Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

Onno stopped at a display of walking sticks with primitively carved wooden handles.

"Suppose I took this one," he said, pointing to a snake's head. "That would really be tempting fate."

"I'd be careful about that in Jerusalem."

"Forty shekels," said the shopkeeper, and pulled out the stick.

Since he found them all equally ugly, Onno shook his head and walked on, but the man followed them and a few steps farther the price had fallen to thirty shekels, twenty-five, twenty.

"Wait a bit," said Onno, "and we'll get it for nothing."

"If we simply go on walking, we'll automatically become millionaires," added Quinten — thinking for a moment of the disguised hotel keeper, who had no idea that his safe had been temporarily transformed into the ark of the covenant and was housing a billion guilders' worth of sapphires.

For ten shekels Onno purchased a heavy stick with an uncarved handle, almost a truncheon, helpfully fetched by the salesman from his workshop. Relieved that he again had something to lean on, he walked on. By now they had been walking for a quarter of an hour, but there was no sign of the Temple Mount anywhere. Farther on, the street was topped by arches, and a little later they found themselves in the shadows of a crowded, labyrinthine bazaar, which made it impossible to walk straight ahead.

When Quinten looked to see where they were at a street corner, he read: " 'Via Dolorosa.' "

"Yes, that's what it's like here. The way of the cross of our Lord and Savior." Onno pointed to a relief above a church door with his stick. "This is the fourth station, where Jesus met his mother. But," he said, and looked left and right, "this route leads to Golgotha, over which the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built; and it must start from Pilate's Citadel Antonia, where the Holy Stairs come from. So we have to go that way, because the fortress, I think, is also on the Temple Mount."

At that moment Quinten grabbed his arm and pulled him into a shop selling jewels. "What's wrong?"

"There's Aunt Trees."

Behind a man holding a closed red parasol over his head, she was walking in the middle of a group of white-haired ladies, looking as alike as their flowered dresses.

Crouched in his hiding place, Onno followed her with his eyes. He felt quite moved. "How old she's become," he said softly, "the shrew. But as devout as ever. She's going to put her hand in the hole where the cross of Jesus Christ stood."

"Or did you want to meet her?" asked Quinten. "She would have recognized you too, of course."

"I don't really know." Onno stood up with a groan. "I've no idea anymore what to do with my life, but of course I can't go on acting as if everything's the same as before. You've made sure of that."

Obsequiously, the shopkeeper held up a silver chain — or what was supposed to be a silver chain — with a small Star of David on it.

Onno looked into the eyes of the old Arab, who wore a blob of fine white lace on his head. "We'll have to buy this," he said. He paid the absurd price he was asked and put the chain around Quinten's neck.

Quinten felt it and asked: "Are you allowed to wear one of these if you are not a Jew?"

"Only if you've been given it by your father. That's bound to be somewhere in the Talmud."

A few houses farther on, they bought a map at a newspaper stand, which quickly showed them the way back to the Jewish quarter. The crossing point was clearly on a kind of border, formed by soldiers, who were standing around in a bored fashion on either side of a narrow street. As they descended a wide staircase, they passed another group of soldiers shortly afterward; in the shadow next to radio equipment with a long aerial, they sat and relaxed on chairs, automatic rifles at the ready on their laps.

"God and violence," said Onno. "It's been like that here for four thousand years." The stairs made a ninety-degree turn — and suddenly they stopped.

For a moment Quinten was reminded of Venice, when he had emerged into the Piazza San Marco from the maze of alleyways. But there art and beauty reigned, full of wind and sea and with a floating lightness. Here something else very different was going on: it was not beautiful; it was crushing. He had the feeling that the scene he was watching was not only where it was but in himself, too, like a pit in a fruit — like the word testimony on the plane yesterday.

Hot as an oven, filled with the buzzing of voices, the sound of drums and exotic high-pitched trills from women's throats, a great square extended before them, enclosed on the far side by the massive, yellow Wailing Wall. It did not form a division between two spaces, like a city wall; it was like a cliff. On the area above it gleamed the golden and silver cupolas that he had seen from a taxi; and from there came the electronically amplified wail of a muezzin. In this city the religions not only existed side by side, they were even piled on top of one another.

"That wall," said Onno, "is all that is left of the temple complex of Herod. It stood on top of that plateau. As far as I know it's not called the Wailing Wall because people have been lamenting Jewish persecution there for centuries, like Auschwitz and the gas chambers, but because of the destruction of the temple by the Romans. It will appeal to you." He glanced uncomfortably at Quinten. "They pray for its rebuilding and the coming of the Messiah."

Quinten looked up. Here and there soldiers with rifles were sitting on the wall. "How can we get up there?"

Onno began climbing down the last few steps feeling giddy. "Now that I'm finally in Jerusalem, I want to have a look around down here first. Do you realize what all this means to me? All through my childhood this hoo-ha was pounded into me with a sledgehammer. It's no accident that my sister's walking around here too."

The mood at the foot of the wall was more festive than plaintive. Part of the square was fenced off and reserved for men, a smaller area for women; at the entrance they were given paper yarmulkes — perhaps folded in prisons by Palestinians — and for half an hour they mingled in the religious throng. All along the wall, out of which clumps of weeds were growing, the faithful stood facing the huge blocks, the bottom two rows colored brown by the hands and lips that had been pressed on them for twenty centuries. Orthodox Jews, in knee-breeches, with round hats and ringlets down their cheeks, were indulging in strange jerking movements, like puppets, while reading books; old men with gray beards sat on chairs facing the wall, also reading. When Quinten began to pay attention, he saw that everything related to reading. The cracks between the stones were cemented with countless folded pieces of paper, obviously with wishes written on them.

"That's right," said Onno. "Here you're in the world of the book. I come from there myself. Perhaps you should be glad you've been spared that, but perhaps not."

Here and there were tables with books on them, which people occasionally leafed through; now and then someone took a copy with him to the wall. Through a stone archway in the left-hand corner of the square Quinten took a few steps into a dark space, which for a moment reminded him of his Citadel, where there were many more books on shelves. Suddenly a small, untidy procession appeared from the caves: men in prayer clothes, with cloths over their heads, carried an opened wooden box into the light. It contained two large scrolls with writing on them.

"So there you have the Jewish Law,' " said Onno with ironic emphasis, and looked at Quinten from the side. "That's the Torah."

Of course Quinten heard the undertone in his voice, but he ignored it.

Touched and kissed as they passed, the scrolls were taken to the partition with the women's area, from which those high-pitched trills again rose. It was some kind of initiation of a boy of about twelve; men in white yarmulkes and black beards wound a mysterious ribbon around his bare left arm and a strange, futuristic block was fastened to his forehead, while a patriarchal rabbi in a gold-colored toga read from the Torah they had brought. Exuberant women and girls threw candies over the fence.