He made a much bigger find than a cap! Wouldn't Etienne and Mr. Verdonkschot be pleased! He looked again at the two stones that he had thrown aside. No doubt about it! Hand axes.
Excitedly, he stuffed the finds in his pockets, filled up the trench, stamped down the ground, and brushed the leaves back in place so that no one else would have the idea of coming to look for prehistoric remains here. He was also glad that Gijs was in his shed and couldn't have seen him working. He decided not to say anything to Mr. Roskam, because he might ask him why he had started digging there; and what was he supposed to say then?
The light in the workshop was on, but the nut still wasn't loosened.
"Well?" said Mr. Roskam without looking up, when Quinten put back the spade. "Did you find any?"
"Yes."
"Good."
Fortunately he didn't ask anything else. But the chauffeur had gone and sat in the car, from which soft music was issuing. The engine was running almost inaudibly; he had obviously gotten cold. Upstairs at the front there was no light on, but when he came in everyone was sitting in the same places in the dusk.
"You've been up to something," said Sophia.
"I've been looking for Mr. Roskam's father's cap."
There was a silence, which was only broken after a considerable time by Max: "Mr. Roskam's father's cap. . you've been looking for it. .?"
"Yes."
"Well?" asked Onno.
"I dug a trench and look what I found."
He emptied his pockets on the table and put the light on. All three of them stood up and bent over the artifacts.
"Fantastic!" cried Max. "Quinten! Unbelievable!" And to Onno he said, "This is unbelievably ironic. God knows all the places that man goes digging, and it's right outside his door."
"Yes," said Onno thoughtfully, holding an arrowhead close to the lamp.
"Such is life," said Sophia.
"Perhaps it's not that odd," speculated Max. "The fact that there's been a castle here for centuries might well indicate that this place was already inhabited in the Stone Age."
"So were all those things in a line?" Onno asked Quinten.
"Yes."
Onno blew on the arrowhead, moistened it with a little spit, and studied it closely again. Then he looked at Max and said: "I'm not an archaeologist, but from my previous life I have some experience of a certain kind of archaeologist. Shall I tell you what I think? That gentleman there in the orangery. . What's his name?"
"Verdonkschot."
"That Mr. Verdonkschot made these things himself and put them in the ground, where he lets them go prehistoric for a few years and then sells them for a bundle. I'd swear to it. That whole collection of his is fake, of course."
Max looked at him flabbergasted and then sank back on the sofa. "Of course!" he cried. "Of course!"
"Okay, you can laugh," said Onno, "because you always laugh. But we've still got a problem. One fine day those con men are going to realize that something's missing and that they've been found out."
"Shall I put them back?" asked Quinten.
"Can they see that you've been digging there?"
"I pushed the leaves back on top."
"Very good. It's October now, and by the time the ground is visible again it'll be February or March next year. And all the traces of your digging will be gone. The stuff will have just disappeared; that's their problem. Perhaps they only dig up their goods after three or four years, because if you ask me they don't look nearly old enough yet. No, there's probably no problem. Throw that rubbish straight in the dustbin."
"What villains!" said Quinten indignantly. "Shouldn't we report them to the police?"
"Absolutely," said Onno. "Legally that's our duty, in fact. But I suggest not doing it, because it's not pleasant work. Naturally it's shameful that I should say so as a minister, but the police can't blame us for not having the idea that we had immediately, of course."
Obviously, the police had other channels for discovering the truth, because a year later a blue police van suddenly appeared at the orangery, policemen in sweaters without hats on threw the contents of the display cabinets into plastic garbage bags, and, under the silent gaze of almost all the residents, Etienne and Mr. Verdonkschot were arrested. Quinten shivered when he saw them getting so helplessly into the van. He looked up at Sophia and whispered, "Daddy's always right" — at which she put a finger to her lips. Just imagine, he thought, that this had happened because his father had reported them. Etienne gave him a wave from behind the barred window.
The following day it was even in the national papers. This made the position of the two friends at Groot Rechteren untenable, and the baron immediately gave them notice to quit. Piet Keller's wife looked after the goat for another week, but after their move it disappeared too and the orangery remained uninhabited.
Quinten missed the animal most. Weeks later he sometimes sat down on the large stone and saw Gijs leaping toward him in his lopsided way — but he wasn't there. The sky was empty, and the emptiness and the absence so unfathomable and complete that he could scarcely bear it. It was as though the whole world were affected by it — the woods, the castle, everything was filled with Gijs's impossible absence in that spot, so everything that was there in some way wasn't there, actually couldn't be there, or wouldn't be there. Who was he going to talk to now? Once he had burst into sobs on the stone, and decided not to go there anymore.
He had a similar feeling when at the end of the summer there was a plague of wasps. There were screens over all the windows, but it was as though they penetrated the thick walls. There were scores of them buzzing in every room on the ceilings with their black and yellow bodies: that nasty color combination, with which they proclaimed that there was no mercy to be expected from them. Actually that was pretty stupid of them, thought Quinten; if you were a villain, you didn't flaunt it, and you really ought to clothe yourself in soft blue or pink. But of course it was to frighten off greedy birds. No one understood where they suddenly appeared from; apart from that, it looked as though there were more wasps inside than outside, so the screens were probably having the reverse effect.
One afternoon when he was wandering through the back attic he suddenly stopped and cocked his head to one side as he listened. He was aware that the whole time there was a scarcely audible trembling in the air, almost more a feeling than a sound. Here too there were wasps buzzing close to the beams, but the sound was coming from somewhere else: from the direction of Gevers's storage rooms. He stopped at a closed door. He knew that it led to a small room, really more a cupboard, where the washerwoman had perhaps once slept, but which now contained only a few rusty bed springs. Cautiously, he pushed down the handle and slowly opened the door. He froze. It was as though he were seeing something holy, that he was not allowed to see.
The wasp's nest hung from the ceiling like a huge drop from another world — slightly off-center but completely in accordance with the Golden Section, which Mr. Themaat had taught him. It seemed to be made of dusty gold. Hundreds of wasps were walking over it, slipping in and out of the opening and flying back and forth through the room, almost without buzzing, as if not to disturb the queen who was laying her eggs there in the dark interior. Suddenly they no longer seemed dangerous, just modest and charming. The window was closed. When he gently closed the door it was as though the vision of the secret had nestled deep inside him, as though he had swallowed it. In the front loft he met Arend — who was now in sixth grade and didn't want to be called Arendje anymore. When Quinten told him about his discovery he went there in disbelief, opened the door ajar, and cried, "Christ Almighty!" quickly closed the door, and fetched his father. "Very good, QuQu," said Proctor, and immediately took steps.