by Liz Jensen
‘I saw what I now know to be such a speaking device in Fru Krak’s home,’ I confessed. ‘Fru Schleswig found it’
He smiled & nodded. ‘No use to anyone there,’ he said. ‘Though I have a theory that there is no reason why today’s telephone signals should not transport easily to the past, if positioned at the correct angle on a Time-Sucker fault-line in an area where there will one day stand a transmitter. Ah, I see that the next stop is ours, my dear: prepare to disembark. Anyway, to return to poor Pandora: the nightmares she would have, after she came home! How she screamed in the night, stakkels lille skat. I fed her grapes & pastries & marzipan, for she had the sweetest tooth I have ever come across. O, I treated her like a princess!’ he sighed happily, and it struck me then that, the Kraks being childless, this dumb creature might have filled a sentimental void in the basement world of Rosenvængets Alle. ‘But in the most cruel of ironies, the one thing I was unable to protect her from was the danger lurking in my own home, the very place I thought to be the safest in the world,’ he went on, his tone of voice now heavy with dejection. ‘For it was there that the dear creature met her dreadful fate.’ Here he stopped to gaze out of the window, his eyes misting over with tears.
‘What happened?’ I asked, as the train came to a halt and we disembarked on to a clean and mysteriously empty platform, upon which stood a bench where he gestured we might sit.
‘What happened was a housekeeper woman by the name of Gudrun Olsen.’
‘Oh my,’ I breathed. And there, on the bench, with the occasional tin train whirring in and disgorging passengers, all more neatly & pleasingly dressed than those we had seen before, Professor Krak pursued his tragic theme.
‘Gudrun, as housekeeper, was under strict instructions not to enter my workshop, no matter what strange cries she heard. But for all her many qualities – & she assisted me a great deal in the construction of the machine – Gudrun has the most insatiable curiosity, & she could not leave well alone. One night Pandora was recovering from a particularly difficult mission – I knew this for she had come back bloody & scarred, as though animals had attacked her. Anyway, that night she had one of her nightmares. It was quite a screaming fit’
Here the Professor sighed.
‘And then?’ I prompted.
‘Well, despite being barred from my quarters, in walked Gudrun, brandishing a poker. Pandora awoke at that moment & leaped up, & so did I, shouting to Gudrun to move not a centimetre, but Pandora had by then attacked her poor face.’
I shuddered, horrified, as I pictured Gudrun’s eye-socket split raggedly by a swipe of the creature’s filthy claw, the wound gushing crimson blood upon her impeccably starched pinafore.
‘And then – ‘ he broke off, unable to continue.
But I imagined the rest: the screaming Gudrun, blood pouring from her cheek, bashing the monkey with her lethal poker, cracking open its little skull like a walnut, uncasing the throbbing brain, a pale translucent mauve, spotted with gore, & ending that small, brave life. And what followed: a man racked with grief for his murdered monkey, & a beautiful woman, disfigured for life, lost to a world of laundry & steam, never to marry, or fully understand what had transpired on the fateful day she entered the Professor’s territory unbidden.
But bless you: let us expunge the image of that ghastly female inter-species confrontation & move on. Professor Krak & I left the bench, & rose upwards on another moving stairway, this one shining & clean, adorned with gleaming brass. Carried heavenward by this, amid a throng of other passengers, all gentlefolk it seemed, we were next propelled into an airy balconied temple of light, high-ceilinged & dotted with magnificent exotic plants, the like of which I had never seen before except in paintings of the jungle. I gasped in wonderment, half expecting an Indian tiger to pounce at us from its upper reaches, or a troupe of minstrels to burst into a glitter of harmonies. And all above us & around us, folk, folk, folk, & dwarfing them, glass, glass, glass! Never had I seen such huge sheets of it, so unsmudged, so unbroken & so unadorned by colour or leadwork! Outside, water shone flat, reflecting the highest buildings, and in them, the skies reflected back, until it seemed there were a thousand mirrors, out-staring one another. We exited through a portal & found ourselves upon an odd-shaped, curving bridge, that straddled a stretch of water, below which a row of manned vehicles sat, clawing into the water with articulated arms, & dredging out mud that they swung aloft, dripping. Above us, in the sky, buzzed a giant metal insect which Professor Krak said was a ‘helicopter’, bearing intrepid humans; & all around, the buildings reared up like magical steel cliffs, blank-faced & heroic.
‘Seductive, is it not?’ he said, as though reading my thoughts. At which a pang of loyalty to my own place & time overwhelmed me, & I retorted that Canary Wharf was all very well but I saw neither canaries nor wharves, & in any case it was nothing in comparison to Amalienborg, & all of a sudden the memory of that noble palace made me long for Copenhagen so sharply that I felt the tears prick.
‘So exactly how do I get home?’ I asked, as we passed a mirror in which at first I did not recognize myself, for I looked so like a prisoner, or a simpleton, or the inhabitant of an asylum, in the ugly garb of that century.
He glanced at me with what I feared was pity. ‘Let us find ourselves a little coffee house,’ he suggested. ‘And I will explain the, er … parameters!
And it was, in a nutshell, just as Franz Poppersen Muhl had described – only far, far worse. The predicament was thus: the arrival of Pastor Dahlberg in Fru Krak’s life compromised the Mother Machine, as Krak called the contraption – which he referred to like a nautical vessel, as ‘she’. The house was no longer a safe place to keep her, & yet because of her shape & size, & the fact that her inventor had (foolishly, he admitted with hindsight) assembled her in the basement in such a way that she could not be removed, swift action must be taken before the contraption was discovered & destroyed in the wake of the forthcoming nuptials. All this Professor Krak explained as a black savage (whom to my extreme discomfiture I found to be most attractive, so much so that I even wondered, pervertedly, what it might be like to have him in my bed) served us the frothed coffee known as latte, and fresh, moist croissants as good as anything you might buy at Herr Møller’s bakery on Classensgade. Just like the driver of the vehicle we entered when we first arrived, the blackamoor spoke fluent English.
‘Do normal people not find it disturbing to have cannibals in their midst?’ I asked Professor Krak, as we watched the disconcerting waiter walk away. He merely laughed & told me to ‘keep an open mind, for the world is a wider place than we Danes can easily dream of’, & then returned to the subject in hand, viz how to rid the Krak homestead of its occupants, and save the Mother Machine.
‘But why on earth should I help you?’ I asked, as his logistical plight became apparent. ‘You spied on me, did you not? Wearing a balaclava?’
He nodded in the affirmative. ‘I needed to see how curious you were,’ he admitted. ‘And what you would do with the information you came by.’
‘And then you lured me to the machine.’
‘By warning you away from it!’ he smiled. ‘Remember? I knew you would not resist that challenge. The manner of your arrival was a little unexpected, I must admit, due to the intervention of Fru Schleswig: I had planned it otherwise. However, here you are!’
‘But what right had you to bring me to this place?’ I asked, peeved that he should have anticipated my behaviour so well.
‘None, my dear,’ he confessed, patting my hand. ‘None whatsoever. You ask why you should help me. Well, I hope to show you that there is much in this for you, if you will be so good as to listen further. For my belief is that we can mutually assist one another,’ he smiled, sipping his coffee. ‘We are talking of more than merely your safe return home. You must not forget, dear Frøken Charlotte, that I have been watching you, & was acquainted well enough with your plucky character to know how to tempt you to the Oblivion Room. Now I will come straight to
the point of why I did so. What I need is someone whom I can trust, to occupy that house & safeguard the machine, so I can continue to come & go as I please. That someone, in my scheme of things, is you. Now in return –‘ (& here he paused for effect) ’ – you may not only have the run of the entire house, but become its legal mistress.’
At this he grinned at me most winningly, & winked. Well, I’ll grant him this much, I thought: he knows how my heart works all right A young whore raised in an orphanage, mistress of a huge & imposing mansion in a grand part of town! The things I could do if I got my hands on that place! Lord, I could run my own brothel! I’d call it Hotel Charlotte. I’d employ ten, no, twenty girls, & have Doktor Thorning check their tissekones for diseases once a month. I’d buy good beds, with the best linen & the softest pillows, & there would be hot & cold running water in each room, & scented soaps, & –
As though reading my thoughts, he smiled. ‘And do with it as you wish, within reason. But you must stay discreet.’
‘But how is this to be achieved?’ I asked, so excited by my fantasy that I nearly spilled my frothy beverage. ‘I can understand your need to protect the Mother Machine, as you call it, but you will never prise your wife out of that house!’
‘Aha,’ he said, wiping his mouth on a paper napkin as the waiter came and cleared the crockery. ‘Let me explain something that might give you hope. In the seven years since I have regularly been returning to Copenhagen, I have been able to influence my wife’s movements,’ he said slowly. ‘And with your help, I hope to influence them further. So far, indeed, as to send her packing, never to return.’
Much as I wanted to believe this, I found it most puzzling & frankly hard to credit. ‘Influence a woman as obtuse as Fru Krak? How so?’
‘Obtuse, yes. But she is also superstitious &, in certain ways, gullible to the extreme. Are you familiar with a publication known as the Fine Lady?
I nodded. ‘She is a slave to it’
‘Precisely,’ smiled Herr Krak. ‘A Fine Lady through & through, would you not say?’
‘She certainly pays most particular heed to what her horoscope commands,’ I averred.
‘Well, meet its author!’ he beamed, showing an array of implausibly white teeth.
‘What – you? You wrote the Aquarian Lady?’ I gasped. Now I was indeed impressed.
‘Not just Aquarius. I did all twelve. Each week, for the last few years, anonymously, & for no pay.’ My eyes widened. ‘I made the mistake, I fear, of encouraging her with the Pastor, as I wished never to be shackled to her again, in case I found myself trapped back there one day, God forbid. However, when I realized he might pose a threat to the machine, I decided to try & influence her into getting a domestic servant whom I might use on the other side. I know my wife’s weak spots: within a week of hatching this plan, the Aquarian Lady was persuaded to hire a cleaning girl. But it was pure luck that I should end up with one as bright and clever as you.’
I was shocked. I had known it was a trap, but had never guessed the scope of it! What evil genius!
‘And when you’d written this horoscope, you came to Copenhagen & you posted it to the Fine Lady’ I realized aloud. ‘In the letterbox down by Sortedams Lake. And all those who saw you there thought you were a ghost, not stopping to wonder why a phantom might be availing itself of the Royal Mail!’
I could not help but clap my hands then & there: Lord, you had to admire the nerve of the Professor’s endeavour! I was beginning to get the feeling that we might become allies after all.
Professor Krak explained then that he could not risk revealing himself to Fru Krak, but already he felt she had sensed something (this I could confirm), & was suspicious. ‘Yet if she tells the Pastor she suspects I am still alive, she can’t marry him without risking bigamy. So she has been burying her head in the sand like an ostrich, & reading her horoscope. Through which I was trying to ensure she kept you on as a servant, & stayed out of the basement rooms. But who knows how the situation might change when the Pastor becomes official master of the house?’
‘So you need to somehow get rid of Fru Krak and the Pastor, & make me owner of the property,’ I said. ‘For if they sold it, someone else might discover the machine & destroy it’
‘Precisely so.’
‘And do you have a plan?’
He shook his head. ‘I had thought of using the horoscope again,’ he said, ‘but I fear that on this issue it might not be enough to budge her – especially now that you tell me she actually descended to the basement. Now you know the Pastor better than I: perhaps there is a possibility to be exploited there? Either way, I know that if you & I put our heads together …’
I nodded vigorously, for having assessed what life of luxury was in store for me if I entered into his scheme, my brain was already conjuring, & indeed a quite clever, nay, brilliant notion was beginning to crystallize in my head, inspired by the denouement of a moving picture story I had watched the previous night on television. ‘Give me a moment,’ I said, & scribbled some notes upon a napkin. Once I had worked out all the logistics, I clapped my hands in delight.
‘What say you to this?’ I cried, outlining my cunning ruse, & laying it before him on the table, where it gleamed like a freshly minted jewel.
‘My, oh my!’ he cried with great enthusiasm when I had finished. ‘You clever girl! What sharp wits you have about you, for I would never have thought of such a thing in a century!’
Which compliment I took most prettily, for I was enjoying the flattery, & was loath to tell him that in fact the real credit was due to a two-dimensional dog called Scooby-Doo & his human comrades, & that all I had done was to steal & refine a plan involving property fraud that they had exposed in the course of their detective work. O, how proud was I in that moment! And how joyously impressed was Professor Krak! So much so that when we had finished our coffee, he led me to a smart dress shop, & bade me choose any outfit I wanted, for I had deserved it, & what’s more, he ‘sensed festivities on the horizon’. And so I emerged an hour later clad in delightful lacy russet-coloured underwear, light as a cobweb, & a green robe that matched my eyes and revealed much of my legs above the knee (how deliciously naked I felt!), & high-heeled shoes & magical stockings that clung to the thigh themselves & needed no suspenders, & I was mightily pleased with my appearance: for the outfit much flattered my figure and as we walked through the streets of the Tin City, marvelling at the sheer height and power of the buildings Professor Krak aptly referred to as ‘sky-scrapers’, I was right glad to note that whatever progress men had undergone in the century & a bit since I last knew them, some of their habits, such as swivelling the head the better to appreciate a young woman with a stupendously good body (if you will forgive the boast, precious reader), have stayed the same.
We then hailed a taxi. Delighted with the progress we had made in formulating a plan, Professor Krak said that I was to return to Copenhagen as soon as was feasible.
‘What does as soon as is feasible mean, exactly?’ I queried, my sudden anxiety exacerbated by the swerving & lurching of our vehicle. ‘What is wrong with tomorrow, in heaven’s name?’ For as you can imagine I was mad-keen to establish myself as mistress of Hotel Charlotte, & had been busily furnishing it in my imagination: curlicued bed-posts, fancy chamber pots, rouched curtains, ashtrays made from exotic shells, gilded spittoons.
He shook his head. ‘It’s a treacherous business at both ends,’ he said. ‘Fru Krak is not our only opponent, I fear. We have also the custodians of the Greenwich Observatory to contend with.’
It was a second or two before the import of what he had said sunk in.
‘I thought you worked with them.’
‘In a manner of speaking, I do,’ he said carefully. ‘The fact is, there is a man whom I bribe to let me in, a buildings inspector. But sadly, he only has access at certain times, & for most specific purposes. The timing is delicate. We will be forced to wait until August, I fear.’
‘The month now being?’<
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‘June.’ I gasped, but he continued hastily: ‘Do not worry, I beg you. Your precious time, dear Froken Charlotte, need not be wasted. On the contrary. Let us collect the good Fru Schleswig & direct ourselves posthaste to join my pioneers at the Halfway Club. Did I not tell you I sensed festivities on the horizon?’
Show me a girl whose heart does not skip a beat at the thought of a party – a party in her honour, no less – & I will show you a liar. As our taxi crawled along dust-belching streets, the Professor explained to us in his twitchy & excitable way (I say us, for the preposterously clad & modernized Fru Schleswig had now crammed herself into our company with much umphing & oomphing) that the building in which the Halfway Club was housed served a dual purpose, the ground floor being the club itself, & the basement storing tiles, cement & brickware, part of the building enterprise of Herr & Fru Jakobsen. The Jakobsens, he said, were two pillars of the community who had ‘relocated’ (as though changing countries & eras were as simple as uprooting to another part of town!) after an intransigent infestation of headlice drove their wig business into ruin: the couple themselves inhabited the upper floor, where they also let rooms to ‘Danes of yore’ in need of accommodation.
A party in my honour!
‘Why, we could be back home!’ I exclaimed in delight, when our taxi drew near to what looked like a schoolhouse, for the Halfway Club was painted the same traditional ochre-yellow as the orphanage of my youth, & atop it (a patriotic tear sprang to my eye!) the glorious red and white of the Danish flag fluttered at full-mast
‘Yes, the pioneers tend to get somewhat nostalgic,’ sighed the Professor. ‘Like all refugees, they hanker after what they left behind. The Jakobsens especially.’