If in the city nature was soft background music, in the castle he was in the midst of a thundering concert hall with Quinten and Sophia. Spring and autumn came with a huge show; the summers were hotter and drier, the winters colder and whiter. The constant change, he had once said to Onno, was of course the source of all creativity; the monotony of nature between the tropics also led to cultural stagnation — the tropics were a constant steambath, always green, just as the polar regions were always white — but the temperate latitudes with their four seasons were hot and cold baths, which kept people awake. That was true in the city too, of course, but only in the country had it become clear to him. Onno had countered by saying that in the country it was perhaps a little too clear, since that annually repeating four-part pattern in turn retained a certain monotony, so that real creations always took place in town. He had seen that Onno refrained from inquiring whether his own creativity had increased in the countryside; but although he had no complaints about his work, he did not broach that topic of his own accord.
In Drenthe not only was the darkness deeper, the silence more silent, storms more violent, and the rainbow more vivid than in Amsterdam; even the rain was different. When there was a walk through the woods with Quinten on the program, it did not occur to Max to wait until it was dry, let alone take an umbrella with him. All three of them put on their green boots and their oilskins, pulled the hoods over their heads, and waded through the mud, while the shots of the baron and his friends rang out in the distance.
Once, when it was no longer raining, and it was still dripping from all the trees, Max said: "When it stops raining, the trees start raining."
"They're crying," said Quinten.
"So you're not a tree, then," said Sophia.
Quinten waved his arms, jumped with both feet into the middle of a puddle, and cried: "I'm the rain!"
When Onno was told of this pronouncement by Max one Saturday afternoon in Amsterdam, in the reptile house at the zoo — while Quinten was looking at a motionless snake, coiled like a rope on a quayside — he said that this might cause problems at school. Everything suggested that he undoubtedly had a more brilliant mind than the teachers, just as had been obvious in his own case.
Since Quinten had communicated his first word to Onno, together with his first laugh, it was really as though he had been able to speak much earlier but had not seen any point. Less than six months later there was no question of any backwardness; grammatically, he seemed to be advanced for his age. When he meant himself, he didn't talk about Quinten, or about Q, but said "I." He called Onno Daddy; Sophia, Granny, or Granny Sophia if he had to make a distinction with Granny To; and Max, Max.
He did, though, remain more silent than other children. General toddler's chatter, tyrannical orders, whining about what he wanted to have, chattering what he had just done or what he wanted to do: there was none of that kind of thing. Nor had he any need for playmates; it did not really give him any pleasure when Sophia took him to the playground or the swimming pool. Before he went to sleep he allowed himself to be read a fairy tale. Apart from that, he was satisfied with the castle and what was going on there; since he had deigned to speak, he was even welcome at Mr. Spier's.
He was never bored. He sat for hours in his tower room and looked at pictures — not pictures from children's books, let it be understood, but particularly the illustrations in. a book that Themaat had let him take upstairs, Giuseppe Bibiena's Architetture e prospettive. As though Quinten knew what the eighteenth century and the Viennese court were, Themaat had told him that the book had been made in the first half of the eighteenth century at the Viennese court. Particularly the etchings of imaginary theatrical sets fascinated him: grand baroque, superperspectivist spaces with colonnades, staircases, caryatids, everything laden with ornaments. He would like to walk through those places.
When he was four, Sophia wanted him to go to the nursery school in Westerbork: that would be good for the development of his personality; in her opinion he was becoming far too solitary like this. Onno and Max had never visited such an institution — it was not usual in the 1930s — and they were not very keen; but Sophia had her way. On his way to the observatory Max dropped him off at the nursery on the first day, and that very morning another toddler bashed Quinten's head with an earthenware mug. When this happened he had not cried and just looked at his attacker with such an astonished look in his deep blue eyes that the other child had burst out crying.
Afterward the teacher, who had not seen anything of what had happened in the dolls' corner, had told Quinten off because he had obviously done something to the little boy, since otherwise he would not be crying like that. Quinten had said nothing. When Max picked him up, bustled by mothers and their screaming offspring, the teacher had told him what had happened. Of course she did not want to say that Quinten was underhanded or spiteful, but perhaps he should be watched a little. Sitting in the backseat of the car, Quinten told him what had actually happened and Max believed him; at home Sophia also discovered a small wound under his black locks. After a telephone call to Onno, having been put through by Mrs. Siliakus, they decided to remove him from the institution immediately.
"You don't have to go there anymore," said Max. "Is that all right?"
Quinten nodded. He stood by Max's desk, twisting the small compass slowly and looking at the wobbling needle, which seemed not to be attached to the compass but to the room.
"Don't you worry," said Sophia.
But it was something else that was troubling him. He focused his eyes on her and said: "All the children were picked up by mommies."
Max and Sophia looked at each other. There it was. Suddenly the fundamental question had been asked. Max didn't immediately know what to say, but Sophia knelt down to him, put an arm round him and said:
"I'm your mommy's mommy, Quinten. Your mommy is much too tired to pick you up. She's lying in a very big house with very nice people, sleeping in a bed, and she can't wake up anymore, that's how tired she is. She can't hear anyone and she can't talk to anyone."
"Not even me?"
"Not even you."
"Not even for a little bit?"
"Not even for a little bit."
"Really not even for a little tiny bit?"
And when Sophia shook her head: "Not even to Daddy and Auntie Helga?"
"Not to anyone, darling."
Thoughtfully, he put the top on the compass. "Just like Sleeping Beauty."
"Yes. Just like Sleeping Beauty."
"What about the prince, then?" he asked, looking up.
Like Max, he saw that Sophia's eyes had grown moist. Max had never seen such emotion in her before. Quinten wiped away Sophia's tears with the palm of his hand and did not ask any more questions. Max went to the mantelpiece and gave him the photograph of Ada and Onno.
"This is Mommy when she was still awake."
Quinten took the photograph in two hands and looked at the face in the square of black hair. "Beautiful."
"That's why you're so beautiful too," said Sophia.
Max expected that he would want to have the photograph, but he gave it back and went to his room. When they were alone, Max wanted to hug Sophia, but that was of course unthinkable.
"That was to be expected," he said. "And what now?"
"We must discuss it with Onno. I don't think we should return to the subject ourselves. I think that what he doesn't ask about he can't cope with."
Max nodded. "One day he'll give another sign."
Sophia brushed real or imaginary crumbs off her lap. "A few weeks ago I read him that fairy story of Sleeping Beauty, and I was halfway through before I realized what it was really about, but by that time I couldn't go back."