"Carrot juice."
"Carrot juice? Never had it."
"Order that, then," said Onno. "Don't you want anything to eat? What time is it?"
"A quarter to twelve. I'm not hungry."
After Onno had ordered a cup of coffee for himself, he asked: "Shall we go to a post office in a bit and phone Granny Sophia? We were going to do that in the Holy of Holies."
"And are you going to tell her everything?"
"You must be joking! That would probably cause a short circuit in the telephone exchange. Just to let her hear from us. I don't know what else you've got in mind, but it will probably mean us eventually going back to Holland."
"Yes?" asked Quinten. "And what then?"
Onno sighed. "That's a mystery to me, too. When I saw Auntie Trees just now in the Via Dolorosa, I took it as a signal that the world is after me again. But what am I supposed to do there? For you that's no problem— you're seventeen, you can go in any direction you like; but I've got no point of reference anymore. Really, I'm just a kind of walking Tower of Babel. What's someone like that supposed to do? In our family everyone lives to be ninety; I can't go on roaming the world for another forty years." He put his stick between his parted legs, his hands on the handle, and rested his chin on them, looking at the passersby.
Quinten found that attitude much too old-looking and asked: "Can't you start something completely new?"
"Something completely new.. Tell me something completely new."
"Or something very old," said Quinten. "What did you want to be when you were little?"
Onno put his cheek on his hands and looked at Quinten reflectively. "What did I want to be when I was small.."
"Yes. The very first thing you wanted to be."
"The very first thing I wanted to be…" repeated Onno, with a sing-song tone in his voice, like in a litany. He raised his head. "A doll doctor."
"A doll doctor?" Quinten repeated in his turn. "What's that?"
"Someone who repairs broken dolls." Onno had not thought about that for almost half a century, but now that he said it, he suddenly realized it was of course connected with his mother, who for years had dressed him up like a girl.
"Well," said Quinten, "then you must become a doll doctor!"
At the same instant Onno saw himself sitting in a small shop in the center of Amsterdam, in a narrow cross street, surrounded by shelves filled with hundreds of pink, gleaming dolls, repairing broken eyelids, installing new "Mommy" voices..
"I'll think about it," he said. "What would Lazarus have done after he'd been raised from the dead?"
"Isn't that in the Bible?"
"Not if you ask me. I vaguely remember a legend about him going to Marseilles, where he became the first bishop."
"Perhaps he simply bored everyone stiff with his experiences while he was dead."
"But then we'd have some information about it. As far as I know he never talked about it." He turned his head to Quinten. "Just as I shall never be able to talk about a certain experience." When Quinten did not react, he said, "In any case we will need a roof over our heads in Amsterdam. The first few weeks we can stay in a hotel, but then I'll have to rent or buy something. I'll telephone Hans Giltay Veth right away. Won't he be surprised!"
Quinten knew that he wouldn't be going with him, but he couldn't say so. What was he to say in reply if his father asked why not? He didn't know himself. Not because he didn't want to, but because it wouldn't happen.
"Aunt Dol said that your things are in storage in Rotterdam, at the docks."
"I don't want any of that," said Onno immediately, while at the same moment the dark-brown Chinese camphor box appeared before his eyes, decorated all around with heavy carving, in which Ada's clothes had lain for seventeen years.
"Mama's cello is in my room in Groot Rechteren now," said Quinten.
Onno nodded in silence.
The girl put their order in front of them. Quinten took a mouthful of his carrot juice and to his amazement it tasted of carrots — or, rather, to his astonishment the taste of carrots could also appear without loud cracking and crunching. He wanted to tell his father this, but then saw that astonishment had taken hold of him too.
"Look," said Onno, perplexed, and pointed to the dark-brown cookie with caramelized sugar and peanuts that was on the saucer next to his coffee. "A gingersnap! Do you remember? We were always given those at Granny To's. The ones that make such a noise in your mouth." He took the round brown cookie carefully in his fingers, raised it with both hands like a priest lifting the host, and it was on the tip of his tongue to say "Mother! Hoc est enim corpus tuum!" — but he simply cried out rapturously, "A gingersnap!"
At that the amazement spread still further. At the next table, two old ladies were about to leave. One was already waiting in the street; the other— dressed in a creamy white dress with sleeves reaching just below her elbow — was still paying the waitress and turned to look at Onno for a moment.
"A gingersnap," she said in Dutch with a strong Hebrew accent. "I haven't heard that word for a long time."
Quinten did not look at her. His attention was caught by the blue number on her wrinkled forearm—31415. When they had gone, Onno opened his mouth to speak, but Quinten asked:
"Did you see that number on her arm? I thought only the rabble had themselves tattooed."
For a few seconds Onno looked straight into Quinten's eyes. "Did she have a number on her arm?" he asked, as if he couldn't believe what he had heard.
"Three-one-four-one-five. What's wrong? Why have you got that funny look in your eyes?"
Onno began trembling, feeling as if the trembling came from his chair, from the earth, like at the beginning of an earthquake. He did not take his eyes off Quinten.
"What's wrong? Dad?" asked Quinten in alarm. "Why aren't you saying anything?"
What he had seen, and what Quinten had not seen, was the color of her eyes — that indescribable lapis lazuli, which in his whole life he had seen in only one person: Quinten. He was going to say that she had eyes just like his, but when Quinten told him about her tattoo, the numbers that people were given in Auschwitz, it immediately triggered a short-circuit in his head. Was he seeing ghosts? He didn't want to think what he was thinking; it was too terrible, too much to cope with. He tried to put it out of his mind, to grab it and crush it underfoot, like a hornet; but it was there and it wouldn't budge. He had to think about this, think it out of existence, right away; but not with Quinten there — he had to be alone. Quinten must never know what he was thinking. He got up, swaying, holding on to his chair.
"I want to go. I'm going to the hotel. You stay here. I'll see you in a bit."
Quinten got up too. "It's not something to do with your brain, is it? Should I phone a doctor?"
"There's nothing wrong with my brain — that is. . please don't ask any more questions."
"I'm going with you."
Quinten paid the waitress, who was still clearing the table where the two old ladies had sat, and took hold of Onno's arm. At the end of the pedestrian precinct he hailed a taxi and helped Onno in. They did not speak during the short drive; he felt that his father was fighting a battle that he didn't understand. Had he had a slight stroke again, but refused to believe it? At any rate, he mustn't leave him alone. They drove past the wall of the Old City to the Jaffa Gate again and got out in the square, which was already as familiar as if they had been living there for weeks.
"Need a guide? Need a guide? Where are you from?"
Aron appeared from the office and put the keys on the counter, with a face that seemed to say that nothing in the world could surprise him anymore, since everything was as it was and would always be as it would be. Up winding stairs, punctuated by neglected corridors with steps up and steps down, they got to their rooms on the third floor, at the back of the hotel.