WILLE in English

During a bank robbery, Wille’s father tries to stop the criminal Miss Halitosis, but with her poisonous breath she melts him without a second thought. Wille is left orphaned, with only his books to comfort him. In his new foster family, the three sons make his life a misery, but that’s nothing compared to what Miss Halitosis is planning for him. Fortunately he meets Imogen, who gives as good as she gets and has the gift of being able to heap misfortune on others. In her double-decker bus full of books, Wille gradually recovers, and along with Professor De Boneir they work out a plan to thwart the seemingly unstoppable Miss Halitosis.

The coolest, funniest and craziest children’s book of 2024 (Wonderland by Alice)

In his first book, Van Gas shows what he has to offer. In sparkling prose and with a great sense of absurdist humour, he tumbles Wille out of each adventure into the next. In the combination of action, humour and violence, echoes of Anthony Horowitz’s early work are never far away. At the same time, a sensitive undercurrent shows us Wille’s fear, sorrow and trauma, and the way in which, with the help of Imogen and the professor, he learns to deal with them. He evolves from a timid boy into a person who will never be anybody’s walkover.

A fine underlying message in a story that’s highly cinematic (De boekenkast van de juf)

The chapters below were translated into English by Laura Vroomen, for Flanders Literature.

Illustration by Melvin

Chapter 40
‘I’M GOING TO ISFAHAN!’
The cry reverberates against the stepped gables overlooking the sun-drenched market square. At the outdoor cafés around the centuries-old fountain conversation falters.
‘I’M GOING TO ISFAHAN!’ can be heard again.
The source of the howling is a man standing in the fountain. From a sculpted tower in the middle, cherubs spew water into the basin. The man is positioned in such a way that one of those jets pours straight into his rubber boot. He has made holes in it, so the liquid spurts out again in lots of little streams. His other foot presses down on the ball of a bulb horn of which the opening is partially submerged. It sounds like somebody trying to drown a trumpeter. On his head he’s wearing an old motorcycle helmet topped with a multi-branched candleholder. The wax of countless tealights has dripped onto his suit jacket, as if a flock of pigeons has mistaken him for a statue. From the pink satchel on his back, a cactus peers over his shoulder.
‘I’M GOING TO ISFAHAN!’
The people watch the spectacle and one another. Embarrassment hangs over the crowd like a heavy quilt. A lady at the table closest to the fountain feels the eyes of the masses boring into her and feigns a deep interest in her shoes.
The man in the fountain digs a notepad out of his trouser pocket. An army of wrinkles marches across his forehead while he feverishly crosses out line after line. An exhausted sigh escapes his mouth. He puts the jotter away, takes a deep breath and exclaims: ‘I’M GOING TO ERPS-KWERPS!’
‘Stark raving mad,’ Wille says. ‘Acutely unhinged. Seriously doolally.’
Wille and Imogen are sitting on the townhall steps, enjoying the show from the best seats in the house. A week has passed since the attack and Wille has made a full recovery, much to his relief without having to resort to Imogen’s concoctions. Imogen insisted on heading due south. It wasn’t long before the landscape grew more rugged, the hills higher and the ravines deeper. They stopped in this small town in the valley of a wide river, with tree-covered slopes on all sides.
Imogen looks pensive. ‘I don’t think so, Willie boy,’ she says. ‘There’s something… peculiar about him.’
‘Something peculiar?’ Wille asks. ‘Let’s see, what could it be… The botanic garden on his back maybe? The underwater orchestra? Or the burning antlers on top of his curly head? No, hang on, I know what it is! His trousers are too short! Most peculiar!’
Imogen grabs hold of one of his ears and pulls his face very close to hers. ‘Listen, nitwit,’ she says slowly. ‘I just know it, okay? Do you doubt my intuition?’
‘No, no, not at all,’ Wille squeaks.
She lets go of him. ‘Good,’ she says, satisfied.
Wille has a quick feel to check if his ear is still intact. ‘All right then,’ he says, his face contorted in pain. ‘But how exactly does his peculiarity help us? Do we wrap his leaky boots in heart-covered wrapping paper and send them to Miss Halitosis with love?’
‘Good grief,’ Imogen sighs. ‘First off, why don’t you prove that you really are a lionheart behind that big mouth of yours and go and talk to that weirdo.’
Wille turns a little green around the gills. ‘Me? Why me? Why don’t you do it? It’s your idea!’
‘I knew it,’ Imogen scoffs. ‘Coward. How are you going to take on Halitosis if you don’t even have the guts to strike up a conversation with gramps over there? Off you go, Willie boy. And take your big mouth with you. Now!’ she barks.
‘My gramps didn’t have a plumbing system inside his boots,’ Wille mutters. Imogen reaches for his ear again. ‘Alright, alright, I’m going!’ he yells. ‘Bloody witch’s spawn,’ he grumbles.
Wille zigzags his way to the middle of the square. Each cobblestone feels like a mountain to climb. Agonisingly slowly, he approaches the final row of tables. Everybody is staring at the oddball in the fountain. And now at him too. He smiles sheepishly, checks if his zip is done up and his chin free of dried nose goblins. His cheeks are burning and waterfalls of sweat gush from his armpits.
As he continues to shuffle, he looks back at Imogen, who has her face in her hands. Then his foot gets caught on a dog lead and like a felled tree he crashes onto a bistro table for six. It promptly tips over and hurls him onto the cobbles amidst a deluge of plates and cutlery. A mussel slides down his nose in a trickle of beer and lands in a dollop of mayonnaise beside his ear. In the shocked silence a saucer rattles to a standstill.
A wave of laughter rolls across the square, bounces off the façades and washes over Wille. People point. People slap their thighs. People take photos and videos. Wille turns bright red and hides his face in his hands. The dog that’s attached to the fateful lead laps the stew off his trousers. Wille is close to tears.
‘Are you okay, my friend?’ a deep voice asks him. ‘I hope you didn’t cut yourself?’
Wille peers through his fingers and sees a rubber boot full of holes that still ooze some water. Its owner is squatting beside him with a worried look on his face. Fountain man brushes the fries off Wille’s shirt, plucks a few strands of spaghetti from his hair and gently takes him by his elbow.
‘Come on, son,’ he says. ‘Don’t panic. Everything will be all right.’

Chapter 41
‘So let me get this straight, you’re a professor?’ Imogen asks.
Imogen, Wille and the man are sitting at a table in a corner of the square. The dust has settled again. Imogen had picked the food scraps off Wille, while the man paid for all the damage. His helmet, boots and horn are now keeping the cactus in his satchel company. He’s a far cry from the nutjob who’d been bellowing in the fountain. Bright white socks bridge the yawning gap between his loafers and his too-short corduroy trousers. His white, closely cropped hair blends seamlessly into his beard, as if he’s wearing a white balaclava. He looks at them cheerfully with his big blue eyes.
‘The sign on my office door says “Professor Baruch De Boneir”. That’s right,’ the professor confirms. ‘I once covered it with “Clumsy Smurf”, which seems entirely justified given the current focus of my research. But the concierge removed it and then lectured me on the appropriate use of university resources. She threatened to box me round the ears with her mop, you see.’ The professor shudders at the memory.
‘I beg your pardon, Professor’, Imogen says, ‘but I have to ask: What is a respectable professor doing in the middle of a fountain?’
The professor smiles. ‘I was testing a theory of mine. I’m doing research into the origin of brilliant ideas.’
Wille raises an eyebrow.
‘I’m of the opinion that the universe is always in balance. There’s a deep sea for every mountain, an icy pool for every desert, a barren plain for every jungle.’
‘Like yin and yang, you mean?’ Wille asks.
The professor nods. ‘That’s right, but I’ve discovered that it applies to absolutely everything. Including ideas. In other words, there must be a completely ludicrous idea for every brilliant one. Something totally silly, you see. Experts are always trying to find the brilliant idea, but I’ve discovered that it’s a quite a bit easier to start at the other end.’
‘So let me get this straight: You do something totally silly in the hope that it triggers an amazing idea that restores the balance?’ Imogen asks.
‘Exactly!’ the professor replies. ‘Of course it doesn’t always work. The person doing the experiment has to be clever enough to receive the brilliant idea, otherwise nothing happens. It won’t work if he’s a simpleton, you see.’
‘You were right,’ Wille says to Imogen. ‘He is peculiar.’
‘At first I didn’t believe it either,’ the professor says calmly. ‘You know what, why don’t I give you a little demonstration.’
He turns to the table behind him, at which two ladies are seated. The one on the left is wearing a big hat and the one on the right has a poodle on her lap. The professor pulls the hat off the first lady’s head and snatches the pooch from her neighbour. He places the dog’s backside against his ear and holds the hat in front of his mouth.
‘HELLO!’ he roars into the hat. ’WHO? NO, MY BROTHER IS A PART-TIME LADLE AND A FULL-TIME BANANA! YES, A REFRESHING FUNGUS TO YOU TOO!’
He coughs into the hat and tosses it over his shoulder, along with the poodle.
‘Wrong number,’ he says to no one in particular and starts scribbling frantically in his notebook.
‘Professor?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Professor!’ Imogen shouts.
‘Erm… yes… what?’
‘So? Did it work?’ Wille asks.
‘Very well indeed!’ says the professor, beaming. ‘I instantly received the chemical reaction for producing cheap energy from earwax! Completely organic and fully degradable, without any dirty emissions! We’re looking at a revolution!’
Wille sticks a finger in his ear and carefully examines the pickings. ‘Professor? How much ear wax would you need to power up a house for roughly one day?’
The professor does some calculations in his notebook. ‘For an average house, I’d estimate around 10 litres, or a big bucket. Give or take a splash, you see.’
Wille wipes his finger on the tablecloth. ‘And erm… how much earwax would you say you produce per year?’
The professor is silent for a moment. ‘I see what you mean,’ he says after a while. ‘But perhaps there’s a way to step up earwax production. Just a moment …’ He turns to the poodle.
‘We believe you! We believe you!’ Wille and Imogen shout in unison.

Chapter 43
After a short walk through the back streets of the small town, professor De Boneir stops beside the strangest car Wille has ever seen. An old, angular vehicle with peeling paintwork, hitched to a large trailer with some sort of cage on it, like the kind gardeners use to transport leaves. Except this one is chockful of plastic bags in every size and colour imaginable. Attached to the cage is a thick hose that runs across the roof and windshield of the car, before disappearing underneath the bonnet. The passenger seat has been ripped out and replaced with a contraption with lots of cables, wires and lights.
‘This is my latest invention,’ the professor explains. ‘A solution to both climate change and the problem of waste: this car runs on plastic bags.’ He points to the tube along the roof. ‘The bags are sucked out of the reservoir and fed through the bonnet and into this machine. In here they’re pulverised to atoms, which then cause a high-energy reaction with used chip fat to fire the engine cylinders.’
Professor De Boneir sits down behind the wheel, with the door open.
‘But I’ve had to solve a teeny-tiny problem. The mixture doesn’t react of its own accord. It just sort of ferments, you see. So I have to give it a bit of a boost with nitroglycerin.’
Wille and Imogen stand beside the open door.
‘With what?’ Wille asks.
‘Nitroglycerin,’ the professor says. ‘It’s an ingredient in dynamite.’ He turns the ignition key.
A bang, like that of a plane breaking the sound barrier, rocks the neighbourhood. The shockwave expels a cloud of dust into the street. A manhole cover spins back into place and a wheelie bin skips to a gradual halt after a crazy flight. Wille’s ears are ringing. As are Imogen’s by the looks of it, because she points to them and shakes her head.
The professor gets out with a note in his hand. He walks to the car parked behind the trailer. The million cracks caused by the explosion have turned the windscreen a milky white. The professor takes a card that says ‘SORRY!’ out of his pocket and is about to stick it behind the windscreen wiper when, at the first touch, the window dissolves in a puff of smoke.
Imogen grabs the professor by the sleeve to get his attention. Wille’s hearing slowly returns. ‘… you … leave… quick…’ he hears her say. Gesticulating wildly, she points to the other side of the road. A criss-cross pattern of large cracks has appeared in a glass façade. A single shard drops out of the frame with a tinkling sound and joins the heaps of shattered porcelain in the window display. In between the cracks you can still just about read the lettering: EXCLUSIVE ANTIQUE PORCELAIN – FREDDY FRAGILE & SONS. Four men appear in the shop’s doorway: one with greying, the other three with black hair, but all four equally big, bulky and muscly. And all four fuming.
Wille rushes over to Imogen and helps her shove the professor behind the wheel.
‘Drive, Professor, drive!’ he yells. ‘If you value your life!’

© Van Gas/Laura Vroomen/Pelckmans/Flanders Literature – this text cannot be copied nor made public by means of (digital) print, copy, internet or in any other way without prior consent from the rights holders.