Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

Thrown off balance, Onno looked at him. Such pious simplicity and goodness rendered him helpless. The fathers had been robbed, hopefully only of two worthless stones, and they would never realize that they had lost anything; but in a few hours' time they would discover that they had been lied to by two burglars who had desecrated their holy chapel. He wanted nothing better than a cup of coffee, but he had the feeling that he would only really be committing a mortal sin if he accepted; apart from that, they had to make their getaway as soon as possible. He said that he didn't want to burden them any longer, whereupon the rector made a gesture of resignation, let his left hand float over Quinten's crown for a moment, and blessed him with the right. Thereupon Onno put out his hand to say goodbye, but at that moment the rector started back in alarm, looking at the hand as though he were being threatened with a knife. Immediately afterward another father accompanied them to the door of the convent, while all the heads turned to follow them, smiling and nodding.

In the white-plastered cloister, where a portrait of the pope hung, the father said with an apologetic gesture: "Please excuse the rector. You mustn't touch him. Padre Agostino has believed for the last few months he is made of butter."

A little later they left the place of pilgrimage via the tradesmen's entrance.

Breathing in the night air deeply, they walked into the square. By the obelisk Quinten turned around and glanced back at the building as if to say farewell.

"This is now no longer the holiest place in the world," he said.

The suggestion that he himself was therefore now the holiest place in the world was so shocking that Onno didn't know what to say. He raised his hand and hailed a taxi; at that point the driver was added to the company that would shortly recognize them, but by that time they would be far away abroad. He gave his address, Quinten put the suitcase on his lap, and, enjoying their freedom in silence, they roared toward the Colosseum and over the broad Via dei Fori Imperiali to the Piazza Venezia.

As they screeched around the corner, Onno suddenly cried: "Made of butter! How in God's name do you dream up that one!"

"Do you find that so crazy?"

"Don't you, then?"

"Not at all. On the contrary, it's logical."

"Of course," said Onno with his eyebrows raised. "That strikes me as just the sort of thing that you would understand. So explain to me why it's not senile but logical."

"Because Christ said that he was made of bread."

Onno did not reply. He looked outside, at the deserted pavements of the somber Corso Vittorio Emanuele. How did the boy's brain work? Was he really human? The rector who had spread himself on Christ to make a sandwich — in what kind of a head could such a thought occur? What kind of world did he live in? Was what he said even true, maybe? Did theology have a psychological dimension, of which psychology had no knowledge, for someone like the old padre?

In the courtyard on the Via del Pellegrino all the windows were dark. They went quietly up the stairs, and when they had gotten to his room, Onno said:

"And now I want to see it at once."

Quinten looked at his Mickey Mouse watch. "We've got no time for that. "You have to sort your things out. What are you taking with you?"

"Nothing. Just my passport and a few clothes."

"And all those notes there?"

"They've served their turn. I'll leave a letter for the landlord, to say I've gone traveling for a few weeks. The rent has been paid for two months in advance; and if I'm not back by then, he'll make sure that things are cleared up."

"Just as long as you hurry. We've got to be out of Italy in a few hours."

"Five minutes!"

"Then I'll quickly put some coffee on."

"Nothing that I need more in the world! And be prepared for the biggest disappointment of your life, Quinten."

Onno took the suitcase and laid it on the table under the window. "Could anything be more idiotic? Thanks to my stupidity, we now have to leave the country — and why? For nothing!" In vain he tried to get the locks open. "How do these bloody things work?"

With a paper filter in his hand, Quinten came and made the locks spring open, and immediately went back to making coffee. It was a mystery to Onno. That boy had done everything to get those things into his possession — and now he had them. On the one hand he was convinced that they were the tablets of the Law; on the other hand they seemed to leave him completely indifferent.

Onno opened the lid, pulled down the desk lamp, put on his reading glasses, and opened the newspapers.

He saw at first glance that it wasn't as easy as that. The surface consisted on all sides of a gray-caked layer, which seemed to be made of congealed time. Was there something underneath? He scratched at it with a thumbnail, causing something of the grainy substance to loosen. This was work for an archaeological laboratory, but he had understood from Quinten that the stones would never find their way there. They had more or less the dimensions that Rabbi Berechiah, without ever having seen them, had given.

With lips tightly clenched, he leaned back. Was it really conceivable that these things here were the original of all those depictions which were to be seen in every synagogue, above the ark? The tablets of the Law: symbol of the Jewish religion, just as the menorah was that of the Jewish state and the Magen David —the "shield of David" — of Zionism. Was it really conceivable that these things which were now lying on the table had once lain in the ark of the covenant, had been lugged through the desert year after year, had been preserved for centuries in the Holy of Holies of the three temples, and then taken by Titus. . Was it conceivable that Quinten was right after all? Was Moses' handwriting hidden beneath that crust? Those signs, scratched into the stone as a result of some inspiration or other? Suddenly his heart started pounding. The oldest known inscriptions in Canaanite writing dated from approximately 1000 B.C.; Moses' writing would therefore be a thousand years older still. Undoubtedly, it would be very close to Egyptian hieroglyphics — and perhaps the Phaistos disc was connected in some way? That writing came from the same period! Suddenly he thought of the sign that looked a little like a sedan chair — was that perhaps the ark? However small the chance was that Quinten was right, it had to be proved beyond doubt that he was not! But how? What was he intending to do?

Hearing a creaking sound near his neck, he looked around in alarm. Smiling, with a pair of scissors in one hand, Quinten was holding up his ponytail. They had decided on that metamorphosis so that no one at the airport would recognize them when their descriptions appeared — and then be able to say where they had gone to. Quinten pulled the rubber band off, and a few entangled gray hairs got stuck in it; but he gathered his own hair behind him and wound the rubber band around it. At the same moment Onno saw a boy changing into a man, like when in a change of scene in a film the role of a young actor is suddenly taken over by an older one. He couldn't remember ever having seen Quinten's ears.

"Drink your coffee," said Quinten. "But keep your head still."

Like a real barber, he held the comb upside down in his left hand, the thumb of his right hand through one ring of the scissors, not the middle but the ring finger through the other, now and then making rapid snips in the air. After each snip his father resembled more and more the memory that he had of him: within five minutes the tramp had largely given way to the minister who had come and fetched him occasionally at Groot Rechteren in the car. Meanwhile he glanced over his shoulder at the tablets of the Law, like a barber glances at the illustrated magazine that the customer has on his lap.