The Great Rabbit Revenge Plan (2 page)

Anabasis the Forest Snake

It's a rhetorical question because Dad cannot possibly answer in any other way except with a heartfelt yes. Because in the first place he always tells Konrad and Peter stories; and secondly he started a new one only yesterday morning. All the same, he doesn't say ‘Yes'. Instead, he says, ‘You're a pair of tyrants.'

‘What are tie-rants?' says Peter.

‘Tyrants,' says Dad, ‘rule by force.'

‘Hmm,' says Konrad.

When Konrad says ‘Hmm,' it sounds to strangers as if he means something like, ‘Ah, so that's the way it is.' Or ‘Oh, great, yes, I see.'

His mum and dad, however, know that he means something quite different. What he means is, ‘I haven't the foggiest idea what you are talking about.' Or indeed, ‘I don't like that.'

In any case, Dad has to explain the word
tyrants
a bit more precisely.

‘In this case,' he says, ‘tyrants are persons between five and ten years of age who pay absolutely no attention to their parents' need for sleep.'

Uh-oh. The conversation is starting to get dangerous. Instead of just telling the story, Dad obviously wants to go
on talking about what an intolerable impertinence it is to expect a person who is hardly awake yet to tell a story at this hour of the morning. It wouldn't be so bad if it could be a story with an ending. But his dreadful sons expect him to think up – just like that, out of his head, on the spot – a new instalment of a serial story.

Luckily, Konrad is pretty good at changing the subject.

‘How big is the snake anyway?' he asks now.

‘Seven metres,' says Dad. ‘At rest. Nearly nine when it stretches itself out.' He gives a stretch.

Bingo! Now at last they are into the story that started yesterday morning. It is about a forest snake called Anabasis, who is guarding an extraordinary mound of earth deep in a large and impenetrable forest. It's been doing this, night and day, for hundreds of years, and yesterday morning Dad gave an extensive account of which long-extinct animals had come by and asked the snake what it was guarding, to which the snake always replied that it could not say, because it was a great secret.

If Konrad were to be entirely honest, he would have to say that, so far, this snake story doesn't sound all that very promising. It is possible that yesterday morning, Dad had been so tired that nothing else had occurred to him, other than to have some dinosaur or other go past this snake. More or less the way it was in those stupid books Konrad had read before he was able to read. There were all these animals who pestered other animals with questions. A cow who'd lost her little calf, or a crocodile whose baby crocodile had gone missing. The animals who were asked the questions would
always say very nicely, ‘No thank you, not with me,' or something, until eventually the baby crocodile turned up and all the animals were thrilled in an animal sort of way and the stupid book was finished.

However, Konrad knows that it is not smart to find fault with the first instalment of a new story and to say so out loud. Then Dad would be offended and that in turn would have a bad effect on the quality of the next instalment. And in any case, Konrad plans to make sure that something exciting will happen soon with this forest snake.

So he says, ‘Da-ad, what were those people called again who discovered this mound?'

‘People?' says Dad.

Possibly he was so tired yesterday morning that he can't remember what he mumbled when he was half asleep. But he doesn't mention that. He just says, ‘What people?' instead.

‘You
know, the
people!'
says Konrad.

‘Yeah, the
people,'
Peter joins in. And because he always has to move when he talks, he kicks Dad, just a bit, quite unintentionally, in the stomach.

‘Oof !' says Dad. ‘The people, the people – oh, yes! – it was the people from Forest Expedition Roman Numeral Three Dash Seven, led by the world-famous special scientist Professor Franzkarl Findouter.'

‘Aha,' says Konrad. ‘Forest Expedition Roman Numeral Three Dash Seven. Right. And the world-famous scientist Franzkarl Findouter.'

This doesn't sound all that very adventurous. But at least it's better than the parade of dinosaurs.

‘You have to imagine,' says Dad, ‘that by now we've arrived in the twenty-first century. Which is to say, today.'

He pinches Peter on the leg. ‘What year is it today?'

‘Twenty-two thousand,' says Peter promptly.

‘Nearly,' says Dad. ‘And just this year a big research centre has decided to send Forest Expedition Roman Numeral Three Dash Seven, led by the aforementioned world famous special scientist Professor Franzkarl Findouter, into the impenetrable forest to figure out the secret of the remarkable mound.'

‘But how did they know about this mound?' says Konrad. ‘It's in the middle of an impenetrable jungle. You said so yourself.'

Now Dad laughs. Konrad and Peter know this laugh. This is how Dad laughs when he knows something better than anyone else on planet Earth.

How well his sons know him!

‘Aerial photography,' he says triumphantly. ‘Aerial photographs taken by satellite. With radar!' Using this kind of thing, he explains, you could photograph a lollipop from a height of eighty-three kilometres and you could tell just from looking at the photo whether the lollipop had been licked yet, and if so, by whom. And this is exactly how the people in the research centre discovered this remarkable mound.

‘What's a satel-tite?' says Peter.

‘Oh, for goodness' sake!' Konrad has known this
forever
. He'd rather know what happens next.

‘Stop!' says Dad. It is absolutely correct to ask whenever
there is something that you don't understand. How often has he said this? So he starts to explain, very precisely, what the earth is and what space is and what an orbit of the earth is, and in view of all this, what a satellite must be. But Konrad can't shake off the feeling that Dad is trying to wriggle out of telling the story. At last he gets to the end of the satellite explanation. All this explaining seems to have perked him up a bit, because he plumps up his pillow now and sits up.

‘So anyway,' he says, ‘Franzkarl Findouter and his expedition arrive at this mysterious mound of earth. These plucky men and women have made enormous efforts to get this far. Only a few hours ago, they sailed the rising waters of the Obernoko in narrow canoes. And the day before, they had almost fallen foul of an attack by warrior ants as long as your finger. But now they have reached their goal. They set up camp, with a little kitchen, and the first thing they do is to make coffee for everyone. They get out the cake and open a tin of custard, they scoff everything, and they have a little nap in the shade, and then – well, then they unpack all their sensitive measuring instruments.'

‘Thermometers!' says Peter. ‘Like Mum uses to see if you have a fever.'

‘That's right,' says Dad. ‘They unpack their fever thermometers and their seismographs, their oscilloscopes, their impulse sensors and their spectrum analysis converters. They put them all around the mysterious mound, and they attach them with a cable to a gigantic battery, and then they sit down at their monitors and take a look at what all the
gadgets are showing: wonderful sine curves, fabulous parabolic arcs, rhomboidal clusters and strategic agglomerations of data.'

‘Hmm,' says Konrad.

Dad ignores the ‘Hmm' and goes on with the story. He's really got into the swing of it now. ‘And of course,' he says, ‘all this cannot happen unbeknownst to Anabasis the forest snake. After all the thousands of years it has spent guarding the secret of the mound, it is now eaten up with anxiety about whether this research team, equipped as it is with all its up-to-the-minute gadgetry, might be able to winkle out the secret.'

Peter moves again, even though he has no idea what he wants to say.

‘Lie still!' says Dad. He can't bear being kicked when he is telling a story.

‘Go on!' says Konrad.

‘Aw,' says Dad, ‘the poor old snake.' His voice is shaking slightly, as if he is just about to burst into tears. ‘Quaking with terror, it watches, from its hiding place among the branches of a tatyrus tree as the research team researches away quietly around the amazing mound. And all the while, it is trying to think what on earth it can do to chase these wretched intruders away from the mound or, better still, out of the forest altogether.'

Peter suddenly knows what it is that he wants to say. ‘The snake!' he says, excitedly. ‘The snake, the snake!'

When Peter gets excited, his words start jostling around in his mouth, and because every word wants to be the first
one to get out, it often happens that only one or two make it out, and then no more can get out at all. This is the case now, and that's why Dad does what Dad always does when Peter gets clogged up with words. He blows softly into his ear. That tickles, which makes Peter laugh, and then all the words in his mouth get so shaken up that they can finally come out, one after another, from between his lips.

‘The snake should buy a tank and shoot the researchers!'

‘Really?' No, Dad doesn't like this one little bit. Why do boys always have to suggest so much shooting? That's no solution, to be shooting each other all the time.

Konrad quite agrees. He has a suggestion of his own: ‘The snake should bite Franzkarl Findouter in the leg with its poisonous fangs. First, his nervous system will collapse and then he will stop breathing, and after ten minutes he will fall down dead.'

Dad can't understand it. They are supposed to be curious children, interested in finding stuff out! How come they are so quick to take the part of this snake who hates research? Humanity is, after all, entitled to expect that remarkable mounds will be researched.

‘How would it be,' says Dad, ‘if research wasn't allowed? Without research, there is no knowledge; without research there would be no
Pippi Longstocking
tapes and without research there would be no
Sams
CD. So please, gentlemen, suggest something else!'

‘Phew,' says Konrad, and Peter looks as if he is about to burst into tears.

This is not what Dad wanted. ‘All right, all right,' he says.
‘Maybe you're right. But first you have to find out why the snake is so insistent on keeping the secret of the mound. We have to know this before we can decide what happens next, whether these merry researchers can go on researching away or whether they should disappear from the forest.'

‘But what is the secret?' says Konrad.

‘But what is the secret?' says Peter.

‘The secret,' says Dad. ‘The secret – ' He breaks off. ‘Did I hear Mum calling us for breakfast?'

‘No,' says Konrad. No way had Mum called them for breakfast!

‘Well, the secret,' says Dad, ‘the secret of the mound is that – '

‘Well?'

‘ – that a gigantic crystal is hidden under it. Ten metres high and five metres across. So,' says Dad, ‘now you know!'

‘A gigantic crystal!' says Peter.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but Peter is deeply interested right now in precious stones and crystals and especially in treasure and pirates and stuff like that. And so when an enormous crystal puts in an appearance, he really can't resist some pretty vigorous kicking.

Dad rolls carefully to one side. ‘Yes,' he says, ‘an enormous crystal, all sparkling with rainbow colours. Pointy on top, and on the bottom more roundy. But of course you can't see that, because more than half of it is stuck in the ground, and there's earth all over the bit that is peeping out as well, so that from the outside, all you can see is this extraordinary mound of earth.

Dad is very proud of his story. When he is proud of his stories he has a certain tone of voice that is very hard to describe.

‘Hmm,' says Konrad. ‘But why does the snake have to guard the crystal?'

He doesn't get an answer, though. Because now Mum really is calling them for breakfast. At which point, Dad leaps out of bed so quickly that he very nearly kicks Peter in the leg.

The Dransfeld

At breakfast, Konrad sits where he can look out of the window. He sets a lot of store by this. He couldn't bear to miss something going on out on the street.

Actually, the Bantelmanns have only been living in this new house for three weeks, since the beginning of the school holidays. This new house of theirs is surrounded by other new houses, which look very like the Bantelmanns' house, in Hedwig Dransfeld Strasse. And because everything is so new here, Konrad takes an intense interest in even the tiniest details. Three weeks ago, the Bantelmanns were still living on Danziger Strasse, right in the middle of town, on the third floor, the door on the right-hand side. It's a fair bit from Danziger Strasse to Hedwig Dransfeld Strasse. Konrad knows the way very well by now, because while the house was being built, they drove that way hundreds of times. First you drive out of town along Steinbecker Strasse, and the buildings get smaller and smaller as you go. At the last big junction before the canal, there at the new supermarket, you go right, onto the main road. For a while, it looks as if that's it, but then you finally come to Hedwig Dransfeld Strasse. It veers off from the canal road, bends a couple of times for no particular reason, loops around and finally joins up with the main road again.

Until the summer holidays, Konrad was still going to his old school in Frankfurter Strasse, fourth class with Frau Schwenkenberg. But that's all over now, which is a pity because Frankfurter Strasse wasn't very far from Danziger, Frau Schwenkenberg was a nice teacher, and Konrad had friends in his class that he could visit after school. In a few weeks, when the holidays are over, he's going to a new school where he will know nobody. He's seen the school a few times. It's near the new supermarket, and it hasn't been there for very long. Everything is new around here. Even Hedwig Dransfeld Strasse is new. It was built at the same time as the new houses. Before that, the whole area was just a big marsh. Then along came the construction machinery and flattened everything into mud, the building work started, and all the identical houses got built at more or less the same time.

They're what you call duplex houses: every house is for two families and two cars, from number 1a to number 47b. The whole lot together is called the Hedwig Dransfeld Estate, or Dransfeld Estate for short, or shorter still, The Dransfeld.

‘Who is this Hedwig Dransfeld?' Konrad asked, two years ago, when they stood for the first time in the middle of the damp field in front of a big hoarding, and Dad read out that soon, Hedwig Dransfeld Strasse, along with forty-seven duplex houses, would be here.

‘Was,' Dad said. Frau Dransfeld was, unfortunately, dead. Being dead, Dad explained, is a prerequisite for having a street named after you.

‘Hmm,' Konrad said.

The rest of what Dad told him about Frau Dransfeld he couldn't quite remember. Either Frau Dransfeld was a great inventor or she was a politician or she was a witch and was burnt at the stake. It would be best if she had been a witch, of course. Though Konrad wouldn't like to think of her having been burnt at the stake. No one wants to live on a street that was called after someone who was burnt as a witch.

But apart from the name, Dransfeld Strasse is a cool place to live. Starting with the way the houses all look the same. That alone is pretty good fun. While the building was going on, and the houses had no numbers yet at the doors, Konrad regularly went into not their future house, number 17a, but some other house. Peter couldn't work it out at all. Mostly he started to cry as soon as they arrived at the site and began picking their way through the mud. He didn't know his way around, he said. He was only three or four years old.

The houses are all very nice. Upstairs, just over the front door, there's this high, pointy window that lets lots of light onto the landing. Dad often said that the architects deserved special praise for these windows. They made a well-balanced and pleasantly functional yet traditional feature. And then Dad laughed and Mum said, ‘Oh, give over.'

What's more, the houses have lovely, brightly painted drainpipes, which wind their way down from the gutters into the front gardens. Here and there, these pipes suddenly break off and they spit their water into a kind of basin, from which it then flows into another pipe. When the rain is really pelting down, this is a wonder to behold, and you forget to be annoyed by the bad weather.

Every house in Dransfeld Strasse has a very small garden in front, and at the back, beyond the patio, a slightly larger one. Before the grass was sown and the beech hedges were planted, these two gardens consisted entirely of wonderful black mud, and for this reason they were out of bounds for Konrad and Peter. Apparently there was a danger that they might bring mud into the house. Which would not be good. Because inside the house, everything is white, or at least very pale. Mud really wouldn't look good in here.

Not only is it all white or pale in the house, but it's completely different from the flat where the Bantelmanns used to live. Even the sockets and the taps and the door handles and the radiators and the skirting boards look different and they feel different too. Konrad and Peter still go around the rooms sometimes, testing out how different everything feels. Mum is not so keen on this.

What's particularly different is that Konrad and Peter now have a room each. The bunk beds that they slept in in Danziger Strasse have been taken apart and made into two beds, and they've got lots of new furniture. Sleeping alone still feels a bit strange, especially for Peter. For this reason, there is a rule that says Konrad is allowed – until the end of the holidays – to stay in Peter's bed until Peter falls asleep after their bedtime story. Or he falls asleep himself. Or they both fall asleep.

When the Bantelmanns were moving in three weeks ago, their removal van was hardly able to find a parking spot. The Dransfeld looked like a reunion of removal-van owners. All the Dransfelders were trying to move into their new houses
at the same time. This made everyone cross, because they kept treading on each other's toes and it was even rumoured that some furniture was moved into the wrong house. What with one thing and another, the whole business of moving in took much longer than expected. Packing cases were still being sorted out late into the night, and then the van drivers had to make a big hoo-ha about getting their vans out of The Dransfeld without bashing into each other.

From the very first day they moved in, Konrad began a careful investigation of The Dransfeld. He wrote up his research findings in a homework notebook where only one page had been written on. He tore that one out, and on the next page he wrote
Dransfeld Investigation
. And since then, he has been taking notes in the notebook. Konrad's first observation was that not only do the houses all look the same, but the new inhabitants also resemble each other. For example, they all have a Volkswagen Passat or at least a car that looks a bit like that. At any rate, it has to be a long one, with a hatchback. And on the back window there has to be a ‘Baby on Board' sticker. Either a new one, or one that's half worn away, or one that's all pale and washed-out looking from the car wash.

Apart from that, there has to be a father and a mother in each duplex half and they always have two children. Which is to say, some have only one child and a few have three, but they mostly have two, and if the ones who have three gave one of theirs to the ones who have only one, then they would all have two. Konrad worked that out in his notebook, using the law of averages, and it came out almost exactly. Although
of course a few of the mothers could have a new baby, and that would mess up his calculations.

Not that that would be a problem. The great thing is that suddenly he and Peter have got lots of kids to play with. Do the maths: forty-seven duplexes multiplied by two families multiplied by two children makes a hundred and eighty-eight children, all within easy walking distance!

When they'd lived in the big apartment house in Danziger Strasse, there was no one to play with. Philip lived three whole buildings away, and it was so far to Justus's house that Konrad hadn't been allowed to go there on his own until he was in third class. Before that, Mum or Dad had to take him round and pick him up, and they would mutter about a child-friendly environment.

Konrad knows what that is now. Soon he'll know so many children in The Dransfeld that he could, theoretically speaking, play with a different child every second day for a whole year. More or less. Of course, Konrad hasn't managed to meet all the other children in the space of three weeks, but soon he will have.

It's very easy to meet all the kids in The Dransfeld, one by one. The front doors are left open everywhere, because people are still bringing stuff in or because they are working in their little front gardens. And the easiest way to get to know other children quickly is to wander straight from number 17a in through one of the open doors. Konrad goes through the hall and up the stairs. Upstairs there are two doors beside each other. In the A houses, they are on the right, and in the B houses on the left. These are the children's rooms. In every
house it's the same, and on most of the doors the children's names are already stuck on in brightly painted wooden letters. This way, Konrad can tell if a boy or a girl lives on the other side of the door, and what their name is. If it's a girl – sometimes it's two – too bad, because of course you can't play with girls. Then Konrad goes downstairs again, softly, softly, and gets out of there without being seen, if possible.

If it's a boy, though, then all he has to do is knock on the door and if someone calls out, ‘Come in!' then he goes in and says, ‘Hello, Sebastian, I'm Konrad from number 17a,' or ‘Hello, Christoph,' ‘Hello Fabian,' ‘Hello Viktor,' or whatever. And then it all goes on from there.

Since last week, Konrad has been taking Peter along on these visits. Sometimes the boys weren't the right age. Once, Konrad knocked on the door of a Michael, and he called out good and loud, ‘Come in!' but then there was this rather young boy sitting on a blue carpet playing with these biggish wooden blocks. That was embarrassing. And as if that wasn't bad enough, this mother has to appear in the doorway and say how nice it is that someone has dropped in to play with Michael, and Konrad had to sit on the blue carpet for two solid hours, playing with the biggish blocks. To make sure that doesn't happen again, he brings Peter along, and if there turns out to be a little chap on the other side of the door, then all Konrad has to say is, ‘Hello, Michael, this is my brother Peter. Would you like to play together?' If they want to, and they always do, then Konrad can leave his little brother there and scoot off to the next open door and the next child of the right age.

It's not a bit dangerous. You wouldn't usually take your little brother by the hand and leave him with strangers. Anything but! But here in The Dransfeld the rules are different. Dad said so. Here you are completely secure, and everyone is there for everyone else. Dad said this on their second evening in The Dransfeld, while they were having dinner and fifty people rang on the door, one by one, to let him know that his Passat headlamps were on. ‘That's what they're like,' Dad said, ‘the people who have moved into The Dransfeld, always watching out for their neighbours!' You could leave your little brother with these people without giving it a second thought. Either someone would pick him up later, or the people themselves would drop him home.

Mum and Dad are completely in agreement with this procedure, because when the neighbours bring Peter home, they usually stay for a while. In fact, Mum always asks them in. They get something to eat and to drink. They don't want anything, they always say, but they do eat and drink anyway, and they talk too. Mostly they talk about what works especially well in their house or what doesn't work. For example, the underfloor heating is a dream, but the windows that you are supposed to be able to open at the top are a catastrophe. Or they tell about the problems they have with the people who live in the other half of their duplex. They say it is impossible to get them to agree where the compost bin should go and where to put the ordinary rubbish bin. Or they just explain who they are and what they do and especially what they like in life and what they don't like.

‘Take Peter anywhere you like,' Dad said. According to
him, it's very refreshing to meet so many people with so many different problems. You get a whole new view of the world. He had more to say, but Mum somehow managed to make him shut up.

Since last week, Konrad has been bringing not only his younger brother on these Dransfeld expeditions, but also an elaborate list of the children he has already met. That became necessary when Konrad twice went into houses where he had already been. Both times, houses with girls! This new list is of course written in The Dransfeld notebook. It takes up several pages and has lots of columns. In the leftmost column there's just a number. That's the house number. Konrad has carefully written in all the numbers from 1a to 47b. In the next column is a name: Christoph or Sebastian or Viktor or Julian; these are the children who live in the houses. Of course, only the names of those who would make good playmates are written in, in other words, boys of the right age. Where there are only girls, Konrad puts a big red stroke. The most important column, however, by a long shot, is the third. Because here it says what the kids' favourite things to do are, and what they hate doing. After the name Christoph, for example, it says, ‘doesn't like Lego'. And after Sebastian, ‘has
Crazy Bugs 2'
, and after Viktor, ‘can do good stuff'.

Every time Konrad makes a new visit, he makes a new entry in his list. It'll soon be finished. And then it will be very useful. If, for example, he doesn't feel like playing Lego, then he can see that it would be a good idea to go round to Christoph's, because he doesn't like Lego. And if he is bursting to play
Crazy Bugs 2
, then it's off to
Sebastian's, because he is constantly at the computer. And so on and so forth.