The Angel Maker Read Online Free PDF Page A

his patients to excuse the inconvenience and said he had not had the opportunity to unpack everything, so that he was frequently obliged to leave the room during the consultation to fetch something he needed, such as the blood-pressure gauge or some disinfectant.
    Dr Hoppe was invariably attentive and amiable, and never asked for payment, which made him - inadvertently perhaps - even more popular with the villagers. They certainly flocked to the surgery at all hours of the day, from as early as half past six in the morning until late in the evening. Sometimes they even rang in the middle of the night, like the time when Eduard Mantels of 20 Napoleonstrasse just couldn’t get to sleep, even after two cups of linden tea laced with rum, and had roused the doctor from his bed for a sleeping pill.

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    One fine Saturday in July, some weeks after George Bayer’s resuscitation, a sign went up on the gate of the doctor’s house posting surgery hours: from 9 to 11 a.m. and 6.30 to 8 p.m., weekdays only. And if anyone needed to see the doctor outside those times, an appointment would have to be made by telephone. This caused a fair amount of indignation, for some of the villagers thought a doctor ought to be always at his patients’ beck and call, but on the whole most condoned the doctor’s decision, especially since he was having the waiting and consultation rooms refurbished. The doctor delegated this job to Florent Keuning, who often moonlighted as a handyman. Florent gave the walls a fresh coat of paint, the doors and windows too, and sanded and varnished the wooden floors. The rest of the house was also in need of all sorts of repairs. Hinges and latches had to be oiled, windows and doors that were sticking needed adjustment, there were damp spots on walls and ceilings to be patched, and plumbing leaks to be soldered, so that altogether Florent had at least four weeks of work ahead of him.
    During the month he worked at the house, he’d catch a glimpse of the triplets from time to time. Ever since the doctor had shown his children to the patrons of the Café Terminus, they had not been seen again. Nor did anyone hear them crying, even though the villagers who attended the surgery were particularly alert to that possibility.
    ‘Are the children always so quiet?’ they asked the doctor on several occasions.
    ‘They’re very calm babies,’ was his usual reply. ‘They’re hardly any trouble.’
    Florent was asked the same question when he told the patrons of the Café Terminus that he had seen the little boys.
    ‘It’s true, they were ever so quiet,’ he confirmed. ‘They were sitting in those little rocking chairs - you know the kind - just staring off into space, as if they were trying to work out some complicated problem. They didn’t even look up when I hammered a nail into the wall right next to them. I don’t think they even noticed me.’
    ‘Valium, I expect,’ said René Moresnet.
    ‘Oh, come off it,’ his daughter broke in; ‘maybe they were just a bit under the weather, or exhausted or something. You always assume the worst.’
    Maria wanted to know if the boys still looked so weird. What she really meant was ugly, but she didn’t say so out loud.
    ‘Their hair is an even brassier colour than the first time we saw them,’ the handyman replied. ‘Not the doctor’s kind of garish red - it’s more of a rusty colour, as if they’d had their heads dunked into a jar of red lead.’
    ‘And what about their . . .’ said Jacques Meekers, pointing to his upper lip.
    ‘The work of a clumsy joiner. You know, the kind that tries to fill a crack in the wood with some putty and sawdust. A half-arsed job, if you ask me.’
    ‘And do they really know how to talk?’ Maria wanted to know.
    Florent shrugged. ‘Not that I’ve heard, anyway.’
    ‘Just as I thought,’ said Maria.
    Over the next few days Florent Keuning was often stopped on the street. Some of the ladies were curious to know if the doctor