Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"It's just as well you've gotten away from that castle," said Onno, making a face. Because he wasn't sure that anti-Semitic platitude had not taken root in Quinten, he decided to nip it in the bud immediately. "The Jews didn't crucify Christ at all, Quinten; the Romans crucified Christ. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment for serious criminals. Over there, that Orthodox Jewish gentleman, with the beard and the black hat on the back of his head — if you say to me, 'Kill him,' and I kill him, does that make you his murderer and not me? I don't have to do what you tell me, do I? Now, if I were completely in your power, then it would be different, but I'm not. You can say so many things. The Jews cried, 'Crucify him,' but Pilate did it. He could have stood his ground, at the top of those sacred stairs, and said, 'Get lost, I wouldn't dream of it, he's innocent,' couldn't he? He was the boss, wasn't he? Yes, he was responsible for keeping the peace in the occupied area. He didn't want any problems with the emperor here in Rome. All understandable — that's how it goes in politics — but why should the descendants of those loudmouths later be persecuted and exterminated and not the descendants of the actual murderers — that is, the Italians? Peter and Paul were also crucified by the Romans, and without the Jews demanding it. But not only were the Italian people not forced into the gas chambers; until recently, Christ's representatives on earth were virtually exclusively Italian descendants of the Romans. And the popes still have their seat in Rome, just like the Roman emperors. All very strange, isn't it? God moves in ironic ways, shall we say. I also used to think that the hatred of Jews was all about Christ, but that isn't the case; it existed long before Christ. They keep thinking up new reasons for it: that they're rich and showy, that they're poor and dirty, that they pull the strings of plutocratic world capitalism, that they're revolutionaries and have communism on their conscience, that they've got no homeland, that they're reestablishing their homeland — it's all grist for the mill, as long as it's bad. The fact that one accusation contradicts another doesn't matter, because hate is primary. And the fact that hate has always been there is another proof for anti-Semites that there must be a basis to it."

On the way to the runway a taxiing plane turned its back on them and for a few seconds emitted a deafening din. Quinten waited for a moment.

"And what is it based on?"

Onno put his hand on the suitcase, which Quinten had on his lap. "On this. At least, if what you think is in there is in there. On the fact that the God of the Jews had sanctified his people by entering into a covenant with them, which no other people can boast. Obviously an intolerable thought for many people. Anyway, give me that thing. I'll do the talking if it's necessary." He got up. "Remember, you don't know a thing, you're just tagging along."

At the tables, a few yards apart, they were questioned separately by the security officials, Quinten in English, Onno in Italian. They were asked whether the suitcases and that backpack was their property. Whether they had packed their luggage themselves. If they had lost sight of it since they had packed it. If anyone had given them anything to take along. In reply to the question what he was going to do in Israel, Quinten said that he was accompanying his father and that he wanted to visit the holy places, while Onno said:

"On business."

"What kind of business?"

"I try with moderate success to make my living as an art dealer."

The official looked at the two pieces of luggage from all sides, put two red stickers on them, gave Onno his ticket and passport back, and allowed him to pass with a brief wave of his hand.

"If we check in the suitcase," said Onno as they were standing in the back of the queue at the counter, "the stones may break, and of course they sling them around on the platform. But if we take it as hand luggage, we're almost bound to have to open it. What shall we do?"

"Hand luggage."

"Of course." Onno nodded — and he couldn't resist adding with a smile, "The first set was smashed to pieces as well, after all."

Through passport control, too, in the crowded departure lounge by their gate, there were heavily armed policemen and all kinds of people whose function was not immediately clear. Bent over the screen of the detection apparatus sat a fat woman in a blue uniform; behind her, a blond girl with her arms folded watched. Onno put the suitcase on the conveyor belt, whereupon it disappeared under the rubber flaps. A little later the belt stopped. Perhaps it won't come out again, thought Quinten — slowly the X-ray picture faded and disappeared from the screen; even after the machine was dismantled down to the last screw, nothing would be found of the suitcase.

When it appeared after half a minute on the other side under the rubber flaps, the girl came forward and invited Onno with a razor-sharp smile to open the case. He could tell from her accent immediately that she wasn't Italian but Israeli. Quinten helped him with the locks, and to his amazement Onno saw a beige envelope marked WESTERBORK SYNTHETIC RADIO TELESCOPE, with an astronomical mirror as a logo. The girl put the envelope aside and folded open the newspapers.

"What on earth is this?" With her fingers wide apart, she raised her hands in the air and looked with a distaste at the gray stones. She lifted one up and asked, "What kind of material is this? Its lighter than you'd think. Lava?"

"Maybe some plastic or other," said Onno as well as he could in ancient Hebrew. "Modern art, at any rate. A creation of a promising young German: Anselm Buchwald. An atmospheric evocation of the Grail legend."

She looked up and said in modern Hebrew: "To me it looks more like an atmospheric evocation of the Third Reich."

"Who knows, perhaps it amounts to the same thing."

She looked at him piercingly with her green eyes. "You speak Hebrew like Jeremiah."

"Like Job would be more correct," said Onno with feigned sadness.

"The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away: praised be the name of the Lord!"

After they had been let through, he asked Quinten what was in the envelope.

"Secret," said Quinten gruffly.

Onno shook his head. "You mustn't do such unexpected things. As if we didn't have enough problems already."

"You see," said Quinten with a laugh when they were off the ground, "we've gotten away."

"As long as they're not waiting for us in Tel Aviv," said Onno, looking worried. "It's a quarter past eight. Those fathers have probably already discovered my stick, or else they will within an hour. Padre Agostino will turn to Gorgonzola from fright, and in two hours Angiolina will give a precise description of that strange father and son who wanted to leave on the very first flight, and they'll hear from that Israeli policewoman that there was something very strange about the pair," he said, and pointed up at the baggage locker. "In three hours' time, when we land, there will be an expatriation request waiting for us at the airport, and we'll be taken back on the same plane under guard via Cyprus to Rome, where we shall languish until we die in a dungeon of the Castel Sant'Angelo, rattling our chains and gnawed by the rats."

"Then they'd be missing something really special in the Holy Land," said Quinten. "Besides which, you're forgetting the time difference."

Onno looked at him inquiringly. "What do you mean I'm forgetting the time difference?"

"It's an hour later in Israel than in Italy, isn't it?"

"What about it?"

"That means that for that hour we haven't existed. And if you've been able not to exist for an hour, no one can find you anymore, if you ask me."

Onno watched calmly while Quinten put his Mickey Mouse watch an hour forward, then crossed his arms and glanced sideways out of the window in front of him. The plane toppled the earth and in a wide arc they reached the sea above Ostia, which glittered in the morning sunlight like an aging skin. Confronted with Quinten's invulnerability, he felt like a bird trying to open a safe with its beak. He should surrender to Quinten, just as Quinten himself had surrendered to… well, to what? To something that he probably didn't know himself.