Sixteen years and three daughters later, their guilt was assuaged by sending Lotte to the convent at La Chapelle. Lotte did not put up any resistance. She wanted to become a teacher and thought that the postulancy would be her first step towards that goal. Her parents, however, had failed to tell her that there was no school attached to the convent of La Chapelle. She found out soon enough, when the nuns put her to work in the asylum. As a postulant, she had to change the cotton nappies of patients who were incontinent, and empty and rinse out the chamber pots of the rest. Her tasks also included changing soiled bed linen and cleaning festering wounds. During the year of her postulancy she was not allowed to speak to the patients.
That probationary year was extended to almost twenty-one months, at which point her parents insisted that Sister Milgitha allow Lotte to become a novice; on her visits home their daughter had twice told them that she refused to return to the convent.
The habit Lotte was given to wear as a novice finally made her feel worthy, even though she had to sweat through the leaden heat of the summer of 1948. Her tasks remained the same, because she was still the youngest nun in the order. Her name did change, however. From then on she was known as Sister Marthe, a convent name the abbess had picked for her. St Martha was the sister of Mary Magdalene, and had always faithfully taken care of the household chores while her sister went to listen to Jesus. According to Sister Milgitha, the convent name was a reward for Lotte’s hard work.
For herself, the greatest reward was that she was now allowed to talk to the patients. She was informed of this the day after Egon Weiss was silenced for good. Undoubtedly the two were connected, since permission to talk to the patients involved being discreet and not passing on what the patients said. Or what they blathered: that was the word Sister Milgitha had used. Which led Sister Milgitha to dismiss everything the patients said as nonsense. What Marc François had blathered, for instance. The imbecile had waved Sister Marthe over a few days after it happened and whispered in her ear that Egon had been murdered. He illustrated his words by slashing his forefinger across his throat. She then asked him who had done it. Tucking the same forefinger behind his ear, he had pointed furtively at Angelo Venturini. When she reported this to the abbess, Sister Milgitha took her to have a look at Egon’s corpse. The abbess pointed out the unblemished throat of the deceased.
‘You see, Sister Marthe,’ she said, ‘it’s all nonsense, the patients’ blather. That’s why it’s dangerous to pass this sort of thing on.’
Sister Marthe understood, perfectly.
Since Egon’s death, his howling at night had been replaced by Victor’s sing-song voice. As soon as the overhead light went out, the boy would start on a string of litanies and not stop until daybreak. His voice had no intonation or feeling. It was nothing more than an incessant mumbling and so did not disturb the other patients. On the contrary, the monotone sound seemed to calm them down and lull them to sleep.
Victor slept during the day, or perhaps he was just pretending. Whatever the case, it was as if he’d erected a wall around himself. Neither the voices of the nuns, nor the din the patients made, seemed to reach him. The sisters soon gave up trying to have any interaction with him; the patients, on the other hand, persisted, in some cases only because they’d forgotten they had already tried before. Jean Surmont sat down on the rails at the foot of Victor’s bed and crowed like a rooster; Nico Baumgarten stood next to the bed imitating the sound of a trumpet; and Marc François, sneaking up to Victor, proceeded to empty a round of imaginary machine-gun bullets into him.
Since Egon’s death Victor had refused to eat; he would only drink. His plate would be left on the table by his bed, and if he hadn’t touched it by the time the other patients were done with their meal, it was simply cleared away. Sister Milgitha said that he would eat when he was hungry, but when the boy still had not eaten anything after three days, even she began to worry.
‘He is mourning for Egon,’ said Sister Marie-Gabrielle.
‘He’s much too young,’ said Sister Milgitha. ‘It’s just a prank. We’ll teach him not to try that sort of thing with us.’
That afternoon, with the assistance of three other nuns, she stuffed his mouth with food, pinching his nose shut until he swallowed it. She forced his entire meal down his throat that way.
Less than a minute after he’d gulped down the last mouthful, Victor threw it up again - all over Sister Milgitha’s habit.
Marc François, across the room, howled with laughter. To restore her own dignity, the abbess gave Victor such a box on the ears that it made everyone gulp.
Victor didn’t cringe or move a muscle. Even though they could all clearly see Sister Milgitha’s handprint reddening on his cheek, the boy remained completely impassive.
‘There truly is evil inside that boy,’ the abbess declared, and she decided to post a sister by his bed, to read to him from the Bible, day and night. That way, she hoped, the devil inside Victor would never get any sleep, so that in the end, desperate for peace and quiet, it would leave the boy’s body.
Victor’s bed was moved to a separate room, and the sisters took turns reading to him, in two-hour shifts by day and four-hour shifts at night.
Sister Marthe was assigned to read to him for a portion of the night; she didn’t mind this too much, because it meant she was allowed to sleep in the next morning, and skip matins.
The first night, she watched Victor as he lay in bed, eyes closed. She stared at the scar over his mouth, which ruined the symmetry of his face, and at his flattened nose, seriously disfigured by the deformity. The scar pushed the wings of his nose upward, causing the right nostril to gape open much wider than the left.
‘That’s how you can tell he’s retarded,’ Sister Noëlle had explained.
She also stared at his hair, at how red it was; but she didn’t find anything devilish about it, as the other nuns so loudly maintained. She even leaned forward and cautiously touched it. Nothing happened. Her hand had not been singed. She wasn’t struck by lightning. Nothing.
Yet perhaps something did happen . . . because when she placed her hand on his forehead, the boy stopped talking for an instant. Then the unstoppable stream of words started up again. Her own voice was supposed to drown his out as she read to him, but she couldn’t do it. His voice hypnotised her.
The boy spoke poorly. The sounds found their way out through his nose, lending his voice a wooden, mechanical tone. But since it was litanies he was reciting, it was possible for a careful listener to translate the noises into actual words.
There had been some debate among the sisters as to the boy’s intelligence. Some maintained that anyone who knew such lengthy verses by heart could not be retarded. Others said that even a parrot could be taught to recite them. Sister Milgitha had intervened, saying that the noises the boy was producing weren’t real litanies, but the ravings of the devil within. With that, the abbess had put an end to the discussion.
But Sister Marthe definitely recognised the prayer of St Joseph, and also that of the Holy Ghost. Never stumbling or stopping, Victor would rattle off the entire sequence, sometimes in French and at other times in German; he even did a better job of it than she ever had. She’d been having a hard time mastering the litanies, and every time she had to recite them for Sister Milgitha she would falter halfway through, or skip a few lines. It was her inability to perform this task adequately that had given Sister Milgitha the excuse to postpone her noviceship. True, she had in the end been promoted, but the abbess had warned her that she would not be allowed to take her vows if she did not know her litanies by then.
That was why, starting that very first night, Sister Marthe began repeating the litanies after Victor. She spoke in a whisper so that her voice would not be heard in the hall. And if she heard a sound anywhere in the building, she would stop and go back to reading aloud from the Bible, as she was supposed to do.
The next afternoon she read aloud to him from the Bible for two hours in Sister Noëlle�
��s stead. When she had finished, she whispered in his ear that she was looking forward to practising with him again later that night. She received no reaction.
The second night went off just like the first night.
‘Irit-uf-is-dom-an-un-ner-an-ing,’ said Victor.
‘Spirit of wisdom and understanding,’ Sister Marthe recited.
‘Irit-uf-oun-sel-an-orri-tude,’ said Victor.
‘Spirit of counsel and fortitude,’ Sister Marthe repeated.
At the end of the night, stroking his red hair again, she asked him, ‘Are you praying for Egon?’
He nodded, but showed no further emotion.
‘That’s good. It will surely help him to find peace,’ she said.
He did not respond. But a little later, as she walked away, she felt his eyes on her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him look quickly the other way.
‘You have to eat something,’ said Sister Marthe. She held a bar of chocolate under his nose.
He brusquely twisted his head away.
It was the fourth night that she had sat with him. The previous night had been quite extraordinary. Victor had been playing a game with her. At least, that was what it seemed like. He kept breaking off in the middle of a litany, leaving her to continue it. A few verses later he would join in again. They had repeated this a few times. But when she made a mistake he had shaken his head and corrected her. That was when she realised that he was testing her. She, a twenty-year-old woman, was the pupil of a child of three.
They had kept the game up for two hours, with three short breaks, during which Victor would involuntarily drop off to sleep. He hadn’t eaten in a week and hunger was taking its toll. The abbess had said that she would give him an injection of undiluted glucose if he continued to refuse to eat. This wasn’t without its risks, Sister Noëlle blabbed, but she hadn’t explained what kind of danger the injection entailed. Sister Marthe had therefore decided that she had to convince Victor to eat.
‘You have to,’ she tried again.
Victor kept his lips clamped shut.
‘If you don’t eat, Sister Milgitha will hurt you again.’
No reaction whatsoever, as if she were talking to a wall.
‘If you don’t eat, you will die.’
Even those words did not elicit any emotion on his pallid little face.
‘Once you’re dead, you won’t be able to pray for Egon any more.’
A frown passed over Victor’s face - just fleetingly, but it was enough.
‘Nobody else will pray for Egon. The sisters won’t do it.’
Now Victor began to pluck nervously at the bed sheet that came halfway up his chest.
‘Nor will the other patients,’ she went on. ‘Nobody. Not Marc François. Not Angelo Venturini. Not Nico Baumgarten. Nobody.’
She saw his pupils swivel in her direction.
‘No, not even I, Victor. Because if you die, I’ll be praying for you.’
Logically, it didn’t really make sense, but Sister Marthe had instinctively invoked the only reasoning young Victor Hoppe was able to understand.
If . . . then. One thing led to another, in his mind. A chain reaction.
If . . . then. That was the way his brain worked.
Sister Marthe broke off a piece of chocolate and held it to Victor’s mouth. The boy parted his lips and allowed her to place the chocolate on his tongue.
‘Maybe you should sit up a bit,’ she said, ‘or you might choke.’
He lifted his head and looked round in a daze, as if he had only just realised that he was no longer on the main ward. It did her good to see Victor starting to suck on the chocolate. Without a word he accepted another piece and stuck it into his mouth. Then another one, and another. He began wolfing down the chocolate greedily, as if he’d suddenly realised how ravenous he was.
‘Now you’ll probably want a little water as well,’ she said as the boy started on the last piece.
He nodded and said something she did not understand.
‘What did you say?’ she asked. It was the first time he had actually used his voice to communicate.
‘Yeah-sis-ter,’ she heard again. And then, ‘P-ease.’
She was stunned. None of the sisters had ever taught him to say those words. They had never taught him anything, in fact, except how to walk. Yet all the time he had been mute he must have been watching and listening, filing it all away somewhere in his head; filing it away for a day when he might have a need for it; or the desire to use it.
‘Then I’ll just go and get you a glass of water. I’ll be back in a moment.’
She walked to the bathroom. She wished she could go straight to Sister Milgitha to tell her the news. ‘Victor’s eating!’ she wanted to say. And, ‘Victor can talk!’
But the abbess was to be woken only in cases of dire emergency. And Sister Marthe didn’t think this was an emergency. It certainly wasn’t. This was good news. Not only for Victor, but also for her. She had proved herself as a novice. She, Sister Marthe, Lotte Guelen in another life, had succeeded in persuading Victor to eat again, something none of the other nuns had been able to do.
When she returned with the glass of water she found Victor lying down again, reciting yet another litany.
‘Victor,’ she said quietly, ‘Victor, I’ve got some water for you.’
The boy went on praying as if he hadn’t heard. She started to feel uneasy. Had she dreamed the whole thing? She glanced at the crumpled chocolate-bar wrapper on the bedside table, and frowned.
‘Victor? Didn’t you want some water?’
She listened to his voice. He was saying the litany of Divine Providence. He was almost finished with it.
She decided to join in for the last few lines. ‘... no matter how little we may deserve this grace, grant us, we beseech Thee, the mercy to submit to all the decrees of Your Providence over the course of our lives, so that we may come into the possession of the heavenly goods. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.’
She had just finished crossing herself when Victor sat up again. Not looking at her, he reached out to take the glass from her hand. ‘Ac-k-you,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome,’ she replied, and let out a sigh of relief.
‘Shall we pray some more for Egon?’ she asked next.
Victor nodded. She noticed that he continued to avoid all eye contact. She might finally have got through to him, but he was still keeping his distance.
They recited the litany of St Joseph together, and then Sister Marthe suggested that Victor just close his eyes for a bit. It was 4 a.m. She saw that he was hesitant.
‘I think Egon would want it,’ she said. ‘In fact I’m sure of it.’ That seemed to reassure the boy. He closed his eyes, and she began to sing to him softly.
‘The little flowers dropped off to sleep.
Their fragrance had worn them out.
They nodded their little heads at me
As if to say good-night.’
She paused, then said, ‘That’s a Dutch song, Victor; my grandmother used to sing it to me all the time.’
But Victor, it turned out, was already sound asleep.
The next morning Sister Milgitha witnessed Victor eating his bread. Hunched over, his head lowered, he sat cross-legged on his mattress and, holding the bread up to his mouth, nibbled at it with tiny bites. His eyeballs kept swivelling from side to side, as if he were afraid someone would come and take his food away from him.
Sister Marthe was standing next to the abbess. Her eyes were shining. She’d got up that morning at the same time as the other nuns, even though it was her prerogative to sleep in, and had immediately gone to tell the abbess the great news. The abbess had been incredulous and announced she wanted to see it for herself. Just as St Thomas would not believe that Jesus Christ was risen until he had touched Christ’s wounds with his own finger, Sister Marthe thought to herself.
For a minute she was worried that Victor wouldn’t want to eat in Sister Milgitha’s presence
, but when she handed him a piece of bread, he took it from her.
‘Here you are,’ she said.
‘An-k-you,’ was his reply.
She felt as if she’d won a glorious victory.
‘Reading to him has helped. The evil has been driven out,’ Sister Milgitha said. ‘I knew it would work. The sisters have done good work.’
Sister Marthe couldn’t believe her ears. She blinked, and when she saw the abbess looking at her, she didn’t know how to hide her disappointment.
‘You too, Sister Marthe,’ the abbess said dryly.
She felt Sister Milgitha’s hand lightly touch her shoulder.
That was all.
Sister Milgitha had decided that Victor would continue to be read to for two hours a day, just in case the devil tried to return. That task was given to Sister Marthe, not because she had forged a relationship with the young patient, but because - so said the abbess - she’d be able to study her Bible texts at the same time that way.
Sister Marthe didn’t really care what reason was given. She was just glad to be allowed to spend two hours a day alone with Victor. At ten in the morning and three in the afternoon she would fetch the boy from the main ward and together they would retreat to a little room at the far end of the convent, where the sound of the other patients would not disturb them. Sister Milgitha often happened to pass that way, and would peek in through the door’s stained-glass window. Occasionally she would come in and, nodding to Sister Marthe to continue her reading, would stand motionless in a corner of the room, listening. Then she’d walk out again without a word.
‘She’s keeping an eye on me,’ Sister Marthe said to Victor, not just to reassure him, but also because she was certain that was the case.
The Angel Maker Page 16