Bubble in the Bathtub

by Jo Nesbo

  By this point Nilly was so excited, worked up, ecstatic, and inspired that he just had to start singing. So he did, “There will be life here—yes, yes! And not death—no, no!”

  Bloodbath ran over to the guillotine, unlocked it, got Lisa and Doctor Proctor out and onto their feet again as he brushed off their clothes, and asked with concern if they were all right. Obviously they were because they ran right over to the little lad in the uniform, each grabbed one of his arms and lifted him up while he kept singing, “There will be life here—yes, yes!”

  Down in front of the stage people had started dancing and jumping up and down as they sang along. People were more animated than they’d been even during the bloodiest and most successful Sunday beheadings. Bloodbath felt a strange warmth, yes, a sense of joy spreading through his body at the sight of them, a delight that surged through him. It couldn’t be stopped, there was something about this irritating, simple little song. So, once the delight reached his throat, Bloodbath did something he had never done before in his entire career as Paris’s most dreaded executioner. He pulled off his hood and allowed people to see his face. And then, in an instant, the crowd stopped singing. They stared at him, appalled, because Bloodbath was not at all a good-looking man. But then he smiled broadly and chimed in in his booming vibrato, “There will be life here—rah, rah!”

  And with that, the party was in full swing again. People ran amok. They were crazed, frenzied, zany, brazen, pizzazzy, and a bunch of other things with Zs in them. They didn’t even notice the three people sneaking away behind the stage, around the corner of the dreaded Bastille prison building and disappearing. They just kept singing and dancing and splashing red wine on each other. The song was long forgotten by the next day when most of them woke up with throbbing heads, aching hips, and sore throats, but not by Bloodbath. Bloodbath would keep singing this song for the rest of his life and would later teach it to his children and grandchildren, who would eventually move around quite a bit, to England, to Germany—and some of them even to a small town in Minnesota, where they would form the heavy metal band Meat Ball, which would become famous after being featured in the mockumentary There Will Be Life Here.

  “DID YOU BRING the time soap?” Proctor asked breathlessly. He and Lisa and Nilly had left the Bastille behind and were now racing through the crooked streets of Paris. Lisa and Nilly had no idea where they were, but the professor seemed to know his way through the quiet Sunday alleys and lanes.

  “I have a smidge,” Lisa said. “But I don’t think it’s enough for all three of us. I had to take a few detours to get here, you know.”

  “I have a smidge,” Nilly said. “But I don’t think it’s enough for all three of us. I had to take a few detours to get here, you know.”

  “Let’s hope if we combine it, it’ll be enough,” Doctor Proctor said as they came around a corner. “Have you guys seen Juliette? Is she waiting at the hotel?”

  But before they were able to answer, Doctor Proctor stopped so suddenly that Lisa and Nilly ran right into him.

  “Oh no!” the professor said. “Someone stole my bathtub. Look!”

  But there wasn’t much to see since what he was pointing to was an empty square with just a few empty market stalls in it.

  “Well, I guess someone got themselves a new bathtub,” Nilly mumbled. “What are we going to do now?”

  “Where’s your bathtub, Nilly?” Lisa asked.

  “Where you said you were going on that message in the bottle,” Nilly said. “The Pastille. Weird destination, by the way. I wound up in the middle of a big chicken coop.”

  “Sorry, I mixed up Pastille and Bastille,” Lisa said. “If we don’t have enough time soap, we’ll have to get there before the bubbles are gone. But how will we get there? We don’t have any pigs.”

  “Pigs?” the professor and Nilly cried in unison.

  “Forget about it,” Lisa sighed, realizing that it would be too hard to explain. “What are we going to do now?”

  “Yeah, what are we going to do?” the professor and Nilly cried in unison.

  The three friends stared at each other, stymied.

  And as they stood there staring at each other, stymied, in the sunshine filtering down between the tall Parisian buildings, they heard the lively clopping of horseshoes and the creaking of large wooden wheels. They turned around. A brown horse with large black blinders came prancing around the corner. And behind it, a carriage. A driver was sitting on the front of the carriage, swaying back and forth and looking like he was about to fall asleep. He had big bags under his eyes, a tattered coat, and a moth-eaten top hat, black and tall as a stovepipe.

  “Need a lift?” he asked with a yawn.

  “That’s just what we needed!” the professor exclaimed. “Come on!”

  They climbed in the door of the carriage, which started moving right away.

  There was just exactly enough room for four people on the two benches, and that was also just what they needed, because there was already one person sitting in there. The brim of the passenger’s top hat had slipped down over his eyes, and he was obviously sound asleep, because his body was flopping back and forth as the carriage moved.

  “Weird,” Lisa said.

  “What is?” the professor asked.

  “The driver didn’t ask us where we were going.”

  “Elementary.” Nilly smiled condescendingly. “Obviously he’s going to drop this other passenger off first.”

  “But we don’t have time for that!” Lisa said. “Should we wake him up and ask if it’s okay if we go to the Pastille first?”

  The professor shook his head. “I’m afraid that won’t help, Lisa. I’m sure the bubbles will already be long gone.”

  They sat there for a while contemplating this, and the only thing that broke the silence was the sound of the horse’s hooves, clopping against the cobblestones in a slow tap dance.

  “Raspa was there,” Lisa said. “In the crowd. Did you see her?”

  “No,” Doctor Proctor said. “But I’m not surprised.”

  “Oh?” Lisa and Nilly said, looking at the professor, shocked.

  “That was the idea—for her to follow you guys to Paris,” he sighed.

  “The idea?” Nilly and Lisa yelled, you guessed it, in unison.

  “Yeah. I sent you two down to her shop with that stamp so she would understand that I had succeeded in traveling through time, that I had gotten our invention to work. I knew that once she understood that, she would try to find out where I was and then come to steal the invention from me. Like she had tried to do when she was my assistant here in Paris.”

  “Steal the invention from you!” Lisa exclaimed, agitated. “Why would you want her to come here, if that’s what she was going to do?”

  “Because I was out of time soap,” the professor said. “And because I knew there was enough in that jar in the cellar to bring you two here but not to bring all three of us back. Raspa is the only one in the world who can make more time soap. I needed her here, simple as that.”

  “Why couldn’t you just send Raspa a postcard and ask her to come?” Nilly asked.

  The professor sighed again. “Raspa would never have voluntarily come to rescue me. She hates me.”

  “Why?”

  Doctor Proctor scratched his head. “I’ve wondered about that a lot, but I really don’t know. I never tried to deprive her of the honor of having invented time soap.”

  “But …,” Nilly said. “How did you know that we would spill the beans so she would find out we were going to Paris?”

  The professor smiled wryly. “First of all, there was the stamp and the postcard, which I knew would make her understand the situation. Second of all, you’re a whiz at a lot of things, Nilly, but keeping secrets isn’t exactly your specialty, is it?”

  Lisa cleared her throat.

  “Eh heh heh,” Nilly chuckled with a zigzag smile.

  “But what do we do?” Lisa said. “How do we find Raspa and get her t
o make more time soap?”

  “Well,” the professor said. “Finding her won’t be that hard.”

  “Oh?”

  “You think horse-drawn carriages just show up out of thin air right when you need them?”

  Doctor Proctor nodded toward the sleeping passenger, and then looked down. Nilly and Lisa followed his gaze down to the floor. And there—jutting out from under the edge of the trench coat—was a wooden leg that ended in a roller skate.

  Where Is Juliette?

  THE HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGE jostled back and forth over the streets of Paris. Lisa, Nilly, and Doctor Proctor sat inside it, staring at their strange traveling companion.

  “So that’s it?” a hoarse voice grumbled from under the rim of the top hat. “So that’s why you wanted me back, Victor? To make more time soap for you and these brats?”

  As the top hat was pushed up onto the top of the passenger’s head, Raspa’s searing eyes emerged to glare at Doctor Proctor.

  “Yes, of course,” Doctor Proctor said.

  “Yes, of course!” hissed Raspa, throwing her top hat to the floor. “Because that’s all I ever was to you, isn’t it, Victor? A lousy soap maker!”

  “Quite the contrary,” the professor said, taken aback. “You were a brilliant soap maker. The best, actually.”

  “But a soap maker all the same. Never … never …” Raspa’s voice quivered a little. “Never anything more.”

  “What do you mean, Raspa?”

  She stared at Doctor Proctor, her chest rising and falling.

  “Nothing,” she said, suddenly sounding as if she had a cold. “And now, Victor, now you think she’s there at the Hôtel Frainche-Fraille waiting for you, that … that …” She waved her hand dismissively and spat out the name, “Juliette Margarine!”

  Nilly looked from Raspa to Doctor Proctor. He didn’t understand what was going on and it looked like the professor—who usually understood so much—was also clueless.

  Only Lisa appeared to be keeping up with the situation. At any rate, she leaned over toward Raspa and asked, “Where’s Juliette?”

  The woman with all the black eye makeup laughed like a croaking crow, “And why should I tell you that?”

  “Now you listen here, Raspa—,” Doctor Proctor started threateningly, but was interrupted.

  “Don’t worry, Victor. Let’s just say that she’s getting what she deserves. Forget about that woman. She was never the one for you anyway, that witch.”

  “Witch …? Ouch!” The professor had stood up in the carriage, smacking his head on the roof. “No one calls the woman I love a witch!”

  “Victor, please,” Raspa laughed. “A man of your age shouldn’t be getting worked up like this. Think about your heart.”

  “At least I have a heart,” the professor snarled. “While you … you …” Big professor tears welled up in his eyes. “You just have a big, cold brain!”

  “Raspa, where is Juliette?” Lisa repeated. “She traveled somewhere in time, didn’t she? You tracked her using the soap residue, didn’t you?”

  Raspa sighed deeply. “I don’t know how much time soap you have left, but if you have any I suggest you use it to get back to your own time. That’s where I’m planning on going anyway.” She leaned back in her seat, crossing her foot over her wooden leg.

  “Raspa …,” whispered a tearful Doctor Proctor as a humongous, gigantic professor tear rolled down his cheek. “Please! Just tell me what you want in exchange for telling me where Juliette is and I’ll give it to you.”

  Raspa raised an eyebrow. “Anything?”

  “Anything! Don’t you understand? If I can’t have Juliette, I might as well be dead.”

  Raspa shivered at his words, as if they’d stung her like peas from a slingshot.

  “Oh really?” she said sharply, lifting her chin. “Well then draw out the plans for the time-traveling bathtub and give them to me. Ha!”

  “Sure thing!” cried Doctor Proctor, smiling. “You can have the whole invention to yourself. And all the other inventions I’ve come up with, actually. They’re all yours!”

  Raspa’s mouth opened, but at first nothing came out. She closed it again, opened it and tried again. “Do you mean …,” she whispered. “Do you mean that you would give me everything just for … that woman?”

  “Yes, I do,” Doctor Proctor said quickly. “You have my word. No matter what you think of me otherwise, you know I always keep my word.”

  Raspa stared at him, her mouth gaping.

  “Well?” the professor said.

  “It’s a deal,” Raspa said, barely audibly. “So …”

  She took a breath, and the only thing you could hear in the carriage was the clopping of horse feet, cows mooing in the distance, and a sound that almost sounded like snoring. “When I managed to bust open the door to the room you guys were staying in at the Hôtel Frainche-Fraille, the little girl and boy had already left via the bathtub. But Juliette was still there. I threatened her with my old, but completely functional, pistol. I ordered her into the tub, then grabbed hold of her hair, submerged my own head, concentrated, and sent her to where she is now. The same way you sent your postcard, Victor.”

  “Hm,” the professor concurred. “And where did you send her?”

  “Someplace where she couldn’t run away or be found, of course. After all, she was all I had … how should I put this … to negotiate with.”

  Doctor Proctor gulped. “Where? Out with it.”

  “To a jail cell. In the city of Rouen. On May thirtieth. In the year 1431.”

  Doctor Proctor looked puzzled. “Why there? Why then?”

  “I know,” Lisa said.

  “Oh?” Doctor Proctor said, and looked at her.

  “Mrs. Strobe just covered that in history class. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in the Old Market Square in Rouen on that date.”

  “Is that true?” the professor asked, looking at Raspa.

  Raspa shrugged. “It was the first thing I thought of.”

  “Something tells me our troubles aren’t over yet,” Doctor Proctor said.

  Just then the carriage stopped and they heard the driver’s voice call from the roof, “The Pastille, Mademoiselle Raspa!”

  “So this is where you were going, too?” Doctor Proctor asked.

  “Of course,” Raspa said. “My bathtub is here. In the pigsty, to be precise.”

  “You followed me,” Lisa said.

  “Yes. I realized that one over there was never going to lead me to Victor,” Raspa said, nodding toward Nilly, who you’re probably thinking has been quiet for quite a while now, which is pretty unlike him. Nilly was lying, slumped down in the seat, and the sound that almost sounded like snoring actually was just that: snoring.

  Lisa rolled her eyes and gave Nilly a kick in the shin so that he opened his eyes. He blinked, smacked his lips, smiled, and mumbled a very groggy, but hopeful, “Breakfast?”

  They hurried out of the carriage. Luckily the bathtubs were still right where they’d left them. Sure, they had to pull out three pigs, who were enjoying the bathwater, and in the chicken coop the rooster was perched on the edge of the tub pecking at them aggressively. He obviously thought the tub now belonged to him.

  Raspa poured time soap into both of the tubs and said that she wanted to go to Rouen with them. How else could she be sure that they wouldn’t run off and cheat her of the drawings for the tub?

  Doctor Proctor didn’t object and they agreed that he and Nilly would use the tub in the chicken coop and Raspa and Lisa would use the one in the pigsty.

  When Lisa and Raspa were alone in the pigsty, stirring the tub to make some bubbles, Lisa heard Raspa sniffle. Lisa didn’t say anything. She just waited. Then there was another sniffle. And another.

  “You were in love with him,” Lisa said finally. “Weren’t you?”

  Raspa sniffled a long, wet, oversized sniffle.

  “Victor never noticed,” she said. “He was only ever interested in his inventio
ns.”

  Lisa just nodded. She’d suspected this for a long time.

  “I would have done anything for him,” Raspa said, sniffling and still stirring. “I would have gladly given him the recipe for the stupid time soap if he’d only just asked. I thought he was a little slow, that he just needed a little time to fall in love with me. But I realized that he wasn’t slow at all when one day he came into the laboratory beaming, and said that he’d fallen in love with a French girl he’d met on the street.” Massive sniffle. “And you know what?”

  “No, what?” Lisa said.

  “Back then I was much prettier than that … that … Juliette Margarine. Just so you know!”

  “I see,” Lisa said. “But he fell in love with her. That’s just how it happens sometimes.”

  Raspa stopped stirring and cocked her head, looking down at Lisa. “Who died and made you Miss Smarty Pants, if I might ask? You’re just a little snippet of a girl. What do you know?”

  “Not that much, maybe,” Lisa said. “But I lost a friend once, and I made a new one.”

  Raspa pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “You don’t say,” she said. “A new friend, huh?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said. “It’s never too late to make new friends, you know.”

  Raspa sniffled contemptuously. “And who does Little Miss Smarty Pants think would want to be friends with an evil old lady with a wooden leg, if I might ask?”

  “Well,” Lisa said, looking down at the soap, which was starting to form a nice layer of bubbles, “me, for example.”

  “Sea spray!” Raspa spluttered, clearing her throat.

  Lisa didn’t respond. They kept stirring in silence, even though there were enough bubbles now for them to go.

  Finally Raspa asked, “Do you know what the stupidest thing is?”

  “No,” Lisa said.

  Raspa laughed a short, hard laugh. “Don’t say anything to Victor, but I’ve known how to make tubs that could time-travel the whole time.”

  Lisa stopped stirring. “What are you saying?”

  Raspa shrugged her shoulders. “That I don’t actually need his drawings. I can make my own time-traveling tub anytime I want.”