The End of the World. Maybe

by Jo Nesbo

  “Hiccup.”

  Lisa and the others turned around and came back to Nilly.

  “Amazing!” Doctor Proctor laughed. “Now, my dear friends, despite everything, we have no choice but to be satisfied with the ending of this story!”

  “Almost,” Nilly said. “Shh!”

  He cocked his head to the side, towards the little seven-legged Peruvian sucking spider that he had placed on his shoulder.

  “Perry wants us to go this way,” Nilly said, and started running down one of the tunnels. There was less water there, but what little there was splashed around his feet. The others hurried after him. And when they rounded a turn, they saw Nilly standing there, legs apart. And in front of him was a large, beautiful cob web that stretched across the whole sewer tunnel, its strands glittering in the light.

  “Look!” Nilly whispered.

  And they looked. They saw that the cobweb was moving. As if something large and invisible were thrashing about helplessly in the network of threads that was so strong they must have been spun by a spider who had consumed Doctor Proctor’s Strength Tonic with Mexican Thunder Chili, Maximum Strength. And when they looked more carefully, they could see that the shape still had splotches of waffle batter here and there.

  Lisa positioned herself next to Nilly and reached out her hand. And shuddered when she felt it encounter something warm and hairy.

  “Yodolf Staler,” Nilly said in a deep voice. “So we were fated to meet again.”

  “Shut up, you dwarf!” a familiar, enraged voice screamed from inside the cobweb. “Let me out of here!”

  “We’d be happy to,” Doctor Proctor said. “We’ll send a few nice soldiers down who’ll put some nice, shiny handcuffs on you and give you a free lift to a snug, warm cage. And who knows? Maybe you’ll get to be on display at the zoo. To strike a little fear into the hearts of visitors.”

  “Aaaargh!” came the snarl from the cobweb. And slowly he came into view. Yodolf Staler. Lisa shuddered again when she saw those sharp teeth gleaming in that open mouth.

  And as they turned around to go back, Lisa hoped she would never see Yodolf Staler again, in a zoo or anywhere else. And she wouldn’t, either.

  But from then on, Lisa stopped thinking about all that stuff. Because when our friends emerged into the daylight in the palace’s rear courtyard, the festivities were already in full swing. The soldiers were dancing around and people were gathered outside the gate waving small Norwegian flags and shouting, “Hurrah!”

  “Party!” Nilly shouted, doing the moonwalk into the middle of the crowd. “Bring on the girls, jelly, and song!”

  And that’s exactly what happened.

  “WELL, THIS IS certainly fun, Rolf,” Gunnar said, snapping the handcuffs around the hairy wrists of Yodolf, who was dangling from the ceiling of the tunnel, swaddled in cobwebs, down in the sewers. They had put a piece of tape over Yodolf’s mouth after they got tired of listening to him promise them first money, then gold and even green forestland if they would let him escape, and then – after they politely declined his offers – he threatened to bite off their stupid heads with those stupid hats if they didn’t let him go immediately. Now the baboon couldn’t make a sound, and it was so quiet Rolf and Gunnar could hear the music and cheering from the people aboveground. The celebration had spread to include all of Oslo, yes, even all of Norway, where people were now pouring out onto the streets to celebrate and congratulate each other on being free from Staler the despot.

  Rolf wiped his cheek where one of the girls in Palace Square had kissed him.

  “Feels good doesn’t it, Gunnar, to have liberated Norway?” He laughed.

  “They’ll write epic poems about us,” Gunnar said, fastening cuffs around the unpleasant moon chameleon’s ankles.

  “They’ll build a museum in our honour and make movies about our heroic deeds,” Rolf said.

  Gunnar tried to prize Yodolf free from the cobwebs. “I have to say, he’s good and stuck in this web. Give me a hand here, Rolf, would you?”

  “Of course, Gunnar.”

  But even together they couldn’t get Yodolf free.

  “It’s like glue,” Rolf groaned. “We’re going to have to get some monster hedge clippers and clip him free.”

  “Good thinging.”

  “I think you meant ‘thinking.’”

  “I think you’re probably right about that, Rolf.”

  They pulled the tape off Yodolf’s mouth so he wouldn’t suffocate while they were gone, and started wading back the same way they’d come while Yodolf screamed after them, “Numbskulls! Filthy britches!”

  Suddenly Gunnar stopped.

  “What is it?” Rolf asked.

  “Did you see that?”

  “What?”

  “In the dark over there. A flash of white. Like teeth in an enormous jaw full of teeth.”

  “How enormous?”

  “Well. Like an inflatable swim ring.”

  “Quit kidding around, Rolf.”

  “Uh, you’re Rolf.”

  “Gunnar, I mean. You don’t believe that old urban legend that’s going around, about an anaconda living in the sewers under Oslo, the one that’s supposed to be eighteen yards of solid, constrictor muscles with teeth like upside-down ice cream cones. I’m sorry, but if you believe that one, well then you’re more gullible than . . .”

  He was interrupted by a loud shriek and an even louder bang.

  “What was that sound?”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was an enormous jaw suddenly snapping shut and someone making a cry for help.”

  “More like half a cry for help.”

  “Yeah. ‘Hel—!’ That was it.”

  “Yeah. ‘Hel—!’ And then it stopped.”

  “As if the cry was cut in half.”

  “Hm. Do you hear anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly. He’s awfully quiet all of a sudden.”

  “You mean . . .”

  They turned around slowly and shone their torches at the cobweb. And there, in the middle of the cob web, where a thrashing, writhing, furious moon chameleon had been hanging just a few seconds before, now there wasn’t one. Not even a cobweb. As if some one had taken a big bite. A bite the size of . . . well, an inflatable swim ring.

  “R-R-Rolf?” Gunnar asked as they backed away, shining the light everywhere. “D-d-do you think anacondas like moon chameleons?”

  “I – I – I don’t know, Gunnar. I wouldn’t think so. But maybe if they had a little bit of a waffle taste?”

  And with that they both spun around and ran as fast as they could out of the sewer and up into the day light. And there they stood, blinking in the sunshine, surrounded by people dancing, balloons flying, fireworks exploding and flags waving. And then girls stepped over and kissed both of them on both cheeks – the cheeks with the handlebar mustache and the cheeks with the Fu Manchu mustache – and they joined right in with the dancing and forgot all about Yodolf and at least half about the anaconda.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON there was a party at the crooked blue house at the top of Cannon Avenue. And since the sun was shining even more enthusiastically than the day before, Doctor Proctor, Lisa and Nilly had brought dining-table chairs, the holey sofa and the barbecue out into the garden. The entire thrown-together-at-the-last-minute Cannon Avenue band plus neighbours and friends were there. The melting snow gurgled and laughed in the gutters and storm drains as the guests ate their grilled hot dogs. And these weren’t just any old grilled hot dogs; they were South Trøndelag grilled hot dogs, brought to the party by a special guest who had landed his hang glider in the garden earlier that day. And who was now playing Chinese checkers with another special guest.

  “I do believe, Your Royal Highness,” Petter said with his mouth full of hot dog, moving the last blue and yellow marble into place, “that I just won.”

  The king looked down at the game board and mumbled, “Well, I’ll be!”

  Petter tipped h
is head back and yelled at the blue sky, “Fight, Petter! So wonderful, Petter! Three cheers for Petter! I’m the one and only Petter . . .”

  And then Nilly tapped on his glass with a knife to let everyone know he was going to say something. Silence settled over the snow-covered yard. Nilly leaped up onto his chair and cleared his throat:

  “People are strange,” he began. “When we feel like strangling someone, it’s usually one of the people we love the most.”

  “Yup!” Nilly’s sister called out.

  “We elected Yodolf as president,” Nilly continued. “But it is very human to be fooled and to make mistakes. Yes indeed, even I readily admit that I myself have been wrong on two occasions.”

  Lisa, who was sitting next to Nilly, elbowed him in the side. Nilly cleared his throat again:

  “Maybe even three times. But what’s important is that you’re brave enough to admit that you made a mistake. In fact, people really ought to make mistakes sometimes. Because how else would you ever get the chance to correct your mistakes?”

  Nilly paused to give everyone a chance to mull this over. Then he continued:

  “We are here today to celebrate the fact that we fought for something. But what did we actually fight for? The right to be little and know how to spell? Is that important enough to risk wafflisation for?”

  He looked around.

  “Yes,” Lisa said, standing up too. “Because it’s not just about the right to be little or good at spelling. It’s just as much about the right to be big and be bad at spelling. It’s about the right to be both the same and different.”

  Lisa and Nilly bowed and sat back down. Applause broke out and Lisa gave her commandant father and commandant mother a stern look so they would understand it was embarrassing that they kept clapping for so long after everyone else had stopped.

  “That girl’s going to be prime minister one day,” the king whispered to Gregory and Mrs Strobe. Then he tapped his knife on his glass and jumped up:

  “My fellow countrymen, I too would like to say something. It has been an eventful year, and there is more to come.”

  Nilly’s mother yawned so loudly that her jaws made a popping sound.

  “But most of all I would like to make a proclamation,” the king said. “Two of the people here today have decided to get engaged. And I’m so proud because they asked if I would be the best man. Ladies and gentle men, I present to you . . . Rosemarie Strobe and Gregory Galvanius.”

  Cheers rose through the air, and a smiling, red-cheeked Mrs Strobe raised her glass for a toast. Then Gregory put his arms around her and asked her loudly if he could have a kiss.

  Everyone cheered and Nilly raised his glass of pear juice. “Then with that I declare the war over. Let dessert begin. Because as fate would have it, Doctor Proctor and his fiancée Juliette, who returned home from Paris today, have made jelly.”

  A long, expectant “ooooh” ran through the crowd and everyone turned towards the blue house, from which the professor and his fiancée had just emerged. Over their heads, their arms straight, they were holding the longest tray anyone had ever seen.

  “Th-th-that’s a gigantic jelly – that must weigh as mush as a house!”

  At the sound of ‘mush,’ it was like everyone in the yard suddenly froze. Everyone stared in horror at the man who’d said it.

  “Uh, heh heh,” Mr Madsen laughed, embarrassed and self-conscious, and then adjusted his sunglasses. “Just kidding.”

  And cheers broke out again.

  AND WE LEAVE our friends there. We take a hang glider, perhaps, and fly up into the air. Over the garden with that blue house, where they’re still shovelling the longest jelly anyone has ever eaten into their mouths. Over the pear tree where a bird is singing about a slightly too early spring. Over the city of Oslo, where people are still dancing in the streets and the sun is shining on everyone. And we follow one of the rays of sunlight, the one that shines down on a manhole cover, through a little hole and on down into Oslo’s jungle of sewer pipes and tunnels. We can maybe hear something smacking its lips down there in the darkness. Full and content. I know what you’re thinking, but you don’t actually believe those old stories. Do you?