Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"Now you're the one who looks as if you're being touched by transcendence," said Onno ironically, as they went inside. "Don't tell me that you really believe that staircase comes from Pilate's Citadel Antonia."

The mention of the word Citadel, at this moment, gave Quinten a slight jolt. "Like those people there? Not at all. Or, rather, I don't bother to ask myself if it's genuine or not. But I don't know.." he said, and looked around. "I have the feeling that there's a story being told here."

He bought a brochure on the building from an ancient priest at a table. As he put down his money, a second old priest tapped hard with a hundred-lire coin against the glass of a ticket office and made an inexorable gesture toward a man who was planning to visit the sanctuary in shorts. He also had an emblem of a white heart with the letters JESU XPI PASSIO, crowned by a cross on the chest of his black habit.

"You mean," said Onno in a muffled voice, as they gradually ascended the staircase and stopped at an appropriate distance, "the story about 'What is truth?', washing one's hands in innocence, 'Ecce homo' and all that?"

Quinten knew that story only vaguely. He breathed in, in order to say something, stopped, and shook his head — it was as though he were not clear himself what he meant.

"I don't know, leave it. In any case a story that those people are part of too," he said, nodding at the kneeling people, "who are praying and crawling upward, toward that ypsilon."

"Ypsilon?"

"The crucified Christ on that fresco at the end. He's in the shape of a Y, isn't he?"

"Good God," said Onno. "Pythagoras's letter." He looked at Quinten appreciatively. "Well seen. Do you know that cross is also on the ceremonial habit of a bishop? Perhaps you've made a discovery."

Quinten had not been listening to him. "I have the feeling that this building itself is telling a story in some way."

"You're talking in riddles. But perhaps that's appropriate here."

"Let me read this first."

By a pillar Quinten sat down on the marble floor and opened the brochure, but immediately a broken voice told him to get up. A second priest, just as old and dressed in black like the other, was sitting on a straight wooden chair in the middle of the vestibule and moved a white index finger reproachfully back and forth. While Onno was amazed at the frenzied mood that had suddenly taken hold of Quinten, he went and looked at the statues and painting in the entrance. Meanwhile Quinten read the short text, which was concluded with twenty-eight prayers, one for each step.

After a few minutes he looked up. "Dad?"

"Yes?"

"I know all about it."

"That's a lot."

"It's like this: according to a medieval legend, that staircase was brought to the Lateran by the empress Helena from Jerusalem. She was the mother of Constantine."

"I know. He was married to a certain Fausta — that pious Christian emperor subsequently had her murdered." He looked at Quinten with a crooked smile.

"When the popes returned from exile in Avignon, in the fourteenth century, the palace was largely gutted and then they took the Vatican as their headquarters. In the sixteenth century Sixtus V had the Lateran demolished, except for the papal chapel, up there. The architect," he said, and looked in the brochure, "Domenico Fontana, then moved the staircase to here. For some reason or other it happened at night, by torchlight."

"It obviously couldn't bear the light of day."

"The steps were laid from top to bottom, otherwise the workers would have had to stand on them."

"It seems right to me."

With a wave of his arm Quinten looked around him. "Just imagine: everything gone, that enormous palace, where all those popes lived for a thousand years — all that's left is that chapel with this staircase here. The building has been put around it like a shell."

"What's so strange about that? The whole of Rome is made like that."

"But what about those crawling people? It isn't just a kind of museum, like everywhere else, is it? There's something going on here, isn't there? It's just as though it's a stage up there, on which a mystery play has to be performed. Just look, that window with those bars, under that painting of the crucifixion, which they are heading for. It's like the window of a prison cell. Come on, let's go and have a look."

"Just a moment. You don't really expect me to go up that staircase on my knees?"

"Here at the side there are two ordinary staircases. At the other side too."

While they went up the marble stairway on the left, Onno was pleased by Quinten's enthusiasm. What boy was interested nowadays in anything else except technical things, having fun, and money? He reminded him of himself when he was the same age and how he buried himself in study, which astonished his friends. No, it had never been any different. Boys like Quinten and himself had always been exceptions. But if you were such an exception yourself, it took twenty-five years for it to get through to you that not everyone was exceptional, and that awareness came as a great disappointment — while the nonexceptional people precisely thought that the exceptional ones were constantly arrogantly aware of their exceptional qualities. The opposite was the case. They didn't despise other people; they overestimated them. It was the nonexceptional people who were constantly aware of the exceptional quality of the exceptional one. It was like a misunderstanding between a dog and cat. When a dog was afraid, it put its tail between its legs, but if it was happy, then it wafted the pleasant smell of its backside toward you; but a cat wagged its tail precisely when it was afraid, since its feces stank. The dog wagging its tail jumped forward to play with the cat wagging its tail, who in turn thought that it was being attacked, and the dog got a bloody scratch on its nose — that linguistic confusion gave birth to the irreconcilable enmity between the two of them. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at Quinten. As they climbed the stairs, his hair billowed like black satin.

While Onno stayed hesitantly on the landing, which the five steps brought him to, Quinten immediately walked on to the point where the central staircase ended, the holy spot. The believers, who were now climbing toward them from below, kept their heads bowed as they muttered, and paid no attention to him. He turned his back on them, bent down, and looked through the bars, which were thicker than a finger and which were in a marble frame.

The Sancta Sanctorum. The transition was even greater than just now from the square to the front entrance — in the dim chapel it was as silent as in a mirror, and the first thing Quinten thought of was the face of his mother in her bed. His heart began pounding. The small space was high and completely square, approximately twenty feet by twenty, exuding an overwhelming sense of everything that was no longer there: 160 popes, who had prayed here daily for ten centuries.

It was as though time had disappeared from here. In the middle of the inlaid marble floor, opposite the altar, was a prayer stool. The altar was behind the protruding, raised section of the back wall, which was supported by two porphyry columns. Across the whole width of the frame above the gilded capitals were the letters:

NON EST • IN • TOTO • SANCTIOR • ORBE • LOCUS

He beckoned his father. "How would you translate that?" he whispered.

"Quinten," said Onno sternly. "You've been to secondary school for five years. You can do that perfectly well."

"There is not," Quinten tried, "at all.. more sacred.. world place?"

"Compelling prose. Of course you could also say: 'Nowhere in the world is there a more sacred spot.' Just because those popes were here? That seems slightly exaggerated."