"Wait a moment.. . this is . . . this is just impossible ... I have to write it down. So you gave her that injection on Saturday evening. It was seven-thirty. She died at twelve-thirty. In the morning she was taken to the morgue, where she lay yesterday. This morning she was put in a coffin and taken to the crematorium. And she was cremated there an hour ago."
"Yes. What's so important about those times?"
"What... how can . . . I .. ."
"Onno? Hello! Onno? Can you hear me? Are you still there?"
"There's something wrong with my head, Sophia, I can feel it ... I can't write anymore . . . the whole of my left side . . . Eighteen months ago I had a . . ."
"For heaven's sake, Onno! Where are you?"
"Hotel Raphael..."
"Get them to call for a doctor at once. I'll take the next plane. I'm coming to get you both."
Epilogue
—That's enough! You must know when to stop. Think of Goethe's words: "Restriction shows the master's hand."
—But to be on the safe side he also said: "The fact that you cannot end is what makes you great."
—Yes, those writers are like that. Always having the best of both worlds. You've accomplished your mission, and I've got six hundred and sixty-six questions about your machinations, but I won't ask them. The main thing is that we've got the testimony back just in time. Where's our man now?
—Returned to the Light.
—By now you might just as well say: to the Twilight. And what happened to the fragments of the two tablets?
—Collected by the Jerusalem Sanitation Department. Taken to a rubbish dump with all the other rubble in the Dome of the Chain.
—Well, for that matter, the testimony itself is a mess too. It looks like an upturned compositor's typecase.
—If you must use terrestrial imagery, you'd better choose a more modern one: like erased software.
—That is precisely the language of a world that we've no use for anymore. I suppose the sapphire tablets of the Law were the hardware, then?
—As it were.
—Yes, since Bacon the devil speaks English. It's becoming the world language. So let's keep to Latin: consummatum est. It has been accomplished. My strength is exhausted. We're done for. The world is done for. Humankind is done for. Everything is done for—except Lucifer. What we thought would never be possible has happened: time has gained a hold over us. Time—that was Lucifer's secret weapon. The only thing left to us after more than three thousand years was to take back those ten words. An impotent gesture, of course: like a jilted girl reclaiming her engagement ring. A poor consolation, a symbolic act, a melancholy farewell. But the Decalogue was the ultimate thing on earth: the Chiefs contract with humankind, concluded with its deputy, the Jewish people, represented by its leader Moses in the role of notary. From now on Lucifer has a free hand. Let him carry off all those human things. I really don't care anymore.
—Perhaps someone will appear on earth to put everything right.
—The person would have to come from here, but nothing can come from here anymore. In Moscow an enlightened character assumed power a short while ago—the greatest human being in the human twentieth century in a positive sense, just as he whose name I shall not mention was in the negative sense. Within five years the Berlin Wall will be demolished, Russia will lose its colonies, the whole world will rejoice at the dawning of a new age . . . then in the liberated areas, the ultimate bloodthirsty backwardness will be in control again. Migrations of people will take place, shots will ring out again in Sarajevo, and as the third millennium approaches the disgusting twentieth century will be revived due to overwhelming popular success.
—I can't believe that.
—You'll learn to believe it. And it's all the same old thing—politics means nothing. The rise and fall of world empires has gone on forever. Politics are the rippling of the waves in a storm—makes no difference at all to the waves, because they come from somewhere completely different: they come from the moon. To the old global disasters are now added the ravaging tidal waves of the new: with their Baconian control of nature, people will finally consume themselves with nuclear power, burn themselves up through the hole they have made in the ozone layer, dissolve in acid rain, roast in the greenhouse effect, crush each other to death because of their numbers, hang themselves on the double helix of DNA, choke in their own Satan's shit, because that swine didn't conclude his pact out of love of humankind, only out of hatred for us. All hell will break loose on earth and human bangs will one day remember the good old days, when they still listened to us—and probably they won't even do that anymore. It won't even be tragic anymore, just wretched. It's hopeless. Forget it.
—And if they find out what we have done, won't that bring about a change of heart? I can see to that. At the moment there's one person on earth who knows about it.
—You've suggested that before. Don't fool yourself. If they find out, not a soul will believe it. The news will be reported here and there; perhaps a few thousand righteous people, a few hundred theologians, and ten archaeologists will get very excited, but then it will be drowned out by the constant cataract of other news items, and a few months later it'll be forgotten. No, drop it, it's over. Finis comoediae.
—We can at least try!
—No, I'm not even prepared to give that knowledge to those treacherous offspring of ours anymore.
—Am I hearing you correctly? Is Onno Quist in danger if he tells anyone else?
—That must be prevented. If that happens, just throw a stone at his head, like you did with Max Delius. Quiet a moment. . . I'm being called. I have to give a report on what you've told me.
—Let's think of something else, then. We must fight to the last—we can still do it! Better to fail than to give up! Can't we do something about that pact that Lucifer concluded with Bacon? Give me another mission at once!
—Those days are gone. You're retiring. Thanks for everything, on behalf of the Chief, too. Adieu.
—Then I'll do it on my own initiative! Do you hear me? I'm not leaving it at that! How do they have the nerve! Who do they think they are, the upstarts! Answer me!
Table of Contents
Title page
PART ONE THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING
PROLOGUE
1 The Family Gathering
2 Their Meeting
3 I'll See You Home
4 Friendship
5 Coming Out to Play
6 Another Meeting
7 The Observatory
8 An Idyll
9 The Demons
10 The Gypsies
11 The Trial
12 The Triangle
13 Clearing Up
14 Repayment
15 The Invitation
16 The Conference
17 Hot Days
18 The Vanishing Point
19 In the Sea
THE MISSION
PART TWO THE END OF THE BEGINNING
First Intermezzo
20 The Hooblei
21 The News
22 What Next?
23 Heads or Tails
24 The Wedding
25 The Mirror
26 Fancy
27 Consolation
28 The Funeral
29 Irreversibility
30 The Scaffold
31 The Proposal
32 The Dilettante
33 Cesarean Section
De Profundis
PART THREE THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Second Intermezzo
34 The Gift
35 The Move
36 The Monument
37 Expeditions
38 The Grave
39 Further Expeditions
40 The World of Words
41 Absences
42 The Citadel
43 Finds
44 The Not
45 Changes
46 The Free Market Economy
47 The Music
48 Velocities
&n
bsp; 49 The Westerbork
50 The Decision
De Profundis
PART FOUR THE END OF THE END
Third Intermezzo
51 The Golden Wall
52 Italian Journey
53 The Shadow
54 The Stones of Rome
55 The Spot
56 Biblical Scholarship
57 Discoveries
58 Preparations
59 Waiting
60 The Commandos
61 The Flight
62 Thither
63 The Center of the Center
64 Chawah Lawan?
65 The Law Taker
Epilogue
Harry Mulisch, The Discovery of Heaven
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