‘I wasn’t aware that he’d hurt his back as well,’ she said.
The doctor nodded. ‘Oh, I removed a piece of one of his kidneys.’
‘Why - was it damaged in his fall?’
‘No. What makes you think it that?’
His answer flabbergasted her. He wasn’t even pretending - to him there clearly just wasn’t anything wrong with what he had done.
‘What makes me think that?’ she said, trying to keep calm. ‘You removed a piece of his kidney. Surely that’s something you don’t do for no reason.’
‘No. I did have my reasons.’
‘You had your reasons? That’s it? Because you had your reasons? I don’t believe you. There was no reason. I don’t believe you any more.’
He didn’t react the way she expected him to. She would have thought he’d either fire her on the spot, or to try to convince her he was right. But he seemed quite upset.
‘You don’t believe me, Frau Maenhout? Have you, too, lost faith in me? I have always trusted you and now you’re telling me this? Why? Surely I’ve . . .’
He’s wallowing in self-pity, she thought. He’s trying to make me feel sorry for him. Don’t fall for it.
‘I refuse to listen to your stories any longer!’ she said brusquely, although her legs were trembling. ‘Everything you’ve tried - none of it has worked. None of it! It’s about time that you faced the truth. You wanted to save their lives, but all you’ve done is push them closer to death. That’s the only thing you’ve accomplished!’
She wanted neither to see nor to hear his reaction. She simply rushed from the room, afraid that she’d burst into tears right then and there, thereby showing him her weakness.
She did in fact burst into tears a little while later, in the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror and asking herself why she had let him get away with it for so long.
10
Seven days. From Monday until Sunday. That was how long Frau Maenhout had given herself. To teach the children just a few more things. To enjoy being with them just a little longer. To say goodbye. Seven days. After that, she would go for help. Another doctor. A specialist. Perhaps even the police. She wasn’t completely sure about that yet, but what she was sure about was that as soon as she did it she would lose the children.
Giving them up. Delivering them into good hands. That was how she qualified it to herself. It would make it easier to say goodbye.
In those seven days she would also have to try to collect some concrete evidence, proof that the doctor was abusing his sons. For it wasn’t only his good name (to which many a villager would testify) she was up against, but also the doctor’s own explanations, for he was bound to contend that every procedure and test had been necessary. For the sake of their health, he’d say. To save their lives.
She did not inform the boys. She just told them that by the end of the week their first year of school would be over and that she still had to teach them a few things.
‘And what happens after this school year’s over, then?’ asked Michael.
She didn’t want to lie to them, so she had to be careful what she said. ‘The next school year will begin. I’m sure it’ll be even more fun than this one. A lot more fun.’
One of the things she had yet to teach them was the Lord’s Prayer. And she had not yet told them about Jesus. She hadn’t found the opportunity.
The boys had no trouble learning the Lord’s Prayer by heart - in both French and German. They did have some trouble mastering the sign of the cross, however. They couldn’t remember the sequence of the gestures, nor whether they were supposed to start on the left side or the right.
She told them to cross themselves every night before bed, and to say the Lord’s Prayer. The whole thing was exciting to them.
‘And Father isn’t supposed to know, right?’
She had told them he wasn’t, but in fact it didn’t really matter any more. She didn’t want to confuse the boys, however, nor did she like to involve them in her quarrel with the doctor.
Also, since there was no way round the subject, she told the boys about death, despite the trouble and grief this cost her. ‘Children who die’, she told them, ‘change into angels, and fly straight up to heaven.’ And with an arm as heavy as lead she drew an angel on the blackboard.
‘Where is heaven? What road do we take to get there?’ Michael asked.
She thought it rather a sick joke that the boys were named after the archangels - as if the doctor had known, and had chosen the names on purpose.
‘Heaven’s up there.’ She pointed at the blue sky. ‘You just fly straight up, and you’ll get there automatically.’
She also explained that heaven was like a country without borders, and that it had an endless river flowing through it. An enormous ship, with God at the helm, sailed along that river; and there was a seat reserved on it for everyone who got to heaven.
‘Will we be allowed to steer the ship too, sometimes?’ Gabriel asked.
‘I think so.’
‘I wish we were already dead,’ he sighed, but fortunately she didn’t have a chance to dwell on this because Raphael immediately came up with another question: ‘How about grown-ups? Do they go to heaven too?’
‘Only the ones who’ve been good all their lives.’
‘Then you’re going to heaven too,’ Raphael said.
‘And Father isn’t,’ Gabriel promptly added.
So they had got her to smile in the end.
For a moment she had felt envious of the fact that young children only see people as either good or bad, and wished that she were still at that stage herself. Then she could just have relegated the doctor to the bad camp a long time ago. As it was, she had been too considerate of his feelings, of his grief or despair or helplessness, even though he had never openly shown those feelings.
As the end of the week approached, she found it increasingly more difficult to see the boys without betraying her emotions. In the meantime, she had made a decision: she would call in the police. Any doctor or nurse would promptly be shown the door by Dr Hoppe, meaning that they wouldn’t get to see the boys, and she thought it was crucial that they be seen by an outsider. Anyone who laid eyes on them would see that they urgently needed specialised help.
But then something intervened, something Frau Maenhout hadn’t counted on. She had hardly seen the doctor all week. It was as if he had been avoiding her since their last encounter. When she arrived in the morning he would already be at his desk or in the lab, and he’d still be there when she left. On Friday morning, however, he suddenly appeared before her.
‘I have to go away,’ he said. ‘To a conference in Frankfurt. I’m leaving tomorrow morning. A taxi is coming to pick me up at 5.30.’
That was all he had said. He hadn’t even asked her if she would come and babysit, but she assumed that that was what he’d meant.
It was for the children’s sake - that was what Frau Maenhout told herself. The boys had been dreaming for so long of seeing just a little bit of the world, and now that the opportunity had presented itself, since their father was going to be away for a few days, she would see to it that their dream was turned into reality: she would take them for a small outing, up to the three-border junction. It was the last thing she’d be able to do for them. If everything went off without a hitch, nobody need ever find out. At least Michael, Gabriel and Raphael would have something to remember in the time remaining to them. Besides, if the birthday party hadn’t ended in disaster, she’d have sought the doctor’s permission to take his sons to the three borders anyway.
She had not been up there herself since her retirement. Before that, she used to take her class on an outing to the top of the Vaalserberg every year, and before that, as a child, she had visited often. Back then it had never been very crowded - there had been no observation tower - but over the years the three borders had drawn more and more tourists, as evidenced by the traffic clogging Wolfheim’s streets. Cars and coaches streaming through the village from morning till night had to squeeze under the narrow bridge at the end of Napoleonstrasse, and sometimes the traffic jam stretched all the way back to the doctor’s house. After the bridge came the Route des Trois Bornes, which led the vehicles up a steep incline to the top of the Vaalserberg, the highest point in the Netherlands. Up there, a stone with the inscription ‘322.5 metres above sea level’ was planted in the middle of a quadrangle of cobblestones. Just behind this, a row of ancient boundary markers sometimes led tourists to the erroneous conclusion that this was the site of the three-border junction. The actual intersection of the Belgian, Dutch and German frontiers was a dozen or so metres further south, marked by a small cement column in the shape of an obelisk. The letters ‘B’, ‘D’ and ‘NL’ had been carved into the sides of the column to show the tourists shuffling around it which of the three countries they were in at any given moment.
The Boudewijntoren was another big attraction. This tower, situated on Belgian soil but very close to the three borders, measured thirty-four metres high. A metal stair led up to the platform at the top, from which you had a great view of the entire region. The climb to the top had always been the highlight of the class outing. Unfortunately, since the tower would still be closed at such an early hour, Frau Maenhout wouldn’t be able to climb it with the triplets. It was a shame, because the view from the top would finally have given some three-dimensional perspective to their map of Europe.
On the eve of the doctor’s departure she worked into the night, rustling up a disguise for them. She didn’t want the boys to be recognised if they happened to bump into anyone. The disguise was also intended to make them less nervous and boost their self-confidence. She had noticed that all three were much bolder when playing dressing up: they actually transformed themselves into the characters they were pretending to be. Which was understandable, since it was the only way of escaping their father’s iron control.
Once in bed, she couldn’t fall asleep. She kept rehashing the past: she had been with the boys practically every day for three years; and yet it seemed as if everything had happened in the space of just a couple of days. That was on account of the routine, she thought to herself. Many of the days had just blended into one another. Her forty-five years as a teacher were similarly compressed in her mind into just a few months. Still, just as she had missed the routine of teaching after her retirement, she was going to miss this routine as well. And of course she would miss the three boys.
She had come to love them, of that she was sure; yet she had never really come to know any of them. They had shown little in the way of a distinct personality in all these years. Not one of them - neither Michael, nor Gabriel, nor Raphael - had ever stood out from the rest by being particularly mischievous, or bashful, or cheerful. Hannah had once opined that their brains were probably connected to each other by some invisible thread, and that seemed to be the case with their personalities too. All three were introverts - quite curious, to be sure, about what went on around them, but on the whole they had remained largely withdrawn. Like their father, she thought ruefully - except that he had also lost his sense of wonder, or perhaps he’d never had one. Had she been given more time, she might have been able to get the three boys to blossom, to bring out what was hidden deep inside, so that they would not grow up to be like their father.
If she’d had more time . . . With that thought, she fell asleep.
When she arrived at the house the next morning, a few minutes before 5.30, Dr Hoppe was just coming out. The taxi had not yet arrived. She felt her heart pounding. The doctor did not greet her, but she decided to act as if nothing had happened between them, and asked, ‘Are the boys awake?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied, opening the gate.
‘May I go in to them?’ she asked.
‘If you like. You have the key.’ He stood peering down the street.
‘What time will you be back?’ she asked. ‘So that I’ll know when to get dinner ready.’ It was a crafty subterfuge, but his answer disappointed her.
‘Don’t worry about me for dinner.’
‘Right, well then,’ she muttered and without wasting another glance on him she walked up the path to the door as she heard the sound of a car approaching.
‘Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, wake up!’
She flipped on the light in the bedroom. Other than some muttering there was no reaction.
‘Wake up. We’re going on a trip.’
Blinking their big eyes, the three boys immediately sat up in bed. She took a deep breath and scrutinised their faces one by one.
‘What did you say, Frau Maenhout?’ Michael asked, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands.
‘We’re going on a trip. I’m going to give you a task.’
‘A task?’
Then she showed them the costumes. Three capes, three hats and three cardboard masks. The capes and hats were in three different colours. Red. Green. Blue. She had painted the masks a silvery-grey.
‘Today you’re the three musketeers. Knights in the service of the King.’
‘What king?’ Raphael asked.
‘King Boudewijn of Belgium. And he has given his musketeers a task. You’re going to have to capture the three-border junction.’
The words were sinking in rather slowly.
‘You’d better get up quickly, before the King changes his mind,’ she added. And in the blink of an eye all three were standing to attention beside their beds.
As soon as they were dressed, she made them put on their masks. She had cut two slits for the eyes and a hole for the mouth. Next came the hats and the capes. They stroked the fabric as if it were rich velvet.
‘There’s still something missing,’ Frau Maenhout said, and with a grand flourish she drew three wooden swords from her bag. ‘First you’ll have to be knighted.’
Three pairs of eyes stared at the swords through the slits in the masks.