"He has a congenital defect of being highly gifted." Onno nodded. "Shall I test him again?" And then he said to Quinten, "Can you see anything funny in the name Lon Nol?"
"There's a mirror in between," said Quinten immediately.
"You can't believe your ears!" cried Max — with double joy: there could no longer be any doubt who had contributed the hereditary factors here!
"Just like. .?" Onno went on.
Quinten thought for a moment, but didn't know.
"Me," said Onno. He was going to say Ada too, but he didn't; anyway it wasn't quite right: the d in the middle was not itself symmetrical.
"Of course!" said Quinten, laughing and covered the two l's with his two forefingers. "You're in it!"
"I'm in Lon Nol. ." repeated Onno. "If my party leader should hear, it will harm my career."
"That rhymes," said Quinten, "so it's true."
Max burst out laughing. "At last someone who takes poetry seriously."
"A while ago," Onno told them, "I was also asked to read aloud. By the P.P.S."
"What's the P.P.S.?" asked Sophia.
"Who is the P.P.S.? The permanent parliamentary secretary, the top official in the department who outlasts all the politicians — the representative of eternity."
"What did he want you to read?" asked Max.
"Everything, the whole time. Of course I wouldn't have dreamed of reading something from a piece of paper in Parliament, like the honorable members almost all do — I've always spoken my shattering truths impromptu. But he said that created bad blood, and that by doing it I was confronting them with their own bungling and they would take revenge. In his view oratorical talent was undesirable in Dutch politics — and what do you think? Since then I have deigned to put some papers in front of me, sometimes blank sheets, so that the chamber at least has the impression that I am reading from notes. Doesn't it make you want to hang yourself?"
And when Max laughed, he went on:
"Yes, you're laughing, but I'm sinking farther and farther into the morass of decline. In politics everything hinges on words. It's a disgusting world of words."
"Well, to me," said Max, "a world of words seems just the place for you."
"But not in this way. When I used to decipher texts in the dim and distant past, that consisted of actions, which were separate from the text even though I was only substituting one word for another. Can you follow me?"
"Even when everyone else has long ceased to follow you, Onno, I shall still follow you."
"But in politics the words themselves are the deeds, and that's something quite different. When you're sitting there in Westerbork and listening to the rustlings from the depths of the universe, I listen to words from early in the morning to late at night: at the ministry, in Parliament, in the coffee lounge, at party headquarters, during committee meetings, on the telephone, in the car, at cocktail parties, at dinners and receptions, and on working visits, from people who whisper something in my ear, who thrust information at me in notes, even if it's only 'Be careful of that guy' or some such thing. And I myself keep on saying all kinds of things to everyone on such occasions, and at press conferences or interviews in the paper and on television. I try to persuade, influence people. That's politics, power: it's all verbal, a continuous blizzard of words. But it's not just speaking, it's making statements. It's action; it's doing something without doing anything. Of course it's wonderful if you can change and improve things — I won't say a word against that— but the realization that it all happens like that is beginning to gnaw at me."
"Why? What could be nicer than doing things with words? Does a writer do anything else? And what about God?"
"Yes," said Onno. "Let's take God. That can never do any harm. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.' "
"Is that from the Bible?" asked Quinten.
"It certainly is! So according to St. John, the creator coincided with the word of creation, and according to the psalmist that was at the same time creation itself: 'He speaks and it is there.' God, Word, World — they're all identical. Nothing more political than Christian theology is conceivable."
"You can also turn it around, and say that it means politics are a religious matter," said Max.
"Do you know whom you're talking to? 'Government is the servant of God armed with a sword': I imbibed that with my mother's milk. It's just that the Christian dogs have never looked at it from the point of view of the philosophy of language. Anyway, that applies not just to politics. When I once said 'I do' at the town hall on your birthday, that was more of an action than a statement, or when I called that strange creature there Quinten. But I wasn't cut out for God, like you perhaps. There's a bad smell about doing things verbally without doing anything. Something that I don't like about it is a certain — how shall I say.. immoral dimension."
"Immoral dimension…" repeated Max. "That doesn't sound too good." He had to force himself not to look at Sophia — suddenly he had the feeling that Onno was really speaking about his clandestine relationship with her, but of course that was nonsense.
"The emperor Napoleon beautified Paris," said Onno, and was suddenly silent. Max nodded and waited for what came next. "King Solomon built the first temple in Jerusalem."
"I expect that's from the Bible too," said Quinten.
"Everything is always from the Bible."
"And what about Napoleon and Solomon?" inquired Max.
"The thing is that in the whole of his life King Solomon never once put one brick on top of another. So he didn't build it. He commissioned his architect to build a temple, but he didn't build it, either. It was built by anonymous workers. What right has the person who has least to do with it to take the credit for it?"
"Because it would not have been built without him."
"And it would have been built without the architect? And without the workers? And yet Solomon is of course the sole builder of the temple — the grounds of his power and a deed consisting of three words: 'Build a temple!.' Or rather two: 'Tiwne migdásh!' Build obviously means saying 'Build.' Isn't that indecent?"
"Exactly," said Max, who suddenly felt criticized in some way. "And having a temple built is still something noble, but take the example of being given an order to do something criminal." He turned to Sophia. "Tell him what you heard yesterday — about that cap."
Sophia looked at the paper pattern that she was pinning to a piece of cloth. Max and Onno could see that she had to concentrate for a moment: these kinds of conversations tended to pass her by. Probably, she thought it was all boyish nonsense.
Yesterday Mr. Roskam, the caretaker, had been invited to coffee, and he had told her about his father, who had been gardener under the father of the present baron. When Mr. Roskam was the same age as Quinten, he had once gone with his father to the orangery, which was still in use as a winter garden. On the threshold the old Gevers had stood, also with his son, also about six at the time, and he had glanced at Mr. Roskam's father's cap. "Fetch a spade, my man." His father had fetched a spade. "Dig a hole." His father had dug a hole. "Throw your cap in. I want that filthy thing out of my sight." His father had buried his cap and stamped down the earth with his clogs, while the two boys looked on. Fifty years later Mr. Roskam still trembled as he talked about it. His father had thought that he would be given a new cap, but that hadn't happened.
"Mr. Roskam?" asked Quinten, who had listened open-mouthed.
"Right," said Onno. "When I hear something like that I remember why I'm left-wing."
"As you say," said Max in an agitated voice, "the immoral thing is that commands like that are possible. 'Build a temple!' 'Bury your cap!' Take Hitler. He once gave Himmler his very personal order: 'Kill all Jews!'—of course only verbally. But he himself never murdered a Jew, nor did Himmler or Heydrich or Eichmann; that was finally done by the lowliest foot-soldiers. And in Auschwitz it was even more idiotic; there the Zyklon-B had to be thrown into the gas chambers by Jewish prisoners. So there you had the spectacle of the actual murder not being committed by the murderers but by the victims. Whoever did it didn't do it, and whoever didn't do it did it." He met a look from Sophia and suddenly checked himself. So as not to burden Quinten with the past, he never talked about those things when he was there — and actually, not even when he wasn't there.