‘That’s it,’ he heard. Dr Hoppe leaned back and again placed his hand on his side.
‘Is it done - already?’ asked Lothar.
‘It is done,’ said the doctor, but with scarcely any excitement in his voice, as if he had done no more than his duty. He had done his part. Now it was up to Vera.
Lothar Weber watched his wife sit up slowly. There was life in her stomach now - new life. He could scarcely believe it. He felt himself becoming quite emotional at the thought. He hadn’t expected that. He couldn’t help thinking of Gunther, and had to steel himself not to burst into tears.
10
When Rex Cremer got to the top of the Vaalserberg, he was surprised to note that the Boudewijn Tower had vanished. He drove on a bit further, then stopped the car. The area where the tower had once stood had been transformed into an enormous building site enclosed inside a security fence. A huge hole had been dug there, so deep that Rex could not see the bottom, and massive cement blocks rose up from its depths with long metal rods sticking out of them. A rectangular sign on the fence showed a picture of the new tower, the legend written in four languages.
‘The new Boudewijn Tower being built on this site,’ he read, ‘will be fifty metres high, with a lift and a roofed platform at the top that will offer a unique panoramic view.’
The drawing of the new tower showed a lofty structure with a series of stairs winding up around it. It made him think of a giant rendering of a DNA spiral, a double helix braided together in perfect harmony. The platform at the top of the tower was an octagonal structure with vertical glass walls and a metal-braced roof shaped like a pyramid, a flagpole at its peak.
Fifty metres high. You can’t stop progress, thought Rex, thinking nostalgically of the old tower. A boyhood memory had been razed to the ground. The thought suddenly made him feel very old. It was a feeling he was having more frequently these days, as if time were slipping through his fingers. The years seemed to have turned into days. Case in point: he had last come this way six months ago, yet it felt like only an hour ago. The four years he’d been in Cologne, too, seemed scarcely to amount to anything. And, looking back, even those years at the university were condensed into just a few snapshot moments - snapshots in which Victor Hoppe, naturally, played a prominent role; but how could it be otherwise? Their first meeting had been nearly ten years ago. And the first occasion he had contacted Victor even earlier than that. He could still remember the exact date on which he had written the card that had started the whole thing rolling: 9 April 1979.
Sighing, he moved his foot from the brake to the accelerator. The car began to move forward again, driving at a slow crawl past the gaping hole that had been scooped out of the top of Mount Vaalserberg. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was five to eleven. The day was Sunday, 21 May 1989.
Ever since the abruptly disconnected phone call from that woman, five days earlier, Cremer had been unable to relax. Part of it, of course, was not knowing what had happened, but the main reason for his anxiety was his own sense of guilt, which had suddenly returned with a vengeance. He just couldn’t shake the thought that he was partly responsible for everything that had happened, even if he did not yet know the full scope of the consequences. He should have stepped in from the very beginning. He shouldn’t have been such a chicken. That wasn’t the kind of man he was. He had never been that way before, though perhaps - and he fervently hoped this was true - perhaps he was getting himself all worked up over nothing. But if something terrible had indeed happened, if Victor Hoppe really had gone too far this time, then he, Rex Cremer, would have to accept the responsibility.
It was with that mindset that he had left Cologne that Sunday morning at 10 a.m. Resolute. Determined. But, driving down the Route des Trois Bornes an hour later, all his resolve seemed to have evaporated and he was, more than anything, paralysed by anxiety.
He rolled into the village just as the church bells began to toll. He saw a few people hurriedly crossing the street and running towards the church, where Sunday Mass was presumably about to begin. He slowed the car to a snail’s pace, driving on to Victor Hoppe’s house once everyone was off the street.
Getting out of the car, he was struck by how oppressively hot it was. A thunderstorm was forecast, which was supposed to put an end to the heat of the past few days. He felt himself break out in a sweat. He wiped his forehead and began walking towards the gate. But before he could reach it the front door opened and Victor came out. Rex stopped and took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure if the doctor was coming to greet him, or if he just happened to be on his way out.
‘I have been expecting you,’ said Victor before Rex had a chance to say a word. The doctor unlocked the gate and flung it open. Rex saw that something had changed about his former colleague’s appearance. His hair and his beard. His unkempt red hair, especially, struck him. It was almost down to his shoulders.
‘I know why you have come,’ said Victor. ‘You have come to betray me.’
‘Excuse me?’ Rex stared at him in astonishment, but the doctor avoided his gaze.
‘You have come to betray me,’ he repeated. ‘You will return with a great mob and then you will betray me.’
There was no menace in his voice, but Rex felt his anxiety rise. Victor had always had a peculiar way of behaving, but the way he stood there, swaying slightly, his head bowed, one hand pressed to his side, the other hand clawing the air - Rex had never seen him act this way before.
‘They don’t understand me,’ Victor went on. ‘They don’t believe in me. Do you still believe in me?’
Rex decided the best thing was not to answer him. He didn’t want to provoke him. But Victor wasn’t waiting for an answer. He went on stonily, ‘They mustn’t lock me up. They must not. If they lock me up, I will not be able to fulfil my task. I have a mission.’
‘Victor, perhaps—’
Victor whipped his arm up into the air and pointed his forefinger at Rex menacingly.
‘You will betray me!’ he said, raising his voice. ‘You will be the one! But woe unto him who betrays me, he shall wish that he had never been born. You will hang, don’t you know? You will hang for this!’
Rex, flinching, took a step back. For just a second his eyes met Victor’s. The gaze was empty, like that of a blind man. Rex took another step backwards. The outstretched arm came down; Victor began tugging at the bottom of his shirt tail.
‘You don’t believe me, do you! You still won’t believe me,’ he said, pulling his shirt out of his trousers, higher and higher, until his chalk-white, hollow stomach was exposed.
Rex shook his head.
‘Do you want to see? Then will you believe it?’ cried Victor. He pulled his shirt up another notch. There was a laceration in his side almost ten centimetres wide. ‘Do you want to feel it? Then will you believe?’
Victor brought his hand dramatically to the wound and stuck two, three fingers inside the gash. He began to pull - no, he tore it open.
Averting his gaze, Rex tried to back off a little more, as inconspicuously as he could. He was starting to feel seriously nauseated and his head began to spin. Then he turned on his heels and darted to his car. He yanked open the door, got in and jammed the key into the ignition. He glanced over his shoulder to see if he was being followed, but Victor was still standing at the gate, his fingers plunged deep inside the wound.
He stopped the car at the three borders, because he felt as if he was going to be sick.
The voice. The words. The wound. The fingers inside that wound. And on top of it all, the stifling heat. The nausea. It was all too much for Rex. He stopped the car and threw up. Gradually the sick feeling began to pass. But Victor’s voice wouldn’t stop ringing in his ears.
You have come to betray me. You will return with a great mob and you will betray me. You are going to betray me.
The ravings of a lunatic. Rex had no idea where Victor had got that idea from, or who might have put the thought into his head.
You will hang for it!
That threat was even more worrying. The more he thought about it, the more those words began to feel like a real noose around his neck. He interpreted them to mean that Victor would drag him down with him. Victor would try to deny his own responsibility and fob it all off on Rex. He would say that Rex Cremer had known what he was doing and never tried to stop him; had encouraged him, even. And, besides, Rex had set the whole ball rolling, on 9 April 1979. And he would show them the proof. Black on white, dated, in his handwriting:
You have certainly beaten God at his own game.
Tormented by such thoughts, Rex Cremer paced round the summit of Mount Vaalserberg. He walked to the three borders. Then to the highest point in the Netherlands. Back to the three borders. He paced around the marker. Netherlands. Germany. Belgium. Nowhere could he find peace.
Finally he headed over to the fenced-off building site. Peering down, he could just glimpse the bottom, at least ten metres down. The four cement pylons with their metal stakes seemed to have been thrust up from the earth’s core with diabolical force, as if trying to reach for something. He stood there for several minutes staring into the pit, his fingers threaded through the chain-link fence.
‘Don’t jump, mister!’ he suddenly heard someone yell.
Startled, he looked round. A man walked by, laughing.
The man’s voice had jolted him out of his reverie. Of course he wouldn’t jump. The thought had never even occurred to him. He’d merely been thinking about what he should do next. Whether he should go home, and wait passively for what came next - as was his wont. To wait patiently - only this time it would be until they came for him. And even if he denied everything a thousand times, they still would not believe him. He too would not be believed. Misunderstood. Just like Victor.
Or should he go back to Wolfheim? Should he try once more to bring Victor to his senses? Perhaps it wasn’t that terrible. Perhaps the thing he feared the most hadn’t actually happened.
He left the building site and walked back to his car. He had to do something. Waiting was no longer an option. He had to try to persuade Victor to seek help, and he had to find out how the children were faring. He couldn’t just leave them to their fate. He couldn’t do that any longer.
So Rex tried to pull himself together and buck up his courage as he started the car and slowly began the drive back down the Route des Trois Bornes, down to the bottom, under the bridge, into the village, up to the house.
The gate was still open, and the front door too. Victor had vanished. Rex got out of the car and looked round. The village square was deserted. The pavements empty. He glanced at his watch. It was 12.15.
It was still stiflingly hot. Clouds had started forming, obscuring the sun, but that only made it feel even more oppressive.
You will come back with a great mob. You will betray me.
He had indeed come back; Victor was right about that. But he was alone. And he had not come to betray him. He had come to help him.
Cautiously he walked up the path to the front door and went in. It stank to high heaven. The stench took his breath away. Clapping his hand over his nose and mouth, he looked round. The front hall was deserted but one of the doors was open: the door to the office.
Besides the stench, there were also the flies - everywhere he looked. Bluebottles. There was something rotting in here. That was where flies laid their eggs: in rotting meat, so that when the eggs hatched, the larvae would have something to eat. The thought came to him in a flash as he stepped into the office. But it too was empty. Behind the desk another door stood open, as if showing the way. It might be a trap.
He sidled over to the door, one hand over his nose, the other swatting at the squadrons of flies zooming about his head. For a split second he thought he would find Victor in the room. Alive, or dead. The latter might be best.
But Victor wasn’t in there. And yet he was. Three times over, in fact. V1. V2. V3. That was how the first, second and third glass jars were labelled.
They were barely children any longer. He saw that when he got closer up. They seemed to have reverted to the foetal stage. So skinny. So tiny. So bald. And the way they were curled up, just like a foetus in the womb. As if Victor had left them to stiffen in that position before preserving them in formaldehyde.
It was a terrible shock, which only grew when he saw the dates written on the labels. Three different dates: 13 May 1989. 17 May 1989. 16 May 1989.
He was too late.
His nausea returned. But at the same time he felt the urge to smash open the glass jars. Not to release the children, but to destroy them. To erase the harm and the shame. To obliterate all traces of it. Quickly. He took a step forward and stretched out his hands.
Then he spotted . . . her.
She was lying on the floor, half under the table. As he lunged forward, the movement caused the flies crawling on and inside her corpse to take flight in their thousands, like a lid suddenly being lifted off a pan. She was lying on her back, and although he could not recall her face clearly, since he’d seen her only once, he knew that it was her. She was naked from the waist up, and even though there was a second laceration that was quite a bit larger, the first wound he noticed was the smaller one. His eyes moved down from her face to her chest, where there was a cut, no bigger than the breadth of a thumb, but that cut was so exact, so surgically exact, that he knew that that one thrust, there in that spot, right by the breastbone, had dealt the death blow. She must have died within seconds. And so he realised that the other, much larger wound, had been made later. It followed the line of an older scar neatly, right along the incision. And he knew at once that Victor must have removed something from that stomach - the very thing, in fact, that was being redeposited in there by the flies, the hundreds and thousands of swarming bluebottles, laying their eggs in the putrefying womb in order to hatch new flies.