The doctor begged his patients to excuse the inconvenience and said he had not had the opportunity to unpack everything, so that he was frequently obliged to leave the room during the consultation to fetch something he needed, such as the blood-pressure gauge or some disinfectant.
Dr Hoppe was invariably attentive and amiable, and never asked for payment, which made him - inadvertently perhaps - even more popular with the villagers. They certainly flocked to the surgery at all hours of the day, from as early as half past six in the morning until late in the evening. Sometimes they even rang in the middle of the night, like the time when Eduard Mantels of 20 Napoleonstrasse just couldn’t get to sleep, even after two cups of linden tea laced with rum, and had roused the doctor from his bed for a sleeping pill.
4
One fine Saturday in July, some weeks after George Bayer’s resuscitation, a sign went up on the gate of the doctor’s house posting surgery hours: from 9 to 11 a.m. and 6.30 to 8 p.m., weekdays only. And if anyone needed to see the doctor outside those times, an appointment would have to be made by telephone. This caused a fair amount of indignation, for some of the villagers thought a doctor ought to be always at his patients’ beck and call, but on the whole most condoned the doctor’s decision, especially since he was having the waiting and consultation rooms refurbished. The doctor delegated this job to Florent Keuning, who often moonlighted as a handyman. Florent gave the walls a fresh coat of paint, the doors and windows too, and sanded and varnished the wooden floors. The rest of the house was also in need of all sorts of repairs. Hinges and latches had to be oiled, windows and doors that were sticking needed adjustment, there were damp spots on walls and ceilings to be patched, and plumbing leaks to be soldered, so that altogether Florent had at least four weeks of work ahead of him.
During the month he worked at the house, he’d catch a glimpse of the triplets from time to time. Ever since the doctor had shown his children to the patrons of the Café Terminus, they had not been seen again. Nor did anyone hear them crying, even though the villagers who attended the surgery were particularly alert to that possibility.
‘Are the children always so quiet?’ they asked the doctor on several occasions.
‘They’re very calm babies,’ was his usual reply. ‘They’re hardly any trouble.’
Florent was asked the same question when he told the patrons of the Café Terminus that he had seen the little boys.
‘It’s true, they were ever so quiet,’ he confirmed. ‘They were sitting in those little rocking chairs - you know the kind - just staring off into space, as if they were trying to work out some complicated problem. They didn’t even look up when I hammered a nail into the wall right next to them. I don’t think they even noticed me.’
‘Valium, I expect,’ said René Moresnet.
‘Oh, come off it,’ his daughter broke in; ‘maybe they were just a bit under the weather, or exhausted or something. You always assume the worst.’
Maria wanted to know if the boys still looked so weird. What she really meant was ugly, but she didn’t say so out loud.
‘Their hair is an even brassier colour than the first time we saw them,’ the handyman replied. ‘Not the doctor’s kind of garish red - it’s more of a rusty colour, as if they’d had their heads dunked into a jar of red lead.’
‘And what about their . . .’ said Jacques Meekers, pointing to his upper lip.
‘The work of a clumsy joiner. You know, the kind that tries to fill a crack in the wood with some putty and sawdust. A half-arsed job, if you ask me.’
‘And do they really know how to talk?’ Maria wanted to know.
Florent shrugged. ‘Not that I’ve heard, anyway.’
‘Just as I thought,’ said Maria.
Over the next few days Florent Keuning was often stopped on the street. Some of the ladies were curious to know if the doctor could manage the housework all by himself.
‘I think so. It’s always neat as a pin. And he’s always asking me to keep the dust down.’
‘But does he change the babies’ nappies often enough?’ asked Irma Nüssbaum, the mother of two adult sons.
‘And are their clothes clean?’ asked Helga Barnard, who had raised three daughters.
‘Does he test the milk first, to check if it isn’t too hot?’ asked Odette Surmont, grandmother of six.
‘Oh, I couldn’t tell you,’ said Florent; ‘that isn’t a man’s business, is it?’
‘See what we mean? It can’t be easy for him without having a woman around. The doctor really needs someone to help him,’ they decided.
One after another, the ladies swiftly made good on their words. Feigned spells of the migraine led to inquiries about whether the doctor needed a housekeeper or a babysitter; he thanked each and every one of them for their kind offer, maintaining that he could manage by himself. He did, however, accept any tips they offered with evident interest - what to do about teething pains, for example.
‘Have them chew on a crust of frozen bread, Doctor,’ Odette Surmont advised him, while Helga Barnard swore that in the case of her two daughters raw onion rings had done the trick.
So it was with some consternation that Irma Nüssbaum, Helga Barnard and Odette Surmont found out from Florent Keuning a few days later that Charlotte Maenhout was going to be looking after the doctor’s brood. The three women, on porch-sweeping patrol late that afternoon, had gathered at the corner of Napoleonstrasse and Kirchstrasse, and there they ambushed the handyman, who had just finished his last day of work at the doctor’s and was on his way to spend his nice big tip at the Café Terminus. The news was dire enough to stop their brooms in mid-air, whereas the ladies themselves exploded in indignation. It was true that, as a former schoolteacher, Frau Maenhout had some experience educating children - she had taught the reception class at the Gemmerich schoolhouse for many years - but she had never had any children of her own, to say nothing of a husband. So how could she be expected to know how to look after a bunch of little tykes?
Helga asked the handyman if he was absolutely sure, whereupon he told the ladies how that morning, as he had been giving one of the doors a final coat of paint, he had peeked through the crack and seen Dr Hoppe showing Frau Maenhout into the kitchen, where the little boys were seated as usual like rag dolls in their rocking chairs.
‘Was it really Charlotte Maenhout?’ Irma promptly broke in. ‘From Aachenerstrasse?’
Florent nodded confidently, and said he’d recognise Charlotte Maenhout from a kilometre away, which nobody could refute, since there was no other woman in the village with as hefty a build as the sixty-eight-year-old retired schoolteacher who had come to live in Wolfheim three years ago. She was tall - one metre eighty-four - and her broad back was hunched from years of hovering over her young pupils, guiding their inexperienced hands in the art of writing. Her bowed back caused her neck to sink down between her knobbly shoulders, and in order to lengthen it, she always wore her long silver hair in a bun at the nape, or twisted it up with a wooden hairpin. Another conspicuous thing about her was her generous bosom, or, as Florent described it, her ‘stack of wood at the front door’.
‘What did she say? What did the doctor say?’ Helga wanted to know.
‘First the doctor introduced his children to her,’ the handyman answered, pinching his nose to mimic Dr Hoppe’s voice: ‘This is Raphael. He has the green bracelet. That is Gabriel, with the yellow bracelet. And the one with the blue bracelet is Michael.’
Florent went on in a normal voice: ‘They have these little plastic bracelets around their wrists. Like newborns in hospital, you know? And then the doctor turned to his sons and told them that Frau Maenhout would be coming to look after them.’
The three ladies shook their heads and Irma Nüssbaum said aloud what the other two were thinking: ‘Why her, in God’s name? She isn’t even from around here.’
‘Wait,’ the handyman broke in, ‘because that wasn’t all. The doctor had just finished telling the children that she’d be looking after them when all three boys raised their heads at the same time - and they winked at her.’
The ladies looked at him open-mouthed.
‘That’s what it seemed like to me anyway,’ he added, watering down his testimony somewhat.
‘And then? What did Frau Maenhout do then?’ asked Odette.
‘Nothing. She asked the doctor what time he wanted her to be there and the doctor said 8.30. Then she left. And now I must be going myself, ladies. I have urgent business spending a nice big tip!’
He forged his way out of the circle of muttering women and started walking off, but turned back one last time. ‘The doctor pays well. I don’t think Frau Maenhout will regret her decision.’
Then he turned on his heels and made straight for the Terminus. Behind him there was a brief silence, and then the tongues started wagging again.
Half past eight the next morning found Charlotte Maenhout striding resolutely along Napoleonstrasse. Passing the churchyard, she nodded at Jacob Weinstein, who was weeding the paths; he stuck his chin in the air by way of greeting. From across the street, Irma Nüssbaum, who had been at her post behind the kitchen curtain for a good half-hour, watched her approach. The former schoolteacher had flung a white crocheted shawl around her broad shoulders and every now and then the thick lenses of her horn-rimmed glasses would catch the rising sun. She was wearing her hair pinned up, and Irma guessed that the red fabric sticking out of the wicker basket on her left arm must be an apron. When Frau Maenhout rang the bell at the doctor’s gate, she glanced over her shoulder, showing her face, its roundness in marked contrast to the angular build of her heavy-set body. Her gleaming eyes wore their usual amiable expression, which had always put the little children she taught at ease from their very first day at school.
When she heard the doctor’s front door being unlocked, Frau Maenhout turned forward again. Irma saw Dr Hoppe in the doorway, awkwardly raising his hand in greeting. He was already wearing his lab coat, but had not buttoned it. With long strides he walked to the gate and opened it, inviting Frau Maenhout to come inside and leaving the gate unlatched for the patients who would be streaming in over the course of the next two hours.
Following the doctor inside, Charlotte Maenhout couldn’t help recalling the conversation of the day before. She had gone to see the doctor about her raised blood pressure, and Dr Hoppe had made use of the occasion to give her a thorough check-up and ask all sorts of questions for the medical file that he began for every new patient. He’d asked about previous complaints, about any surgery or illnesses or abnormalities in the family. He had also wanted to know about her lifestyle, her eating habits and whether she drank or smoked. Her answers had met with his approval, but she had not admitted to him that she had a sweet tooth. Then he had asked if she was married or had any children - ‘The doctor is looking for a new wife,’ Odette Surmont told her friends after he had asked her the same question on her first visit - whereupon she had said, smiling, that forty years ago, a teacher at a convent school was expected to remain single and live in, and that now she was too old and too wise to take a husband. The doctor hadn’t seemed to get the joke. But at least he now knew not to try anything with her, she had thought at the time. She didn’t find him at all attractive; on the contrary, she was even slightly repelled by him. Never having seen him before, the moment she laid eyes on him she had decided that Martha Bollen was not exaggerating when she’d said that the doctor had been last in line on the day that God was doling out good looks. The hair on his head, on his arms and on the back of his hands was the colour of baby carrots. His beard was darker, sprouting from his chin and jaw like a rusty tangle of barbed wire, with sparser tufts of hair growing on his cheeks and the region just below his mouth. Since the scar of his cleft lip was hairless, it looked as if someone had taken a razor and roughly carved a strip out of his moustache. And then there was his nasal, monotone voice; the consonants normally produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth, such as the ‘t’ and ‘l’, almost vanishing into the mouth cavity, so that they were barely audible. Only his sober clothes - brown corduroy trousers and a beige shirt - were unremarkable.
As the doctor had examined Charlotte he had been punctilious about telling her what he was about to do, asking her direct questions all the while. So it had turned out that he was most interested to hear that she could speak French, German and Dutch.
‘Niederlandisch,’ he had said, and then he’d asked if she knew a song in that language called ‘The little flowers nodded off. The lovely smells had worn them out.’ He’d said the words with a strong accent, but she’d known which song he meant.
‘It’s called “The Sandman”.’
‘What?’
‘ “The Sandman”. Das Sandmännchen,’ she’d clarified.
As long as he doesn’t ask me to sing it, she’d prayed, but he hadn’t. He had asked some more questions, including about her former profession. Again he’d showed great interest when she told him that she had spent almost her entire career teaching first years at Gemmenich and had initially been in charge of the nursery school. It had not immediately dawned on her what the doctor was getting at, so when he had suddenly asked her point-blank if she would babysit for his three little boys during surgery hours, she had been so bowled over that she hadn’t been able to think of what to say. Nor had he waited for her answer before showing her his children. The doctor had led her into the kitchen, where the three little ones had been sitting in their rocking chairs.
She had been taken aback, despite having heard the many stories circulating about the children. They looked the way a child might have drawn them: the proportions weren’t right. Their heads were too big in relation to their bodies and the eyes were much too big for their heads. That was what she had noticed first.