The Father of Angels
A Novel by Stefan Brijs
A fascination with the unusual was already apparent in earlier work by the Flemish writer Stefan Brijs (1969-). In his second novel, Eagle (Arend, 2000) all attention is focused on a sluggish overweight young man trying to rise above and fly beyond the vale of tears in which he finds himself. In this book, which follows his debut as a novelist with Degeneration (De verwording) in 1997, Brijs manages to evoke his character's tragic attempts with considerable compassion and empathy. His lengthy novel, The Angel Maker (De engelenmaker), published in late 2005, at first appears to be about genetic experiments, a hot topic in many a committee of clerics and politicians but also a regular cause of academic squabbling. Research results published by a South Korean professor a couple of years ago, for instance, proved to have been rather economical with the truth. So there are obvious dangers lying in wait for any novelist wishing to illuminate such a complicated issue. His or her story would soon be eclipsed by the theoretical detail. But Stefan Brijs has handled the topic differently, and magnificently, in his masterful novel. Of course the book is about scientific experiment and cloning, but it is mainly a play of voices, a dialogue between truth and illusion, between suspicion and reality, a dialogue not so much between characters as by the villagers, neighbours and (so-called) witnesses. Brijs uses this interplay to build up the tension page by page, releasing its horrifying climax on the reader only at the very end of the novel.
In Part I a doctor called Victor Hoppe moves to Wolfheim, a village in Belgian Limburg close to the borders with the Netherlands and Germany, and settles there with his three sons Gabriel, Rafael en Michael. The locals are quick to remark that the boys are far from being archangels. Their father is a repulsive-looking introverted man with untidy rust-brown hair, dead white skin and a repaired harelip. At first he hides himself away in his practice, but in time begins to see the villagers. They come to him not only with their complaints and sicknesses but mainly to satisfy their curiosity: what do his children really look like and,
more particularly, where is their mother? Hoppe manages to break the ice by bringing the three boys with him to the local café. There the villagers see three lads with huge heads, each with a harelip like their father's and skin white to the point of being transparent. And the mother? Does she live somewhere else; is she dead? ‘
No’, Hoppe tells them smoothly, ‘
they never had one’. Their fear and anxiety is transformed into admiration for this mysterious doctor, who with the help of a retired schoolmistress devotes himself to bringing up his sons in what the villagers consider an exemplary way. But the schoolmistress, Charlotte Maenhout, soon discovers that things are very far from what they seem. The children are constantly subjected to medical experiments, they are not allowed out of the house, their fates are sealed. They are all mortally ill and are going to die. Having discovered the terrible truth, she devotes herself with all her heart to looking after the children. At the same time she tries to draw Hoppe out. But she says and claims things that trigger something in him he has no control over. Brijs writes that the evil had entered into him, and evil has to be fought against. Then, before Hoppe's very eyes, Charlotte Maenhout falls backwards down the stairs.
In Part II, Brijs switches the perspective to Victor Hoppe himself. Hoppe's mother believed that her malformed son was a ‘child of the devil’. He was put up for adoption and grew up in miserable circumstances in an orphanage run by nuns. Most of the nuns thought he was mad and dangerous, but a novice discovered he had a brilliant mind and was in fact very talented. He was allowed to continue his education at a Catholic boarding school, where the strict rules and schedules only helped him to progress. He becomes fascinated by Christ's Way of the Cross, by the Son of God who died, mocked and ridiculed, on the cross. From that moment on, Victor Hoppe decides ‘he'll put one over on God’. He finishes his studies, becoming an embryologist, and is awarded a doctorate at Aachen where he writes a