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Pepel Van Winkel

by Remington Darling, Burgmann Anglican School

The Beginning of a Strange Tale

This story was recounted by Winkel’s great-g-g-g-grandchild, and all of the words and references were reproduced faithfully for the reader to research and enjoy.

The town of Utrecht, the Netherlands harboured an incompetent man by the name of Pepel Van (Deusceth Archemes Barthuthulu Pestilanialiatumetyrrhach Nomelasonne) Winkel, First of Seven.

It was the twilight of autumn, the aurora of winter, and the year was 1812. The firmament remained a sempiternal-grey, taunting the residents of Earth with the thought of snow.

Winkel lived in a small house just outside Utrecht. He constantly imagined visiting Saint Petersburg to join the war against Napoleon Bonaparte. Along with imagining it, he perpetually pestered the French occupying force with it every day, earning himself a vacation in prison.

Winkel decided to do something about this dilemma, however. He plotted to hijack a boat and sail it across the North Sea and through the straits of Skagerrak and Kattegat to the Baltic, and then he’d land and declare himself ruler of whatever shore he might encounter. Winkel, however, didn’t plan on doing it in that order, first declaring himself emperor of the Netherlands. He promptly was arrested for blasphemous slander, stating how silly the guards’ uniforms looked, and how easy it would be for the Russians to see them.

After his sentence of four hours was up, Winkel was ready to enact his grand plan; but first he’d need some fellow incompetents, the only other people in the kingdom whom Winkel trusted. “Allô, my comrades,” Winkel declared fervidly, “it is time to start the revolution!”

“I thought we were invading,” said the heavily misinformed Dakh.

“You’re going to your likely demises,” replied Winkel.

Dakh leaned over to Wilhelm, “What does ‘demises’ mean?”

“I think it means victory,” Wilhelm whispered back.

“I feel like I am being left out of the group I created,” Winkel said. “I am your leader, so you must obey my every command.”

The three made the journey north, miraculously surviving. They arrived at a small beach with a white ferry. “I didn’t even know there would be a boat here!” Winkel exclaimed. “I mean, yes, everything is going according to my evil plan.”

“I thought we were the good-guys,” Dakh said.

“Of course, we are!” Winkel shouted. “Why else would we be trying to murder everyone who doesn’t understand our murderous ways?”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

A soldier came out of the boat. “Unarm yourselves!”

“Oh, now would be a good time to be an octopus, I know!” Winkel thought aloud. He picked a false arm out of his bag, held it to his side, and dropped it. “I have unarmed myself!”

The soldier face-palmed.

“Oh,” Winkel discovered his friends emptying their pockets of their weapons. “This is a mugging, I see. I shall have to call the authorities on you, if that is the case. Run now or be arrested by me instead, the Great Pepel Van Winkel, First of Seven!”

“Ahem,” the soldier enunciated, “I am part of the resistance, and I was supposed to take some people to Russia.”

“So, you’re not mugging us?”

“Why would I be doing that?”

“Because I said so,” Winkel retaliated tersely.

The soldier beckoned them all onto the boat, and Winkel made haste by running onto the barque after catching sight of a deformed potato on board.  “Are you going to continue looking disappointed for the whole trip? The potato is mine now, and you must keep a distance of at least one French inch away from Lemon,” Winkel demanded.

“Lemon?” Wilhelm asked.

“Be silent, expendable fainéant dandiprat. I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Who were you talking to?” Dakh questioned Winkel.

“I was talking to the former captain of this ship, Mr. Spiky-Helmet,” said Winkel.

“He’s not even here anymore. Mr… Spiky is sailing the ship out to sea.”

“He is? I didn’t give my helmsman permission to man the helm.”

“I don’t think they need permission …..” Dakh began.

“No one questions my clear superiority.”

⁂

We skip ahead to a very unexciting time of Winkel’s life. A time where he had to wait for an hour until a siege was over. “I must go out into the rain!” Winkel declared vehemently, pushing into a half-broken door.

“Hearken, it’s far too perilous a plight for us, sir,” Wilhelm reasoned, pulling Winkel back.

“Bethink oneself, peasant, I’m in charge. I decide what happens. So, off you go…” he trailed off.

“……Wilhelm.”

“Right, Wilting, will you man the helm? Go out into the rain and bring back a souvenir for me to show to Napoleon, demonstrating my far superior wealth,” Winkel beckoned Wilhelm out of the doorway. “And then later, I can find out that had the desired effect on his morale,” he said with superfluous verbosity. “I can just imagine. How such schadenfreude should quench my ever-esurient appetency.”

“Oh, erm… would you like a jewel from that soldier?” Wilhelm suggested, gesturing towards a very colourful, very dead corpse.

“No, of course not! And that is of a surety.”

“Why not?” Wilhelm asked. He picked up a rock with a yellow duck painted on it. “How about this?”

Winkel gasped. “Why, it’s perfect! I hereby promote you, Wilting. You have done a dangerous mission and have returned with every limb. Although, you may have lost some organs,” he stated. “Especially in the intelligence sector,” Winkel whispered to himself.

“Wow! What do I get? Extra pay?”

“No, you get my demand that you find more of these rooster-things. Well, you might get extra pay. Because I already pay you nothing, and if I times your augend nothing-pay by the addend of three, then I still pay you nothing.”

“Is that better than it was before?” Wilhelm asked eagerly.

“Certes, it is! You get thrice the pay as you did before, forsooth,” said Winkel blithely.

Wilhelm burst out over the threshold ecstatically, running into the disease-infested battlefield to get quadruple the pay, exactly zero francs, nor any other pecuniary currency.

“Well, now I’m bored again.”

⁂

Alone, Winkel arrived on the Eastern Front against the French.

He announced imperiously in front of the whole Russian army as if he were their commander. “I shall defeat Napoleon single-handedly!” The soldiers looked confused.

“Are you all idiots? It is all your fault that you don’t understand Dutch!” Winkel cursed in French. “N’est-ce pas ? Je sais que c’est vrai.”

The army charged him, and Winkel ran in the opposite direction.  “Why are you attacking me? I am your leader!” Winkel espied the French army across the hill. “Oh, look! Everyone! I am your saviour!”

Napoleon himself was mounted upon a gallant white steed, and his eyes widened as soon as he saw the infamous Pepel Van Winkel. “Retreat! It’s that lunatic Dutchman! Run for your lives!” Napoleon cried in arrant terror.

The Russians stopped and praised Winkel for his heroism. He was lauded a national hero for the rest of his life. At least, that’s how he told the story, from a maximum-security shed in Siberia.

Image: Napoleon – Bataille de Wagram. Sourced from Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Napoleon_Wagram.jpg