The Angel Maker Read online

  Frau Maenhout had thought it all a bit odd, but who was she to question the doctor’s professional opinion? Besides, Michael, Raphael and Gabriel had always returned from these separations hale and hearty.

  Actually, hale and hearty wasn’t exactly the right expression, because there did seem to be something seriously wrong with them. However, Frau Maenhout had not quite deduced what it was. The doctor was always a bit vague about it, as if he didn’t want to come out and admit that he wasn’t sure either. In referring to their illness he used words she did not understand, and kept telling her he was still running tests. She had once made the suggestion that he call in a specialist, but the doctor had seemed so offended that she had not raised the subject again.

  ‘Any other doctor wouldn’t know the first thing about it,’ he had said, before stalking off.

  The worst thing for Charlotte was that she had no idea what the children’s ailment looked like, nor how it might manifest itself. Other than the fact that the children tired easily and couldn’t really tolerate being touched, she hadn’t noticed anything that might indicate a serious condition.

  ‘What should I be looking out for?’ she had asked Dr Hoppe early on.

  ‘Oh, it will be plain enough,’ he’d replied.

  Martha Bollen’s voice roused Frau Maenhout from her musings. ‘And how well are they talking now?’ asked the shopkeeper. ‘Rosette Bayer said that they can speak Dutch as well. She heard them singing a Dutch song.’

  ‘Singing isn’t speaking, Martha. You mustn’t believe everything people tell you. The boys just like to copy what I say.’ She’d deliberately twisted the truth a little, for she had noticed on other occasions that mentioning the triplets’ unusual ability with languages tended to provoke envy or disbelief. Some people thought Charlotte was just showing off what a good teacher she was.

  ‘But they’re smart little fellows, aren’t they?’

  ‘They get that from their father.’

  ‘And a good thing too,’ said Martha sotto voce. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it - if the only thing they’ve inherited from him is his looks. And how is our doctor, anyway?’

  ‘Busy, very busy. People think he can work miracles.’

  ‘And so he can! Last week he cured Freddy Machon of his chronic gout. Gave him five shots and then it was all better. The doctor told him they’ve been using the stuff in Germany for years. You know what it is, Frau Maenhout? We’re very behind, here in Belgium, as far as medicine is concerned. It’s too bad the doctor didn’t get here sooner. Maybe he’d have been able to cure our Michel.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be thinking that way, Martha. What’s done is done. How much do I owe you?’

  Martha, peering at the bill to check that she had not forgotten anything, then said, ‘Nine hundred and twenty francs, please.’

  Frau Maenhout took out her purse, removed a thousand-franc note and placed it in the shopkeeper’s stubby hand. After putting away the change, she left, wheeling the shopping trolley behind her.

  ‘Will you please give the doctor my regards?’ Martha called after her as she reached the door.

  As Charlotte crossed the street, the plastic wheels of the shopping trolley clattered loudly over the cobblestones, attracting the attention of the three youths in the square, who began waving at her. She recognised Fritz Meekers, Robert Chevalier and deaf Gunther Weber, who used to come to her for weekly speech lessons because his parents couldn’t afford a trained speech therapist. She hadn’t really been all that happy with the result, but at least he could now make himself understood and appeared to be taking great strides since he’d started attending a special school for the deaf in Liège last year.

  Waving back at them, she hurried on, urged by the church bell, which had started to strike six o’clock. It had been over two days since she’d seen the triplets. She’d sat by the phone all weekend, as usual, in case Dr Hoppe rang to ask her to mind the children while he went out on an emergency call. But nothing of a serious nature had happened to any of the villagers - she was ashamed to admit that she almost wished it had - so she had waited in vain, working herself up into a state about the boys’ condition.

  This morning she hadn’t been allowed to see them either. The doctor had told her they were quite a bit better, but they were still asleep. He wanted to let them sleep on, so she had just tidied the place up and done a little cleaning, keeping an ear open for any sound from the boys. When it was time to go home, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael were still asleep. When she rang the doctor some time around three in the afternoon, he told her they’d finally woken up at 1.30, which came as a great relief.

  As she rang the bell at the gate, the sixth and last peal of the church bells was dying away over the roofs of Wolfheim. She peered wistfully through the railings, hoping to see Dr Hoppe with one of the boys in his arms on the lookout for her through one of the street-facing windows. Alas, he wasn’t there.

  She had become attached to the children, and they had become attached to her. Even though it did still feel as if the three boys had put up a wall around themselves, she had the impression that they were beginning to lower their guard every once in a while. There was definitely a change in their facial expressions when she arrived, and also when she left. If you hadn’t known them before, you wouldn’t have seen the difference, but she had learned to notice the most trivial things: a slight tug at the corner of the mouth, a glance, a twitch of the hand.

  ‘Frau Maenhout stay,’ Michael had even said the last time she left, as if he’d had a premonition that she would be forced to stay away longer than usual. ‘Vow aynot yay.’ That’s the way it had sounded.

  Meanwhile, the boys were learning fast. Frau Maenhout estimated that they were at least six months ahead of other children their age. They understood almost everything she said to them, and came out with simple sentences in German and French. They could put together wooden puzzles aimed at eighteen-month-olds, and identify objects in picture books or comics.

  Physically they were a little slower. They were not yet walking, and also had some trouble with their motor skills. This was made plain, for instance, when they tried to feed themselves or to pick something up. But that, Frau Maenhout thought, was only because she had limited time to devote to each of the three boys. There wasn’t enough opportunity to give them individual attention. ‘I only have two hands!’ she’d often exclaim.

  Besides, she suspected that the doctor didn’t spend very much time with the children after she went home. He would plop them down in their little chairs or in their playpen, and then barely pay them any attention, except to put them through more medical tests.

  ‘Isn’t the doctor home?’ she suddenly heard a boy’s voice calling.

  Frau Maenhout was startled. The doctor hadn’t yet appeared, and the boys who had been playing in the village square were now ambling towards her.

  ‘Oh, he is,’ she said; ‘he’ll be coming out in just a minute.’

  ‘How are they doing, then, the Hoppe brothers?’ asked Lanky Meekers.

  ‘Very well. How about you? I see you’re still growing. You’ll soon be a head taller than me.’

  The doctor says I’m going to be at least two metres,’ the boy responded, not without some pride. ‘He examined me the other day.’

  ‘His dad kick im in pants all de time!’ Gunther Weber remarked. ‘Thas why he’s so tall!’

  ‘And yours doesn’t kick you often enough!’

  ‘OK, no bickering, boys.’

  Frau Maenhout glanced at the front door, but there was still no sign of life.

  ‘My dad says the doctor’s sons are geniuses,’ said Robert Chevalier.

  ‘Gee-whah?’ cried Gunther, pointing at his ears.

  ‘Gee-nee-uses,’ said Robert, enunciating carefully. ‘Exceptional.’

  ‘Well, aren’t all of you?’ said Frau Maenhout with a wink, and saw all three puff up with pride. ‘Here, I’ve got something for you.’ She put down her basket, rummaged in
her shopping trolley and drew out the bag of gingersnaps.

  ‘From Martha the shopkeeper,’ she said, glad that she could at least make someone else happy with the biscuits.

  ‘Mmmmm!’ said Gunther.

  ‘Thank you, Frau Maenhout,’ said Lanky Meekers and Robert Chevalier in unison, eagerly taking one biscuit each.

  ‘Dwhere is de doctor.’

  Gunther was pointing at the house. Dr Hoppe had opened the door and was coming down the front steps.

  ‘When can we come and play with the doctor’s boys?’ Lanky Meekers asked quickly.

  ‘Later on, when they’re bigger.’

  ‘Hello, Heaw Doktow,’ Robert said with his mouth full.

  The doctor nodded and clicked open the gate. ‘Please come in, Frau Maenhout.’

  ‘Can we help you?’ asked Lanky Meekers.

  The doctor acted as if he hadn’t heard him. He bent down, picked up the basket and said again, ‘Please come in, Frau Maenhout; we don’t want to leave the children unattended for too long.’

  Lanky Meekers scowled at his friends. Frau Maenhout, grabbing the handle of the shopping trolley, nodded goodbye to the boys. They stared after her as she walked up the path. At the door the doctor took the shopping trolley from her.

  ‘How are the children, Doctor? Are they all better?’ asked Frau Maenhout before going inside.

  No response. He stopped to let her pass. ‘I’ll take this into the kitchen,’ he said. ‘You go on ahead.’

  She didn’t have to be told twice and hurried down the corridor.

  Behind her she heard, ‘Frau Maenhout?’ There was some urgency in the doctor’s voice.

  She looked back at him quizzically, and thought she could see his left eyelid twitching. The same thing happened to his sons sometimes, when they were under stress.

  ‘Something has happened, Frau Maenhout.’ And his eyelid twitched again.

  6

  By the time Dr Hoppe had been back in the village a year, Wolfheim had settled down again; the gossips’ brooms could therefore be put to their time-honoured use once more. In winter the brooms brushed the snow from the front porches; the following summer, a dry one, they whisked away the dusty sand blown down into the valley from Mount Vaalserberg, and when autumn came, they swept up the dead leaves that the old lime tree in the town square had shaken from its branches. Dr Hoppe continued to carry out his profession in an exemplary manner, relieving the villagers of their coughs, sunburns, influenzas, kidney stones and other ailments with his home-made tonics, poultices and pills. He hadn’t performed any more miracles, it was true; but these things take time, Father Kaisergruber proclaimed in one of his Sunday sermons. In any case, everyone always talked about the doctor with the greatest respect, and his sons were rarely discussed, even though more and more people were starting to wonder why no one ever saw the three little boys, either indoors or out. In winter their absence hadn’t been all that surprising - there had been a bitterly cold spell that lasted several weeks - but when both a lovely spring and a hot summer went by without even a glimpse of the children, people began to raise their eyebrows. No one was overly concerned, however, because from their little voices, which were sometimes heard out in the waiting room, the patients could tell that the threesome was doing fine. This was confirmed more than once by the doctor himself, as well as by Frau Maenhout, who still spent several hours a day with them.

  After a while, however, two possible explanations for the three little boys’ hidden existence began to make the rounds. Léon Huysmans, who had long ago studied medicine at the University of Liège for a year before dropping out, thought that they might have elephantiasis - an affliction that could make your head swell up to the size of an elephant’s. He drew this conclusion from the fact that for months now the doctor’ s desk had displayed the same picture - a Polaroid of the children just prior to their first birthday. Their heads had already been quite large at that stage, and Léon suspected that the transformation had been so quick that the doctor didn’t have the heart to display a more recent photo, even though, according to Martha Bollen, he was still buying film.

  Helga Barnard, on the other hand, had been passing around an article from Reader’s Digest about people who were allergic to sunlight, and had to live their entire lives in the dark. ‘When they’re exposed to daylight, their skin immediately starts to burn. It must be something like that.’

  It wasn’t until September of 1986 that the truth came out - or at least in part. It happened one evening during Irma Nüssbaum’s umpteenth visit to Dr Hoppe, this time to have her blood pressure checked. Other visits had been occasioned by backaches, ringing in the ears or memory loss; sometimes it was her stomach or her guts, although, if you asked her husband, it was all in her head.

  Young Julius Rosenboom, a diabetic who came every day for his insulin shot, was already in the waiting room when Irma Nüssbaum entered. She sat down across from him so that she could keep an eye on the door of the consultation room, and chose a women’s magazine from the pile on the table.

  ‘Hasn’t the doctor started seeing people yet?’ she asked.

  Julius shrugged his shoulders without raising his eyes from the comic book on his lap.

  ‘Have you heard them yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Who?’ asked Julius.

  ‘The doctor’s sons.’

  Again Julius shrugged. Just then a door slammed somewhere in the house, and then a child’s voice cried out, ‘No, I’m not gonna!’

  ‘That must be them,’ Irma said, delighted. She cocked her head in order to listen. The noises seemed to be coming from upstairs.

  ‘Michael, don’t be naughty. Come here!’

  ‘Frau Maenhout obviously can’t handle them,’ Irma said. She looked at Julius, who was turning a page. ‘Does this happen often?’

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ said Julius, jerking his head towards the office door. ‘I think the doctor’s coming. You go in first, I haven’t finished reading this yet.’

  Irma was only too happy to take the boy up on his offer and she got to her feet as soon as Dr Hoppe opened the door.

  She always needed a moment to get used to his appearance again. Her eyes were continually drawn to his hair and beard, and she often caught herself staring at his scar, which he tried to camouflage with his moustache.

  ‘Come on through, Frau Nüssbaum,’ the doctor said.

  In the consultation room he took a seat at his desk and bent down to find her file in one of the drawers.

  Irma Nüssbaum took the opportunity to turn the framed picture sitting on a corner of the desk towards her. ‘It amazes me every time, Doctor, how much they look alike,’ she said.

  The doctor glanced up briefly and nodded.

  ‘They must have changed quite a bit since this picture was taken - am I right?’ Irma went on.

  Placing the patient file on the desk, the doctor nodded again.

  ‘Do they still look alike?’ she insisted.

  ‘They do.’

  ‘And how are they, Doctor? I thought I heard one of them yelling just now.’

  ‘Frau Maenhout is trying to give them a bath, I think. They aren’t very fond of baths so, naturally, they resist. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Tell me about it! Just wait until they’re a little older. I’m glad my two have finally left home. How old are the boys now?’

  ‘Almost two. But please tell me—’

  ‘You should soak it in cold water,’ Irma interrupted the doctor.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘That spot,’ she said, pointing at the doctor’s lab coat, the left sleeve of which had a stain on it the size of a coin. ‘That’s blood, isn’t it? You can get rid of the blood by soaking your coat in cold water for an hour or so, and then washing it at sixty degrees. Doesn’t Frau Maenhout know that?’

  He seemed bewildered for a moment, and rubbed at the dried stain.

  ‘Or is it ink?’ She was pointing at a fountain pen lying on the desk. ‘If that’s what
it is, you ought to use vinegar, or lemon juice.’

  ‘I’ll tell Frau Maenhout,’ said the doctor, scratching at the spot with his fingernail.

  ‘Don’t do that, it’ll only make it worse,’ said Irma sternly.

  The doctor drew back his hand involuntarily. He sat up straight and began leafing through her file. ‘So. What were you here for, again?’

  Before Irma Nüssbaum was able to answer him, or even remember what she had come for, there was another noise from upstairs, this time a loud thudding. It sounded as if someone was storming down the stairs, and both Irma and the doctor turned to gaze at the door leading to the corridor, which was flung open wide the next instant. Frau Maenhout stood in the doorway. Her face was red and she was panting for air, her hand clenched on the doorknob. Her mouth was twisted into a grimace and behind her glasses her eyes were gleaming with anger.

  Irma, in her chair, cringed at the sight of the tall figure stomping towards her. She raised her arms to defend herself, but she wasn’t the one Frau Maenhout was after. Skirting the desk she marched right up to the doctor, who was gripping the arms of his chair, raised her hand, leaned forward and wagged a threatening forefinger right in the doctor’s face.

  ‘If you ever again so much as raise a finger,’ she cried out, ‘against your children, I’ll report you to the authorities! Just remember that, Doctor!’ Then she turned on her heels.

  Irma Nüssbaum slapped her hands to her mouth. But Dr Hoppe didn’t seem the least bit cowed, for he had risen to his feet before Charlotte Maenhout had gone three steps.

  ‘Frau Maenhout, what on earth do you mean? I don’t understand . . .’

  She halted and turned around. ‘How dare you?’ she cried. ‘How dare you act as if nothing has happened?’

  ‘Truly, Frau Maenhout, I . . .’

  Irma glanced from Frau Maenhout to Dr Hoppe and back again. She was asking herself whether she should try to intervene, or just stay out of it, when suddenly the doctor’s three little boys appeared at the doorway, each wrapped in a towel.