Read Online The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch - Free Book Online

like that came, Onno sank farther into his chair as though hit by a salvo of bullets, until he finally lay shaking euphorically on the ground. Max had finally gotten up with the book and shot the words vertically down at him from a height, while Onno cried:
    "Mercy! Father! Not the worst! Yes, I will even make the sacrificium intellects for you, yes, I will worship you forever, like the lowliest creature, I, worm that I am, not worthy to kiss your feet, crush me, that your just will may be done!"
    Max slammed the book shut and pressed it against his stomach as he laughed. They were unique, immortal! No one would ever understand, but it was not necessary for anyone to understand. Onno hoisted himself back in his chair, refilled his glass to the brim half with rum and half with cola. Max said that the letter was the key to Kafka's whole work. The Trial could only be understood via this piece. Josef K.!
    "You were brilliant enough to trace the origin of HAL, but I've discovered where that 'Josef comes from. 'K.' stands for Kafka, of course, and the man who comes into his room at the very beginning of the novel to arrest him is called Franz like Kafka himself, but why is K. himself called Josef, and not Max, after his friend Brod, or Moritz?"
    "Franz Joseph!" cried Onno.
    "That's it. The arresting officer, the man arrested, and Kafka himself are the trinity of Seine kaiserliche und königliche, apostolische Majestat, His Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic Majesty.
    The night advanced, the earth rotated on its axis, and they talked about the problem of why a flag in the wind, a stiff current of air, flutters and why the waves in Max's hair did not move as his hair grew but remained in the same place, just the opposite of the sea, where the waves moved horizontally but the water remained in the same place; and about the war, about Adolf Hitler, whom they called the "A.H.-Erlebnis," and about the twin daughters of Max Planck, the founder of quantum mechanics: the first gave birth to a daughter and died in childbirth; the other looked after the child and married the widower, became pregnant herself two years later, and also died in childbirth. Added to that, one son died in the First World War, while his second son was shot in the Second. Planck's constant!
    Later they might perhaps regret not having kept any record of those days; but if they had taken notes it would not have been like it was. Onno might not then have told him what he told him as morning approached: that his mother had hoped that he would be a girl. He was an afterthought, and until the age of four he had walked around with long curls, in pink dresses with ribbons. But he had systematically destroyed the evidence; not only were there no more delightful snapshots to be found in his parents' photo album, the albums of his brothers and sisters had also been purged on devious pretexts.
    Max looked at him and nodded. "Now tell me," he said, "what you will really never tell anyone."
    However much Onno had had to drink, there was always a point where he was sober. He put down his glass.
    "Dreadful! As a student I was living in a rented room, where I was trying to get the philosophy of the concept of law into my head. Next to me there was an unmarried mother, a girl with a baby that cried nonstop. God knows what got into me. One winter evening I ran into her place, at the end of my tether. She was sitting at the table sewing baby clothes; the baby was screaming—for a father, of course! There was one of those old-fashioned coal stoves, boiling hot. I snatched the brat from its cradle, held it up by its ankle with my right hand, grabbed the poker with my left hand, raised the lid of the stove, and held the child above the glow with its head down. I said nothing, I just looked at her. She was frozen. She looked like a photo of herself. The baby, too, was silent for the first time. Terrible! I ought to have been arrested for that and thrown into prison."
    He fixed Max's