The Discovery of Heaven (33 page)

"Noble simplicity, silent grandeur,"
he said. "You see before you a personage beside whom you sink into total insignificance."

"You have a supernatural beauty," said Max. "It can only be that the spirit has been poured out into you."

"You have no idea of everything that's been poured out."

Onno sat down in his chair and said, "Brace yourself, Max." And when Max joined in the game and grabbed hold of the grand piano, he continued, "I'm going to be a father."

Max kept his hands on the smooth black varnish and looked at him. "It's not true."

"True, true, infinitely true!"

The full implications of those few words had not yet gotten through to Max, though he had had an immediate sensation like at the launch of a ship, when the bottle of champagne smashes fizzing against the bow and the ship slowly starts to move. It was as though his hands had stuck to the grand piano; his attitude belonged to a game that was suddenly no longer being played. He stood up.

"How long have you known?"

"We've known for certain since yesterday. A frog was crucified for my child. You'll see in eight months if you don't believe it. To your astronomical mind, which is totally focused on eternity, the infinitely tender creation of a new life means nothing, of course, but you're still the first person to hear about it—for reasons that are too disgusting to refer to."

Max felt sick. Had Ada told him what had happened in Varadero? That was surely impossible! And when the memory of that night in the sea came back to him, as he made a lightning calculation, a much more awful possibility suddenly dawned on him: whose child was it?

He went over to the cupboard where he kept the glasses and asked: "What do you mean?"

"Let's say that you introduced her to me. What did you think I meant? What's wrong with you? You look green around the gills, my friend."

Max realized that he was starting to panic. "It's a shock," he said, putting the glasses down. "I'm sorry. It may be because I occasionally thought of children when I was with Ada and that's now out of the question for good."

He went to the kitchen. That was another lie—Onno would tell Ada, and she would know that that was not the reason for his alarm, but she wouldn't tell Onno. Hands shaking, he took a steaming ice tray out of the freezer compartment, held it under the tap for a moment, and pushed the ice into a bowl. He had to get his thoughts in order, weigh everything carefully, see what he had to do, and at the same time he had to go in and have a conversation with Onno, which would not be about what it was about. He had destroyed the palace of their friendship, which Onno thought was still standing, without realizing that it had become a mirage.

"I had no idea," said Onno.

"Of what?"

"That you wanted a child with Ada."

"It's not exactly like that, but she was the only woman in my life with whom the thought of a child didn't immediately scare me to death. Forget it. Things are as they are."

"If things were other than they were, something very strange would be going on in the world."

Max put a rum-and-Coke down next to Onno, poured himself a glass of wine, and sat down opposite him. He forced himself to look at Onno. "Had she stopped the pill?"

"The pill! Don't talk to me about the pill. She could just as well have swallowed a peanut every day. Medical technology is still obviously in its infancy—just as my child will be shortly. But I have no regrets. I reacted very differently than I thought I would. I would certainly never have decided to have a child of my own accord, but now that it's been taken out of my hands by a quack manufacturer, I've discovered I'm a born father. That warm, profoundly paternal element in me must have often struck you too. Or didn't it?"

"Of course," said Max, having difficulty in adjusting to Onno's tone, which had not changed but for him already belonged to the past. He took a sip and said, "If my arithmetic is right, it happened in Cuba."

"In Havana, in the headquarters of the revolution, on that night of the eighth to the ninth of October,
A
.
D
. 1967, at about two in the morning. You two had gone to the beach that Sunday. I was unfortunately prevented from going by some religious-phenomenological field research."

They looked into each other's eyes. Max nodded; he knew that Onno knew that he was now remembering their telephone conversation, in which he had called himself a "moral wreck" and a "necrophiliac." But whatever had happened, one thing that was certain was that Ada—after what had happened between her and himself—had seduced Onno that evening: that was why she had wanted to sleep with him instead of in her own hotel. She had taken everything into account, and quite rightly, as it now appeared. Quite deliberately, she had contrived to make the paternity of an extremely improbable but not impossible child uncertain. Did her cunning know no bounds? He had never known her like this, nor had Onno. But one day the moment of truth would arrive, because who would the child begin to resemble? In alarm, he allowed the question to sink in. Now, if he had himself looked a little like Onno, then no one would hit on the idea that the child was not Onno's, if it was his—but what did Onno and he have in common?

As Onno sat there on the green chesterfield with his big, heavy body, alongside which his own elegant figure was almost ethereal—and particularly with his straight, classical nose and, beneath it, the curved lips of a small restrained mouth, which was indeed a little like a Greek statue's. From an art-historical point of view, his own face belonged more in the period of Mannerism, with his predatory nose and his rapacious mouth. In a certain sense his head would be better suited to Onno's body, and vice versa. Fortunately they were both dark blond with blue eyes. Just imagine if one of them had been Chinese, or black . . .

"My daughter," said Onno, "will be the incarnation of the revolution. A second Rosa Luxemburg—or, rather, something like that woman in that painting by Delacroix,
La barricade:
leading the working masses with breasts bared and a rifle and the fluttering
tricolore."

Of course, it might also turn out to be a girl—then Ada's share might predominate; but it might be better if it didn't turn out to be anything at all.

"And are you sure you want it?"

"Basically," said Onno, letting the ice cubes clink in his glass, "I'm in favor of abortion up to the age of forty, and euthanasia from the age of forty on. I shall do my utmost to have that included in the party program. But in this particular case I want to make an exception. I knew you would allude to abortion. You'll never have children, because you haven't got a father. But I've got a father, and not just any old father, and this is my chance of giving him a devastating blow on his home ground, because soon I shall be his equal and then he won't be able to tell me what to do anymore. I'm going to perform an abortion, yes! But on the son that I am, if you follow my meaning. I'm going to get rid of myself!" he cried with an exalted look in his eyes.

Max was becoming increasingly distraught. In the past he would have delighted in every word that Onno said; now it was as though he were being forced to drink champagne at a deathbed. It couldn't go on like this— something had to happen. He would have preferred Onno to leave now, so that he could collect his thoughts, but he had only just arrived and would stay for hours, until he had taken the status of paternity into the highest regions, reigned over by God the Father, who no longer had any authority over him, either.

"And what about Ada? What will happen to her musical career?"

"No problem at all, because I shall go into labor. Yes, don't give me that stupid look. In darkest Africa, which has retained its links with the primeval roots of humanity, it's generally accepted. The mother-to-be works the land in the scorching heat, singing as she goes, while the father-to-be lies groaning on the bed in the shadow of the hut. Confinement is a short incident. Ada will pick up her cello again, and I will push the baby carriage around the Vondelpark, sit on a bench, and talk with a retired civil servant from the Housing Bureau about the old days, while I rock the carriage to and fro with one hand. Later I'll take the toddler to the sandbox and talk to young mothers about diaper rash and baby powder, while our little darlings try to dash each other's brains out with stones. In the evenings when Ada plunges into the thundering depths of Mahler in the Concertgebouw, I shall have the impulse to throw the screaming child out the window; but when it finally falls asleep I shall wake it up because I'm frightened it's dead. In short, I shall merge completely with the imbecilic eternity of the elemental."

"And what about politics?"

"I've been delivered from that, too. While Holland sinks rudderless into chaos without me, I will penetrate to the ultimate philosophical insight that is given to only the few: the father
is
the mother!" He took a large swig and said, "Maybe eventually I'll start wearing dresses, and earrings that reach to the ground."

Max got up to do something at his desk, where there was nothing to be done. He arranged some papers that didn't need arranging and asked: "Are you planning to get married?"

"Yes, what did you think? That I was going to go on living in sin? It's already bad enough that our child will start doing arithmetic one day and won't arrive at nine months between our wedding day and its birth, in July next year. What on earth will it think of us!"

The naming of that date gave Max a new shock. It was now November—and time would continue, week after week, through winter and spring to summer, until that day of days irrevocably dawned.

"Yes," he said, not knowing what to say.

"I'll tell you something else," continued Onno. "We are announcing the engagement this afternoon. Our wedding will be in two weeks. The twenty-seventh."

"That's my birthday."

"I know, but that's the date they had free at the town hall. Perhaps you can arrange to take the day off. Of course you're going to be a witness."

Max felt as though he were being tortured. A machine had started that could not be stopped but which could not continue in this way. Something must happen—but what?

"Very honored, I'm sure."

"I say, you don't give the impression of being very edified by the fact that the urge to found a family has taken hold of your friend. Are you really paying attention?"

"To be honest, Onno," he said, sitting at his desk, "not completely. In Leiden we're busy processing some important measurements from Dwinge-loo, which keep running through my head. Would you mind if I give a colleague of mine a call?"

"If you consider the universe more important than my wedding, then you must phone now. Obviously you've lost all sense of proportion."

Max smiled and dialed his own number, which turned out to be engaged.

"Hello, Max here," he said to the stupidly repeating tone. "Is there any news yet? You can't be serious—a polarization of forty percent with a wavelength of ten centimeters?—That's sensational! But if that's right, then . . . Of course. Of course . . ." He didn't know what else to say. He was saying whatever came into his head. "And what if it consists of two double radio sources? Yes, why not? On the one hand the structure of the magnetic field is virtually uniform, but on the other hand if you take account of the Faraday rotation . . . What did you say? Yes, that's a bit difficult," he said with a hesitant look at Onno. "I've got a visitor. But. . ."

"Okay, okay, I'm going," said Onno, putting down his glass. "Off you go to your polarization."

"I'll be right there. I'll be in Leiden in twenty minutes."

However, he did not go to Leiden. He took Onno to the Kerkstraat in his car and then parked not at his apartment, but one street farther on, so as not to be caught out in case Onno and Ada went for a walk. So things had gotten this far! With a feeling of self-loathing that he had never experienced before, he went up the steps again and, without turning on the light, he continued pacing deep into the night following the set diagonals and perpendicular bisectors, now and then glancing at Onno's glass, which he had not completely emptied.

The following morning when he awoke, it immediately took hold of him again and did not let go for the whole day. From minute to minute the embryo was growing in the darkness of Ada's womb; thousands of new cells were being added and organizing themselves into a dreadful threat. Although important data from the Computer Institute were in fact coming in, he kept going over to the window of his office in Leiden with his hands in his pockets and looking out over the Botanical Garden, where the Dutch autumn had descended on the tropics.

For some time he had been repeating the same thoughts over and over. There was a 50 percent chance that it would be his child—that was a dreadful risk—and even if it turned out eventually not to be his child, he would still live for years in fear of an emerging likeness. As far as he knew, there still was no method of determining paternity at the pregnancy stage. But suppose that his paternity were to be evident on the day of birth, from his spatula-shaped thumbs. What would happen then? Or if gradually his own nose—that is, his mother's—appeared under a replica of Ada's eyes. What would happen then? Shouldn't he emigrate within eight months? Accept the fellowship in California on Mount Palomar after all? Hang himself? What would he do in Onno's place? Perhaps he would murder him.

He rubbed his face with both hands. Was it conceivable that he had wrecked his own life? How could the dignity ever return to it?
He
was now the moral wreck, up to his neck in lies and betrayal. He thought back to that night in the sea: what in heaven's name had possessed him? How could he have ever been so crazy! Onno had asked him to be a witness at his wedding in two weeks' time: that was as impossible as a refusal would have been. He was caught in a trap. There must be a fundamental change in the situation this week, tomorrow rather than the day after—but how? He would have preferred to be honest and confess his faux pas to Onno, fall at his feet, take his foot and put it on his neck and await his fate. Or perhaps he should do it in writing, in a more cowardly but more accurate way.