"All that happened was that I wasn't allowed to smoke or drink anymore. Well, three glasses of wine a day, but that makes you more or less a teetotaler. The left-hand side of my body is still a little numb, and I'm almost always giddy when I walk. Perhaps it will pass eventually; but as you get older, things usually don't pass. That's why I use a walking stick now. I can do without it, but I feel safer with one."
"Why did you suddenly have that hemorrhage?"
"I've a hunch about that. Do you remember I used to work on deciphering archaic script? I once published a theory about Etruscan, for which I received an honorary doctorate."
"Yes, Auntie Dol said the other day that you told her to send it back."
"Dol.." repeated Onno, and was silent for a moment. "How's Dol?"
"They live on Menorca now."
Onno looked in a melancholy way through the space, which was filling with tourists.
"You probably also know that after that Etruscan thing I turned my attention to the Phaistos disc, but I couldn't crack it. I went into politics to have a private excuse for not being able to work on it anymore. But things didn't work out in politics either, and when Auntie Helga died I didn't know what to do anymore. I wrote to you all about that. I wanted to go away for good — but where? Then I thought: I'm back where I started. Perhaps I won't want to do anything anymore, but you never know for sure. Nothing is final in life, apart from death — as you can see yet again now. So I thought: if ever I want to do anything else, then I must continue where I left off, with that disc. The script had still not been deciphered. Actually, my old notes were the only thing I took with me from Amsterdam, although I could scarcely understand them any longer. And since I had to go somewhere, that settled my destination. Rome. You won't find as much material anywhere else. Maybe in London, but it rains most of the time there."
"Of course!" cried Quinten. "I could have thought of that myself! I only thought of Crete."
Onno looked at Quinten. "Did you want to find me?"
"Yes, of course. Do you think that's crazy?"
Onno looked down. Somehow he must have been groggy from the blow all these years, like a boxer hanging on the ropes and being constantly pounded by his opponent, even though the referee with his bow tie occasionally stepped between them. He hadn't really admitted the thought of Quinten to himself. Since Quinten's birth he had told himself that though the boy might be physically the son of himself and Ada, he'd actually been Max and Sophia's son from day one. What a mistake! What a dreadful lie! It was as though from minute to minute more and more crusts were falling off him, as they did off a croute emerging from the oven.
"No, I don't think it's crazy." He looked at him again. "Did you visit Hans Giltay Veth?"
"Of course. But I wasn't any the wiser for that."
Onno was silent for a moment — but then he forced himself to say: "Do you forgive me, Quinten?"
Quinten looked straight at him with his azure eyes. "There's nothing to forgive."
It was as though Onno were sitting opposite his father — as though his son were his superior, and he could raise no objections.
"I was telling you what may have been the reason for my hemorrhage," he continued. "Those linguistic things were lying around in my room and I never looked at them again. But one morning, about eighteen months ago, I went to the market in the square around the corner from my place to get something to eat. I bought a piece of San Pietro, sunfish, I remember exactly; I can remember the fishwife wrapping it in a newspaper with her swollen red hands. I hadn't read a newspaper since I'd left Holland, but as I was unwrapping the fish at home, I suddenly saw my own name — spelled as Qiuts. When you're famous later and in the paper, you'll also notice that: it's as though the letters of your name jump off the page at you. The report was about my former rival Pellegrini, who was a professor here in Rome and had never been convinced by my Etruscan theory. In the past he had even written letters to Uppsala to block my honorary doctorate, as I heard from the vice-chancellor there. And I now read that in his old age he had been visiting his son's new country house in Tuscany, somewhere near Arezzo, and was walking through the garden when he suddenly fell into a hole in the ground. And what do you think? He'd landed in an Etruscan burial chamber. He had broken his hip, but the first thing he saw inscribed on a stela was a new bilingue—the same text in two languages, in this case Etruscan and Phoenician. From this it emerged that il professore islandese Qiuts had gotten it all wrong in any case. That meant there was virtually nothing of my life left."
"Except for me, that is."
"Yes," said Onno, looking away. "Except for you, of course. But nothing else. And I also knew that no one in the field would take me seriously again if I came up with a solution to the Phaistos disc. So I threw away all my notes, hundreds of pages, the work of years. What shocked me most perhaps was a remark of Pellegrini's. When the journalist asked him how on earth he had contrived to fall into that chamber of all chambers, the old villain said, 'A question of talent.' He was right. I had no talent. The following day there was that incident in my bedroom."
"In your bedroom? You just said it happened in the street."
"That's what thalamus means: 'bedroom,' 'bed,' 'marriage bed.' " Quinten looked at the dazzling egg: it had left the fresco, sunk slightly, and moved right, toward a chapel with a terracotta-colored Annunciation. The building had become crowded, but it was still just as quiet, as though the sound of the voices was being sucked like smoke through the opening at the top of the cupola.
Quinten sighed deeply. His father had been spared few things, and much should be forgiven him. Was that the same with everyone? Was that how life was? If everything finally came to nothing, what was the point of it? So was something like that waiting for him? The thought seemed ridiculous to him. Of course not! He didn't know what he was going to do, but once he had made a decision, then he would see it through to the end — nothing and no one would stop him: that was absolutely one hundred percent certain.
"Aren't you frightened that it'll happen again?"
"A stroke?" Onno shrugged his shoulders. "If it happens it happens. I'm not so worried about my body — I've always felt as if it belonged to someone else. A kind of pet." He glanced upward, at the disc of light through which Edgar had disappeared.
"And what do you do all day long?"
"Nothing. Sleep. Make notes. Think a bit. But everything I think is just as awful." He looked at Quinten. "I don't exist anymore, Quinten. I once read a story about a woman without a shadow, but I'm a shadow without a man."
That was it. Quinten could scarcely imagine it was the same man sitting there who in the past, in answer to the same question, would have shaken his index finger above his head like a prophet and cried, "I'm devoting myself to the spirit: the call of the abyss!" He wanted to ask him about the raven, which had just flown off through that blue pupil, but at the same moment Onno too opened his mouth. Quinten restrained himself and knew what was coming next.
"Is Max in Rome too?"
Quinten did not answer, but looked straight at him.
"Why aren't you saying anything?"
With a shiver, Quinten saw that Max's death was now getting through to his father even without words, like water trickling through rock.
"When?" Onno stammered finally.