After a few minutes he looked up. "Dad?"
"Yes?"
"I know all about it."
"That's a lot."
"It's like this: according to a medieval legend, that staircase was brought to the Lateran by the empress Helena from Jerusalem. She was the mother of Constantine."
"I know. He was married to a certain Fausta — that pious Christian emperor subsequently had her murdered." He looked at Quinten with a crooked smile.
"When the popes returned from exile in Avignon, in the fourteenth century, the palace was largely gutted and then they took the Vatican as their headquarters. In the sixteenth century Sixtus V had the Lateran demolished, except for the papal chapel, up there. The architect," he said, and looked in the brochure, "Domenico Fontana, then moved the staircase to here. For some reason or other it happened at night, by torchlight."
"It obviously couldn't bear the light of day."
"The steps were laid from top to bottom, otherwise the workers would have had to stand on them."
"It seems right to me."
With a wave of his arm Quinten looked around him. "Just imagine: everything gone, that enormous palace, where all those popes lived for a thousand years — all that's left is that chapel with this staircase here. The building has been put around it like a shell."
"What's so strange about that? The whole of Rome is made like that."
"But what about those crawling people? It isn't just a kind of museum, like everywhere else, is it? There's something going on here, isn't there? It's just as though it's a stage up there, on which a mystery play has to be performed. Just look, that window with those bars, under that painting of the crucifixion, which they are heading for. It's like the window of a prison cell. Come on, let's go and have a look."
"Just a moment. You don't really expect me to go up that staircase on my knees?"
"Here at the side there are two ordinary staircases. At the other side too."
While they went up the marble stairway on the left, Onno was pleased by Quinten's enthusiasm. What boy was interested nowadays in anything else except technical things, having fun, and money? He reminded him of himself when he was the same age and how he buried himself in study, which astonished his friends. No, it had never been any different. Boys like Quinten and himself had always been exceptions. But if you were such an exception yourself, it took twenty-five years for it to get through to you that not everyone was exceptional, and that awareness came as a great disappointment — while the nonexceptional people precisely thought that the exceptional ones were constantly arrogantly aware of their exceptional qualities. The opposite was the case. They didn't despise other people; they overestimated them. It was the nonexceptional people who were constantly aware of the exceptional quality of the exceptional one. It was like a misunderstanding between a dog and cat. When a dog was afraid, it put its tail between its legs, but if it was happy, then it wafted the pleasant smell of its backside toward you; but a cat wagged its tail precisely when it was afraid, since its feces stank. The dog wagging its tail jumped forward to play with the cat wagging its tail, who in turn thought that it was being attacked, and the dog got a bloody scratch on its nose — that linguistic confusion gave birth to the irreconcilable enmity between the two of them. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at Quinten. As they climbed the stairs, his hair billowed like black satin.
While Onno stayed hesitantly on the landing, which the five steps brought him to, Quinten immediately walked on to the point where the central staircase ended, the holy spot. The believers, who were now climbing toward them from below, kept their heads bowed as they muttered, and paid no attention to him. He turned his back on them, bent down, and looked through the bars, which were thicker than a finger and which were in a marble frame.
The Sancta Sanctorum. The transition was even greater than just now from the square to the front entrance — in the dim chapel it was as silent as in a mirror, and the first thing Quinten thought of was the face of his mother in her bed. His heart began pounding. The small space was high and completely square, approximately twenty feet by twenty, exuding an overwhelming sense of everything that was no longer there: 160 popes, who had prayed here daily for ten centuries.
It was as though time had disappeared from here. In the middle of the inlaid marble floor, opposite the altar, was a prayer stool. The altar was behind the protruding, raised section of the back wall, which was supported by two porphyry columns. Across the whole width of the frame above the gilded capitals were the letters:
NON EST • IN • TOTO • SANCTIOR • ORBE • LOCUS
He beckoned his father. "How would you translate that?" he whispered.
"Quinten," said Onno sternly. "You've been to secondary school for five years. You can do that perfectly well."
"There is not," Quinten tried, "at all.. more sacred.. world place?"
"Compelling prose. Of course you could also say: 'Nowhere in the world is there a more sacred spot.' Just because those popes were here? That seems slightly exaggerated."
Quinten pointed out to him the great icon, which stood on the altar: a triptych with opened side panels. The scene could scarcely be distinguished in the dim light, but he told his father what he had just read: the image of the most holy savior on the central panel, acheiropoeton, had been painted not by a human hand but by an angel. Only the head painted on silk had not been covered by gilded, heavily worked silver, but that head was not the original one; that was underneath. The panel was covered by a semicircular canopy, crowned by two gilded angels.
"Yes, Quinten," said Onno with a laugh. "We're not in Holland here." He put his hand on the bars. "To my taste it's more like a torture chamber here. Look at this, between those turned columns above the altar: there are also two barred windows. Of course from there the holy fathers were watched as they sat praying. And the bottom part of that altar itself is also all bars. Look at those locks."
Quinten looked at the padlocks, which he had not yet noticed. The top one was a gigantic iron thing, a sliding padlock, as large as a loaf — the moment he saw it, he was overcome by alarm. Where was he? Was he dreaming? Was he in his dream? He looked at his father with his eyes wide.
"What's wrong?" asked Onno in alarm. "You've gone as pale as a ghost."
"I don't know. ." he stammered.
Was that vanished Lateran palace his Citadel? Was he there? Those steps, four times seven steps, that chapel, his mother… In confusion, he turned away from the bars and for the moment met the glance of an old woman, who had mounted the twenty-eighth step, stood up groaning, crossed herself, smiled at him for a moment, and, rubbing one thigh, went to the other staircase.
"Let's go," said Onno. "It's unhealthy here. You have to eat something."
Quinten shook his head. "That's not why. ." He could not possibly tell his father what was going on inside him, because that was a deep secret. "Perhaps it's not that chapel which is behind bars, perhaps we're the ones who are behind bars… He looked around him wide-eyed. "I know for certain that something very strange is going on, I can't say why, but I must and I will get to the bottom of it."
Onno gave him a searching look for a few seconds. Suddenly there was a hard glint in Quinten's eyes. Onno nodded, leaned on his stick, and looked around as though he were searching for something too. His dizziness was more intense than usual; perhaps it was because of the steps.