Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

— A kind of Dutch polder engineer from the Ministry of Transport, in fact, who shuts out the sea with doors. Perhaps Goethe was thinking of Leeghwater; he was very famous as early as the seventeenth century with his Book of the Haarlemmer Meer.

— Maybe, but I can't concentrate on literary historical reflections at the moment. You're distracting me from my argument — what was I talking about?

— About the general downfall of everything.

— Yes, and especially our own. Because that was what Lucifer was after from the very first day: our complete humiliation and destruction. In the last analysis human beings leave him cold. And for that matter don't forget that the damn technology also has all kinds of pleasant aspects. Not only the construction of polders, but take medical technology for example. Think of local anesthetic, to mention one small thing. Did you think that anyone at all would want to go back to having a tooth pulled without anesthetic? And can you blame them? How dreadful to have teeth! No, take it from me — that it's hopeless. Via people's bodies, Lucifer has gotten a grip on their minds. Our greatest mistake is that we have always underestimated him. We thought things wouldn't be that bad, because who could challenge the Chief? Well, he could. Sometimes I think — it's a shame to have to say it — that he knows people much better than the Chief. The Chief is an idealist, a darling, who wants the best for people without knowing what he has taken on. But Lucifer knows that they would prefer to let heaven and earth go under rather than get rid of their car. He has ensured that their salvation now resides in things. He knows that they'd sooner get rid of their own legs. So heaven and earth will go under. And there will be nothing left to be lost in that Twilight of Humankind, because it has been devilishly betrayed, sold and melted down to make machines. A motorist is not a pedestrian in a car but a totally new creature, made of flesh, blood, steel, and gasoline. They are modern centaurs, griffons, and the actual mythical creatures are the only thing that will ultimately remain, because they have been created at the cost of nature, human beings, us and the Chief. With every new technological gadget, human life has automatically become more absurd. And our world will finally contain only that triumphant Negative in the ice-cold flames of its hell, with in heaven the eternal agony of the Chief as the flickering ember of a great Light. Looking back on it, it's all been for nothing. What was I actually going to say? I've totally lost the thread. Yes, I'm getting more and more confused. I can feel the decay and exhaustion in myself, too. Go on. I'm listening.

"Healthy baby born to brain-dead mother," reported the morning paper the following day; Ada survived the operation without complications, and the weeks following — during which Quinten had to remain in the incubator— brought new changes.

The director of the observatory kept his word: he had made an appointment for Max with an old friend from his student days, a Baron Gevers, who lived a few miles south of the radio observatory at Westerbork and, as he had informed Max, had a place to rent. It was a sunny June day when Max drove there from Dwingeloo, with the caretaker's description of the route in his head. On his right, the sun flickered like a strobe light between the alder trees along the provincial road as they flashed by, which meant he had to resist something like a threatening hypnosis; as always he glanced at the space on the left of the road where there were two trees missing.

After driving along the main highway for a few miles, he took a turn-off into a winding woodland path by a collapsed barn. There were still fallen trees everywhere, their crowns forever in their bare wintry state, their roots, which had been torn out of the earth, already dried out and whitish. To his amazement he suddenly saw a group of Indonesian boys creeping through the bushes, in improvised battle dress, as though there were a war on — a moment later he had the feeling that he had dreamt it. And now and then the wood gave way to meadows with a farmhouse, fields, maize plantations, the path crossed an unmanned level crossing — and at the moment he saw the house looming up, he thought of what Goethe had once said, according to Onno: "Humanity begins with barons."

The low, white, quite small country house, from the look of it dating from the beginning of the last century, lay at the end of a lawn and radiated restrained distinction. At the same time it also looked like the center of a working farm. Next to it there were stalls, a haystack, sheds for agricultural machinery. It was called Klein Rechteren. The drive was flanked by large erratic stones and was strewn with gravel, which crunched feudally beneath his tires and forced even the Volkswagen to the slow sedateness of a Bentley. Because his intuition told him that he couldn't park his car right outside the door, he parked it opposite. When he got out, he saw a peacock sitting on the eaves.

The door was opened by a boy of about twenty with Down's syndrome. He looked up at Max with bewildered beady eyes.

"Mommy!" he shouted at once in a hoarse voice, without taking his eyes off Max.

A slender lady of about sixty appeared in the hallway. Max introduced himself and then also shook the warm, broad, motionless hand of her son, who turned out to be called Rutger. In the conservatory at the back of the house, where the doors to the terrace and the vegetable garden stood open, he was given a cup of China tea.

"I'm expecting my husband any moment. How is our Jan getting on? We haven't seen him for quite a while. He occasionally stays here when he has to come to Dwingeloo."

She was talking about the director. Although the director had of course explained exactly Max's own circumstances to them, she did not allude to them. That might have been discretion, but also something else; he felt a little uncomfortable with the cool politeness of her conversation, and he had the impression that this was the intention. Should he come to live here, he must be quite clear from the outset that this was no charter for familiarity.

Next to her stood a round table with framed family photos on it; also a photo of a white horse. Max looked at Rutger now and again with fascination. He sat in a wicker chair, the back of which spread to enormous dimensions like a throne, fiddling about, with his tongue hanging out. To his left a ball of violet wool lay on the ground; by means of a reel, with three small nails in it, he was weaving a woollen thread into a rope, which must by now be hundreds of feet long and lay in a colorful heap at his feet.

"Make very big curtain," he said when his eyes met Max's.

Max nodded at him in encouragement and looked at his mother.

"He's been working on it for about ten years, that very big curtain. I cut a bit off now and then, otherwise eventually we won't be able to get into the house anymore."

"And he doesn't notice?"

"Not if he doesn't see me doing it."

"Perhaps," said Max, "he has no sense of the length of that thread because he has no sense of time."

The baroness looked at him with an expressionless face. "Maybe."

Max had the feeling that he had gone too far: whoever talks about time is also talking about death.

A tractor approached down the path at the end of the vegetable garden, driven by a heavy figure in workman's clothes; only his sand-colored hat, the brim of which was turned up on one side and down on the other, indicated that this was not a simple farmer. He came into the conservatory in green boots and introduced himself with a hard, callused hand, without coming in. There was something severe, but not unfriendly, about his face; he sported a cultured, small white mustache.