Bubble in the Bathtub (19 page)

“I knew there was something familiar about that square!” Lisa exclaimed. She thought about the picture on the postcard, how she'd thought the empty public square seemed like it was missing something. And suddenly she thought she knew what it was missing….

“He wrote some stuff in code on the card and said it was to two friends in Oslo,” Eiffel said. “A Mister Nilly and Miss Lisa. He said he was going to tell you to come to the same place he was about to go to.”

“Which was … the, uh, French Revolution in 1793?”

“Yes, didn't you know that? He said he wrote that on the card.”

“That must've been the part that got washed away. Any idea where in the French Revolution I should start looking for him?”

“Well …” Eiffel twisted his mustache. “I would try the Place de la Révolution, which was in front of the dreaded Bastille prison in Paris. That's where the guillotine was put to most industrious use, surely that's where the Count of Monte Crisco must have been beheaded as well.”

“Thanks,” Lisa said. “I'll focus on 1793, the Count of Monte Crisco, and the Pastille in Paris. But there's one other thing: How did Doctor Proctor send his postcard from here?”

Eiffel chuckled at the memory: “He held the card underwater in the bathtub and stuck his head underwater at the same time. He said he just thought about where the card should go and—voilà!—there it went. I guess only things that are completely submerged
in the water can be sent, so he stayed here.”

“Interesting,” Lisa said, and pointed at the empty wine bottles on the desk. “Could I borrow one of these and a piece of paper and a pencil?”

Gustave Eiffel made a sweeping gesture with his hand and said, “Help yourself.”

Lisa went over to the desk, grabbed a pencil and started scribbling something on a piece of paper. Then she folded it up, stuffed it into one of the wine bottles, found two corks in the trashcan, and shoved one into the mouth of the bottle.

“What's that?” Eiffel asked.

“A note saying where I'm going,” Lisa said. “If Doctor Proctor can send things by bathtub post, I should be able to too.”

“Sounds logical. Who's it to?”

“Nilly or Juliette. I don't know where they are, but I'm sending the note to the bathtub in our room at the Hôtel Frainche-Fraille.”

Eiffel wasn't able to follow the last bit, because Lisa had already stuck her head under the water along with the bottle and her words were floating up to the surface of the water like small bubbles of speech.

“There!” she said as she pulled her head back up again. “It's sent!”

“I have to hurry up and go now,” Lisa said, climbing into the tub.

“I have to hurry too,” Eiffel said dejectedly. “But it was very nice to meet you, Lisa. If you find the professor, give him my regards. And please don't mess history up too much.”

Lisa gave him a wave and dove down.

After she was gone, Eiffel leaned over his drawings again and muttered, “
Merde
, why couldn't they just ask me to draw one of my standard ugly old bridges?” Then he noticed the sound of something dripping on the wood floor next to him and looked up. There was Lisa with her hair full of soap bubbles.

“Oh, you didn't leave after all,
moan amee
?” he asked.

“I just thought I would make a suggestion first, to thank you for all your help,” she said, grabbing one of his pencils and starting to draw.

Eiffel stared wide-eyed at how her hand flew up and down, as if she knew exactly what the thing she was drawing looked like. The arches, the latticework, the four legs sloping gently outward, almost like the legs of a bathtub. It was beautiful, it was ingenious, it … it took his breath away.

“There, like that,” Lisa said. “Do you like it?”

Eiffel was overwhelmed. “Wha-what is it?”

“A tower.”

“I can see that. But it's not just a tower, it's a
marvelous
tower. It's perfect! But what should I call it? The Lisa Tower?”

Lisa considered it for a second. “I think the Eiffel Tower sounds better.”

“The Eiffel Tower?” The engineer had a coughing attack from sheer excitement. “You mean it? Thank you!”

“No need to thank me. Good luck!” Lisa said, and then she marched back to the bathtub, climbed in, mumbled “the Pastille in Paris” to herself, dove under, and—voilà!—just like that she was gone.

When she surfaced again, the first thing that struck her was the pervasive stench. The second thing that struck her was the hysterical squealing and snorting. And if Lisa had been Nilly, the third thing that would have struck her would have been the thought of:
Breakfast! Fresh bacon!

The fourth thing that struck her was the end of a wooden plank that hit the back of her head. The other end was being held by an enraged farmer with a red-striped hat.

“Get out of my pigpen, you ragamuffin!” he growled. “Shh! Piggy, piggy, shh!”

LISA DUCKED AS the plank came whooshing past her a second time.

She climbed out of the bathwater at once and scrambled up onto the edge of the tub.

Around and below her was a living carpet of pink
pig backs all bumping into the time-traveling bathtub and each other.

“Shh! Piggy, piggy, shh!” the furious farmer urged, closing in on Lisa with his plank.

Lisa jumped. She landed on one of the pig's backs, and a piercing squeal was heard above the steady drone of munching and snorting. Instinctively, she grabbed the pig's ears as it started to run. It pushed its way through the herd of pigs and continued toward the fence enclosing the pigpen, kicking up a splash of manure as it ran. When it reached the fence it lurched to a sudden stop, heaving up onto its front feet and bucking its rear end to send Lisa sailing through the air all of a sudden. She flew over the fence, over a pitchfork, over a piglet that had strayed from the pen, and closed her eyes as she prepared for a hard landing.

Astonished when that didn't happen, she opened her eyes again and determined that she was lying on a big, soft bale of hay. Lisa stood up, brushed the hay off her
clothes, and watched the farmer, who was approaching her at full speed.

Lisa was tired. Tired of being chased, tired of being afraid, and tired of traveling and not finding what she was looking for, tired of not being home with her mother and father, and tired of not having her teddy bear. She'd had enough. So she jumped down, pushed the piglet out of her way with her foot, grabbed the pitchfork, and aimed it at the farmer as she screamed, her voice trembling with rage:

“I'm going to skewer you and feed you to these pigs, you miserable bumpkin!”

The farmer stopped suddenly and let go of the plank.

“Wha-wha-what do you want?” he asked in a gentle voice.

“I want my teddy bear!” Lisa howled, moving toward the farmer. “Apart from that, I want you to tell me the way to the Pastille! Right now! Let's hear it!”

“The P-P-Pastille?” the terrified farmer stuttered,
scrambling to get out of pitchfork range. “Well, that's … that's here.”

“There's no prison here! Where's the Place de la Révolution?”

“Oh … I think you must mean the Bastille with a
B
.”

Lisa's eyes lost a little of their fury. “The Bastille?”

“Yeah. That's in the middle of the city, right in front of the Place de la Révolution.”

“How far away is that?”

“It's kind of a long walk, but may—may—maybe you're not in a hurry?”

“I need to get there before they behead the Count of Monte Crisco, thank you very much.”

“Uh-oh,” the farmer said. “Then—then you don't have much time.”

Lisa lowered the pitchfork. “Why not?”

“Because they're planning to behead that Monte Crisco guy today.”

Lisa tossed the pitchfork aside. “Quick! Do you have a horse I can borrow?”

“A horse?” the farmed scoffed. “I'm a pig farmer, not some yeehaw pony-pusher.”

Lisa sighed. She looked around. A hairy, black pig—monstrous, the size of a motorcycle, with sharp tusks—had just rolled over in the manure, stood up, and was now grunting at her menacingly. Lisa sighed again. This wasn't going to be pretty. This wasn't going to be without risk. This was going to be pig riding.

ON THIS DAY, a boy named Marcel had come to the Place de la Révolution with his parents to enjoy the crowds. “And to make sure the executioners do their jobs,” his father had said.

His mother had fixed a nice lunch basket, and Marcel was looking forward to the brie and French bread. Of course Marcel didn't call it French bread, just like Spaniards don't call theirs Spanish bread, the
Danes don't say Danish bread, the Americans … well, you get the idea.

He just called it bread.

And brie.

And maybe a little red wine mixed with water.

They were sitting on a blanket his mother had spread out over the cobblestones in the overcrowded square. Marcel was eyeing the lunch basket longingly while his parents and the other people kept their eyes on the wooden platform up ahead of them. The executioner—a guy with no shirt on, a sweaty torso, and a black hood pulled over his head with just holes for his eyes—would read the person's death sentence in an authoritative, gravelly vibrato voice. Then he'd pull a cord and, with a whistling sound, the razor-sharp knife would plunge down from the top of the twelve-foot-high stand and make a
chop!
sound as it cut off the head of the poor guy who was lying below with his neck in the guillotine. The
chop
would then be followed by a cheer from the crowd.

“You see that?” The father nodded appreciatively. “That's what I call a great beheading. Did you see that, Marcel?”

But Marcel hadn't seen it. He was bored. These beheadings had been going on all summer. They'd been chopping and chopping. The heads would dance their way into the woven baskets in front of the guillotine and the blood would pour off the stage onto the cobblestones below. And every now and then, when someone had done something extra awful or had been just a little too rich or aristocratic, they would sew the head back onto the body and behead the person one more time.

No, Marcel had liked Sundays before the revolution better. Back then, he and his mother and father used to come to the Place de la Révolution and listen to musicians playing on the stage out in front of the Bastille. Marcel loved music and wanted to be a musician when he grew up. He brought the trumpet he'd gotten from his grandfather with him everywhere he went. Today
was no exception. So while all the other people were absorbed in what was going on up on the stage, Marcel raised his trumpet to his lips to play a little song he'd come up with all on his own. But he never started playing because he got distracted, staring at something that was galloping down one of the side streets toward them. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't without risk. No, in fact it actually looked an awful lot like pig riding. And there was a girl sitting on the back of the monstrous black pig!

The pig stopped and the girl hopped off and ran into the crowd shouting, “Doctor Proctor! Doctor Proctor! It's me, Lisa! Are you here? Doctor Proctor!”

But the girl's voice was drowned out by the whistling of the blade, the chopping, and the cheering of the crowd. The girl stopped and stood there, shouting and shouting, but got no response. Of course not, there was no way anyone could hear her delicate girl's voice. She gave up, and Marcel could see the tears welling up
in her eyes as she stood there scanning the crowd in despair. Since Marcel was a sensitive boy who was more interested in music and the happiness of his fellow man than beheadings, he took his trumpet and went over to the girl.

“Hi,” he said.

But the girl was too busy scanning the crowd to notice him.

Marcel cleared his throat. “Hi, Litha.”

She turned and looked at him in surprise. “Did you say Lisa?” she asked.