by Jo Nesbo
“Do you think we can’t recognize a Christmas porridge when we see one, boy?”
“I have no doubt that you highly esteemed upholders of the law know your porridges. I mean, as a people, we Norwegians are fond of our porridges. There’s oat porridge—well, I suppose we usually just call that one oatmeal—but then there’s rice porridge, farina porridge, semolina porridge, sour cream porridge, peas porridge hot, you know. But I’m also sure that if you use that hypermodern magnifying glass you brought along to investigate crimes against humanity in general and Mr. Thrane in particular, it will shine some light on the truth. Which is that this is not Christmas porridge. Quite the contrary. It’s a Kristi Himmelfart porridge, as traditionally eaten on Ascension Day.”
“There’s a porridge for that?”
“Yes. It’s a little more golden brown in color than Christmas porridge, and also the grains of rice are a smidge bigger.”
Mr. Fu Manchu studied the casserole pan through the magnifying glass. “Hmm, there is actually something light brown in here that I didn’t notice before . . . .”
Mr. Handlebar took a spoon and tasted a mouthful. “It tastes . . . ,” he said, and loudly smacked his lips with a look of profound concentration on his face. “Well, I’ll be . . . It tastes like caramel!”
“Exactly,” Lisa said. “Kristi Himmelfart porridge.”
“French Himmelfart porridge,” Juliette said.
“Which is traditionally served exactly four months and thirty-three days before the day after Ascension Day,” Doctor Proctor said. “Which is today!”
“To be completely precise,” Nilly said, licking all the way around his mouth, where Lisa thought she saw traces of caramel sauce, “this dish is called French Himmelfart Porridge à la Nilly. Named for the world-famous little redheaded chef also known for his Bouche de Nilly, a chef who was beloved by an entire nation, and particularly by the cancan dancers who flocked around him and . . .”
Doctor Proctor cleared his throat and said, “I’m sure the policemen would love to hear the rest of that story, but no doubt they’re extremely busy cracking down on people who are breaking the new Christmas rules.”
“True enough,” Mr. Handlebar said, and took another spoonful of porridge. “But if you were to absolutely insist that we stay for a bit and have some of this delightful French Himmelfart porridge . . .”
“À la Nilly,” Nilly added.
“ . . . then I’m sure we could spare a few minutes, wouldn’t you say, Rolf?”
“Gunnar, I don’t think Mr. Thrane would be too pleased . . .”
“No, you’re probably right. Yes, yes. Well, we’re sorry to have disturbed you. Have a good . . . uh, Himmelfart.”
“Umm, do you think maybe you could . . .” Doctor Proctor held out his hands.
“Oh, right, I almost forgot,” Mr. Handlebar said, and then chuckled. He unlocked the handcuffs and stuffed them in his pocket.
“That wouldn’t have looked good, would it, Rolf?”
“Word,” Mr. Fu Manchu replied. “Probably would have earned him a few funny looks.”
After they left, Lisa pulled the bottle of caramel sauce out of Nilly’s pocket. “You may not be the wisest person I know, but you’re the cleverest!” Then she threw her arms around him and gave him a peck on the cheek. And Nilly beamed like the sun.
“But now,” Juliette said, “we need an audience with the king, pronto.”
“What do you mean ‘an audience’?” Lisa asked.
“It’s like permission to visit important people,” Doctor Proctor explained.
“Important people?” Nilly said. “I’ll handle this.”
Tuesday, and Now Three Days until Christmas Eve
“THAT WAS A strange letter,” the king said, scratching his chin. He squirmed a little, because his much-too-big throne was confoundingly hard and the seat cushions he’d ordered online to raise him up a little had turned out to be made of plastic, which made his butt get really sweaty.
“Do you want to hear this, Vera?”
“I would prefer it if the king would call me ‘Court Marshal’ and not Vera, Your Majesty,” the uniformed woman standing beside him said. Then she re-pursed her lips.
“And I wish you would call me Johnny.” The king sighed. “Do you want to hear it or not?”
“I would like whatever the king commands, Your Majesty.”
“Boooriing!” the king said. He slumped in his throne, dangling his legs in front. Then he pulled himself together and read the letter out loud:
Dear King:
I, Nilly, of number 15 Cannon Avenue, hereby have the pleasure of notifying you that you have been granted an audience with the world-famous inventor and snow shoveler, Doctor Proctor. You also have permission to greet, exchange a few words with, and—if you’re funny—tell a brief joke to Doctor Proctor in the Mirror Hall at the palace on the last Tuesday before Christmas at precisely 11:00 a.m. Remember to polish your shoes and brush your teeth.
Sincerely, Nilly
Authorized Test Pilot
“Isn’t that strange, Vera?” the king said, setting down the letter.
“Extremely strange, Your Majesty.”
“What day is it today? And what time is it?”
“Tuesday, Your Majesty, and it’s eleven o’clock.”
“And where are we?”
“In the Mirror Hall, Your Maje—”
The twelve-foot-tall door at the end of the hall opened with a bang, and sure enough, an entourage walked in.
“Welcome,” the one in front proclaimed.
The king had to put on his monocle to see who it was. It was a teeny-tiny redheaded boy. A girl in pigtails entered behind him. And behind her there was a tall skeleton of a man in a blue lab coat, a bow tie, and something that looked like swim goggles. And the king’s own bowlegged cabinet secretary came running in behind them.
“They just walked right past me and came in, Your Majesty!” she exclaimed.
“Good,” the little boy proclaimed. “We’re all here, Mr. King. Wonderful. Now the audience can begin.”
He stopped in front of the throne.
“Allow me to present”—the boy stepped to the side and bowed deeply—“the insanely unfamous and unbelievably little recognized Doctor Proctor.”
The tall man stepped forward.
“Let me make them a head shorter, Your Majesty,” whispered the court marshal, grabbing the handle of her sword.
“Thank you, Vera, but a few of the people present are already short enough as it is,” the king whispered back. “Besides, there’s something familiar about them. I may have met them before.” He clapped his hands together. “Thank you so much for allowing me to meet you, Proctor.”
“Doctor Proctor,” the girl with the pigtails said.
“Pardon me. Doctor Proctor. Now, where have I heard that name before? And where have I seen you?”
“You meet so many people, King, but since this is a brief audience, let’s cut to the chase, posthaste. Why did you sell Christmas to Mr. Thrane?”
“Because I have mold in my basement, wouldn’t you know it.”
“I read that in the paper. Would you mind if I took a look?”
“I DON’T SEE anything,” Doctor Proctor said.
The king had escorted them down to the basement, and now they were staring into a room that was bigger than four soccer fields. But it was totally empty. And there wasn’t any mold in it either, as far as Lisa, Nilly, or Doctor Proctor could see.
“That’s the thing about mold,” the king said. “It’s invisible. You need to be a fungal inspector to know how to determine if it’s there or not.”
“But what does it do?” Lisa asked.
“It eats up the walls, and then someday the building collapses,” the king said.
“That’s true,” Nilly said. “Mold is actually discussed on page three oh six of Animals You Wish Didn’t Exist.”
“And who told you that you have mold?” Doctor Proctor a
sked, leaning over and sniffing the wall.
“The fungal inspector, of course! He came over here one day, asked to take a peek in the basement, and when he was standing right where we’re standing now, he said there was no doubt, the basement was full of mold. And that mold is one heck of an infestation, a botheration, a tarnation, a devastation! And there’s only one remedy for it. But I lucked out, because he had just so happened to have invented that very remedy himself and that was why he could offer me such a great deal on it.”
“And?”
“And I’m sure he gave me a good price by the pound. But, well, as you can see for yourselves, it’s a big basement. He said it would cost a hundred and fifty million crowns.”
“A hundred and fifty million?”
“Which I don’t have.”
“So you decided to sell Christmas?”
“No, the fungal inspector decided I should sell Christmas. He even had a potential buyer in mind, he said. That was Mr. Thrane, of course. He was really a very helpful fungal inspector.”
“Tell me,” Doctor Proctor said, “what did this helpful fungal inspector look like?”
“Well,” the king said, “he was wearing a boiler suit that said FUNGAL INSPECTOR across the back. And he wore a pair of plastic sunglasses with an unbelievably big nose with a bushy black mustache under it.”
“Kind of like one of those fake noses with the mustaches attached that you might buy at a toy store?” Doctor Proctor asked.
“Yeah, actually, now that you mention it . . .”
“And what did this so-called fungal inspector say his name was?”
“Mr. Enarht.”
“Aha!” Doctor Proctor and Lisa said.
“Aha!” said Nilly.
“Aha!” the king said. “Wait . . . um, why are we saying ‘aha’?”
“Think about it,” Doctor Proctor said.
“Okay,” the king said.
After a couple minutes of silence, the king moaned, “This is booooring!”
“Let us help you,” Lisa said. “What does Enarht spell backward?”
The king rolled his eyes and said, “How in the world would I know that, you twit?”
Lisa sighed and said, “Explain it to him, would you, Nilly?”
“My pleasure,” Nilly said. “Enarht backward would obviously be . . . uh, tr-tr-trendy!”
Lisa gave him a look that was both disappointed and expectant.
“Wait!” Nilly said. “It would be . . . trainer? No? Chill out, people. Let me see . . . . It would be . . . T . . . T . . . Thrane! Of course! Mr. Thrane!”
“Now do you see, Your Majesty?” Doctor Proctor said.
“Yes,” the king replied. “The fungal inspector’s name is ‘Thrane’ backward.”
“No one is named Enarht!” Doctor Proctor exclaimed. “He and Mr. Thrane are one and the same. He tricked you! Mr. Thrane owns Thrane’s Department Store. He just wants people to spend more money buying Christmas presents. That’s why he conned you into selling Christmas. I’m afraid I have some bad news. You probably don’t really have mold.”
“Why is that bad news? That’s wonderful news!”
“The bad news is that you gave away Christmas for nothing!” Lisa said.
“Oh, that,” the king said. “Pshaw. I didn’t even know I owned Christmas, you know?”
“Really?” Lisa said. “You mean you didn’t have one of those deeds of registration that proved you were the owner?”
“No, no. Mr. Thrane came to see me the following day and he and I just agreed that I must own it. Norway is the country closest to the North Pole, and I’m the King of Norway. Given that, I can’t really see how anyone other than me could own Christmas. I mean, unless you believe in Santa Claus, of course!” He gave a hearty laugh, which echoed through the vast, dark basement. “Anyway, I sold something I didn’t know I had to get rid of a mold infestation I also didn’t know I had. Plus, I promised Mr. Thrane I’d officiate at the kickoff to his final pre-Christmas sales push on December twenty-third, Little Christmas Eve, at a department store I didn’t know he had. So it was a win-win-win situation. But wait! Mr. Thrane didn’t have a big nose or a mustache! How could he be the same person as the fungal inspector when . . .”
“It was a fake nose with a mustache,” Lisa said with a sigh.
“Oh, right. That must’ve been it!”
They heard footsteps running down the basement steps toward them. “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”
“What is it, Vera?”
The court marshal looked flustered.
“The Finnish ambassador is here. They want to lodge a formal protest. They claim that they own Christmas. They simply won’t accept that the world will not be allowed to celebrate Christmas just because . . .”
“Oh, how quaint!” the king exclaimed. “It’s too late, though. Christmas has been sold. Schmick, schmack, schmeck, boom, done, thank you very much! All that’s left now is for everyone to do a little Christmas shopping and then everyone can celebrate Christmas!”
“No, now you listen up!” Lisa said in her strictest Lisa voice. “If everyone on the whole planet bought ten thousand crowns’ worth of consumer goods, the earth would collapse, self-destruct. Just think of the emissions, the pollution, the scarcity of raw materials . . . .”
The king slapped his hands over his ears and wailed, “Boooring! Vera, throw them out! I want to play Battlefield Finland on the PlayStation!”
The cabinet secretary came to escort Lisa, Nilly, and Doctor Proctor out, while the king and the court marshal walked back to the Mirror Hall to play PlayStation. The last thing our three friends heard before they were shoved out the door was the king’s voice:
“Did I tell you what I want for Christmas, Vera? Peace and quiet! Good children! Plus maybe a hot tub for my vacation cabin. Did you write all that down?”
OUR THREE FRIENDS walked down Karl Johan Street, which was decorated for Christmas. Snow was falling in big, fluffy puffs. Warm, cozy light flooded out of the shop windows. A brass band was playing “Silent Night,” and people were desperately running from one store to another to buy enough to qualify for official Christmas membership. The big fountain in the plaza in front of the National Theater Shopping Mall, which had at one time been an actual theater, was lit up in multiple colors so that it looked like one of the jets of water shooting into the air was made of pear soda and another of raspberry soda. And the pool the jets fell back down into was lit up blue, like the most beautiful ocean Lisa had ever seen. There was also a statue of the famous author Henrik Ibsen, and someone had put a Santa hat on its head. A man wearing the same kind of hat was standing next to the fountain behind a table piled high with hair dryers. He shouted: “The most expensive hair dryers in the city! A thousand crowns each! You only need to buy ten to qualify for Christmas membership! Buy them here or inside Thrane’s Department Store! Supremely expensive hair dryers. Qualify for Christmas. And they can blow dry hair, too!”
But as they walked farther, they moved away from the lights and the commotion of Karl Johan Street. There were fewer people, not as many lights, fewer stores, and less space between the buildings. Little by little Lisa thought the neighborhood they were walking through was becoming dicier.
“Wh-wh-where are we going?” she asked.
“Well,” Doctor Proctor said, “we’re going to find the only person who just might possibly be able to help us save Christmas.”
“And how is th-th-this person going to do that?” Nilly asked. He did not look particularly tall in his winter hat. Yes, actually, it made him seem even shorter than usual.
“I said possibly,” Doctor Proctor said gloomily. “Actually, I don’t think he can help us or even wants to.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s not as nice as a lot of children think.”
They were in the city’s deepest back streets now. The crooked walls of centuries-old buildings leaned over them, and black windows stared down at them. The protracted his
s of a gigantic anaconda snake could be heard from below the manhole covers.
“Hmm,” Doctor Proctor said. “Now, where was it again?”
“M-m-maybe we could come back in the daylight sometime?” Lisa suggested.
“Yes, m-m-maybe it would be easier to find then,” Nilly said.
“I appreciate that you’re scared, but if we’re going to save Christmas, we need to be brave,” Doctor Proctor said.
“Fiddlesticks. I—I—I’m never scared,” Nilly said.
“Never?” Doctor Proctor asked. “Weren’t you ever scared when you were a kid and a grown man looked you in the eye and asked you if you’d been naughty or nice that year?”
“A li-li-little scared, maybe,” Nilly said.
“Super-super-super-sc-sc-scared,” Lisa said.
From somewhere in the distance they heard the long, plaintive howl of a ravenous wolf.
“We’re always afraid of the unknown,” Doctor Proctor said, and looked around. “That’s why I was afraid of Santa Claus too. But then one Christmas Eve when my father said, as usual, that he was going out to help Santa, I asked if I could tag along.”
“You had figured out that he was just tricking you and that he really was Santa Claus, right?” Lisa asked.
“Well, that’s what I thought,” Doctor Proctor confirmed. “So I was a little surprised when my dad looked at me and said that would be fine, that it was about time I found out what was going on since soon I would be big enough that helping Santa Claus would be my job. That was the Christmas Eve when I stopped believing that Santa Claus existed . . . .”
“Ouch!” Nilly yelped. “You’re squeezing my hand, Lisa!”
“You’re the one squeezing mine!” Lisa said. “Why did you stop believing Santa Claus existed, Doctor Proctor?”
“Because from that day forward I didn’t have to believe; I knew Santa Claus existed,” Doctor Proctor said.
The wind picked up just then. Suddenly, snow started swirling around them. The wind whistled in the downspouts and made the sign hanging over a door swing back and forth, its hinges creaking eerily.
“There it is!” Doctor Proctor exclaimed, pointing to the sign.