Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"Eternity and perspective are incompatible. Shall I tell you something, Dutch Max? Perspective was discovered in the fifteenth century. Up till then God had always fitted very naturally into the space of the painting, a Madonna and child for example, but that space itself was unnatural. He simply sat on a throne in the blue sky, above the Madonna, with some circles and stars around him; or on the left you had St. Dionysius wearing an elegant mitre in a dungeon and on the right later after his head had been chopped off, and in the center Christ, naked on the cross hundreds of years earlier, surrounded by the twelve apostles in bishop's robes: all of that quite naturally in one impossible space at one impossible moment. But with the discovery of central perspective, natural space and natural time were defined. Someone on a chair in the sky would fall down, and things that followed each other could not happen simultaneously. So that was the beginning of the end of eternity."

He listened to her exposition in amazement. It was as though she were giving a summary of her M.A. thesis.

"Do you perhaps mean that since then nothing can worm its way from the heavenly side through the vanishing point in perspective to this world?"

"You won't hear me talking that kind of nonsense."

"Pity."

"There is no heavenly side of the vanishing point."

"How do you know? Perhaps it can no longer be made visible with artistic decency, but perhaps it's still all there just the same." He said it to tease her, but she turned out to be impervious.

"In my opinion that's all drivel. Only temporality and space are eternal."

"And probably not even them." He turned over onto his stomach too. "I believe that in astronomy it is sometimes called into question. For that matter, when I think of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, which is hanging on the Rampa. . that's from after the discovery of perspective, isn't it?"

"And in that, God floats there of necessity, in natural space, on this side of the vanishing point, which has no other side. He isn't a credible God any longer, but the brilliant fantasy of a man who overcame the laws of nature."

"Instead of having made them." Max nodded. "But wait a moment. . nowadays—"

"Yes, I know what you mean."

"You do? What, then?"

"That modern art has abandoned perspective again."

"Exactly. Take Picasso. With him you don't see any nonsimultaneous happenings, like in medieval paintings, but you do see spacial impossibilities, like the front and side of a face at the same time, and in the theory of relativity you find all those temporal and spatial oddities in scientific form, so I've heard."

"But God hasn't reappeared. If there is another side to the vanishing point, then he's suffocated there by now, and it's only his corpse that is lying stinking in heaven."

"Do you think so? If you ask me, nothing has changed, because nothing can change in eternity. Eternity is exactly the same thing as the moment. The vanishing point is the gate of heaven, where St. Peter stands with his keys. We probably can't take them from him, but if you ask me you can easily find a way through that point with your submachine gun. I'll slip in right behind you."

"Well, I think what you're saying is all well and good, but you aren't going to tell me that you are a believer?"

"Of course not."

"You aren't going to tell me, or you aren't one?"

"Perhaps Einstein is God; he's a bit like him. Ein Stein der Weisen —the Philosophers' Stone." Max sighed deeply. He pushed his fingers into the hot sand to where it was a little cooler. "I can still remember very well when he died in 1955; I was twenty-two and I felt as though I had lost my father. Listen, Marilyn. I make the occasional joke. I know that's not right according to orthodox thinkers like you, but that's just how I am. What's more, I'm in Cuba too now. Just like you, I believe that it must be possible to found a just society on earth. It's true that I'm still that much of a believer — just like you. And if Fidel succeeds, if only a little, I'm quite prepared in a manner of speaking to grant him a reflection of something like the divine. Or perhaps it already applies to his intention, even if he doesn't succeed. There's definitely something apostolic about him. I've got a good nose for that."

He wanted to say to Ada in Dutch that here was finally someone who took art history seriously, and reached for a gun, but because it would be impolite suddenly to speak a secret language, he put his head on his arms and closed his eyes. He was sorry that Onno wasn't there; he would definitely have had something more to say.

Perhaps he would have praised her for not having brought in the psychology of religion, or Marx. Max listened to the surf while the sun baked his back. That sound at any rate was almost eternal. Perhaps only the sound of an erupting volcano was older. The oldest signal was of course the cosmic background radiation of 3°K, the afterglow of the Big Bang, in which Marilyn's "natural space and time" had originated; the exploding singularity, then, was Marilyn's perspective vanishing point, through which nothing could pass. The question what was behind it, or in front of it, was absurd. It was so neat: art not only as a guide for political action but also for the scientific understanding of the world!

"You're burning," said Ada. "So am I, come to that. I'll go and see if there's any sun oil."

When she went to the bungalow he leaned on one elbow, looked deep into Marilyn's eyes, and said, "If that's all true, why don't we get married?"

She returned his glance for a moment, and then, convulsed with laughter, rolled off her towel into the sand, where she lay on her back, her arms and legs spread wide apart. He was about to laugh too, but when he suddenly saw her mons veneris rising, with the thin material of her swim-suit wrapped over the curve of her labia, like a great coffee bean, his mouth hung open a little. When she realized what was suddenly happening, her laugh froze too. She sat up, put her arms around her knees, and looked at him for a while, nodding.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"Terrible things."

"Put those out of your head. You've got the wrong person."

"I'm afraid I have."

"Christ, this really bugs me. Here we are having an interesting conversation, but your wife or your girlfriend has no sooner gone off than the fooling around begins."

"She's not my girlfriend. She's my friend's girlfriend." He saw that the information threw her for a moment. "You see, now you're supposed to cry: 'Darling, that changes everything!' and throw your arms around me."

It was obviously an effort for her to maintain an air of indignation — if she were to laugh now, she probably thought, things would soon get out of hand. Of course she was involved with some comandante, or, rather, with an earnest professor of aesthetics, or with a jovial surrealist in a messy studio — anything was possible: a man never knew who a woman was involved with. Perhaps the revolution was her only love. He decided to leave things as they were for now. The day wasn't over yet. He turned back onto his stomach, rested his chin on his hands, and looked at Ada, who was coming out of the bungalow with the oil.

In the evening Jesús again preferred to eat in the kitchen. Languidly, with red faces, they sat at the table on the veranda during the intemperate sunset; the heat scarcely abated, and, after showering, they had all put on just a shirt; Guerra was still wearing his long trousers with the embroidered jacket. As darkness quickly fell and the forest no longer stood out because of its shadow, it was filled with the chirping of legions of crickets. Melancholy at the thought of her impending departure, helped by the full-bodied red wine that was served with the roast lamb, Ada looked at the deepening violet glow above the sea.