Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"An hour? Did you say an hour? You're not a bit overwrought, are you, Onno?"

"That too. I know it sounds idiotic, but…"

"Please stop it. If he's been gone for an hour, he'll be back in an hour. I know all about that boy wandering off — he was always getting lost as a toddler. Take something to calm you down, or try and get some sleep. You must forgive me, I've got other things on my mind now. I'll tell you something that you have to know but no one else must know."

"I can scarcely hear you anymore."

"I have to keep my voice down, because these days it's possible I'm being bugged by those scum here at the castle. Fortunately I'll soon be moving in with someone in Westerbork, Max's ex-girlfriend. Of course, you've heard about everything that's happened."

"Yes."

"Listen carefully, Onno. Weren't you wondering why Ada died so suddenly?"

"You mean. ."

"Yes. That's what I mean. In your farewell letter you wrote that Ada was flesh of my flesh and that I had the last word about her. She was in a terrible state, too awful to look at. Her kidneys had stopped functioning, she had cancer of the womb that had spread — I'll spare you the details. She'd gone completely white. It wasn't the kind of hospital where people had the last word; I had to do it myself."

"How?"

"With an overdose of insulin. I gave it to her last Saturday evening during visiting hours, at about seven-thirty, under the sheet, in her left thigh. No one saw me. They only discovered yesterday morning that she had died. Death must have occurred at about twelve-thirty in the morning, I was told when they called me up. That is, insofar as death hadn't occurred long ago. In the afternoon I was able to see her in the morgue. She reminded me of a fawn, she'd become so small."

"And she was cremated today? It's only Monday today. Isn't that very quick?"

"Of course that struck everyone. I called your lawyer, Giltay Veth, and he said that according to the Disposal of the Dead Act there was a minimum period of thirty-six hours. They kept to that exactly at the hospital. I think they were suspicious, just as Giltay Veth was for that matter. Perhaps they discovered the hole in her thigh at the postmortem and wanted to get rid of the evidence that anything untoward could have happened at their hospital as soon as possible. There was a short notice in today's newspaper saying that Mrs. Q. had died a natural death after seventeen years."

"Wait a moment.. this is. . this is just impossible… I have to write it down. So you gave her that injection on Saturday evening. It was seven-thirty. She died at twelve-thirty. In the morning she was taken to the morgue, where she lay yesterday. This morning she was put in a coffin and taken to the crematorium. And she was cremated there an hour ago."

"Yes. What's so important about those times?"

"What… how can. . I.. "

"Onno? Hello! Onno? Can you hear me? Are you still there?"

"There's something wrong with my head, Sophia, I can feel it… I can't write anymore. . the whole of my left side. . Eighteen months ago I had a. ."

"For heaven's sake, Onno! Where are you?"

"Hotel Raphael…"

"Get them to call for a doctor at once. I'll take the next plane. I'm coming to get you both."

— That's enough! You must know when to stop. Think of Goethe's words: "Restriction shows the master's hand."

— But to be on the safe side he also said: "The fact that you cannot end is what makes you great."

— Yes, those writers are like that. Always having the best of both worlds. You've accomplished your mission, and I've got six hundred and sixty-six questions about your machinations, but I won't ask them. The main thing is that we've got the testimony back just in time. Where's our man now?

— Returned to the Light.

— By now you might just as well say: to the Twilight. And what happened to the fragments of the two tablets?

— Collected by the Jerusalem Sanitation Department. Taken to a rubbish dump with all the other rubble in the Dome of the Chain.

— Well, for that matter, the testimony itself is a mess too. It looks like an upturned compositor's typecase.

— If you must use terrestrial imagery, you'd better choose a more modern one: like erased software.

— That is precisely the language of a world that we've no use for anymore. I suppose the sapphire tablets of the Law were the hardware, then?

— As it were.

— Yes, since Bacon the devil speaks English. It's becoming the world language. So let's keep to Latin: consummatum est. It has been accomplished. My strength is exhausted. We're done for. The world is done for. Humankind is done for. Everything is done for — except Lucifer. What we thought would never be possible has happened: time has gained a hold over us. Time — that was Lucifer's secret weapon. The only thing left to us after more than three thousand years was to take back those ten words. An impotent gesture, of course: like a jilted girl reclaiming her engagement ring. A poor consolation, a symbolic act, a melancholy farewell. But the Decalogue was the ultimate thing on earth: the Chiefs contract with humankind, concluded with its deputy, the Jewish people, represented by its leader Moses in the role of notary. From now on Lucifer has a free hand. Let him carry off all those human things. I really don't care anymore.

— Perhaps someone will appear on earth to put everything right.

— The person would have to come from here, but nothing can come from here anymore. In Moscow an enlightened character assumed power a short while ago — the greatest human being in the human twentieth century in a positive sense, just as he whose name I shall not mention was in the negative sense. Within five years the Berlin Wall will be demolished, Russia will lose its colonies, the whole world will rejoice at the dawning of a new age. . then in the liberated areas, the ultimate bloodthirsty backwardness will be in control again. Migrations of people will take place, shots will ring out again in Sarajevo, and as the third millennium approaches the disgusting twentieth century will be revived due to overwhelming popular success.

— I can't believe that.

— You'll learn to believe it. And it's all the same old thing — politics means nothing. The rise and fall of world empires has gone on forever. Politics are the rippling of the waves in a storm — makes no difference at all to the waves, because they come from somewhere completely different: they come from the moon. To the old global disasters are now added the ravaging tidal waves of the new: with their Baconian control of nature, people will finally consume themselves with nuclear power, burn themselves up through the hole they have made in the ozone layer, dissolve in acid rain, roast in the greenhouse effect, crush each other to death because of their numbers, hang themselves on the double helix of DNA, choke in their own Satan's shit, because that swine didn't conclude his pact out of love of humankind, only out of hatred for us. All hell will break loose on earth and human bangs will one day remember the good old days, when they still listened to us — and probably they won't even do that anymore. It won't even be tragic anymore, just wretched. It's hopeless. Forget it.

— And if they find out what we have done, won't that bring about a change of heart? I can see to that. At the moment there's one person on earth who knows about it.

— You've suggested that before. Don't fool yourself. If they find out, not a soul will believe it. The news will be reported here and there; perhaps a few thousand righteous people, a few hundred theologians, and ten archaeologists will get very excited, but then it will be drowned out by the constant cataract of other news items, and a few months later it'll be forgotten. No, drop it, it's over. Finis comoediae.