Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder: Time-Travel Bath Bomb Read online

  “He wrote some stuff in code on the card and said it was to two friends in Oslo,” Eiffel said. “A Mister Nilly and Miss Lisa. He said he was going to tell you to come to the same place he was about to go to.”

  “Which was . . . the, uh, French Revolution in 1793?”

  “Yes, didn’t you know that? He said he wrote that on the card.”

  “That must’ve been the part that got washed away. Any idea where in the French Revolution I should start looking for him?”

  “Well . . .” Eiffel twisted his moustache. “I would try the Place de la Révolution, which was in front of the dreaded Bastille prison in Paris. That’s where the guillotine was put to most industrious use; surely that’s where the Count of Monte Crisco must have been beheaded as well.”

  “Thanks,” Lisa said. “I’ll focus on 1793, the Count of Monte Crisco and the Pastille in Paris. But there’s one other thing, how did Doctor Proctor send his postcard from here?”

  Eiffel chuckled at the memory. “He held the card underwater in the bath and stuck his head underwater at the same time. He said he just thought about where the card should go and – voilà! – there it went. I guess only things that are completely submerged in the water can be sent, so he stayed here.”

  “Interesting,” Lisa said, and pointed at the empty wine bottles on the desk. “Could I borrow one of these and a piece of paper and a pencil?”

  Gustave Eiffel made a sweeping gesture with his hand and said, “Help yourself.”

  Lisa went over to the desk, grabbed a pencil and started scribbling something on a piece of paper. Then she folded it up, stuffed it into one of the wine bottles, found two corks in the rubbish bin and shoved one into the mouth of the bottle.

  “What’s that?” Eiffel asked.

  “A note saying where I’m going,” Lisa said. “If Doctor Proctor can send things by bath post, I should be able to too.”

  “Sounds logical. Who’s it to?”

  “Nilly or Juliette. I don’t know where they are, but I’m sending the note to the bath in our room at the Hôtel Frainche-Fraille.”

  Eiffel wasn’t able to follow the last bit, because Lisa had already stuck her head under the water along with the bottle and her words were floating up to the surface of the water like small bubbles of speech.

  “There!” she said as she pulled her head back up again. “It’s sent!”

  “I have to hurry up and go now,” Lisa said, climbing into the bath.

  “I have to hurry too,” Eiffel said dejectedly. “But it was very nice to meet you, Lisa. If you find the professor, give him my regards. And please don’t mess history up too much.”

  Lisa gave him a wave and dived down.

  After she was gone, Eiffel leaned over his drawings again and muttered, “Merde, why couldn’t they just ask me to draw one of my standard ugly old bridges?” Then he noticed the sound of something dripping on the wood floor next to him and looked up. There was Lisa with her hair full of soap bubbles.

  “Oh, you didn’t leave after all, moan amee?” he asked.

  “I just thought I would make a suggestion first, to thank you for all your help,” she said, grabbing one of his pencils and starting to draw.

  Eiffel stared wide-eyed at how her hand flew up and down, as if she knew exactly what the thing she was drawing looked like. The arches, the latticework, the four legs sloping gently outwards, almost like the legs of a bath. It was beautiful, it was ingenious, it . . . it took his breath away.

  “There, like that,” Lisa said. “Do you like it?”

  Eiffel was overwhelmed. “Wha-what is it?”

  “A tower.”

  “I can see that. But it’s not just a tower, it’s a marvellous tower. It’s perfect! But what should I call it? The Lisa Tower?”

  Lisa considered it for a second. “I think the Eiffel Tower sounds better.”

  “The Eiffel Tower?” The engineer had a coughing attack from sheer excitement. “You mean it? Thank you!”

  “No need to thank me. Good luck!” Lisa said, and then she marched back to the bath, climbed in, mumbled “the Pastille in Paris” to herself, dived under and – voilà! – just like that she was gone.

  When she surfaced again, the first thing that struck her was the stench. The second thing that struck her was the hysterical squealing and snorting. And if Lisa had been Nilly, the third thing that would have struck her would have been the thought of: breakfast! Fresh bacon!

  But instead the third thing that struck Lisa was the end of a wooden plank that hit the back of her head. The other end was being held by an enraged farmer with a red-striped hat.

  “Get out of my pigpen, you ragamuffin!” he growled. “Shh! Piggy, piggy, shh!”

  The French Revolution

  LISA DUCKED AS the plank came whooshing past her a second time.

  She climbed out of the bathwater at once and scrambled up onto the edge of the bath.

  Around and below her was a living carpet of pink pig backs all bumping into the time-travelling bath and each other.

  “Shh! Piggy, piggy, shh!” the furious farmer urged, closing in on Lisa with his plank.

  Lisa jumped. She landed on one of the pig’s backs, and a piercing squeal was heard above the steady drone of munching and snorting. Instinctively, she grabbed the pig’s ears as it started to run. It pushed its way through the herd of pigs and continued towards the fence enclosing the pigpen, kicking up a splash of manure as it ran. When it reached the fence it lurched to a sudden stop, heaving up onto its front feet and bucking its rear end, sending Lisa sailing through the air all of a sudden. She flew over the fence, over a pitchfork, over a piglet that had strayed from the pen, and closed her eyes as she prepared for a hard landing.

  Astonished when that didn’t happen, she opened her eyes again and realised that she was lying on a big, soft bale of hay. Lisa stood up, brushed the hay off her clothes, and watched the farmer, who was approaching her at full speed.

  Lisa was tired. Tired of being chased, tired of being afraid, tired of travelling and not finding what she was looking for, tired of not being home with her mother and father and tired of not having her teddy bear. She’d had enough. So she jumped down, pushed the piglet out of her way with her foot, grabbed the pitchfork and aimed it at the farmer.

  “I’m going to skewer you and feed you to these pigs, you miserable bumpkin!” she screamed, her voice trembling with rage.

  The farmer stopped suddenly and let go of the plank.

  “Wha-wha-what do you want?” he asked in a gentle voice.

  “I want my teddy bear!” Lisa howled, moving towards the farmer. “Apart from that, I want you to tell me the way to the Pastille! Right now! Let’s hear it!”

  “The P-P-Pastille?” the terrified farmer stuttered, scrambling to get out of pitchfork range. “Well, that’s . . . that’s here.”

  “There’s no prison here! Where’s the Place de la Révolution?”

  “Oh . . . I think you must mean the Bastille with a B.”

  Lisa’s eyes lost a little of their fury. “The Bastille?”

  “Yeah. That’s in the middle of the city, right in front of the Place de la Révolution.”

  “How far away is that?”

  “It’s kind of a long walk, but may – may – maybe you’re not in a hurry?”

  “I need to get there before they behead the Count of Monte Crisco, thank you very much.”

  “Uh-oh,” the farmer said. “Then – then you don’t have much time.”

  Lisa lowered the pitchfork. “Why not?”

  “Because they’re planning to behead that Monte Crisco guy today.”

  Lisa tossed the pitchfork aside. “Quick! Do you have a horse I can borrow?”

  “A horse?” the farmer scoffed. “I’m a pig farmer, not some yeehaw pony-pusher.”

  Lisa sighed. She looked around. A hairy, black pig – monstrous, the size of a motorcycle, with sharp tusks – had just rolled over in the manure, stood up and was now grunt
ing at her menacingly. Lisa sighed again. This wasn’t going to be pretty. This wasn’t going to be without risk. This was going to be pig riding.

  ON THIS DAY, a boy named Marcel had come to the Place de la Révolution with his parents to enjoy the crowds. “And to make sure the executioners do their jobs,” his father had said.

  His mother had fixed a nice packed lunch, and Marcel was looking forward to the brie and French bread. Of course Marcel didn’t call it French bread, just like Spaniards don’t call theirs Spanish bread, the Danes don’t say Danish bread, the Americans . . . well, you get the idea.

  He just called it bread.

  And brie.

  And maybe a little red wine mixed with water.

  They were sitting on a blanket his mother had spread out over the cobblestones in the overcrowded square. Marcel was eyeing the lunch basket longingly while his parents and the other people kept their eyes on the wooden platform up ahead of them. The executioner – a guy with no shirt on, a sweaty torso, and a black hood pulled over his head with just holes for his eyes – would read the person’s death sentence in an authoritative, gravelly vibrato voice. Then he’d pull a cord and, with a whistling sound, the razor-sharp knife would plunge down from the top of the three-metre-high stand and make a chop! sound as it cut off the head of the poor guy who was lying below with his neck in the guillotine. The chop would then be followed by a cheer from the crowd.

  “You see that?” The father nodded appreciatively. “That’s what I call a great beheading. Did you see that, Marcel?”

  But Marcel hadn’t seen it. He was bored. These beheadings had been going on all summer. They’d been chopping and chopping. The heads would dance their way into the woven baskets in front of the guillotine and the blood would pour off the stage onto the cobblestones below. And every now and then, when someone had done something extra awful or had been just a little too rich or aristocratic, they would sew the head back onto the body and behead the person one more time.

  No, Marcel had liked Sundays before the revolution better. Back then, he and his mother and father used to come to the Place de la Révolution and listen to musicians playing on the stage out in front of the Bastille. Marcel loved music and wanted to be a musician when he grew up. He brought the trumpet he’d been given by his grandfather with him everywhere he went. Today was no exception. So while all the other people were absorbed in what was going on up on the stage, Marcel raised his trumpet to his lips to play a little song he’d come up with all on his own. But he never started playing because he got distracted, staring at something that was galloping down one of the side streets towards them. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t without risk. No, in fact it actually looked an awful lot like pig riding. And there was a girl sitting on the back of the monstrous black pig!

  The pig stopped and the girl hopped off and ran into the crowd shouting, “Doctor Proctor! Doctor Proctor! It’s me, Lisa! Are you here? Doctor Proctor!”

  But the girl’s voice was drowned out by the whistling of the blade, the chopping and the cheering of the crowd. The girl stopped and stood there, shouting and shouting, but got no response. Of course not, there was no way anyone could hear her delicate girl’s voice. She gave up, and Marcel could see the tears welling up in her eyes as she stood there scanning the crowd in despair. Since Marcel was a sensitive boy who was more interested in music and the happiness of his fellow man than beheadings, he took his trumpet and went over to the girl.

  “Hi,” he said.

  But the girl was too busy scanning the crowd to notice him.

  Marcel cleared his throat. “Hi, Litha.”

  She turned and looked at him in surprise. “Did you say Lisa?” she asked.

  “Yeth, Litha. That’th what I thaid. Do you need thome help?” Marcel asked.

  “How did you know my name?” the girl asked.

  “Becauthe you hollered ‘It’th me, Litha’ theveral timeth.”

  “Oh, right,” Lisa said, smiling, but it wasn’t a happy smile, more like an about-to-cry smile.

  “Your voithe doethn’t carry that well becauthe of all the noithe from all theeth people,” Marcel said. “If you want thith Doctor Proctor fellow to hear you, you need thomething loud. Thith, for exthample.” Marcel held out his trumpet. “And maybe you ought to take that thtrange clip off your nothe.”

  Lisa looked at his instrument. “I can’t shout his name with that.”

  “No,” Marcel said. “But maybe I could play thome-thing that would make him underthtand that you’re here.”

  “What would that be?”

  “I don’t know. Ithn’t there a Doctor Proctor thong? Or a Litha thong?”

  Lisa looked discouraged and shook her head.

  Marcel cocked his head to the side. “Maybe a thong from the plathe you’re from?”

  “A Cannon Avenue thong, I mean, song?” Lisa said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, then,” Marcel sighed, thinking for a minute. “Would you like a thlitce of bread with thome brie and pâté?”

  Lisa stared at Marcel’s trumpet. Imagining is imagining, she thought. And dreaming is just dreaming. Or maybe not.

  “Could I borrow your trumpet?” she asked.

  Marcel looked first at her and then down at his instrument. He hesitated. But then he nodded and handed her the trumpet. She put her lips to the mouthpiece, concentrated to block out the sound of yet another swish! – chop! – hurrah! Because this was what she had dreamed of. Not that it would happen in a place where people’s heads were being chopped off, exactly, but still: playing this song for a large crowd.

  She placed her fingers over the keys like Nilly had taught her and then she blew. The first note quivered, hesitant and timid. The second was flat and sounded awful. The third was just wrong. But the fourth was right. Marcel nodded in approval as the sixth note rose, clear and strong, into the blue afternoon sky over the Place de la Révolution in Paris. It’s funny to think about this, but no one other than you and me know that this was the first time in history that anyone in France – and anyone anywhere in the world for that matter – heard a song that wouldn’t be written for another sixty-something years, a song that every Norwegian would one day recognise, a song that would go on to become the Norwegian national anthem, “Ja, vi elsker”.

  The notes pierced through the noise of the crowd and made everyone turn around to listen. Even the executioner up on the stage, who’d been nicknamed Bloodbath because of his efficiency, stopped his work, cocked his ears under his black executioner’s hood and scratched his naked barrel-shaped torso. He thought it was quite a captivating melody. All it lacked was . . . well, what was it missing, actually? An accordion maybe? Bloodbath was roused from his musical contemplations by the fact that the guy with his head currently locked into the guillotine, a thin beanpole with some weird eyeglasses that looked like they were glued onto his face, started yelling and shouting in some strange foreign language:

  “Nilly! Lisa! Here! I’m up here!”

  Lisa stopped playing and looked around, her heart pounding, because there was no doubt about whose voice that was. He rolled his Rs like a rusty old lawn-mower. It was Doctor Proctor! She jumped up and down, trying to see where his voice was coming from.

  “Why don’t you thit up on my thoulderth tho you can thee,” Marcel offered.

  “Are you sure you’re strong enough?” Lisa asked, looking sceptically at the skinny boy.

  “Of courth,” Marcel said, kneeling down.

  Lisa climbed onto his shoulders and Marcel stood up, staggering and wobbling.

  “I’m over here!” Doctor Proctor called. “Quick! The situation is a little, uh . . . urgent!”

  “Oh no . . .” Lisa said, losing hope. Up on the stage she saw a thin, bony man with scraggly, dishevelled hair over a pair of sooty motorcycle goggles, who was screaming in a language she assumed was Norwegian, as Lisa was still wearing the French nose clips. Doctor Proctor!

  “What ith it?” Marcel groaned underneath h
er.

  “Doctor Proctor is in the guillotine! They’re going to behead him! We have to save him!”

  Lisa swung herself off, slid down Marcel’s back and started running forwards, pushing her way through the crowd.

  “No!” Marcel shouted. “They behead anyone who trieth to thtop people from being beheaded! Litha!”

  But Lisa wasn’t listening, she was just forcing her way through.

  Bloodbath’s grave, vibrato voice rang out from the stage: “The Revolutionary Court of Paris has sentenced Doctor Victor Proctor to beheading because he tried to prevent the beheading of this fellow here . . .”

  Bloodbath stuck his hand down into the woven basket, picked up a head by its hair and held it up to the attentive audience.

  “. . . the recently deceased Count of Monte Crisco!”

  The crowd erupted into cheers.

  Lisa had almost reached the stage, but was stuck behind a tall person who wouldn’t budge. “Please let me through!” Lisa cried loudly, using the trumpet to poke the person in the shoulder.

  The person slowly turned to stare at Lisa, smiled broadly and whispered, in a voice as dry as a desert wind, “Ship ahoy, there you are. Let me give you a hug!”

  Lisa felt everything freeze into ice. The blood that ran in her veins, the scream she had on her lips, yes, even time seemed to stop moving as a couple of arms – thin, but as strong as steel wires – coiled around her. The breath hit her at near gale force and reeked of stinky socks.

  Bloodbath tossed the Count of Monte Crisco’s head back into the basket and put a pair of glasses on over his mask. He started to read aloud from a document.

  “The jury had the following to say about the condemned: ‘Doctor Victor Proctor is a funny guy who speaks well for himself. But he chose the wrong tactic and made a nasty mistake when he argued before the court today that he had just invented a time-travelling bath that—’”

  The audience laughed in delight and Bloodbath had to wait for a moment before he could proceed.

  Meanwhile Lisa squirmed in vain in the tall woman’s iron grip.