Free The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch

started on. She was jealous, of course. "You're not jealous by any chance?"
    "I want the best for you."
    He sighed deeply and turned around. "Listen. What there is between Max and me can never exist between you and me; and what there is between you and me can never exist between me and Max. That's as clear as crystal, we don't have to waste words on it. To be honest, I think we've already wasted too many words on it."
    She got up, took a few steps, stopped and said, "Onno, be careful."
    "What in heaven's name do I have to be careful of?" he asked in amazement.
    She made a helpless gesture. "I don't know."
    "Aha," he said, and went over to her. "Woman's intuition." He hugged her clumsily. "Sorry about that. Women have everything—brains, feeling, willpower—but only men have intuition. That's why there's no female creation of any importance, and that isn't because they've always been confined to the kitchen, because even the best cooks are men. One is forced reluctantly to accept the fact. But they can do one thing that men can't do, and that is give birth to men. That's more than enough." She freed herself from the hug.
    "Why do you start waffling on the moment I try to talk to you?"
    "You know what Napoleon said, don't you? All his wars were a bagatelle compared with the war that will break out one day between men and women. Therefore I now swear a sacred oath, that when it comes to that I will be the first traitor to my sex, although I know that I will pay dearly for it in the long run."
    "All right, Onno. That's enough. You're impossible." She pushed the loose strands of hair back under the hairpins with both hands. "Shall we go to the Vondelpark?"
    At that moment there was a shout from outside: "Yoohoo, Onno!"
    They glanced at each other and each leaned out of a different window. With his hands in his pockets and a magazine under his arm, Max was leaning against a telephone box by the side of the canal.
    "Mrs. Hartman," he called to Helga, putting on a whining boy's voice. "Can Onno come out to play?"
    Onno and Helga looked at each other again, now along the front of the house. Disaster. They both realized at the same moment that this was the end—that in his innocence Max had suddenly laid bare the heart of their relationship.
    A quarter of an hour later Onno finally came out.
    "Did you have to do your homework first?" asked Max.
    Onno did not look at him. He walked beside him in a rage. "The things you do to your friends.. .. It's over. All your fault. I left the front door key on the table."
    "My fault? What have I done?"
    "It's none of your business. I'm not talking to you anymore." He stopped and looked at him with disgust. "Do you know what's wrong with you?" When Max looked back at him with a puzzled expression, he repeated: "Don't you know?"
    "Not that I'm aware of."
    "Don't you know? Then I'll tell you: I don't like your intuition. I don't like your intuition one little bit."
    Max had no idea what he was getting at; he knew almost nothing about Onno's relationship with Helga. They never talked about women, or about cars, money, or sports; at most, about woman as such, as Onno was in the habit of putting it—and never about their own girlfriends. Max did not talk about his, because he did not allow himself time to get to know them— and because Onno would have found it disgusting to listen to. And Onno did not talk about Helga, because that was not done. The few times that Max had met her, they had said scarcely a word to each other—not because he did not like her, but he saw her as belonging to a different world. She would never have caught his eye, even if he had sat opposite her in a train for an hour; and through her he realized how completely different he was from Onno. He couldn't imagine a woman that they would both be interested in.
    He had never been in Helga's flat, and Onno never invited Max to his place on the Kerkstraat. He was in the habit of saying that mankind was divided into guests and