Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

On the backseat of a car an old, emaciated man is lying in her arms, and she can feel his white stubbly beard against her cheek. She tries to push him away, but the problem is that the top button of his crumpled raincoat is a button of a murderer's coat and at the same time a button of her own. She eventually has to go into the dungeon that extends under the Saturnusplein; those who know about it can see it in the shape of the square. In a large, dark space full of staircases, drawbridges, vaults, railings, dangling cables, and chains, she is forced into a cage made of wooden slats, but the tribunal is already waiting for her. The presiding judge in the middle displays an oblong silver medallion, or perhaps it is a box with a jewel in it, and a little later a group of religious Jews dressed for prayer begin singing a lament. This signals the beginning of religious confusion. Suddenly she has a glass of champagne in her hand, and a priest in his habit giving a blessing thinks that it is part of the service; then she has to ascend a long, steep staircase, but for some reason she cannot climb the stairs. When she turns around, she sees an old woman in a Buddha pose gliding or floating diagonally through the space and telling the secrets of the past for the umpteenth time. .

She was awakened by Max's hand stroking her belly. He had an erection but was still half asleep. The erection did not count — he would have had that without her. He groaned.

"I'll make coffee first," she said, and looked at her watch. "Hey, it's already nearly nine-thirty. Don't you have to go to Leiden?"

"I'm taking a morning off."

She pulled open the curtains and went naked into the small kitchen. The morning sun shone in over the trees. In the park below, a jogger had put his heel on the back of a bench and was trying to break himself in two. There was a smell of coffee and toasting bread, birdsong in the trees, further away the roar of the traffic. Everything was as it should be. In the bedroom Max had turned on the radio for the news; she heard him telephoning, probably to the observatory. Soon he would take her to Leiden and for a few days she would see him only at lunchtimes. Every time he disappeared around the corner in his car, she had the feeling that he had never been there, or would never be there again — but where was the source of that feeling of absence, in him or in her?

When she came into the room with breakfast, he was sitting cross-legged on the bed, which reminded her vaguely of something she had dreamed, but she could not remember what. Her eyes glided over his body as quickly as a breath of wind, making her aware that she was as naked as he was: but even naked he seemed better dressed than she would ever be. He had an athletic build, nowhere deformed by sport or any other violent activity into proportions designed to impress women but in fact were only impressive to men; his skin was as soft and velvety as a child's.

They sat cross-legged opposite each other on the bed, with the tray between them, spread marmalade, bit into toast, drank coffee, spooned eggs, and now and again, very naturally, he placed his hand on her vagina for a moment, as though it were part of the process of having breakfast. The erection he gradually got pleased her more than the previous one, although she was amazed yet again at the dimensions that things can assume in this world. While he told her about the gypsies, she gently grasped his cool scrotum, as though weighing it.

" 'Be embraced, you millions,' " she said, quoting Schiller's "Ode to Joy."

His eyes clouded a little, but he had obviously decided not to hurry. "They all surrounded me. ." he said in a slightly intoxicated voice. "It was as though I was the focus of a concave mirror. ."

He faltered. Each of them now had their hands in the other's crotch, and Ada could feel that he could feel how wet she was getting. As he continued looking at her his back arched a little, as though he were in pain; she started smiling. He put the tray on the ground and slid on top of her, groaning and with his eyes rolling, his tongue and penis sinking deep inside her.

"Slowly," he gasped, "slowly. ."

He was talking to himself, because she wanted nothing better. Their bodies moved slowly across the bed, andante maestoso. It seemed to her as though they were floating on the waves, slowly sinking beneath the surface, where the same movement dominated, but increasingly shut off from the outside world, from the air, the light — noiseless, a darker and darker blue, more and more violet..

The doorbell rang.

The net was raised. Max's movement stopped; he leaned on his elbows and looked at his watch.

"Let it ring," whispered Ada with her eyes closed.

"It's Onno. We arranged to meet."

He quickly disengaged himself from her. Her arms slid off him, and he went to the intercom in the hall. "Onno?" she heard him call out. "I'll be right down. One minute."

He hurried into the room and opened the wardrobe. When he saw her lying there, her legs still wide apart, he said, "Bring yourself off," and disappeared into the bathroom.

Ada froze. What had he said? She couldn't believe that he had said what she had heard. Had he really said that she should bring herself off? Had he said that? That she should bring herself off? Eyes wide with astonishment, she looked at the ceiling, unable to move. Was it conceivable that he had been so crude?

"Max.." she started to say, when he appeared in the room dressed— then he pressed a hurried kiss on her forehead and said, "I'll see you at lunchtime, and I'll tell you all about it then. 'Bye now."

A moment later she heard the quick drumming of his feet as he ran down the stairs, then the fainter drumming on the next staircase; on the last staircase she could no longer hear him, and then through the open window came the slamming of the front door.

Silence.

She sat on the edge of the bed in a daze. It had still not sunk in completely, but she knew this was the end. He could never make this up to her: it was though she had suddenly seen the face of Mr. Hyde on that of Dr. Jekyll. Bring yourself off. She didn't know what the two them were going to do, but couldn't it have waited a quarter of an hour? Couldn't he have sent Onno to the pub for a while? The haste wasn't because of any particular urgency, but because it was Onno at the door. He couldn't keep Onno waiting; perhaps he was in a panic that Onno might turn away from him for good. Nonsense, of course, but even that was comprehensible. It wasn't that she could not bear Onno being more important to him than she was in certain respects, but the brutal way that he had trampled on her feelings was intolerable. A slap in the face would have been less awful.

The bathroom was still warm and damp from his shower. Under the stream of water it seemed for a moment that it had been washed away, but when she got back in the room it was there again. Bring yourself off. As though orgasm were what mattered. He hadn't come, either. Suddenly angry, she began to get dressed, and then she saw him again appearing from nowhere on the steps leading from the bookshop. Did she love him? She wasn't sure, so perhaps she did not. Perhaps you knew for sure when you loved someone, but then she'd never loved anyone yet, and perhaps she would have to accept that she never would. All she knew for certain was that she loved music. And yet, perhaps she would have liked a child by him.

Occasionally she had toyed with the idea of stopping the pill and seeing what happened. The thought of a little Max, or Maxima, tottering around the room made her feel as weak as a sugar lump dissolving in a cup of hot tea: she would certainly have loved a child. But it would have jeopardized her musical career, so a child was out of the question. She also knew that he slept with other girls, of course — the signs of it in his apartment, the blond hairs, the lipstick-covered cigarette ends in the wastepaper basket did not escape her — but she didn't mind that much, because she knew that he had forgotten those women before he had even seen them. Now, though, something irrevocable had happened.