Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"Go next door, Coba," said his mother, "to Mrs. Van Pallandt's. Perhaps she can help us. But only if the lights are on."

"Yes, ma'am."

"It's less than two months since the birthday of the Lord Jesus," cried Onno, "and there's no longer a single candle to be found in this Calvinist bastion!"

"Can you please put a stop to that exasperating chatter?" asked his eldest sister's husband. "For goodness' sake clear off, man. Go to Amsterdam where you belong."

"Yes, heaven be praised that I live in Amsterdam and not in Holland."

"How many rum-and-Cokes have you had, Onno?"

"In Amsterdam," said Onno, raising his glass, "we don't call this liquid rum-and-Coke. In Amsterdam we call it a Cuba libre, but you'll eventually catch on in Holland. So I shall drink a toast to el líder maximo. Patria o muerte — venceremos! He downed his glass in one.

"Long live Che Guevara!" shouted a boy.

"Hey, Maarten, have you taken leave of your senses?"

"The young monkey's showing his true colors."

"Beware of that monkey! That monkey will make short work of you and your horrible Holland. Soon Coba will be in control here, and then it will be the ex-governor of the ex-queen who will have to fetch candles from the people next door, who won't be called Van Pallandt but, for all I know, Gortzak, or some other honest working-class name. The bunch of you are Holland. Without Quists there would be no Holland, and what a blessing that would be for mankind."

"Onno—"

"Ignore him. Simply ignore him, then he'll shut up by himself."

"Anyway, you're a Quist too."

"Me? Me a Quist? What an unforgivable insult. I'm a bastard," he said solemnly. "A cuckoo in the next — that's what I am."

"You're cuckoo, all right," said one of his aunts at the table with the flashlight, which was becoming weaker and weaker.

"And who is the father of the cuckoo?" asked his eldest sister.

"Mother and I will never reveal that. Never! Isn't that so, Mother? We have sworn not to."

"What have we sworn?"

"Oh, now you're playing dumb. Don't you remember that handsome prince from that distant country who came to Holland on a white horse?"

"What on earth is he talking about?"

"If you ask me, the fellow's no longer completely compos mentis."

Onno put his hand on his heart.

"About the Seventh Commandment, woman."

"Did the prince have a black beard by any chance?" asked his other brother, a professor of criminal law in Groningen. "Was he dressed in a green uniform, with a pistol perhaps?"

Onno faltered, set his glass down, put both hands against the wall, and began shaking with laughter.

"He's enjoying it, the windbag."

"Mother!" shouted Onno with a choking voice. "They know! It's come out!"

"What has come out?"

"That you deceived Father with Fidel Castro."

"Me, deceive Father? Wherever did you get that idea? I don't even know the man."

"Joke, dear, joke."

"Funny kind of jokes they tell here. I've never deceived Father."

"You deceived me!" cried Onno, standing up and raising a trembling forefinger like a prophet. "With Father! By conceiving me!"

At that moment his youngest sister, two heads shorter than he, loomed in front of him and took his hand. He allowed himself to be led into the room like a clumsy circus bear.

"That's really enough, Onno," she said softly. "There are limits."

"Who told you that?"

"I don't mind at all, I can take a dig or two, but you're embarrassing Mother. She can't follow your strange sense of humor."

"Strange sense of humor?" he repeated. "I mean every word. Doesn't anyone understand that? Not even you? If even you don't understand me, who will? Oh, where is there someone who understands me!"

"Stop it. You're simply being provocative, and you're enjoying it."

"Of course, of course, but I also mean it. I also mean what I don't mean."

"Oh yes, tell me more."

"No, you don't want me to tell you more at all. When I'm dying I shall crawl to you on my knees, but even you don't understand a thing. No one understands me!" he cried pathetically and suddenly at full volume again.

"That's true," said his eldest sister's husband. "So hurry back to your crossword puzzles, then we here in Holland will make sure you can go on doing your puzzles in peace."

Onno cupped his hand behind his ear.

"Do I detect a shrill tone there? Is that because no one will believe that a certain seedy public prosecutor from the provinces is the brother-in-law of the great, unforgettable, world-famous Onno Quist?"

While he beat his chest with both fists, the door opened and admitted a flock of children, led by a little girl of about seven. She was wearing a white nightgown, which came down to her bare feet. She cried: "Who's that drunk man?"

Onno surveyed them with a look of horror. "Brood of vipers! Are they all going to become ministers and judges and ambassadors' wives in their turn? Oh God, take those children and smash them to pieces against the rocks! Otherwise there will never be an end to it."

"Uncle Onno! Uncle Onno!"

"I'm not anybody's uncle. How dare you? I'm only my own uncle. Misunderstood, sneered at by everyone, and kicked into a corner, I wander lonely and magnificent in the rarefied realms of the Utterly Different."

"That clown is beginning to make me feel ill," said the provincial governor. "Father, can't you put a stop to it?"

There was a silence. Onno, too, suddenly stopped talking. Far away, in the front room, near the plush curtains, sat Quist. Onno could not see him, and looked in his direction, eyes peering, as when one tries to focus on a faint star.

"Oh," said Quist, "the lad will turn out all right."

When Onno heard this, he put his glass on the windowsill and made his way to the front room between the heavy pieces of furniture and the outstretched legs — a journey in the course of which the average age of the guests gradually increased. At the other end of the suite his father was sitting in the winged armchair like a dark red boulder: a last erratic stone that had come to rest, having been driven along by the terminal moraine of his times. Beside him was the oak lectern, on which lay the massive seventeenth-century Authorized Version, as large as a suitcase, with silver trimmings and two heavy locks. Onno could not make out his face. He dropped to his knees and pressed his lips to his father's high black shoes. The leather was warmed by the feet it was covering.

Onno sat up, and suddenly said in a lighthearted tone, "Farewell, all. I'm going home."

"What time is it?" asked his mother. "Surely there are no more trains running?"

"I'm going to hitch a lift."

"What nonsense, you can sleep here."

His brother-in-law laughed. "I wouldn't dream of giving a lift to such a sinister figure in the middle of the night."

"We've got a bed too," said his eldest sister. "You can come in the car with us. We're all going home; it's twelve-thirty."

"I'm going to Amsterdam. I've got a date."

"Stop being silly. You haven't got a date."

"Let him have his way," said the public prosecutor.

Had the insults already been forgotten? Obviously, his family regarded him as a natural phenomenon: after the storm, the branches that have been blown down are cleared up, and there's an end of it. He spread his arms wide in farewell and went into the hall whistling softly.

"You can't find a thing here in this Stygian darkness," said his youngest sister, with the almost completely extinguished pocket flashlight in her hand.

As he began rummaging among the piles of coats, the key squeaked in the lock. "Heavens, you're muddling everything up," said Coba, retrieving his coat as she passed.

"Shall I drive you to the main Wassenaar road?" asked his sister, while he unbuttoned his coat again and this time rebuttoned it symmetrically. "It's over half an hour's walk."