"It's never occurred to me. I know almost nothing about him, not even exactly where he was born, or on what day. I've always had the feeling that getting interested in my father was something I couldn't inflict on my mother."
Pensively, he watched the primus, who was now again walking among the tables, bending over ladies with his violin and looking deep into their de-colettes, while gentlemen who knew the etiquette folded banknotes lengthwise and tucked them into his wide sleeves like voting slips. Bruno had sat down next to the cymbalist. "Has it ever struck you that people often know a lot about things that don't concern them but very little about things that really matter to them? People who have been in camps know nothing about the structure of Himmler's Reichssicherheitshauptamt, but I know every intimate detail — I could draw you a diagram just like that. But I have no idea how they elect the Upper Chamber in the Netherlands."
"I'll explain it to you sometime."
"Of course. But with you it's genetic."
"True enough. Not with you, of course."
"You know all about languages, but what do they matter to you? I know all about stars, but what do they matter to me?"
"Just a moment. Surely you're not naive enough to think that our Upper Chamber means more to you than the Reichssicherheitshauptamt?"
Max was silent. The conversation was confusing him even more. Five years before, he had followed the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem day by day: the man with the asymmetrical face in his glass cage, like a mechanical doll from the Tales of Hoffman; he had read a dozen of the stream of books that had appeared about Nazism at the time. Of course he had thought of his father during that time, and of his trial; but even the fact that there were still newspapers from 1946 around had not occurred to him. In some way or other he assumed that everything had disappeared into the past, and been ground up by time. In fact, he knew more about the Leopold and Loeb trial. But of course everything was still available!
He looked up. "Shall I tell you something? I want to see it tomorrow. It had to happen sometime. Of course they've got all those old newspapers at the Press Institute. I'd like you to come, too."
Onno thought for a moment. "Perhaps we could be a little more thorough. I imagine his file is probably at the National Institute for War Documentation. Suppose we go there."
"Is it open to the public, do you think?"
"Of course not. But you're the dreadful son of that dreadful father, aren't you? What's more, you're the son of your murdered mother. If they get awkward, I'll involve my dreadful brother, or if necessary my father himself, and then I'd like to see them say no. However, because they know all that, it's actually a foregone conclusion."
They said goodnight to Bruno, and Max saw Onno to his front door, where they arranged that Onno would pick him up the following morning at ten o'clock. Max would take the morning off. They decided it would be better not to ring the institute in advance for an appointment, because that might be a pretext for postponing the matter indefinitely.
On the way home Max felt his pulse for a moment — too fast, but not irregular. Tomorrow he was going to sort out his past. He didn't even have any photos of his parents. Everything had been lost when they had been arrested. He could still remember his mother clearly: a young, cheerful woman, in rooms, at the piano, in the street, in the park, with a Star of David sewn onto the left breast of all her clothes, with the word Jew on it in mocking pseudo-Hebrew letters. He remembered her laughing as she said, with a sort of pathetic triumph, "It isn't yellow at all, it's orange!" But he had no image of his father apart from one frozen scene.
On Heiligabend—which was unknown in the Netherlands, but which they usually celebrated in Central European style — he had been instructed to stay in his room until the Christmas tree had been decorated and the candles lit. Neither his father nor his mother were believers. The only Christian thing about such a heathen Germanic seasonal symbol as a decorated tree with lights, he had realized later, was the crude wooden cross that kept it upright — but that was precisely hidden by red crepe paper, on which the presents were to be laid. Perhaps there was an argument, or some impatience or irritation. In any case, he thought he had been summoned. He went into the room, and there it etched itself into his memory: his father next to the Christmas tree, standing on a chair, with the glittering star for the top in his hand, and in his flashing blue eyes, looking down at Max from an immeasurable height, a look as cold as liquid air..
In his front doorway he groped in his pocket for the key and then remembered that he had given it to Ada. He went up two steps and lifted the half brick. The shiny key lay in the dark niche, like Ada upstairs in his bed.
11. The Trial
Ada had half woken up a few times, once when Max crept into bed beside her. And when the sun was already shining on the curtains, she became entangled in a complicated dream:
On the backseat of a car an old, emaciated man is lying in her arms, and she can feel his white stubbly beard against her cheek. She tries to push him away, but the problem is that the top button of his crumpled raincoat is a button of a murderer's coat and at the same time a button of her own. She eventually has to go into the dungeon that extends under the Saturnusplein; those who know about it can see it in the shape of the square. In a large, dark space full of staircases, drawbridges, vaults, railings, dangling cables, and chains, she is forced into a cage made of wooden slats, but the tribunal is already waiting for her. The presiding judge in the middle displays an oblong silver medallion, or perhaps it is a box with a jewel in it, and a little later a group of religious Jews dressed for prayer begin singing a lament. This signals the beginning of religious confusion. Suddenly she has a glass of champagne in her hand, and a priest in his habit giving a blessing thinks that it is part of the service; then she has to ascend a long, steep staircase, but for some reason she cannot climb the stairs. When she turns around, she sees an old woman in a Buddha pose gliding or floating diagonally through the space and telling the secrets of the past for the umpteenth time. .
She was awakened by Max's hand stroking her belly. He had an erection but was still half asleep. The erection did not count — he would have had that without her. He groaned.
"I'll make coffee first," she said, and looked at her watch. "Hey, it's already nearly nine-thirty. Don't you have to go to Leiden?"
"I'm taking a morning off."
She pulled open the curtains and went naked into the small kitchen. The morning sun shone in over the trees. In the park below, a jogger had put his heel on the back of a bench and was trying to break himself in two. There was a smell of coffee and toasting bread, birdsong in the trees, further away the roar of the traffic. Everything was as it should be. In the bedroom Max had turned on the radio for the news; she heard him telephoning, probably to the observatory. Soon he would take her to Leiden and for a few days she would see him only at lunchtimes. Every time he disappeared around the corner in his car, she had the feeling that he had never been there, or would never be there again — but where was the source of that feeling of absence, in him or in her?
When she came into the room with breakfast, he was sitting cross-legged on the bed, which reminded her vaguely of something she had dreamed, but she could not remember what. Her eyes glided over his body as quickly as a breath of wind, making her aware that she was as naked as he was: but even naked he seemed better dressed than she would ever be. He had an athletic build, nowhere deformed by sport or any other violent activity into proportions designed to impress women but in fact were only impressive to men; his skin was as soft and velvety as a child's.