9
Most of the villagers who had young children were understanding of the extreme measures the doctor took the morning after the birthday party. Some of the older ones brought up the death of Dr Hoppe’s father, albeit in the most veiled terms, and suggested that the sad lot of the doctor’s own sons provided the doctor with enough justification for his actions. Others weren’t so sure, but the one thing they did all agree on was that the doctor’s decision would only bring even more calamity upon the village. As for the events that had led to that decision, there had been several witnesses, and their testimonies were patched together to form a story.
Boris Croiset, who came by car on account of his sprained ankle, had been the first to arrive at the birthday party that day - 29 September 1988. He was one of five lucky children who had found an invitation from the brothers Hoppe in their postboxes a few days earlier. Six-year-old Olaf Zweste, of Kirchstrasse, and his neighbour Reinhart Schoonbrodt, the same age, were also invited, as were the five-year-old twin brothers Michel and Marcel Moresnet, who had proudly shown off their invitation to the patrons of the Café Terminus. Judging from the messy penmanship, in big block letters, everyone could tell that it had been written by one of the birthday boys himself.
That day, Frau Maenhout had led Boris into the kitchen, where the doctor’s three sons, wearing gold paper crowns on their heads, were sitting reading. They had been told to close their books and put them away, and had done so with obvious reluctance.
‘They were awfully big books,’ Boris reported later, indicating with his thumb and index finger a girth of about five centimetres. Since he had only just started to learn to read, he was unable to provide titles, but had recognised the picture of a balloon on one of the covers.
Reinhart and Olaf had arrived together and had shaken hands with the birthday boys. Reinhart had noticed that all three had brown spots on the backs of their hands.
‘Freckles, just like the doctor’s,’ his mother supposed.
They had given rather limp handshakes, too.
Those seeking further information about the triplets’ appearance only heard what they already knew.
‘They were short, and skinny. You could have knocked them over with a feather.’
‘Their faces were very white, like clowns’ faces.’
‘Their eyes looked like frogs’ eyes.’
‘Their mouths were all crooked.’
By the time Michel and Marcel had arrived, Dr Hoppe had joined them too. It was the first time the children had ever seen him without his doctor’s coat; around his neck, instead of the stethoscope, hung the Polaroid camera, for which Frau Maenhout had purchased several new film cartridges just the day before.
Next, the birthday boys had opened their presents, while their father had snapped pictures of them. Boris had given them a game of snakes and ladders, Olaf a set of dominoes and from Michel and Marcel they had received some colouring books; these the brothers had put aside indifferently. Reinhart, whose father was a lorry driver, had brought each birthday boy a matrushka, one of those wooden dolls with another little doll inside, which in turn hides another and another.
‘Papa brought them back from Russia,’ he had told them when they started opening his presents. The threesome had suddenly perked up.
‘From Moscow?’ one of them asked. ‘Or from Leningrad?’
‘No, Russia,’ Reinhart said.
After presents it was time for cake, one that Frau Maenhout had baked herself. She came in with it singing ‘Happy Birthday’, and all the children sang along. The cake had twelve candles.
‘Four for each birthday boy,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to blow them out all in one go, boys.’
Michael, Gabriel and Raphael stood up and linked hands. The other children counted to three, and then the birthday boys tried to blow them out all in one go. More than half the candles remained lit.
‘Is that the best you can do?’ Michel Moresnet yelled, then blew out the remaining candles with one great puff.
‘He just wanted to help,’ Maria claimed in defence of her son later when she heard that the doctor’s children had burst into tears.
The guests were then shown the classroom on the first floor. Frau Maenhout carried Boris up the stairs, on account of his ankle. After the children had been allowed to test out the desks, they split up into little groups. Gabriel and Raphael took Reinhart over to the map of Europe to show him where Russia lay. Then they asked him what other countries his father had been to, and told him that they came from Germany.
Michael showed Olaf and Boris their exercise books, every page filled with sums, and reacted with surprise when Boris told him he only knew how to count to ten. Boris slunk off and joined Michel and Marcel; Frau Maenhout had given them some chalk to draw on the blackboard.
Then Frau Maenhout had left to answer the telephone. At first she’d hesitated, listening to see if the doctor would answer it downstairs; then she’d gone to the top of the stairs and yelled down, ‘Doctor!’ but apparently he had heard neither the telephone nor her shout. So in the end she’d run down the stairs and answered the phone in the living room.
Nobody has ever come forward to admit they were the one who called the doctor’s house and spoke to Charlotte Maenhout that day. The name of Irma Nüssbaum did come up, because she often rang Dr Hoppe for a telephone consultation, but she adamantly denied that it had been her. And Freddy Machon had seen Maria Moresnet making a phone call that afternoon from the Café Terminus, but Michel and Marcel’s mum swore that she’d been on the phone to the brewery, and later proved it by producing the delivery slip with the date and time of her order.
It was only natural that nobody would admit to having made that phone call, because it was while Frau Maenhout was downstairs answering the phone that the drama took place on the first floor - a drama Michel and Marcel blamed squarely on the doctor’s sons.
‘Marcel saw there were nuts outside the window,’ Michel told his mother afterwards. ‘The whole tree was full of them. There were millions!’
The old walnut tree that grew right next to the house did bear an extraordinary crop that year. The branches groaned under the weight of the clusters of nuts inside their husks, some of them almost the size of an apple. The tree had not been pruned for years, and the loftiest branches had grown up past the roof. In the days before the birthday party, the first nuts had started falling onto the roof and from inside the house the noise sometimes sounded like gunfire, according to some of the patients.
‘The three boys came and stood next to us,’ Michel went on, ‘and one of them said—’
‘Gabriel - it was Gabriel!’ Marcel piped up.
‘Gabriel said he was going to pick us a nut.’
‘We told him he mustn’t . . .’
‘. . . but then the other one grabbed a chair and put it under the window.’
‘Gabriel climbed up on it and opened the window.’
‘He reached out and . . .’
‘. . . then the chair slipped under him and he . . .’
The doctor had been in the laboratory, and just before the crash he had seen a gold paper crown wafting down past his window. Then there was the loud crack of branches snapping, and in a flash he saw a body come tumbling down, followed by a dull thud. The doctor rushed outside, and Frau Maenhout must have heard it too, for she came racing out to the garden in a panic.
Irma Nüssbaum had stepped out of her house at practically the same moment - exacerbating the suspicion that it was she who had made the call - and understood from Frau Maenhout’s reaction that something had happened.
‘You could hear the branches snapping from right inside my house,’ Irma asserted defensively, but no one really believed that the sound could have travelled as far as that.
In any event, she was able to testify truthfully that she had seen the doctor’s two other sons peering anxiously out of the first-floor window.
‘Inside!’ their father had yelled. ‘Get back inside!’
Irma had also heard Frau Maenhout’s voice. First a shriek, and then: ‘I’m calling the ambulance!’
‘No, no ambulance!’ she’d clearly and distinctly heard Dr Hoppe shout, and he’d had to repeat it twice, because Charlotte kept on insisting. Irma thought it was a shame that Charlotte seemed to have so little confidence in the doctor’s abilities. Then the doctor must have picked the boy up in his arms, because she heard him say, ‘Frau Maenhout, please hold the door open!’
At that moment Michel and Marcel had appeared at the window upstairs. ‘He was trying to pick a nut, Herr Doktor! He just wanted to pick a nut!’
The doctor had ignored them, and the door had slammed shut behind him. A little while later Frau Maenhout had rung all the parents and asked them to come and pick up their children.
All day long, many of the villagers just happened to pass by the house at 1 Napoleonstrasse, and all gazed up at the big branch of the walnut tree that had snapped and was dangling down the trunk like a paralysed arm.
‘I always said that tree was dangerous,’ Irma repeated over and over again.
The next morning the sound of a chainsaw was heard in the doctor’s garden, fifteen minutes after Florent Keuning had arrived.
‘He asked me to,’ the latter claimed afterwards. ‘I couldn’t really refuse, could I?’
Even from far away you could see every leaf of that walnut tree quivering, and the longer the sound of the chainsaw was heard, the more nuts fell onto the slate roof of the doctor’s house.
‘It’s bad luck to cut down a walnut tree! Bad luck!’ cried Josef Zimmerman, peering out of the Terminus window and seeing the broad crown suddenly disappear from the sky above the doctor’s house.
Even inside the café, they could feel the thud of the tree as it crashed to the ground.
It had been her idea, of course. She had felt justifiably proud of herself for having arranged it. It had taken quite a bit of persuasion, but in the end the doctor had given his permission for a birthday party. One of the arguments she’d used was that it would be good for their health. The accident had shaken her to the core. But it hadn’t ended there. Other things had come to light and shocked her even more. For instance, she later discovered that Michel and Marcel Moresnet had lied about the part they had played in the drama. As soon as all the other children had gone home, Michael and Raphael had told their version of the story. It turned out that Marcel Moresnet had crept up on Gabriel and had snatched the crown off his head.
‘Hey, look, he’s got no hair!’ Boris Croiset had cried out. Michael, Gabriel and Raphael had tried to get the crown back, but the other kids had ganged up on them, passing the coveted headpiece from hand to hand.
It was true, she’d heard the commotion upstairs, but hadn’t been able to get Irma Nüssbaum off the phone.
As soon as Michel Moresnet had the crown, he had flung it out of the window. The crown had landed in the walnut tree, and Gabriel, standing on a chair, had tried to grab it. But the thing had wafted down through the leaves and finally fluttered all the way down to the ground. The next moment, someone had pushed the chair out from beneath Gabriel and he lost his balance.
Frau Maenhout had wanted to tell the doctor the truth, but had not done so at first because she couldn’t see the point. What was done, was done. On the other hand, had she told him, Dr Hoppe might have left the walnut tree standing. That had been the next shock. When she’d arrived at the house the next morning, the tree had already been cut down and Florent Keuning was busy sawing off the limbs.
So then she did tell the doctor after all, because Gabriel hadn’t been trying to pick walnuts and therefore the tree had had nothing to do with his accident. She’d wanted to make the doctor feel guilty, possibly to assuage her own sense of guilt.
‘Oh, that tree should have come down years ago,’ he had replied, shrugging his shoulders.
For a moment it had seemed as if that was all that needed to be said, but then he had started venting accusations that had only increased her feelings of guilt. How could she have even considered leaving the boys by themselves? Didn’t she realise that Gabriel might have been killed? Did she understand that he’d be left with a scar, which meant that from now on he’d always look different from his brothers?
Dr Hoppe had said it all flatly, as a sort of recapitulation of facts, and it had hit her hard. She’d had no rejoinder, and had run away in tears. Only later did it occur to her what she should have said: that he too was to blame; that he should have answered the telephone; that it was even possible that he’d let it ring on purpose, to lure her away from the classroom, hoping that something bad would happen - something that he would then be able blame on her.
The next shock came when she saw Gabriel again for the first time, one week after the accident. All she knew was that he’d sustained some cuts and scrapes, a mild concussion and a head wound, which was now covered with a square of gauze. It had required seven stitches, and as long as he remained bald, the scar would indeed remain visible. But then it turned out that there was a dressing the size of a postcard on his back as well. The doctor hadn’t said anything about that. Frau Maenhout and he hadn’t spoken, however, since his outburst, and so she didn’t have the nerve to come right out and ask him about it. Gabriel himself couldn’t remember anything that had happened, from the time he fell from the window until he woke up in the darkened laboratory next to the doctor’s office.
In the end she had carefully removed the plaster sticking the dressing to Gabriel’s back. Underneath was a stitched-up incision at least ten centimetres long. She looked for the jumper Gabriel had been wearing the day of the accident, to see if she could detect any bloodstains on the back. She could not. There was some staining on the shoulders and on the front that had not come out completely in the wash. She couldn’t stop wondering about it, but didn’t want to go jumping to conclusions, so she mentioned it on the day he took out Gabriel’s stitches.