It was a child’s drawing, with simple lines, but that made it instantly recognisable. It was erased in a trice.
The doctor then turned his attention to the remaining half of the blackboard, which was covered in scribbles. The single phrase Rex managed to decipher before it was obscured by the doctor’s hand told him what the rest of the text had said: . . . who art in heaven . . .
Victor put down the eraser and turned round. He rubbed his hands together, and dust flew into the air. Then he wiped his face. His fingers left white tracks in his red beard.
For a split second Rex had forgotten what he’d come for, but Victor’s glance reminded him.
There were three of them. Three, but it might as well have been two, or four. It wouldn’t have made the slightest difference, for he saw it immediately. He saw that it wasn’t a sham. Victor Hoppe had made nothing up.
2
When, in the autumn of 1988, the walnut tree in the doctor’s garden was cut down, there were few villagers who really believed that the event would bring bad luck to Wolfheim, as Josef Zimmerman had predicted. Not one year later, however, even the greatest sceptic was forced to admit that the old man had been right. Jacques Meekers had come up with his own theory by then: that the calamity had been spreading through the village the way the roots of a tree spread under the earth. If anyone happened to express doubts about his theory, he would unfold a topographic map of Wolfheim and its surroundings, and spread it out on the counter of the Café Terminus. He had marked every spot where the calamity had surfaced with an X. Each cross was given a number, and was connected with a jagged line to the mark where the walnut tree had once stood. In the map’s margins, Meers had jotted down the details of the accidents relating to each X, including victim and date. He had strengthened his case by including even run-of-the-mill mishaps that had had negligible consequences, and was able to refute the objection that there was no way the tree’s roots could have spread all the way to La Chapelle by showing that the distance between La Chapelle and the tree’s core was less than five hundred metres as the crow flies.
The onslaught of the calamities, everyone agreed, had started with Charlotte Maenhout’s accident on 29 October 1988. Her funeral had lured many folks to the church, most of them probably hoping that Dr Hoppe and his three offspring would attend the service. The doctor had not made an appearance, however, either at the Mass or at the graveside. Jacob Weinstein reported afterwards that the doctor had rung shortly before the funeral to excuse himself: the children were very sick. Sick with grief, of course, he’d supposed, but when some days later the details of Charlotte’s will became known, he was forced to revise his assumption, as were many of the other villagers.
Father Kaisergruber personally heard the news from Notary Legrand of Gemmenich. The notary told him that Charlotte Maenhout had left all her money - he didn’t say how much, but it was a hefty sum - to a children’s cancer foundation. That piece of news needn’t necessarily have raised any red flags, but Notary Legrand added that Frau Maenhout had had her will changed just two months prior to her death. Before that, the doctor’s children had been named as her beneficiaries. They were to have received the money on their eighteenth birthday.
But there was more. Irma Nüssbaum had seen a big box being delivered to the doctor’s house, marked with a large radioactive warning, and the next day he’d had a visitor from Germany who had told Irma that the children were not doing so well.
‘He was in there for over an hour,’ Irma said, ‘and when he came back out he looked as if he’d seen a ghost. He got into his car, but then got straight out of it again. I went over to him and asked him what was the matter - was it the children? He gave me this guilty look, and that told me enough. They aren’t doing too well, are they? I asked. I saw him hesitate, but then he shook his head. No, he said, not really. In a tone as if someone - well, you know. Then he asked if I knew a certain Frau Maanwoud. Frau Maenhout, you mean, I said; she was the doctor’s housekeeper. He wanted to know what had happened to her and I told him that she had fallen down the stairs at the doctor’s house the week before. She had died instantly. I asked him why he wanted to know. Oh, no reason, he said, no reason; he’d just heard something about it. He was definitely distraught, because he got back into his car without saying another word.’
The doctor’s absence at the funeral, the news of Charlotte’s Maenhout’s inheritance, Irma Nüssbaum’s story - all led to the same conclusion.
‘The doctor’s sons are dying.’
‘So it must be - you know . . .’
‘It’s probably leukaemia,’ said Léon Huysmans. ‘It’s fairly common in young kids. And fatal.’
‘You could see it coming.’
The villagers grew even more convinced of their theory over the following weeks, when they saw that Dr Hoppe’s surgery was shut more often than not. No one answered the telephone, and the gate remained locked, so that several of his patients were forced to find another doctor. There was some grumbling, but for the most part people were understanding.
‘He has to look after his children.’
‘They must be going downhill fast. That’s why you never see them outside any more.’
‘How awful: first his wife, and now . . .’
From all quarters came offers of help, both from the ladies, who offered to take care of the housekeeping, and from the men, who wanted to mow his lawn. Dr Hoppe thanked them all but turned them down. The only offer he did take up came from Martha Bollen, who told him he could order his groceries over the phone and have them delivered to his house.
‘He wants to spend as much time as possible with the children, naturally. It goes without saying,’ said Martha, who delivered the groceries herself and always threw in some treats for the kids.
Once, when making a delivery, she just couldn’t keep it in any longer. ‘Doctor, is it true—?’ She deliberately broke off in mid-sentence because she assumed he would know what she was talking about.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘You know, about the children?’ she tried.
She could tell from his expression that he was startled. Yet he still pretended that he had no idea what she was talking about.
‘What about the children?’
With the utmost reluctance, she uttered the name of the illness that had taken her own husband’s life ten years before.
The doctor frowned and shook his head. ‘Cancer? No, not as far as I know.’
His response sounded forced, so she did not pursue it. It was quite obvious to her that he did not want to talk about it.
‘He isn’t ready to face up to reality yet,’ she explained afterwards, in her shop. ‘He has to learn to cope with it first. When my husband fell ill, it took me three months before I could bring myself to tell my customers.’
For two weeks the sad news about the doctor’s sons was practically the only topic of conversation in the village. Then suddenly, literally in the blink of an eye, it was eclipsed by another tragedy that caused even greater consternation.
‘Here, see this X, halfway down Napoleonstrasse, a stone’s throw from the doctor’s house,’ Jacques Meekers would explain years later at the Café Terminus. ‘That’s where the second accident happened. Not even two weeks after Charlotte Maenhout died! The victim was Gunther Weber - you know, the deaf kid. It was 11 November 1988: Armistice Day. So it was a public holiday.’
Gunther Weber and five other boys had been playing a game of football on the village green. It was a peaceful autumn day, and since early morning cars and coaches chock-full of Belgian tourists had been snaking through the village on their way to the three-border junction. A traffic jam had soon clogged the narrow underpass leading to the Route des Trois Bornes. By lunch time the traffic jam stretched all the way past Dr Hoppe’s house. With so many people stuck inside their cars, and therefore so many eyes on them, the boys were encouraged, as usual, to show off. Fritz ‘Lanky’ Meekers, thirteen years old by then and just shy of two metres, had never given up the hope that one day a football coach would jump out of his car and offer him a contract to play for a top club, a dream shared by the other boys as well, though it was, as a rule, crushed by Meekers.
‘You, Gunther, you - picked for a top club? You can’t even hear the referee’s whistle!’ It was a remark he would regret for the rest of his life, since it was the constant teasing that goaded Gunther Weber into being even more of a show-off than the others, because he wanted to be considered as good as the rest of them.
Gunther was goalie as usual, because from between the goalposts he had a view of the entire field. Julius Rosenboom had just kicked the ball wide of the goal and Gunther had gone to retrieve it. As he picked up the ball, he felt all eyes in the traffic jam upon him, and it made him puff up with pride. Pushing out his chest, his nose in the air and the ball under his arm, he marched back to the goal. He placed the ball on the ground, repositioned it a few times with a great deal of fuss, turned the ball over one more time and nodded theatrically when he was satisfied that it was just the way he wanted it.
‘Gunther, don’t be such a show-off!’ yelled Lanky Meekers. ‘OK, we’ve all seen you!’
It may have been those very words that encouraged Gunther to stretch out his one-man show even longer. He tapped one of his ears, pretending he hadn’t understood. Then, raising his hand to his eyes, he peered in the direction where he was intending to kick the ball. He stretched his arm high up in the air and waved it back and forth.
‘Gwo-back, gwo-back,’ he shouted at his mates. ‘I’m-gwonnah-kick-de-bwall-erry-fah! ’
And as the other boys started walking backwards, Gunther also took several giant paces back, to give himself a running start. Look there - what’s that boy doing? he could sense the people behind him wondering, and he imagined them nudging each other. He took yet another couple of steps backward, rolling his shoulders demonstratively. He’s going in for the kick. That boy’s going to kick that ball clear up into the sky! Just look at how far back he’s going!
He was some twenty feet from the ball when he saw his mates starting to wave and shout at him. But he was too far away to read their lips. Keeping his eyes on the ball, he took another step back and then pitched forward slowly, like a runner waiting for the starting shot. In his mind he could hear the shouts of encouragement behind him: Gunther! Gunther!
Oh, he was going to give that ball such a kick! Just one more step back and then . . .
Gunther Weber landed under the 12.59 p.m. bus that had come swerving into the bus stop on the green. The boy was killed instantly, it was determined by a physician in one of the stationary cars who had immediately rushed to his side. That news was his parents’ only consolation, although it did not bring them much comfort. They had lost their only child.
Victor Hoppe, standing at a first-storey window, watched people rushing to the scene. It was as if they were all pouncing on some quarry sprawled in the middle of the street, except that they all hung back a bit, leaving an empty circle around it. Peering through the glass, Victor could just make out their stricken faces, discreetly averted, yet sneaking covert glances at what was lying there. A man, shouting, was elbowing his way through the crowd, which fell back to make way for him. The man had to be a doctor, Victor guessed, and the quarry was the victim of an accident. Then he made the connection between the sounds he had just heard and the bus drawn up close to the victim.
He recognised the gestures the doctor was making. A life had been taken. That was easy, taking a life. There wasn’t anything to it. It was much easier than creating a life. Taking a life was easy, even if you hadn’t meant to. That was something he’d learned just the other day.
Victor Hoppe looked on, fascinated, his hands behind his back.
The doctor’s announcement caused a stir amongst the crowd. Heads were shaken or bowed; people buried their faces in their hands. A small group of boys stood huddled together, sobbing.
One boy detached himself from the group and walked away. Victor Hoppe saw that it was Fritz Meekers. The kid was screaming and yelling, and was running towards the village green, where two stacks of coats had been piled on the ground about three metres apart. The goal. And a ball lay on the ground beside the goal. Fritz was racing towards the ball. He seemed to be skating across the tarmac; it almost looked as if he were floating, as if his screams were making him levitate above the ground. Using all the pent-up force of his run, he gave the ball a vehement kick. A long-drawn-out wail followed the ball as it soared into the sky. Fritz didn’t watch where it went. His long legs buckling under him, he sank to his knees and his shoulders began to shake. People began walking over to him.
Victor turned away to stare at the victim again, who, he was certain, must be one of the kids from the village.
Someone came over with a blanket. The physician flung it over the victim so that the body was no longer visible. Death has to be erased as quickly as possible, thought Victor. Erased, like a mistake on a blackboard.
He saw that people were already starting to leave. The show was over. They returned to their cars or their coach and went back to being ordinary tourists again, on their way to the three-border junction. It was not a real place, Victor knew: only an arbitrary figment of the human imagination. Not real, yet it did exist. They all wanted to see it with their own eyes, even though there wasn’t really anything to see. And even though there wasn’t anything there, it did give them something to believe in. The three-border junction was like God. People were attracted to it, but at the same time they were being deceived.
Suddenly people were getting out of their vehicles again. Something new had caught their attention. Victor blinked. The little group of people still hovering around the victim broke apart, this time to make way for a woman who had come running over. It was Vera Weber. Now he knew who the victim was. The doctor had stood up, and was trying to restrain the woman. Shaking his head, he grabbed her by the shoulders, but she shook him off.