Max looked at her. She had Onno's classic straight nose. Until he was four, she had made Onno walk around in pink dresses and ringlets. Whose grandchild was she going to have? Her own, or that of a Jewess gassed at Auschwitz? And him, the prime minister? His own, or that of an executed war criminal?
In the little basement restaurant on the Prinsengracht that Onno had booked they ate leg of hare with red cabbage and drank Burgundy. All the relations had been packed off home and there remained a select group of mainly politicians, musicians, linguists, and a solitary astronomer. There were comic after-dinner speeches and toasts were drunk, which Onno endured with inflated self-satisfaction, putting his domineering arm around Ada's narrow golden shoulders. When someone alluded to his forthcoming fatherhood, he cried:
"I'm married to the daughter of my child's grandmother!"
"Do you think that's anything special?"
"Can't you hear it is?!"
A few times Max met an inquiring look: shouldn't he, as a bosom friend, also say a few words? But he made a slight gesture of refusal with his hand and shook his head. He must hold his tongue. If things went wrong, then anything he might have said now would be counted as extra salt in the wound. Perhaps his silence would be interpreted as evidence of good taste, because the bride was an ex-girlfriend of his, or as a sign of resentment at not being the bridegroom—he would just have to put up with that.
Even after coffee the drink continued to flow; people changed places and finally started mixing. Brittle linguists and bony politicians demonstrated that they also knew something about music, and delicate musicians that they knew nothing about linguistics and were not interested in politics; politicians assured linguists that they were in fact the true "linguists," since they used nothing but words, so that all things considered there was nothing left for the linguists. What were they doing here, anyway? Hadn't Onno himself realized that? Whereupon the linguists inquired if they had decided where they stood on the issue of surplus manure. As the atmosphere got livelier, the volume rose, and somewhere someone launched into "Arise, ye wretched of the earth!" in a stentorian voice, and shouted that it was better than Schubert's Erlkönig; Max had his first chance to exchange a few words with Ada. He had seen that she was drinking only water.
"Fine," she said, when he asked how she was feeling. "And you?"
"I feel like someone who's trodden on a land mine and heard the click: he knows that if he takes another step he'll be blown sky-high."
"Just wait and see. What's the point of getting so worked up? There's just as great a chance that everything will turn out fine."
"But, Ada, that wedding, all these people, this party—while only you and I know that it may all be a lie, phony, nonsense, fraud. How can you live with that?"
"I'm living with my child."
"When I think of Onno—"
"Quiet, here he comes."
A full glass of rum-and-Coke in his hand, Onno surveyed him from head to toe.
"When I see your pitiful appearance, I have to think back to the dreadful time when I was still a bachelor. What a nightmare! In my mind's eye I see a desolate landscape with a single bare tree in the biting wind, into the teeth of which a lonely, stooping pilgrim dressed in rags, with a long staff, is laboring on his way to his mournful end. And now look at me," he said, puffing out his chest. "I have just attained the highest state of human self-fulfilment: marriage! My flesh is as fragrant as the Rose of Sharon, because I am married! As the lily among thorns, so am I among the sons. My lips drip like the honeycomb, my shoots are a paradise of pomegranates, for I am married. I am a walled garden, a sealed fountain!" he cried—and, inspired by the silence that had fallen, he stretched out an arm to Ada. "Behold, thou art fair, o my bride! Thy eyes are the sun rising above the fishermen cycling palely out of town with their worms. Thy voice is the singing of the first birds in the roof gutters. Thy hair shines like oil lying in the street where cars have been parked in the watery early morning light. Thy teeth are as the milk that schoolchildren drink at playtime, your lips a scarlet pool of blood at lunchtime, recalling the lady who has been run over. Thou art all fair, my love! Thy laughter is as the gold leaf of the sirens in the ear of factory girls. Thy breasts glow like the first neon signs, unseen in the falling dusk. Thy navel is the orange fire of the setting sun in the windows of the department stores. Thy belly is hidden like the shop window behind the rattling steel shutters that the jeweler lowers to the ground over his treasures after six o'clock. Awake, O south wind, and come! Thou art as the late evening, when the actress in her tunic cries: 'Wretched one! Woe, didst thou never hear who thou art!' And thy sleep is ... I haven't a clue. Thy sleep is the wakefulness of the small boy on whom croaking madness is descending!"
Exhausted, he put his glass to his lips. And amid the applause that was his reward, Max felt the urge to pray that it would be Onno's child—but that was pointless, because it was already certain whose child it was. Even if God existed, he could do nothing to change it.
25
The Mirror
Mid-February was the first anniversary of their friendship, but Onno was too busy with politics to remember and Max did not remind him. It was a fitful winter—in Czechoslovakia indeed the "Prague Spring" broke out early—interspersed with a few extremely cold days. Sometimes the impending danger vanished from his mind for hours, but then it suddenly loomed up in front of him again like a cliff out of the fog. At work, too, he sometimes found his attention wandering from the papers on his desk and himself staring at the second hand of his wristwatch, turning with inexorable jerks, but actually advancing down a possibly infinite straight line, along which the event would take place one summer's day.
"Just wait and see," Ada had said. He thought back to the image that had occurred to him during the wedding dinner: standing on a land mine with the pin taken out. He imagined an American soldier, on reconnaissance in the Vietnam jungle. Click. He stopped, dead-still. One more step and he would be blown to pieces. What was he to do now? He had lost contact with his patrol, and there was no point in screaming amid the deafening screeching of monkeys and parrots and cockatoos. Nor could he fire a shot, because the recoil would set off the explosion. Beneath his feet, covered by a thin layer of earth, he could feel death: a flat iron pressure cooker, assembled by women's hands somewhere in China or the Soviet Union. He must think hard—but there was nothing to think about. He must wait. Perhaps someone would happen to see him standing there, hopefully not a Vietcong: a motionless American in the tropical forest. He thought of his life, which had suddenly come to a halt, like a film stuck in the projector. Why had he always done his homework? Everything around him was moving, but he had turned into the statue of a GI, heavily armed, with helmet and backpack. His head was still moving, his chest was moving up and down, in his body his heart was beating and his intestines were working, but the weight of all that now determined the moment of his death. He didn't dare discard anything, because that would change his weight; nor could he reach his water bottle without danger. Hour after hour went by. Sweating, bitten by insects, his tongue thick and dry like a mouthful of flour, he thought of his girl, at home in Oakland, on the bay—night fell with scarcely any transition, his legs began trembling gently with exhaustion. If they gave out, or if he fell asleep, it was all over for him. Should he turn his submachine gun on himself, or was there still hope? Had he been wrong, perhaps? Could it have been the mating sound of some giant beetle or other? Was he not standing on a land mine at all, perhaps, and should he simply walk on?
Max in his turn had forgotten that the twenty-seventh of February was the day of their joint conception.
"We have to celebrate that," said Onno on the telephone. "Anyway, I need to get away for a bit and talk to a normal human being for a change."
"Do you mean me?"
"You see how warped I've become."
"Where shall we do that?"
"What would you say to the Reichstag in Berlin? Or do you have a better idea?"
"I can think of nothing better," said Max, looking in his diary. "Trouble is, I shall still be in Dwingeloo for the whole of that Tuesday. What would you say about coming to Drenthe on the train? Then I'll collect you from the station in Wijster and show you the works, so that you can make yourself popular with a large subsidy when you're in power."
"On the contrary, drastic cuts are needed. Mirrors, mirrors, nothing but mirrors; you're all just like the military. And what is the social use of all those mirrors?"
"Nil, thank God."
"I'll have someone work out how many nurseries could be built for the price of one mirror."
"So you'll be left holding the babies," said Max, immediately thrown by the ambiguity of that remark.
"If you ask me, they're just distorting mirrors, and you're all killing yourselves laughing all day long at the stupid government."
"Please don't tell anyone. Come and have a look on Tuesday—you'll kill yourself laughing. If you like, you can stay over in the guest room, then we'll drive back together the following morning."
"Agreed. Of course you don't mind if I bring Ada with me? I scarcely see her anymore; if things go on like this, my marriage will also be on the rocks. I see the same thing all around me."
"All three of you are welcome."
It had been abnormally warm all week. That afternoon, as Max sat waiting alone on the open platform of the country station, it was oppressive, without a breath of wind. The sky was overcast, and there looked to be a storm on the way. With the middle finger of his right hand he stroked the small bald patch on the back of his head, which he had discovered to his alarm a few weeks ago. It was oval, just under half an inch long, and invisible under his hair; the fear of suddenly going bald had stayed with him for days, but when the spot did not increase in size, it had gradually lessened.
He looked at the slowly approaching short train. A yellow caterpillar. It contained what he loved most in the world and what threatened him most. When Onno gave Ada his hand as she got out, with a carryall in the other, Max saw for the first time that her belly had grown larger. She was wearing an ankle-length black dress, with strips of white lace around the high collar and the long sleeves. Below the waist she suddenly expanded, because her center of gravity had shifted, causing her to lean slightly backward.
Onno looked contemptuously around him.
"So you think you can plumb the depths of the universe in this hole." He cupped a hand behind his ear and listened. "I can't hear the echo of that Big Bang of yours at all. All I can hear are stupid cows in the distance, wanting milking."
"So you can actually hear it," said Max.
The hood of his car was open, and small boys were bending over the dashboard to see how fast he could go. Because of the changed circumstances, it was now Onno who had to force himself sideways into the narrow space behind the seats. They drove out of the village along a provincial road, lined by tall elms; the sky, monochrome-gray like tin, hung over the alternating farms and woods. Max pointed out the large erratic stones, from the Ice Age, which were piled into small pyramids at the entrance of every farm. They worked themselves to the surface from the depths, he told them, whereupon the farmers hit them as they plowed.
"Am I right in thinking," asked Onno, "that stones fall upward here?"
"Not once they reach the surface."
"Ah, mother earth!" said Onno with something like paternal pity in his voice.
Max was about to say he had also heard that with war veterans, bullets sometimes appeared from their backs after twenty years—but it was no longer possible to talk to Onno in this playful way. The barrier was now right next to him, under that black curve. He cast a glance in his mirror, in which he could see Onno looking around with his hair waving, obviously enjoying the ride. Behind him, still in the mirror, they were driving backward on the wrong side of the road: yes, that was what their relationship was like now.
They passed farm cottages, also with erratic granite blocks in their small front gardens, drove through a village, and after a few hundred yards signs appeared on a woodland path forbidding all motor traffic. That was because of the radio waves transmitted by the spark plugs, explained Max; the telescope was so sensitive that even such a minimal signal was enough to interfere with reception.
"And what about your spark plugs?" asked Ada.
"They're insulated."
"So it might happen," suggested Onno, "that you think you've discovered a new spiral nebula when it was simply a moped trespassing on the site."
Max made a skeptical gesture with his hand. "Okay," he said. "That might be possible. I hope you haven't got an electric razor with you."
"So that it's not beyond the realms of possibility," Onno persisted, "that what you radio astronomers regard as the universe is simply the traffic situation in the surrounding area."
Max had to laugh despite himself. "God knows."
"You've put your finger on it! The earth is flat and the stars are tiny holes in the firmament, through which the light of the Empyrean, the abode of the blessed, shines. And anyone who maintains anything different, like you, is on the slippery slope."
Suddenly a portion of the mirror became visible above the trees: a gigantic framework twenty-five yards in diameter, a transparent parabola of gray steel, as out of place in the rural environment as an oath in a sermon.
"It's not an eye at all," said Onno. "It's an ear."
At a complex of low-rise service buildings, Max turned off his engine and an unrestrained silence descended upon them. The birds in the wood simply made it deeper; from the other direction, where it was more open, came the scent of heather.
Ada got out, took a deep breath, and looked around. "How marvelous it is here."
"Yes," said Onno, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply. "That's the marvel of numbness. Nature is the sleep of the intellect. Only in the city does the spirit awaken."
"I wouldn't mind living here, though. If necessary, with a little less intellect."
"Shame on you! Nature is for children."
"That's what I mean."
With a groan Onno had also clambered out of the car and gave her a kiss.
"You're a darling, but you're making a terrible logical error. For her own safety, our daughter must become a real city child. You can tell that from all those children from the provinces. At the age of fourteen they sneak off to Amsterdam and then walk into every trap at once. They know which toadstools are poisonous and that they mustn't walk through the tall grass barefoot, but they haven't a clue about the vipers in the city. If they've grown up in the city, they know exactly what they have to be careful of. And believe me, in fourteen years' time it will be a lot more dangerous in Amsterdam than it is now, because everything always gets worse. Could you live here?" he asked Max. "Nothing was ever thought of in the country, was it? After all, you think up in Leiden what you test out here."
Max had listened to him in desperation. What he had said about that "daughter" was of course a game, but as a real father he had obviously already thought about the best environment for Ada's child.
"Really live here all the time? I'd prefer to give up astronomy. I'd feel like a banished criminal. I won't say a word against Drenthe, but of course it's the Siberia of the Netherlands." He looked at the sky. "I think I'll put the top up."
With the help of Onno, he pulled it up, and after securing the handles and press studs, he took them to the guest suite, where he had asked the caretaker to reserve a bedroom. In the communal living room, furnished with wicker chairs and plywood sofas, he introduced them to a young colleague from Sydney, who was too fat for his age and was sitting working at the dining table. Max told them in English that he was here to combine the Australian data on the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the Milky Way with that of the Northern hemisphere, thus producing a complete map.
"Something like this," he said, pointing to one of the papers, on which was a diagram that, according to Onno, looked like a Rorschach te
st but in Ada's opinion was like a view of the brain from below.
"What do you know about brains?" asked Onno. "That's my specialty."
"I once saw a photograph of one."
After they had unpacked their bags in the bedroom, they went to the low hall in the main building, where astronomers, technicians, administrative personnel, and students working their way through college had gathered around a cart carrying tea and biscuits. Some of them knew Onno and Ada from their visit to the Leiden observatory—that was the very first day, Max suddenly realized, when he had plucked Ada from the "In Praise of Folly" bookshop. He saw her sitting at her cello again, musicienne du silence, her father with paint on his face—and later: "Be careful, don't hurt me . . ."
He showed them his office, as tidy as the one in Leiden, the metrological department, the instrument-making workshop, and the other workshops, where the lights were on, after which they went outside through the back entrance. A hundred yards farther on stood the colossal telescope, silently focused on a point in the dark sky. Max himself still felt a mysterious effect emanating from the instrument, which he knew so well—not comparable with any other technical structure. The wind had come up somewhat, and while they walked toward it along the path, he said that the wind was, of course, because of the contact with the most distant and earliest things in the universe that was taking place there. On the edge of the heath, which extended to the horizon, the reflector towered above them, as transparent as a fallen leaf in winter, in which only the veins had remained. The monster rested on feet, between which was a service hut; the whole construction was supported by four wheels on a circular track.
"If you ask me, those are kitchen brushes," said Ada, pointing to the brushes, which had been tied provisionally with string at the front and back of each wheel to keep the rail smooth.
"From the household store in Dwingeloo," said Max, nodding. "It ultimately comes down to that kind of thing. That's how it is in science, but no one must know."