When Frau Maenhout had first started working for the doctor, she had been confident that she would soon be able to tell them apart with the naked eye. That had been her experience with all the twins she’d encountered in her classroom. But she’d had to admit that the doctor had been right when he’d told her right at the outset that she would never succeed, and even to this day she was unable to tell them apart.
‘All done!’
One of the boys put down his toothbrush and jumped off the stool. He turned and showed her his teeth by tugging at his upper lip and sticking out his lower jaw. Frau Maenhout automatically glanced at the child’s wristband, to see its colour. She was on her guard about this because that morning the boys had tried to switch places. They had tried it before, but she had always been able to tell which she was dealing with by the coloured wristbands. This morning they’d finally succeeded in getting the little catch open. Raphael had snapped his around Gabriel’s wrist, who had given his to Michael, and Raphael had in turn taken Michael’s. Their identity swap had not lasted long, however. Frau Maenhout hadn’t noticed it herself, but when she had asked Raphael a question, glancing at his wrist and addressing him as Michael, the real Michael had blurted out, ‘He’s Raphael. I’m Michael.’
Any other child would have yelled, ‘Ha, ha, gotcha!’ and screeched with laughter, but the boys had just nodded, as if to say, ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ Frau Maenhout understood that they were hoping she would mix up their names again, and so she had proceeded to do just that, several times, on purpose. When, at 10.30, she was getting ready to go home, the toddlers, putting their fingers to their lips, had whispered that she shouldn’t tell their father. She realised that they had not yet tried their trick on him.
‘Iz goo nuff?’ asked Michael now, not moving his lips.
She gave his teeth a cursory glance.
‘Well done, Michael. But there’s still a little toothpaste in the corner of your mouth.’
Raphael and Gabriel stepped down and, without needing to be asked, also showed her their teeth. Frau Maenhout nodded, satisfied.
‘You see, we can do it ourself,’ said Gabriel.
‘Soon you won’t be needing me any more,’ she said, winking at them. ‘OK, now get undressed. I’ll run the water for the bath.’ It took her a little while to get the temperature of the water right, and when she turned round again, she saw that Gabriel was the only one who’d managed to take off his jumper. Michael had got no further than taking one arm out of its sleeve and Raphael, struggling to pull his sweater over his head, was still fumbling with the back of it, his elbows sticking out in front of him. It was then that Frau Maenhout noticed something in the mirror she had not seen before.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing at Raphael’s bare back in the mirror.
‘Father did it,’ he said quickly.
She walked up to him and pulled off his jumper. There was a postage-stamp-sized piece of white gauze stuck to the skin with tape.
‘We weren’t allowed to,’ Raphael added.
‘What wasn’t allowed?’ she asked. Fear gripped her heart.
‘Our wriss-banns . . .’
She began to peel off the tape. Her hands were shaking. She felt a great rage taking hold of her, even though she still wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. Carefully she removed the piece of gauze. The skin beneath it was red and swollen, but she could clearly see three small black spots.
‘What in heaven’s name . . . ?’ she said. A terrible thought occurred to her. She rubbed at the spots, but they did not disappear, not even when she wet the tip of her finger with saliva. She looked at Gabriel and Michael, who were staring into space. Hoping that she was wrong, she went over to Gabriel, who was standing with his back to the wall. Taking him by the shoulders, she turned him around. On his back was a similar square of gauze. Carefully she peeled it off and what she had suspected proved to be all too true: his back had the same little black dots, but this time there were only two. For a moment she stood there perplexed. Oh, it can’t be, she thought to herself, yet at the same time she just knew that Dr Hoppe would indeed be capable of such a thing. She turned to Michael and although there was no need to examine him, she did it anyway, if only to fuel her indignation. She pulled off Michael’s patch and discovered a single spot, the black ink a permanent blot on the boy’s skin.
‘Stay here,’ she ordered the boys and ran out of the bathroom.
After Frau Maenhout’s outburst Wolfheim was gripped by an outbreak of gossip fever. Irma Nüssbaum was the first carrier, and she was responsible for spreading the virus, which found an easy target in the womenfolk, spreading from mouth to mouth like wildfire. For weeks Dr Hoppe’s waiting room was even more congested than usual, and even though the patients swore they were suffering from ringing in the ears, headaches, a stitch in the side or dizziness, it was clear that they were in truth suffering from one and the same stubborn ailment. Each one had her own explanation for Charlotte Maenhout’s tantrum, and would air her opinion, preferably while in the waiting room for all to hear, in the hope that her words would reach as far as the examination room or kitchen. Remarkably enough, it was never the doctor who was criticised. Odette Surmont suspected that the former teacher had grown severely depressed since her retirement; Kaat Blum, from Kirchstrasse, maintained that Charlotte Maenhout must be abusing the children herself, and Rosette Bayer said it had to be jealousy, adding that the doctor would have to be vigilant, and make sure his babysitter didn’t run off with his three sons. On one point, however, the ladies were all in agreement: Dr Hoppe ought to give Charlotte Maenhout her marching orders, and today wouldn’t be soon enough.
At the Café Terminus, where every night booze worked to loosen the wagging tongues, René Moresnet talked his customers into wagering how long Charlotte would keep her job. And every time the date passed on which one of the regulars had bet some money, the loser, to great general hilarity, would bang on the café window and shake his fist when Frau Maenhout was seen leaving the doctor’s house and crossing the village square for home. Father Kaisergruber kept his opinion on the whole affair to himself, but the very fact that he kept mum about it was proof enough, according to Jacob Weinstein, that his boss condoned the parishioners’ behaviour, for he had certainly not forgotten that it was Dr Hoppe’s miraculous potion that had cured his stomach ailment.
Frau Maenhout was not fired, however, and it was with growing disappointment that some of the ladies had to grant that her voice was heard ringing throughout the doctor’s house with growing volume and self-confidence - almost as if she were rubbing it in.
Besides all the fuss over Charlotte Maenhout, there was a significant amount of talk about the doctor’s children as well. Everyone wondered what was wrong with them, which led to more wild speculation. Léon Huysmans continued to maintain that it was elephantiasis, backing up his diagnosis with pictures from medical textbooks that showed people with disfigured features and disproportionately large bald heads. Some villagers even began to allude to the dreaded illness that was only referred to by its initial - ‘the big C’.
Dr Hoppe stuck to his story, however, saying that there really wasn’t anything to worry about; insinuating, even, that the flu virus that swept through the region practically every winter was considerably more dangerous than whatever it was that ailed his three little boys.
7
For four long months Frau Maenhout had hardly exchanged a word with Dr Hoppe. She had been meaning to talk to him about the children’s tattoos on several occasions, but since he had largely left his sons alone after that episode, save for some routine treatments, she had not brought up the subject again. The boys’ health did seem to be improving, and she was beginning to wonder if the doctor had been trying out new medications or techniques all this time. The children were still frequently tired, to be sure, and needed a lot more sleep than other children their age, but once awake they were far more communicative than before, as if they’d been shaken out of a persistent stupor. As a result, they were becoming ever more curious about everything that went on outside the four walls behind which, to all intents and purposes, they were being kept prisoner. But Charlotte always took care to keep her answers superficial, so as not to excite their longings too much.
‘What’s behind there?’ they had asked her on several occasions, pointing at the houses across the street.
‘More houses,’ she had replied.
‘Where are all those cars going?’ they had asked when there was yet another traffic jam in their street.
‘Up the mountain.’
‘Where’s the Netherlands?’
‘On the other side of the mountain.’
‘When are we going there?’
‘Oh, some day.’
So their world view was restricted, in the literal as well as the figurative sense, to what they could see from their window: the church, the street, houses, some trees, cars and people. Frau Maenhout wished she could take them out some day - even if it were only to the opposite side of the street, or the village square, it would be a start. And so, when spring came, she decided to mention the idea to the doctor. She didn’t think he would object, now that the children seemed to be doing so much better.
‘I would like to take Michael, Gabriel and Raphael outside one of these days,’ she told him.
‘What for?’
‘They have never been out of the house. In less than six months they’ll be three, and they’ve never seen anything of the world.’
‘Nor had I, at their age.’
His answer surprised her. It almost seemed as if he wished to impose his own childhood experience onto his sons. If that was the only thing stopping him from letting his children venture out, she really had to try to talk him out of such a silly idea. But it did make her wonder: why had the doctor not been permitted out of the house when he was little? But staring at his face, and - she couldn’t help it - at his scar, a startling answer occurred to her. She did not push the thought away; she wanted to know if she was right.
‘Are you afraid someone will see them?’ she asked. ‘Are you ashamed of your own children? Is that it?’
His reaction was almost imperceptible - for a split second he seemed to wince, as if he were biting down on something hard - but it was enough for her to know that she had touched a sore spot.
‘Is that what you think? Is that really what you think?’
‘I’m not the only one,’ she bluffed. ‘Everyone thinks so.’
He was quiet for a moment as he digested her words.
‘I am not ashamed of them,’ he then said. ‘What makes you think that? Why should I be ashamed?’
Because of the way they look. It was on the very tip of her tongue.
But what she said was, ‘In that case, there’s no reason to keep them indoors, is there?’
‘I don’t want anything to happen to them. It is absolutely essential that nothing happens to them.’
Overprotective. Was that it? Was that why he was so strict? She had had to deal with this kind of parent before: parents who lived around the corner from the school but still felt obliged to drive their child right up to the school gate, for example, or who would not allow their child to go on a class outing, or sent in a note listing the activities their daughter was not allowed to take part in during break. But she didn’t know any parents who kept their children at home all the time. Maybe the reason the doctor was so fearful was that he had already lost his wife.
She did not pose the question. It really wouldn’t have mattered one way or another, at that point. What she said was, ‘Then just let me take them out into the garden. Surely there’s very little that can happen to them there? And I’ll watch them like a hawk. I’ll be with them every second.’ Take it step by step, she thought.
‘Well, perhaps, but only if the weather’s good,’ the doctor said, probably because he didn’t want to give in to too much at once.
But to Charlotte, it was a victory of sorts.
Just as a fire will die out from lack of oxygen, so did the rumour epidemic that had kept the village abuzz for several weeks gradually peter out. There were still a few mothers who tried to keep at least a pilot light of gossip going, but even they were silenced when, on the first pleasant spring day of 1987, it was reported that the triplets had been spotted in the garden. Freddy Machon had discovered they were there when, walking his dog in the village square, he had suddenly heard children’s voices on the other side of the high hawthorn hedge that enclosed the doctor’s garden. He had crept closer and followed the hedge round until he found a gap through which he could peek into the garden. To prove it, he later showed the patrons of the Café Terminus the scratches on his hands made by the hawthorn’s nasty barbs. He reported that the three boys had been sitting at a little table in the shade of the old walnut tree. Charlotte Maenhout had been with them, peeling potatoes. The brothers were playing a card game. After placing the cards face down, in columns and rows, on the table, they had taken turns turning the cards up two at a time, in search of pairs.
‘Memory!’ cried René Moresnet, as if it were a quiz. ‘That’s the memory game.’
‘Could you tell if they were bald?’ Jacques Meekers wanted to know.
Freddy shook his head and said that all three had been wearing hats, the brims pulled down over their ears, shading their faces.
‘Naturally. Otherwise their heads would be terribly sunburnt,’ Meekers said, rubbing his own bald pate. ‘The sun can be treacherous this time of year. And what else? Did you see anything else?’
Freddy said that what had struck him most was the paleness of their skin. Their bare arms and legs - all three were wearing T-shirt and shorts - were as white as talcum powder. As if Frau Maenhout had rolled them in it before taking them outside.