"Certificate of Report," he read, "As required under Article 9, first clause, of Decree No. 6/1941 of the Reichskpmmissar for the occupied territory of the Netherlands, regarding compulsory reporting of persons of wholly or partly Jewish extraction." He turned it over. "Haken, Petronella. Number of Jewish ancestors in the sense of Art. 2 of the decree: one." He looked inquiringly at Sophia.
"That's my mother's," she said. "Her grandmother on her mother's side was Jewish."
"That means—" Quinten began.
"Yes, that you've also got Jewish blood in you."
"You never told me that!"
"It wasn't worth mentioning. Work it out."
"My great-grandmother was a quarter, you an eighth, Mommy a sixteenth, and me a thirty-second." He put the card back and said, "No, it's not much. Did Max know about this?"
"To tell you the truth, I never thought about it."
His aunt and uncle could only repeat that they did not know where Onno was, either. Dol was the only person in the family to have had a letter from him, and since then she had not heard anything either; nor had he tried to get hold of his stored things in any way. Only on one occasion — already eighteen months ago — had Hans Giltay Veth written to them; Onno wanted the certificate of his honorary doctorate returned to Uppsala. They had done that, although they did not know the reason, nor did the lawyer.
It was their last day in the suburb near Rotterdam. They were just able to receive him in the midst of their moving. Uncle Karel, the surgeon, had finally laid down his scalpels, and they were going to move permanently to their second home on Menorca, where Quinten had stayed a couple of times during summer vacation.
In the dismantled front room, as they sat with plastic cups of mineral water on nailed-down boxes, the conversation that he had had with Sophia repeated itself: about interrupting his studies, and if he was so sure that what he was doing was sensible, and about where was he going to look. He had the feeling that Onno had almost disappeared from their lives. His things had already been collected a few weeks ago by a storage company; they were now in a warehouse in the docks. Sophia had been informed about it, but she had obviously not wanted to burden him with that message. While he waited for the train to Amsterdam on the platform, the expression that his uncle had used for his father constantly echoed through his head: dropout.
In the lobby of the lawyers' office building behind the Rijksmuseum the name J.C.G.F. Giltay Veth, M.L. stood among a long list of other names. The bearer of it came to see him himself: a fat, kindly man in his early fifties, with a small pair of reading glasses on the tip of his nose. In the elevator up to the top floor he told Quinten that he had known his father since they were students together. Although Onno could say terrible things, Giltay Veth had seldom laughed so much as he had with him. His room looked out over the entire center of town. He pointed out the palace on the Dam in the distance to Quinten, with Atlas carrying the globe of the world on his neck— like someone, thought Quinten, who was himself outside the world.
When a black girl in a white coat put down some tea, they sat down opposite each other at a long table, half of which was taken up by piles of folders and dossiers.
"I must extend my sympathies on the death of your foster father," said Giltay Veth. "I read about it in the paper. It's scarcely credible, something like that." Lost for words, he shook his head for a moment. "Of course I had nothing to do with it, but are his affairs properly sorted out, as far as you know?"
"You should ask my grandmother about that. I believe there are problems, because he had no family at all."
"Please tell your grandmother that she can always contact me if she needs help. It won't cost her a penny. I know that I will be acting in the spirit of your father."
Quinten looked straight at him. "Didn't you tell my father, then?"
Giltay Veth held a lump of sugar in his tea and waited until it had absorbed all the tea. "No." He let go of the lump. "I can only contact him in extreme cases."
"So he doesn't know at all that Max is dead?"
"I couldn't tell you. Perhaps he's read about it in the paper somewhere, too."
"So he's not in Holland?"
The ghost of a smile crossed Giltay Veth's face, but it immediately disappeared; he stirred his cup seriously for a few seconds.
"I know what you're getting at, Quinten. To tell you the truth, I expected your visit much earlier. I knew that you'd be sitting here opposite me one day; I said as much to your father at the time. But if you want to know from me where he is, I can't tell you."
"I swear I'll never tell anyone that I heard it from you. Surely I can bump into him by accident somewhere, as it were, can't I? Coincidences like that do happen, don't they? My foster father was hit by a meteorite; surely that's a much greater coincidence?"
"Absolutely." Giltay Veth nodded. "Except that it's not a question of my knowing and not being able to tell you; I really don't know. I haven't the faintest idea."
"How can that be? In his farewell letter to Max my father wrote that he could always be reached by you in emergencies."
"That's true, but only in a roundabout way. There are two other addresses in between. The first is that of a colleague of mine — abroad, yes, you got hold of the right end of the stick there. But he knows only of a post-office box in another country. That might be Holland, but just as easily Paraguay. Suppose you managed to get me to tell you where that colleague is — which won't happen. Even then that gentleman won't help you out, because he knows nothing about you. Quite apart from the fact that the only thing he knows is that post-office box number, in another country." He put one hand on top of the other and looked at Quinten. "Forget it, lad. Your father has covered his tracks thoroughly. Something dreadful has happened to him; you must assume that he's not alive anymore. I know all about your situation. I know of the dreadful fate that befell your mother, I know what happened to your father and recently to your foster father, but you must resign yourself to it. There are boys whose fathers have been murdered, or have been killed in a plane crash. It's all equally horrible, but that's obviously how life is. Try and put it out of your mind. Don't let your life be scarred by it."
Quinten made an awkward gesture and said: "If I knew that my father was really dead, there would be nothing wrong. But he isn't dead. He's somewhere in the world and is doing something or other at this moment. Perhaps he's sitting reading the newspaper, or drinking a cup of tea." He faltered. "That means. . are you actually sure that he's still alive?"
Giltay Veth nodded. "If it were otherwise, I would know and so would you."
"Then I'm going to look for him."
The telephone rang, and without waiting to see who was on the line, the lawyer said: "I don't want to be disturbed." He put the receiver down, folded his arms, and leaned back."No one can stop you. But have you asked yourself whether you're acting in accordance with your father's wishes?"
He had been talking the whole time about his father's spirit. Quinten took Onno's letter out of his pocket and read the last sentence aloud. When he had explained his interpretation — that it wasn't a ban on looking for him but just a statement of the pointlessness of doing so — a smile crossed Giltay Veth's face.