The Angel Maker (35 page)

‘It’s too many.’

‘Couldn’t you have foreseen that? Or perhaps you underestimated yourself?’

He was conscious of the derisive tone, and wondered if Victor would notice.

‘I wanted to be certain,’ said Victor.

‘So, now you are.’

‘But there’s four of them. I don’t know if she’ll want them. If she’ll want to raise—’

‘So? In that case you can take a couple of them yourself.’

‘I can’t. I don’t know how—’

‘Well, then you will have to face up to your responsibilities,’ said Rex, in a rather paternalistic tone of voice. ‘It goes without saying. If you decide to bring children into the world, you have an obligation to look after them.’

Amused, he waited for an answer, which failed to come.

‘Victor?’

But the phone had already gone dead.

The commission completed its inquiry in two months. In the report that was delivered to the vice chancellor on 30 May 1984 there wasn’t a word about fraud, or deception, or fabricated data. The independent investigators had found no proof of any such thing. In no way, however, did this mean they endorsed Victor Hoppe’s experiments or imply that his results could be accepted as genuine. On the contrary, the commission had determined that Victor Hoppe’s notes were ‘riddled with deletions, illegible passages, muddled statements and contradictory data’. Consequently, the commission had concluded that ‘even the most elementary scientific guidelines had not been followed’ and it therefore arrived at the verdict that ‘the value of Dr Victor Hoppe’s entire inquiry must be brought into question’.

 

I’m proud of you, Victor. I’m truly proud of you.

That was what his father had wanted to say, on the phone, when Victor told him the news. He had been prepared to say it.

But the tone in which his son had informed him that he had passed his medical degree held him back. It was a tone of complete indifference. As usual. And he thought, Can’t you just be proud of yourself for once, Victor? Shout it to the rooftops, for crying out loud!

He did not voice those thoughts. He simply said, ‘That’s very good, Victor. Excellent.’ As if someone had asked him how he liked some culinary dish.

And when he hung up, he cursed himself. Also as usual.

 

He started the letter with ‘Dear Victor’, but immediately crossed that out. Then he tried ‘My son’, and ‘Son’, but went with a simple ‘Victor’ in the end.

 

The vice chancellor of Aachen University summoned Victor Hoppe to his office in the early afternoon of 27 June 1966. He glanced at the young man and asked himself if they had ever met before. Probably not, or he would doubtless have remembered him.

The vice chancellor had been informed by Dr Bergmann, the dean of the College of Biomedical Sciences, that Victor Hoppe had graduated cum laude the previous day, and that he had always been a quiet, hard worker, his innate talents boosted by his extraordinary persistence - a young man of few words but abundant results. Promising. Dr Bergmann hoped that Victor Hoppe would pursue his doctorate in one of his college’s departments.

‘Is he emotional? Will the news . . .’ the vice chancellor had enquired at the end of the conversation.

The dean had been unable to say.

The young man sat there rather stiffly. His head was slightly bowed, arms and legs crossed. A defensive posture, the vice chancellor knew, indicated shyness, fear, but also reticence.

‘Victor,’ the vice chancellor began after sitting down behind his desk.

The young man shifted in his seat, but did not look up.

‘Victor, allow me first to congratulate you on your diploma. Your professors have sung your praises.’

‘Thank you very much,’ was the polite response.

The nasal voice took the vice chancellor aback for a second. It required some effort to remember what he had been intending to say.

Congratulations. Condolences. Those were the words.

‘But I am so sorry to have to offer you my condolences as well,’ said the vice chancellor.

Victor Hoppe still did not look up.

‘Your father has passed away,’ the vice chancellor went on. He tried to inject some sympathy into his voice.

The announcement did not seem to startle the young man. He just nodded a couple of times. Perhaps he had felt it coming. Or perhaps his father had let him know what he was planning to do, or had already made earlier attempts. The vice chancellor wondered if he should tell him anyway.

‘You are not surprised?’ he tried.

Victor shrugged his shoulders.

‘You did see it coming, then,’ the vice chancellor concluded.

Now Victor shook his head.

‘What was I supposed to see coming?’

The vice chancellor folded his hands together and he sighed. ‘Your father made his own decision,’ he said slowly. ‘About dying. He took his own life.’

This did not evoke any emotion at first.

‘How?’ Victor finally asked. ‘Do you know how?’

He knew how, but should he tell him? Was that his job? If the boy wanted to know, he had that right, of course. But how to tell him?

‘From a tree,’ he said, hoping that that would make it clear enough.

The boy nodded and then said something the vice chancellor didn’t quite follow.

‘Like Judas, then.’

‘What did you say?’

Victor shook his head and remained silent.

‘Is there anyone who can come and pick you up?’ the vice chancellor asked, concerned. ‘To take you home? Can I call someone for you?’

‘No, Vice Chancellor, thank you,’ Victor answered. And after a brief pause, letting his hands fall into his lap, he asked, ‘Do I have to go home? Is that really necessary?’

‘I should think so,’ said the vice chancellor, with a frown. ‘The police will want to ask you some questions. Nothing out of the ordinary. It’s standard procedure, in the case of . . .’ He couldn’t get the word out, so quickly changed the subject.

‘Do you know what you are going to do? I mean, what’s next for you? Now that you have graduated.’

Victor shrugged.

‘I haven’t thought about it yet.’

‘Your professors would very much like you to pursue your doctorate here at the university. You could go far, with a talent like yours. It would be a shame to waste it.’

The vice chancellor thought he caught just a flash of something that might have been a reaction, but it was so faint that he could easily have imagined it. He decided to return to the subject some other time.

‘Shall I ask someone to take you home?’

Victor shook his head and stood up. ‘No, thank you. I’ll manage.’

‘I hope so. But if there is anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to come and see me.’

‘I’ll do that, Vice Chancellor. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome, Victor. And again, my condolences.’

 

Someone from the police social-work department gave Victor the letter. The envelope had been opened. To rule out foul play, the man explained. He said he was sorry.

When the man had gone, Victor read the letter. He wasn’t really hoping to find any answers in there, since he didn’t have any questions. It did shock him, nevertheless.

 

His father’s words had shaken Victor. Not what he had done, or his death, but his words. They shook the very foundation upon which Victor had built his world. He had always assumed that doing good was sufficient, and that evil needed only to be avoided. After all, evil was out to crush anyone who attempted to do good. But now it seemed that it might be the other way round. It was an entirely new insight for him. It set him thinking, but more than that: for the first time in his life he began to have doubts. About what he knew. About what he had done. And about what he was going to do. And Father Kaisergruber’s visit that same afternoon only made matters worse.

 

Father Kaisergruber had gone to see Victor Hoppe about the funeral arrangements with a heavy heart. He wanted to keep the visit as short as possible, and therefore came straight to the point.

‘I’d prefer to keep it understated, I hope you understand.’

‘No, I don’t understand,’ answered Victor.

‘It’s not permitted. It isn’t really permitted.’

‘What isn’t permitted?’

‘A church service, for your father.’

‘But I don’t want one in any case.’

‘It is what he wanted.’

‘What he wanted?’

‘He left instructions. For the undertaker. Haven’t you seen them?’

Victor shook his head.

‘He wanted to be buried next to his wife, your mother. He wanted it for her sake. It’s not really allowed, but we’ll just let that slide. But it has to be done quickly, and it has to be low key. No choir, no eulogies. Restraint.’

‘Why isn’t it allowed?’

‘Because of . . . you know. Everyone knows about it. Everyone could see him.’

‘But because of what?’ Victor persisted, to the priest’s annoyance.

‘God will not permit it.’

‘What won’t God permit?’

He was arguing like a child, thought the priest, every answer met with another question.

To head off further discussion, he decided to make it quite clear. ‘Suicide,’ he said flatly.

‘Where does it say that?’

‘In the Bible.’

‘Where in the Bible?’

The priest began to feel a bit hot under the collar. Rarely did anyone contradict him. And the worst thing was that he didn’t have an answer, because he didn’t know where in the Bible it was written that suicide was not permitted. He mentioned a verse nevertheless. At the end of the Gospel according to St Matthew, referring to Judas’s suicide.

‘Matthew 27, verse 18.’

‘For he knew that for envy they had delivered him,’ responded Victor, to the priest’s amazement, adding, ‘It isn’t in the Bible. There’s nothing about it in the Bible.’

The priest was momentarily thrown off balance, but he quickly recovered.

‘The Church won’t allow it!’ he declared categorically. ‘Life is a gift from God. We are not permitted to take it into our own hands. It is not up to us to make decisions about life or death. He is the one who decides! God giveth and God taketh away, none else but He.’

‘Who gives Him that right?’ Victor raised his voice. ‘Why should we deliver ourselves to his will? He is evil, and evil must be striven against.’

He truly has the devil in him, thought Father Kaisergruber; I always knew it. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying such a thing! Didn’t they teach you anything at that school? Your father took you out much too soon! Sister Milgitha was right: the evil was never driven out of you!’ Then he brusquely stood up and began to walk away. He had gone only two steps when he halted and turned back. Victor was sitting there as if the hand of God itself had smitten him.

‘Your father’s funeral is on Saturday, at half past nine. A quiet and understated Mass. And then he’ll be laid to rest in your mother’s grave. The way he wanted.’

 

Victor did not attend his father’s funeral. He had returned to his room at the university campus some days earlier. He seemed to have lost his footing and his direction. He was completely adrift, his head all abuzz with voices and words.

Your father took you out much too soon.

You can do as much good as it is in your power to do, yet in the end you’ll still have to atone for the evil that you have done.

Evil must striven against.

The evil in you is never vanquished.

God giveth and God taketh away, none else but He.

He was in such a state that he hardly dared leave his room.

 

The vice chancellor and the dean of the College of Biomedical Sciences came looking for him. It was the middle of August. The dog days were making a last effort to push up the temperature above thirty degrees and everything was blistering in the sun.

The vice chancellor knocked, but nobody came to answer the door, although both he and Dr Bergmann could hear a voice inside. It sounded as if a tape was being played at slow speed.

‘Victor!’ the vice chancellor shouted.

The sound stopped, but still no one came to open the door.

The vice chancellor went to fetch the spare key from the concierge, hoping that Victor had not succumbed to despair the way his father had.

When he opened the door, a blast of heat hit him in the face, immediately followed by a stench - the stench of rotting flesh. His mind had made the association with rotting flesh even before he noticed the flies, which came swarming out of the room. Dozens of them. Green and glinting. Buzzing loudly.