Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

Onno looked up at the obelisk. He had never been here before either; with his head right back, stroking his beard thoughtfully, he peered at the hieroglyphics.

"Can you read them?"

"I'm a bit rusty, I see. It looks like a ceremonial treatise on the eternal life of Pharaoh Thutmoses the Third."

"Another Moses then."

"But a few hundred years older than the Jewish one. This," he said, pointing with his index finger, "is definitely the oldest artistic monument on European soil. I mean, approximately between three and a half and four thousand years old."

Onno explained to him that Moses was an Egyptian name which meant "child," "son." Because the pharaoh had all newborn Jewish males murdered, Moses' mother had put her baby in a rush basket among the reeds of the Nile; it was made of papyrus stalks, since crocodiles had an aversion to papyrus. Moses' sister saw him being found by the pharaoh's daughter, and then told the princess that she knew of a good wet nurse for the foundling— namely, her mother. And so it came to pass. The princess called the child "Child," so that, without anyone knowing, Moses was brought up by his own mother. More than a thousand years later, said Onno, as a mirror image of those events, Mary and Joseph fled with their son to Egypt of all places in order to escape Herod's murder of the innocents in Bethlehem — and just as Moses' foster mother was actually his real mother, so Jesus' lawful father was not his true father.

"In those circles, family relationships are often rather complicated."

"The Annunciation." Quinten nodded.

"As you say. So Thutmoses means 'child of the God Thoth.' He was the inventor of writing."

"You look as though you really believe that."

Onno shrugged his shoulders.

"An ex-cryptographer has to have a God too, doesn't he? And anyway, what does 'really believe' mean? Do you know that story about Niels Bohr, the great physicist? Max told it to me once. Another great physicist, Wolfgang Pauli or some such person, once visited Bohr in his country house and saw that he had nailed an horseshoe above his front door. 'Professor!' he said. 'You? A horseshoe? Do you believe in that?' To which Bohr said, 'Of course not. But do you know, Pauli, they say it helps even if you don't believe in it.' " He laughed, and Quinten could see that it was partly also because he was thinking of the way that Max had told him that anecdote. "By the way, did you know, child of mine, that the word obelisk was the first word that you could speak? There at the grave of that horse, at Groot Rechteren."

"Deep Thought Sunstar," said Quinten, lost in thought. He couldn't remember it, but the sudden emergence of the castle here in the square, from his father's mouth, gave him the same kind of feeling as when he drank a glass of hot milk on a winter's day. "Sometimes," he said, as they walked toward the side entrance of the cathedral, "I have the feeling that the world is very complicated, but that there's something behind it that is very simple and at the same time incomprehensible."

"Such as?"

"I don't know… a sphere. Or a point."

Onno glanced at him from the side. "Are you talking about stories, like the one about Moses, or about reality?"

"Is there so much difference?"

Perhaps a story was precisely the complete opposite of reality, thought Onno; but he had the feeling that he should not confuse Quinten with that.

"And that sphere, or that point, does that give reality a meaning?"

"Meaning? What do you mean by that?"

Onno said nothing. The thought that anything could give a meaning to the world was alien to him. It was there, but it was absurd that it was there. It might just as well not have been there. Quinten's sphere reminded him of that original, shining sphere, which had been polished in Los Alamos by young soldiers, who went out dancing with their girls in the evening. What was the relation between the smoldering chaos in Hiroshima and that Platonic body? One could not be understood with the aid of the other, though it emerged from it. How could a human being be understood from a fertilized ovum? How could anything be understood?

Reality wasn't a syllogism like "Socrates is a man — all men are mortal— hence Socrates is mortal," but more like "Helga is a human being — all telephone booths have been vandalized — hence Helga must die." Or like: "Hitler is a human being — all Jews are animals — hence all Jews must die." That incomprehensible logic, which controlled everything, good and bad and neutral, Quinten must find for himself. He didn't consider it his job to cloud the purity of the boy. Someone who didn't even know what "meaning" meant must keep that pristine sense for as long as possible.

A mass was being celebrated in the crowded archbasilica—"mother and head of all churches in the city and the world" — by a cardinal in purple; they walked forward on tiptoe. The cold baroque interior disappointed Quinten; there was as little left of the medieval building from the time of the emperor Constantine as of the old papal palace. Only the high altar with its Gothic canopy did he find beautiful and mysterious. At the top of the slender cage on posts, behind bars, were statues of Peter and Paul; their heads were supposed to be buried beneath it. He looked up from his guidebook.

"Were they friends, those two?" he whispered.

"Not that I know of. When you're occupied with things like they were, I don't think there's room for friendship. In the religion business, I expect it's the same as in politics."

Quinten again focused on the closed, painted part of the ciborium, where the relics were housed. He seemed to see the two skulls already lying there. "I'd like to take a look in there."

"You won't be able to do that, my friend."

There was a flash: someone took a photo of the striking pair, the tramp with the beautiful boy. With panic in his eyes, Onno turned around. A Japanese girl with a black raincap on her head; she was already walking on, as though it was allowed simply to appropriate someone's image. A little later a sexton stopped her and pointed to her camera with the shake of his head.

"Why does it make you jump like that, Dad?"

Onno made a helpless gesture. "I'm sorry, a stupid reflex. Any Dutch scandal sheet would have gladly given a thousand guilders for that photo. You get those kinds of reactions when you've hidden away from everybody for years."

"But it's not like that anymore, is it?"

"No, Quinten, not anymore. But what it's really like, I don't honestly know. We'll see." He didn't want to think about it; he would have preferred to spend his days like this forever, with Quinten in the Eternal City. "Where are we going now?"

"To the other side."

The gigantic bronze doors of the Roman Curia, which now formed the central entrance, were closed; they emerged outside through a side door. Quinten turned around for a moment and looked up. Sharply outlined against the sky, above the eaves of the basilica, a row of enormous figures stood gesticulating excitedly, as though something extraordinary were about to happen.

They crossed the busy, windy square diagonally and Quinten stopped on the terrace of the building containing the Sancta Sanctorum and looked in through the open doors. Straight ahead of him, on the other side of a high doorway, were the Holy Stairs, the Scala Santa.

A shiver went through him. With the din of the traffic behind him, he looked into a world where it was as quiet as in an aquarium. On the slowly ascending steps, less than nine feet wide, ten or twelve men and women were kneeling, praying with their heads bowed, their backs and the soles of their shoes facing him. They were as stationary as people on an escalator, but the escalator was not moving, it was standing still; now and then someone made his way laboriously up to the next step. The walls and the semicircular ceiling were covered with pious frescoes; the architect had constructed the stairwell in such a perspective that it seemed as though it were a long, horizontal corridor to the other side, with the navel of a crucified Christ at the vanishing point. The stairs were covered with wood, but small cracks revealed the marble, over which the accused was supposed to have walked.