That was the way it must have played out in his mind. Cremer understood it up to this point, or thought he understood it. But should he just let it happen? Should he allow Victor Hoppe to continue his work undisturbed, for the sake of science? Or should he halt a genius because that genius was also showing signs of madness?
Those were the questions that had been plaguing him, and he knew full well what his answer ought to be; but he’d been trying to ignore it, reluctant as ever to become involved.
But then came the woman’s phone call. At first he had thought it was someone playing a trick on him, but soon he’d realised that this was in fact the mother. Not the biological mother; the surrogate mother. But he didn’t say so. What he did do was tell her where she could find Victor Hoppe. And by telling her where to find him, he had solved his own predicament.
‘They’re boys. Three boys.’ That was what Dr Hoppe had suddenly told her when she was eight months pregnant. Her stomach had been as round as a drum; a drum that was constantly being pounded from inside. The doctor had been doing a final ultrasound on her. He’d rarely told her anything while doing the procedure - until now. ‘See that grey spot, there,’ he’d usually say, but she had never seen anything but black specks, although she had never come out and said so because she didn’t want to seem even more stupid than she already felt. When he told her that everything was fine, that was always enough for her. But that last time, he’d said, ‘They’re boys. Three boys.’
‘What?’
‘There are three boys in your stomach.’
‘But it can’t be! It’s not possible. You’re pulling my leg.’
‘Do you want to see? I’ll show you.’
He had pointed it all out to her in great detail. And she had looked, and counted, and grown more and more bewildered. Six eyes. Six hands. Three hearts. Three beating hearts. And three penises. That was the word the doctor had used.
‘But you promised me a daughter,’ she managed to blurt out. ‘You always told me it was a girl!’
‘I never said that. You convinced yourself.’
She felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
‘It can’t be. It can’t be.’
‘There used to be four. At first. Four boys.’
She shook her head, confused.
‘Here,’ he said. He then traced something on the screen with his pen. A mouse. Or a hamster. That was what it looked like.
‘That one died five months ago.’
She felt like vomiting. She wanted to spew out the entire contents of her stomach. But nothing came.
When the doctor went to wipe the gel from her stomach, she hit him.
‘Out!’ she yelled. ‘Take it out! Take them out! Take them all out!’
‘Tomorrow. I can’t do it until tomorrow.’
‘Now! Now! Now!’ She began hammering both fists on her stomach. ‘I don’t want it! I don’t want it!’
He grabbed her hands by the wrists and tied them to the bed frame.
‘You must stay calm. This isn’t good for the children.’
She began kicking with her feet, twisting her body from side to side. She screamed. She yelled.
Then he injected something into her intravenous tube.
‘You don’t have to see them tomorrow,’ she heard him say. ‘If you don’t want to.’
It had been impossible for her to forget the children, no matter how hard she tried, because they had left an ineradicable souvenir, from one side of her stomach to the other.
It had turned into an ugly scar. Some parts of the incision had become infected, and she had left it untreated for quite some time. Out of shame, but also because she had wanted to punish herself. It wasn’t until the pain was so bad that it felt as if she was being stabbed by a thousand daggers that she’d gone to the hospital. The stitches had been left in three weeks longer than they should have been.
She told them it was a miscarriage. An emergency Caesarean section, while on a trip abroad. The physician who removed the stitches asked if the surgeon had been a butcher. He’d never seen such a mess. She had to clamp her lips shut. It was the only time she ever showed her scar to anyone.
The scar was still her Achilles heel. Even at the slightest touch it hurt. She could no longer bear to wear tight clothes. Her stomach was often terribly bloated. That was why it didn’t really feel like a scar. Instead of having something taken out of her, she felt as if she’d had something put inside her.
She had never tried to have another relationship either. How could another person take pleasure in her body when she was so revolted by it? And as long as she remained celibate, there was no need to explain anything. She had accepted the loneliness that came with it.
The financial compensation she had insisted on - which the doctor had promptly paid - had done little to ease her pain. She had hoped that it would still her conscience. She had put her body at his disposal, not her soul. But afterwards it had made her feel like a whore. Worse than a whore.
She’d needed the money to live on and to pay off her debts, and so she had kept it and spent it. But it meant that her conscience had never stopped festering either.
Several times she had made up her mind to look for the children. She wanted to know how they were, if they were well. That, at the very least. It was the only way she’d ever be able to clear her conscience. But she had changed her mind every time. As the children grew older, the urge to see them only increased. She counted the months. She counted the years.
The worst day of the year was always 29 September. The ache in her stomach would grow unbearable around that date. The day the children turned four, and for the umpteenth time, she made the decision to try to find them. They were now old enough, surely, to start wondering about their mother - who she was. At that age, they needed a mother. Yet still she had waited a few months; gathered up her courage. And finally she had taken the big step.
6
She arrived on Sunday, 14 May 1989. Whitsun. She had taken the train from Salzburg to Luxembourg the previous day, and had spent the night there. Early the next morning she took the train to Liège, where she boarded the local connection to La Chapelle, from which she found a bus departing hourly for Wolfheim.
She asked the bus driver to warn her when they got to the village.
‘Where do you want to get out? At the church?’
She was gratified that he spoke excellent German.
‘Napoleonstrasse. I’m on my way to see Dr Hoppe. Dr Victor Hoppe.’
She had set out on the off chance that he would be home. She had found his address and telephone number a few weeks ago through international directory enquiries, but had not rung him in advance. She was afraid of hearing his voice. She thought it would make her lose her nerve. Even now, having come so far, she wasn’t sure if she would find the courage to ring the doorbell. She had brought enough money and clothes to stay a couple of days in the area if need be.
‘Dr Hoppe,’ the bus driver repeated. ‘In that case you will need to get out at the church. He lives right there.’
She was speechless. She hadn’t expected to meet anyone who knew him so soon. She immediately felt paralysed with fear.
‘Have you ever met him?’ she asked in a quavering voice.
The driver shook his head. ‘No, I haven’t. But I’ve heard people say that he is an excellent doctor.’
She wanted to ask if he knew anything about the doctor’s children, but then she might have to explain herself, which she wanted to avoid at all costs. Besides, she was afraid his answer would be a disappointment, so she said nothing more. She tried not to think of the upcoming encounter, but without much success. Every time the bus rolled to a halt she expected the doctor to climb aboard. It was the same feeling she’d had some months before, when she had tried to find him in Bonn. She had hoped back then that she might accidentally bump into him, in the street or in a shop - but now that it might actually come to pass, she hoped it wouldn’t.
The bus left the municipality of Kelmis behind. They had already traversed the villages of Montzen and Hergenrath.
‘We’ll be in Wolfheim any minute,’ said the driver, glancing at her in the rear-view mirror.
She nodded at him. ‘Your German is quite fluent,’ she remarked in the hope that a chat would get her mind on something else. ‘I thought that in Belgium people spoke only French and Dutch.’
‘In this part of the country most of the people speak German,’ said the driver. ‘But many also know French, and some can speak Flemish as well. The languages and the borders here have been jumbled up together for centuries. Do you know about the three-border junction?’
She shook her head.
‘It’s just a few kilometres from here. At the top of the Vaalserberg. It’s where the borders of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany converge. You really must go and have a look. If you stayed on the bus, you’d see it. My route takes me up to the three borders; I make a U-turn up there. If you like, you could get off at Wolfheim on the way back.’
‘Another time, maybe,’ she said, smiling. ‘I don’t have the time today.’
She had no idea how much time she had, or might need. She didn’t even know what she would say when she saw the doctor, even though she’d rehearsed many an opening sentence on the long train ride.
The bus swerved to the right, past a sign that said Wolfheim. The road was paved with cobblestones and the wheels of the bus rattled over them in a jouncing rhythm. A church steeple appeared through the windscreen.
‘There’s your stop,’ said the bus driver, slowing down.
She began buttoning her coat.
‘A few months ago a tragic accident happened here,’ the driver began. ‘A colleague of mine ran over a boy, with his bus.’
She felt the blood drain from her face. It was what she’d always been afraid of but had tried to think about as little as possible. She was sure it had been one of her children. She was too late, then. A cold chill went through her. She heard what the bus driver said next, but it barely registered.
‘My colleague has been staying home ever since. He doesn’t have the nerve to drive a bus any more. I’m replacing him for now.’
The bus swerved right, and screeched to a halt.
‘Here we are,’ said the driver, as the doors swung open. ‘The doctor’s house is over there.’
He pointed through the windscreen to a tall house a bit further on.
She nodded mechanically, stood up, picked up her suitcase and shuffled towards the exit.
It had just rained, and a breeze brushed her face. She turned her coat collar up and waited, looking at the ground, until the bus left. When the sound of the engine had almost quite died away, she heard the shouts of children playing. She turned round and saw across the street a group of small children splashing in a puddle. There were four boys, and she guessed they were about five years old, perhaps a little younger. For a long-drawn-out minute she stared at the children, motionless, listening to their voices. From their shouts she was able to make out the names: Michel, Reinhart. She felt her heart beating faster, and took a deep breath. Slowly she exhaled through her nose. Then, just as slowly, she set herself in motion. The wheels of her suitcase, rolling along behind her, made a rattling sound. She walked on until there was only the street between her and the children.
Then she recognised them, even though she had never seen them before. The boys were the spitting image of each other. The posture. The stance. The shape of the face. And they were wearing the same blue anorak and woolly hat, which enhanced the likeness. But there were only two of them. Not three. She began to feel dizzy. And in that moment, as everything started spinning around her, one of the boys glanced her way; and then suddenly everything settled down again, as if someone had pulled a lever.
The boys had her eyes. She had seen it in a split second: the dark iris set in an expanse of white that was so quintessentially her.
As if in a trance, she had let go of her suitcase and crossed the street.
‘It’s my fault! It’s all my fault!’ She must have cried something like that. Then she had grabbed hold of one of the boys’ hands, clutched it in hers, and fell to her knees so that her face was level with his and she could look him straight in the eye.
‘I should never have left you alone!’ She had said something like that. Or perhaps, ‘I should never have left you!’
She was more sure of what she had said next: ‘I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!’
But she did not remember when she had said it. It might have been when the boy had tried to pull free and started screaming. It might have been when she’d apologised to the women.
‘Let go of him!’ the woman who was the first to come running had yelled. ‘Let go of him!’
‘I’m their mother!’
‘You’re crazy!’
Another woman had reached them by now, ‘Let go of my son! In the name of God, let go of my son!’
The second woman had pushed her and, tumbling backwards into the puddle, she had let go of the child.
‘Michel, Marcel, go inside. And take Olaf and Reinhart with you!’
She had stretched out her arms, but the children had run away. She’d burst into tears, sitting on the ground, in the puddle. It was then that she’d realised she must have made a mistake.
‘I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!’
Then she had said all sorts of things. She had tried to explain. But finally she’d scrambled to her feet. ‘I have to go to the doctor’s,’ were her last words.
She had rung the bell three times before the front door was opened and Dr Hoppe stepped outside. His physical appearance immediately evoked such revulsion in her that she shuddered to remember the times his fingers had poked and prodded her, both inside and out.
She was determined not to mention the children straight away. She had vowed to herself that she’d be more careful this time.