Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

In Lod, at Ben Gurion airport, it was full of policemen and armed security troops, which reminded Onno of Havana eighteen years before, when all these men had been in their cribs playing with rattles; but no one was looking for them. The vacationers bound for Cyprus, who had applauded after the landing, had remained in the plane. Their baggage was inspected again at long tables; for the third time people were checked to see if they resembled the photos in their passports. The suitcase was opened again and Parsifal had to help again. Next to them was the Orthodox man, who also glanced at the stones without interest.

"If only he knew," said Quinten.

"Careful," said Onno softly. "Even abroad there's always a chance that someone will understand you. Certainly in Israel." When they were finally given permission to leave and he had drawn some money — shekels, according to him the currency back in Old Testament times — he asked, "Now what?"

"Well, fairly logical. We're going outside."

It was almost one o'clock. On the square in front of the departure hall it was swelteringly hot; people had scarcely any shadows coming from their feet. They walked through the throng of cars and buses toward a low, white office for tourist information and hotel reservations.

"If there's one thing I need," said Onno, "it's a civilized bath. Do you realize we haven't taken our clothes off for twenty-four hours? Don't you feel grimy?"

"I'm okay."

"Sherut?" shouted a man with a yarmulke on his crown, who was hastily loading suitcases into a small bus. "Yerushalayim?"

There were still two free seats in his shuttle to Jerusalem, and Onno had gradually realized that all they had to do was to get in. On the backseat they found themselves next to a graying lady reading L'Express; all the others were intellectual-looking men, Americans, in shortsleeved shirts, some of them wearing bow ties. When the driver started the engine, he turned around and asked them what hotel they wanted. The lady was going to the King David; the Americans had to get to the Hilton. When Onno didn't reply immediately, he asked impatiently: "The Hilton too?"

Onno made a gesture that they might as well go there, and a little later they drove into the dry, stone-strewn hills.

They did not speak during the forty-five-minute drive. Onno had never been in Israel, but he felt as if the metaphysical violence that had raged here for four thousand years, and was still raging, could be read from the landscape. Of course that was a romantic thought, deriving from what he knew of history, from Bible readings with his father and the vicar and from sugary catechism prints from his early childhood, with breaking clouds that let through fans of holy rays. For him, too, Israel had always been "the Promised Land," but that he should finally get to see it under these circumstances was the most unbelievable thing of all: accompanied by his son, who had a suitcase on his lap that supposedly contained the tablets of the Law.

It was as if in this scorching light, undisturbed by any Dutch cloud, time curled up like an insect in a flame. Gradually the hills became more rugged; here and there they were in bloom, and in the verge of the four-lane highway there were the wrecks of shot-up trucks and armored cars preserved with rust-colored red-lead paint. The driver told them that they were from the wars of 1948 and 1967; but they might just as well have been from the time of the Crusaders, the Romans, the Babylonians. .

The tower of the Jerusalem Hilton, with each balcony rail bedecked with an Israeli flag, was in the western part of the city; the excavations that were going on next to it showed that it had once been different. In the cool, sumptuous lobby, surrounded by small boutiques, the Americans reported to excited ladies at a table with miniature flags and papers on it; a board on an easel welcomed delegates to the international conference on the irrigation of the Negev. At the counter Onno put down their passports and asked for two rooms. Perhaps because he saw that they were Dutch passports, the receptionist directed him in English to the hydraulic engineers' table.

"No, we're not with them."

"Why not?" asked Quinten.

"For God's sake!" said Onno, raising his arms. "Not again! You're just like Max."

"Why?"

"I'll tell you sometime."

But there were no other rooms free, all the hotels were full; there were four or five conferences being held in Jerusalem at the moment. Only in the Old City might there be still something available, but of course security was not all it might be there. When Onno said that they weren't so easily frightened, and anyway had to find accommodation somewhere, the receptionist made a couple of telephone calls and noted down the name and address of a hotel.

After they had had a bite to eat in the bar — with Quinten being refused a glass of milk with his ham roll — a taxi took them to the eastern part of the city. At the end of a wide shopping street jammed with traffic the ground sloped gradually downward, and a little later, on the other side of a valley full of vegetation, really more a gully, the massive walls of old Jerusalem rose up above them. Behind them, in a flood of sunlight, were countless towers, with a gold and a silver cupola in the center. Quinten bent deep over his suitcase to be able to see it better through the front windshield.

"Look at that," he said softly. "There it is. It really exists."

Although the Arab on his camel belonged to the same order as the heavy, sandy yellow stones of the city wall that he was riding past, the driver hooted at him to move aside, drove through the Jaffa Gate, and stopped in a small square. A little later there they were in the throng of tourists, Palestinian merchants wearing headscarves, Roman Catholic monks and nuns, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic priests in exotic robes, religious Jews in kaftans, military patrols made up of boys and girls, with Uzis and Kalashnikovs slung around them. The pealing of church bells and the cries of the merchants merged into a din that effortlessly absorbed the two dull thuds with which a jet broke the sound barrier in the distance.

Hotel Raphael, probably not mentioned in any travel guide, sat wedged unimposingly between a bureau de change and a grocer's, which had displayed its boxes and sacks of herbs like the palette of Carpaccio: vermilion, rusty-brown, terra-cotta, cornflower blue, olive-green, saffron-yellow. The reception desk consisted of a corrugated wooden counter in a narrow hallway leading via a couple of steps into what was obviously the lounge-cum-breakfast room; slumped in a chair with a torn plastic back, a man in his sixties sat watching the television, which was fed by a V-shaped indoor aerial. He put his cigarette in an ashtray and got up.

"Quist?" he asked with a melancholy smile. "Shalom," — and then in English—"My colleague said you were coming." He shook hands with them and introduced himself as Menachem Aron.

He had not made things easy for himself. On his head was a wig of chestnut-colored hair that was too thick and too even, out of which reddish-gray hair protruded by his ears; what's more, there was a light-blue yar-mulke pinned to its crown, which in this case may not have been strictly necessary liturgically — unless he was taking account of the possibility, Onno reflected, that God could not see he was wearing a wig. Aron put two forms on the counter and asked how many nights they wanted to stay.

"Two?" asked Quinten. "Three?"

"I'm not saying anything. It's your undertaking, you must know."

"Two, then." That should be enough.

"Shower in the hall," said Aron, putting down their room keys.

"I don't know about you," said Onno, "but I'm going straight to bed. I've had it." He pointed to the suitcase. "What do you think? Shall we ask if he's got a luggage locker?"