My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time (28 page)

On the Internet, Fru Jakobsen had located private rooms available for Cheap Weekend Breaks on Holsteinsgade, just a few streets
from the cold attic where Fru Schleswig & I once resided. ‘I thought you'd like to reminisce a bit,' explained Fru Jakobsen
– who probably meant it kindly: for being firmly of the belief that it is rude to dampen the spirits of others unduly, I had
painted her a series of amusing vignettes which made my former life as a whore look like a most agreeable & fancy picnic.

Having paid off the taxi & deposited our belongings on the twin beds of our small, neat but bare apartment (among them my
trusty dictionary, & my photograph of Fergus & Josie taken on their last ‘dig', both of them buried deep in archaeological
mud), I steered Fru Jakobsen – a native of Hellerup & therefore alien to this quarter – to our first port of call, a location
I insisted on visiting for curiosity's sake, which was but five minutes' walk from our lodgings. Rosenvængets Allé, I was
much relieved to see, had changed little in a hundred-odd years, apart from the Krak mansion itself, which had quite transmogrified:
now it appeared much lighter & altogether happier in colour & appearance, & consequently less doom-laden than of yore: the
creeping variegated ivy & the tall fir trees that had once fringed its parameters like prison guards had vanished, & the creaking
Baba Yaga Bonylegs gate was ‘a thing of the past', as the English expression goes. From the upstairs window from which Fergus
& I had spied Fru Krak's two thugaroos smashing their way in came the soft thud of modern music (how contemporaneans do love
their drums!), & the dark oakwood door that they had destroyed was now replaced by a new version in amnesiac white; indeed,
it was as though the whole house had forgotten its former self, & those of us who had once peopled it. How thoughtless of
it! A little shiver ran through me as I saw how the passage of the years erases all trace. O, how I prayed that there would
nevertheless be something left of olden times, that might help us!

Having absorbed the view for a few moments, & reflected thus upon the fickle nature of time, we now set off in separate directions.
Fru Jakobsen's mission, at the Municipal Library & the Public Records Office, was to investigate the property history of the
Krak mansion, for clues as to what the future held, & more importantly to discover whether the records showed that a Scot
by the name of Fergus McCrombie had wed (this did not bear thinking about, unless it was to me!) or died (also unbearable!)
in Copenhagen, & a Charlotte Dagmar Marie Schleswig likewise – though the idea of hearing of my own death caused me to feel
as though a goose was stomping across my grave. I, meanwhile, followed the trail of the Poppersen Muhl clan, which led me
first to Sortedams Lake, & to the grandiose building overlooking it, that housed the huge apartment Franz's family had once
inhabited. Here, luck was mine, for the first thing I spied upon the wall was a blue plaque which declared:
Franz Poppersen Muhl, inventor of the first
Danish dust-sucker, lived here between 1880 & 1899.

Hurra!
So the fragile-spirited but determined young Franz had realized his dream after all: how gratifying, amusing & vindicatory
all at once, that he had thus disproved the Professor's theory of ‘Epistemological Impossibility'! But the dates upon the
plaque puzzled me, for if they were to be believed, it seemed that Franz had quit his parents for a second time at the tender
age of nineteen, only two years after his return. What circumstances can have conspired to prompt his departure, & whither
might he have gone? Hoping that the answer might lie within, I studied the names next to the front door, but finding no Poppersen
Muhl among them, I rang the bell of a random dweller of the fourth floor, which is where I recalled Franz's family having
lived, & was presently summoned by a buzzer. On reaching the landing, it was clear at once that the original Poppersen Muhl
premises (which Fergus had told me about in much detail, for he had been impressed by its grandeur) had been divided into
four smaller, more shrunken dwellings. From one of the doors now came a fumbling noise, & some infant cries, & the murmur
of a male voice, & finally it was flung open to reveal a youngish man with long hair in a ponytail & sporting a little goatee
beard, who struggled in the door-frame to greet me amid much hubbub, for he bore a half-naked, identical baby in each arm,
like two wriggling parcels, & was simultaneously attempting to open a package of disposable nappies with his teeth, with a
telephone clamped between chin & shoulder. Seeing his plight, I wordlessly took the nappy-parcel from him & tore along the
dotted line, while he said into the telephone, ‘Tuesday five o' clock for their inoculations, then, thanks, no problem,' &
finished the call looking most relieved, saying: ‘You must be Gitte? With the prison canteen drawings & the surveyor's calculations?'

Deciding not to disabuse him of this notion until I was well inside the door, I followed him into a large parlour where he
waved me towards a chair. Plonking the writhing twins unceremoniously on the sofa, he then pulled two nappies from the pack
which the girls grabbed & clutched at, gurgling.

‘Good sir, might I suggest that I be of assistance here?' I offered. ‘Perhaps if I were to deal with one, & you the other,
we should complete the task more promptly, for I had hoped for some discourse on a matter of concern to me.' He grunted his
accord, & then, having not the faintest clue how to set about such a challenge, I observed & imitated his deft actions, &
it was whilst we were thus occupied applying absorbent padding to the girls' roly-poly behinds that I told him I was not in
actual fact Gitte, bearing drawings or calculations, but Charlotte, a researcher specializing in Domestic History with a particular
emphasis on household cleaning, & might he have any inkling of what befell Franz Poppersen Muhl, who once lived here in the
dim & distant past? At which he looked blank for a moment ('sorry, baby brain!'), & then said, ‘You mean the dust-sucker guy?'

‘Yes indeed,' I said. ‘He whose name features on the plaque affixed outside.'

He looked at me most curiously. ‘Can I ask where you're from, Charlotte? Because if you'll forgive me for saying so, your
Danish sounds like it's straight out of a costume drama.'

‘I hail from the Faroe Islands,' I said quickly. ‘Where one of the things we like to stand on, apart from ice floes' (I was
inventing frantically here) ‘is ceremony. Now, good sir, please be kind enough to tell me what you know.'

‘Well, the family were here for generations,' said the young man. ‘I know because it was a great-great-grand-niece of the
Poppersen Muhls who sold me this apartment ten years ago: she wanted to flog a lot of furniture as well but it was all very
ancien régime:
as you can see I'm much more into classical contemporary.' I glanced around briefly but frankly saw not a great deal save
some bare white walls, a pot-plant, a featureless red plastic chair, & a bleached ashwood table with a white, hedgehoggy-looking
lamp suspended above it: I tried to look impressed nonetheless. ‘Anyway, I can give you Fru Boisengluk's contact number, if
you want,' he said. ‘She might be able to put you on the right track.'

When we had finished dressing the little girls in their ornamental leggings, the man copied Lone Boisengluk's number from
a notebook on to his business card (it seemed he was an accredited architect, as well as a busy father!) & I thanked him most
profusely, & said I must go, & he said it was a pleasure to meet a Faroe Islander, he had no idea we were so different, &
he must leave too, as soon as he had e-mailed some plans to a client: he needed to shop for dinner, because his wife always
expected a hot meal ready on the table when she returned.

‘From work?' I asked, intrigued by this small insight into the daily life of future Denmark.

‘No, it's more like a three-year part-time course in self-realization,' he said, dismally. I had heard of ‘courses' in England,
but never quite understood what they were for, save that women of the future hanker after them a great deal. Perhaps he saw
my sympathy, for he said loyally as we shook hands: ‘Vera's a busy woman. It's a huge responsibility, sharing the emotional
burdens of others, & helping them take control of their lives & feelings.' But he looked oddly bemused at what had just emerged
from his mouth. ‘Have a good day now,' he said as I was leaving. ‘You deserve it!'

Deserve
it? ‘Do I?' I asked, surprised.

‘Of course!' he smiled encouragingly. ‘You can achieve whatever you want to achieve! You've spent too long looking after other
people's needs, and ignoring your own! Go for it!'

Most puzzling.

Back at our lodgings on Holsteinsgade, I telephoned Lone Boisengluk, who was more than happy to talk about her distinguished
Poppersen Muhl heritage.

‘My family can trace its roots back to Gorm den Gamle,' she said in a voice that made me wonder whether she might have some
Bischen-Baschen ancestry. ‘Is there a particular aspect of the blood-line you're exploring?'

‘It's actually
Franz
I am most fascinated by,' I said, when she had finished reeling off a list of Poppersen Muhls who had dined with this or that
king, princess or count, & bequeathed this or that flattering observation about them to ‘the interested historian'. But at
my mention of Franz there came a sudden irritated sigh from Fru Boisengluk, after which I sensed a change of atmosphere at
the end of the line. ‘Franz, the illustrious inventor of the dust-sucker?' I prompted.

‘The
least
impressive member of the family,' she countered quickly. ‘Yes: Great-great-uncle Franz, a pitiful character. The dust-sucker
was his one claim to fame, but it was soon superseded by an American model' The way she said it – for there was clear contempt
in her voice – made me feel most hotly indignant on Franz's behalf good grief, what other ‘claim to fame' did anyone in this
family have, apart from the fact that they had licked aristocratic arses down the generations, with no sense of shame, & had
chronic delusions of grandeur? None that I could see!

‘And what happened to Franz, pray, madam?' I asked, attempting to put the question in a light tone that disguised my intense
interest, nay anxiety: for the fact was that if Fru Boisengluk were to inform me that poor Franz had hanged himself, I would
be in for a right awful shock, & was at that very moment bracing myself for the worst of tidings.

‘Well, he ended up at the Sankt Hans, as you probably know,' she said sniffily.

‘The Sankt Hans?' I queried, aghast. ‘Are you quite sure?'

‘Yes. So if you're really as “fascinated" as you claim, then that's the place to go. I have plenty of photo albums – but Franz
won't be in any of them, I can assure you: he was very much the black sheep. I've also all the heirlooms & antiques, of course,'
she added smugly, ‘if you're interested in that side of things. You're not a dealer, by any chance? I have a Louis Quinze
dressing table that has featured in
Heritage Interiors.'

I said goodbye as swiftly as I could after that, for the news that Franz Poppersen Muhl had been sent to the Sankt Hans, Denmark's
largest & most notorious madhouse, much whizzied up my thoughts. Franz's nervous system had always been delicate, & his psychic
state vulnerable at the best of times: had his displacement to London, followed by the shock of his return (conjoined, perhaps,
with further conflict with his stern & snobbish parents) conspired to tip him over the edge? Or had he foolishly blabbed about
his travels through time, & thus been deemed a madman by the family doctor? It was on this subject that I pondered as I followed
the path along the lake's margin, dodging fanatic-faced joggers, to meet up with Fru Jakobsen, as agreed, at a café on the corner of Østerbrogade brogade. Here, at an astrologically inflated price, we ate massive ‘burgers' accompanied by mounds of unadorned raw foliage,
& exchanged what information we each had gleaned. I acquainted her with Franz's dismal fate, at which she became most disconsolate,
just as I had done, & in turn she revealed that her own search for ‘Charlotte Dagmar Marie Schleswig' had yielded naught whatsoever
(which I confess was a relief), & for Fergus McCrombie likewise. At these tidings I was inclined to be much encouraged, for
(I argued) it indicated that my future husband had not been stranded in Copenhagen indefinitely – but Fru Jakobsen then pointed
out that I must not be too optimistic, for Fergus might simply have left Copenhagen & travelled back to England, where he
at least spoke the language, & made a life there – a possibility which could be checked by investigating the historical records
in London on our return. As for my own death not being a matter of record, this might be accounted for by the fact that my
birth had never been registered in the first place, due to Fru Schleswig's probable lack of acquaintanceship with civic duty.
In short, as far as late nineteenth-century Denmark was concerned, I had simply never existed: a strange notion, which all
of a sudden made me feel as insubstantial as a character in a novelette! Aside from that, Fru Jakobsen had learned that the
Kraks' home had been sold in 1898, shortly after Pastor Dahlberg's death.

‘His death?' I asked, curious. ‘Shortly after his marriage, & our return to London? A hasty demise indeed!'

‘And can you imagine how he passed away?' she whispered, conspiratorially.

It was not a conundrum to which I needed to apply my mind for long. ‘In the arms of a whore,' I said, ‘at an educated guess.'

‘Correct!' she trilled. ‘Dressed in his full parsonic regalia!' (That poor working girl, I thought, considering the scenario
for a moment.)

‘And what of Fru Krak?'