Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

However, after only two days Max began to wonder what he was doing here. He became increasingly fed up with sitting for hours in an artificially lit room in this marvelous weather, listening to the translation of endless papers, behind him the incessant hubbub of the interpreters in their cubicles, while he wanted to walk through the city outside. Was it going to go on like this for five days? In the mornings, in his bathrobe, he took the elevator down to the large open-air swimming pool on the first floor, where the tape, which had not been changed since the 1950s, was already playing: "Sentimental Journey," "Don't Fence Me In." He played truant, lying in the sun till lunchtime, and during the afternoon sessions he passed the time by reading Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen, which he had put into his suitcase at the last moment — but he hadn't come to Cuba for that! The ideological and tactical wrangling didn't interest him, either. Apart from that the really interesting things, of course, did not come up in the committee meetings; they were discussed in hotel rooms, behind locked doors — or in the Central Committee building.

However, he was particularly shocked by the Palestinian delegation, which wanted to wipe the state of Israel off the map and was applauded by everyone because of it. That was new to him. Israel! The child and pendant of Auschwitz! Of course Israel wasn't a branch of heaven, either, but did that mean that it had to be changed into a second branch of hell? Could it be that the far left and the far right were of one mind when it came to fighting the Jews? He remembered from the war how the Palestinian grand mufti of Jerusalem had visited Hitler with a white blob on his head to discuss the extermination of the Jews in Palestine: General Rommel was already on his way with his Afrikakorps. Was "anti-Zionism" the latest euphemism for anti-Semitism, as "final solution" was for extermination? Had hell extended its tentacles as far as Cuba? If Israel was his mother, then surely it could not be that this fantastic island belonged to the world of his father.

He did not want to think about that dilemma, and he did not talk about it. What made him stay was Onno, who said that he was learning a lot, although — being the Erasmian parliamentary democrat that he ultimately was — he felt lukewarm about all that radicalism. Apart from that there was the comfort, of course. The chauffeur-driven car, the bus trips into the country, the theatrical performances, late suppers in a rustic square in the old town, at rows of ready-laid tables, each sixty feet long, with music and speeches, or a visit to a show in La Tropicana, a gigantic open-air nightclub, where white grand pianos emerged from the ground, played by black men in white dinner jackets, singing "Guantanamera," and where fifty girls with ostrich feathers on their heads high-kicked and at the finale sung the "Internationale," while around them in the undergrowth hundreds of soldiers kept watch, since there was always a chance of attacks from infiltrators from Miami.

When the time came for Ada's performance at the end of the week, Max was in bad shape. He'd had a high temperature all day long; he would have preferred to crawl into bed, but that was of course impossible, though no one would have taken it amiss. Onno had already left with Ada, and purely to help to build up Guerra's strength, Max had gone to the dining room, where he restricted himself to a fruit salad. Because no car was available, he took the smoking, juddering bus to the old town and was stared at by his cheerful fellow passengers.

The small auditorium was hot and full to overflowing, and people were ' even sitting in the aisles; a number of composers had come too. Ada was nervous. All their rehearsals, their free journey, their hotel, the meals, the free entry to concerts and ballet performances, everyone's kindness, must now all be counterbalanced by less than half an hour's music after the intermission. They played Saint-Saen's Allegro apassionato, followed by Janácek's Fairy Tale, and everything went well. The attentive silence persisted for a moment after the final notes, and then gave way to applause, which while not overwhelming was still above the level of mere politeness.

Afterward, daiquiris were served in the throng at the back of the platform.

When Onno saw Max's face, both tanned and pale, he said, "Go on, have one. You'll feel better."

Max clinked glasses with Ada and Bruno, and cautiously sucked the crushed ice with rum in it out of the low glass. He liked the taste. He emptied the glass, held it against his forehead for a moment, and took a second.

But after one mouthful he was suddenly drunk. It was as though a net had fallen over him, a net curtain, but at the same time he emerged from the daze in which he had been in all day long.

"Nazdrovye!" he shouted, and downed this glass too, feeling an urge to throw it over his shoulder, as he had seen a cube-shaped Russian general do in the Tropicana.

From that moment on, events quickly became increasingly confused for him. The two Cubans they had met in Amsterdam loomed up and disappeared again; his girlfriend of a few days ago offered her cheek for him to kiss and a moment later had gone. He slurped the ice-cold white mud and felt it slipping down coolingly through his chest, while he surveyed the throng contentedly. Suddenly people made as if to leave. No one could yet see that anything about him had changed. Onno said that Bruno had organized an excursion; he must put his glass down now, because they were going to a Santería ceremony. A Santería ceremony? Okay, let's go to a Santería ceremony. As long as there was daiquiri there.

But there wasn't any. They drove to a poor street in a suburb in rattling cars, with Max wedged in the backseat between three or four people he did not know. They got out in front of a wooden house with an open front door between peeling pillars. It was so full in the small rooms that they could scarcely get in. Max stood on tiptoe; something terribly occult was going on.

From the back room came the sound of a crescendo of drumming and singing; on an uptight wooden chair, flanked by candles, an emaciated black man in a light-blue flowered dress was shaking as though surges of current were being pumped through his body, while two black women were trying to keep him under control. In a trance he blurted out words and sounds, which Onno said were completely unrelated to Spanish but more like Nigerian, Yoruba, or whatever it might be. Obviously, an African spirit had taken possession of him, but on the other hand it couldn't be that heathen, because above his head there was a kitschy image of the Virgin on a pedestal, while above that was a portrait of Fidel Castro. But perhaps it was everything at once, ignoring the law of the odd man out, to the eternal shame of those who thought they understood anything.

Down and chicken feathers flew through the air. The drummers and women singers worked themselves up into a state of frantic ecstasy, which now also transmitted itself to some black men and women in the audience, so that people quickly had to give way to avoid flailing arms and legs. Max was forced into a corner, and with eyes too heavy with rum to focus properly, he suddenly found himself looking into the eyes of the Dutch writer who had sat on the forum panel in Amsterdam and who was standing beside him.

"So we meet again?" said Max. He tried to focus his eyes on him, but he was too close; there were two identical writers refusing to merge. Only because he had had too much to drink, did it occur to him to ask: "How the hell is it possible for someone to dream up a novel?"

"I never dream up anything," said the two mouths coolly. "I remember. I remember things that have never happened. Just like you do when you read my novel."