She fell silent. Did she perhaps mean that Hondius had meant to give him the photograph on his deathbed? Max did not take his eyes off the photograph.
"May I have it?"
"Of course."
It was a mystery to him. So this photograph had come from his father's cell, which meant that it was one of the few things he had taken with him when he was arrested—why? He had driven that woman there on his left arm to her death, which had brought him in front of the firing squad, him, the Mortal Ego. So why should he have a photo of someone who didn't exist and hence could not die? Did that mean she did still exist for him? So had she died after all? How explicable was a human being? How explicable was he himself?
31
The Proposal
The following morning Max woke up in his own bed with the memory of something glittering and glowing. He kept his eyes closed for a moment and saw that it was Mother Tonia's silver scalp, which was hidden by her wig— and for a moment the boundless halls of his dream of that night, with their corridors and chambers, their momentous messages and dizzying vistas, opened up again and then immediately closed forever, as if the country of a departing traveler were not only to disappear below the horizon but to cease to exist. . .
He opened his eyes. Everything was in its place in the soft light that shone through the orange curtains. Nothing had changed, and at the same time everything had changed: somehow it had lost its permanence, which allowed it to be the same tomorrow as today and the same the day after tomorrow as tomorrow. It was as though he no longer lived here, as though his soul had already departed. Ten o'clock. Because it was Saturday he had not set his alarm; he did not have to go to Leiden. He got out of bed, opened the curtains, and dialed Sophia's number. She was on the point of leaving for Amsterdam, to go to the hospital.
"I've got my coat on."
"Is Onno coming too?"
"I think so. Why?"
"I have to speak to you for a moment, but without Onno. It's important."
"Has something happened? You disappeared so suddenly yesterday."
"Yes, something has happened, but I can't tell you over the telephone."
"Where shall we meet?"
The obvious thing for him to do would have been to invite her to his flat, ten minutes' walk from the Wilhelmina Hospital, but he had the feeling that that would be crossing a forbidden boundary.
"How about the station buffet? That may be easiest for you."
"But I can't possibly say exactly what time I'll be there."
"I understand. Don't hurry, I'll be there from one o'clock onward. We can have a bite to eat."
"See you this afternoon, then."
On his desk lay the photograph of his parents. He looked at it for a while and decided to have it framed later. He ran a bath and in the hot water tried to think about the future, but there was not much point until he had spoken to Sophia. It was not impossible that she would look at him in astonishment and ask him if he had taken leave of his senses; that would probably mean an immediate end to their secret relationship. But perhaps things might be different, and in that case he must take immediate steps to ensure his appointment in Westerbork and his living accommodations. Although . . . ultimately everything depended on Onno. He must decide. It concerned his wife and what was at least officially his child; he was under pressure from his family, and there was some doubt whether he could come to terms with a scheme that he might be inclined to class as surrealistic. Max was aware that he must rely on the very friendship he had betrayed.
At about twelve-thirty, with the photo in a folded newspaper, he went downstairs, took the morning paper out of the mailbox, and walked in the direction of the Central Station. In the window of a photographer's on the Leidsestraat was a shot of a car crash from the 1920s: a yellowed little snap of two cars that, absurdly, had collided in what was still a virtually car-free world, enlarged by technical wizardry into a large, shiny photograph that looked as though it had been taken yesterday. In the shop a girl offered to transform his damaged photo in the same way; but what mattered to him was not only what was depicted but the object itself, that original paper, that substance, which had been in the possession of his father and mother. There must be traces of molecules from their hands on it.
He walked down the Damrak to the Central Station, which blocked off the harbor front like a dam. It was as if the town council of Venice had hit on the idea of building a station on the Molo, behind the two pillars on the Piazzetta, which would have obscured the view of the lagoon. Amsterdam, he thought, might be the Venice of the North, but Venice was fortunately not the Amsterdam of the South. Ever since he'd had a car, he'd only been in the station once: when he'd made his trip to Poland. Just as he always used to, he glanced to the left before going into the station concourse: at the ramp for goods traffic, along which the 110,000 Jews had been driven to the goods wagons.
The gigantic, semicircular roof of steel girders—so constructed in order to absorb the smoke and steam of locomotives—had always felt like the inside of a Zeppelin, but now it reminded him of the ribs of a whale that had swallowed him up. He felt something akin to stage fright. In the buffet, with its dark paneling and carving and murals, he sat down at a table by the window.
Because the station blocked the view of the wide world, like a seal set on Holland's vanished maritime power, it had a magnificent view of its own; the busy square branching out in all directions, with churches, hotels, and seventeenth-century gables reflected in the water, on the other side affording an almost obscene view deep into the city. As he looked at it he had the same kind of feeling as this morning when he woke up: perhaps it was no longer his city. Apart from his scientific work, everything had happened there, from his birth up to the conversation that he was shortly to have.
He ordered coffee from a waiter in a white full-length apron and opened his newspaper. In Paris, de Gaulle had made a statement that he would remain in office as president, whereupon riots had broken out again in all French cities, with several deaths and thousands of casualties. He read only the headlines and the leads—not because he was unable to concentrate, but because it still didn't interest him. Since he had been in Cuba, he was preoccupied solely with his personal problems, which he had caused, and with those of radio sources in the distant past of the universe—everything in between, like the war in Vietnam and the revolution in Europe, was less and less real for him; he left that to Onno. He read an article about the rapid development of the silicon chip, in which he was later to be involved, with the constant squeaking of the restaurant door in his ears, shrill guards' whistles filling the belly of the whale, the thundering of arriving trains, reducing speed with reluctant grating. Now and then an incomprehensible voice blared from the loudspeakers.
"Have you been waiting long?"
Sophia was standing looking down at him. He got up, said hello, and took her coat, which was cold on the outside and warm on the inside.
When they were sitting opposite each other, she said: "Well, it's been decided. Next Thursday at the latest they're going to get the baby out."
He nodded. "Did they say why?"
"They don't say everything even to me, particularly when Onno's there. They discussed it at length; they say they're doing it to be on the safe side, but I don't know what that means. You can imagine that all kinds of things have gone haywire in that body of hers. She's also getting bed sores. She has to be turned every three hours, iced and blow-dried."
The way in which Sophia said that body, when she herself had given birth to it, sent a chill through him. Turned. Iced. Blow-dried.
"But can she survive such a severe operation?"
Sophia looked at her hands. "Who can say? We've just spoken briefly to the surgeon, but of course he's not giving anything away. He says that there needn't be any risk to her life. In any case there's no problem at all for the child: it's already over seven months."
Max reflected that it might be best if Ada did not survive, and that So
phia was probably thinking the same thing at that moment; but he didn't have the courage to say it.
"What about Onno?"
"He understands that there's a risk, of course, but he said that he'd rather be a father sooner than later."
Max could hear him saying it: with an expansive gesture, to which the surgeon had no reply, though he knew more about it than Onno. He always created misunderstandings; the doctor probably now thought that he lacked seriousness.
"If all goes well," he said, "it will mean that the child will need a roof over its head in a few weeks' time. Has Onno made his mind up yet?"
Sophia looked at him in bewilderment. "It's as though you never see him anymore. Is there something wrong between you?"
"No," said Max, returning her look. "Why should there be? The last time I spoke to him was the day before yesterday." He looked down and folded the newspaper.
"We were just talking about it in the tram," said Sophia, "but he still hasn't decided. He asked my advice."
"And what advice did you give him?"
"In my opinion he shouldn't let the child be dragged around the world by civil servants; he should choose his niece Paula in Rotterdam. Besides, one day he'll meet someone else and then he can still take it back."
Max had not considered that possibility. Yes, even that was of course conceivable; but it wouldn't happen. He remembered what Onno had said to him the very day after the accident: that he didn't find being alone the worst thing about it, since he was the classic comic type of the married bachelor. He would certainly meet another woman one day, but he'd never live with anyone again; for him that had been an incident, like when a miser who once buys shares then loses his money, after which he puts his capital on deposit forever, even though his speculative friends tell him that saving with a bank is pouring your money down the drain. For Onno it was once bitten, twice shy.
"Did you tell him that?"
"Of course not."
Max shook his head. "From what I know of him, he'll stay a bachelor for the rest of his days—that is, live like a bachelor."
A waiter was standing in silence by their table looking from one to the other, with his ballpoint pen and notepad in his hand. Used to such rudeness, they both ordered a small open sandwich, even though that would probably be equally unsavory. With his fingernail, Max drew bars across a stain that had not been properly washed off the tablecloth.
"But what if," he said slowly, without raising his eyes, "you and I were to do it..."
"Do what?"
"Take care of Ada's child."
It had been said. Suddenly it was there, like a thing, a meteor that had penetrated the atmosphere. He looked into her eyes and tried to read from her face the effect his proposal had had, but he saw no emotion at all.
"Us look after Ada's child? You and me? And how do you picture that?"
It was on the tip of his tongue to say "In heaven's name let's stop this play acting, Sophia. It's gone on long enough; I'm crazy about you, I can't live without you, and you know that; even when I take your coat, I'm thinking of the dark ritual of our nights in Leiden, and the same goes for you." But supposing he'd said that, and she'd then said, "Yes, of course, you're right, we must put an end to this pretense"—would he still have wanted her to move in with him with Ada's child? Of course not. He knew perfectly well that it was precisely the incomprehensible secrecy to which he was wedded heart and soul: that which they not only kept hidden from the world but from each other, and she perhaps even from herself.
"Since your husband's death," he said, "you've been running 'In Praise of Folly,' but if you ask me that won't last. I will probably have to move to Drenthe shortly—I'm going to be appointed telescope astronomer, in Westerbork. Next Thursday your daughter is going to give birth to my best friend's child. These are the facts, aren't they? Ada is no longer of this world, Onno has to find a home for his child, I don't like the thought of living alone in the provinces, and there's nothing left for you in Leiden. All five of us are alone—so let's throw in our lot together. You told me that the grandmother is traditionally the one who looks after the children, and that you had offered yourself to Onno in that capacity, but that he felt that there should be a man in the family. Well, that'll be me. It won't be your average family, but it will have some features of one. In a higher sense it might be even more of a family than normal families."
What he meant by this last remark was not immediately clear even to himself, but that might come later. Sophia turned her head away and looked outside. Her remorseless profile suddenly reminded him of that of a woman in a painting by Franz von Stuck, Sphinx, of which he had once seen a reproduction: a nude lying on her belly, with a raised upper torso, and fingers curled into claws, in the attitude of a lion, on the shore of a dark mountain lake into which a waterfall is plunging. He could not see what was going on inside her, but at least she had not dismissed it out of hand.
She looked at him. "Do you know what you're saying?"
"I don't know always what I'm saying, because then I'd never say anything important; but what I've just said I've considered from all sides. I know it would completely change my life, and yours too. But we owe it to Ada. Or perhaps we don't owe it to her, but in that case we have to do it although we don't owe it to her." He put the paper aside and stretched his back. "That's what I wanted to say to you. Of course everything would have to be arranged at short notice; I must find a house with sufficient room for the three of us, some old vicarage perhaps. You should wind up the bookshop, but that's all solvable. My salary isn't that fat, but there are families who have to live on less; and anyway everything is cheaper in the country, particularly when you get it from the farm." He made a gesture with his hand. "I can imagine that it's come as a big surprise and that you'd like to think about it calmly for a day or two, so—"
"I don't have to think about it," she said, and looked him straight in the eye.
"Because?" He looked at her tensely.
"For the last few months my life ... I mean ... if Onno agrees . . ."
He had an impulse to take her hand in his, but controlled himself. For the first time he saw something like a chink in her armor. "Is he at home now?"
"I think so."
"Then I'll drop by to see him in a moment. I'll let you know at once how he reacts; I think it's better if I go alone." He saw how he surprised her with his decisiveness. "You must always make big decisions quickly, otherwise you'll never get around to it." He laughed. "Onno will be very surprised—even by the fact that I'm dropping by to see him. It's never happened."
Unlike Max, Onno had the gift of being able to switch his attention completely from one moment to the next, like someone going from one room into the other and closing the door behind him. The news that his child would be delivered in five days' time and that he must now reach a decision quickly had preoccupied him until he put the key in the lock. He agreed with his mother-in-law that the choice of Hans and Hadewych would be the worse one, but because he wanted to make not a less bad but a good choice, he still could not bring himself to cut the Gordian knot. Once inside, in his study, his eye was caught by the party papers, in which shortly afterward he was immersed.
When the bell rang, he got up automatically and opened the door, without interrupting his thoughts. When he saw Max on the step, he came to himself in amazement.
"This is very unusual," he said.
"Thank you for the heart-warming reception. I know that you don't belong to the species host, but I need to discuss something with you."
"Salve."
Max followed him to the basement, which after a short period of modest tidiness had again succumbed to the second law of thermodynamics. The chaos caused him almost physical pain. Lost for words, he looked at the mess. He himself could spend minutes carefully arranging the instruments at the edge of his desk, the magnet, the compass, the tuning fork, to the millimeter—here, there was not even the beginning of an awareness that there was such a thing as order.
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"Are you really human?" he asked.
"Yes, it leaves you speechless, doesn't it? Only the very strongest can live like this. Upstairs it's a little tidier, but I only go up there to sleep these days."
That he was probably human, after all, was apparent from Ada's cello: the case lay on two upright chairs, standing facing each other next to his desk, like a body on a bed. Onno led the way to the back room, where his bed had once been, and cleared a corner of a sagging sofa; books, newspapers, a pair of gray socks, a toaster, were pushed aside, and in a flash Max also saw the book on Fabergé, which he had given Ada that first day.
"I was at the Wilhelmina Hospital this morning. It's going to be on Thursday, at four-thirty. Oh you don't know yet: the doctors—"
"I do know. I talked to your mother-in-law. That's why I'm here."
Onno had sunk into a small armchair, which dated from his student days and which he bought from a secondhand shop; at the sides there were stripes and scratches in the brown leather, perhaps from a long-dead cat that had once sharpened its claws on it. Had Max talked to his mother-in-law?
He looked at Max with raised eyebrows. "You talked to my mother-in-law?"
Someone may know someone else for years, but if he's asked what color the other person's eyes are, he often doesn't know, because people don't look at someone's eyes but at them. For the first time Max saw that Onno had a brown ring around his blue irises.
"Yes."
"We're listening."
Everything depended on the right tone. Max had not prepared what he was about to say, because then he would have to remember what he had prepared, when it was not a matter of remembering the right things but of saying the right things in the right way.
"Listen, Onno, I won't beat around the bush. The day before yesterday you told me about your dilemma, deciding who the child should live with. Because I had the feeling that I might be able to help you in some way, I contacted your mother-in-law yesterday. She told me two things—first, that the child is going to be delivered next Thursday by cesarean section, because Ada's condition may become critical."