"Why?"
"I'll tell you sometime."
But there were no other rooms free, all the hotels were full; there were four or five conferences being held in Jerusalem at the moment. Only in the Old City might there be still something available, but of course security was not all it might be there. When Onno said that they weren't so easily frightened, and anyway had to find accommodation somewhere, the receptionist made a couple of telephone calls and noted down the name and address of a hotel.
After they had had a bite to eat in the bar — with Quinten being refused a glass of milk with his ham roll — a taxi took them to the eastern part of the city. At the end of a wide shopping street jammed with traffic the ground sloped gradually downward, and a little later, on the other side of a valley full of vegetation, really more a gully, the massive walls of old Jerusalem rose up above them. Behind them, in a flood of sunlight, were countless towers, with a gold and a silver cupola in the center. Quinten bent deep over his suitcase to be able to see it better through the front windshield.
"Look at that," he said softly. "There it is. It really exists."
Although the Arab on his camel belonged to the same order as the heavy, sandy yellow stones of the city wall that he was riding past, the driver hooted at him to move aside, drove through the Jaffa Gate, and stopped in a small square. A little later there they were in the throng of tourists, Palestinian merchants wearing headscarves, Roman Catholic monks and nuns, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic priests in exotic robes, religious Jews in kaftans, military patrols made up of boys and girls, with Uzis and Kalashnikovs slung around them. The pealing of church bells and the cries of the merchants merged into a din that effortlessly absorbed the two dull thuds with which a jet broke the sound barrier in the distance.
Hotel Raphael, probably not mentioned in any travel guide, sat wedged unimposingly between a bureau de change and a grocer's, which had displayed its boxes and sacks of herbs like the palette of Carpaccio: vermilion, rusty-brown, terra-cotta, cornflower blue, olive-green, saffron-yellow. The reception desk consisted of a corrugated wooden counter in a narrow hallway leading via a couple of steps into what was obviously the lounge-cum-breakfast room; slumped in a chair with a torn plastic back, a man in his sixties sat watching the television, which was fed by a V-shaped indoor aerial. He put his cigarette in an ashtray and got up.
"Quist?" he asked with a melancholy smile. "Shalom," — and then in English—"My colleague said you were coming." He shook hands with them and introduced himself as Menachem Aron.
He had not made things easy for himself. On his head was a wig of chestnut-colored hair that was too thick and too even, out of which reddish-gray hair protruded by his ears; what's more, there was a light-blue yar-mulke pinned to its crown, which in this case may not have been strictly necessary liturgically — unless he was taking account of the possibility, Onno reflected, that God could not see he was wearing a wig. Aron put two forms on the counter and asked how many nights they wanted to stay.
"Two?" asked Quinten. "Three?"
"I'm not saying anything. It's your undertaking, you must know."
"Two, then." That should be enough.
"Shower in the hall," said Aron, putting down their room keys.
"I don't know about you," said Onno, "but I'm going straight to bed. I've had it." He pointed to the suitcase. "What do you think? Shall we ask if he's got a luggage locker?"
Aron disappeared through a door behind the counter and a little later came back with a narrow iron drawer, into which a wallet fitted. When it was explained to him what was needed, he asked Quinten to follow him. In a cluttered little office, also used to store crates of empty bottles, a girl looked up from her typewriter and nodded to Quinten with a look that made him a little uncertain. Her black hair was cut very short, like his mother's.
In the corner stood a head-high green safe from a bygone age; in the center of the door was a heavy brass plate with the name Kromer on it. Quinten had seen at once that the monster had an old-fashioned letter combination lock, which had long since ceased to be used. Aron put one knee on the tiled floor and turned the knob back and forth four times, making sure that the combination was invisible to his guest. When the colossal steel door, a good ten inches thick, slowly swung open, Quinten saw that there was room for a hundred commandments.
"Heavy," said the hotel keeper, putting the case on the bottom shelf, but he asked no other questions. After he had closed the door with a bang, he struck the knob twice with the side of his hand. "All right?"
"Yes."
The girl turned around and asked something in Hebrew, perhaps just to be able to see Quinten again, with the white lock of hair in his black pony-tail. But Aron stood guard over his daughter and motioned to Quinten that he could go back to the counter.
Something had happened in the meantime. Onno stood open-mouthed on the threshold to the lounge, with his eyes obviously focused on the television. With an imperious gesture at hip height, he motioned to Quinten to be quiet.
Quinten went up to him and also looked at the screen: pictures of an exalted praying and singing throng on a square, most of them kneeling, with arms opened wide, their faces raised ecstatically to heaven; dotted among them were pizza stands. He could not catch what the voice of the Hebrew commentator was saying. When the camera swung around, he suddenly saw where it was: in the Sancta Sanctorum! The crowded Holy Stairs, the chapel, through the bars a close-up of his father's stick on the papal prayer stool opposite the altar! A little later an old woman came into the shot, gesturing excitedly, talking in Italian with a breaking voice, of which he understood only the word miracolo, followed by a priest choosing his words and subtitled in Hebrew, but not the one made of butter. After the stick with the snake's-head handle had been shown again, the Israeli newsreader concluded the item with an ironic look at the viewers.
Speechless, Onno sank into a chair.
"Tell me!" said Quinten. "What's happened?"
"I'm going crazy. This morning my stick was discovered — by that old woman. She's the first one to go up the Holy Stairs on Sundays, and she alerted the fathers of the Holy Cross. When she saw their amazement, she began screaming that a miracle had happened, since no one could get into the chapel. Within an hour the news had spread through the city and people began flooding in from all directions. Guess what? They believe that my stick is Moses' staff, with which he struck water from the rock. This is proved by the handle in the shape of a snake's head: at the pharaoh's court, Moses once threw his staff on the ground and it changed into a snake. At the same time, they say, the serpent from paradise is now worshiping the acheiropoeton in the papal Holy of Holies, and that indicates the end of Original Sin and the second coming of Christ. At the moment there seem to be jams on all the approach roads to Rome."
It took a while before Quinten could say: "But those fathers know that it's your stick, don't they?"
"So they're obviously leaving it at that." Onno nodded. "They didn't take proper care, and now it's not in their interest for it to become known. What's more, they feel that the rise in appreciation for their chapel is marvelous, of course."
"And what if Mauro recognizes your stick?"
"He won't dare say anything. Perhaps he'll accept a bribe to keep quiet. There's no turning back for anyone."
"And why didn't the rector speak just now? Could there be something else wrong?"
"Perhaps Padre Agostino will be canonized in a while. Patron saint of the dairy industry."
"Who was that priest at the end?"