My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time

by Liz Jensen

  ‘What ingeniousness!’ I cried. ‘Are men not wonderfully brainy creatures, Fru Jakobsen? Why, this ruse is similar to dear Georg’s inspiration with the bogus travelling toilet: how the masculine mind runs along such nifty tracks! Now all Fergus has to do is assemble the machine, & find the liquid catalysing ingredients! How touching, that we are both at a parallel stage!’

  ‘But both seemingly stuck,’ said Fru Jakobsen, pragmatically. ‘Due to the fact that the four mystery ingredients remain – well, four mystery ingredients’ which brought me galumphingly back down to earth. My wise friend was quite right of course, & it was with a somewhat heavier heart that I read on. The next diary entry merely engendered more confusion, & did nothing to encourage optimism, for it recorded that Gudrun Olsen, interrogated by Fergus through the medium of Franz, had recalled that Professor Krak had often bade her listen while he read aloud Hans Christian Andersen’s The Story of a Mother,about a woman whose child dies, & who will do anything to get him back. Anyone who knows this tale will be aware of how gruesome heart-breaking it is, but what was the Professor’s purpose, in depressing poor Gudrun so? Apparently whenever he had finished reading this sad, sad tale, Professor Krak would treat Gudrun most kindly, and dry her tears with his handkerchief, & pay her an extra ten kroner on top of her wages. Our Scottish friend & I discussed this at length with Gudrun, who was most keen to help – but none of us could work out what the significance was, wrote Franz.

  ‘What on earth might that all mean?’ I queried, baffled. Fru Jakobsen merely shook her head. I read on, & learned that Fergus did indeed begin his project of building a new Time Machine in the garden of the Krak house, & disguised it successfully with fir trees.

  The structure being complete, & corresponding in most ways to the original Time Machine (though more chaotic & less refined in appearance), all that now remains,wrote Franz on January 21st, is to identify the four secret ingredients of the catalysing agent. Last night our Scottish friend & I held a lengthy conversation on the subject, but the truth is we know not where to begin, & we emerged none the wiser; the list of possibilities being seemingly endless. Over a glass of schnapps our Scottish friend declared himself puzzled as to the baffling contents of the Oblivion Room: did I remember what was in it?

  A stuffed orangutan, I recalled. And there was a box with a scalpel in it, & some books, & perhaps some pieces of old carpet, & a table with a medicine bottle upon it. At this he became animated: what kind of medicine, he wanted to know? I replied that I believed it was a clear liquid, perhaps antiseptic – which, we agreed, could well be one ingredient of the mixture. But what on earth were the others? And what was that scalpel for, & did the catalysing liquid have to be ‘freshly made’, & why was it designed to last a few days?

  I yawned: it was by now midnight.

  ‘Shall we put the light out now, skat,& get some rest?’ asked Fru Jakobsen. ‘I’m most exhausted, after such a hectic day. We still have the best part of tomorrow, for our plane does not depart until the afternoon. And if there’s any more to be done after that, why I can remain here a few more days & you can direct my researches from London, if it seems imperative.’

  ‘But I need to find out if Fergus discovered –’

  ‘Best sleep on it,’ Fru Jakobsen interrupted me in a kindly but firm manner. ‘I really do have the most enthusiastic premonition about the way events will turn. Rest, I have always noted, is quite a problem-solver. Here, have a sleeping pill,’ & she handed me a violet-coloured capsule. Overcome by a sudden yearning for oblivion, I swallowed it obediently & was gone.

  But where to? Well, to my mind it seemed the strangest place I had ever clapped eyes on: it appeared to be a jungle. Perhaps Borneo? Yes; I was in Borneo, I knew it from the vegetation, & the way the wind shuddered high in the forest canopy above us. Us? Yes: for there above me, high high high, I spotted Pandora swinging from branch to branch on suspended lianas, like a trapeze artist at the circus! My O my, how beautiful & free she looked: how different from that stuffed creature, so tragic-faced, in the glass case!

  ‘Fergus, come & look!’ I cried, & there all at once my love materialized at my side, his daughter clamped to his back like a baby ape, & we were waving to Pandora, & she was flipping somersaults to show off, & flinging down bunches of bananas. And then Gudrun arrived, & her scar was gone, & she carried a book from which she began to read: it was The Story of a Motherby Hans Christian Andersen, but it became too, too sad, & she had to stop, & Pandora descended from her tree & put a comforting arm around her & the two of them wept together, & Josie looked on amazed, then cried: ‘O, look! There’s Uncle Fred riding the bicycle that doesn’t go anywhere!’ & we all followed him to a clearing where O joy! – there indeed was Professor Krak, bare-chested & sweaty, pedalling furiously with a happy smile on his face. ‘Toil, toil, toil, pain, pain, pain!’ he cried, then drew from the box on the small table beside him a gleaming scalpel, with which –

  O!

  I woke with a start & sat upright in bed. Of course! There was the answer! It was all there, in my dream: the three products of human pain: blood, sweat & tears! The scalpel was for the blood. The sweat came from the exercise. And the tears: first, from The Story ofa Mother,which is too, too sad – & after the death of Pandora – why, her memory! That was why her stuffed body, in its glass case, had been placed so strategically within sight of the exercise bicycle! One drop of each, mixed with ten parts of … & here he had spoken English, had he not? ‘The great human ant–’

  Eureka! For what had Franz & Fergus discussed in the last diary entry but the bottle of medicine which appeared to contain

  ‘Antiseptic!’ I cried aloud, & leaped out of bed & shook Fru Jakobsen awake.

  ‘I have it! I have the answer! Blood, sweat, tears & antiseptic!’

  ‘Very good, dear,’ she sighed sleepily. ‘I am delighted for you! Most gratifying. Now can we go back to sleep & talk about it in the morning?’

  The next day, Fru Jakobsen claimed there was a last-gasp slut-spurtsale at the department store Magasin, & she would like more than anything else to take a peek, despite the monstrous modern prices: would I mind? I was quite baffled. Here we were, having finally made a discovery that might secure our happiness & our futures, & she was contemplating a shopping trip! But she seemed quite resolute, in her genteel way, & as I am a fast reader, I estimated I could work my way through Franz’s diaries just as well on my own, & the pressure was somewhat off, now that I had cracked the pestilential catalyser riddle, so off Fru Jakobsen went, & on I read. But as I did so, my emotions were soon helter-skeltering floorwards. I will let Franz’s diary speak.

  January 25th. Fergus came to me most excited this morning & said he had been thinking about the catalysing ingredients, & believed he had the answer. He went on to talk in a complicated manner about the deductions he had made through trying to analyse the significance of the items in the Oblivion Room, to wit the stuffed monkey, the exercise bicycle, the scalpel & the medicine bottle. On & on he went on this track, & not wishing to arouse his Scottish wrath I gave the appearance of listening politely whilst mentally sketching a device for coiling electrical cords, & trying to remember whether I had warned Mama that my system was still feeling most sensitive. I have heard that boiled rice & bananas are an excellent cure for an upset stomach, while in the future (about which I must never speak for fear of seeming like a lunatic – though Lord, it is hard!) they swear by 7UP for all intestinal misfortunes. Just as I was pondering how one might set about reproducing such a carbonized beverage in my own era, I noticed that our Scottish friend had stopped talking & was looking at me expectantly, as though I should supply an answer.

  ‘Sorry, can you repeat what you just said?’ I asked – then added hurriedly, ‘Just the last bit, of course, which I didn’t quite catch. Not the whole story, I beg you.’

  ‘Blood, sweat, tears & antiseptic!’ he cried. ‘Those are the secret catalysing ingredients, I am sure of it! It all makes sense! Three of them ea
sily extracted from the human body, but subject to decay – which is why it cannot be stored for more than two days. The fourth liquid – well, it was in that bottle on the table in the Oblivion Room all the time! Antiseptic: what else?

  O joy! My clever man! I read on, greedily.

  ‘What else indeed,’ I replied, still not quite there. It sounded quite addle-brained to me, yet somehow not uncharacteristic of Professor Krak’s way of thinking. Yes: it had a kind of logic.

  ‘So now we must put it to the test!’ he cried happily. ‘The blood and sweat are easily come by. I will cut myself, & take a jog around the lake. The antiseptic, your mother can supply us with.’

  But what of the tears? Although of a sensitive nature, & not ashamed to cry when something moves me, I suddenly (& most frustratingly) found myself quite unable to coax the necessary muscles on this occasion, & nor could our Scottish friend, however sad the thoughts he summoned, such as the sale of his daughter to the ‘circus’, & the loss of Charlotte to modern London.

  ‘What about Else? said Fergus. ‘Is she the tearful type?’

  ‘Well, she used to be a performer, so maybe she could muster some,’ I said.

  As it turned out Else needed scarcely any prompting to cry, for she missed her friend Charlotte terribly, & thought Fergus’s attempts to be reunited with her a moving & romantic & inspiring story, so when she had fully blubbed, & we had squeezed a drop from her handkerchief into Fergus’s blood & sweat, off we set with a vial of the precious liquid to Number Nine Rosenvængets Allé, full of hope.

  Would that I had stopped reading there, & kept my optimism! But I could not desist from turning the pages, I simply could not! O woe!

  When Fru Jakobsen returned an hour later laden with shopping bags & packages, she found me weeping on the bed, the last volume of Franz’s diaries having led me into a state of unconsolable despair.

  ‘What on earth has happened, skat?’ she asked, looking most concerned.

  ‘I do not know! I do not know what fate has befallen my love, & it seems our whole reunion is in jeopardy! Without more of Franz’s scrapbooks from the Sankt Hans, I can discover no more! For the formula I came up with in my dream – well, it seems that Fergus came to the same conclusion about its ingredients!’

  ‘So why do you weep?’

  Unable to speak, I merely moaned & pointed to the relevant excerpt of Franz’s diary.

  February 11th. Today our Scottish friend appeared especially in the doldrums, as he had once again tried the antiseptic solution, & nothing positive had come of it. ‘If I have got it all wrong then how?’ he cried, as we sat by thefireside pursuing our ‘English lesson’. ‘And in what way? It must be to do with the quantities. I’ll just have to keep mixing & trying – but I could be stuck out there in the Time Machine in the Kraks’ garden for ever, experimenting! And in the meantime, the Christmas trees have gone brown, & are dropping needles, & I don’t know how much longer I can keep the Time Machine hidden!’

  Things are getting most desperate, & all the while Mama & Papa send our Scottish friend unfriendly glances, & they want to know how he spends his time, & I can tell they disapprove mightily of what he did to his daughter. I can see I made a mistake in telling them about the circus, but I was thinking on my feet! When does he intend to travel back to Scotland, they want to know. It is most stressful & wearying. Tomorrow I shall visit Herr Bang & order some pink medicine.

  February 17th. ‘Why the hell doesn’t it work?’ our Scottish friend asked me today. ‘Is it possible, Franz, that Professor Krak kept a bottle of antiseptic in the Oblivion Room purely for – well – antiseptic purposes? To treat the cut made by the scalpel when he was extracting blood?’

  This was the conclusion Fergus wearily & most reluctantly reached, & relayed to Franz: that he thought he had figured out three of the ingredients but the fourth remained a mystery wrapped inside an enigma, & – O God! – in any case he knew not the proportions of the mixture, or at what temperature it should be introduced into the sphere, & … O, how my poor love was in deep, deep despair! Tears in my eyes, I conveyed this to Fru Jakobsen.

  ‘And then what happened?’ she asked. It was with gratitude that I observed she seemed finally to be paying the matter the attention it warranted.

  ‘He began trying various other liquids as the fourth component, in varying quantities,’ I told her. ‘Dissolved pig-fat, paraffin, vinegar, milk, lemon juice, elderflower wine, diluted soda crystals & many others, in all manner of combinations. But then came two calamities: first Pastor Dahlberg & Fru Krak – who I suppose we now call Fru Dahlberg – took it upon themselves one night to venture out in order to observe the full moon, & surprised Fergus in the garden, where they presumed him to be a burglar, & the next day they procured themselves an Alsatian guard-dog – attached by a long chain to its kennel by the front gate – that barked at the slightest disturbance. Next the Poppersen Muhls warned Franz that Fergus must leave by the end of the week, for they considered him a “hectic influence” on Franz, & O, Fru Jakobsen, we are quite, quite undone!’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then the diary comes to an end, & we cannot find out what befell them unless we return to the Sankt Hans & procure more volumes!’ I cried, by now quite distraught.

  ‘Come now, I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that,’ proclaimed Fru Jakobsen matter-of-factly. ‘I think you must simply abandon hope of Fergus coming to London under his own steam, & instead concentrate on what you can do to reach him. Your lively imagination will rustle something up, I am sure of it. Come now, apply your mind to those ingredients again. Blood, sweat and tears go together, don’t they – but I’d say antiseptic is the misfit, for it is not something one would normally carry about one’s person. Think of how practical Professor Krak is, dear. What might he always be able to come by? I know! Why not try looking in your dictionary for an English word beginning with ant?’

  Upon which, without further ceremony, she announced that she was going to take a stroll around the botanical gardens, & thence to the cinema, & she would leave me with the bottle of schnapps she now produced.

  ‘Abandon me here, in this state?’ I wailed. ‘Doing all the investigating myself?’

  ‘Well, two of us can’t read a dictionary at once,’ she argued. ‘And you seem to enjoy looking up words; indeed, it’s quite a hobby, is it not?’

  In the seemingly militant absence of support from my companion, I had to admit that my choices were limited at this point, for regaining access to the Sankt Hans archive in the wake of our theft seemed an impossibility, given that our flying-machine departed in a mere four hours. So I reached for my red English dictionary, with its wafer-thin pages bearing thousands of definitions & sub-definitions, my first & only gift from Fergus, & how the tears came to my eyes when I reread the inscription inside, written in his plain Scottish writing, so different from my own loopy & curlicued hand: ‘For Lottie, with love beyond words.’

  O! Feel my fevered brow, dear reader! Does your heart swoon with mine?

  ‘But look at all these pages!’ I cried despondently, urging Fru Jakobsen to at least measure the weight of the volume in her hand, for it seemed to me heavier than a whole bag of flour. ‘So many words! And when you consider it, does not every single nounhave an “anti” version of itself? Where to begin?’ But Fru Jakobsen had donned her jacket & headed for the door, leaving me, I shall confess to you, with a sharp nudge of disappointment at her laconic attitude, which seemed uncharacteristically ruthless under the circumstances. Had I misjudged her?

  ‘Have a stiff drink,’ she counselled, waving an airy goodbye. ‘Then begin at the beginning, go on until you come to the end, & then stop.’

  Upon which she took her merry leave, seeming quite determined to enjoy her time in Copenhagen, so there was naught to do but follow her advice & reach for the schnapps bottle, at which a warm glow instantly spread through my chest, bringing with it a tiny flicker of hope. Bottle in hand, I sprawled on the bed, working my w
ay patiently through the nouns, trying out each with the prefix ‘the great human’, & considering what might be classified as a liquid, or produce same.

  The great human antic. (’ Antic: fantastic action or trick!’ Yes, I had been tricked all right, but not fantastically!) The great human anticathode. (Krak was certainly a man for blinding one with science!) I swigged some more, & felt the warmth expand further through my chest. My face felt a blood-rush & I realized I had very swiftly made myself somewhat drunk. Good: maybe it will help, I thought, as I took another swig & contracted an immediate bout of hiccups. The great human antichrist (ectoplasmic? But how to catch him?). Hic. The great human anticlimax. (Exactly what I had just suffered!) A further swig & I began to feel quite dizzy. The great human anticonvulsant. (Aha! Hic. Possible). Might a ‘great human anti-devolutionist’, if chopped into small enough pieces, be successfully liquidized in a modern food processor? Soon the words were dancing before my eyes &, before I knew it, I had fallen into a queasy slumber …

  It was afternoon when I was awakened by a knock at the door. I staggered to my feet. Fru Jakobsen had returned from her trip to the cinema, & she was now sniffing the air. She spotted the schnapps bottle. ‘Charlotte-pige!’ she exclaimed. ‘I suggested, I think, a small pick-me-up, rather than –’

  ‘O Fru Jakobsen!’ I cried, & burst into tears. ‘How plunged into gloom I am, & how mightily drunk, & what a headache I am in for! How I curse Professor Krak, for making life so difficult!’