My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time (2 page)

‘Why should I care whether she is your mother or the man in the moon?' retorted Fru Krak with a strangely triumphant laugh.
‘What I need to know is, can she wield a broom? Will she apply herself vigorously to a task? Is she capable of proper scouring?'

I assured her that Fru Schleswig was a champion scourer, & no stranger to hard graft. (Another lie, for the old creature was, & is, as idle as a sloth in an irreversible coma.) And to impress her further, I curtsied yet again, for who knows, I was thinking: might the Queen of Sheba here sometimes be in need of a personal maid, to help her dress, & be at hand to furnish
her with all the necessary accoutrements of hoitytoityship such as muffs in winter & fans in summer, & prepare tea for the
Pastor? Or perhaps assist the gentleman himself more directly, & in other ways? I have found the clergy, in general, to be
quite a fresh bunch, & prone to guilt afterwards, which they sometimes assuage by offloading an extra krone or two on the
wench who has serviced them. Such were the thoughts that flurried through my head as I respectfully suggested that Fru Schleswig
& I should visit Fru Krak later that morning.

‘No, come at three this afternoon,' she said, her glance flickering over my body in the same way she might look over a flank
of raw beef at the butcher's, judging its worth & succulence as weighed against the contents of her purse. ‘You can bring
my cake along, & save me the journey. I have much to prepare, with Pastor Dahlberg's arrival this evening. I hold to very
high standards,' she said, & gave me a warning glare that told me that nothing but perfection would suffice, but nor might
it ever be attained, in her eyes, for it was plain to see she was a picky one.

So I complimented her on the efficiency of her thinking, & it was agreed that if all went well, Fru Schleswig could start
work at Fru Krak's home on Rosenvængets Allé immediately. She had got my hackles up, though, with her sense of superiority,
so as I left the bakery I lowered my veil &, beneath it, released the steam of my annoyance by pulling a comical face such
as I sometimes do for the amusement of the simple-minded Fru Schleswig, who will laugh like a crazed mule at the slightest
foolishness.

It was by now nine in the morning: I had a full six hours to awaken Fru Schleswig from the drunken stupor into which she had
sunk the night before in our three-roomed attic, & spruce her up. As I climbed the stairs to our lodgings, I could hear her
snoring from a full three flights below. There had been complaints from neighbours about these nocturnal emissions, & at times
I was forced to shove a whole pillow & eiderdown over the woman's face, to silence her. I sighed as I rolled her over & surveyed
her visage, as familiar to me as a winter potato, with its bulbous nose & slabby cheeks. It was hard to assess how long it
would take to get her looking respectable. Reeking schnapps-fumes formed an invisible cloud around her head, & repulsive wafts
of even fouler air emanated from her nether regions, fungal & glaucous. My stomach churned.

‘Chop chop, Fru S!' I yelled in her ear, slapping her sweat-glazed forehead with my glove. She snorted awake & opened a glutinous
eye. ‘Rise & shine! I have news for you, madam! You are finally to work for a living!'

While she broke wind prodigiously, groaned & rolled around on her mattress, fighting with the dregs of sleep, I heated water
on the brazier, then seized her by the arm & dragged her to the kitchen, where I poured a tepid pailful over the mass of her.
She grunted like a pig.

One should begin in childhood, I suppose. Is not that the tradition, in autobiography? But forgive me, dearly beloved one
(and my, you are looking well today, if I may say so!), if I skate over mine in the briefest manner possible, for the tale
of my early years is simply too tragic to dwell on & I do not wish to start our tender relationship by making you cry tears
of pity for me at this stage, as there will be plenty of opportunity for you to do so later. Suffice it to say that, reluctantly
abandoned by my royal-blooded & beautiful young parents who were forced to flee monarchic persecution, I grew up in a nameless
orphanage in the wilds of Jutland, starved of Love. The house – a gloomy, low-slung, ochre-painted building swarming with
dozens of diseased brats – stood on a gaunt escarpment, lashed by whatever weather God saw fit to throw at it: wind, thunder,
hail, & occasional thin shards of sun that poked through the cloud & then retreated, scared off by the barrenness of what
they illuminated below. Many a little mite died of starvation & grief in that house; none thrived. It was not a place in which
to blossom, or where joy might be kindled. It was home only to despair, a cankered nest to leave & to forget before it strangled
your soul.

And leave it I did, before death took me.

I headed for Copenhagen. I was sixteen years old.

But just as a sheep will trail crotties stuck to its tail & hindquarters, I trailed something too. At this point I fear I
must raise the subject of the human disaster Fru Fanny Schleswig, & how she became embroiled in my tale & remains a part of
it, however keen I have been (for reasons you will understand, being – like me – of a refined nature) to jettison her from
it altogether. Fru Schleswig had been employed as a cook (or should I say poisoner) in the orphanage in Jutland, & when I
fled from that vile & dangerous place she got wind of my escape & swore to follow me, so pathetically attached was she to
the young girl whom she had known from babyhood, & watched grow into the lithe & lissom young woman who was to walk into Herr Møller's bakery that winter morning & unwittingly set all hell in motion. Being of shockingly low intelligence, & barely literate,
Fru Schleswig had nevertheless displayed the wiliness of a truffle-hunting pig in tracking me down in Copenhagen within hours
of my arrival at the train station, insisting that whatever was my Fate, it would be hers too. To this day I cannot fathom
what ugly or pitiable mix of misguided loyalty, sly opportunism & parasitic greed led her to pursue me & claim some kind of
kinship. But there she was, grunting on my doorstep, & I could not turn her away.

While Fru Schleswig, who had by now opened her second eye but was not yet capable of what passed, in her terms, for human
speech, fought with a bar of coal-tar soap, I descended to the florist's shop on Holsteinsgade to glean what information I
could from my friend Else, with whom I used to perform in my music-hall days, before she tripped on a sausage-skin & broke
her heel, & I discovered there were more lucrative activities to be pursued offstage than on it. Now that she was mistress
of her own shop, Else was party to all the Østerbro gossip, & could tell me more about Fru Krak, I was sure.

‘Winter-flowering cherry, tra-la-la!' she sang triumphantly as I entered. The smell of flowers & soil hit me in a soft rush
& it was a moment before I saw my pretty friend, hidden as she was behind a thousand sprays of pale pink blossom, as delightful
& cheerful as fresh knickers. ‘All the way from the south of France,' she continued, waving a huge sprig at me. ‘Here, have
some.' She lowered her voice. ‘But profit from it now, for it will be dead by tea-time. Blossom don't travel. I need to flog
the lot today, to whatever poor fool will have it'

Else's screaming orange hair was tied up in a most becoming though eccentric style, sitting on her head like a crouching tiger
set to pounce, & pierced through with chopsticks from which several coloured beads & bells hung & jangled. Although the singing days of the Østerbro Coquettes were over, Else had never left them behind her, & seemed always to stand on a tiny stage of her own devising, upon which each of her smallest gestures was a dramatic performance. I watched her with my usual admiration as she busied herself with shears cutting laurel & catkin stalks & turning them into a deft & fiddle-de-dee arrangement. While she worked, I told her of my meeting with Lady Muck, aka Fru Krak, & she in turn told me the three facts about the woman that she had in her possession. Which were firstly that Fru Krak was a consummate bitch (which anyone, I told her, could ascertain from the distance of a furlong), she was a miser (which came as no surprise), & thirdly, that she had very probably murdered her husband, a professor of physics who was now a ghost that walked the streets of Østerbro at night, and had been seen posting letters in the box down by Sortedams Lake. Now the third piece of information did somewhat startle me, but to say that Else is prone to exaggeration is an understatement, so I did not show the level of surprise that
you,
dear one, might have done on receipt of such alarming news.

‘A ghost?' I queried. ‘Killed him how?'

‘Well, ain't that just the mystery,' she said, now slickly weaving a length of pink ribbon into a basket of bulbs & moss.
‘The poor bugger's body was never found. Which means she is a widow only in name. She never buried him. Well, you can't bury
thin air, can you?'

‘Curiouser & curiouser! So what happened?'

‘He disappeared from the face of the earth. When Fru Krak was away taking the waters at Silkeborg. Or so she claimed, come
alibi time. The Prof didn't pack no suitcase or take nothing. Odd or what? Wife's story was, he was suicidal, & must've killed
himself & then got his corpse to do a vanishing trick.'

‘If indeed he died,' I mused. ‘An interesting case legally speaking, you might think. Since she is to remarry. If Professor
Krak is actually alive enough to be seen posting letters, then does that not make the woman a bigamist?'

‘Only with a bad lawyer on her side,' laughed Else, whose father was a bad lawyer: having grown up with the sound of angry
clients pounding at the door asking for their money back, she knew of what she spoke. ‘She got herself one who'd swear black
was white, for the right dosh. And remember, the Professor ain't been seen alive in donkey's years. Except as a ghost. They
said he was the
erratic
type: odd ideas, dodgy theories. Anyway, according to this lawyer, after seven years you can remarry, &
the previous alliance can be deemed by the
courts null & void!

‘And the man she's to wed? Pastor Dahlberg?'

‘A widower. Interesting to see how long he lasts.' She lowered her voice & pulled a doomy face, still flicking skilfully at the pink ribbon. ‘My line of work, you can never have enough wreaths laid by. Charge a king's ransom for them, you can, cos Fru Customer reckons it ain't proper to haggle, question of respect for Herr Deceased. I had an old bag in here last week –'

‘But how do you know all this about the Kraks?' I interrupted, keen to steer her back to the matter in hand, for when Else
runs off on a tangent, she is never guaranteed to return.

‘From Gudrun Olsen. We play cards together Fridays. She's Mistress of Ironing at the laundry, fifty girls she's in charge
of. That's now. Back then, though, she was the Kraks' housekeeper. Fru K gave her the sack straight after. Smells fishy in
itself, I'd say. Go see her: she'll tell you more than I can, & give you some ironing tips too. What Gudrun can't teach you
about steam ain't worth know–'

‘But the ghost!' I interrupted again. ‘Tell me, you've seen it?'

She threw up her hands. ‘Blimey, how would I know if I had? I never clocked Professor Krak alive, & don't know his features.
There's many a man walks in this shop who could easily be dead, to look at him. But he ain't. He's just married to the wrong
woman. Dead folk walk the streets every day, Charlotte. You know it as well as me, & what's more, you roger them.'

‘Such a cheery view of the world you take!'

‘I merely got myself two clear eyes. Avoidance of disappointment: a little lesson I learned after my sausage-skin accident. Life's breakable,
Charlotte-pige:
crash, bang, wallop! Today's party is tomorrow's popped balloon. Just think, I could've been a star, if it weren't for that ruddy scrap of pig's intestine!'

She gave the bulb-basket a last snip, whirled round, picked up a swathe of catkins, & plonked them in a tin bucket –
voilà
! At which point the door opened & a handsome red-cravatted man walked in brandishing a cane.

‘Well, mercy me,' murmured Else. ‘A good client of mine.'

‘Mine likewise,' I said, recognizing him, & his cane, with which he was wont to demand perverted acts be performed, on payment of an additional fee.

‘Herr Swampe! What a happy surprise!' we said together, then couldn't help bursting into amused laughter – laughter which for a glittering moment transformed us back into the Østerbro Coquettes, who would flick up their petticoats & reveal their lacy stocking-tops to the roar of the steaming, thundering crowds that packed the stalls.

The same memory of our heyday was clearly awoken in Herr Swampe too, for he immediately said: ‘O, gorgeous as two sea-shells from the Tropics you are, my dears. The heart fair lights up with joy. I loved that naughty stage-act of yours. Quite something, that was. You drove me wild with that tongue-kissing thing you did. Sometimes I'd get so worked up – ‘