He knew people for whom being an alderman in Amsterdam would be the pinnacle of their life's achievement. He himself was happy with it because it at least gave him something to do. He had decided to make the best of things. He had abandoned the illusion that he could change Holland or even Amsterdam after just a few months — and if he were honest with himself, he didn't really think it was necessary. Where in the world were things better than in Holland? In Switzerland, perhaps — but that was more corrupt and, worse still, more boring. If he could grasp the light-hearted changes that had been brought about in the second half of the 1960s from below and stabilize them, he would be satisfied; but now, as the 1970s approached, he saw imagination being drowned in a morass of constant, embittered meetings, which seemed to be out to achieve something like a merciless, totalitarian democracy. No one did anything anymore; everyone simply talked about the way something ought to be done, if anyone did it. He had once talked in an interview about "the self-abusive reflection," which had caused softening of the brain and weakening of the bone marrow in students.
His front door was daubed with red paint and in the middle of the night he received a threatening phone calclass="underline" "We'll get you one day, you bastard!"
But before he was able to say, "Is that you, Bork?" the caller hung up.
Since the accident he had lived in celibacy. Not that he forced himself, but because it did not occur to him to take up with a woman. There would be no trouble: he had soon discovered that power had an erotic effect; and if anyone wanted to get into his bad books forever, then they should ask him why he didn't get divorced, which would be a legal formality.
The fact that his rooms were tidied up every morning by a municipal housekeeper, who also made up his bed and did his laundry while he himself was at the town hall, was of course connected with this. That had been organized by Mrs. Siliakus, his secretary, without whom nothing would have gone right, either with his work or with his life: she supplemented exactly what was missing in him. "Together we make a human being," he was once to say. But Mrs. Siliakus was already in her fifties and for twenty years had shared a flat with a lady of her own age. "If you didn't have such an offensively unnatural nature," he confessed to her in an intimate moment, "but were as utterly normal as me, then I'd know what to do."
Until, one Sunday evening in July, Max had called him on his new, unlisted telephone number and had asked if he knew that that evening the first man was to set foot on the moon.
"Of course you'll be watching? It's all on television."
"What time, then?"
"At about four."
"To tell you the truth I wasn't intending to. The moon? You must be crazy. It plays absolutely no part in municipal politics. Tomorrow morning at half past nine I've got to address the chancellor of the University of Leningrad, in Russian. I'm working at it now."
"You absolutely must watch. The fantastic thing is not that it's happening, because Jules Verne predicted that, and Cyrano de Bergerac, and Kepler as well in fact—"
"And what would you say to Plutarch? And Lucian? And Cicero? Somnium Scipionis! Of course you've never heard of them. That takes us before Christ. Don't get any ideas."
"Let me finish for goodness' sake! What I'm trying to say is that one thing never occurred to anyone: that everyone in the world will be witnesses when a man steps onto the moon, without even getting out of their armchairs — even though the moon is not visible in the sky to them at that moment. That's the really inconceivable thing. If anyone had predicted that, he'd have been branded as a madman."
"Will you always be twelve years old? If I understand you correctly then I have to watch because it's something that can't really be seen: an idea. For you everything is always different. You yourself, indeed, are more or less looking at the Big Bang there on the heath. But okay, I'll listen to you again, although I have the feeling that it won't do me much good. Tell me, how is Quinten Quist getting on? Has he said anything yet?"
"No idea, I can't understand it anyway. You would probably have to know what language he's babbling in. It may be the same one that you were looking for before."
"Yes, just you go on opening old wounds, born sadist that you are. Perhaps I shall have to resign myself to being the father of an illiterate. It always happens: Goethe's son was thick as a brick, too. Great men always have imbeciles for sons — which of course implicitly proves that my father wasn't a great man. Anyway, perhaps we should be glad that his lordship is at least prepared to crawl."
"We sometimes have the impression that he understands things."
"Let's hope so. How is my esteemed mother-in-law faring?"
"Fine. Come and see us soon."
Onno replaced the receiver, but held on to it and sighed. Since Quinten's first birthday, two months ago, he hadn't been back in Drenthe; so many Quists with their retinue had appeared, and fellow tenants of the castle, and even the mother of his mother-in-law, that he had scarcely had an opportunity to spend any time with Quinten. He had had to spend that thirtieth of May mainly massaging his family, who had seen for the first time how a Quist was being brought up by his grandmother and his father's friend.
With his hands still on the receiver, he looked at his watch. It was eleven o'clock. The five hours still separating him from Max's lunar moment seemed insurmountably long to him. Hearing Max's voice had done him good; it had suddenly torn him away from the drudgery of his work. Of course he could just go to bed, Max would never know, or wasn't there someone who could keep him company? Couldn't he look someone up?
At the same moment he knew he who he was going to ring — but the brainwave gave him such a shock that it took him a couple of seconds to get over it. He still knew the number by heart.
"Helga?"
"Yes, who's that?"
"How awful. Don't you even recognize my voice anymore?"
"Onno! What a surprise! How are you?"
"Well, I expect you heard a bit about all of it. Uh, a lot has happened."
"Awful. I wanted to write to you, but I didn't know what kind of tone to take. Is there any change in her condition?"
"No."
"And your son? How old is he now?"
"Just over a year."
"Does he live with you? How do you manage? Aren't you an alderman at the moment?"
"I live alone. He's being brought up by my mother-in-law and by Max— you know, the chap you were so crazy about. They live in Drenthe."
"Isn't that a bit odd?"
"A little, yes, but it's the ideal solution. Of course he's got some new girlfriend there already, but we don't talk about that kind of thing anymore. And what about you? What are you getting up to?"
"At this moment? I'm sitting reading."
"What?"
"You'll laugh: the council report in the paper."
"You're sitting reading the newspaper? Haven't you read what's going to happen in a few hours?"
"What?"
"Tonight a man is going to set foot on the moon."
"So what? As long as he doesn't slip over. Is that why you're calling? Since when have you been interested in that kind of thing?"
"Since five minutes ago. Max called and said that I had to watch."
"And so you're going to."
"Helga, the shrill note in your voice is not escaping me. I don't give a damn about celestial bodies, including the earth; but I'm glad he did so, because that gives me a chance to ask you to receive me, so we can watch it together."