The Angel Maker

by Brijs, Stefan

  In today’s world, Victor Hoppe would probably have been diagnosed as having Asperger’s syndrome. Dr Hans Asperger, paediatrician at the University of Vienna, described this mild form of autism in his thesis Die Autistischen Psychopathen im Kindesalter. He had studied children with severe deficiencies in socialisation, imagination and, above all, communication skills. Although their language ability was intact, they often came across as pedantic or mannered. These children appeared to have no sense of humour at all and showed very little emotion. They also took practically everything that was said to them literally. On the other hand, they were all exceptionally intelligent, and capable at an early age of remembering the most complex, but frequently also the most banal, things, such as the Vienna tram schedule in its entirety, or the names of all the parts of the internal-combustion engine.

  Dr Asperger published his findings in 1944, but it was not until the 1960s that his study drew the attention of other academics, and even then it took until 1981 before it was officially recognised as a syndrome. It is now thought that both Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein suffered from Asperger’s syndrome.

  The Clare Sisters of the La Chapelle institute had never heard of Asperger’s syndrome. Even the term ‘autism’ was unfamiliar to them. They were only aware of three previously established classes of psychiatric aberration: idiocy, for an IQ of between 0 and 20; imbecility, in the case of an IQ between 21 and 50, and feeble-mindedness, between 51 and 70.

  Victor Hoppe was therefore categorised as feeble-minded. Since he didn’t speak a word, the sisters assumed that he didn’t know any words or understand them. His behaviour, too, bore that out. He scarcely betrayed any reaction or emotion to what was being said to him. The only thing that seemed to fascinate him was Egon Weiss’s animal braying. He could sit for hours staring at the young man and listening to him. He was also the only patient who could sleep in the bed next to the idiot without being driven totally round the bend by him. This led the sisters to suspect that Victor Hoppe’s condition might be even worse than was feared, and that he might in fact be an imbecile or even an idiot, although he was too young for them to know for sure.

  When he was three, Victor finally began to speak. All of a sudden. It happened one night during the sweltering summer of 1948. The near-tropical heat that had gripped a great portion of Europe for weeks had penetrated even the thick walls of the cloister at La Chapelle and caused the temperature in the normally chilly building to rise dramatically. With the heat came the flies and the mosquitoes. The flies were attracted by the smell of rapidly spoiling food, the mosquitoes by the sweat of the patients, who even in these circumstances were bathed only a couple of times per week.

  If at night the heat did not prevent the patients from getting any sleep, the buzzing of the flies and whining of the mosquitoes would. Egon’s screams, too, had become quite unbearable. The weather conditions had exacerbated his own condition dramatically. The heat squeezed the sweat from his pores, the flies crept up his sleeves and trouser legs, and the mosquitoes sucked his blood right through his clothes. But he was unable to swat them off, for he was tethered to the bed, tied down by the ankles and wrists. His own stench, the tickle of flies crawling on his skin and the itch of the insect bites were driving him into a mad rage.

  None of the other patients was able to get any sleep. They became irritable. Rebellious. One afternoon, Marc François, imbecile, aged eighteen, tore off all his clothes and began running through the building in search of somewhere cooler, somewhere Egon’s voice would not reach. It took eight sisters to catch and restrain him.

  Fabian Nadler, likewise imbecile, aged fourteen, smashed a windowpane with his bare fist and started trying to corral the flies towards the opening. Other patients joined in to help. They leaped and darted through the ward, chasing visible and invisible flies. Angelo Venturini, feeble-minded and a partial cripple, aged twenty, took advantage of the commotion to pick up a shard of glass, and headed over to Egon Weiss’s bed. He was presumably on his way to cut the demons out of Egon’s body and chase them out the window with the flies. But he tripped before reaching Egon’s bed and slashed his own thigh instead.

  Victor Hoppe, feeble-minded, aged three, was not ruffled by any of this. The heat and the din did not seem to affect him. He did not even appear to notice Angelo Venturini’s assault. He sat in a chair beside Egon’s bed and the only thing that interested him was the bugs - not the ones on his own body, but the ones crawling over his neighbour’s face. Whenever a fly or mosquito landed there, Victor would shoo the insect away with a sweep of the arm. He kept it up all day long. It did seem to calm Egon Weiss somewhat, and every once in a while he’d turn and stare at the toddler with hollow eyes. His gaze was blank, but the very fact that he was looking at the child at all was a triumph over his usual feral skittishness. If Victor had been given the chance, he might even have succeeded in taming Egon.

  But each night he had to go back to his own crib. The night sister would raise the side rails so that his arms could no longer reach far enough to swat at the flies and mosquitoes. In the faint glow of the night lights over each bed he saw the insects buzzing round his neighbour’s head and heard his voice escalate to a bellow once again.

  Then Angelo Venturini decided to make a second attempt at silencing the demons inside the idiot’s body, and this time he succeeded. He couldn’t remember a thing about it afterwards and, since he had been afflicted with somnambulism ever since childhood, the nuns thought that he had acted unconsciously.

  Nonsense. In order to walk in your sleep, you have actually to be asleep. And no one could sleep that night - including Venturini. So when he got out of bed, he was wide awake. In order to keep up the pretence while making his way down the narrow aisle between the beds, he kept his head cocked sideways, with a pillow wedged between cheek and shoulder. His genuine sleepwalking episodes had never involved a pillow.

  Sister Ludomira, who was on night duty, glanced up through the window of the screened-off cubicle at the end of the ward, recognised Angelo Venturini from his hobbled walk, and went back to the prayer book in front of her. She knew from experience that he would walk up and down three times, and then get back into bed.

  That night, however, Venturini did not walk up and down three times. He limped straight over to Egon’s bed. Perhaps Egon did not see Venturini’s shadow as he leaned over him. Perhaps he did not recognise the danger. Perhaps he just wanted the itch to stop. In any event, Egon did not put up a fight when Venturini pressed the pillow to his face. He did not shake his head. He did not try to yank his wrists or ankles out of their restraints. He just tried to continue screeching. But his voice now sounded muffled, the way it occasionally did even when he didn’t have a pillow pressed to his face. That was why Sister Ludomira did not immediately look up.

  She only looked up when Egon Weiss suddenly fell completely silent. Angelo Venturini was just lifting his pillow off Egon’s face. Tucking the pillow back on his shoulder and snuggling his head against it, he walked down the aisle, back to his bed.

  Across the aisle, Marc François was sitting up in bed, swaying jubilantly from side to side, clapping his hands, and braying with laughter. Sister Ludomira sprang into action. She flipped on the overhead light, pulled on the cord that rang a bell somewhere in the convent and rushed to Egon’s bedside. Venturini crept into his bed, stretched out and promptly fell asleep, in spite of the buzzing of the flies and mosquitoes.

  Sister Ludomira could only confirm, from Egon’s vacant eyes, that he was dead. She crossed herself. Then she heard an unfamiliar voice behind her. She turned round, and, covering her mouth with her left hand, crossed herself again with her right.

  Victor was on his knees in his crib, hands folded over the bars, his head resting on his hands. A stream of sound was coming from his mouth, which at first Sister Ludomira thought was just gibberish, but which, it suddenly struck her, had a distinct rhythm. That was when she realised what the boy was babbling in his shrill little voice
- in German:

  ‘Holy Joseph, solace of the wretched, pray for us.

  Holy Joseph, hope of the sick, pray for us.

  Holy Joseph, patron of the dying, pray for us.

  Holy Joseph, terror of demons, pray for us.’

  Egon Weiss’s death certificate ascribes his death at age thirty to asphyxiation, caused by swallowing his own tongue.

  An interim report on Victor Hoppe, from around the same time period, notes, ‘Speaks. Unintelligibly, alas.’

  The two women had come all the way from Vienna. They had a specific request and had already been turned down by several other physicians. Almost all of these had told them that their wish was beyond the realm of possibility - for the foreseeable future, anyway. The ladies themselves, however, were convinced that these days, ever since Louise Brown’s birth, anything was possible, and that the doctors’ objections were of an ethical rather than a practical nature.

  ‘Is it because we are a same-sex couple? Is that the reason? Is that why you won’t do it for us?’ was the question they kept asking.

  ‘No, it’s impossible. It’s simply impossible.’

  One doctor had said, ‘It isn’t allowed,’ which had made them all the more determined.

  In the end they had crossed the border. Perhaps it was permitted in Germany.

  The consultation took place on 11 November 1978. ‘We want a child,’ one of them said to Dr Hoppe.

  ‘From both of us,’ the other clarified.

  They both sensed that the doctor thought they were talking gibberish. All the hope that had been building up in them on the train ride to Bonn promptly vanished into thin air. They felt both ridiculous and naive, and had already half-risen from their seats when the doctor had curtly said he could do it.

  They were astonished at this, and reiterated, adamantly, that they wished the child to be from both of them - the way it was with a man and a woman: with physical characteristics inherited from both.

  ‘I can do it,’ the doctor said again, ‘but not right away.’

  ‘We have all we need with us,’ one of them said, while the other took a portfolio from her bag and shoved it ostentatiously under his nose. ‘Here are the results of our Pap smears and blood tests, and a schedule of our menstrual cycles. We are both fertile right now.’

  ‘Our menstrual cycles are in sync,’ the other said proudly, giving her girlfriend a fond look.

  ‘Nuns in a convent tend to menstruate at the same time of the month,’ the doctor responded dryly.

  The ladies were briefly taken aback. The doctor had opened the portfolio and was leafing through it.

  ‘What are our chances, Doctor?’

  ‘I don’t believe in gambling,’ he replied.

  The ladies felt uncomfortable in his presence. But the discomfort they felt was far outweighed by the happy tidings that followed.

  ‘Come back tomorrow,’ he told them after examining them. ‘Then we’ll begin.’

  He had wanted to send the women packing. He should have sent them packing. But as usual, he had blurted out things he had not meant to say, expressed thoughts that had suddenly popped into his head.

  ‘I can do it,’ he’d said. By the time he heard himself say it, it was too late. The women had misunderstood him when he’d added that he couldn’t do it right away. Or perhaps it was he who had failed to make himself clear, as usual.

  When they had told him what they wanted, he had seen in a flash how he would go about it. It was possible, in theory. He would have to take nuclei from random cells taken from each woman, and fuse them together inside a fertilised egg whose own nucleus he would have removed beforehand. It was an experiment he had performed several times as a student, albeit on frog or salamander eggs, not human ones.

  So he had said, ‘I can do it.’

  But in the next instant the practical obstacles had occurred to him. Human egg cells were a thousand times smaller than amphibian eggs. And his experiments with the latter had never actually produced an embryo capable of developing into an adult. That was why he had added that it wouldn’t be possible immediately. He needed more time, was what he’d meant. Months, perhaps years.

  But his first words had given the women hope, and they had latched on to that hope. At that point he had felt he couldn’t disappoint them, which had made him say even more things that had stunned them.

  Then he had examined the women. One of them had suggested that perhaps they could both become pregnant at the same time. She may have meant it as a joke, but the doctor had not taken it as such. Indeed it had set him thinking, and it occurred to him what a unique chance these women were offering.

  When he had said that he would begin the next day, he knew it was too soon. He had to practise first. With other animal cells - mouse cells; or rabbit cells. But he hadn’t told them that. If he had asked them to come back in six months, they might have changed their minds.

  They returned the next day at the appointed time and he performed the procedure. But unknown to them, he used unfertilised eggs. At least that way he’d gained another month.

  The women were both a week late. In those seven days they had become convinced they were pregnant. This they had told him with great excitement. And then the embryos must have somehow been rejected by their bodies without them noticing it. The doctor did not deny their theory, even though he knew there had never been an actual embryo. Then he proceeded to implant another set of unfertilised eggs into both women, since he was still experimenting.

  This was how far he had got by this point: he had managed to grow mouse embryos from two female eggs, but none of the embryos had developed into live mice. As for human cells, he had progressed no further than the nuclear-fusion stage. However, even this was an exceptional result.

  Then he had shut himself in his laboratory for days at a time. He was working on several experiments at once, starting a new one before the previous one was finished. He jotted down the data only sporadically - too sporadically, in fact, even for him. I’ll get to it later, he kept thinking; his mind was already on to the next step. His thoughts were like domino pieces: as soon as one toppled over, all the others followed automatically.

  On 15 January 1979 the women once again came to his office. He had wanted to postpone their meeting since he needed another month. But they had insisted, and he’d given in because he didn’t want them to go elsewhere.

  ‘Is it going to work this time, Doctor?’

  ‘Time will tell.’ He had been expecting the question, and had prepared an answer.

  ‘And if it doesn’t . . . ?’

  He’d been hoping they would ask that. ‘Then I’d like to try one more time. If you’ll agree, of course.’

  The women looked at each other. One said, ‘So you think it won’t work this time either?’

  Her remark was a reproach, but his response was the same nonetheless. ‘Time will tell.’

  ‘We have been discussing it . . .’ the woman continued after a short pause. ‘Maybe we should stop. We are—’

  ‘You don’t have to pay me,’ he said quickly.

  ‘It’s not about the money. We no longer trust that it’s possible.’ Her words made it sound as if she were breaking up with someone.

  Her friend concurred. ‘People have told us that what we want is impossible.’

  ‘Who are these “people”?’ he shouted, louder than he’d meant to. It made the women jump. For a moment he feared they were slipping through his fingers like sand, but then it occurred to him that they wouldn’t have come back if they had given up hope completely. He just needed to convince them. So he took them to see his laboratory.

  ‘Sometimes what may seem impossible is merely very difficult,’ he told them.

  The three mice he showed them were five days old, the size of an infant’s little finger. Their skin was covered in fine hairs, brown in the case of two of the mice and white in the case of the other. They were tucked in a box of shredded paper, being suckled by a black mouse.


  ‘That isn’t the biological mother. She merely carried them to term.’ He picked two adult mice, one white and one brown, out of another cage. ‘These are the mothers. The babies are their offspring. No male mouse was involved.’

  The women looked on open-mouthed.

  He did not try to deceive them this time. He told them that he needed to carry out a few last experiments on human eggs but was certain that it would work after that. He spent an hour and a half lecturing them on how and why it would work this time, and they never interrupted him once. So in the end he managed to convince them to wait another month before the next attempt.

  That very day he wrote down everything he had told them. Now that the women had seen the mice, he anticipated that the news would spread quickly, so he would have to make his methods public, before other scientists cried foul and accused him of spreading lies. He’d have preferred to wait until the women had actually given birth, but he no longer had that option.

  The article practically wrote itself. He only had to consult his scarce notes a couple of times. He sent it the very next day to Science, the journal that years ago had published some extracts of his thesis. He had taken Polaroid pictures of the mouse young and their female progenitors, and also included microscope slides or sketches of each stage of the division process. Then he shut himself in his lab once more.

  Lotte Guelen had entered the convent of the Clare Sisters at La Chapelle a year after the end of the Second World War. Her father, Klaas, was from Vaals in the Netherlands, and in 1928 he had moved to Liège in Belgium to work in the coal mines. He had met a nurse at the hospital a year later, Marie Wojczek, the eldest daughter of strict Catholic immigrants from Poland. Marie was nineteen years old. They’d married after they’d known each other only six months. That was in March of 1930. Marie was three months pregnant with Lotte. She had hidden the slight bulge of her belly under her wedding dress by means of a corset. No one had noticed a thing - not until six months later, that is, when anyone who bothered to do the maths came away frowning. But that was as far as it went. Even her parents never mentioned it. It may have been precisely for that reason that Klaas and Marie never stopped feeling guilty about it.