"Such as?"
"I don't know… a sphere. Or a point."
Onno glanced at him from the side. "Are you talking about stories, like the one about Moses, or about reality?"
"Is there so much difference?"
Perhaps a story was precisely the complete opposite of reality, thought Onno; but he had the feeling that he should not confuse Quinten with that.
"And that sphere, or that point, does that give reality a meaning?"
"Meaning? What do you mean by that?"
Onno said nothing. The thought that anything could give a meaning to the world was alien to him. It was there, but it was absurd that it was there. It might just as well not have been there. Quinten's sphere reminded him of that original, shining sphere, which had been polished in Los Alamos by young soldiers, who went out dancing with their girls in the evening. What was the relation between the smoldering chaos in Hiroshima and that Platonic body? One could not be understood with the aid of the other, though it emerged from it. How could a human being be understood from a fertilized ovum? How could anything be understood?
Reality wasn't a syllogism like "Socrates is a man — all men are mortal— hence Socrates is mortal," but more like "Helga is a human being — all telephone booths have been vandalized — hence Helga must die." Or like: "Hitler is a human being — all Jews are animals — hence all Jews must die." That incomprehensible logic, which controlled everything, good and bad and neutral, Quinten must find for himself. He didn't consider it his job to cloud the purity of the boy. Someone who didn't even know what "meaning" meant must keep that pristine sense for as long as possible.
A mass was being celebrated in the crowded archbasilica—"mother and head of all churches in the city and the world" — by a cardinal in purple; they walked forward on tiptoe. The cold baroque interior disappointed Quinten; there was as little left of the medieval building from the time of the emperor Constantine as of the old papal palace. Only the high altar with its Gothic canopy did he find beautiful and mysterious. At the top of the slender cage on posts, behind bars, were statues of Peter and Paul; their heads were supposed to be buried beneath it. He looked up from his guidebook.
"Were they friends, those two?" he whispered.
"Not that I know of. When you're occupied with things like they were, I don't think there's room for friendship. In the religion business, I expect it's the same as in politics."
Quinten again focused on the closed, painted part of the ciborium, where the relics were housed. He seemed to see the two skulls already lying there. "I'd like to take a look in there."
"You won't be able to do that, my friend."
There was a flash: someone took a photo of the striking pair, the tramp with the beautiful boy. With panic in his eyes, Onno turned around. A Japanese girl with a black raincap on her head; she was already walking on, as though it was allowed simply to appropriate someone's image. A little later a sexton stopped her and pointed to her camera with the shake of his head.
"Why does it make you jump like that, Dad?"
Onno made a helpless gesture. "I'm sorry, a stupid reflex. Any Dutch scandal sheet would have gladly given a thousand guilders for that photo. You get those kinds of reactions when you've hidden away from everybody for years."
"But it's not like that anymore, is it?"
"No, Quinten, not anymore. But what it's really like, I don't honestly know. We'll see." He didn't want to think about it; he would have preferred to spend his days like this forever, with Quinten in the Eternal City. "Where are we going now?"
"To the other side."
The gigantic bronze doors of the Roman Curia, which now formed the central entrance, were closed; they emerged outside through a side door. Quinten turned around for a moment and looked up. Sharply outlined against the sky, above the eaves of the basilica, a row of enormous figures stood gesticulating excitedly, as though something extraordinary were about to happen.
They crossed the busy, windy square diagonally and Quinten stopped on the terrace of the building containing the Sancta Sanctorum and looked in through the open doors. Straight ahead of him, on the other side of a high doorway, were the Holy Stairs, the Scala Santa.
A shiver went through him. With the din of the traffic behind him, he looked into a world where it was as quiet as in an aquarium. On the slowly ascending steps, less than nine feet wide, ten or twelve men and women were kneeling, praying with their heads bowed, their backs and the soles of their shoes facing him. They were as stationary as people on an escalator, but the escalator was not moving, it was standing still; now and then someone made his way laboriously up to the next step. The walls and the semicircular ceiling were covered with pious frescoes; the architect had constructed the stairwell in such a perspective that it seemed as though it were a long, horizontal corridor to the other side, with the navel of a crucified Christ at the vanishing point. The stairs were covered with wood, but small cracks revealed the marble, over which the accused was supposed to have walked.
"Now you're the one who looks as if you're being touched by transcendence," said Onno ironically, as they went inside. "Don't tell me that you really believe that staircase comes from Pilate's Citadel Antonia."
The mention of the word Citadel, at this moment, gave Quinten a slight jolt. "Like those people there? Not at all. Or, rather, I don't bother to ask myself if it's genuine or not. But I don't know.." he said, and looked around. "I have the feeling that there's a story being told here."
He bought a brochure on the building from an ancient priest at a table. As he put down his money, a second old priest tapped hard with a hundred-lire coin against the glass of a ticket office and made an inexorable gesture toward a man who was planning to visit the sanctuary in shorts. He also had an emblem of a white heart with the letters JESU XPI PASSIO, crowned by a cross on the chest of his black habit.
"You mean," said Onno in a muffled voice, as they gradually ascended the staircase and stopped at an appropriate distance, "the story about 'What is truth?', washing one's hands in innocence, 'Ecce homo' and all that?"
Quinten knew that story only vaguely. He breathed in, in order to say something, stopped, and shook his head — it was as though he were not clear himself what he meant.
"I don't know, leave it. In any case a story that those people are part of too," he said, nodding at the kneeling people, "who are praying and crawling upward, toward that ypsilon."
"Ypsilon?"
"The crucified Christ on that fresco at the end. He's in the shape of a Y, isn't he?"
"Good God," said Onno. "Pythagoras's letter." He looked at Quinten appreciatively. "Well seen. Do you know that cross is also on the ceremonial habit of a bishop? Perhaps you've made a discovery."
Quinten had not been listening to him. "I have the feeling that this building itself is telling a story in some way."
"You're talking in riddles. But perhaps that's appropriate here."
"Let me read this first."
By a pillar Quinten sat down on the marble floor and opened the brochure, but immediately a broken voice told him to get up. A second priest, just as old and dressed in black like the other, was sitting on a straight wooden chair in the middle of the vestibule and moved a white index finger reproachfully back and forth. While Onno was amazed at the frenzied mood that had suddenly taken hold of Quinten, he went and looked at the statues and painting in the entrance. Meanwhile Quinten read the short text, which was concluded with twenty-eight prayers, one for each step.