Making History

by Stephen Fry

  MICHAEL

  (stifling a laugh)

  Really? Well, how do you do, Mr. Franklin.

  He holds out a hand.

  LEO

  (shaking hands)

  You find this name amusing?

  MICHAEL

  (hastily)

  No! Please, I’m sorry. It’s just . . . well, you know . . .

  LEO goes over to a wastebasket and drops in the cotton lint.

  LEO

  You are right. It is not, of course, my real name.

  MICHAEL

  Hey, that’s okay. None of my business, Mr. Franklin. Or is that Dr. Franklin?

  LEO

  Professor Franklin. But please, call me Chester.

  MICHAEL

  You got it, Chester. People call me Mikey.

  LEO

  So tell me . . . er . . . Mikey. I find this paper you are writing most . . .

  LEO’s observations are interrupted by a loud beep-beep-beep.

  MICHAEL

  Uh-oh, my compad. Do you mind?

  LEO

  Please . . .

  MICHAEL’s bag is next to him on the kitchen table. With his back to LEO he pulls out his compad and looks at the readout. He closes his eyes briefly for a second, mind racing hard.

  He turns to LEO.

  MICHAEL

  (loudly)

  Gee, it’s real kind of you to clean me up like this, Chester.

  As he speaks, he goes over to a yellow legal pad and picks up a pen next to it. He starts to write in frantic haste, the pen racing along.

  MICHAEL (CONT’D)

  (loudly: while writing)

  I’m such a klutz, you know? Third time I’ve come off my bike this week.

  LEO

  I’m sure it was not your fault . . .

  MICHAEL

  (talking over him)

  My friends tell me I should get a tricycle. You know, three wheels? Maybe it would be safer. Nice place you have here, Chester. Quiet little street. I live in a dorm. You a baseball fan, Chester?

  LEO

  (rather puzzled by all this)

  Well, I . . .

  MICHAEL

  Baseball is my life. I eat baseball, drink baseball, sleep baseball. You should try and catch a game. It’s what the angels play in heaven. I guess you like soccer? We don’t really play much soccer here. American football, you ever seen that? Basketball maybe. I’m not really tall enough for basketball. You have to be real tall to reach the basket, you know? Me, I guess I’m average height at most, always wanted to be taller. Still, you can’t always get what you want, am I right?

  During these last witterings, MICHAEL has torn off the top sheet from the pad and handed it to LEO. He holds it in front of his eyes, an urgent expression on his face. Bewildered, LEO fishes for his reading glasses and reads.

  From his POV we read the note too. It is written in big block capitals.

  NOTE

  Trust me. We are being watched. I know you are Axel Bauer. I am a friend. I can help you. I know about your father and Kremer and Brunau and Auschwitz. You must trust me. I can help.

  LEO’s eyes widen with fear. He stares at MICHAEL, dumbfounded.

  MICHAEL holds a finger over his lips.

  MICHAEL

  (loudly)

  Hey! Is that the time? Jeez, I’d better be going. Did you say you might give me a ride?

  LEO just stands there, trembling slightly.

  MICHAEL nods his head vigorously. LEO jerks out of his trance.

  LEO

  Hey? A ride? Of course. Certainly.

  MICHAEL

  (casual, loud voice)

  Guess we should be able to get that old bike of mine in back, if you don’t mind a bit of mud on the seats?

  LEO shakes his head and realizes he is supposed to answer for the benefit of any listening devices.

  LEO

  (even louder)

  NO! NO PROBLEM. THE MUD IS FINE.

  MICHAEL winces slightly and shakes his head smilingly. He takes the thoroughly bemused and shaken LEO by the shoulder and leads him through to the hallway. He has a sudden thought.

  He rushes back into the kitchen, to where the yellow legal pad is. He pulls off the next top sheet, and then the next. What the hell. He pulls off thirty at once and takes them all with him.

  MICHAEL

  (rejoining LEO in the hall)

  Okay then, let’s hit the road. Probably not the best metaphor, but you know what I mean, huh?

  LEO

  (still too loud)

  YES. I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN. HIT THE ROAD! HA-HA! MOST AMUSING.

  They go to the front door.

  CUT TO:

  EXT. MERCER STREET—SAME TIME

  WIDE on LEO and MICHAEL dumping the bicycle into the backseat and getting into the front of the car.

  ANOTHER ANGLE:

  STEVE watches from his tree.

  The car backs out of the drive. LEO has to slam the brakes on again as another bicycle comes shooting by.

  CUT TO:

  INTERIOR OF CAR

  LEO

  My God. Not again!

  MICHAEL

  (looking over his shoulder)

  It’s okay. You’re clear now.

  CUT TO:

  STEVE’S CAMERA’S POV. LEO’s blue convertible backs out, straightens up and heads away.

  We MOVE UP to the maroon sedan, a cigarette butt is thrown from the window, the car pulls out and follows LEO’s blue convertible.

  CUT TO:

  STEVE, lowering the camera, a worried look on his face.

  CUT TO:

  EXT. PRINCETON STREETS—MORNING

  LEO’s car emerges onto Nassau.

  CUT TO:

  INT. LEO’S CAR—SAME TIME

  LEO, looking scared as hell, is driving badly.

  MICHAEL

  If you could just drive me round to University Place, that would be fine.

  LEO

  Please to tell me what . . .

  MICHAEL stops him by putting a hand on his arm. LEO looks across. MICHAEL indicates the car instrument panel and points to his ears. LEO gets the message. Even the car might be bugged.

  MICHAEL has an idea. He turns the radio on, loud.

  MUSIC:

  The Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin roars out, trumpets blaring.

  MICHAEL

  (shouting above the music)

  I’m sorry, Axel. But you can’t be too careful.

  LEO

  Who are you? How do you know my name? My God! I know! It’s you! You are the one!

  MICHAEL frowns in puzzlement.

  MICHAEL

  What do you mean?

  LEO (CONT’D)

  You are that student on the train, yes? They tell me I was talking in my sleep. They give me drugs to stop it happening again. You are that student who heard me talk on the train.

  MICHAEL

  Oh. Of course. Look, I’m sorry about that, Axel. That’s just what I told them. It’s not true. I was never on any train with you. I’m sure you don’t talk in your sleep. I had to make up some story to explain how I knew all about you, you see. It was all I could come up with at the time.

  LEO

  (terrified)

  You are English! Your accent is English! Who are you working for? I stop the car right now.

  The car swerves. Brakes squeal. Horns sound from behind.

  MICHAEL

  (desperately straightening the wheel)

  No! Keep driving, for God’s sake! We’re almost certainly being followed.

  LEO

  Followed? Followed? By whom?

  MICHAEL

&nbs
p; You know Hubbard and Brown?

  LEO

  I know them, yes.

  MICHAEL

  Hubbard has been watching your house.

  LEO

  But Hubbard is my friend! You. You are working for Europe. You are a Nazi!

  MICHAEL

  (struggling to be heard over the music)

  No! Please believe me. I am not a Nazi. Listen, I know things. Things that you need to know. If I’m right, you will be trying to develop a machine.

  LEO

  Machine? What machine?

  MICHAEL

  To generate an artificial quantum singularity. To create a window on past time. You are obsessed by your father’s guilt. The factory he built at Auschwitz to mass produce Brunau Water. Maybe you want to send something back in time. Something to destroy the factory perhaps. Something to stop Rudolf Gloder from being born. But I know what you really have to do. I know the answer.

  (looking around)

  Just pull up here, outside the market.

  The car has turned into University Place.

  The Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin, meanwhile, has developed into the Bridal March that follows.

  LEO stops the car with a squeal of brakes outside the Wawa Minimart. Next to it is a cycle shop called CYCLORAMA.

  MICHAEL (CONT’D)

  I know the secret of Brunau Water. I know how it got there in the first place. I know who put it in the water supply of Brunau over a hundred years ago. Believe me. I know.

  LEO stares at him.

  VOICE

  Hey!

  LEO almost jumps out of his skin.

  A PASSERBY looks into the car and shouts over the music.

  PASSERBY

  Congratulations on the wedding, guys. But how’s about turning it down, huh?

  MICHAEL waves him away with a hand.

  MICHAEL

  (shouting in LEO’s ear)

  The lake. West Windsor. Tonight. Eight o’clock. Please! I am a friend. Believe me. Whatever you do, make sure you’re not being followed. A friend of mine will watch your back. He will be wearing red.

  The PASSERBY puts his hand in the car and wrenches down the volume.

  PASSERBY

  Assholes!

  The PASSERBY straightens up and then, true to name and nature, passes on by.

  MICHAEL

  (calling after him)

  Sorry, man.

  (to Leo: feigned normality)

  So, thanks for the ride, Chester. Real nice to meet you. Hope it all goes well. You really should go see a ball game one of these days.

  MICHAEL gets out of the car, hauls his bike from the backseat and turns towards Cyclorama.

  LEO is sitting, staring sightlessly forward.

  MICHAEL

  (calling after him)

  So long then, Chester. I expect you need to be moving along now, right?

  LEO turns to look at MICHAEL once more, doubt and anxiety in his eyes.

  MICHAEL mouths the words “TRUST ME,” salutes him farewell and turns into the shop.

  In the background, we see the front of the MAROON SEDAN, which is parked around the corner. It does not follow LEO’s car. It stays where it is as MICHAEL enters the shop.

  FADE OUT.

  MAKING HISTORY

  Rats

  I wished it were winter. In winter it got bitterly cold in Princeton, Steve had said. Maybe as much as twenty below. There would have been snow and ice everywhere and the bicycle ride to Windsor would have been difficult, miserable and dangerous. But at least it would have been dark. Blessedly, wonderfully dark. As I pedaled along, I would have been able to see any headlights behind me and that luxury would have made up for a lot of physical discomfort.

  There again, I thought, as I turned off the road and hid myself and my bicycle behind a tree for the fourth time, maybe Hubbard and Brown had all kinds of night-vision gear available to them, so perhaps it made no difference whether it was dark or light.

  I waited behind the tree for fifteen minutes before pushing the bike back out into the highway and resuming the ride south.

  West Windsor lay only a mile or so from Princeton, but Steve and I had agreed that I should allow four hours for the journey. Just to be sure.

  I leaned round a corner and at last saw what I was looking for, a turning left towards the lake.

  Somewhere on another road, I prayed, Leo was undertaking the same kind of cautious journey, with Steve a safe distance behind him.

  Or maybe Leo was sitting around that shiny maple table, under the framed Gettysburg Address, talking to Hubbard and Brown about his strange morning with the mysterious Englishman who shared Michael D. Young’s fingerprints, but knew things Michael D. Young shouldn’t.

  If that was the case, then that meant they must have got to Steve too, because for the last three hours my compad had been silent. No alarms, no changes of plan.

  I realized now, far too late, that it would have been much more sensible to have arranged instead for Steve to bleep me every hour on the hour whatever was happening, just to let me know that every­thing was cool. I cursed myself for not thinking of this. The silence of the compad didn’t really tell me anything at all. I debated calling him just to set my mind at rest. I decided against it; if you make a plan, you should stick to it. Maybe he was in a place where a sudden bleeping noise would draw attention to him at exactly the most disastrous time. I didn’t understand the technology of these compads enough to know whether or not the bleepers could be turned off, or whether their calls were traceable. Maybe, I realized, that’s why Steve hadn’t suggested regular communication between us in the first place, because our positions could be calculated by someone listen­ing in. For all I knew, Hubbard and Brown could track us in a scan­ning van the moment our compads were in use.

  I wondered if Leo would be any good at this kind of thing. He had managed to escape from his conference in Venice and make his way to the American consulate. That argued some kind of gumption.

  I had remembered to warn him about Steve. “A friend of mine will watch your back. He will be wearing red.” Once Leo got to the lake, Steve would make himself known to him and lead him to me. That was the plan.

  But suppose Hubbard or one of his men, by some ghastly coinci­dence, was also wearing red?

  Suppose, suppose, suppose. All kind of things might happen. It was no use my worrying about them. All I could do is follow my part of the plan and hope for the best.

  The sweat on me was attracting the midges and mosquitoes that hung around in gangs on the lakeside like street-corner thugs. I was off the bike now, and wheeling it along a narrow path that skirted the lake on its north side. Across the water I heard the traffic on Highway One, a mile to the south, and in the center of the lake, a rowing eight skimmed by at an astonishing speed, the barking of the cox coming to me clear over the unruffled surface.

  A sudden movement in the bushes on my left stopped me dead in my tracks. I stood where I was, my heart beginning to thrash about in my chest like a trapped bird.

  Suddenly, a rat, big as an otter, its fur damply streaked, jumped onto the path in front of me almost colliding with my brand-new Cyclorama front wheel. I let out an instant involuntary shout of horror and fear, and the rat, shocked out of its wits, skidded and scrambled like a rally-car out of control, obviously a great deal more scared than me. It rolled over twice, regained its footing and dived back into the undergrowth, leaves, twigs and stones sticking to its back like totems on a Mexican bride’s wedding dress.

  “Rats,” I said in an Indiana Jones voice. “I hate rats.”

  I saw and heard more of them as I hurried on towards the ren­dezvous point.

  Maybe they weren’t rats, though. Maybe they were groundhogs or gophers. Not that I was exactly sure what those were. I only kne
w about them from those Bill Murray movies, Groundhog Day and Caddyshack. Was a groundhog the same as a gopher? There was yet another kind of American rodent too, wasn’t there? A coypu. Maybe they were coypus. Or possums even.

  Whatever they were, I hated them to buggery and made as much noise as possible as I worked my way along, just to alert them to my presence.

  After twenty more minutes, I came at last to a place where the path divided. To the right it snaked round, following the outline of the lake, to the left it led into the land of rats, gophers, coypus, pos­sums and groundhogs. Slapping the back of my neck like a true jun­gle explorer, I took the left-hand path.

  Two hundred yards in, after battling through some overhanging greenery, a clearing came into view. I saw a tall silver birch and next to it, the huge, lichen-covered tree stump that Steve had told me about. On this stump I sat, smoking busily to keep the no-see-ums and mosquitoes at bay.

  There was a repulsive stench about this place, something far worse than the usual rotten marshy pong characteristic of land near water. I began to feel my gorge rise. For gorge read lunch. The ciga­rette smoke was of no help at all, either in deterring the insects or in masking the foul reek. I stood up, almost unable to breathe. As I moved away, things improved. The smell was localized it seemed.

  Pulling out a handkerchief and holding it over my mouth and nose, I edged back towards the stump where a funnel of gnats still swirled. I peeped cautiously over the stump and instantly vomited.

  In the long grass a pair of dead rats nestled, clinging to each other with tightly closed eyes like sleeping children, their fur alive with lit­tle white squirming maggots, no bigger than commas. The soup of vomit now beside them, I supposed, as I wiped my mouth, would be another treat for the malevolent insect life that seemed to own this part of the woods.

  I leaned against a tree that was as far away from the stump as I could find, and contemplated the foulness of nature.

  Hot red lumps had begun to break out on my neck and hands. They were not the bite marks of insects, but more like some kind of allergic reaction. As a child I had suffered from mild hay fever. I thought I had outgrown it, but out here the rich density of lakeside life, of pollen and lichen and rats and bugs and grasses and seeds and spores seemed to give off a toxic cloud of allergens at which my skin and lungs revolted. I felt my chest tighten into a wheeze and my eyes, I knew, were puffing up like marshmallows.