Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"I've missed my period."

Although he was a man of language, he had scarcely ever heard a sentence that heralded the possibility of a fundamental change in his circumstances. Sentences like "You're under arrest" or "You're seriously ill" or "I'm leaving you" had been spared him up to now, seeing that he did not misbehave, was healthy, and had never really become attached to a woman; he had never yet heard the news that people who were really close to him were dead. Occasionally he had heard sentences like "After the revolution you'll be a beachcomber on Ameland," and there was even one sentence that he could not decipher, but all in all his life — despite the war — still had a virginal quality. "I've missed my period…" — the sentence seemed to have a shape: dark and elongated, like a torpedo launched from the tube and disappearing into the waves. He wanted to turn on the light, but he lay there and stared in the darkness at the spot where the old school poster with the picture alphabet on it must be hanging.

"When were you due?"

"Over a week ago."

"Are you often late?"

"Never. Always bang on time."

"And you haven't forgotten to take the pill at all? Not even in Cuba?"

"I'm quite sure of it. Do you want to see the strip? All twenty-one have gone."

"No, please. And you don't have to convince me you haven't flushed them down the toilet. It's unbelievable! It's as big a mess in the pharmaceutical industry as everywhere else. If you really have a baby, we'll put it in a shoe box and send it to the complaints department at the factory. That'll teach them." He sensed that she gave a start; he put an arm around her and said in a different voice, "If you have a baby, Ada, we shall bring it up lovingly, but with an iron hand, the sole aim being that it shall honor its father."

"What do you really think, Onno?"

"To tell you the truth, I've no idea. It's obviously been on your mind for days, but how am I supposed to know what I think all at once?" He really did not know. It was a moment like when the hour of the great god Pan strikes in the classical landscape: the onset of the motionless, scorching midday heat. "For the whole evening I've immersed myself in the breathtaking problem of how social benefits should be linked to civil servants' salaries— and then you suddenly tell me you're pregnant. Good grief!" he cried. "Now I hear myself say it, it's suddenly dawned on me. You can't be serious! Is it true?"

"If you were to leave the room," said Ada, "I'd be sure that I wasn't alone."

He now remembered that on a number of times in the last few days he had noticed something strange in her eyes: as though she were looking not outward but inward, as though he were seeing her from behind a two-way mirror, like they had in shops and brothels. When she looked at him, it was as though she were not seeing him but only herself.

"That's incontrovertible proof. So I won't leave the room. The three of us will stay here forever, because the family is the cornerstone of society. It's just as well that they don't know in the party how right-wing and crypto-Christian Democrat I am deep down." To his own amazement the idea that he might become a father suddenly became attractive, like when a deskbound scholar unexpectedly has the offer of an around-the-world trip. It would turn his life upside down, but why should that always remain as it was?

She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I was frightened you'd say that we'd have to get rid of it."

"Have to get rid of it?" he repeated, with horror in his voice. "Me get rid of my child? I might want to get rid of you, but certainly not my child! Get rid of a Quist — whoever heard of anything so scandalous? And of course we're getting married, because a Brons is no good to me."

They were still lying in the dark, as though they didn't dare face each other in their new situation.

"I don't care what it's called. As long as it's a normal, healthy baby."

"Healthy, yes, normal, no. For that matter the chance doesn't seem to me very great genetically. Abnormally gifted, with a wide range of interests, dazzlingly beautiful — that's what she'll be."

"She? Do you want a girl?"

"I don't want anything, but it's bound to be a girl. Real men have daughters." Suddenly he started groaning.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm thinking of the scandal in my family. A Quist marrying a pregnant woman is unheard of; my parents will never get over it. Perhaps it's time I introduced you." He felt like smoking a cigarette, but he didn't want to see the light of the match. "Do you know who else it will be a nice surprise for?"

"Max," said Ada rather flatly.

Of course, for the last few days the thought of Max had occurred to her repeatedly, like a fish breaking the surface of a pond, but she had kept suppressing it; for now she wanted to think only of her child and not of the father. Onno groped for her hand, and for a while they lay next to each other in silence.

"What if I'd said we would have to get rid of it?" he asked. "Would you have done it?"

"Not in a million years."

He turned onto his side and put his other hand on her belly. "How big do you think it is now? A sixteenth of an inch? An eighth of an inch?"

"About the size of a globule of frogspawn, I think. The same as you at that age."

"Would you mind moderating your language? Me a globule of frog-spawn.. you must be out of your mind. I emerged spontaneously from my mother's fontanel, in full regalia, with shield and spear; my father fainted at the sight, the planets left their orbits, and all over God's creation strange portents were seen." He leaned on one elbow and asked in the direction of her face, "Listen, are you sure it's all true? What will you do if you have your period tomorrow?" As he was saying this he realized that it would be a disappointment to him, too.

"I'm not going to have my period tomorrow."

"Have you been to a gynecologist?"

"Not yet."

"You're going to the gynecologist tomorrow. And if you're not pregnant, you're going to stop the pill." He could tell from the pillow that she was nodding. "When's it due? The lunar calender won't present any problems to you as a pregnant woman."

"The eighth of July."

"So it happened. ."

"On our last night in Havana."

Onno stared into the darkness.

Again he saw her shadow appearing in the doorway of his hotel room with the light of the corridor behind her — submerged far away below the horizon in Cuba. The greatest miracle of all was surely memory. How could Max's Big Bang lead to memory? To everything that existed, okay, but how could it lead to the memory of everything that had existed up to and including the Big Bang itself? Maria, who had twice patted the place next to her, whereupon he had obeyed her orders like a lap dog — rendered defenseless by misunderstandings, the lying telephone conversation with Ada, and the gruesome photograph of the body on the bier.

She had taken him into her bed, where the spirit of the man with the beard and the big hat was still present, had raped him, and then — past saluting soldiers — delivered him back to the hotel, where he had lain in the bath for hours and spent the rest of the day sighing and groaning and reading the letters of Walther Rathenau to his mother, in a Spanish translation, a crumpled old edition, which the previous guest — some anarcho-syndicalist radicalinski, of course — had left on his bedside table. Disgusted with himself and consumed by guilt, he had gone to bed early and forced himself to sleep; after the telephone conversation with Max he did not wake again until Ada, who was supposed to be sleeping in her own hotel, suddenly arrived and crept into bed with him. It was as if she had had a premonition of his deceit and wanted to make it invisible, like putting a layer of paint over the primer. That alone deprived him of the right to demand an abortion — even if he had wanted to.