Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"You bet we are. It's five-thirty. The Sancta Sanctorum closes in two hours." Quinten took the small bright-red canvas backpack, which he had bought yesterday and had packed hours before, off his camp bed. "Are you coming, or would you rather go on sleeping?"

"Of course I'd rather go on sleeping," said Onno gruffly, and stumbled to the tap. "I was just dreaming about an ideal world without crime, without commandments, and without boys who are far too enterprising."

After they had eaten half a French loaf with ham at Mauro's, with nothing but an espresso, and had been to the toilet one last time, Onno suggested hailing a taxi, but that didn't seem a good idea to Quinten: if things went wrong, the driver would have their description. On the Corso Vittorio Emanuele they took the bus and got off at the basilica. As they walked past the obelisk to the entrance, Onno raised his stick in the air and said:

"Ave, Pharao, morituri te salutant."

In his other hand he had the flat, sturdy gray plastic air-travel suitcase in which the stone tablets of Moses were shortly to be put.

The Sancta Sanctorum was busier than on the previous days — perhaps because tomorrow was Sunday. The grumpy face of the old priest, who was ready to tap angrily with his coin against the glass, lit up with a smile when he saw Quinten.

"You're about to rob that dear old chap," said Onno.

"I'm going to collect something he doesn't even know he has."

"And you think that's not stealing? Perhaps it's even worse. You don't do things like that. It isn't even a question of Mosaic morality, but upbringing."

"Then you should have brought me up properly," said Quinten before he knew it. He was immediately sorry that he had blurted it out. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that."

Onno nodded without looking at him. "Leave it. You're right."

No, he wasn't a thief, Quinten reflected. He'd never stolen anything. After all, he didn't want those stones for himself! Once he had them, he would no more have them to himself than those priests had them now. Those same fathers of the Holy Cross would certainly understand him better — but no, they of course had only entered the order to get to heaven; they were expecting a rich reward. He himself expected nothing, and his father kept trying up to the very last moment to make him give up his plan. But if he wasn't a thief, what was he then?

In order to win the complete confidence of the priests, and in order to be able to use their piety as an argument in the event of a disaster, Quinten had persuaded Onno to go up via the Holy Stairs. They crossed the entrance and waited at the bottom stair for their turn, as though in front of a box office.

"In a moment," said Onno, "I shall sink to my knees, and from the Calvinist Heaven my father, seated at the right hand of God, will glare down at me and then fall from his chair in a swoon. All your fault." And when a place became free and he actually knelt down, supporting himself on his stick, he bent his head and muttered, "Forgive me, Father, I know not what I do. Only your grandson knows that."

It sounded like a prayer, and Quinten had difficulty in suppressing a laugh. That old mixture of jokes and seriousness that he remembered so well from the past was returning more and more. Or, rather, it wasn't a mixture; the one was at the same time the other — the jokes were serious, without being any the less jokes for that. Perhaps no one had ever understood that except Max; perhaps their friendship had been based on it.

Quinten also knelt on the first step with his hands folded. He had not gone to the lengths of learning the twenty-eight official prayers by heart, but just moving his lips for a quarter of an hour seemed equally ridiculous to him; so he began muttering his Latin declensions:

Hic, haec, hoc. Hic, huius, hoc. Hic, huic, hoc. Hunc, hanc, hoc. Hoc, hac, hoc. Hi, hae, haec. Horum, harum, horum. Horum, his, horum. Hos, has, haec. Hos, his, haec."

The wood-paneled steps were low and wide, the next two were empty, on the fourth knelt a nun and a heavy, common-looking man. The soles of his shoes, which Quinten was looking at, had thick treads with small stones stuck in them. He would have loved to take a knife out of his backpack and prise them out, which would have made them fly six feet in the air. While the nun and the man made their way laboriously to the following step, like invalids, he and Onno also clambered upward. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his father shuffling clumsily with his stick and his case. After five or six steps, each of which were kissed by the nun, he had run out of pronouns, and so started on the verbs:

"Capio, capis, capit, capimus, capitis, capiunt. Capiam, capias, capiat, capia-mus, capiatis, capiant. Capiebam, capiebas, capiebat, capiebamus, capiebatis, capiebant. Caperem, caperes, caperet, caperemus, caperetis, caperent. Capiam, copies, capiet, capiemus, capietis, capient."

The higher he got, the more irregular the verbs became and gradually he sank into a light trance. How did it go again? Deponentia, semi-deponentia… Volebamus, ferebatis, ferrebaris. . Through a small glass window in the wood, pale-brown spots were visible on the white marble: Christ's blood of course. Conficit, confecit, confectus. .

At the top, by the barred window of the chapel, opposite the altar, they got to their feet.

"If we are not crushed by the power of God's right hand now," said Onno, "that will be the ontological proof that he doesn't exist."

It was seven o'clock. For the last half hour they wandered among the tourists and worshipers through the chapels, which gradually began to empty; a priest had stationed himself at the bottom of the Holy Stairs to prevent anyone else climbing them.

"There's still time for us to leave," said Onno, without hope.

"But we won't. Let's take up our positions."

They went to the right-hand side chapel, where there was no one except an elderly couple, obviously German; they both wore green loden jackets and were looking at the fresco of St. Lorenzo above the altar. Very shortly, Quinten knew, a priest would do the rounds in order to ask the stragglers to leave with unctuous gestures. The priest himself would not wait for them, but a little later he would come back for a last check. If he were to appear before the couple had disappeared, there would be no problem: they would wait until they were alone and then quickly make themselves invisible— there was no communication between the priest above and those at the foot of the four profane staircases. But it was made easy for them. As they stood by the outside wall, opposite the bronze door with the padlocks on it, which led to the Sancta Sanctorum, the man in the loden jacket suddenly looked at his watch, said, "Good heavens!" in alarm — and hurried oft holding his wife by the arm.

The moment they were out of sight, Quinten and Onno turned, pulled open the black velvet curtains of a confessional, and slipped in.

The scuffing sandals of the priest had come and gone. Five minutes later they had again come and gone, the outside doors had closed with a thunderous crash, the light has been turned off, and in the pitch blackness of their hideaway they listened to the sounds. After the lay public had been turned out into the street, the atmosphere of sanctity downstairs at the entrance gradually gave way to a flaming row in Italian.

The clerics seemed to have undergone a transformation. Onno could not follow what all those grumbling old voices were saying, but regarded the fact that this had happened as a confirmation of his theory of the Golden Wall: behind the Church's wall things were just like everywhere else — and in a certain sense that was right and proper, because in this way those impassioned old men in their black dresses proved that they were religious professionals and not pious amateurs. After about ten minutes calm returned: murmuring voices in the distance, obviously on the farthest staircase on the other side, which led to the chapel of San Silvestro; the slamming of the door there, which gave access to the convent.