"Cardinal Sartolli, the archpriest of San Giovanni in Laterano. He was being diplomatically noncommittal. He said that the Church was of course pleased by the piety of the people but that they should now wait for an official reaction from the Vatican." Onno looked up at him. "Quinten! What have we done?"
Quinten looked at him for a moment — and suddenly, as if struck by lightning, he fell about laughing.
63. The Center of the Center
"I've never seen you laugh like that," said Onno the following morning at breakfast, after he had read the latest news of the situation in Rome to Quinten from the Ha'aretz: by now pilgrims from all over the world were streaming to the Sancta Sanctorum; the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano had been closed to all traffic, and, like the Holy See, the chief rabbi's office in Jerusalem was making no comment.
"Doesn't it make you laugh yourself silly? All those praying people precisely when there's nothing more to worship? Only that silly walking stick of yours."
Onno folded the paper. "Right. So we've traded the Ten Commandments for my walking stick, and you're going to take them back." He looked at Quinten over his reading glasses. "Might those two stones perhaps be just the same as that rod of Moses they're worshiping?"
"How can you think such a thing?" said Quinten indignantly. "Your stick isn't Moses', is it?"
Onno nodded and silently spooned up his egg. "But I assume that the safe in Hotel Raphael isn't their final destination."
"Of course not."
"I wasn't able to sleep too well, as you may perhaps understand, and so I tried again to put myself in your shoes… I know that that's impossible, but why shouldn't someone attempt the impossible.. and I think you want to deliver them exactly where Titus got them from. Or am I wrong?"
"I don't know," said Quinten. He had not thought about it himself — he would see — but perhaps it was a good idea.
"That means the spot where the temple of Herod stood."
"But," Quinten added, "it must in the exact spot where the Holy of Holies was."
Onno wiped his mouth with a sigh.
"Of course, you can never be too exact. So that means some more learning. I hadn't thought that I'd get to know so much because of you." He pushed back his chair with an unbearable scraping sound and got up. "Shall we go and take a look at the situation, then?"
Quinten was a little surprised at the initiative his father was suddenly showing. It was as though he were in a hurry all at once; perhaps he felt that it was time they put an end to the whole affair, after what was now happening in Rome. But he himself was curious about the spot where all those temples had stood. In the doorway, Aron pointed out the narrow street that they had to take: straight ahead — that would bring them directly to the Temple Mount, Moriah, ten minutes' walk.
The heat was becoming more intense again after the cool night. The crowded street, adorned with drying laundry, like all streets around the Mediterranean, was the beginning of the souk: an uninterrupted string of tiny shops selling souvenirs, pottery, multicolored cloth, sweets, indeterminate workshops, copper smithies, a barber's, but above all of yelling tradesmen trying to offload their wares onto the tourists. And every ten yards men with headscarves forced themselves on one as guides; hearing where they came from, all of them without exception shouted the Dutch shibboleth "Allemachtig achtentachtig!" with its string of guttural sounds.
Onno stopped at a display of walking sticks with primitively carved wooden handles.
"Suppose I took this one," he said, pointing to a snake's head. "That would really be tempting fate."
"I'd be careful about that in Jerusalem."
"Forty shekels," said the shopkeeper, and pulled out the stick.
Since he found them all equally ugly, Onno shook his head and walked on, but the man followed them and a few steps farther the price had fallen to thirty shekels, twenty-five, twenty.
"Wait a bit," said Onno, "and we'll get it for nothing."
"If we simply go on walking, we'll automatically become millionaires," added Quinten — thinking for a moment of the disguised hotel keeper, who had no idea that his safe had been temporarily transformed into the ark of the covenant and was housing a billion guilders' worth of sapphires.
For ten shekels Onno purchased a heavy stick with an uncarved handle, almost a truncheon, helpfully fetched by the salesman from his workshop. Relieved that he again had something to lean on, he walked on. By now they had been walking for a quarter of an hour, but there was no sign of the Temple Mount anywhere. Farther on, the street was topped by arches, and a little later they found themselves in the shadows of a crowded, labyrinthine bazaar, which made it impossible to walk straight ahead.
When Quinten looked to see where they were at a street corner, he read: " 'Via Dolorosa.' "
"Yes, that's what it's like here. The way of the cross of our Lord and Savior." Onno pointed to a relief above a church door with his stick. "This is the fourth station, where Jesus met his mother. But," he said, and looked left and right, "this route leads to Golgotha, over which the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built; and it must start from Pilate's Citadel Antonia, where the Holy Stairs come from. So we have to go that way, because the fortress, I think, is also on the Temple Mount."
At that moment Quinten grabbed his arm and pulled him into a shop selling jewels. "What's wrong?"
"There's Aunt Trees."
Behind a man holding a closed red parasol over his head, she was walking in the middle of a group of white-haired ladies, looking as alike as their flowered dresses.
Crouched in his hiding place, Onno followed her with his eyes. He felt quite moved. "How old she's become," he said softly, "the shrew. But as devout as ever. She's going to put her hand in the hole where the cross of Jesus Christ stood."
"Or did you want to meet her?" asked Quinten. "She would have recognized you too, of course."
"I don't really know." Onno stood up with a groan. "I've no idea anymore what to do with my life, but of course I can't go on acting as if everything's the same as before. You've made sure of that."
Obsequiously, the shopkeeper held up a silver chain — or what was supposed to be a silver chain — with a small Star of David on it.
Onno looked into the eyes of the old Arab, who wore a blob of fine white lace on his head. "We'll have to buy this," he said. He paid the absurd price he was asked and put the chain around Quinten's neck.
Quinten felt it and asked: "Are you allowed to wear one of these if you are not a Jew?"
"Only if you've been given it by your father. That's bound to be somewhere in the Talmud."
A few houses farther on, they bought a map at a newspaper stand, which quickly showed them the way back to the Jewish quarter. The crossing point was clearly on a kind of border, formed by soldiers, who were standing around in a bored fashion on either side of a narrow street. As they descended a wide staircase, they passed another group of soldiers shortly afterward; in the shadow next to radio equipment with a long aerial, they sat and relaxed on chairs, automatic rifles at the ready on their laps.
"God and violence," said Onno. "It's been like that here for four thousand years." The stairs made a ninety-degree turn — and suddenly they stopped.
For a moment Quinten was reminded of Venice, when he had emerged into the Piazza San Marco from the maze of alleyways. But there art and beauty reigned, full of wind and sea and with a floating lightness. Here something else very different was going on: it was not beautiful; it was crushing. He had the feeling that the scene he was watching was not only where it was but in himself, too, like a pit in a fruit — like the word testimony on the plane yesterday.