The Angel Maker (31 page)

‘Egregious,’ Brother Rombout repeated after him meekly, although he strongly disagreed. But he had to kowtow to the abbot, pay him lip service.

In the end the abbot imposed reams of extra homework on Victor, and then gave him one more chance. One more egregious transgression and he would automatically be expelled.

Brother Rombout was relieved and, in hindsight, agreed with the students that what Victor had done might indeed be called a spectacle. Like them, the monk would never have thought Victor capable of making such a scene.

 

It happened during the last week of June 1955. The exams were over and, following school tradition, the students in the senior class (Brother Rombout’s class that year) were going to visit Calvary Hill at La Chapelle. The monks described it as a school outing; the students termed it a pilgrimage, a word they spat out as if it tasted revolting.

The seventeen students of the seventh year were accompanied not only by Brother Rombout but also by Father Norbert, who was to lead them on the Stations of the Cross. The Road to Calvary was situated on top of Altenberg Hill. It had been built by the Clare Sisters of La Chapelle in 1898 to express ‘their adoration of the Cross’. The convent, also the asylum in which Victor had spent the first five years of his life, was situated at the foot of the Altenberg, from which a narrow stone staircase ascended up to Calvary Hill. Since the patients were never allowed to venture outside the convent walls, Victor had never visited it when he lived there. Consequently, he had no clue that he was so close to his former home that day, but then he did have other things on his mind.

You could say that it had all started with the jeering. That he had recognised the jeering for what St Luke the Evangelist had described in the words: ‘They will mock him and insult him.’

Victor didn’t know how to ride a bike.

The monk, the priest and the seventeen students were to make the journey from Eupen to La Chapelle by bicycle, a trip of about fifteen kilometres. Most of the boys had their own bikes; the boarders were to borrow theirs from the younger students. Victor was lent a bicycle belonging to a boy in the fourth year.

As the group set off with Brother Rombout in the lead and Father Norbert bringing up the rear, Victor Hoppe just stood there, one leg on either side of the bike, clutching the handlebars.

‘Come on, Victor Hoppe,’ Father Norbert urged him with a two-fingered rap on the back of the head.

But Victor stayed put, his head hung low.

‘Victor, if you’re expecting the Lord to do the pedalling for you, you’re sadly mistaken!’

Father Norbert was still in a jovial mood. But when he realised that Victor still had not budged, he shouted at Brother Rombout to wait and clamped the rebel student’s ear between his thumb and forefinger.

The other students began to laugh. It was just a snigger at first, because they were happy it wasn’t their turn to be singled out as the victim.

It may have been that that was the point when the priest realised something was amiss, because in spite of the increasing pressure on his pinched ear Victor still hadn’t begun to move. Or it may simply have been a ruse on his part, to prod Victor into action. Whatever the reason, he said, loudly and with a touch of scorn in his voice, ‘I think Victor Hoppe doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle.’

The giggling grew louder. A grin spread across the priest’s face.

Meantime the high priests and the elders stirred up the multitude.

Brother Rombout had jumped off his bicycle and was walking back to Victor. Father Norbert went on, now shouting, ‘Well, if Victor Hoppe doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle, he’ll just have to make his own way to Calvary Hill!’

Some of the boys started jeering.

But they shouted even louder.

Brother Rombout scowled at the students to be quiet. Father Norbert finally released Victor’s ear and moved out of the way with his bike.

Brother Rombout leaned over Victor, placing a hand on his shoulder. ‘Victor, have you ever been on a bike?’ Softly.

Victor shook his head. The laughter that followed halted abruptly when the brother raised his head and sent his pupils a withering look.

‘Oh, let’s just leave him here then,’ said Father Norbert brusquely.

Brother Rombout shook his head. ‘He can ride on the back of my bike.’

All the students saw the other priest raise his eyebrows, but Brother Rombout ignored him. ‘Just wheel your bike back to the rack, Victor. And then you’ll come with me.’

And so they rode to La Chapelle, Brother Rombout at the head of the pack with Victor Hoppe sitting on the back of his bicycle, gripping the saddle for dear life. He looked neither right nor left, but he knew that his fellow students were staring at him derisively, making faces at him.

Mocked him and insulted him.

That was how it had started.

 

Jesus condemned to death. First Station.

That was what the sign said underneath, in three languages: in German, French and Dutch.

Victor stared at the sculpture and he recognised the scene.

The high priests. Who stirred the crowd.

The multitude. That cried, ‘Crucify Him!’

Pontius Pilate. Who washed his hands.

And Jesus. Who was bound and silent. Submitted to his fate.

The scene was carved out of white sandstone and crowned an altar of black marble. The altar and the relief carving were set inside a grotto, behind a cast-iron fence. The grotto was made of pumice from the Eifel region, Brother Rombout told them.

Then it was Father Norbert’s turn. Before starting on the first prayer he reminded the students that they weren’t allowed to talk for the entire Way of the Cross, all fourteen stations of it. Their voices were only to be heard in prayer.

‘This holy place will tolerate only holy words,’ said the father.

Holy place. Holy words. It made Victor’s head buzz.

Then the priest opened his prayer book and intoned, ‘We worship Thee, O Christ, and praise Thee.’

And all the students responded, ‘Because by thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.’

Then Father Norbert recited the prayer of the first station, and when it was over all the students said the Lord’s Prayer.

Next they strolled down a twisting paved path to the second station, with Father Norbert reading non-stop from the prayer book, which he carried before him on outspread hands as if it were a dead bird.

Jesus takes the cross upon his shoulders. Second Station.

Again Victor stared, overwhelmed. The grotto. The fence. The altar. The sign. And above all of that, the sculpture.

The three-dimensional relief carving was so lifelike that the stone figures looked as if they might step out of the scene at any moment - as if they were only posing while there were people looking at them. But Victor knew the figures couldn’t actually be real, because they were too small. They were even smaller than he was, in fact.

‘Amen.’

Yet as he followed his class to the next station, he couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder, and he kept looking back until the sculpture was out of sight and he was sure that the figures hadn’t moved.

So he walked from station to station with the rest of the group, and three times he saw Jesus fall. And three times he had the urge to help Him to his feet again.

But that was what the fence was for, thought Victor to himself - so that no one would help him.

‘We worship Thee, O Christ, and praise Thee.’

‘Because by thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.’

They had arrived at the eleventh station.

Jesus is nailed to the cross.

‘Drawn by thy wounds,’ Victor heard the priest pray, as he stared at the raised hammers that were poised to drive the nails through Jesus’ hands and feet. For once, Victor was relieved that the figures did not come alive. But that didn’t mean that at the next station Jesus would not be hanging from the cross. Victor knew that he would be, and that was why he did not say the Lord’s Prayer, because it was God’s fault that Jesus had ended up on that cross. He had abandoned his Son to his fate.

‘Amen.’

This time Victor did not look over his shoulder as they walked on. If he looked back, he knew he would see the figures starting to move. They really would this time, and then the hammers would come down with a wallop. He didn’t want to be a witness to that.

He hung back a bit, because he had no desire to see Jesus hanging from the cross either. But Brother Rombout’s hand on his shoulder gently pushed him forward.

The path took a sharp turn, and they arrived at the large clearing in front of the twelfth station. Victor’s mouth fell open.

There was Jesus on the cross, large as life. Not inside the grotto, but on top of it. Not as part of a relief, but all by Himself, as if He really had been dragged out of the sculpted scene and hung on the cross. As if he had only just died up there, on the hill.

And to the left and right of Jesus were two other crosses, with equally life-sized, crucified men. And at the foot of Jesus’ cross, just as large and real, were four people Victor could easily have recognised had he been paying any attention.

All he did see, however, was Christ on the cross - large, and grey-looking; as if dust had drifted down from heaven and settled on Him.

The thought that had first taken hold of Victor a while ago, when they had mocked and jeered at him, now grew more insistent. Each line led to the next.

Thou that destroyst the temple, and buildest it in three days, save Thyself. If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocked him, with the scribes and elders.

A rosary of words unfurled itself.

They said: He has saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He be the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him.

Victor disengaged himself from the group, and neither Brother Rombout nor Father Norbert saw him go because they had their eyes closed while reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Just a handful of students, squinting through half-closed eyes, saw Victor leave.

He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him: for He said, I am the Son of God.

He disappeared into the pines that grew on either side of the cave. The students began nudging each other.

The thieves also, that were crucified with Him, cast the same in his teeth.

He emerged from the side, like someone entering from the wings. Hurrying beneath the cross of the murderer, past Mary Magdalene, past the Roman soldier, he halted at the foot of Christ. He stood with his back to the cross, pressing his spine up against it. The top of his head came up to Christ’s navel.

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice.

Then Victor stretched out his arms like Jesus Christ above him, opened his mouth and cried, ‘ELI, ELI, LAMMA SABAKTÁNI!’

His shrill voice soared into the sky and everyone looked up to see Victor as his head sank slowly down.

 

A few weeks after Victor Hoppe’s article was published in Cell a treacherous wind came blowing in from the west, from across the Atlantic. At Philadelphia’s Wistar Institute for Anatomy and Biology the biologists David Solar and James Grath had pored over the article shaking their heads. The two scientists had been working on cell-nucleus transplantation for many years, and had built up an impressive and unassailable reputation in that field. Victor Hoppe’s account immediately raised many questions in their minds. Professional jealousy no doubt played a part, but that never came up for discussion. What mattered was that they had questions. And that was why they decided to undertake what Victor had consistently refused to do: repeat the experiment.

They didn’t take any short cuts. Their experiments took them three long years - three years of hovering over the same little spot, like wide-winged vultures coasting on a breeze.

If anyone could have felt that wind coming, it ought to have been Rex Cremer. In those same three years he too had repeatedly tried to duplicate Victor Hoppe’s experiment, yet not once had he managed to clone a mouse embryo. Something always went wrong. One time the embryos died when they were still in the growth medium, another time they failed to implant in the uterus, and on those rare occasions when the experiment actually did result in a birth, the mice were either stillborn or had severe birth defects. You just have to keep trying, Victor insisted, but he had never shown him how, or given him a helping hand.

Notwithstanding his optimistic predictions, Victor had not managed to clone any adult mice in those three years either, so that Cremer was beginning to doubt that his technique was viable. Victor maintained that in his own case it wasn’t the technique that was the problem but the fact that he wasn’t having any luck deprogramming the cells. He did grant that he was finding it more difficult than he had expected - it was the first time he’d admitted to any such thing - and when one day he finally did achieve a breakthrough, he acknowledged, moreover, that luck had played a significant part. He explained that, after abandoning a certain experiment, he had left the used cells in their Petri dish and forgotten about them. Under normal circumstances he would have added some supplemental serum to the growth medium to keep the cells alive, but he had not done so this time, so that the cells had literally been starved. A few days later he happened to come across the same Petri dish again and decided, just out of curiosity, to examine the cells. He saw that some of them were dead; but others were still alive, although so badly weakened that they had lost their specialist function. These cells had therefore reverted to the elemental phase, as if they had not divided more than once or twice - the exact stage Victor had been attempting to arrive at for almost two years. All that was left was to deduce the quantity of serum needed to ensure that the cells would not have sufficient nourishment to thrive but would be kept just alive, frozen in the G0 phase.