While in the city the music gradually stopped, even in the last nightclubs, the building was again filled with ancient Gregorian unanimity. As he listened, Quinten was suddenly struck by the sense that old works of art were always old things: old bricks, old marble, old paint — but that old music was at the same time always brand-new, because it came from living throats. Apart from that, only old stories could also be new. That was of course because music and stories existed not in space but only in time.
"We've woken up now," he said, not whispering again for the first time. He stretched with a groan. "We look around, surprised to see where we are. In the Sancta Sanctorum! Oh no! How can it have happened? We must have fallen asleep. Come on, let's go."
"I suppose we'll have to." Onno sighed.
"You do the talking. And give me the suitcase, otherwise you'll forget that too."
As they walked through the rear chapel, where it was already lighter and the singing louder, Onno felt like an amateur actor forced to go onstage at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in the role of King Lear. They turned the corner and stopped.
In the choir stalls a dozen old faces above black cassocks turned in their direction, the nocturne on the Resurrection died on their lips. No one showed a sign of alarm; there was only mild surprise. When they saw Quinten, a smile appeared here and there.
Quinten realized that he now had to throw this weapon into the battle. With his free hand he rubbed his eyes and made as if to yawn, but immediately he really yawned: the silence was filled with the long, touching yawn of a resplendent boy.
"Forgive us, Fathers," said Onno in Italian, "for disturbing you in your nocturnal vigil. My son and I fell asleep here yesterday. The whole day we had been wandering around your very beautiful city and we sat down for a moment in a confessional to rest. And only just now—"
With his hands clasped, as other people only do in an armchair, his head cocked to one side, an old man came forward. He introduced himself in a weak voice as Padre Agostino, the rector. He separated his hands for a moment and then put them back together again and said: "The guest is Jesus Christ. Would you like something to eat? A cup of coffee?"
Thrown off balance, Onno looked at him. Such pious simplicity and goodness rendered him helpless. The fathers had been robbed, hopefully only of two worthless stones, and they would never realize that they had lost anything; but in a few hours' time they would discover that they had been lied to by two burglars who had desecrated their holy chapel. He wanted nothing better than a cup of coffee, but he had the feeling that he would only really be committing a mortal sin if he accepted; apart from that, they had to make their getaway as soon as possible. He said that he didn't want to burden them any longer, whereupon the rector made a gesture of resignation, let his left hand float over Quinten's crown for a moment, and blessed him with the right. Thereupon Onno put out his hand to say goodbye, but at that moment the rector started back in alarm, looking at the hand as though he were being threatened with a knife. Immediately afterward another father accompanied them to the door of the convent, while all the heads turned to follow them, smiling and nodding.
In the white-plastered cloister, where a portrait of the pope hung, the father said with an apologetic gesture: "Please excuse the rector. You mustn't touch him. Padre Agostino has believed for the last few months he is made of butter."
A little later they left the place of pilgrimage via the tradesmen's entrance.
Breathing in the night air deeply, they walked into the square. By the obelisk Quinten turned around and glanced back at the building as if to say farewell.
"This is now no longer the holiest place in the world," he said.
The suggestion that he himself was therefore now the holiest place in the world was so shocking that Onno didn't know what to say. He raised his hand and hailed a taxi; at that point the driver was added to the company that would shortly recognize them, but by that time they would be far away abroad. He gave his address, Quinten put the suitcase on his lap, and, enjoying their freedom in silence, they roared toward the Colosseum and over the broad Via dei Fori Imperiali to the Piazza Venezia.
As they screeched around the corner, Onno suddenly cried: "Made of butter! How in God's name do you dream up that one!"
"Do you find that so crazy?"
"Don't you, then?"
"Not at all. On the contrary, it's logical."
"Of course," said Onno with his eyebrows raised. "That strikes me as just the sort of thing that you would understand. So explain to me why it's not senile but logical."
"Because Christ said that he was made of bread."
Onno did not reply. He looked outside, at the deserted pavements of the somber Corso Vittorio Emanuele. How did the boy's brain work? Was he really human? The rector who had spread himself on Christ to make a sandwich — in what kind of a head could such a thought occur? What kind of world did he live in? Was what he said even true, maybe? Did theology have a psychological dimension, of which psychology had no knowledge, for someone like the old padre?
In the courtyard on the Via del Pellegrino all the windows were dark. They went quietly up the stairs, and when they had gotten to his room, Onno said:
"And now I want to see it at once."
Quinten looked at his Mickey Mouse watch. "We've got no time for that. "You have to sort your things out. What are you taking with you?"
"Nothing. Just my passport and a few clothes."
"And all those notes there?"
"They've served their turn. I'll leave a letter for the landlord, to say I've gone traveling for a few weeks. The rent has been paid for two months in advance; and if I'm not back by then, he'll make sure that things are cleared up."
"Just as long as you hurry. We've got to be out of Italy in a few hours."
"Five minutes!"
"Then I'll quickly put some coffee on."
"Nothing that I need more in the world! And be prepared for the biggest disappointment of your life, Quinten."
Onno took the suitcase and laid it on the table under the window. "Could anything be more idiotic? Thanks to my stupidity, we now have to leave the country — and why? For nothing!" In vain he tried to get the locks open. "How do these bloody things work?"
With a paper filter in his hand, Quinten came and made the locks spring open, and immediately went back to making coffee. It was a mystery to Onno. That boy had done everything to get those things into his possession — and now he had them. On the one hand he was convinced that they were the tablets of the Law; on the other hand they seemed to leave him completely indifferent.