"And that spot marks your navel," he said, "which linked you to your mother."
A little alarmed, Quinten looked at the coin, which through Themaat's words was suddenly transformed into a shining mystery.
That linking of the "homo circularis" and the "homo quadratus," Themaat told him, had been described before Christ by Vitruvius in his treatise on architecture, but in the fifteenth century Leonardo da Vinci made a famous drawing of it. He took a book out of the case and showed it to Quinten: a proud, naked man in a square and a circle, with thick locks of hair down to his shoulders and four arms and four legs, surrounded by a commentary in mirror writing.
"I expect it's a self-portrait," he said. "And good God, he's like a spider in a web too — and he's got eight limbs as well! What does that mean?" He glanced sideways at Quinten, who had also seen it right away. "Aren't you frightened that you're gradually venturing into areas where no one can follow you anymore?"
"How do you mean?"
"I don't know."
Quinten looked at the figures on the carpet again and said. "It also looks a bit like the ground plan of the Pantheon."
Themaat exchanged a glance with Elsbeth and said with a solemn note in his voice: "The awareness that the divine body is determined by two perfect, elementary mathematical figures placed man in the center of cosmic harmony. You can understand that this was a colossal discovery for those humanist architects, like your great friend Palladio."
Quinten did not take his eyes off the white square and the white circle, the guilder in the middle. Might that configuration also be the essence of his Citadel? Was this the last word? He was reminded of what Max had once said to him: that in the limitless universe the circumference was nowhere and the center everywhere — but also of the hoarse, blood-curdling voice in his dream, which had said that behind the bolted door was "the center of the world."
He looked at the guilder and suddenly saw his mother in front of him in her white bed: but that was oblong. Did the oblong go a step farther than the square? But the circle would then of course automatically become an ellipse, with two centers: the orbit of the earth around the sun!
At that moment he felt fingers in the hair at the back of his head, slightly to the right of the center. It was Mrs. Themaat.
"Quinten! Did you know that you were getting a white hair here? Just here, in this spot!"
46. The Free Market Economy
Within a few months it had become clear that people fought over castles just as they had done in the Middle Ages. It was a fight that took place in the black of night, between virtually invisible parties, which the residents had no part in but which would probably end in their expulsion by the victor. The longer the war lasted, the better it was for them. The first purchaser was a rich poultry farmer from Barneveld, the lord of life and death of millions of chickens. When he appeared one day at Groot Rechteren in order to survey his new property, which he had acquired unseen, he looked exactly as one imagined such a person: a large, heavy man with a harsh voice, a cigar, and an excellent disposition, who never appeared again. He left it to his estate manager, a graying gentleman of noble extraction who had also adapted his appearance to his title — but, Max felt, with something just a little too measured and aristocratic about his knickerbockers, green socks, and highly polished brogues, since he was, after all, the servant of a vulgar poultry farmer.
The new owner had not made any statement about the use to which he wanted to put Groot Rechteren, but according to the manager he was definitely not going to live there; he had a splendid villa in Lunteren. In the village, rumors began circulating that the castle was going to become the main building for an anthroposophical center for the mentally defective, with three units in the park taking sixty pupils each — which was supposed to have been sold to a pension fund. That was supposed to have been a precondition of the baroness's for the sale, although the lady vicar said she knew nothing about this.
Because it had been he who had frustrated the tenants' association, Max felt obliged to do something to resolve the uncertainty. He was completely absorbed in the preparation for an exciting international research program on a new wave band on quasar MQ 3412, from which the condition of the early universe could be studied — but nevertheless he regularly sat wasting his time in the town hall in order to get some clear idea of the plans. But the alderman and the officials, who of course were fully in the picture, and who were undoubtedly pleased to see the name Westerbork linked to a medical facility, proved even more impenetrable than the horizon of the universe to which he had now come so close.
Six months later, the anthroposophical lunatic asylum suddenly vanished from the scene. The rent had to be transferred immediately to a different bank account, in the name of someone who did not even deign to view his acquisition. He lived in a large country house in Overijssel, in the middle of the woods, where Max visited him. He looked like the postage-stamp clerk at the post office counter; his skinny wife was slightly hunchbacked; and on the lawn a hollow-eyed gardener with a scythe gave him a bloodthirsty look. It was all as menacing as in a Gothic novel, and Max could not even find out what the new landlord did for a living, let alone what his plans were. According to Mr. Rosinga, who lugged the oil drums upstairs in the winter, people were now telling each other in the village that Groot Rechteren was going to be converted into a luxury hotel-restaurant, but Piet Keller had heard that it was going to house a police training school.
None of this went ahead, either, and the owners continued to succeed each other. Now there was mention of an auction house that wanted to set up shop in the castle; now a recreation center for overworked managers. Meanwhile, nothing more was done about maintenance. Mr. Roskam had cleared his workshop, and no one knew whether or not he had followed the baron underground, into the domain of his father's cap.
Cracks in the external walls became visible; there were leaks; plaster fell from the lath ceilings; and in the corners of the rooms mildewed wallpaper began to come loose from the latching, exposing rough, centuries-old masonry. Autumn leaves blocked the gutters, so the rainwater streamed down the walls and flooded the cellars, which led to a plague of gnats in summer. It was as though the castle had cancer. It deteriorated month by month, and a stubborn spirit of resistance seized everyone: they weren't going to be driven out by the capitalists!
Eighteen months after Gevers's death, in 1983—Max had meanwhile turned fifty, Sophia sixty — the first breach appeared in their community: Keller agreed to let himself be bought out. At that time the owner was a good-natured-looking man in his forties, according to the vicar a Jehovah's Witness, whose wife ran a sex club in Amersfoort. He called himself an "antiques dealer," which meant that he drove to Spain with a "partner" in an empty van every month and came back with a load of peasant chairs, tables, and cupboards, which he stored in the dilapidated orangery. Keller's house was intended for the partner, who gave more of the impression of a lackey who would go through fire for his master.
According to him, no one need have any worries about taking advantage of their protected period of three years; after that the castle would be thoroughly restored, with a link-up to the natural gas network and central heating. The present residents would of course receive the right of first refusal, though they would have to take into account the fact that the rents would then be many times what they were at present. According to Mr. Spier, it would amount to a gigantic brothel under the patronage of the Supreme Being.