Quinten looked around him and opened the map. So that meant that the tablets of the Law and the menorah and all those things had been taken out of the temple along this same route, down the terrace here, and then across the valley of Kidron to the other side. He was struck by a strange gatehouse obliquely opposite, in the east wall of the plateau, surrounded by grass and trees. It was deeply embedded in the ground, with a double nave, crowned by two low towers with flat domes; both gateways had been bricked up. At the front, where the battlements were, stood Israeli soldiers in green berets.
"What gate is that?"
"Ah!" said Ibrahim raising both hands. "The Golden Gate! According to the Jews, that's the gate through which God once entered their temple to mount his throne there. It must stay closed until the coming of the Messiah, at the end of time. That is why every religious Jew wants to be buried over there on the slopes of the Mount of Olives."
Onno pointed to the soldiers on the roof with his stick.
"The Messiah would be gunned down immediately."
A crooked smile appeared on Ibrahim's face. "Not only that — the Messiah has a second problem. On the other side of the wall there are Muslim graves, and that's unclean; he mustn't walk over them."
"What a rotten thing to do," said Quinten, "putting them there."
"So you see," — laughed Onno—"they ride rough-shod over dead bodies here — or precisely not, how shall one put it?"
"For the Christians," added Ibrahim, "the Golden Gate is a symbol of Mary, through whom Jesus came into the world and who remained a virgin before during and after his birth: closed, so to speak."
Those words made Quinten rather uncertain. He glanced timidly at the mysterious gate and thought of his mother for a moment; to hide his embarrassment he looked at the map, which he still had unfolded in his hand. Suddenly he was struck by the fact that the whole temple square had the shape of a trapezoid, and the raised terrace with the Dome of the Rock too. He showed his father.
"What's so special about that?"
"Well, that stone that we just saw is a trapezoid too."
"Yes," said Onno. "That's right."
Quinten did not know what to make of it either. Had the rock served as the model for the terrace and the square? The Piazza San Marco in Venice was in the shape of a trapezoid, too — he'd thought that so beautiful. Were all those trapezoid-shaped things connected in some way through that shape? Or all spherical objects? Was an eye connected with the sun? Yes of course, profoundly. And with a soccer ball? The sphere, the circle, the octagon, and square, the ellipse, the rectangle, the triangle, the cube, the pyramid — all those shapes with which Mr. Themaat had first acquainted him; what was their real message? What were they themselves? Did they actually exist somewhere? Perhaps where music came from too? He looked back at the map, and saw that it was not the Dome of the Rock but the Dome of the Chain that was exactly in the center of the temple square.
"To tell you the truth," said Onno, letting his eyes wander over the Mount of Olives, Mount Scopus, Mount Zion, "all this metaphysics here is starting to make me sick. Anyway, it's getting far too hot. What would you say if we got a bus and had a drink in the west, in the new city? Nothing can happen to us there, I think." He turned around. "What's happened to our poet? We've still got to pay him."
"There he goes."
Hands behind his back, his head cocked a little to one side, like a real gentleman, they saw Ibrahim just descending the northern staircase of the temple terrace.
64. Chawah Lawan?
They got off at a busy junction and crossed to a row of shops, where a table was just being vacated on a shady terrace.
"Look at that," said Onno, rubbing his left thigh. "Here we can finally have a normal conversation."
The priests and Orthodox Jews had vanished from the streets; even the tourists had largely given way to women shopping, workmen, and groups of schoolchildren. Although there wasn't an Arab in sight, there were again fully armed male and female soldiers sitting on the edge of a large container of plants.
"Why is it," asked Quinten, "that Ibrahim knew so much about all those biblical figures? Muslims have got the Koran, haven't they?"
Onno looked at him for a few seconds. "Is that what you understand by a normal conversation?"
"What's so abnormal about it? It's an ordinary question, isn't it? All these things exist, don't they?"
"All right, I'll answer," said Onno with resignation. "The Bible and Koran overlap to a great extent. According to Islam, Allah in heaven has the original copy of the Holy Scripture; the Torah and the Gospels are corrupt editions and forgeries of it; the Koran is a true copy." He nodded, looking at Quinten. "Yes, you need quite a nerve to declare your grandfather and your father to be your son and your grandson. .. Right. And now could we change the subject perhaps? Or don't you have any sense of everyday reality anymore?"
"This is everyday reality to me."
"That's what I was afraid of. But do you never have the feeling that it might get utterly exhausting for other people in the long run?"
"But you don't get tired from thinking and learning things? I only get tired when I'm bored."
"I admit," said Onno, "boredom doesn't get much of a look in around you." He looked around. "Of course you're right, it all exists, but not everything exists in the same way. Have you ever listened to other people's conversations? Here on this terrace you can't understand them, but people usually talk about people — about their family and friends, or people at work, or people in politics and sports, and mostly about themselves."
"And what if I were to get completely sick of that kind of chatter? When they talk about things, it's almost always about the things you can have, like cars, money. I never talk about people, and not about myself, and not about what I've got."
"No, you talk about trapezoids, or sacred stones — and you're not concerned with those stones but with their sacredness, their meaning. You only care about meanings and connections. I admit I may have lumbered you with that — concrete things are not my strong point, either; but even I'm not as abstract as you. Did you really examine that rock just now? Do you know what kind of stone it is? Granite? Limestone?"
"Why should I examine it if it doesn't mean anything? There are so many rocks."
"Can you hear what I'm saying? If a rock means something you don't have to examine it, and not if it means nothing, either. So you really never have to examine anything. Do you belong in this world?"
Quinten did not reply. No one knew who he was — not even himself. What was "this world"? The boys playing soccer in Westerbork, they belonged in this world — but the feeling that they got when they scored a goal was what he got when something interesting occurred to him.
All these people here were sitting chattering about other people or about things that you could have, like those two white-haired ladies at the next table: none of it had anything to do with him. So would it be best if he went into a monastery? Became a father of the Holy Cross? Had a black ribbon tied around his arm at the Wailing Wall? Then he thought of what he himself possessed — the tablets with the Ten Commandments on them, which he had seen were made of sapphire; the testimony, which was at the same time not his possession and which today or tomorrow at the latest he would give away somehow. After that there was nothing more for him here, not even in a monastery. Yesterday, in the Francis Bacon..
His thoughts were interrupted by a girl who came to take their order. He pointed to the neighboring table, where an old lady with her back toward them had an orange drink in front of her. "What's that?"