The Angel Maker Read online

  Not even two minutes later, Werner and Rosette Bayer’s car came squealing to a halt in front of the doctor’s house. Werner snatched his son out of his wife’s arms and rushed to the gate, yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘Doctor! Help! Doctor! Please help!’

  On all sides curtains promptly began twitching and the first neighbours came rushing outside. Only in Dr Hoppe’s house was there no sign of life, so that Werner began to holler even louder, lifting his son’s semi-limp body high up in the air, as if he were bringing an offering. That was when Dr Hoppe finally appeared in the doorway, immediately took in the gravity of the situation and ran to the gate with a bunch of keys in his hand.

  ‘There’s something stuck in his throat,’ said Werner; ‘he’s swallowed something.’

  With four or five bystanders watching, Dr Hoppe took little George from his father’s arms. The neighbours’ curious eyes were more intent on the red-haired pate bent over the child than on the child’s face itself, which was beginning to turn blue. Without saying a word, the doctor tucked his arms around the torso of the unconscious boy from behind, locked his hands together and, with a vigorous thrust to the skinny little chest, expelled the obstruction from the victim’s throat. The marble bounced onto the pavement and then rolled to a stop at the feet of Lanky Meekers, who had come to join the group of bystanders.

  Next Dr Hoppe laid the toddler down on his back, knelt beside him and pressed his mouth against the child’s. You could hear a loud gulp or two from the spectators. George’s mother was sobbing, while Irma Nüssbaum made the sign of the cross and began to pray out loud. Some of the other bystanders couldn’t bear to look, and only heard the doctor over and over again taking in a mouthful of air and then blowing it into the boy’s lungs. Irma had just called out to Saint Rita when suddenly a shudder went through George’s body and he began to gasp for air.

  A sigh of relief went through the crowd and Rosette Bayer, rushing to her son’s side, gathered him up in her arms. ‘My boy, oh my little boy,’ she wept, dabbing at the saliva that was dribbling down his chin. She picked the toddler up, tucked his head against her shoulder and gazed with tears in her eyes at Dr Hoppe, who had taken a few steps back, as if eager to return inside.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor, you saved his life.’

  ‘You are welcome,’ said the doctor, and even though he had only spoken three words, the effect of his voice on the onlookers was like being stabbed with a knife. No one knew where to look, or how to react.

  ‘Doctor, please tell me what I owe you.’ George’s father broke the awkward silence.

  ‘Nothing, Herr . . .’

  ‘Bayer. Werner Bayer.’ He stuck out his hand, then let it fall again, but extended it once more upon receiving a discreet poke in the back from his wife.

  ‘Nothing, Herr Bayer, you owe me nothing,’ said Dr Hoppe. He gave the extended hand a quick shake, looking the other way, embarrassed.

  ‘But I do want to thank you - some way or other. At least let me buy you a drink at the Terminus.’

  Werner, glancing over his shoulder, indicated the café opposite the church. Dr Hoppe shook his head and nervously stroked his beard, which was a jumble of stringy tufts of red hair.

  ‘Oh, come on, Doctor, just one little drink,’ Werner insisted. ‘It’s on me. I’ll buy everyone a round. Tournée générale!’

  Voices were raised in approbation and now the other villagers also did their best to convince the doctor. Lanky Meekers made use of the commotion to bend down surreptitiously, pick up the marble, and furtively slip it into his jacket pocket.

  ‘Yes, Doctor, let’s drink to it!’ he cried. ‘To the miracle! Long live Dr Hoppe!’

  There was a moment of hesitation from the bystanders, but then little George lifted his head from his mother’s shoulder and gazed around, teary-eyed. Irma Nüssbaum was ecstatic. ‘Yes, it’s wonderful! It’s a miracle! Long live Dr Hoppe!’ Her cheer dispelled any remaining tension, and there was a sudden din of shouting and laughter.

  ‘I can’t, I’m afraid,’ said the doctor, shaking his head. His voice carried easily over the brouhaha. ‘My children, they . . .’

  ‘But then bring your children with you!’ cried Werner. ‘A sip of gin will make them grow big and strong! Besides, we’d love to have a look at them, finally.’

  Some of the bystanders nodded their agreement; others held their breath, waiting for the doctor’s reaction.

  ‘I . . . just give me five minutes, Herr Bayer. I have to take care of some things first. You go on ahead and I’ll be along shortly.’

  Then the doctor turned on his heels and strode down the garden path. Some of the villagers returned to their homes, but most headed straight for the Terminus, so that the little café was bursting at the seams in no time at all and Maria, the daughter of café owner René Moresnet, had to come over to give him a hand.

  Josef Zimmermann had watched the entire incident from his usual table by the window, and when Werner Bayer arrived and began to sing the doctor’s praises, the old man shook his head, drained his glass of gin in one gulp, then exclaimed, ‘Only God can perform miracles!’

  Werner waved his pronouncement away, and a glass of gin, compliments of Werner, did much to soften old Zimmermann’s objections, so that after a little muttering he finally fell silent. Every time the door of the café swung open, everyone would stop talking and look up. But it always turned out to be yet another villager who had just heard the news.

  ‘René, pour the man a drink,’ Werner would call each time from his bar stool.

  The tension grew by the minute, and when Jacob Weinstein, the village sexton, arrived and shouted that he had seen the doctor leave his house with a carrycot, wagers were hurriedly made: bets on the babies’ sex and hair colour, but especially on the dimensions of their facial cleft.

  ‘Here, write it down: eighteen centimetres,’ Lanky Meekers said to his father, whose pen was poised over a beer coaster. ‘I’m sure of it, Pa! I’d bet at least twenty francs on it if I were you!’

  ‘If I lose, it’s coming off your allowance,’ said his father before scribbling down the bet and handing the coaster, with a twenty-franc coin, to the bartender.

  Dr Hoppe, who had swapped his lab coat for a long grey overcoat, came into the Café Terminus backwards, so that the first thing the villagers saw was his hunched back and only afterwards did they catch a glimpse of the navy-blue carrycot he was toting. Even though everyone saw the difficulty he was having manoeuvring the cot through the doorway, nobody jumped up to give him a hand. It wasn’t until he was finally inside and uncomfortably looking around for a place to put down his heavy load that Werner Bayer stepped forward, swiftly cleared some glasses off one of the tables and pointed magnanimously at the empty table top. Florent Keuning, who had been sitting there, hastily moved over to another table.

  ‘Here, put it down here,’ said Werner.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the doctor.

  Again his voice startled the onlookers. Lanky Meekers’ dad brought his mouth up to the ear of Jacob Weinstein and whispered, ‘It’s on account of the harelip. Makes him take in too much air.’

  The sexton nodded, even though, being hard of hearing, he had hardly understood a word. Open-mouthed, he followed the doctor’s every movement as he leaned over the cot and began to remove the plastic rain shield.

  ‘What would you like to drink, Herr Doktor?’ asked Werner.

  ‘Water.’

  ‘Really? Water?’

  The doctor nodded.

  ‘René, a glass of water for the doctor. And for, uh . . .’ He waved his hand at the cot doubtfully.

  ‘They don’t need anything,’ said the doctor, and as if he felt the need to justify himself, he added, ‘I take good care of them.’

  ‘Oh, I have no worries about that,’ said Werner, though everyone heard how forced his answer sounded. Everyone, that is, except for the doctor, because he showed no reaction. Bending over the cot, he pushed the hood down, unhooked the cover
and pulled it off. The onlookers standing closest took a few steps back. Only the villagers standing at the back weren’t afraid to stare directly at the cot, even craning on tiptoe; but still no one could see what was inside.

  The doctor, swaying a little on his feet, stood silently beside the cot. Except for the hum of the old ceiling fan, there was an awkward pause, and Werner felt all eyes on him.

  ‘Hey, Werner, give the doctor his drink,’ cried René Moresnet. The bartender held out a glass of water. Everyone watched as Werner handed the glass over to the doctor, who accepted it with a polite nod.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, stepping aside to free up a space right next to the cot. ‘Please, be my guest, Herr Bayer.’

  Werner took a hesitant step forward. ‘They’re so quiet,’ he remarked. ‘Are they asleep?’

  ‘Oh, no, they’re awake,’ replied the doctor with a cursory glance into the cot.

  ‘Ohhh.’ Cautiously Werner leaned forward; he thought he could make out the tops of the babies’ heads. ‘Girls?’ he asked.

  ‘No, three boys.’

  ‘Three boys,’ Werner echoed, swallowing audibly. He inched past the doctor to the side of the cot. ‘What are their names?’

  ‘Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.’

  A buzz went round the café and Freddy Machon exclaimed in alarm, much louder than he’d intended, ‘The angels of vengeance!’

  It was clear that Dr Hoppe didn’t know where to look. In order to cover his embarrassment, he took a sip of water.

  Jacob Weinstein, who had not caught Machon’s exclamation, chimed in: ‘Just like the archangels, right, Doctor? God’s messengers,’ stated the sexton emphatically, as if to show off his biblical knowledge.

  The doctor nodded, but remained mute.

  Werner was still dithering next to the cot. ‘How old are they now, Doctor?’

  ‘Nearly nine months.’

  Werner tried to recall what his own son had looked like at that age - how big had the boy been; and had he had any teeth?

  His hands behind his back, his eyes squeezed shut, Werner leaned in slowly, screwing up his face as if he were biting into something sour. René Moresnet watched from behind the bar as Werner opened first one eye, then the other. Twice his eyes scanned the cot, from side to side and back again.

  Then his face lit up. ‘It’s incredible! They look so much alike, all three of them!’ he exclaimed, with a sigh of relief.

  Dr Hoppe nodded. ‘Quite. And nobody thought I could do it.’

  Some of the patrons laughed, but the doctor’s face remained serious, so that several people began to wonder whether it really was meant as a joke.

  Werner took no notice; he was waving the bystanders over. ‘Come on, you’ve got to see this!’

  René Moresnet emerged from behind his bar, pushing Wilfred Nüssbaum ahead of him. It wasn’t until the two men had leaned over the cot and reacted with an enthusiasm equal to Werner’s that the other villagers felt it safe to approach. There was some pushing and jostling, and as the cries of Oooh! and Aaaah! proliferated, everyone tried to catch a glimpse of the three infants.

  The first thing that everyone noticed was the way in which the doctor had had to arrange the babies in the cot, because they no longer quite fitted. Two of them were lying head-up: one had his left ear pressed against the side of the cot, the other his right. The third boy lay with his head at the foot of the cot, his feet sandwiched between his brothers’ heads.

  ‘Like sardines in a tin,’ whispered Freddy Machon.

  There was no blanket, but to ward off the cold their father had dressed the babies in mouse-grey woollen jumpsuits that covered them from neck to toe. All three jumpsuits had a sailboat on the left breast pocket, but most of the villagers did not notice this until they had closely examined the three little faces, none of which betrayed any sign of the wide-open gash Lanky Meekers had described. As it turned out, each infant did have a stitched upper lip, leaving a diagonal scar that extended, as in the doctor’s own case, halfway up the wide, flattened nose. Their bulging heads - ‘I thought for a moment they were wearing helmets,’ René Moresnet remarked later - sprouted stringy ginger hair that was still too sparse to mask the entire skull. They had also inherited their father’s grey-blue eyes, and his pale complexion. The skin on their high foreheads and cheeks was flaky, as it was on the backs of their hands.

  ‘Their skin is too dry. He ought to use Zwitsal soap on them,’ whispered Maria Moresnet, mother of a pair of illegitimate eighteen-month-old twins.

  In any case, everyone agreed that the three brothers looked uncannily alike, and were nothing like the monsters most people had been imagining. The boys certainly weren’t cute, and if you had said that they were ugly, nobody would have been likely to contradict you. However, for most people, especially the young mothers, the sight of the boys didn’t evoke disgust, only pity - although no one was actually tempted to touch them, pat their ginger hair or say their names out loud, as if the people were all afraid that doing so would summon the children’s celestial namesakes. The villagers shuffled round and round the cot, their heads bobbing above the three little boys like so many balloons. Anyone expecting the babies to react with alarm, now that they suddenly found themselves the centre of attention after so many months of confinement, would have been sadly mistaken. They simply didn’t react at all. The spectators decided the babies must be overwhelmed by all the new things to see, because even pulling a funny face at them, or crooning ga-ga-ga or boolle-boolle-boolle did not make them as much as blink.

  ‘They seem drugged,’ whispered René Moresnet.

  When just about everyone had had their turn at the cot, Lanky Meekers and his father came to have a gander.

  Meekers promptly gave Lanky a poke in the ribs. ‘Eighteen centimetres? Idiot!’ his father hissed at Lanky, causing quite a bit of hilarity among the bystanders. Quickly, to change the subject, he turned to the doctor. ‘Can they talk yet?’

  From behind the bar Maria Moresnet said scornfully, ‘At nine months? Surely not!’

  But Dr Hoppe nodded and said dryly, ‘Indeed they can, ever since they were six months old.’

  Meekers looked up triumphantly. ‘See? I was right!’

  ‘Really? That soon, Doctor?’ asked Maria incredulously.

  The doctor nodded again. ‘In French and German,’ he added.

  Now Maria began to laugh, ‘Oh, you’re joking.’

  But the doctor wasn’t joking. He even seemed to be slightly offended. ‘I have to go,’ he said abruptly, walking over to the cot and yanking up the hood.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like another drink, Doctor?’ René Moresnet suggested. The doctor shook his head, stretching the cover over the cot.

  ‘Doctor?’ The question came from somewhere at the front of the bar - a voice that had not been heard from before. Whoever it was cleared his throat and cried again, louder this time, ‘Doctor, would you mind if I had a look at your sons too?’

  The doctor was startled. He turned his head to see where the voice was coming from. A man with a wrinkled face, squinting out of one eye, stuck his gnarled hand up from his seat at a table by the window.

  ‘My name is Josef Zimmermann, Doctor.’

  There was some tittering. With his good eye Zimmerman glared around the café. ‘Could you bring them over here for a minute?’ he said, turning to the doctor. ‘I’m not too steady on my feet, you see.’ With a nod of the head he indicated the walking stick that was hooked over the arm of his chair.

  ‘If you like, Herr Zimmermann,’ said the doctor.

  The café had gone quiet again, and the patrons held their breath as they watched Dr Hoppe pick up the cot and swing it down off the table. He crossed over to where Zimmermann was sitting and, crouching down, placed the cot on the floor right next to the old codger’s scrawny legs.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Zimmermann, staring at the bowed back in front of him.

  The doctor let the cot’s hood down once more, then stood up
. The old man was scrutinising him intently with his one functioning eye, the inky pupil of which filled almost the entire cornea. The other eye was just a horizontal split ringed with yellowish crusts.

  ‘I knew your father and mother,’ said Zimmermann.

  The doctor cringed as if he’d been stung, but rose to his full height, trying to look nonchalant.

  ‘Your father, now there was a good doctor,’ the old man went on. ‘They don’t make them like that any more.’

  It was a mean thing to say, but Dr Hoppe did not react. He simply stared at the cot and didn’t say another word. Josef Zimmermann gave an audible sigh and slowly bent forward over the head of the cot.

  ‘Well, well, so there they are. They look just like you.’ He paused for a second, then said, ‘Where is their mother, if I may ask?’

  Behind him, some of the villagers exchanged looks of surprise. Everyone had been wondering the same thing for months, but nobody had had the guts to come right out with it and ask the doctor.

  Dr Hoppe did not seem fazed, as if he had been expecting the question. He took a deep breath and then replied, ‘They don’t have a mother. Never had one.’

  Josef Zimmermann looked baffled, but then he shook himself and said, ‘I’m sorry, Doctor, I didn’t know . . .’

  All of a sudden the babies made their presence known. All three simultaneously opened their mouths and began to cry, and their voices were so exactly alike that it almost seemed as if the wailing were emerging from a single throat. Their shrieks set the bystanders’ eardrums ringing. Even hard-of-hearing Weinstein covered his ears. The doctor reacted nervously to the screams, but did not make any attempt to hush his offspring. He pulled the hood of the cot back up and snapped the plastic rain shield into place. Then he picked up the cot and manoeuvred it between the tables and chairs towards the door, which he struggled in vain to open. Werner Bayer rushed forward and flung the door open wide, nodding his head nervously. He stared after the doctor as he crossed the street, then shut the door, turned round and glared angrily at Josef Zimmerman.