Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

Quinten looked at his watch. Five to twelve. He stood up and said: "We must go."

When he made to leave the chapel, Onno whispered: "Shouldn't we clear up in here? We can't leave it like this, can we?"

"We're coming back in half an hour."

Onno stiffened.

"To do what? They're not here, Quinten. You were wrong. Everything has gone well up to now, let's call it a day."

Quinten put a finger to his lips — and for the umpteenth time Onno realized that there was nothing he could say.

Back for the second time in the chapel of San Lorenzo, sitting next to each other in the dark on a bench, Onno thought of the mess that they had made — picked locks, opened doors, tools lying everywhere. Imagine an insomniac father of the Holy Cross taking his prayer book and going for a walk through the building, praying as he went, and then seeing that chaos in the sanctum! But he was even more tormented by the question how he could support Quinten.

For reasons that were obscure to him, the boy had invested so much in this adventure that he could obviously not stand the fact that it all had been for nothing. How could he get it through to him that this was how things were in life? When you were seventeen, you thought that the world was made of the same substance as your own theories, so that you had control of it and could turn it to your own advantage. But one day everyone had to confront the bitter truth that it wasn't like that, that the world was soup and thought was generally a fork: it seldom resulted in a good meal. Today the moment of truth had struck for Quinten — differently than for other boys, that was true, but it amounted to the same thing.

"Quinten?"

"Yes?"

"What do you want to do?"

"Have another good look."

"We did have a good look."

"But still no better than Grisar. Or Flavius Josephus."

Onno sighed in resignation. Again he was encountering granite. He could keep his wise sermons to himself; it was as though Freud's father were to try to convince his son that the subconscious did not exist — and it was very questionable whether it existed. At the same time it gave him a feeling of satisfaction: Quinten still had the kind of unspoiled self-confidence that he himself had long since lost — if he'd ever possessed it; he wasn't even sure of that anymore. He mustn't try to talk him around at all; he had to empty that cup to the dregs. What's more, he might otherwise have to hear for the rest of his life that the tablets might have been in that damn altar after all. On their ascetic beds the fathers meanwhile rose for a short while to the second stage of their sleep, before sinking back to the fourth.

At quarter past twelve, Quinten took the flashlight and said: "Now for it."

By now they both felt at home in the chapel that they kept going in and out of. Quinten squatted down, laid the flashlight against the marble step, rested his elbows on his knees, put his hands on his cheeks, and looked intently at the shrine. He had to finish in ten minutes.

It had not surprised him that the four drawers were empty, because he knew that. But where else could two flat stones have been hidden? Actually, only behind the treasure chest. At the back, the altar was built against the wall; it couldn't be reached from the side. But it must be possible to take the box out: it had once been put in. In the center of the lower frame he noticed a ring, obviously intended to pull the whole thing forward; but that was impossible, since the marble pillars of the altar blocked the sides of the box. So this meant that the shrine had not been pushed into the altar but that the altar had been built around the shrine. And that had happened in about the year 800, while the tablets of the Law had only been brought here from the basilica four centuries later. In other words: they couldn't be behind the box. So? So they must be underneath.

The box was not resting on the ground; there was a narrow chink. Obviously it was on legs, but they were obscured from view by the pillars. Quinten lay down on his stomach, put his cheek on the step, and shone the flashlight underneath. Had Grisar done this too? What reason would he have had to do that? There was all kinds of rubbish that was difficult to distinguish — shards, pieces and fragments, perhaps remains of masonry work. On either side the shrine was supported not by feet but by flat stones.

Quinten looked inside numbly, feeling the blood draining from his face. From his backpack he produced a long skeleton key and put the key around the back of the right-hand stone. Helping it along with the flat of his hand, which just fitted through the gap, he tried to see if it could be moved. Scraping over the dust, the stone moved forward. It was not supporting anything!

"Dad.." he whispered flatly. "I've got them."

When Onno saw the oblong, gray, almost black stone appearing from the crack, he remembered for an instant how as a little boy he'd sometimes stood by the mailbox when the postman came. The flap suddenly opening, the letters falling into the hall from nowhere. He began trembling.

"You're crazy!" he whispered, while it seemed as if he were screaming. "It's impossible! Let me see!"

"Not now," said Quinten with determination. "Give me the suitcase."

"Let me see if there's anything written on it!"

"In a moment. Hurry up."

With trembling hands, Onno gave him the suitcase, and Quinten snapped open the locks. The stone was lighter than he thought, but still almost as heavy as a paving slab; carefully he laid it among the newspapers that he had put in at home — the Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, the Herald Tribune. When Onno saw the second stone appearing too, his head began to spin. It was inconceivable that these could really be Moses' tablets of the Law! Surely this was the most inconceivable thing of all! Of course they were simply two old flagstones. Quinten was seeing what he wanted to see — he was simply making a bigger and bigger hangover for himself!

Quinten snapped the locks of the suitcase again, collected his tools, and put them into the backpack. As he stood there with it in his hands, he surveyed the shrine, opened the upper right-hand drawer, and put his backpack into the compartment.

"Treasure trove," he said, closing the door, "in a thousand years' time." Then he closed the bronze doors, took the large padlock off the steps, put it through the rings, and pushed it into the lock with a loud click. Next the barred gate was shut — two clicks of the padlocks and this was also barred. Together with Onno, he pushed the iron rod through the rings and put the large sliding padlock on it. When he pushed the parts together with all his strength, it produced such a penetrating sharp click that it was as though someone were striking an anvil with a hammer. Onno stopped to see if anyone had heard it, but Quinten gave him the case and pushed him in the back. "Let's go now, before someone comes." They went quickly through the narrow passage to the chapel of San Lorenzo, where Quinten closed the entry door behind him and put on the two locks, again with loud clicks.

"Right," he said, and listened. "Not much more can happen to us now." With his left hand Onno pointed to the suitcase in his right. "If the Ten Commandments are really in here, which God forbid, then more can happen to us than you could ever imagine in your wildest dreams, my dear friend. That would be more explosive than an atom bomb."

"Only if you can't hold your tongue. No one will ever know." What did his father know about his wildest dreams? Only because of his dream of the Citadel had he been able to fetch the tablets from the center of the world — thus, as it were, removing the sting from the SOMNIUM QUINTI. The sting was now in that suitcase.