“So that’s how the postcard got wet! Some of the writing was washed off and there were traces of soap on the stamp,” Lisa said.
“Hm, if you ask me,” Nilly said, “that’s how the postcard got wet. Some of the writing was washed off and there were traces of soap on the stamp.”
Juliette poured a little more soap powder into the water. “Stir it up and make some bubbles. Quick, the hippos will be here any minute.”
Nilly churned his arms like an eggbeater in the water.
“Why couldn’t Proctor just get in touch with that assistant and get more time soap?” he asked.
Juliette sighed. “Victor’s assistant was a very peculiar person. Right after Victor and I started seeing each other, they had a falling out. I’m not sure why, but after Victor disappeared, his assistant tried to steal the whole time-traveling bathtub invention. Luckily Victor hadn’t left any sketches behind. He kept everything in his head, and Victor himself was the only one who knew how to configure the bathtub so it would work. And—”
Juliette suddenly stopped talking because they all heard a definite creaking sound from the hallway outside.
“Wha-what’s that sound?” Nilly asked.
Juliette held out her hand. It held the two blue nose clips. “Quick, put these on and dive.”
“Don’t need to,” Lisa said, demonstrating how she could pinch her nose shut with her thumb and index finger.
Juliette opened one of the blue nose clips and released it so that it clipped over Lisa’s nostrils with a little pop!
“Ouch!” Lisa protested.
Juliette gave Nilly the other nose clip. “Keep them on and a lot will become clear to you.”
There was a loud knock on the door.
“Under the water, now!” Juliette whispered, screwing the lid of the soap jar back on and passing it to Lisa.
“But you have to come too,” Lisa urged.
“No, I have to stay here.”
“What?” Lisa whispered. “Cliché is just going to lock you up again! And we’ll never find Doctor Proctor without your help!”
There was another knock on the door, louder this time.
Juliette bent down and kissed first Lisa and then Nilly on the forehead. “Victor said you were two smart kids. And I can already see that he’s right. Hurry up. Find him and come back.”
They heard an angry shout from the hallway and rapid footsteps, and the next second the door bulged into the room as if someone had just flung themselves against it. The door quit bulging, and they heard the creaking of the floorboards again, as if someone were taking another running start.
Lisa and Nilly took deep breaths and dove under the soap bubbles.
Then they were in a watery twilight where there was total silence.
Nilly could feel Lisa’s hand holding on to his own as he concentrated. Naturally what he wanted to do most of all was travel back to the Moulin Rouge to that girl who had thought he was so cute, but you couldn’t travel back to the same time and place more than once. So instead he had to think about … about … where were they supposed to be going again? That’s right, the Provence mountains. July … 3, 1969! More specifically Inn … Inn … what was that place that Juliette had said again? Darn it, it started with Inn! Inn … Inn …
Soon he couldn’t hold his breath anymore.
Inn … Inn …
Must have air!
Inn … DARN IT!
Nilly stood up in the tub, gasping for air.
He was standing in a bathtub in the middle of a meadow full of colorful flowers. The sun was shining, bees were buzzing, and birds were chirping all around him, and there were extremely tall mountains in every direction. At the other end of the meadow he saw a bunch of people sitting along the edge of a road in folding chairs waving French flags as they said cheers and clinked their wineglasses together and cheered on bicyclists as they passed. It was a wonderfully beautiful summer’s day out in the countryside. There were really only two things that concerned Nilly. One was that Lisa wasn’t anywhere to be seen. The second was that a bull with horns the size of a Congolese tse-tse elephant’s tusks was heading toward him at full speed.
Tour de France
THE BULL WAS the size of a small tractor but had a significantly faster maximum speed. Nilly realized that even if he ran as fast as his tiny legs could carry him, the bull was still going to overtake him. The ground beneath him shook and he could hear the animal’s terrible snorting. Bees and butterflies darted out of the bull’s path in fear as Nilly raced through the flower-filled meadow that just seconds ago had seemed so idyllic and peaceful.
“Help,” Nilly cried, but only very softly, because he knew that no one could help him, and that he should save his breath. He would need it if he was going to reach the fence before that beast of muscles and horns that was rapidly approaching him from behind. So he very quietly called “help” one more time, before he accepted that no matter how much air he had left, he was not going to reach the fence first, that very soon he would be dangling from one of those massive barbecue skewer horns. So Nilly prepared himself and then leaped up into the air, tucked his legs up, wrapped his arms around them, curled himself into a ball and screamed (without saving any breath): “Cannonball!”
With that, the tiny little boy disappeared. The bull stopped and stared down at the hillside that was covered with tall Bermuda grass, wild begonias, lily of the valley, and other stuff that grows in French meadows and that the bull didn’t even know the name of. The bull rummaged around in this salad with one of his horns, all the while realizing that he was feeling even madder. Where the cow buttocks had that unbelievably irritating little chap gone?
Nilly wriggled through the grass, and he didn’t stand up again until he was sure that he had crawled under the fence and past it. He turned toward the bull, who was still standing out there in the meadow sniffing the ground.
“Hey, yoo-hoo! Hey, Mr. Beef, Medium Well!”
The bull raised his head and stared at Nilly, who put a thumb in each ear and wiggled his fingers and said “nyah, nyah” as he stuck out his tongue and gave a Bronx cheer. The bull responded by blowing hot steaming air out of his splayed nostrils, positioning his legs on the ground, and lowering his head. What an insufferable, poorly behaved, rude young man, he thought. Then he came barreling. But he never made it to the red-haired boy. Seconds later, his enormous bull horns struck that idiotic bathtub that for some reason or other had suddenly appeared in the meadow. The bathtub was lifted up into the air, whirled around, and then came down to land upside down so that all the water and soap bubbles ran out.
Nilly was going to laugh, but instead he stiffened. He dug around desperately in his wet pockets, but found only small things that started with P: a parking stub, a plum pit, and a sealed plastic bag of fartonaut powder. But not what he was looking for. Of course not, because Lisa was the one who had brought the jar of time soap. All he had was an empty time-traveling bathtub! How was he ever going to get back?
Nilly stuck his index finger into his ear, rotated it around and pulled it out again. Plop! But even that didn’t help. His brain didn’t give him any answers. He was doomed. So Nilly wasn’t laughing, not one bit.
But there were some other people who were.
Nilly turned to see where the laughter was coming from. And saw a short, thin man who was lying on his back in the grass with a blade of grass in the corner of his mouth. He was wearing a blue bicycling jersey with a number on it.
“Great sprint.” The man laughed. “You ought to take up biking, kid.”
“Thanks,” Nilly said. And since he was a born optimist who also liked company and a good conversation, his outlook on the situation had already started to improve a bit.
“Do you know why bulls like that get so mad?” Nilly asked. “Did I do something to that sack of beef, or what?”
The guy said, “Red hair” and pointed at Nilly’s head. “Bulls see red when they see red.”
Nilly cocke
d his red-haired head to the side and looked at the man. “Um, how come you’re speaking Norwegian?”
The man laughed again. “I’m speaking French, my friend. And so are you.”
“I am?”
“You’re certainly a very funny clown. What’s your name?”
“Nilly. And I’m not a clown.”
“You’re not?” the man said. “You’ll really have to excuse me, Nilly. I thought that was a clown nose.”
Nilly reached up to feel his nose. He’d totally forgotten about the nose clip. Something was slowly starting to dawn on him. He pulled off the nose clip and tried: “And what’s your name, man in the blue bicycling jersey?”
The man looked at him blankly. “Keska too ah dee?”
“Aha!” Nilly shouted triumphantly. It wasn’t just dawning on him, it was broad daylight inside his head. He understood everything. Well, almost everything. At any rate, he understood why he had understood what the cancan dancer had said, and what Juliette had meant when she’d said a lot would become clear to them if they kept the nose clips on. That was because these really were French nose clips. While you wore them you could understand French and you could speak French. What do you know, another ingenious Proctor invention!
Nilly was so excited that, as usual, he forgot all about his problems. He put his nose clip on and asked the man what his name was and why in the world he was lying here in the grass when all the other bicyclists he’d seen were riding as if their lives depended on it.
“My name’s Eddy. And my bike has its third flat of the day.” He pointed over by the road where a racing bike was lying on its side. “I just couldn’t take anymore. The finish line is at the top of that mountain over there.”
Eddy pointed again and Nilly had to bend his neck back to see the peak of the snow-capped mountain in front of them.
“What about you, Nilly?”
“I came from the future,” Nilly said. “I think I came to the right time, but the wrong place. What year is it and what’s the name of this place?”
Eddy laughed even louder. “Thank you, Nilly. At least you’re cheering me up!”
“I’m not kidding.”
“Well,” Eddy said. “The year is 1969 and we’re in Inndarnit. Where were you supposed to be?”
“Inndarnit?” Nilly mumbled, scratching his left sideburn. “I was supposed to be somewhere that started with ‘Inn,’ but I forgot the rest. Lisa must be there now, you know?”
“Lisa?”
“Yeah, we’re supposed to find Doctor Proctor. Maybe she’s already found him, and now they’re just waiting for me to show up. It’s actually totally crucial that I find them. Without them I’m going to be stuck here in 1969.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Eddy said. He took a little drink from his water bottle and passed it to Nilly. “1969 really sucks.”
“Oh?” Nilly asked.
“Nothing but flat tires in every single race,” Eddy said. “Just as bad as 1815 was for Napoléon.”
“1815? Napoléon?”
“Don’t you remember?”
Nilly thought about it. “I don’t think I was born then.”
“From history class, silly! June eighteenth, 1815. That was when Napoléon led his troops …”
“… across the Alps?” Nilly tried.
“No,” Eddy said, waving away a bumblebee. “That was when he took a licking in the Battle of Waterloo. And I know that quite well, because Waterloo is just a few minutes of Eddy-biking from my dad’s bike shop in Belgium. Totally flat country. You know what? Now that I’m giving up biking, I think I’ll go home and see if I can get a job there.”
“Good thinking,” Nilly said, taking a drink from the water bottle. “Because, really, what’s the point of biking up and down all these mountains? They’re way too big.”
“The point?” Eddy was staring at Nilly as if Nilly had reminded him of something he’d forgotten.
“Yeah,” Nilly said, gulping down more water. All this time travel had made him unusually thirsty.
“This is the Tour de France,” Eddy said. “Whoever wins this mountain stage wins money, gets kissed on the cheek by cute girls, and will be interviewed on TV while everyone in France watches.”
Nilly thought about that, and began to see that perhaps there was some point to it after all. Especially the part about being kissed by cute girls. And being seen on TV by everyone in France couldn’t really hurt either….
“Hey!” Nilly cried. “Did you just say everyone in France?”
“Absolutely everyone,” Eddy said. “Every TV in France is on for the Tour de France. You can’t not see it.”
“Even if you don’t have a TV at home?”
“They set up TVs in every single café, restaurant, and country store. Merde! You’ve got to stop making me talk about this stuff, Nilly! Now I just want to fling myself back on my bike and win this darned race!”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do!” Nilly shouted. Then he ran over to Eddy and pulled him up onto his feet.
“What?” Eddy asked.
“First I’m going to help you patch your tire, and then we’re going to fart our way up to the top of this mountain and be interviewed on TV.”
“We?” Eddy asked as Nilly pushed him toward his bike.
“Yup. Because I’m going to sit in on the interview. And I’ll say that Lisa and Doctor Proctor have to come and pick me up, so we can return to our own time.”
“You sure say a lot of funny-sounding things,” Eddy mumbled and took out his patch kit. “But at least you’ve given me back my desire to win.”
TWO MINUTES LATER, two cud-chewing sheep raised their heads as a bike passed them on the road just outside their fence.
“Did you see that?” the one cud-chewing sheep said to the other. “Two people on one bike. Isn’t that cheating?”
The other sheep blinked his eyes sleepily. “Baaa, why? It makes the bike even heavier when you’re going uphill. Besides, they’re dead last.”
“That’s not the point,” the one sheep said. “Is it allowed?”
The other chewed his cud for a bit while he contemplated this.
“No idea,” he finally said. “I’m a sheep, you know? We don’t know that kind of thing.”
* * *
EDDY STOOD ON his pedals and pushed as hard as he could. Not just because standing on the pedals helped him go faster, but because his seat was occupied by a red-haired little guy with a nose clip who was screaming into his ear:
“Come on, Eddy! Faster, Eddy! You’re the best, Eddy!”
And when Eddy tried to ease up on the pace a little:
“Pull yourself together, Eddy! Do you want a licking, Eddy? Do you want this to be your Waterloo, Eddy? Do you want to be a full-time tire-patcher, Eddy? You can do more! It feels gooood to be tired!”
And, truth be told, it was helping. Soon they started overtaking cyclists who stared openmouthed at the strange two-man team with the little boy screaming:
“Push, Eddy! The other cyclists are even tireder! Think about the girls waiting at the top, Eddy. They have soft lips. Soooooft lips, Eddy. Faster, faster, otherwise I’m going to give you a noogie! And we’re not talking about a little love noogie, we’re talking about a massive, sasquatch noogie!”
Eddy, who wasn’t really sure what a noogie was, but didn’t particularly want to find out either, pushed. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth, and his breath had started making a strange, rasping sound. But they were still passing cyclist after cyclist and had made it quite a ways up the mountain, to where there were still patches of snow in the shadows. Even though Nilly’s clothes had dried in the sunshine, he was now so cold that his teeth chattered as he chanted his mixture of encouragement and threats. Until a wheezing Eddy interrupted him:
“I can’t do it….”
“What?” Nilly yelled through his chattering teeth. “Do you want a n-n-noogie, you B-B-Belgian waffle!”
“The finish line is to
o close …,” wheezed Eddy. “We won’t be able to pass everyone.”
“Nonsense,” Nilly said. “I said we would fart up this mountain, and when Nilly says we’ll fart up a mountain, you’d darn well better—”
“Fart all you want …,” Eddy groaned. His tongue was hanging down to the handlebars, and the bike had started wobbling ominously. “Look at how steep this is.”
Nilly looked. The road was so steep that it looked like a wall. And way, way up ahead, high, high above them he saw the yellow jersey of the guy in front.
“Hm,” Nilly said.
“Hm what?” Eddy wheezed.
“I’m going to fart.” Nilly stuck his hand in his pocket and fished out a plastic sack, which he resolutely opened, and then poured the contents into his mouth.
“What was that?” Eddy asked.
“That was a little carry-on item starting with P,” Nilly said, and burped. “Hold on tight. Six—five—four—three—two …”
“Hold on …?”
Eddy didn’t have a chance to say anything else. There was a bang so loud that it felt like the earwax was being pushed into his ears and his eyes bulged out of his head. And then there was a roar, like from a speeding rocket engine. The reason he thought of a rocket engine specifically was that they were rushing up the mountain sort of like—well actually, exactly like—a rocket!
“Yippee!” Nilly cheered in his ear.
“Yippee!” Eddy cheered as they passed the cyclists ahead of them and had only the one in the yellow jersey left to overtake. But there was the finish line! And the guy in the yellow jersey had only a few yards to go.
“Give it all you got, Nilly!” Eddy yelled, steering the bike as best he could so they wouldn’t run right off the side of the mountain. “Full fart steam ahead! Otherwise it’s noogie-time for you!”
“I’m trying,” groaned Nilly, who was very red in the face.
“Faster, Nilly, we’re not going to make it! Think about those soooooft lips!”
And Nilly thought. He thought that if they didn’t manage this, he would probably never get to see Lisa or Doctor Proctor again. This thought made his intestines give one final effort, and he pressed out a little more gas so they shot ahead with a little more speed. The spectators watching would talk about it for years afterward—that they had been witness to the fantastic sprint in the Provence mountains at the 1969 Tour de France, when the legendary Eddy and his strange red-haired passenger, whose name no one could remember, had flown toward the finish line as if they had a jet engine on their bike. Some even claimed that the bicycle had lifted off from the ground. Yes, a few even imagined that a strange white smoke had trailed from the seat of the pants of the little boy on the bike seat. Even so, it had appeared hopeless, up until the final yards when they had managed to increase their speed a tiny bit more and at the finish line they had beaten the yellow jersey by a gumillionth of a millimeter. It was the first victory for Eddy, who would go on to became the world famous Eddy who would win bike races around the world, but who in his memoirs would say that it had been that win in Provence that had made him believe in himself and stick with cycling.