Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"I've got my coat on."

"Is Onno coming too?"

"I think so. Why?"

"I have to speak to you for a moment, but without Onno. It's important."

"Has something happened? You disappeared so suddenly yesterday."

"Yes, something has happened, but I can't tell you over the telephone."

"Where shall we meet?"

The obvious thing for him to do would have been to invite her to his flat, ten minutes' walk from the Wilhelmina Hospital, but he had the feeling that that would be crossing a forbidden boundary.

"How about the station buffet? That may be easiest for you."

"But I can't possibly say exactly what time I'll be there."

"I understand. Don't hurry, I'll be there from one o'clock onward. We can have a bite to eat."

"See you this afternoon, then."

On his desk lay the photograph of his parents. He looked at it for a while and decided to have it framed later. He ran a bath and in the hot water tried to think about the future, but there was not much point until he had spoken to Sophia. It was not impossible that she would look at him in astonishment and ask him if he had taken leave of his senses; that would probably mean an immediate end to their secret relationship. But perhaps things might be different, and in that case he must take immediate steps to ensure his appointment in Westerbork and his living accommodations. Although. . ultimately everything depended on Onno. He must decide. It concerned his wife and what was at least officially his child; he was under pressure from his family, and there was some doubt whether he could come to terms with a scheme that he might be inclined to class as surrealistic. Max was aware that he must rely on the very friendship he had betrayed.

At about twelve-thirty, with the photo in a folded newspaper, he went downstairs, took the morning paper out of the mailbox, and walked in the direction of the Central Station. In the window of a photographer's on the Leidsestraat was a shot of a car crash from the 1920s: a yellowed little snap of two cars that, absurdly, had collided in what was still a virtually car-free world, enlarged by technical wizardry into a large, shiny photograph that looked as though it had been taken yesterday. In the shop a girl offered to transform his damaged photo in the same way; but what mattered to him was not only what was depicted but the object itself, that original paper, that substance, which had been in the possession of his father and mother. There must be traces of molecules from their hands on it.

He walked down the Damrak to the Central Station, which blocked off the harbor front like a dam. It was as if the town council of Venice had hit on the idea of building a station on the Molo, behind the two pillars on the Piazzetta, which would have obscured the view of the lagoon. Amsterdam, he thought, might be the Venice of the North, but Venice was fortunately not the Amsterdam of the South. Ever since he'd had a car, he'd only been in the station once: when he'd made his trip to Poland. Just as he always used to, he glanced to the left before going into the station concourse: at the ramp for goods traffic, along which the 110,000 Jews had been driven to the goods wagons.

The gigantic, semicircular roof of steel girders — so constructed in order to absorb the smoke and steam of locomotives — had always felt like the inside of a Zeppelin, but now it reminded him of the ribs of a whale that had swallowed him up. He felt something akin to stage fright. In the buffet, with its dark paneling and carving and murals, he sat down at a table by the window.

Because the station blocked the view of the wide world, like a seal set on Holland's vanished maritime power, it had a magnificent view of its own; the busy square branching out in all directions, with churches, hotels, and seventeenth-century gables reflected in the water, on the other side affording an almost obscene view deep into the city. As he looked at it he had the same kind of feeling as this morning when he woke up: perhaps it was no longer his city. Apart from his scientific work, everything had happened there, from his birth up to the conversation that he was shortly to have.

He ordered coffee from a waiter in a white full-length apron and opened his newspaper. In Paris, de Gaulle had made a statement that he would remain in office as president, whereupon riots had broken out again in all French cities, with several deaths and thousands of casualties. He read only the headlines and the leads — not because he was unable to concentrate, but because it still didn't interest him. Since he had been in Cuba, he was preoccupied solely with his personal problems, which he had caused, and with those of radio sources in the distant past of the universe — everything in between, like the war in Vietnam and the revolution in Europe, was less and less real for him; he left that to Onno. He read an article about the rapid development of the silicon chip, in which he was later to be involved, with the constant squeaking of the restaurant door in his ears, shrill guards' whistles filling the belly of the whale, the thundering of arriving trains, reducing speed with reluctant grating. Now and then an incomprehensible voice blared from the loudspeakers.

"Have you been waiting long?"

Sophia was standing looking down at him. He got up, said hello, and took her coat, which was cold on the outside and warm on the inside.

When they were sitting opposite each other, she said: "Well, it's been decided. Next Thursday at the latest they're going to get the baby out."

He nodded. "Did they say why?"

"They don't say everything even to me, particularly when Onno's there. They discussed it at length; they say they're doing it to be on the safe side, but I don't know what that means. You can imagine that all kinds of things have gone haywire in that body of hers. She's also getting bed sores. She has to be turned every three hours, iced and blow-dried."

The way in which Sophia said that body, when she herself had given birth to it, sent a chill through him. Turned. Iced. Blow-dried.

"But can she survive such a severe operation?"

Sophia looked at her hands. "Who can say? We've just spoken briefly to the surgeon, but of course he's not giving anything away. He says that there needn't be any risk to her life. In any case there's no problem at all for the child: it's already over seven months."

Max reflected that it might be best if Ada did not survive, and that Sophia was probably thinking the same thing at that moment; but he didn't have the courage to say it.

"What about Onno?"

"He understands that there's a risk, of course, but he said that he'd rather be a father sooner than later."

Max could hear him saying it: with an expansive gesture, to which the surgeon had no reply, though he knew more about it than Onno. He always created misunderstandings; the doctor probably now thought that he lacked seriousness.

"If all goes well," he said, "it will mean that the child will need a roof over its head in a few weeks' time. Has Onno made his mind up yet?"

Sophia looked at him in bewilderment. "It's as though you never see him anymore. Is there something wrong between you?"

"No," said Max, returning her look. "Why should there be? The last time I spoke to him was the day before yesterday." He looked down and folded the newspaper.

"We were just talking about it in the tram," said Sophia, "but he still hasn't decided. He asked my advice."

"And what advice did you give him?"

"In my opinion he shouldn't let the child be dragged around the world by civil servants; he should choose his niece Paula in Rotterdam. Besides, one day he'll meet someone else and then he can still take it back."

Max had not considered that possibility. Yes, even that was of course conceivable; but it wouldn't happen. He remembered what Onno had said to him the very day after the accident: that he didn't find being alone the worst thing about it, since he was the classic comic type of the married bachelor. He would certainly meet another woman one day, but he'd never live with anyone again; for him that had been an incident, like when a miser who once buys shares then loses his money, after which he puts his capital on deposit forever, even though his speculative friends tell him that saving with a bank is pouring your money down the drain. For Onno it was once bitten, twice shy.