Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder

  Nilly paused dramatically as he rang out his wet T-shirt. “True, some people said it wasn’t a wig, that it was the Italian guy’s own hair that had been pulled right out. I decided to try sitting on the fountain.” Nilly leaned to the side to get the water out of his ear.

  Finally one of the kids asked, “What happened?”

  “Well,” Nilly said, holding his nose and blowing hard, first through one nostril and then the other.

  “What did he say?” one of the kids who was standing farther back asked. The ones who were standing in front said, “Shhh!”

  “From up where I was sitting, I could see all the way to France, which was more than five hundred miles away,” Nilly said, shaking his bangs and sending out a spray of water. “That may sound like an exaggeration,” he said, pulling a comb out of his back pocket and running it through his hair. “But you have to remember that it was an unusually clear day and that that part of Europe is extremely flat.”

  Then Nilly plowed his way through the crowd of kids and walked over to Lisa at the edge of the playground.

  “Well,” she said with a little smile. “What do you think of our school so far?”

  “Not so bad,” he said. “No one’s called me Silly Nilly yet.”

  “Those two were Truls and Trym,” Lisa said. “They’re twins and, unfortunately, they live on Cannon Avenue.”

  Nilly shrugged. “Truls and Trym live everywhere.”

  “What do you mean?” Lisa asked.

  “Every street has Trulses and Tryms. You can’t get away from them, no matter where you move,” Nilly explained.

  Lisa thought about it. Could there be Trulses and Tryms in Sarpsborg, too?

  “Did you find a new best friend yet?” Nilly asked.

  Lisa shook her head. They stood there next to each other in silence, watching the other kids play, until Lisa asked, “Was that really true, what you said about Doctor Proctor and the invention?”

  “Of course,” Nilly said with a wry smile. “Almost everything I say is true.”

  Right then the bell rang.

  Nilly Has an Idea

  THAT AFTERNOON, NILLY knocked hard on the cellar door at the blue house. Three firm knocks. That was the signal they’d agreed on.

  Doctor Proctor flung open the door and when he saw Nilly, he exclaimed, “Wonderful!” Then he raised one bushy eyebrow and lowered another bushy eyebrow, pointed, and asked, “Who is that?”

  “Lisa,” Nilly said.

  “I can see that,” the professor said. “She lives across the street there if I’m not mistaken. What I mean is: What’s she doing here? Didn’t we agree that this project was top secret?”

  “Obviously it’s not that secret,” Lisa said. “Nilly told the whole class about it today.”

  “What?” the professor exclaimed, frightened. “Nilly, is that true?”

  “Uh,” Nilly said. “A little, maybe.”

  “You told … you told … ,” the professor sputtered, waving his arms around in the air, while Nilly stuck out his lower lip and made his eyes look big, as if he were on the verge of tears. This facial expression, which Nilly had practiced especially for situations like this, made him look like a tiny little, very depressed camel. Because everyone knows that it’s absolutely impossible to be mad at a very depressed camel. The professor groaned, giving up, and lowered his arms again. “Well, well, maybe it’s not so terrible. And you are my assistant after all, so I suppose it’s all right.”

  “Thanks,” Nilly said quietly.

  “Sure, sure,” said the professor, waving his hands at Nilly. “You can stop trying to look like a camel now. Come in and close the door behind you.”

  They did as he said, while Doctor Proctor hurried over to the test tubes and glass containers that were bubbling and smoking with something that smelled like cooked pears.

  Lisa stopped just inside the door and looked around. There was a potted plant with white petals on the windowsill. And on the wall next to it hung a picture of a motorcycle with a sidecar in front of what she assumed must be the Eiffel Tower in Paris. A smiling young man who looked like the professor was sitting on the motorcycle seat, and there was a sweet, smiling girl with dark hair in the sidecar.

  “What are you doing?” Nilly asked Doctor Proctor.

  “I’m perfecting the product,” he said, stirring some mixture in a big barrel. “Something that ought to give it even more pep. A concoction of the more explosive type, you might say.”

  The professor dipped a finger in and then brought it to his mouth. “Hmm. A little more wormwood.”

  “Can I taste?” Lisa asked, peering over the edge of the barrel.

  “Sorry,” the professor said.

  “Sorry,” Nilly said.

  “Why not?” Lisa asked.

  “Are you a certified fart powder tester, perhaps?” Nilly asked.

  Lisa thought for a second and said, “Not as far as I know.”

  “Then I recommend that you leave the testing to me for the time being,” Nilly said, pulling on his suspenders. Then he took a spoon and stuck it down into the barrel.

  “Careful,” the professor said. “Start with a quarter spoonful.”

  “Sure,” Nilly said, putting a quarter spoonful of powder in his mouth.

  “Then we’ll start the countdown,” Doctor Proctor said, and looked at the clock. “Seven—six—five—four—three … hey, don’t stand right behind him, Lisa!”

  Right then there was a bang. And Lisa felt a blast of air hitting her before she lost her balance and sat down hard on her butt on the cold cellar floor.

  “Oh,” Nilly said. “Lisa, are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, a little dazed as the professor helped her back onto her feet. “Well, I’d call that some pep!”

  Nilly laughed out loud. “Well done, Doctor!”

  “Thank you, thank you,” the professor said. “I think I’ll conduct a little test myself …”

  The professor took half a teaspoon and counted down. At zero there was another bang, but this time Lisa was careful to stand by the door.

  “Wow,” the professor said, picking up the plant, which didn’t have petals on it anymore. “I think we’ll do the next test outside.”

  They poured the powder into a cookie tin and brought it outside.

  “Give me the teaspoon,” Nilly said.

  “Careful with the dose … ,” Doctor Proctor started to say, but Nilly had already gobbled up a full teaspoon.

  “I feel a tingling in my stomach,” said Nilly, who was so excited that he was whining and jumping up and down.

  “Seven—six—five,” the professor counted.

  When the bang came, all the songbirds in the professor’s pear tree took off and flew away in alarm. And this time it wasn’t Lisa but Nilly who got knocked over and disappeared in the tall grass.

  “Where are you?” Doctor Proctor yelled, searching in the grass. “How did it go?”

  They heard a gurgling noise and then Nilly popped up, totally red in the face from laughing.

  “More!” he yelled. “More!”

  “Look, Professor!” Lisa pointed. “It ripped the seat of Nilly’s pants!”

  And indeed it had. Nilly’s pants were practically torn apart. The professor looked at the results with concern and decided that they should stop the testing for today. He asked them to search for his lawn furniture, which was in the grass somewhere, and then went inside. When he came back out, he brought bread, butter, liverwurst, and juice. Lisa had found the lawn furniture, and while they sat in the crooked white-painted chairs and ate, they contemplated what the invention could be used for. The professor had the idea of trying to sell the powder to farmers. “They could eat a half teaspoon of fart powder,” he explained, “and hold the sack of seed grain in front of the … uh, launch site. Then the air pressure would spread the seeds over the whole field. It’ll save a ton of time. What do you guys think?”

  “Excellent!” Nilly said.

  ?
??To be completely honest,” Lisa said, “I don’t think people are really going to want to eat food that comes from seeds that have been farted on.”

  “Hmm,” the professor said, scratching his mop of white hair. “You’re probably right about that.”

  “What about making the world’s fastest bicycle pump?” Nilly yelled. “All you have to do is take a hose, fasten one end to your butt and the other to the valve on the bike tire, and then … kaboom! The tire is filled in a fraction of a second!”

  “Interesting,” said the professor, stroking his goatee. “But I’m afraid it’s the kaboom that’s the problem. The tire’s going to explode too.”

  “What if we use the fart powder to dry hair?” Lisa suggested.

  Nilly and the professor looked at Lisa while she explained that the whole family could draw straws, everyone from the littlest to Grandma, to see who would eat the fart powder after everyone had showered in the morning. And then everyone else could just stand behind that person.

  “Good idea,” said the professor. “But who’s going to dry the farter’s hair?”

  “And what if the blast knocks Grandma over and she breaks her hip?” Nilly said.

  They kept tossing out one suggestion after another, but all of the suggestions had some kind of annoying drawback or other. In the end they were all sitting there quietly chewing their sandwiches when Nilly suddenly exclaimed, “I have it!”

  Lisa and Doctor Proctor looked at him without much enthusiasm, since this was the fourth time in only a couple of minutes that Nilly had said he had it and so far he definitely hadn’t had it. Nilly leaped up onto the table. “We could just use the powder for the same thing we’ve been using it for so far!” he said.

  “But we’re not using it for anything,” the professor said.

  “We’re just making meaningless bangs,” Lisa said.

  “Exactly!” Nilly said. “And who likes meaningless bangs better than anything?”

  “Well,” the professor said. “Kids, I guess. And adults who are a little childish.”

  “Exactly! And when do they want things that bang?”

  “New Year’s Eve?”

  “Yes!” Nilly shouted, excited. “And … and … and?”

  “Norwegian Independence Day!” Lisa blurted out, jumping up onto the table next to Nilly. “That’s only a few days away! Don’t you see, Professor? We don’t need to come up with anything at all, we can just sell the powder the way it is!”

  The professor’s eyes widened and he stretched his thin, wrinkled neck so that he looked like some kind of shorebird. “Interesting,” he mumbled. “Very interesting. Independence Day … children … things that go boom … it’s … it’s …” With a bounce he leaped up onto the table too. “Eureka!”

  And as if on cue, the three of them started dancing a victory dance around the table.

  Conductor Madsen and the Dølgen School Marching Band

  MR. MADSEN WAS standing in the gym with both arms out in front of him. Facing him sat the twenty students who made up the Dølgen School Marching Band. Mr. Madsen squeezed a baton between his right thumb and index finger, his other eight fingers splayed in all directions. He had closed his eyes, and for a second he imagined he was far away from the bleachers, worn wood floor, and stinky gym mats, standing before a sold-out audience in a concert hall in Venice, with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and cheering people in formal clothes in the balcony seats. Then Mr. Madsen opened his eyes again.

  “Ready?” he yelled, wrinkling his nose so his dark aviator sunglasses wouldn’t slide down. Because unlike Mrs. Strobe, Mr. Madsen had a short, fat nose with black pores.

  None of the twenty faces in the chairs in front of him looked like they were ready. But they didn’t protest, either, so Mr. Madsen counted down as if for a rocket launch.

  “Four—three—two—one!”

  Then Mr. Madsen swung his baton as if it were a magic wand, and the Dølgen School Marching Band began to play. Not like a rocket, exactly. More like a train that, snorting and puffing, started to move. As usual, the drums had started playing long before Mr. Madsen got to one. Now he was just waiting for the rest of the band. First came a screech of a trombone, then a French horn bleated in the wrong key, before two clarinets played almost the same note. The two trumpet players, the twins Truls and Trym Trane, were picking their noses. Finally, Petra managed to get her tuba to make a sound, and Per made a hesitant tap on the base drum.

  “No, no, no!” Mr. Madsen called, losing hope and waving his baton defensively. But just like a train, the Dølgen School Marching Band was hard to stop once it got going. And when they tried to stop, it sounded like a ton of kitchen implements falling on the floor. Crash! Bang! Toooot! When it was finally quiet and the windows at Dølgen School had stopped vibrating, Mr. Madsen took off his aviator glasses.

  “My dear ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Do you know how many days there are left until Independence Day?”

  No one said anything.

  Mr. Madsen groaned. “Well, I wouldn’t expect you to either, since you don’t even seem to know what song we’re playing. What song is this, Trym?”

  Trym stopped picking his nose and glanced over at his brother questioningly.

  “Well, Truls,” Mr. Madsen said. “Can you help Trym out?”

  Truls scratched his back with his trumpet and squinted at the music stand. “I got some rain on my music, Mr. Madsen. I can’t see nothin’,” he said.

  “Right,” Mr. Madsen said. “For crying out loud, this is the national anthem. Is there really no one here besides Lisa who can read music? Or at least play in key?”

  Lisa cowered behind her clarinet as she felt everyone else looking at her. She knew what those looks were saying. They were saying that even if Mr. Madsen said she was good, she shouldn’t think that any of them wanted to be friends with her. In fact, the opposite was true.

  “If we don’t improve by Independence Day, we’re going to have to give up the idea of a band camp this summer,” Mr. Madsen said. “I don’t want to be made into a laughingstock in front of dozens of other band conductors. Understood?”

  Mr. Madsen saw the faces in front of him start gaping. This was a shock to them, that much was clear. After all, he had talked so much and so positively about the big band competition in Eidsvoll, and they were all really looking forward to it. But he had made it clear to them from the very beginning. Nikolai Amadeus Madsen was not playing around, conducting a rattling, old military band. So unless a miracle occurred, no one at Eidsvoll was going to hear so much as a triangle clang from the Dølgen School Marching Band. And unfortunately, since Mr. Madsen’s baton wasn’t a magic wand, there wasn’t going to be any miracle.

  “Let’s take it again from the top,” Mr. Madsen said with a sigh, raising his baton. “Ready?”

  But they simply were not ready. In fact, they were all staring at the door to the locker room that was right behind Mr. Madsen’s back. Irritated, he turned around but couldn’t see anyone. He turned back toward the band and was just about to count off when his brain realized that it had seen something in the doorway after all. Something down by the floor. He turned around, took off his sunglasses, and looked at the tiny little boy with the red bangs.

  “What are you doing here?” Mr. Madsen asked curtly.

  “Shouldn’t you ask who I am first?” Nilly said, holding out an old, beat-up trumpet. “I’m Nilly. I can play the trumpet. You want to hear me play a little?”

  “No!” Mr. Madsen said.

  “Just a little … ,” Nilly said, raising his trumpet and forming his lips as if for a kiss.

  “No! No! No!” growled Mr. Madsen, who was bright red in the face and slapping his thigh with the baton. “I am an artist!” he yelled. “I have arranged marches for the big marching band festival in Venice. And now I’m conducting a school band for tone-deaf brats, and I don’t need to hear one more tone-deaf brat. Understood? Now get out!”

  “Hmm,” Nilly said. “Th
at sounded like an A. I have perfect pitch. Just check with your tuning fork.”

  “You’re not only tone-deaf, you’re deaf!” Mr. Madsen sputtered, shaking and spitting in agitation. “Shut that door again and don’t ever come back here! Surely you don’t think any band would take someone so small that … that …”

  “That there isn’t even room for the stripe on the side of his uniform pants,” Nilly said. “So short that his band medals would drag on the ground. So teensy-weensy that he couldn’t see what was on the music stand. Whose uniform hat falls down over his eyes.”

  Nilly smiled innocently at Mr. Madsen, who was now rushing straight toward him in long strides.

  “So he can’t see where he’s going,” Nilly continued. “And suddenly he finds himself on Aker Street while the rest of the band is marching down Karl Johan Street.”

  “Exactly!” Mr. Madsen said, grabbing hold of the door and flinging it shut right in Nilly’s face. Then he stomped back over to his music stand. He noted the big grins on Truls and Trym’s faces before he raised his baton.

  “So,” Mr. Madsen said. “Back to the national anthem.”

  That Night, in a Sewer Beneath Oslo

  THERE ARE BIG animals in the sewers that run every which way beneath Oslo. So big that you probably wouldn’t want to bump into them. But if you pick up a manhole cover on one of Oslo’s streets and shine a flashlight down into the sewer world, it just may happen that you’ll see the light catch the teeth in the jaws of one of the huge, slimy beasts before it scurries away. Or before it sinks its teeth into your throat. Because they are quite speedy beasts. And we’re not talking now about the regular, innocent Rattus norvegicus, i.e., little Norwegian rats, but about properly beastly beasts. Like Attila. Attila was an old Mongolian water vole who’d lived for thirty-five years and weighed more than thirty pounds. If you want to read more about water voles, turn to page 678 in Animals You Wish Didn’t Exist.