The Discovery of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page A

music—suddenly everything overwhelmed him as he watched the red taillights.
    "I'm alive!" he shouted. "I'm alive!"
    She lived in a pedestrian apartment building, plonked down crudely in a street full of nineteenth-century workers' houses. Even as she walked along the back balcony she remained silent. In a small, warm apartment she lit candles and incense sticks, and handed him a bottle of wine with a label that did not inspire confidence. As he took the bottle between his knees and stuck the corkscrew into the cork, sitar music filled the room.
    "Of course," he said. "Ravi Shankar."
    They clinked glasses and drank, still looking at each other. He did not like the wine and put down his glass. What next? He was sitting in the small armchair; she was on the sofa. He got up, knelt down in front of her, and laid his right hand palm upward in her lap.
    "Right, now let's see what you can do."
    He felt the warmth of her thighs, but she moved his hand to one side like a book that she did not want to read and took hold of his left hand. The hand lay in hers like an item of lost property; her small hand was warmer than his, which aroused him still more. She had still not said a word; they did not even know each other's names. After casting a glance at his short, slightly deformed thumb, she began drawing crosses and circles again—but suddenly she faltered and looked at him in alarm. He was also alarmed. He read something in her look that he would not believe but which he did not want to hear.
    He withdrew his hand and laid it on her hip, putting the other on her neck. Pushing his fingers into her thick hair, he pulled her head slightly toward him, which she willingly allowed him to do. He gave a short grunt, and then suddenly leaped forward across her, while she immediately parted her legs. At the same moment they were writhing and biting like fighting dogs, pulling each other's clothes off. Yelling, screaming, they were caught up in a whirlpool and dragged down to a depth of which no memory usually remains...
    He woke with a start. He had slept for no longer than a minute. He turned his head to the side. Above the slowly fading glow of an incense stick, a thin white cone of ash bent further and further forward and broke off.
    "I must be going," he said.
    Again he studied the topology of the chiromancer. It was as though she were also a snake-woman; her posture was an impossible one, like in an Escher drawing. Her curls of hair had worked loose and lay over her shoulders and back like congealed lava, but it might also have been her breast. Without waking her, he wriggled out from beneath her and opened a door behind which he suspected the bedroom lay. He lifted her up. She was as light as a child; he laid her carefully on the bed and pulled the blankets over her. She had not woken. Because he felt agitated, as though he were in a hurry, he did not take a shower; he washed with cold water in the kitchen, dried himself with a clammy tea towel, dressed quickly, and scrutinized the flat.
    In the Swedish whitewood bookcase there was a postcard of Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding: perhaps because of the pregnant bride's hand, which lay palm upward in that of the bridegroom. The back of the card was blank. He pulled a yellow pencil with an eraser on the end out of his inside pocket, produced a small pencil sharpener from a side pocket of his blazer, sharpened the pencil meticulously in an ashtray, and wrote: "I'll never forget this.—Max." For a moment he considered leaving his telephone number, but did not. He carefully placed the card on her small desk against a polished veined-pink stone, perhaps invested with magic powers, but perhaps simply a souvenir from a southern beach. Then he blew out the candles, left the incense burning, and gently closed the door behind him.
    Sexual satisfaction had washed every part of him clean. He was reminded of a vacation in Venice, when violet-colored mountains suddenly appeared on the horizon after a