The End of the World. Maybe

by Jo Nesbo

  “I’m not imagining a thing!” Lisa yelled crossly.

  Nilly gave her a friendly pat on the back. “I was just kidding. You know what the difference is between you and me, Lisa?”

  “No. Wait, yes. Just about everything.”

  “The difference, Lisa, is that as your friend, I always believe what you say. Completely.”

  “That,” Lisa said, “is because the difference between you and me is that I always tell the truth.”

  Nilly studied the banner thoughtfully. “I think it might just be time for us to get some advice from our friends.”

  “We don’t have any friends, Nilly. Aside from each other, we only have one friend!”

  “That sounds like a whole herd of friends if you ask me,” Nilly said and started tentatively whistling the trumpet melody from the “Old Ranger’s March,” the traditional Norwegian military march. And since he was doing that, Lisa couldn’t help herself. She joined in, whistling the clarinet part.

  And to the tune of the “Old Ranger’s March,” they marched out of school onto Cannon Avenue, past the red house where Lisa lived, past the yellow one across the street from it where Nilly lived, to the strange, crooked blue house all the way at the end of the street, almost hidden below the snowdrifts, where their only friend lived. They waded through the snow past the leafless pear tree and knocked on the door, since the doorbell was still broken.

  “Doctor Proctor!” Nilly yelled. “Open up!”

  BUT NO ONE came to open the door at Doctor Proctor’s house.

  “Where can he be?” Nilly mumbled, peeking in the letter box.

  “There,” Lisa said.

  “Where?” Nilly asked.

  “Up there.”

  Nilly turned and followed Lisa’s index finger.

  And there, balancing up on the ridgeline of the roof, he saw a tall, thin man wearing a professor’s coat and pink earmuffs. The man was taking tiny little steps forwards, walking with his hands out in front of him.

  “Doctor Proctor!” Nilly yelled as loud as he could.

  “He can’t hear you,” Lisa said. “He’s wearing Double Deaf.”

  Double Deaf – or Doctor Proctor’s Double Deaf Earmuffs – was something the professor had invented to protect people’s hearing from another one of his inventions: Doctor Proctor’s Fartonaut Powder.

  Lisa made a snowball and chucked it. It landed on the roof right in front of the professor, who jumped and started performing an odd-looking dance up there. His arms made a sort of shovelling motion, knocking the pink earmuffs so they covered one of his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Nilly yelled.

  “I’m . . . I’m waving my arms around!” the professor yelled, waving his arms even more frantically. “And swaying my upper body. . .” He groaned as his long, thin torso started swaying back and forth. “And losing my balance!” he screamed, and suddenly vanished.

  Lisa and Nilly looked at each other in horror. Then they ran around the house.

  “Hello?” Lisa yelled.

  “Hello?” Nilly yelled.

  “Hello, yes,” came a dry, hollow response from a hole in the snow with two hands sticking out of it. “And if we’re done with the hellos now, could I maybe get a little help over here?”

  Lisa and Nilly each grabbed a hand, and for the second time on this odd day, an adult was pulled out of the snow. Although, true enough, most people who knew Doctor Proctor wouldn’t exactly call him an adult. Sure, he’d been alive for quite a number of years. But the things he invented were ridiculously fun and, unfortunately, not particularly practical in an adult world. Which is why he was neither rich nor famous. But he was a happy man all the same. He had what he wanted. Every day he got to do what he liked best, namely, invent slightly silly things. He had a garden with a pear tree. And a couple of good friends. And he was engaged to the world’s nicest woman, who – as far as he could see through those grimy swim goggles he always wore – was also the most beautiful woman in Oslo, Juliette Margarine. Juliette was currently in Paris but would be joining Doctor Proctor soon.

  “Why were you wearing Double Deaf?” Lisa asked as she helped the doctor to his feet.

  “My ears were so cold, but I couldn’t find my hat,” the professor said. “What’s up?”

  Lisa told him what had happened at school.

  “Gregory Galvanius, huh?” Doctor Proctor said, brushing the snow out of his tousled hair. “Quite a creature, that one.”

  “You know Mr Hiccup?” Nilly asked. “Truls and Trym sewed his trousers to his desk chair in a sort of really ugly cross-stitch. Artistry and craftsmanship are rather elusive skills, aren’t they? But I wonder how they did that without him noticing anything.”

  Doctor Proctor sighed. “I’m sure Gregory probably fell asleep, poor man.”

  “Teachers don’t fall asleep in the middle of their own classes,” Lisa said.

  “Actually, they do,” Doctor Proctor said. “If they’re creatures that really should have been hibernating, they do.”

  “Hmm. Uh, what are those?” Nilly asked, pointing at Doctor Proctor’s feet.

  “Those,” the professor said, looking down at his red and orange boots with blue laces, “are my latest invention: Doctor Proctor’s Balancing Shoes. See. . .” He raised one foot and showed them the sole. “It’s a pair of old boxing shoes that I installed magnetic tracks in, so you can balance on anything. You just flip on this switch here.”

  A normal knob from a stove was attached to the boot’s instep. Lisa read the settings:

  TIGHT LINE

  SLACK LINE

  FENCE

  BRIDGE

  ROOF

  “Cool!” Nilly exclaimed. “Can I try?”

  “Not yet, my dear Nilly. It needs a little perfecting before it’ll be . . . uh, perfect.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, why were you just wearing them up on the roof?” Nilly asked, a little poutily. When Nilly tested one of Doctor Proctor’s inventions, the ones he liked best were the ones that weren’t quite perfect yet.

  “I was adjusting the antenna,” Doctor Proctor said, pointing up at his roof where the outlines of an enormous television antenna were clearly visible in straight, black lines silhouetted against the pale winter sky. “I hardly get a single TV channel these days.”

  Lisa groaned. “But my dear professor! Don’t you know that the TV signals are all digital now? None of those old antennas work anymore.”

  Doctor Proctor raised an eyebrow and looked at Lisa, then up at the antenna on his roof, and then at his watch. “Well, the clock’s ticking. What’s up?”

  “Excuse me?” Lisa said.

  “What’s up?” Doctor Proctor repeated.

  “I saw something that disappeared when the snow melted,” Nilly said.

  “That’s what snow does when it melts,” Doctor Proctor said with a yawn. “What else is going on?”

  “The school banner was missing an O,” Lisa said.

  “Sounds like the end of the world is coming,” Doctor Proctor said, starting to trudge through the snow towards his front door.

  “Do you have any advice about what we should do?” Lisa asked.

  “Of course,” said Proctor.

  “And what would that be?” Lisa prompted.

  “What we always do. We’ll make jelly.”

  “WELL,” DOCTOR PROCTOR said after the three of them had finished off a five-foot-long jelly at the professor’s kitchen table. On the counter sat the model helicopter he had used to whip the cream to put on top, the toaster he had used to do a quick dry on his mittens and socks, and a pot for cooking fish soup that he had made a big hole in the bottom of because he couldn’t stand fish soup.

  “So, you saw something,” Doctor Proctor said.

  “Yup,” Nilly said, and burped loudly. “Excuse me.”

  “Of course. What did you see?”

  “Hard to say. It was sort of dusted with a little flurry of snow after Gregory Galvanius’s collision. I could
see its silhouette. But then the snow melted, and whatever was underneath was invisible.”

  “Human or animal?”

  “Don’t know. The tracks didn’t look like any animal tracks I’ve seen. Or like any person who was barefoot or wearing shoes or boots. It was like it was wearing . . .” Nilly squeezed his eyes shut and looked like he was concentrating rather hard on what it might have been wearing.

  “Hm,” said Doctor Proctor. “And that banner that was missing the O in ‘school.’ But then when you went back, the O was there again?”

  Lisa nodded.

  Doctor Proctor rubbed his chin.

  “Socks!” Nilly yelled.

  Lisa and Doctor Proctor looked at him.

  “They were sock footprints,” Nilly said. “You know like if you get soaked and come home and take off your shoes and walk around in just your wet socks on the floor.”

  “Sock thief,” whispered Proctor, as if to himself. “Speech impediment. Moonka—” Then it was as if he realised that Nilly and Lisa were sitting there and he suddenly stopped talking.

  “Sock thief?” Lisa and Nilly asked in unison.

  “Speech impediment!” Proctor said. “I mean . . . my speech was impeded . . . I misspoke.” He pointed out of the window: “Would you look at that! Look, it started snowing!”

  They glanced out, and sure enough a few tiny grains of snow were falling. But it was Norway, and it snowed a lot there.

  Lisa looked at Doctor Proctor and asked, “What’s a sock thie—”

  “Anyway, I’m working on a new invention,” Proctor said, interrupting her before she had a chance to finish. “It’s a mutant hybrid between a Christmas tree and a normal pine tree that makes it so the trees can grow tinsel, paper chains and lights. All you have to do is chop it down and set it up in your living room already decorated. What do you think?”

  Nilly shook his head and said, “Bad idea. Half the fun is in decorating the tree yourself.”

  “Really?” Doctor Proctor asked.

  “Yup,” Nilly said, scraping his jelly plate. “Couldn’t you invent something that would make the Dølgen School Marching Band sound good instead?”

  “That I think is impossible,” Doctor Proctor said. “But what about gingerbread-flavoured jelly?”

  “You’re onto something there!” Nilly cried, glancing at the last little bit of jelly left in the serving dish. “If no one else is having any more, then maybe I could . . .”

  “Doctor Proctor,” Lisa said, “what were you saying about a sock thief?

  “Never heard of such a thing,” Proctor said. “And neither have you two.”

  Lisa looked over at Nilly. His cheeks were puffed up like two balloons and the jelly plate was empty.

  “Well, well, would you look at the time,” Doctor Proctor said, and then yawned, loudly and obviously.

  “DON’T YOU THINK Doctor Proctor was acting a little weird tonight?” Lisa asked as they stood on his front porch.

  “Nah,” said Nilly, who then burped loudly and smiled contentedly.

  “Exactly,” Lisa said, rolling her eyes.

  After Lisa got home, ate dinner, did her homework and practised her clarinet, her mother called from down in the living room that she thought it was time for Lisa to go to bed. And, actually, Lisa agreed with her. After she brushed her teeth, she went down to the living room to say goodnight. Her parents were sitting there watching TV. A bunch of men and women were singing at the top of their lungs, white capes swaying like curtains in a summer breeze. And Lisa realised she longed for spring.

  “What are you watching?” Lisa asked.

  “What are we watching?” her commandant father gasped. “This is the NoroVision Choral Throwdown. The winning chorus gets twenty thousand krone and fifty øre. Plus their own TV show. Plus an all-expenses-paid camping trip to Denmark.”

  “Plus free haircuts for six months in the towns of Moss or Voss, or any other rhyming town,” Lisa’s mother said. “Plus—”

  “Who’s that singing?” Lisa interrupted.

  “That’s Hallvard Tenorsen’s chorus,” her father muttered.

  “Who’s Hallvard Tenorsen?” Lisa asked.

  “Who’s Hallvard Tenorsen?” her mother repeated, shocked. “Honestly, Lisa, you ought to keep up with the tabloids a little more. Hallvard Tenorsen’s that singing chiropractor from Jönköping, Sweden. Haven’t you heard of him, Lisa? The cutest choral conductor south of the North Pole. Just look! See how cute he is? Odd that he isn’t married.”

  “Not odd that he isn’t married,” Lisa’s father chuckled.

  Lisa looked at the wide-open mouths of the singing, smiling chorus members, then she left.

  Once Lisa was in bed, she turned off her reading light, turned on her flashlight and shone it on a window in the yellow house across the street. And as usual the light over there turned on and a couple of itty-bitty fingers started putting on a shadow play. Tonight the performance seemed to be about a hiccuping man rolling away and crashing into something. And a woman with a long nose helping him up. The man looked like he was trying to kiss her, but she brushed him aside. Lisa laughed out loud. And totally forgot that she had forgotten what she had forgotten. So when the performance was over, Lisa fell into her normally sound sleep abnormally quickly. And she didn’t notice that it had stopped snowing or that a strange murmuring sound had started rising from the manhole cover out on Cannon Avenue. The murmuring rose up towards the moon, which twinkled sleepily down on Oslo as it hummed a song.

  AT SCHOOL THE next day everyone was talking about the choral competition and who had given the best performance.

  Some said, “Hallvard Tenorsen’s chorus.”

  Others said, “The Hallvard Tenorsen Chorus.”

  While a number of other others said just, “Hallvard Tenorsen.”

  The final, deciding round of the NoroVision Choral Throwdown was tonight. Of course everyone would be watching, and the person they would be paying most attention to was Hallvard Tenorsen.

  During lunch break, the girls sat on the bench in the hallway eating from their lunchboxes and talking about Tenorsen’s soft hair, that practically covered those gentle, blue eyes. And those perfect teeth, standing to attention like a white washed picket fence in his mouth.

  “Seriously,” said Beatrize, who wasn’t just the cutest girl in their class, but was also the best at maths, PE, Chinese jump rope and pretty much everything else that mattered at their school. “I think we ought to start our own chorus and enter the competition next year.”

  And as usual when Beatrize expressed an opinion, the other girls nodded in agreement. Everyone aside from Lisa, who had just barely and politely managed to eke out a tiny bit of space at the very end of the bench.

  Beatrize flipped her long, blonde hair and studied her freshly painted nails: “I’m just dead sure we could win, you know. I mean, look at us, you know? We so totally ooze charm and inner beauty and all that stuff.”

  Lisa rolled her eyes, but none of the other girls noticed. And if they had, they would hardly have cared.

  “But, like, how can we just start a chorus, huh, Beatrize?” one of the girls asked.

  “Easy,” Beatrize said, checking her hair for split ends. “All we need is, like, a conductor.”

  “But how do we just, you know, get one of those, huh?”

  Someone up above them exclaimed: “A conductor?”

  And just then something came plopping down and landed on the floor right in front of them with the slap of two tiny shoe soles, children’s size 11. His eyes shone among the freckles. On his little head he was wearing an enormous orange knit hat with a pom-pom on top, askew. “Super. I’ll take the job,” Nilly said.

  “Like, where did you come from?” Beatrize asked.

  “That little shelf up there where people put their hats,” he answered, crumpling the paper bag his lunch had been in and tossing it in a perfect arc up and over into the bin can next to Lisa. “When do I start?”

  B
eatrize rolled her eyes. “What, like we’re going to have some red-haired dwarf as our conductor?”

  The other girls snickered.

  “Like that would get us a lot of votes,” one of them whispered.

  “A few people might find it funny,” whispered another.

  “Not very many. He’s hardly more than a dust bunny,” Beatrize said.

  “Well, my offer expires in exactly five seconds,” Nilly said. “Four, three . . . so, what do you say?”

  And the answer actually sounded like it came from a chorus: “NOOOO!!!”

  “No, well then,” Nilly said. “Don’t come to school complaining and saying you never got your chance when we win next year.”

  “We?” Beatrize asked.

  “Yup,” Nilly said.

  “Who’s we?”

  “Lisa singing soprano and me as tenor.”

  The girls laughed hysterically, but Lisa looked hurt. “Nilly . . .” she began.

  “Well, do you guys have a name then?” Beatrize scoffed.

  “Of course,” Nilly said, writing the letters in the air with his index finger as he pronounced the name slowly and exaggeratedly: “Nilly’s Very Harmonic and Very Mixed Chorus.”

  “Ha, ha,” Beatrize laughed disdainfully. “You guys have a, like, chorus with just two people in it? Hallvard Tenorsen must have, like, at least thirty in his.”

  “Who said just two?” Nilly asked. “Obviously there’s more of us.”

  “Like, who? I mean, like totally, who?” Beatrize scoffed.

  “Well, there’s Doctor Proctor singing baritone,” Nilly said, squeezing his eyebrows together as he counted on his fingers, as if it were hard to remember everyone. “And . . . singing contralto we have his fiancée, Juliette Margarine. Well, if she were here. And then of course there’s the castrato; we’ve got Perry, who sings that part.”

  “Well, like, who’s Perry?”