She thought she was having a chorionic-villi test. At least, that was what Dr Hoppe had told her. The test would allow him to see if the twins in her stomach had Down’s syndrome. If they were mongoloid. She’d never heard of this test before, but he told her it was relatively new.
The doctor had carefully explained that he would pass some narrow tongs through the vagina and cervix to take a sample of placental tissue. She might feel a little pain, but he would mitigate that by administering a topical anaesthetic. By examining the tissue sample’s chromosomes he would be able to determine whether both children were healthy. Or not.
‘And if they aren’t . . . ?’
‘In that case we’ll see,’ the doctor had replied, and quickly changed the subject. He talked about the risks associated with the test. There was a small chance of a miscarriage. Later on. A very small chance. Nothing to worry about.
The woman remembered all this as she lay down on the examination table, slipping her ankles into the stirrups. At the doctor’s request, her friend had stayed in the waiting room. It wouldn’t take long, he had reassured her. They would have preferred to be together during the procedure, but neither had the nerve to protest.
‘You’ll just feel a little pinch,’ she heard him say.
She could not see him. Her stomach and nether parts were hidden by a green sheet; the doctor was parked on a stool on the other side.
The sting sent a mild shock through her entire body. When it eased, she gave a sigh of relief. Then, suddenly, she felt something cold on her stomach. The gel for the ultrasound, she realised. She couldn’t see the ultrasound’s screen either. But she didn’t mind, because she didn’t really want to see what was happening inside her. The sounds she heard were bad enough: the buzzing and clicking of the ultrasound, the clatter of the doctor rummaging through a drawer of metal instruments, the creaking of his stool, his breath.
Now he was moving the probe across her belly. When he stopped at a certain spot and held it there, she wanted to ask him if he could see them - the twins. And if they were OK. But before she could say anything, he said, ‘Please hold your breath for a few seconds. It won’t take long.’
She took in a few gulps of air and clamped her lips shut. Notwithstanding the local anaesthetic, she could feel something cold entering her. She balled her fists and dug her nails deep into the palms of her hands.
He began moving the probe over her stomach again, in small, circular motions. His breathing was agitated. He was inhaling and exhaling through his mouth, which made it sound as if he were panting after some exertion. Then his hand stopped again.
It’s going to happen now, she thought, and clenched her jaw.
Nothing did happen, however. Perhaps she simply hadn’t felt it, she thought at first. But a few seconds later, when she finally had to gasp for air, it occurred to her that she couldn’t even hear him panting any more. She waited a few seconds more, not wanting to startle him, and then asked hoarsely, ‘Doctor, is something wrong?’
There was no response.
‘Doctor?’
Then suddenly everything happened at once. She heard a stool creak, and at the same time the probe was lifted from her stomach and the cold instrument was pulled out of her. There was some clattering of dishes, and then she saw the doctor rush out of the room.
He couldn’t do it. He had been this close. But just as he’d been about to cut the conjoined foetuses apart, in order to pull them out of the womb piece by piece, something had stopped him - as if someone had grabbed his wrist and yanked his arm away.
Then he had stormed out, mortified, leaving the woman lying there in that uncomfortable position. He darted into the bathroom, peeled off his latex gloves and washed his hands for a long time. He stared into the mirror. Because he had not taken the time to shave all week, his jaw sported a sparse beard and he was suddenly struck by how much he looked like his father.
He went on staring at himself in the mirror. At the red hair. At the nose. At the scar on his upper lip.
And it was then, in that very instant, that the idea must have sprung into his mind. It wasn’t more than a flicker, but it was enough to spark the fire that would shortly turn into a blaze.
When he finally returned to the woman’s side, he had no idea how long he had left her lying there. She had stayed in the exact same position, as if she’d been afraid that if she stirred, even slightly, it might somehow harm the twins.
As soon as he walked in, she asked him what was going on. He answered that he had felt faint. It wasn’t even a lie.
Then she asked him if everything was still all right. And if the procedure had worked. He lied twice in reply.
Helping her off the table, he told her to expect the results in a week. He had already told himself that at that point he would tell her the truth about what was growing inside her. Not about what he had been on the point of doing. That didn’t matter any more. He was already beyond that, in his mind. Way beyond that.
The women returned three days later, visibly shaken, and after another ultrasound there was nothing he could do but confirm their worst fears. One of them burst into tears, and the whole story came pouring out in one breathless rush, to make the doctor understand that there was nothing they could have done to prevent it.
It had started with a bad stomach ache, and she had sat on the toilet and started straining, she said. She had not had a bowel movement in days and her intestines had suddenly just let go, in one lengthy, drawn-out convulsion. There had been a stench she had never smelled before, which had made her gag, and before wiping herself she had flushed the toilet, to make sure whatever had been inside her was expelled down the drain as quickly as possible.
Did he understand?
Afterwards she had wiped herself and flushed the toilet a second time, still without looking, her eyes clenched shut, because she was so disgusted at herself. Then she’d stood up, and the pain in her belly had been as bad as before, and that was why she thought her bowels weren’t quite empty yet, and so she had pushed again, because she thought the pain would go away if she just managed to . . .
Did the doctor understand?
And she had had another bowel movement and, again, the overpowering stench, and in the end, in the end, it was possible she might have felt something else leaving her body, out of another orifice, but then, everything down there hurt so much that she really didn’t know what was coming out of where, and so she had flushed it all down the drain, because she never thought that there could have been . . .
‘Do you understand what I’m telling you, Doctor ?’
Again she had cleaned herself with reams of toilet paper, and she had flushed all the paper in several batches too, with her head turned away, still revolted at herself, and then she had stood up to pull up her pants and had noticed that the pain was gone, and it was only then, only then that she’d seen the blood pouring down the insides of her thighs, and had looked down at the toilet bowl where everything that had come out of her with such force had now vanished.
Did he . . . ?
He did understand, he assured her.
Who had been deceived, when all was said and done?
Victor did not ask himself that question. It was no longer of any importance to him. The women had scarcely left his office when he took the first step to set his next plan in motion. He picked up the phone and dialled Rex Cremer’s number.
‘Dr Cremer, this is Victor Hoppe. I promised I would call you back.’
‘I am happy you called, Dr Hoppe.’
‘Do you remember that we talked about God, the last time? You said that I had beaten God at his own game?’
‘Certainly I remember.’
‘Well, I have changed my mind.’
‘So you think you have?’
‘I mean that I would like to try something else.’
‘Something else than what?’
‘Than creating offspring of exclusively female or exclusively male parentage. In order to truly beat God at his own game, one has to break entirely new ground.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘God created man in his likeness.’
‘Right, and from Adam’s rib he created woman . . .’
‘Quite so. It is eminently possible to create a woman using a man’s rib. Perfectly possible. That doesn’t strike me as such a difficult thing to do. If you took a bone cell, sucked out its nucleus and replaced it with the nucleus of—’
‘Dr Hoppe, I was only joking. Where are you headed with this?’
‘...’
‘Dr Hoppe?’
‘Cloning.’
‘Cloning?’
‘Cloning. Creating an identical genetic copy of—’
‘I know what is meant by “cloning”, but what would you want to clone?’
‘Mice. For example.’
‘That’s impossible. It’s impossible to clone mammals, from a biological standpoint.’
‘It’s just a question of technique. It has to be possible, with the right equipment. It ought to be even simpler, in principle, than my last experiment.’
‘I don’t know about this. You are springing something on me I wasn’t prepared for. We’ll have to discuss this another time. Let’s set a date, shall we? Then—’
‘Tomorrow. I’ll come by tomorrow.’
‘As you like. Ten o’clock? Is that convenient?’
‘Ten o’clock.’
One day Johanna Hoppe would not get out of bed. She refused to eat and left her bed only to go to the toilet. She refused to get up the next day too, and the ones after that. Her husband, who did make some attempt to talk her out of it but was ordered to leave her alone every time he tried, finally gave up, and two friends who stopped by on the third day had also left tut-tutting. At first there were frequent bouts of weeping, but these gradually petered out as the light in her eyes began to dim. There was just one final flicker of animation: a temper tantrum of sorts, when she just laid into herself, pummelling her head with her fists. After that came a permanent collapse. All trace of emotion vanished from her face, and nothing moved except the beating of her heart.
It didn’t really surprise anybody in Wolfheim.
‘She’s never got over it.’
‘The child’s lunacy has been working its way back into her own blood.’
‘After the kid was born, she never allowed Dr Hoppe to touch her again.’
‘She bathed five times a day.’
‘The light was never turned off at night.’
‘The devil takes his own.’
‘Let us pray.’
Nor did it surprise anyone that the doctor had taken his wife’s care upon himself, instead of putting her in a nursing home. After all, he was the one best qualified to assess her condition, best equipped to dispense medication and to give her a blood transfusion if necessary.
‘And it’s what’s best for her,’ he said over and over again, just as he’d always claimed that it was best for his son to be with the Clares.
Many of the villagers were surprised, therefore, to find out one day that the doctor had brought the child home.
‘Surely he’s got enough on his hands, taking care of his wife?’
‘She’d never have stood for it, anyway.’
He made no effort to keep his son hidden from the villagers, however. He took the boy along when he went shopping, had him wait in the car when he made house calls and occasionally took him for a walk in the village, nodding at everyone as if nothing were amiss.
Of course everyone was immediately struck by the uncanny resemblance between father and son - the hair, the mouth, the eyes - so that people had to wonder if the boy had inherited any traits at all from his mother. But what struck the villagers even more than the resemblance was that there was something so obviously wrong with the boy.
‘He doesn’t speak.’
‘He doesn’t laugh.’
‘He’s a simpleton.’
Nor did most people understand why the doctor had taken him out of the mental institution, especially after Father Kaisergruber, who had just been appointed pastor of Wolfheim that year, let slip that there was still evil in the boy. He understood that to be the case from talking to the abbess of the cloister. Whenever anyone discreetly questioned the doctor about it, however, the answer was always the same: ‘It was a mistake. Victor did not belong there.’
The villagers would nod sympathetically to his face, but no one really believed him. And the more frequently the boy was seen in public, the more people became convinced that there was definitely something about the boy that was more evil than good.
Karl Hoppe was aware that people were talking and would have liked to show them that there was nothing wrong with his son, but unfortunately there wasn’t much to show. Not only did Victor not speak a word; he seldom showed any emotion. Nevertheless, he took the boy with him everywhere he went, in the hope that contact with normal folks would make Victor open up. What it really came down to was that Victor would have to be reborn. That was how he pictured it.
Of the reading ability Sister Marthe had told him about there was still no sign. Victor would leaf through the picture books his father gave him, but that was all. When asked a question, the boy would just shrug his shoulders or else not react at all.
Karl remained convinced that one day he would see a change. It’s a matter of trust, he kept repeating to himself. That was what Sister Marthe had urged him to remember. After all, how could he expect the boy to forgive him straight away, after what he had done to him for almost five years? That was another reason why he persisted in talking to his son as if nothing were wrong. As he had also been talking to his wife, ever since her descent into a permanent catatonic state. Even though he never got any response, in the past few months he had told her more than he’d ever done in all the preceding years.