The Angel Maker

by Brijs, Stefan

  ‘Let’s wait and see what he has to say, tomorrow,’ Cremer broke in.

  ‘I can’t wait to find out,’ said Dr Genet. ‘I really can’t wait.’

  Victor Hoppe had been talking for almost three hours without interruption. It made him feel as if he were sitting an exam again. There were five biologists at the table, including two of his former professors. He had twice mixed up their names when answering a question, though not on purpose.

  One of the five was Rex Cremer. The dean was friendly. Not pushy. Not wary. Nor overly ingratiating.

  The two professors he hadn’t met before had shaken his hand politely. They didn’t ask any questions but simply listened, spellbound.

  His two former professors, on the other hand, were very critical, but that did not bother him one bit. He was able to answer every question at length, and explained in detail how he was hoping to clone the mice - within a year, he boldly claimed. He declared that in his view the current method of hybridising cells using the Sendai virus was already out of date, and that his method, using the micropipette, had a much greater chance of succeeding. It was simply a matter of technique, he had stressed.

  When he had finished, one of his old professors had one last question. It was one he’d been expecting. Was it his intention, if it were ever to become possible . . . uh . . . would he ever consider - cloning humans?

  He had been ready with his answer, but it left the biologists none the wiser. ‘Come, make us gods, which shall go before us,’ he’d said. He had always thought that it was a lovely line.

  And then he had stood up and left.

  Victor Hoppe’s project was approved by a vote of three to two. He started working at the University of Aachen on 1 September 1979. He was given his own laboratory and a generous budget for the purchase of technical equipment. A room with a desk and a pull-out sofa was also put at his disposal, so that he would not have to commute from Bonn to Aachen every day. He was expected to report to the dean once a week, and there was a conference with the other biologists every other month at which he was to bring them up to date on his experiments.

  He did not have much news to report for the first few months. He told them he was practising his technique. The egg cells were still too frequently and too severely damaged by the micropipette, with harmful consequences. He was asked what kind of consequences he was referring to. He replied that the egg might tear further at the site of the puncture, which could lead to its splitting into two distinct entities that did not completely separate.

  One of the biologists said, ‘Siamese twins?’

  Indeed, replied Victor Hoppe.

  Hoppe’s research project had failed to deliver any concrete results by the end of the year. Dr Genet felt vindicated in his belief that the university would have been better off investing its money in some other project.

  Three months later, Rex Cremer made a discovery that would turn out to be of great importance to Victor Hoppe’s experiment. He was successful in producing the agent cytochalasin B from a mould. This mycotoxin acted on the cytoskeleton, impeding its protein molecules from multiplying. This allowed the cytoplasm surrounding the cell nucleus to remain soft, resulting in a smaller likelihood of damage when the egg cells were pierced with the micropipette, and greatly increasing their chances of survival.

  At the next review session Victor announced that the blocking agent that Dr Cremer had discovered did make a big difference and that a breakthrough would not be long in coming now. Nevertheless it took close to eight months before any clones were born. For Victor had failed to take yet another factor into account. The chances of success may have increased, but they were still so minimal that luck continued to play an essential part.

  In the end, this it what it boiled down to:

  542 cells were microsurgically implanted with a foreign nucleus.

  253 cells survived the procedure.

  48 cells fused with the new nucleus.

  16 cells developed into minuscule embryos.

  3 embryos grew into cloned mice.

  On 31 August 1951 Dr Karl Hoppe drove his son to the boarding section of the Christian Brothers’ School in Eupen, a town some twenty kilometres south-east of Wolfheim.

  ‘It’s the best thing for you,’ he told Victor as they waited outside the monastery’s wooden gate.

  The thought that it might be the best thing for himself no longer even crossed his mind. Once he had made the decision, he had convinced himself that he was doing it for Victor’s sake. Besides, Johanna would have insisted on it, he reminded himself more than once, thus downplaying his own role in the decision. So he didn’t feel at all guilty when the time came to send Victor to the boarding school. He felt nothing much, in fact, as they stood there by the gate. He might as well have been delivering a package.

  He had not warned Victor beforehand. That too had seemed to him to be the best thing. He had just told the boy that he’d be going to school. It wasn’t until they were in the car on their way to the monastery that he informed him that he would be a boarder for a little while.

  The little while ended up being ten years. Victor came home only for the Christmas, Easter and summer holidays.

  ‘I’ll write to you,’ was the last thing Karl Hoppe said to his son before he disappeared through the entrance.

  He never wrote, not even once.

  All in all, boarding school did turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to Victor. Living at the school, which most of the boys considered a kind of hell, was a breath of fresh air to him after a year and a half of living with his father. The strict rules and the rigid schedule gave him the structure he had missed at home, and which was necessary for him to function. The hymns and prayers, the monks in their habits, the echoing corridors, the cavernous dormitory and the nightly weeping of the homesick boy in the bed next to his - all of this was familiar to Victor. It was as if he were being given a custom-made suit to wear that was a perfect fit after a year and a half of clothes that had hung on him like a sack. As a matter of fact, on his first day at school he’d experienced this in a literal sense, having been made to trade in the clothes he’d been wearing for a school uniform. All the other first years were being fitted for the same apparel as well, and whereas the rest of them sniffed and tugged at the stiff new fabric, feeling uncomfortable, Victor just sat there calmly. He felt he had come home again. Every once in a while he’d glance at the door of the great hall, expecting Sister Marthe to materialise any minute.

  It was lucky for Victor that he was placed in Brother Rombout’s class, a young monk who had taken over teaching the first and second years from Brother Lucas just the year before. Brother Lucas had viewed the students as lumps of clay to be kneaded harshly into the shape he had in mind for them, whereas Brother Rombout preferred to take each boy’s individual talents as a starting point, and then stimulate those talents and make them blossom.

  The young brother had delicate features, which, with his long eyelashes and thin eyebrows, gave him a rather feminine air. He also had a pleasant voice, the boys found out when he recited the Lord’s Prayer the first morning of the new school year, after which he told them a story from the Bible. Brother Rombout’s looks and his voice, the prayer and the Bible story all pleased Victor very much. And when the brother asked if any of them knew how to read, and fingers went up in the air to the right and left of him, he too, after a brief hesitation, stuck his finger in the air. And that was how it all began.

  More than Brother Rombout’s looks and personality, it was his teaching method that greatly influenced Victor Hoppe’s development. While studying to become a teacher, the monk had developed an educational method of his own, which he proceeded to test on his pupils. His novel approach, which would eventually attract quite a following, consisted of tackling arithmetic and the natural sciences, in particular, in a controlled progression, from the concrete to the schematic, and thence to the abstract. This method simulated the way young children’s brains process infor
mation. In Victor Hoppe’s case it suited the way his brain worked seamlessly. The monk found in Victor proof positive that his was the right approach, but in actual fact it may have been the other way round: Victor was just the right boy for the brother’s method.

  During the 1951-2 school year Brother Rombout had charge of the first and second years, a class composed of boys who were six, seven and eight years old. Subsequently, at the start of each new school year, he would take his best students with him to the next two-year stage, giving him a chance to adapt his method progressively to the next age group and allowing him to put his theories into practice. Victor Hoppe was the only boy in the first-year class who made it to the seventh, and top, level in just three years. Brother Rombout had promoted him to the next stage every year, in spite of the growing age gap between Victor and the other boys in the class. When after three years he attained the seventh level, Victor was nine; the oldest students in his class were thirteen.

  A year later, on 30 June 1955, Victor graduated from primary school. It had taken him just four years.

  These facts, recorded in the annals of the Christian Brothers’ School in Eupen, attest to Victor Hoppe’s intelligence, the boy who’d started life condemned as a half-wit. But what they don’t show is how Victor’s attitude towards God was shaped at this school, or, rather, misshaped. This is to a certain extent clear from the report cards that have survived and in which Victor’s grades are recorded in Brother Rombout’s elegant handwriting. Year after year, Victor earned 10s, 9s, or very occasionally an 8, in every subject - in every subject, that is, except religious instruction. The first year he still had a 10 for religion. That was to be expected, since he had startled and delighted many a monk with his biblical knowledge. But it was no more than superficial knowledge. He had no real understanding of what he was reading or reciting. The second year he received an 8 in religion, and the next year only a 7. In his last year, Brother Rombout gave him a 4; it was the only time he had failed a class. The brother’s accompanying comment was: ‘Victor will never become a priest.’ He probably meant it ironically, because had the brother known what was really going on inside Victor’s head, he would never have written anything so flippant.

  Discipline flowed forth from a healthy dose of fear. That was the way it was, not only at the monastery school in Eupen but at many other Catholic schools as well. Fear was created not only through the threat of corporal punishment but also by presenting God as the Almighty who would condemn all sinners.

  Wrath. That was a word that was frequently invoked. The wrath of the Lord shall come down upon the sinners.

  The sinners were the students, and most of the monks acted as if they were God, or at least God’s representatives on earth.

  Brother Rombout was an exception to this, and yet he too, albeit indirectly and unconsciously, contributed to Victor’s aversion to God. Five times a week, when the other students in his class were introduced to the Bible through simple stories and pastel illustrations, Victor was given permission to go and sit at the back of the classroom and read the Bible for grown-ups (as Brother Rombout called it) in peace. In his teaching method, that was called differentiation: assignments adjusted to each individual’s level of mastery.

  And Victor would read. Of course Victor would read. He buried himself, he plunged in, he disappeared completely into the formal language, which, as he grew older, he increasingly began to understand. And the more he understood, the more he realised that the picture of God that most of the monks liked to paint was quite in accordance with what was written about Him in the Bible. And that picture was, to put it mildly, not very positive.

  Until about the age of four, children generally see people as either exclusively good or exclusively bad. Nor was it any different for Victor - except that in his case this perception never changed. Other children gradually learn to detect shades of grey in the black or the white. They discover that there is some good and some bad in everyone, in ever-changing proportions, depending on the situations in which they find themselves.

  Victor had trouble with nuances. Unable to show much emotion himself, he was likewise unable to distinguish it in others. To him everything was either black or white. He couldn’t help it: because of his Asperger’s he didn’t even know it wasn’t supposed to be that way.

  But had somebody - a father or a mother, for instance - given Victor more individual attention, he might gradually have been taught or have discovered for himself that every human being is made up of an entire palette of feelings. In that case he might have started to blossom himself, in the widest sense of that word; because, when all was said and done, Victor never got beyond the bud stage. But at boarding school his conviction that there were only good people and bad people was reinforced over and over again. Certainly his lack of intimacy with others played a role in this, but the monks contributed as well. They were masters at hiding their true feelings from one another as well as from the students; indeed, they were expected to do so. Even Brother Rombout. His goodness was certainly apparent, but that was all that he would reveal. What went on inside him, what brooded and seethed there, what he might be feeling or longing for - none of that was made public. So how could Victor be expected to discover that there was more to life than just good or bad?

  The more experience Victor had under his belt, the more he came to associate the good or the bad in a person with either that person’ s voice or the kind of physical contact he had with them. For he couldn’t tell anything from reading someone’s face.

  First, the voice. The volume and the vibration. A loud volume usually came with a heavy vibration. That was bad.

  Brother Rombout always spoke in a soft voice, and when he sang, he sang in a mellifluous voice, not like the dull drone of many of the other monks’ voices. Listening to Brother Rombout was a pleasure.

  Brother Lucas, the third- and fourth-year teacher, and Brother Thomas, the first-year teacher, had voices that sounded like the lowest notes of the chapel organ. But they could do what the organ couldn’t do: they could let out all the stops and still make the sounds vibrate. Their voices were never actually directed at Victor, but he could hear them through the classroom walls. They sounded like a thundercloud passing overhead, and Victor pictured God hurling bolts of lightning at the students, because when the brothers raised their voices, they usually did so in the name of God.

  ‘The wrath of the Lord shall smite you.’

  ‘Fear the Day of Judgement, for God will know how to find you then.’

  ‘God’s vengeance will be implacable.’

  Father Norbert, who usually supervised evening study, likewise had a voice with the bad sound in it. Victor had once experienced it himself. He didn’t know why, but Father Norbert had shouted at him. He was always shouting at the other boys, in fact, but never at him. ‘Look at Victor - he should be your example.’ He often shouted that at the other boys. But this time, this one time, he had shouted at Victor.

  ‘Look at me, Victor Hoppe! Look at me when I’m talking to you!’

  But he couldn’t. He didn’t look up at Father Norbert. He wanted to, but he just couldn’t do it. It was as if his head had been nailed fast to his neck. Then he’d felt a box on the ear.

  ‘God will punish you for this, Victor Hoppe!’

  The physical contact: touch. That too was either bad or good. Hitting someone was bad. Besides the floggings, Father Norbert was also bad when he pinched a student’s ear between his thumb and forefinger and twisted it until the boy had tears in his eyes. Victor had often seen him do that. And whacking someone’s fingers with a wooden ruler was bad too. Brother Lucas and Brother Thomas did that. The students in their classes would show off the black-and-blue marks across their fingers.

  In Brother Rombout’s touch Victor recognised goodness. That sort of touch was gentle. A hand on his shoulder. A pat on the head. The way the brother leaned over him and guided his hand to help him write. That was all good.

  And what about God? The im
age Victor came to have of Him was largely formed by the pronouncements of Brother Thomas, Brother Lucas and Father Norbert. Since they were always presenting God as threatening, as the one who excoriates and punishes, all-powerful, omnipotent and all-knowing, Victor, who was himself powerless and could barely tell the difference between abstract and real, concluded that God had to be the source of all evil.

  And that image of God, that terrifying image, was underscored for him by what he read in the Bible, the Bible that Brother Rombout allowed him to read in peace, never realising what exactly Victor was getting out of it. What he got out of it was: God unleashed wars, God destroyed cities, God sent down plagues, God punished, God killed.

  God giveth and God taketh away, Victor. Remember that.

  God gave, it was true, but for all that God gave, he took away just as much, and more.

  Jesus was good, however.

  The New Testament came as a revelation to Victor when he was in the fifth- to sixth-year learning group. He had read that part of the Bible before, but now he came to it with the insight he’d gained from more than two years in boarding school.

  Victor read about how Jesus fed the hungry; how Jesus calmed the storms; how Jesus healed the sick; how Jesus raised the dead.

  Victor discovered that Jesus did not raise his voice, nor hit people, nor punish people.

  Therefore, Jesus was good.

  It was not only a revelation to Victor; it was also a comfort. Jesus was the Son of God, after all. The Father did bad things; the Son did good things. It was a familiar scenario, and it comforted him. It was no exaggeration to say that he saw a friend in Jesus. Jesus was also more real to him than God - more physical; more human. In that respect it was easier for Victor to imagine what He was like.