Quinten tried in vain to turn the lid of a tin box, in which something was rattling. Onno didn't notice what was happening at his feet; with his eyebrows raised skeptically, he leafed through the specialist journal, as though it were a publication of the Theosophical Society. Only when he felt Quinten's warmth penetrating through the leather of his shoes did he put it down and bend forward.
"Can't you turn it? Leave it in there. It's much nicer when you don't know what it is. What would you say if the two of us went for a walk?"
"Are you sure?" asked Max. "It'll mean venturing out into nature."
"I shall give nature a dreadful shock."
"Look after your father, Quinten," said Helga as they walked hand in hand to the door.
In the forecourt, Onno was undecided about which way to go. Only now did he see the flowering rhododendrons beside the coach houses: huge violet explosions that hung heavily over the water and from beneath which some ducks swam, like the faithful emerging from a cathedral. The decision was made by Quinten. The warm hand pulled him along over the bridge and down the path by the moat; they were walking under the shade of the majestic brown oak and past the side of the castle. The flat, weathered stones of the lower part, which rose at a slight angle from the water, were obviously still from the middle ages.
Onno realized guiltily that it was the first time that he had been alone with Quinten. He was a degenerate father; he left everything to Max as if it were the most natural thing in the world — and on what basis? The little hand in his reminded him of his own in his father's large hand when he had walked with him along the pier at Scheveningen. They had bent over the railings together and looked at the large oblong nets that were winched squeaking and creaking out of the waves on which ten or twenty innocent fish were thrashing about. He was still wearing the curls and pink dresses that his mother liked to see him in. The memory shocked him: was Quinten perhaps the kind of creature that his mother had looked for in himself and that she had brought into being through him? He stopped and looked at Quinten. Yes — if you didn't know, he might just as well be a girl, even without a dress or curls.
"Take a lesson from your wise old father, Quinten," he said as they walked toward the pinewood through the young saplings. "The new is always the old. Everything that's old was once new, and everything that's new will one day be old. The oldest thing of all is the present, because there's never been anything else but the present. No one has ever lived in the past, and no one lives in the future, either. Here we are walking along, you and me, but I in turn once walked just like this with my father along the pier at Scheveningen, which was blown up by the Germans in the war. He told me about the miraculous catch of fish, and that the Lord of Lords had called the apostles "fishers of men." Thirty-five years is an unspeakably long time ago for me, but for your foster father thirty-five years ago is yesterday. For him everything is yesterday. And the war is not even yesterday, but this morning, a moment ago, just now. I don't get the feeling that you're very fond of him, though, or am I mistaken? Tell me honestly. If you ask me, you understand me perfectly well, although you can't understand a word. True or not? Or are you making fools of all of us? Do you understand everything, perhaps, and simply don't feel like talking? Do you get out of bed at night and secretly read the Divina Commedia ? Yes, that's it, I think. Of course you're annoyed at the corrupt translation that Max has in his bookcase, and you can't find anything by Virgil. Isn't that it? Admit it."
Quinten did not reply, but obviously he knew exactly where he was going. As they passed, the trunks of the precisely planted pinewood produced geometric patterns with turning and changing diagonals and verticals till they merged into an overgrown park, where there were bare, uprooted trees everywhere, in various directions, felled by various storms. Where the wood became somewhat lighter a wall of exuberantly flowering rhododendrons appeared. Quinten let go of his hand and went in as though there were no resistance to be overcome, while Onno had to force his way with his hands through the unyielding bushes, which were taller than himself.
"Where in heaven's name are you taking me?" he cried. "This is not meant for human beings, Quinten! People belong on pavements!"
But when he had gotten through, even he experienced the fairy-tale nature of the spot. They were at the edge of a large, capriciously shaped pond, enclosed by mountains of violet flowers; in complete silence two black swans glided between the water lilies. In the distance there was a glimpse of the tower of the castle between the trees — obviously the pool was linked with the moat. But it was too distinguished here for the ducks. The aggressive black coots, with the wicked white patch on their heads, obviously didn't feel at home here either.
Yet they had still not reached their objective. Quinten began walking along the water's edge under the branches. Holding on, complaining all the while, blowing petals out of his face, and once slipping and cursing and getting one shoe wet, Onno followed him to the other side. Once he had gone through another wall of flowers, he was standing at the edge of an open space, thickly overgrown with deep-green stinging nettles that reached to his waist.
"Not through there, surely?" he said.
But Quinten took him to a narrow, winding path that consisted of flattened, but in places already reemerging, stinging nettles. Because he himself was smaller than the devilish brood, he made Onno lead the way. With a sigh Onno tucked his trouser legs into his socks, picked up a branch, and with his squelching shoe went down the path, swiping furiously and with real hatred at every nettle that could threaten them.
"What are you doing to me?" he cried. "If only I'd never married!"
After thirty or forty yards they were suddenly confronted with a square gravestone at the foot of a small, pointed conical pillar.
"What on earth is this?" said Onno, perplexed. He squatted down so that his scratched head was at the same level as Quinten's. His forefinger passed over the carved letters in the stone: DEEP THOUGHT SUNSTAR. He looked at Quinten. "Shall I tell you something? There's a horse buried here. That's what they call racehorses." He got up. "Who on earth buries a horse? Horses go to the knacker's yard, don't they?"
And then something happened that after a moment's speechlessness moved him to hold Quinten in his arms and to run back with him through the stinging nettles in triumph, and through the flowers and past the geometrical dancing of tree trunks to the castle: Quinten extended his finger toward the pillar, leaned back a little, and said with a laugh: "Obelisk."
39. Further Expeditions
Just as in Noordwijk the light of the lighthouse swept in all directions, so the four seasons swept over Groot Rechteren each year in great waves. In fact Max only knew the changing of the seasons from Amsterdam: one day in February or on March first, the indescribable scent of spring when he came into the street in the morning, as indefinable as the decimals of π; the stuffy summer, when the city was filled with tourists, equally suddenly changed into the damp, bitter autumn; and then the pale winter in which the cobble-stoned streets and the walls suddenly seemed to express the inaccessible nature of the world — but really only in passing, noticed in short intervals between going from one interior to the next.