Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"Yes."

"We're listening."

Everything depended on the right tone. Max had not prepared what he was about to say, because then he would have to remember what he had prepared, when it was not a matter of remembering the right things but of saying the right things in the right way.

"Listen, Onno, I won't beat around the bush. The day before yesterday you told me about your dilemma, deciding who the child should live with. Because I had the feeling that I might be able to help you in some way, I contacted your mother-in-law yesterday. She told me two things — first, that the child is going to be delivered next Thursday by cesarean section, because Ada's condition may become critical."

"Which might be the best for everyone. And second?"

"Second, that she had also offered to look after the child herself. But you didn't want it to go to a single woman."

Max waited for a moment to see whether Onno had already realized, but there was no indication that he had.

Onno listened to him with the slightly unpleasant feeling that he was being intruded upon, even if it was by his best friend. Not only in his immediate family were they talking about him behind his back, about things that directly affected his life. He hadn't the faintest idea what Max was getting at.

"That's right." He nodded. "So?"

"I arranged to see her and I've just met her, in the station buffet. I've come straight from there."

What in heaven's name was going on here? Onno sat up. "Isn't that slightly odd? She didn't tell me anything about having arranged to meet you."

"You weren't supposed to know." Max struggled for words. Now he was about to say it for the second time. "Brace yourself, Onno. I suggested to her that she and I should look after your child."

Onno stared at him numbly. What he had just heard could not be possible. "Say that again."

"It's now more or less certain that I'm to become telescope astronomer in Westerbork, and in the foreseeable future I will probably move to Drenthe permanently."

"What on earth are you saying? I remember you saying that you'd feel like an exiled criminal in Siberia there."

"Things have changed for me, Onno. Your mother-in-law is prepared to move in with me, so that your child would be in good hands."

Onno felt as if he were seeing a city collapse and subsequently rise from its ruins in the shape of another city — Amsterdam changing into Rome, the palace on the Dam into St. Peter's. Once before he had had such a sensation. Years ago one winter evening, snow had deadened every noise and every sound in the city and he sat bent over his photos of Etruscan inscriptions: suddenly he saw everything shift into a new constellation, turn on its head, flip, and suddenly his discovery had been made. The sudden metamorphosis of his friend into his child's mentor and that of his mother-in-law into Max's house companion hadn't yet entirely sunk in, but wasn't it the ideal solution? Goodbye to all those cousins and their spouses!

Or was it complete madness, too crazy for words? Max with his dreadful mother-in-law in Drenthe. Surely that would be impossible. He, the frenzied satyr, under one roof with the icy Sophia Brons — what had gotten into him? How had he hit upon the idea of effacing himself in that way? Had his past caught up with him, as a foster child himself? But he had offered it to him; he was sitting there waiting for an answer. Was it perhaps simply friendship?

"Max…" he began — it was as though the resonance of his voice sent tears into his eyes. "I don't know what to say.. "

"Then don't say anything. Or rather say it's okay, and then we'll have it over with."

Onno got up and went out of the room. At the basin, he threw water over his face with both hands. While he was looking for a towel, which was not there, he asked himself whether he could accept the offer. Could he be the cause of such a radical change in Max's life? Maybe Max felt partly responsible, since he, Onno, would never have met Ada without him. Or was the accident involved, because Max had been at the wheel, although he was entirely free of blame? He wiped his face on a sleeve and went back in.

Max had stood up too and was looking at the sheets of squared paper with linguistic diagrams on them that were pinned to the wall; the Phaistos disc was obviously not yet out of Onno's system.

"My ears are still buzzing," said Onno. "Are you sure you're not letting your sense of humor run away with you?"

Max burst out laughing. "I don't think I've ever been as serious as today."

"Perhaps it's been staring us in the face all along, but please help me understand. What's gotten into you? I couldn't stand one day with that creature. What am I to make of it? Is there something going on between you and her, perhaps?"

"Ha, ha," laughed Max. "Don't make, me laugh."

"You're capable of it, but probably there are limits even for you."

"I imagine," said Max with great control, "that I shall live there like a vicar with his housekeeper and her grandchild. She'll cook my food and iron my shirts, collars never toward the point but always away from it. I'll get by sexually somehow — I'm sure to bump into someone."

"But why should you do all that for me?"

"Not just for you. I've had enough of the kind of life I've been living up to now myself. I don't have to go to Westerbork if I don't want to, do I? But I'm going to turn over a new leaf in my sex life too; anyway, it's a practical impossibility to live like a beast in the country. Let me put it like this: in a certain sense it suits me very well. I want to work with that telescope, and otherwise I would have been on my own, in rooms with the local lawyer. Commuting from Amsterdam every day would of course be crazy, certainly in a Volkswagen; and anyway, there are often things to do at night. I'll start an affair with the surgical nurse at Hoogeveen Hospital and then with the German teacher at Zwolle High School. I can teach her a thing or two. And eventually something beautiful will develop between your mother-in-law and the antiques dealer in Assen."

"But supposing you do meet someone, someone you want to start a family with?"

"Then of course I'll take your child with me. But I can't see that happening. Anyway, the unexpected is always possible — even your cousins Hans and Jan-Kees could get divorced."

"Dear God," cried Onno, raising his hands. "You've reminded me. My family! How am I going to tell my family?"

That was it.

"Does that mean that we're going to do it?"

"Of course we're going to do it! I'm sure that Ada would have thought this was the best thing too."

That remark had a big impact on Max. He hadn't thought about it yet, but there could be no doubt about it; it was as though he could see her, nodding with eyes closed. He put out his hand, and Onno looked at it for a moment before shaking it.

"Champagne!" said Max. "La Veuve!"

"I wish I had." Onno shook his head gloomily. "I don't even have any beer here. I've sunk completely back into barbarism."

"Let's go out for a drink, we have to celebrate this. It's my treat."

"You go on. I need to be alone now. I need to stare numbly into space for a long time to get over the shock. And then the three of us must meet as soon as possible; there are bound to be all kinds of snags, but we'll solve them. The child is being born one and a half months prematurely, and according to the doctors it will definitely have to stay in the incubator for four or five weeks. Plenty of time to settle everything."

When Max had gone, Onno went upstairs and dropped onto his bed. Suddenly the mists had cleared and a future again lay in front of him like day after night. Max had convinced him, but it was still not completely clear to him; after all, bringing up a child was a matter of about seventeen years— that meant Max was basically tying himself down until the year 1985, when he would be fifty-two. Fifty-two! Good God! By that time life will be more or less over; his own, too. At least perhaps not over, because why shouldn't someone live to ninety, but certainly changed from afternoon into evening. And meanwhile Max would be doing other things besides bringing up a child — namely, scientific research; bringing up a child would help him in this, since it brought order into his existence.