Free The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs Page A

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