The Discovery of Heaven

  Apart from that he knew only Bruno. The pianist had seen the announcement of the death and asked how Ada had reacted to her father's death.

  "She didn't," said Max. After Max briefly told him what had happened, Bruno asked in shock whether she was still unconscious, but Max didn't know. He excused himself and said hello to Onno's family. They also took it for granted that they would talk not about Brons but about Ada. The brain surgeon confirmed hesitantly that even a long coma did not necessarily mean brain damage, but he would prefer her to wake up sooner rather than later. At least her brain stem, where the breathing center was located, was not damaged.

  "Poor child," said Onno's mother. "And expecting, too. Isn't it appalling?"

  "One doesn't talk like that, To," said Quist with granite authority. "God moves in mysterious ways."

  "Yes of course, but. . ."

  "In the eyes of Providence there are no 'buts.' "

  She was intimidated and fell silent.

  "It was more as if the devil had a hand in it," said Max. "We had to stop for a tree that had fallen over, and just afterward a second tree fell on precisely the same spot."

  Quist shot him a short glance, which he couldn't quite place: on the one hand it said that the devil was something for idolaters, or for Roman Catholics, which in practical terms amounted to the same thing; on the other hand there was a hint of something like sympathy, because Max had come to his wife's aid in a Manichean way in her Theodicean dilemma. Perhaps, thought Max, it was really true that you could only believe in God if you believed in the devil as well. If you believed only in God, you got into difficulties. In that case where did the gas chambers come from? Why did that tree have to fall exactly where it fell? Why was God's creation so faulty that later on a Messiah was necessary, too? "And God saw that it was good"—but it wasn't good at all. It was all wrong.

  The doors of the hall were slowly opened by an attendant, who, despite his youth, was also completely shattered by grief. Max was the last to enter. The coffin, covered in flowers, was centrally placed in front of them, like a missile about to be launched. In the front row he saw Onno, his sister Dol, and Sophia with an old lady who must be her mother; the others were of course Brons's relations. Dol had had the idea of having them play the second part of the Dvorak cello concerto, which made Ada more present than if she had actually been there. It seemed to Max that the music was the only thing that moved in the room. He looked at the white-haired back of Ada's grandmother's head, the hair in a knot. Was that perhaps the great-grandmother of his child sitting there?

  When the music had slowly ended, the broken young man took a step forward, and said, again with a hat in his hand:

  "Mr. A.L.C. Akkersdijk will now say a few words."

  Pulling papers out of his inside pocket, a graying man stepped forward and stood at the lectern. He folded them open, looked fiercely at those assembled, and said with great determination:

  "Oswald Brons is dead."

  This was someone who knew no such thing as doubt. Now he outlined Brons's contributions to the cause of free thought and the triumph of reason over all obscurantism, of scientific atheism over the dogmatism of the churches of all denominations, particularly in the Leiden chapter, where Oswald had given of his best. Max could see from the back of Onno's head that he was thinking of his father, who was now forced to endure this, too. He looked around. The clear hall with its brick walls was as clean and bare as a stream of cold water from the tap—it wasn't the functional architecture of modern death. But was the true architecture of grief perhaps still a dark church full of incense, with columns and statues and dark alcoves, in which candles were burning by dim paintings, executed gods and sacred accoutrements? Wasn't that much more functional emotionally? That had obviously been forgotten by the vegetarian iconoclasts of the Bauhaus and De Stijl.

  To conclude his address, Akkersdijk quoted a bitter aphorism of Multatuli's, with his voice changing as if into that of a vicar reading a verse from the Bible. He folded his manuscript, and somewhat in conflict with his ideology, he looked at the coffin and said gruffly:

  "Au revoir, Oswald."

  Music again took over the space. After half a minute Max wondered what they were waiting for now—then he suddenly saw that the coffin had almost disappeared into the ground. The flowers were disappearing too, and slowly two doors slid shut. They were now setting to work in the basement, sweating men with beer bellies and cigarettes between their lips; he would have liked to go outside to see smoke suddenly coming out of the chimney. He thought of Ada. While her father's body was being destroyed, she was lying in bed unaware of anything. Or was there such a deep, subterranean bond between a daughter and her father that it still registered in some way or other? Perhaps the same kind of bond as that between herself and her unborn child—or between a son and his mother?

  When the process in the underworld was obviously complete, the young man again took a step forward and beckoned toward the family; at the same time double doors opened at the side, and the smell of coffee immediately spread like the incense of the realm of the living. The family stood in a row and Max was the last to give his condolences. Without saying anything he squeezed Sophia's hand, aware of her warmth; but although she must be able to see that on his face, she did not react at all. She introduced him to her mother, who, resting on a stick, looked at him with the same cool eyes and said:

  "You were driving, I hear. How terrible it all is."

  He nodded without saying anything. Brons's mother was in tears, and because of that his father could scarcely keep control of himself; but as the generations progressed, grief became more bearable: the youngest nephews and nieces, at the end, were in an unmistakably cheerful mood.

  Behind him, the line had broken up and he asked Onno how Ada was today.

  "The same." He excused himself, he had to go to his father and mother to make up for the havoc that A.L.C. Akkersdijk had wrought. "What I am putting the pair of them through ... I shall be severely punished for it one day. Besides, we're going back to the Statenlaan shortly, to my parents' place, but that's only for close family. I can't really invite you."

  "Of course not. I'll call you tomorrow."

  He took a coffee and a cake from the buffet and wandered into the crowd, exchanging a few words now and then. Sometimes he cast a short glance in the direction of the widow, but she did not look at him. Of course not. He was making a great mistake, and he must put it out of his mind. It had been an isolated incident; under the pressure of disaster she had let herself go for once and now she was back under control. She was again the unattainable woman that she had always been. Maybe she had by now really convinced herself that it had never happened.

  Nevertheless, when people were about to leave, he made sure that he happened to be in her vicinity.

  As she was helping her mother up, she asked him: "Haven't you missed your pencil sharpener? You left it behind last week."

  "Oh, was it at your house!"

  She looked at him coolly. "See you again sometime. Thank you for coming."

  "Goodbye, Mrs. Brons."

  Max would have liked to get back his pencil sharpener that same evening, but that was of course not possible. His thoughts constantly wandered the following day: from system 3 C 296 to Mrs. Brons's greedy internal biting. It had of course been a disguised invitation! "See you again sometime." Or was he fooling himself? Perhaps all she was thinking about was indeed that pencil sharpener. But did one really mention something as trivial as a forgotten pencil sharpener immediately after the cremation of one's husband? If it had been a fountain pen, or a very special pencil sharpener. But it was an ordinary gray thing costing a few cents, which he had not even missed and of which he had five or ten at home, as he did at the observatory.

  The fact that he did not visit her the following evening, either, but forced himself to get into his car and drive to Amsterdam, was because he could not yet comprehend what he might be getting himself into. Hadn't he gotten himself
into enough of a mess already by now? The first time it was Sophia Brons who had taken the initiative, under extraordinary circumstances; in a certain sense it had never happened. But on the second occasion the initiative would be his. That would be a new beginning, and if it was effective, then everything would change. Then there would be a third time too, and a fourth. How much of a secret could it remain? Imagine Onno getting to know about it! Moreover, her daughter might shortly have a child that looked remarkably like her lover; what then? Then it would be a double disaster, and perhaps not entirely devoid of danger. And as a man of science he could not completely exclude the chance of an even further compounded disaster: that Sophia would become pregnant by him.

  But there was no stopping it. The memory of the greedy biting and the thrilling circumstances of that night, now a week ago, had destroyed any interest in other women for him. Like someone who had stopped smoking and thought of nothing but cigarettes all day long, he wandered through the observatory, went into the garden, came back, paced up and down his room, went for a coffee, had conversations that he immediately forgot, and when most people had already gone home, he went for a meal at the Indonesian restaurant, where he had often been with Ada. He drank three carafes of sake and at nine-thirty he went to the telephone and dialed the number that he had in his diary under Ada's name.

  "Mrs. Brons speaking."

  "It's Max Delius. I'm calling about my pencil sharpener."

  "It's here on the table."

  "Would you mind if I dropped by to pick it up? Or is it too late?"

  "It's not all that late."

  "Then I'll be right over."

  Trembling, he paid the bill and drove to "In Praise of Folly." He parked his car half on the curb and determined not to take any initiative, as was his usual custom; he would see what happened.

  Sophia opened the door with the black reading glasses low down on her nose.

  "Hello, Max."

  "Hello, Mrs. Brons."

  He followed her through the bookshop, which gave the appearance of being open for business again. In the living room the television was on, with the sound turned off. In a square, in Rome by the look of it, the police were beating up demonstrators.

  "What's going on?"

  "Oh, that. I don't know, I wanted to see a Greta Garbo film that's on in a moment. Have a seat—or do you have to go right away?"

  While she made him coffee in the kitchen, he turned the sound up and sat down on the sofa. Since Ada's pregnancy, politics had actually passed him by; of course he read in the paper about everything that was happening, and there was plenty, but he read it like he read the advertisements or the economic news: it didn't penetrate the area that he had inhabited almost exclusively since then; and it did not do so now, either. As Sophia came in with the coffee, the opening titles of Anna Karenina appeared.

  At home he had a portable set, with an extendable, V-shaped indoor antenna, but it was seldom on; he couldn't remember once having watched television with Ada. But now, in this back room behind a bookshop, in deepest secrecy, that most petit bourgeois of all pleasures suddenly revealed an unknown, exciting side, like an innocent boot to a shoe fetishist.

  Sophia sat cross-legged in the small armchair, stirred her coffee, and watched the unfolding drama. They did not speak. He had read the novel about ten years ago, but he didn't have the impression that the film had any more to do with the book than the photo of the disaster with the disaster itself. Palaces, dazzling uniforms. The impenetrable face of Garbo, the despairing sing-song note in her voice. He looked at Sophia now and again out of the corner of his eye, at her beautiful, slim ankles. The function previously performed by the stove, around which the family sat, he reflected, was nowadays fulfilled by the television set. Television was the modern fire. He was going to say that to her, but he had the feeling that he must hold his tongue.

  When the whistling and hissing of the fatal locomotive and the lugubrious clouds of steam gave way to the news, Sophia turned off the set and asked if he would like anything more to drink. "A glass of wine perhaps?"

  "If I'm not keeping you . .."

  "I never go to bed that early, but you have to go to Amsterdam."

  "I can be there in half an hour. It's quiet on the road at this time."

  Was she playing a game—or precisely not? After she had poured him a drink from an opened bottle of Rioja, they talked about Ada. She had been to the hospital again that morning: there was no change in the situation, and the doctors had become noticeably more gloomy. Because she had made no secret of the fact that she was a qualified nurse, they talked to her differently than to just any relation. She was given details of laboratory results, examination of motor functions, eye reflexes. Only weeks afterward could a more or less accurate prognosis be given, but there was still hope and there would continue to be for the time being. In medical literature there was even a case known of a forty-year-old man who had been in a vegetative state for a year and a half but nevertheless woke up and began speaking again, although he was largely paralyzed and completely dependent on other people.

  Max nodded. Of course, she was now thinking the same as he was: how things were to go on should Ada not regain consciousness. He wanted to broach the subject, but did not dare. In answer to his question as to how the bookshop was going, Sophia said that it was open in the afternoons, but that it could not continue for very long; when someone came and browsed and wanted to buy a book, she sold it at the price that her husband had written in pencil on the flyleaf. But when someone took a pile of books out of a bag to sell them, she didn't know what to do and sent them away.

  There was a silence.

  "What was Ada like as a child?" asked Max.

  Sophia glanced at her hands.

  "Should I tell you? Once, just before Oswald and I had to go somewhere, I had an argument with her. She was about eleven or twelve. She had been spreading a terrible story about me: that I had put the cat in a box used for books and drowned it in the Rapenburg canal—when we didn't have a cat at all. Oswald was allergic to cats. When we got home in the afternoon, we found a note here on the table that said she had run away from home and that she was never coming back. The day before we had pancakes for dinner, and as you know you always make too many pancakes; all the leftover pancakes had disappeared. We didn't think it would be too serious, but when she hadn't come home by dinnertime, we began to get alarmed. We called everybody she knew, and later that evening Oswald went to the police with a photo. Of course we stayed up, and in the middle of the night Oswald couldn't stand it any longer. He was quite beside himself, and he got his bike and went to look for her. Even after he had gone a few streets away I could still hear him calling out her name. But half an hour later I suddenly had a strange feeling—I don't know what it was. I went up to the loft and opened the door of the lumber room. She was lying there asleep, with her coat on. Next to her were the pancakes, in a knotted tea towel."

  "And your husband cycled through Leiden for an hour calling out her name?"

  "Yes. By the time he got home, she had long since been put to bed. She hadn't even noticed that I'd undressed her."

  "And the next day?"

  "We didn't talk about it anymore."

  There was not a sound outside. Max emptied his glass—and on an impulse he decided no longer to be the first to say anything. He poured another glass for Sophia and himself and looked at his pencil sharpener, which was lying on the table. Fairy Tale. There he was sitting in that back room where he had seen Ada for the first time, and a little later her mother.

  Time passed, and silence enclosed them like a warmer and warmer bath. At the edge of his field of vision he could constantly see her figure, with the secret deep in her lap. For a few minutes he glanced at her, and for a second she looked back at him, but without expression. He gave no sign of understanding either; he knew for certain that if he had smiled now, he would have destroyed everything.

  After the silence had lasted for ten minutes or a q
uarter of an hour, he was certain that he was going to lose. He had met his match. She would sit there in her chair saying nothing until the following morning.

  With his heart pounding, he glanced at his watch and said: "It's getting late. I'll think I'll be going."

  She also looked at her watch. "Do you have to be back in Leiden tomorrow morning?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "And you've been drinking. If you like you can stay over here."

  "Well... if I'm not disturbing you ..." Brons's things turned out to have disappeared from the bathroom.

  29

  Irreversibility

  In the weeks that followed, he visited Sophia every few days. Each time, he called up first to announce his arrival, because even making a date seemed too intimate; and every morning he thanked her formally for her hospitality. They talked a little, read a little, or watched television; when it was finally really too late to go to Amsterdam, it was all the same to her if he stayed over. And then each time the door opened in the dark and she crept under the covers with him; after letting herself go completely, she disappeared again without him having seen her. Since that first time she had not spoken again, which was also the sign for him to say nothing more in bed. He had never experienced anything so mysterious, but in some way it answered a deep wish of which he had never been conscious. He had attained the unattainable woman!

  No one must know; he must never speak to anyone about it—first and foremost not to her. If he once gave an indication that he knew, it would be over at once. She must remain the two women that she was, the daytime Sophia and the nighttime Sophia—if he were to link the two, a short-circuit would immediately disable the mechanism. He must not even use her first name until she had invited him to. Psychiatrists would find it perverse, he considered—Freud would have found it hilarious—but because her mystery was absolutely complementary to his, like a nut to a bolt, he became completely addicted to the situation—quite apart from her long tongue, and the glowing, subterranean biting. If in other cases his desire for the same women always decreased exponentially, it now seemed to be growing even more intense each time after a month. He no longer looked at other women—which had the incidental advantage of a considerable gain in time.