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.
Bald. That was the first thing she noticed. The boys’ heads were completely bald. There wasn’t a single red hair to be seen, so that their skulls, already large to begin with, appeared even larger. Just under their thin skin was an intricate network of blue veins.
‘Like looking at three huge light bulbs,’ Irma later told her husband, who was pressing her for more details, but in vain, because before she’d had the chance to have a good look at their faces, Charlotte Maenhout had rushed over and gently herded the boys back into the corridor.
‘Come, you still have to have your baths,’ she said, leaving the room without looking back. Irma could hear her telling the boys that everything would be all right, and then it was quiet.
Opposite her Dr Hoppe leaned forward, rubbing his hands together as if nothing had happened. ‘Now, what can I do for you, Frau Nüssbaum?’
‘No I’m not gonna!’ Michael slammed the bathroom door shut and planted himself out in the hall, his arms crossed.
Frau Maenhout called out to him from the other side of the door, ‘Michael, don’t be silly. Come back here!’
She opened the door and stepped into the corridor. Michael was standing by the staircase, ready to hurtle downstairs if she came any nearer. It wasn’t the first time there had been a battle to get the boys into the bath, but they had never put up this much of a fight before.
‘Do it ourselves,’ said Raphael, who was now standing in the bathroom doorway with Gabriel, his hands tucked under his armpits to show that he wasn’t going to cooperate today either. Gabriel nodded and added, ‘Undress, wash, dry. Can do it all by ourselves.’
Michael nodded his agreement. ‘All by ourselves.’
‘Fine,’ said Frau Maenhout. ‘Have it your own way. Just this once. Come on, Michael, get inside.’
Michael followed his two brothers into the bathroom. Frau Maenhout shook her head. The boys had been going through a phase in which they wanted to know everything that was going on. Why this? Why that? How come? Every answer led to another question. They wanted to try to do everything by themselves, even though they weren’t really capable of it yet. She should be stricter with them, she knew, but she just wasn’t able to. She felt sorry for them.
She stepped back into the bathroom and saw that none of the three had begun to undress. ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ she asked.
‘First brush teeth!’ cried Raphael all of a sudden. He rushed to the sink, followed closely by the other two. They climbed up on a little bench so that they could reach the tap. Raphael doled out the toothbrushes that were the same colour as their bracelets.
Frau Maenhout could see their bald heads in the mirror. She remembered how she had wrongly berated their father when confronted for the first time with their baldness a couple of days after their first birthday. She had assumed that Dr Hoppe had shaved their heads, either because he was conducting some kind of test, or simply on a whim. But it turned out that their hair had fallen out by itself, all in a single night. As proof, Dr Hoppe had shown her three plastic bags full of hair, which he had gathered from the boys’ pillows. The boys had confirmed his story themselves.
‘It will come out all right in the end,’ the doctor had said, adding that the baldness was only of a temporary nature. Yet almost a year had gone by and still their hair had not grown back. The doctor was also constantly subjecting his sons to all kinds of tests that he hoped might throw some light on the problem. These included routine check-ups, such as listening to their hearts and lungs, taking their blood pressure and testing their reflexes, but also other kinds of procedure: for example, he would take skin samples, using a metal implement to scrape off a layer, or draw blood from their scrawny little arms with a big hollow needle - unpleasant ordeals the children told her about matter-of-factly, as if they had simply witnessed the treatment instead of undergoing it themselves. Indeed, on that score she had sadly seen little change in the past few months. They still didn’t seem to know how to react to things, or else - and Frau Maenhout wasn’t completely sure which was the case - perhaps they did, but were simply incapable of showing their feelings. The upshot was that they were still extremely unresponsive, except when disinclined to do something, which was happening more and more frequently. Then all three would show themselves to be extraordinarily stubborn and Frau Maenhout suspected that this was their way of showing they were afraid.
Looking at the three boys in the mirror again, she wondered if they could tell that their scars seemed to stand out more sharply in the mirror than they did in reality, making their deformity even more noticeable. They must be able to tell just by looking at each other, Charlotte thought. That was one big advantage of looking so much alike: if they wanted to see what they looked like in other people’s eyes, they had only to gaze at each other. But this was a disadvantage as well, since looking at his brothers would immediately confront each boy with his own disfigurement. There was no escaping it. Frau Maenhout wasn’t really sure if they were conscious of the fact that they looked odd, because they hardly saw any other children or adults. She had never discussed it with them, and their father would certainly never mention it.
Even though they had changed quite a bit in the past year, the brothers’ resemblance to each other was still uncanny. They were all three equally short and skinny, whereas their heads were still abnormally large. They also had the same number of crooked teeth growing in a similar pattern in their mouths, and the scar, too, had grown identically. Whether from close up or far away, not even a kink or squiggle in the veins on their skulls showed the slightest variation; they all had the exact same sickle-shaped vein starting behind the right ear and running right round the back of the skull.