While his pitch-black visitor scratched about around the room, over the chairs, among the rubbish under the bed, it constantly croaked and squawked, and Onno had the impression that it stayed longer if he himself talked a lot, too. From then on he made a habit of speaking while it was there. At the beginning he found it difficult; except for a few words in a shop, a restaurant, or in his bank, he had said nothing for four years. But one can no more forget how to speak than how to ride a bike or swim, and he of all people would be more likely to forget how to ride a bike than how to speak; he could not swim.
"Of course you're wondering what I'm doing here, Edgar. I'll tell you. I'm working on a letter to my father. But it's a rather strange kind of letter, because even when I get it down on paper I won't be able to send it. Kafka wrote a letter to his father too — Max read it to me once, long ago, in far-off innocent days — but poor Royal and Imperial Franz-Josef never dared mail it. My own problem is more serious, because what's the address of a dead person? Perhaps you know, being a black bird; unfortunately you won't be able to tell me. But I want to do it precisely because it's absurd. Since everything is ultimately absurd, the whole of life and the whole world, conversely only the absurd makes any kind of sense. Can you understand that? If everything's absurd, then within that absurdity only the absurd is not absurd! True or not? Have you ever heard of Camus? He was the philosopher of the absurd, and he died in an absurd car accident. For many people that was a confirmation of his thesis that everything is absurd. But for the philosopher of the absurd, an absurd death is of course an extremely meaningful end! Think hard about that. Everything is far more absurd than even he thought. Now of course you're curious about what I'm trying to tell my dead father in my absurd way. It's about the nature of power. In the last few years I've thought of a few things, on which I want his impossible judgment. It's rather sinister, and in political terms you must translate the word sinister not by 'left,' but rather by 'right': then you get dexter. Another difference with Kafka is that I'm not able to get my ideas into order. They're not in an orderly succession; they're still chaotically juxtaposed. In the past when I wrote an article or a speech, academic or political, it was always as if my thoughts were numbered in some way and I immediately knew the sequence of the sentences. But I've lost that priceless ability. Now I feel as if I have to complete a jigsaw puzzle as big as the room, while all the pieces are plain white — or, rather, as black as you, Edgar. Look over there. Thousands of notes. Very personal, about Koos and Dorus and Bart Bork, but also very general ones, about the question of how power is possible and heaven knows what else. The mountain grows higher every day, but do you think that means I'm any closer to my goal? Each note takes me farther away from it! This stuff is like a tree, constantly branching, sprouting, growing, precisely when I'm trying to locate the trunk and the point where it comes out of the ground. Each time I start on my letter, I have to go through all those notes again, to build up momentum, but it never leads to a first sentence, just to new notes. In the meantime many of them have become illegible — because they've lain in the sun, or because I've spilled coffee or cola over them, or because they're stuck together with jam, or because you've relieved yourself on them with your leaching excreta, which are as white as you are black. I don't mind. Don't worry about it — that's nature."
A few weeks later the situation had reversed itself: Edgar no longer came to visit once a day, but occasionally left the house. Changed from a guest into a lodger, he generally slept in a corner of the room among the clothes lying on the floor. The first time the tame animal fluttered onto his shoulder and held onto his ear with its beak, Onno's reflex was to try to push it off, but he was glad that he hadn't, because there would have been no second opportunity. And now Edgar was given fragments to hear every day, sometimes these, sometimes those — and suddenly Onno had the feeling that reading them aloud was bringing him close to a structure, enabling him to make a start on sifting and organizing.
"Listen," he said, sitting at his desk with his reading glasses on his nose. "Take this. This is very important. Perhaps my patriarchal treatise should begin with this. The Golden Wall is the title. In front of the Golden Wall it's an improvised mess; people teem around in the noisy chaos of everyday life, and the reason things don't go haywire is due to the world behind the Golden Wall. The world of power lies there like the eye of the cyclone, in mysterious silence, controlled, reliable, as ordered as a chessboard, a sort of purified world of Platonic Ideas. At least that's the image that the powerless in front of the Golden Wall have of it. It is confirmed by the dark suits, the silent limousines, the guards, the protocol, the perfect organization, the velvety calm in the palaces and ministries. But anyone who's actually been behind the Golden Wall, like you and me, knows that it's all sham and that in there, where decisions are made, it's just as improvised a chaos as in front, in people's homes, at universities, in hospitals, or in companies. I've never had that impression more strongly than in the archaeological museum in Cairo. Once when I was a minister of state I was given a guided tour by my Egyptian colleague. We looked at the treasures from the grave of Tutankhamen — all those wonderful things that were reverently displayed there. But there were also a couple of large photographs of the state in which the tomb had been found. All the things were piled on each other, like old rubbish in a loft, and the mess had not only been caused by robbers. The wooden shrines that housed the sarcophagus had also been crudely and wrongly assembled; the granite lid of the sarcophagus did not fit and had been broken in two when it had been lowered. The same spectacle was presented by the pitiful human remains that had emerged from beneath that indescribably splendid golden mask of the pharaoh's. All politicians, some civil servants, and some journalists know that it's just as pitiful a junk shop behind the Golden Wall as in front of it, but almost none of the powerless citizens know. Should anyone discover how a policy is made — which is virtually impossible — he will spend the rest of his life with a fundamental feeling of insecurity. So it's a miracle that things don't go haywire behind the Golden Wall too: it points to a much higher power. For you that's no problem; for you that's God. But for me unfortunately not even the functioning of society is a proof of God's existence. How can it possibly have functioned up to now? You won't believe it, but I know. It's because of the existence of that very Golden Wall. The Wall itself is the highest power. Wait a moment. Of course — this is where that quote from Shakespeare belongs, from the opening of one of his sonnets. Where is it? Here: From what power hast thou this powerful might? It's about love, but the Golden Wall is connected with love, too. Look what we've got here: What is the nature of the Golden Wall? The powerless think that it consists of the congealed majesty of the mighty, who in some cases are even worshiped: the Liberator, the King, the Leader. But in reality it is not a product of the mighty but of the powerless themselves: it's the crystallization of their own reverence, awe, and fear. But if the powerless are hence in fact worshiping nothing but their own worship, are in awe only of their own awe, and are afraid only of their own fear, which at the same time excludes them from power, what is left for the powerful? What are they? Once someone has penetrated the Golden Wall, what does he see? Nothing special. Just ordinary people going about their business, no more interesting and no different in kind than the powerless. They exercise power not in some 'powerful,' inevitable, so to speak mathematically, certain way, as the powerless believe, but in just as messy and improvised a way as every powerless person manages his affairs. Dorus and Frans formed a cabinet over lunch; Churchill and Stalin carved up the Balkans over a drink. And yet. . they must have something extra, which the powerless experience, because not everyone can penetrate the Wall by acquiring power.