"A few months ago."
"How?"
"Hit by a meteorite."
Without saying anything, Onno stared through the whispering space. Was it perhaps this news, the possibility of this news, from which he had fled four years ago, unable to bear that too? But now it sank in like a meal that he had eaten — perhaps because he had regained Quinten in place of Max? After a minute he took a deep breath and said: "Him too."
"What do you mean 'Him too'?"
"Lack of talent."
That evening in the youth hostel, unable to get to sleep, Quinten kept seeing a drawing from a book that he had once been given by Max for his birthday: one moment it looked like the outline of a vase, the next like the profiles of two faces looking at each other: space and matter were constantly changing places, matter became space, space matter. When he finally fell asleep, his father's face had disappeared, and his own too — only what was between them remained: that vase, filled with liquid air, blue water close to absolute zero. .
54. The Stones of Rome
The following morning Quinten went to the address that Onno had given him. The Via del Pellegrino was a tall, narrow, winding street that led into the Campo dei Fiori, a large square where there was a market. In the corner near a cafe there was a large heap of rubbish, but it wasn't a slum; there were orange and red plastered housefronts, lots of shops with secondhand furniture alternating with displays of plastic kitchen equipment, a piano repair workshop, a small grocer's.
Opposite a shop selling clocks there was a covered passage, hung with mirrors in gold frames; flanked by two ancient weatherbeaten columns, the greater part of which must be in the ground, the gateway led to an intimate courtyard, with plants in large pots and parked scooters and motorbikes around it. Under an array of drying laundry, a carpenter was at work; from the open windows came the sound of voices and music. Quinten took it all in, wide-eyed. So this was the point on the globe that he had been looking for all those years and which had been here all the time. Now that he was here, he found it incomprehensible that he had not known before that here was where he should have gone.
Via the outside staircase that his father had described to him he reached a very drafty stairwell, filled with the noise of playing children, constantly interrupted by mothers calling out "Paolo!" or "Giorgio!" at intervals. On the top floor the door to his father's room was half open. He stood shyly on the threshold.
"Dad?"
"Entrez!"
Onno was leaning forward at a sink brushing his teeth, his torso bare. His long hair was loose, his beard disheveled: it was now even more obvious how much weight he had put on.
"Good morning," he said into the small shaving mirror, with white tooth paste foam on his lips. "I'd like to say make yourself comfortable, but you'll find that a problem here."
The disorder came as no surprise to Quinten. The bed also served as a wardrobe; undefined rubbish bulged out of cardboard boxes; the chaos around a gas ring in the corner of the room scarcely suggested a kitchen. Nowhere was there a telephone or a radio, let alone a television. He glanced out the attic window above the desk. A rippling sea of rust-brown tiles, television aerials, church towers silhouetted against the deep blue sky. In the distance he could just see the gigantic angel on the top of the Castel Sant'Angelo, on the other side of the Tiber. The windowsill was covered in a thick layer of bird droppings.
"What a mess it is in here. Shall I tidy up?"
"There's no point. But go ahead and throw everything away."
They said no more about Max. While Onno told him about Edgar, who had kept him company in recent weeks, Quinten cleared the table, filled two waste-disposal bags with rubbish, and gathered up the dirty clothes that were lying everywhere.
"Why did you call him Edgar?"
"After Edgar Allan Poe, of course. He wrote a famous poem called 'The Raven.' " He stood up, looked in the round mirror that hung on a nail against the wall, and said: " 'Other friends have flown before — on the morrow he will leave me as my Hopes have flown before.' Then the bird said, 'Nevermore.' But he did leave me and I've got a feeling that he won't be back. Perhaps he was frightened by the Pantheon. But I've already come to terms with it, because I have you back in his place." And in exchange for Max, he thought, but he kept that to himself.
Each felt the other's uncertainty about the new situation, but neither could find words to talk about it. They took the washing to the laundrette, a couple of houses along, and sat down on the cafe terrace on the corner. In the middle of the crowded, rectangular square stood a somber statue of a monk with his cowl covering his head.
"Who's that?" asked Quinten.
"Giordiano Bruno."
Quinten nodded. "Who made the universe infinite."
"Did Max tell you that?"
"No, Mr. Verloren van Themaat."
"And you remembered that."
"Yes, why not? I hardly ever forget anything."
Onno looked at the statue for a while, lost in thought.
"That's the spot where they burned him as a heretic." He pointed with his stick at the crowd between the stalls. "Do you know what all that is? All that is also what it is not."
"I don't understand."
"The world will now always also be the Max-less world."
Quinten knew that Max had meant more to his father than to him, that long ago there had been a friendship between them of a kind that he had never had or would ever have with anyone. He looked at his father out of the corner of his eye. His head had sunk slightly forward; there was something elusive about the closeness of the hairy face with the sunglasses, as if at the same time it were too far away to reach.
The waiter came out of the cafe and greeted Onno like an old acquaintance, calling him "Signor Enrico." As he wiped the tabletop with a damp cloth, he glanced at Quinten with slightly raised eyebrows.
"This is my son, Mauro," said Onno in Italian. "Quintilio."
Mauro shook hands with him, without the ironic expression disappearing from his face. It was clear that he only half believed it; the old eccentric had obviously taken up with a rent boy, on the Via Appia — but he didn't begrudge him that.
"Everyone knows me here as Mr. Enrico," said Onno, when Mauro had gone inside. "Enrico Delius," with a diffident note in his voice. "They think I'm an Austrian from the Tyrol."
Quinten nodded again with an expression that seemed to say that it was all quite natural. "That Mauro gave me a rather funny look." He told his father about the advances made to him in Venice and Florence, and Onno asked:
"Didn't you leave some great love behind in Holland?"
"No," said Quinten curtly.
That didn't exist for him, and he didn't want to talk about it. Onno was about to say that he should keep it that way, since every love ended inexorably in heartbreak; but he decided not to encumber Quinten with his own gloom. That belonged not to the beginning but to the end of a life. They sat in silence and looked at the swarming activity in the market.
When the waiter put down caffe latte and croissants at their table, Onno said: "I suddenly fancy rissoles again."
"I like these much better. If only Granny could see us sitting down to breakfast like this."
"Have you already let her know that we've met?"
"No. I haven't written at all yet."
"Perhaps you should keep it to yourself for now."
"Why?"
"I don't know.. otherwise your uncles and aunts will get to hear of it, and I'm not sure I want that yet."
Quinten nodded. He was also glad to be able to share a secret with his father.
Onno rested his elbows on his knees and dipped his bread in the coffee. He still felt at a loss, but suddenly he asked: "What would you say to moving in with me, Quinten? I don't know how long you plan to stay in Rome, but it's ridiculous being stuck in a hotel somewhere when you can live with me, isn't it?" When Quinten looked up in astonishment, he went on: "Let's buy a camp bed. You can pick up your things, and then that problem's solved."