"Nice profession you're in," said Max.
"You're telling me. Politics are conducted by glorified gangsters, and I'm the meanest gangster of them all. Not a job for gentle-natured, unworldly spirits like you."
But world events were passing Ada by. Max had not seen her again since the night of the accident; he felt a resistance to visiting her, and because he didn't have to feel guilty on her account, he didn't feel guilty anymore. Sophia never inquired whether he had been to the Wilhelmina Hospital yet; but when Onno called up one Sunday morning and asked if he would go with him, Max could not refuse. And an hour later they were walking through the streets of the extensive complex of somber buildings, which dated from the last century. Even outdoors in the windless spring morning there was the smell of Lysol, mixed with that of oranges.
She lay in a remote wing with six other coma patients in a ward painted a dirty yellow. It was visiting time, and silent or whispering relatives were already sitting by every bed; most patients had bandages around their heads. A male nurse was sitting reading at a table, under a monthly calendar with a large photo of the pyramid of Cheops. Ada was lying on a sheepskin; her head, with a catheter in her nose, was turned slightly aside on the pillow. She was breathing peacefully, eyes closed, as though she were asleep — and at the same time one could tell in some way that it wasn't sleep. The expression on her face had changed, but it was difficult to say in what way: there was something eternal about it, as though it were slowly making way for an image of itself. Her arms lay next to her body, the hands motionless. What had unmistakably changed in any case, grown, risen, was the wave under the blanket. She was now in her seventh month, and what was growing there inside her was no image, but a creature of flesh and blood. It was as though she only continued to exist to give birth to that, like a helpless queen bee kept alive by drones.
Max and Onno, standing on either side of the high, tightly tucked bed, looked at each other.
"The statue gives birth to a human being," said Max softly, immediately sensing that he was going too far.
Onno shivered. That expressed exactly what he had been feeling all those weeks. She had been reduced to an oven, which was different in kind to the bread that was rising in it. Would the moment ever come when she opened her eyes? Today again nothing had changed, and a short while ago he had virtually lost hope, but he did not want to admit it to himself; and the problems that probably lay in store for him, he only wanted to think about when it was certain. He had the vague feeling that by assuming this he was in some way bringing the irrevocable closer.
"Everyone is convinced," he said, "that the people in those beds can't hear anything, and yet everyone is sitting whispering."
"So that they won't hear," Max added. "So perhaps they can hear something."
"Do you really think so?"
Max shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. We're whispering too, aren't we? Why are we here, for that matter? Perhaps deep down we're convinced that those patients here can take in everything but simply can't express it." Onno opened his mouth, but closed it again — whereupon Max said, "Yes, I know about that E.E.G. too, of course."
Marijke had also said something like that, Onno remembered, but of course that was utter nonsense. He was going to counter by saying that in that case the dead also obviously heard everything, because people whispered in rooms where someone had died too; but Ada's presence prevented him — so that perhaps it was not such an absurd notion after all. Moreover, he knew that Max would immediately push his theory to the limit, just as he always pushed everything to the limit, and would also be ready on this occasion to widen the border area between life and death into an expanse of no-man's-land. From what Onno knew of him, with his rather homosexual tendency to symmetry, he would take a postmortem period of nine months — thus immediately explaining the deeper reason for the period of mourning.
Max, for his part, didn't really believe his theory either — but he too was quite sure that he would not dare to whisper in Ada's ear, "Your father is dead, and I am having an affair with your mother." He read the card on the flowers that stood next to the bed:
"From Bruno." He looked at Onno. "An absurd gesture. Waste of money."
"He did it for himself."
"Worse still."
When Onno realized that Max's answer implied that he was sure that Ada would never wake up, he said: "Or perhaps he hoped that she would come to and immediately see his flowers."
There was a silence in the ward. The motionless patients, with the visitors looking at them: the living dead.
"It's like a museum in here," whispered Max.
At the same moment as Onno, he took Ada's hand in his: Onno the one with which she had controlled the strings, Max the one with which she had held the bow. They both felt that the hand, although warm, had become a thing. Here and there rust erupted through the white paint of the bed.
"Let's go," said Onno after a few moments.
They laid the hands back in place, Onno pressed a kiss on Ada's forehead, and they went to the door. As Max put his hand out toward the handle, it moved downward and a doctor in a white, open jacket appeared, letting Sophia through. They stared at each other in surprise.
"Good heavens," said Onno. "Hello, Mother."
"Hello, Onno. Hello, Max."
"Hello, Mrs. Brons." Max shook hands with her, knowing for sure that no one could tell anything by looking at either of them.
The doctor, a small, balding man, was wearing a pair of glasses with double lenses, the front pair of which was turned up, so that he seemed to be looking at right angles into the sky. After Onno had introduced him as Ada's neurologist, Dr. Stevens, they returned to the bed.
Max had a strange feeling. Suddenly all four of them, or in fact all five of them, were together. But who were they? Onno simply thought he was in the company of his friend, his mother-in-law, and the mother of his child. But at the same time he was in the company of the mistress of his friend, who himself was perhaps the father of the child that his wife was expecting and who could therefore no longer be rightfully called his friend, and nor could his wife be called his wife. Sophia knew a little more than Onno, but not everything, as Max himself did.
Sophia ran her hand through Ada's hair and then loosened the sheet a little at the foot end.
"She'll get club feet like that," she said, without looking at Stevens. And then with an impassive face, "The news is not good, Onno."
Onno looked at the neurologist in alarm.
"Well…" said the latter, glancing at Max.
"Go ahead, I have no secrets from my friend."
"We've just been talking about it. The E.E.G. has deteriorated seriously in the last few days, and there are other indications that you must be prepared for the fact that your wife is in all probability in an irreversible coma."
Onno stared at him, then glanced at Ada and left the ward. Max hesitated, but then followed him into the corridor, where Onno was staring out of the window across the bleached roadways of the hospital site.
"I knew it," he said. "I knew all along. We all knew. What in heaven's name are we going to do now?"