Read Online The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs - Free Book Online Page B

it themselves. Indeed, on that score she had sadly seen little change in the past few months. They still didn’t seem to know how to react to things, or else - and Frau Maenhout wasn’t completely sure which was the case - perhaps they did, but were simply incapable of showing their feelings. The upshot was that they were still extremely unresponsive, except when disinclined to do something, which was happening more and more frequently. Then all three would show themselves to be extraordinarily stubborn and Frau Maenhout suspected that this was their way of showing they were afraid.
    Looking at the three boys in the mirror again, she wondered if they could tell that their scars seemed to stand out more sharply in the mirror than they did in reality, making their deformity even more noticeable. They must be able to tell just by looking at each other, Charlotte thought. That was one big advantage of looking so much alike: if they wanted to see what they looked like in other people’s eyes, they had only to gaze at each other. But this was a disadvantage as well, since looking at his brothers would immediately confront each boy with his own disfigurement. There was no escaping it. Frau Maenhout wasn’t really sure if they were conscious of the fact that they looked odd, because they hardly saw any other children or adults. She had never discussed it with them, and their father would certainly never mention it.
    Even though they had changed quite a bit in the past year, the brothers’ resemblance to each other was still uncanny. They were all three equally short and skinny, whereas their heads were still abnormally large. They also had the same number of crooked teeth growing in a similar pattern in their mouths, and the scar, too, had grown identically. Whether from close up or far away, not even a kink or squiggle in the veins on their skulls showed the slightest variation; they all had the exact same sickle-shaped vein starting behind the right ear and running right round the back of the skull.
    When Frau Maenhout had first started working for the doctor, she had been confident that she would soon be able to tell them apart with the naked eye. That had been her experience with all the twins she’d encountered in her classroom. But she’d had to admit that the doctor had been right when he’d told her right at the outset that she would never succeed, and even to this day she was unable to tell them apart.
    ‘All done!’
    One of the boys put down his toothbrush and jumped off the stool. He turned and showed her his teeth by tugging at his upper lip and sticking out his lower jaw. Frau Maenhout automatically glanced at the child’s wristband, to see its colour. She was on her guard about this because that morning the boys had tried to switch places. They had tried it before, but she had always been able to tell which she was dealing with by the coloured wristbands. This morning they’d finally succeeded in getting the little catch open. Raphael had snapped his around Gabriel’s wrist, who had given his to Michael, and Raphael had in turn taken Michael’s. Their identity swap had not lasted long, however. Frau Maenhout hadn’t noticed it herself, but when she had asked Raphael a question, glancing at his wrist and addressing him as Michael, the real Michael had blurted out, ‘He’s Raphael. I’m Michael.’
    Any other child would have yelled, ‘Ha, ha, gotcha!’ and screeched with laughter, but the boys had just nodded, as if to say, ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ Frau Maenhout understood that they were hoping she would mix up their names again, and so she had proceeded to do just that, several times, on purpose. When, at 10.30, she was getting ready to go home, the toddlers, putting their fingers to their lips, had whispered that she shouldn’t tell their father. She realised that they had not yet tried their trick on him.
    ‘Iz goo nuff?’ asked Michael now, not moving his lips.
    She gave his teeth a cursory