Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"What do you mean by that?"

"That they were gassed and exterminated just like Jews, but that is hushed up so that people can go on niggling at them, even in Holland."

"Are you sure I have to say that?"

"Yes."

The effect was shattering. With his instrument under his arm, the violinist looked at Max, while his eyes filled with tears. He turned and cried something with a choking voice to the others, which Onno translated as "Roma! Gather together!" The bass player now also came over, and the cymbalist with his instrument, making it necessary for the guests to get up and move tables aside; the second violinist took his instrument back from Bruno. A little while later the orchestra had grouped in a semi-circle around Max, and began playing and singing for him — in their own language, Onno suspected: some neo-Indian variant of Hindi from the sound of it, with borrowings from Iranian, Armenian, New Greek, South Slavic, and heaven knows what else.

One can surround someone sitting on a chair and destroy him with threats, blows, or electricity, but here someone was being broken down with gratitude in the form of music. Max cried, for the second time that evening. With a gesture of apology he glanced at Onno, who could see that the musicians were forcing him back mercilessly to his origins, without realizing what they were doing. What was happening was totally alien to Onno — it was a musical scandal — and he would have preferred to put an end to it immediately, but of course that was out of the question. On the other hand his affection for Max grew even greater. What kind of man was it who with a few words could transform a kitschy string band in a back street into an ensemble that was celebrating a missa solemnis for the dead? He looked at Bruno, and on his face saw an expression that said: He deserves Ada.

When the litany was finished, Max raised his hands in a ritual gesture of thanks. The musicians withdrew. He took a sip of his orange juice and said in a churned-up voice: "It's exactly twenty-one years ago today that my father was executed."

When Bruno heard that, he stood up and moved away. Onno was about to raise his glass to his lips, but put it down again. That was it — the gypsies had touched the core. This required very careful maneuvering, but he could not resist asking: "Have you lit a candle for him?"

"I've only just remembered."

"Can you still remember being told about it?"

"Scarcely. I was twelve. I don't think it had much effect on me. I was six when I'd last seen him."

Onno nodded. What next? Max had raised the subject; he must not be left alone with it now.

"Have you ever looked up the newspapers from those days? Have you studied his trial?"

"It's never occurred to me. I know almost nothing about him, not even exactly where he was born, or on what day. I've always had the feeling that getting interested in my father was something I couldn't inflict on my mother."

Pensively, he watched the primus, who was now again walking among the tables, bending over ladies with his violin and looking deep into their de-colettes, while gentlemen who knew the etiquette folded banknotes lengthwise and tucked them into his wide sleeves like voting slips. Bruno had sat down next to the cymbalist. "Has it ever struck you that people often know a lot about things that don't concern them but very little about things that really matter to them? People who have been in camps know nothing about the structure of Himmler's Reichssicherheitshauptamt, but I know every intimate detail — I could draw you a diagram just like that. But I have no idea how they elect the Upper Chamber in the Netherlands."

"I'll explain it to you sometime."

"Of course. But with you it's genetic."

"True enough. Not with you, of course."

"You know all about languages, but what do they matter to you? I know all about stars, but what do they matter to me?"

"Just a moment. Surely you're not naive enough to think that our Upper Chamber means more to you than the Reichssicherheitshauptamt?"

Max was silent. The conversation was confusing him even more. Five years before, he had followed the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem day by day: the man with the asymmetrical face in his glass cage, like a mechanical doll from the Tales of Hoffman; he had read a dozen of the stream of books that had appeared about Nazism at the time. Of course he had thought of his father during that time, and of his trial; but even the fact that there were still newspapers from 1946 around had not occurred to him. In some way or other he assumed that everything had disappeared into the past, and been ground up by time. In fact, he knew more about the Leopold and Loeb trial. But of course everything was still available!

He looked up. "Shall I tell you something? I want to see it tomorrow. It had to happen sometime. Of course they've got all those old newspapers at the Press Institute. I'd like you to come, too."

Onno thought for a moment. "Perhaps we could be a little more thorough. I imagine his file is probably at the National Institute for War Documentation. Suppose we go there."

"Is it open to the public, do you think?"

"Of course not. But you're the dreadful son of that dreadful father, aren't you? What's more, you're the son of your murdered mother. If they get awkward, I'll involve my dreadful brother, or if necessary my father himself, and then I'd like to see them say no. However, because they know all that, it's actually a foregone conclusion."

They said goodnight to Bruno, and Max saw Onno to his front door, where they arranged that Onno would pick him up the following morning at ten o'clock. Max would take the morning off. They decided it would be better not to ring the institute in advance for an appointment, because that might be a pretext for postponing the matter indefinitely.

On the way home Max felt his pulse for a moment — too fast, but not irregular. Tomorrow he was going to sort out his past. He didn't even have any photos of his parents. Everything had been lost when they had been arrested. He could still remember his mother clearly: a young, cheerful woman, in rooms, at the piano, in the street, in the park, with a Star of David sewn onto the left breast of all her clothes, with the word Jew on it in mocking pseudo-Hebrew letters. He remembered her laughing as she said, with a sort of pathetic triumph, "It isn't yellow at all, it's orange!" But he had no image of his father apart from one frozen scene.

On Heiligabend —which was unknown in the Netherlands, but which they usually celebrated in Central European style — he had been instructed to stay in his room until the Christmas tree had been decorated and the candles lit. Neither his father nor his mother were believers. The only Christian thing about such a heathen Germanic seasonal symbol as a decorated tree with lights, he had realized later, was the crude wooden cross that kept it upright — but that was precisely hidden by red crepe paper, on which the presents were to be laid. Perhaps there was an argument, or some impatience or irritation. In any case, he thought he had been summoned. He went into the room, and there it etched itself into his memory: his father next to the Christmas tree, standing on a chair, with the glittering star for the top in his hand, and in his flashing blue eyes, looking down at Max from an immeasurable height, a look as cold as liquid air..

In his front doorway he groped in his pocket for the key and then remembered that he had given it to Ada. He went up two steps and lifted the half brick. The shiny key lay in the dark niche, like Ada upstairs in his bed.

Ada had half woken up a few times, once when Max crept into bed beside her. And when the sun was already shining on the curtains, she became entangled in a complicated dream: