The Great Rabbit Revenge Plan (3 page)

The fourth column is also pretty important. The one on the far right. Here it says who has a little brother who likes playing with Peter. That's someplace you can go, take Peter along, and at the same time, you haven't got him under your feet all day. And then when you get home in the evening, you've been looking after your little brother all afternoon, for which you get the highest possible praise.

Yesterday, Mum and Dad saw the list for the first time, when Konrad was making an entry at breakfast. They both read the list, and they reacted completely differently. Which is pretty unusual. Dad covered his face with his hands and left the room, saying his son had fallen victim to consumerism to such an extent that he was turning his neighbours into a mail-order catalogue. Konrad didn't quite follow this. Mum, on the other hand, said there was no need to get so het up, and anyway it had been a great idea to move into The Dransfeld. All the same, Konrad didn't bring the list with him to breakfast this morning, in order to avoid as much conflict as possible, especially on Sunday morning when the family has to decide what to do today.

‘Zoo!' says Peter.

A good suggestion. And because the Bantelmanns have a yearly ticket for the zoo, and because the yearly ticket is only worth it if you go to the zoo fairly often, they all agree.

Out of sheer delight, Peter knocks over his drinking chocolate.

Rivals on the Obernoko

Every evening, when they go to bed, Konrad and Peter are asked what the best thing was about the day, and what the silliest thing was. Dad and Mum started doing this because it's a great help in bringing up their wonderful sons.

Well, then?

‘The zoo,' says Peter. He's lying in bed on the wall side and pushing in the face of his cuddly mouse. The mouse is called Lackilug and it's fairly old and has a little bell round its neck.

‘Can you be a bit more specific?' says Dad, who is lying in the middle of Peter's bed.

‘The animals,' says Konrad, who is lying on the falling-out side of Peter's bed. He has his toy mouse tucked, in the approved manner, under his arm. For reasons that are lost in the mists of time, his mouse is called Mattchoo, with a double-t and a double-o. It is considerably older than Lackilug, and looks it.

‘Not specific enough!'

That's always the way. When the children want something, then talk comes bubbling up out of them, but when their parents want them to answer a question, then their little mouths are all zipped up. That's what Dad says right now.

‘The elephants,' says Peter.

Which is exactly what you would expect him to say. Peter had been unbelievably brave today at feeding the elephants. First he took the biggest piece of stale bread that you could buy from the elephant keeper and he didn't let go of it until the elephant had got hold of it good and proper with its trunk. He was masterly. The other children screamed and let go of the bread as soon as the big hairy trunk tried to get hold of it, and it kept falling into the muck. But Peter held on till the elephant had got half his trunk round the piece of bread. And not until the elephant started to tug on Peter himself and his parents were beginning to scream a bit did Peter let go of the bread so that the elephant could whisk it elegantly into its mouth.

Encore! Bravo!

‘And the silliest thing?' says Mum. She's sitting at the foot of the bed. There's a bit of room left there.

Inevitably, the knocking over of the drinking chocolate at breakfast gets mentioned. Because that was undoubtedly the silliest thing this Sunday. The Bantelmanns have been discussing the knocking over of drinking chocolate for years. That is to say, for years, the Bantelmann parents have been trying to convince Peter that the chocolate can't help it if it is knocked over. Peter, however, always has some new reason why it is not his fault but the fault of the stupid chocolate itself that it has fallen over. So what's his excuse going to be today?

‘It was standing all wrong!' says Peter.

Not very imaginative.

‘It wasn't standing wrong. It was put down wrong.'

‘But it was wobbling!'

Not much better.

‘It wasn't wobbling. It was wobbled.'

Konrad has to laugh. It sounds so weird: it was wobbled. You can't say that!

‘That was a joke,' says Dad. But he's looking grim enough.

‘I'm allergic to jokes,' says Peter. He pushes Lackilug's face in again.

‘True,' says Mum, ‘but the tablecloth is allergic to chocolate. It breaks out in terrible spots from chocolate.'

‘And sunburn!' Konrad laughs even louder.

If one more joke is made about the tipping over of the chocolate, Peter is sure to cry. You can tell by looking at him, Mum says. She can read Peter's and Konrad's faces like a book. Especially when they are telling lies.

Konrad can't do this. One time he stood in front of the mirror and said loudly, ‘We have a red Golf.' That was a lie, because they have a blue Passat. In any case, there was nothing whatever to be seen in his face. He told Mum this.

‘I mean it metaphorically,' said Mum. ‘Sometimes people say something that doesn't mean what it seems to mean, but means something else, in a transferred kind of way.'

‘Hmm,' Konrad said.

‘Okay,' says Dad. ‘Let's just leave it at that for now.'

Mum says good night.

‘So, where were we?' says Dad.

At the secret of the crystal, of course. And the question of why the forest snake had to guard it.

‘Well,' says Dad. ‘It's hard to say. To be honest – the snake doesn't know why it is supposed to guard the crystal.'

‘Hmm,' says Konrad.

There's no doubt about it, this forest snake story just hasn't got any pizzazz.

‘Or to put it more accurately,' says Dad, ‘the forest snake does know that it is supposed to guard the crystal, and that this is its most important task, but what it doesn't know is why it has to guard the crystal. Basically, it's a bit like Peter and knocking the chocolate over. We do know that he always knocks it over, but we don't know why he does it. Ha ha, ha ha!'

No one laughs except Dad.

‘Right,' he says. ‘So, anyway, the forest snake is a bit nervous, because there is something that it has to do. At this stage, the members of the expedition have got all excited because their sensitive instruments – '

‘Thermometers!' Peter interrupts.

‘ – right, because their sensitive thermometers are giving the most astonishing readings. Obviously, there is some sort of compacted and impenetrable lump of something under the extraordinary mound. A rare substance. Maybe a substance that has not yet been discovered. In a word, a sensational find. The scientists are totally out of their trees. “The Nobble Prize!” they keep shouting, “The Nobble Prize is ours!” '

‘What's the Nobble Prize?' asks Peter from behind Lackilug the mouse.

‘You get the Nobble Prize for important discoveries and inventions,' says Dad. ‘It was founded by Ernst August
Nobble, the inventor of the game of Ludo, and it is awarded once a year.'

‘Huh?' says Konrad. ‘Huh' is a more intense form of ‘Hmm'.

‘Yes,' says Dad. ‘Of course you know Ludo, widely agreed to be the most boring and depressing board game in the whole world. The game that makes Peter and Konrad Bantelmann whinge way more than all other boardgames put together. Ernst August Nobble invented this game. And when he heard later how children all over the world cry when they are knocked out of the game just as they are about to reach Home, and how the mothers and fathers get so bored that it drives them mad, then Ernst August Nobble looked into his soul and he said he wanted to make amends and that he wanted to establish a terrific prize that would really do something great for humanity.'

‘Hmm,' says Konrad.

‘Exactly,' says Dad. ‘And of course, every scientist wants to get this Nobble Prize. Including Professor Franzkarl Findouter. But!' Dad raises a finger. ‘Here it comes! There is another scientist who wants it even more than Franzkarl Findouter. And that is none other than the mysterious Dr B. A. Deceiver.'

‘Be a?' says Peter.

‘Yes. B for Bigomil. His full name is Bigomil Alexander Deceiver. For days, he has secretly been following the troop of researchers. This B. A. Deceiver is nothing like as gifted an expert as Franzkarl Findouter. In fact, he's a bit of a lazybones, and ambitious to boot, as ambitious as it gets.
Even as a boy at school, he copied everything. He gave his lunch to the people he copied from. He wouldn't have eaten it anyway because it was always cheese sandwiches and he couldn't for the life of him abide cheese sandwiches.'

‘I can't stand cheese either,' says Konrad.

‘That was only in passing,' says Dad.

‘What's “in passing”?'

‘It has to do with football,' says Peter through the mouse.

‘Right,' says Dad, ‘That's enough of that. Back to Dr B. A. Deceiver. He's watching now from a hiding place and he sees that the research team is thrilled to bits about their instrument readings. And he decides right away to nab this sensational find all for himself and to make it so that he gets the Nobble Prize and not this fussy old Franzkarl Findouter.'

‘He's mean,' says Peter. But it's very hard to know what he is saying, because he has his mouth half full of Lackilug.

Dad pulls the mouse out, which makes its little bell ring, and he gives Peter a lecture about what he thinks of five-year-old boys who first of all breathe through their soft toys and then try to eat them. An uninteresting lecture. But just to be on the safe side, Konrad stuffs his soft toy, the mouse with the annoying name of Mattchoo, a little bit further down under the duvet. Dad takes an even poorer view of this mouse, a: because it is old and therefore a bit shabby, and b: because it is called what it is called. But since he can't explain to his son why this is such an impossible name for a cuddly toy, Konrad goes right on refusing to give his toy another name.

‘Is it a quarter past yet?' says Dad.

At a quarter past eight, bedtime stories are over. And so that everyone can see when the time has come, there's a clock by the door, with a grinning little man on it whose arms form the hands that point to the numbers. An embarrassing clock.

But he's trying to catch Konrad out. Dad can see the clock quite as easily as the boys can. He just wants to see if Konrad can read the time.

Of course Konrad can read the time. For sure! At his age! But lately, there's this rumour in the Bantelmann family that he can't. It has something to do with coming in so early on Sunday mornings. But it's only that he is a bit absent-minded, because his head is so full of Dransfeld thoughts. Even so, it's a bit difficult to read the time just now, because everything is difficult when somebody is standing over you – or in this case, is lying beside you – to check whether or not you can do whatever it is. Especially such a jumpy, watchful checker. Nobody can do anything right when there's a checker there.

‘Eleven minutes past eight,' says Konrad now.

‘Well, well,' says Dad.

So he must have got it roughly right.

‘Back to Dr B. A. Deceiver. While the research squad are asleep in their tents dreaming of the Nobble Prize, he creeps, under cover of darkness, out of his hiding place to the curious mound of earth. He's brought a little shovel with him, an ice pick and a little bucket. His outrageous plan is to dig his way through to the mysterious substance and then to hack out a piece of it with his ice pick and to carry it off in his
bucket. The following morning, he's planning to cross the Obernoko in utter secrecy, go home on the next jungle bus and pocket the Nobble Prize.'

‘Pocket?' says Konrad.

‘Yes. Pocket, nab, snatch. Cream it all off for himself.'

‘Oh, right.'

‘But!' says Dad, with a quiver in his voice. ‘But the wily Deceiver hasn't reckoned with Anabasis the forest snake. When it sees the sneaky scientist creeping towards the earth mound, it slithers as fast as it can after him. And when the baddie is just about to start digging at the top of the mound, it wraps itself around his feet seven times. Deceiver gets such a shock that he nearly dies on the spot. What is that on his feet? In the dark, he can't make it out. Heeyy!'

Dad grabs Peter by the feet. Peter screeches.

‘Quiet,' says Dad. ‘Deceiver can't screech, because that would wake up the others. Instead, he tries to run away, but try running away with a seven-metre-long forest snake wound round your legs seven times! Ha ha! He can't get away, not even a metre. He comes crashing down the mound like a level-crossing barrier and drops his shovel, his bucket and his ice pick. When he arrives at the bottom, Anabasis the forest snake unwinds itself from his legs and disappears soundlessly into the jungle so that Deceiver thinks that it must have been a ghost or a ghoul or some kind of a spooky thing that has felled him so painfully. In any case, he doesn't say a word and retreats, shaking, to his hiding place, crawls into his sleeping bag and pulls the zip up so far that he almost gets his nose stuck in it.

‘Hoi,' says Konrad. That's another more intense form of ‘Hmm'. He'd never have believed that something as exciting as that could happen in this forest snake story.

‘And that's all for tonight,' says Dad. ‘It's exactly a quarter past eight.'

He stands up, which is not so very simple. You could easily stand on a child.

‘Besides,' he says, ‘you have to stop when it's at the most exciting point.' The boys don't agree. Nor does Lackilug or Mattchoo. When the light goes out and Konrad, as usual, stays on for a while in Peter's bed, the two mice discuss the story so far. They seem to be very edgy, and possibly they are of different minds. But an outsider can't be sure about that, because Mattchoo and Lackilug converse in a totally incomprehensible language, which sounds a bit as if someone had turned the speed way up on a cassette player. It's a cross between squeaking and squealing. Konrad calls it muggering. But he doesn't tell anyone this, not even Peter.