The Discovery of Heaven Read Online Free PDF

storm. His tiredness had gone and with Schubert's First Symphony on the radio—probably the Berlin Philharmonic under Bohm—he drove haphazardly down the empty winter streets. He was free! He wanted nothing more now! This was as wonderful as fucking itself, or the certainty beforehand that it was going to happen. Or was it even more wonderful? Was the reason that he wanted to sleep with a woman every day, a different one every day, ultimately to achieve this aim: not to want to for a short time? What a happy old man he would be. But of course that was not how it would be; when that time came, he would want to want what he was no longer capable of. Happiness was not freedom from chains but release from chains. Chains were an indispensable part of happiness!
    He had no idea where he was, but by driving straight ahead as far as possible he was bound to reach the edge of town. The Hague was not that big. Suddenly he recognized a junction. On the deserted pavement stood a large man in a long overcoat, who raised his hand.
    Surely a mugger would not operate like this, he thought, at one in the morning in the freezing cold. He signaled, pulled over with a rapid movement, and stopped. He saw the man come jogging up in the mirror; he turned off the radio, leaned over, and wound down the window on the other side.
    Onno, bending low, looked into Max's narrow, fanatical face. It reminded him of an ibis, the Egyptian Ibis religiosa, with its thin neck and curved beak; there was something dangerous about it, like an ax. Max, for his part, surveyed Onno's full, domineering features. The transition from the forehead to the straight nose was classical, with no curve; beneath was an equally classical small mouth, with curved lips, scarcely broader than his nostrils. It struck him as vaguely familiar.
    "Where are you headed?"
    "Are you going toward Amsterdam?"
    "In you get."
    Onno took a step back and surveyed the car disapprovingly. "But under protest!"
    "Please, I beg you," said Max in amusement.
    Once, with some effort, he had managed to sit—or, rather, lie—down, Max put his foot down and the car leaped forward like a racehorse.
    "Nice motor," said Onno with an expression that indicated he thought his benefactor was not quite right in the head.
    Max burst out laughing. "Oh, this is nothing. When I grow up, I shall buy a white open-topped Rolls-Royce, and I'll sit on the back seat in a white fur coat, with a beautiful woman at the wheel."
    Pulling a wry face, Onno was forced to laugh a little too, and turned his head to one side. He already had the beginnings of a double chin. "Why don't you buy a pram right away?"
    Max glanced at him for a moment. They had found each other—this was the moment. Did they both realize it? With those few words a bridge had been built. Max knew he had been seen through by Onno as never before, just as Onno felt understood by Max, because his aggressive irony had not met with resistance, as it invariably did, but with a laugh that had something invulnerable about it. They had recognized each other. A little embarrassed by the situation, they were silent for a few minutes.
    Once they had left the stately avenue through Wassenaar behind them and reached the dark motorway, Max accelerated to a hundred miles an hour and said: "I have the feeling I know you from somewhere. Wasn't your photo in the paper recently?"
    "Of course my photo was in the paper recently," said Onno, as if he had been asked if he could read.
    "For what reason?"
    "Can't you remember? Have you already forgotten?"
    "I confess my shortcomings."
    "My photo was in the paper," pontificated Onno, "because I received an honorary doctorate in Uppsala."
    "May I congratulate you belatedly? And what was it for?"
    "So you can't remember that, either. Tell me, what do you know?"
    "Almost nothing."
    "It was because I made Etruscan comprehensible. The greatest minds in the world had failed—even Professor Massimo Pellegrini in Rome was too stupid—so I