My Uncle Oswald

by Roald Dahl

  Sir Charles Makepiece, 4 pills = 4,000 francs

  The German Ambassador, 8 pills = 8,000 francs

  The Russian Ambassador, 10 pills = 10,000 francs

  The Hungarian Ambassador, 3 pills = 3,000 francs

  The Peruvian Ambassador, 2 pills = 2,000 francs

  The Mexican Ambassador, 6 pills = 6,000 francs

  The Italian Ambassador, 4 pills = 4,000 francs

  The French Foreign Minister, 6 pills = 6,000 francs

  The Army General, 3 pills = 3,000 francs

  * * *

  46,000 francs

  Mr Mitsouko, 20 pills (double price) = 40,000 francs

  * * *

  GRAND TOTAL 86,000 francs

  * * *

  Eighty-six thousand francs! At the exchange rate of one hundred francs to five pounds, I was all of a sudden worth four thousand, three hundred English pounds! It was incredible. One could buy a good house for money like that, with a carriage and a pair of horses thrown in, as well as one of those dashing new-fangled automobiles!

  For supper that night, Madame Boisvain served oxtail stew and it wasn't at all bad except that the sloshiness of it all encouraged Monsieur B to suck and swig and gulp in the most disgusting fashion. At one point, he picked up his plate and tipped the gravy straight into his mouth together with a couple of carrots and a large onion. 'My wife tells me that you had a lot of peculiar visitors today,' he said. His face was plastered with brown fluid and strands of meat were hanging from his moustache. 'Who were these men?'

  'They were friends of the British Ambassador,' I answered. 'I am doing a little business for Sir Charles Makepiece.'

  'I cannot have my house turned into a marketplace,' Monsieur B said, speaking with his mouth full of fat. 'These activities must cease.'

  'Don't worry,' I said. 'Tomorrow I am finding alternative accommodation.'

  'You mean you're leaving?' he cried.

  'I'm afraid I must. But you may keep the advance rent my father has paid you.'

  There was a bit of an uproar around the table about all this, much of it from Mademoiselle Nicole, but I stuck to my guns. And the next morning I went out and found myself a quite grand ground-floor apartment with three large rooms and a kitchen. It was on the Avenue Jena. I packed all my possessions and loaded them into a hackney coach. Madame Boisvain was at the front door to see me off. 'Madame,' I said, 'I have a small favour to ask of you.'

  'Yes?'

  'And in return I want you to take this.' I held out five gold twenty-franc pieces. She nearly fell over. 'From time to time,' I said, 'people will call at your house asking for me. All you have to do is tell them I have moved and redirect them to this address.' I gave her a piece of paper with my new address written on it.

  'But that is too much money, Monsieur Oswald!'

  'Take it,' I said, pushing the coins into her hand. 'Keep it for yourself. Don't tell your husband. But it is very important that you inform everyone who calls where I am living.'

  She promised to do this, and I drove away to my new quarters.

  6

  My business flourished. My ten original clients all whispered the great news to their own friends and those friends whispered it to other friends and in a month or so a large snowball had been created. I spent half of each day making pills. I thanked heaven I had had the foresight to bring such a large quantity of powder from the Sudan in the first place. But I did have to reduce my price. Not everyone was an Ambassador or a Foreign Minister, and I found early on that a lot of people simply couldn't afford to pay my absurd original fee of one thousand francs per pill. So I made it two hundred and fifty instead.

  The money gushed in.

  I started buying fine clothes and going out into Paris society.

  I purchased a motor car and learned to drive it. It was De Dion-Bouton's brand new model, the Sports DK, a marvellous little monobloc four with a three-speed gearbox and a pull-on handbrake. Top speed, believe it or not, was as much as 50 mph, and more than once I took her to the limit up the Champs Elysees.

  But above all, I rollocked and frolicked with women to my heart's content. Paris in those days was an exceptionally cosmopolitan city. It was filled with ladies of quality from practically every country in the world, and it was during this period that a curious truth began to dawn upon me. We all know that people of different nations have different national characteristics and different temperaments. What is not quite so well recognized is the fact that these different national characteristics become even more marked during sexual, as opposed to merely social, intercourse. I became an expert on national sexual characteristics. It was extraordinary how the women of one nation or another ran true to form. You could take, for example, half a dozen Serbian ladies (and don't think I didn't) and you would find, if you were paying close attention, that every one of them possessed a number of very definite common eccentricities, common skills and common preferences. Polish women also, because of certain habits they all had in common, were easily recognizable. So were the Basques, the Moroccans, the Equadorians, the Norwegians, the Dutch, the Guatemalians, the Belgians, the Russians, the Chinese and all the rest of them. Toward the end of my stay in Paris, you could have put me on a couch blindfold with any lady from any country, and within five minutes, though she never uttered a word, I would have told you her nationality.

  Now for the obvious question. Which country produced the most exhilarating females?

  I myself became rather partial to Bulgarian ladies of aristocratic stamp. They had, amongst other things, the most unusual tongues. Not only were these tongues of theirs exceptionally muscular and vibrant, but they had a roughness about them, a kind of abrasive quality that one normally finds only in cats' tongues. Get a cat to lick your finger some time and you will see exactly what I mean.

  Turkish ladies (I think I've mentioned them before) were also high on my list. They were like water-wheels. They never stopped turning until the river dried up. But by gad, you had to be fit before you challenged a Turkish lady, and I personally never allowed one into my house until after I'd had a good breakfast.

  Hawaiian women interested me because they had prehensile toes, and in almost any situation you cared to mention, they used their feet rather than their hands.

  As far as Chinese women went, I learned by experience to tamper only with those that came from Peking and the neighbouring province of Shan-Tung. And even then, it was essential that they were from noble families. In those days, it was the custom among the nobility of Peking and Shan-Tung to put their girls into the hands of wise old women as soon as they reached the age of fifteen. For two years thereafter, these girls were subjected to a rigorous course of instruction designed to teach them only one thing - the art of giving physical pleasure to their future husbands. And at the end of it all, after a severe practical examination, certificates were issued indicating a pass or a failure. If the girl was exceptionally dexterous and inventive, she might get what was called a 'Pass with Distinction', and most prized of all was the 'Diploma of Merit'. A young lady with a Diploma could virtually pick her own husband. Unfortunately though, at least half the Diploma girls were whisked away at once into the Emperor's Palace.

  I discovered only one Chinese lady in Paris who had earned a Diploma of Merit. She was the wife of an opium millionaire and she had come over to select a wardrobe. She selected me as well, and I must admit it was a memorable experience. She had developed into a sublime art the practice of what she called so-far-and-no-further. Nothing ever quite finished. She didn't allow it to. She took one to the brink. Two hundred times she took me to the brink of the golden threshold, and for three and a half hours, which was the duration of my suffering, it felt as though a long live nerve was being drawn very very slowly and with exquisite patience out of my burning body. I hung on to the edge of the cliff with my fingertips, screaming for succour or release, but the blissful torture went on and on and on. It was an amazing demonstration of skill and I have never forgotten it.
/>   I could describe if I wished the curious feminine habits of at least fifty other nationalities, but I am not going to do so. Not here anyway, because I really must proceed with the main theme of this story, which is how I made money.

  During my seventh month in Paris, a lucky incident took place that doubled my income. This is what happened. One afternoon, I had a Russian lady in my apartment who was some sort of a relation to the Tsar. She was a slim white-skinned little herring, rather cool and casual, almost offhand she was, and I had to stoke her up pretty vigorously before I succeeded in raising a good head of steam in her boilers. That sort of blase attitude only makes me more determined than ever, and I can promise you that by the time I'd finished with her, she'd had a fair old roasting.

  When it was over, I lay back on the couch sipping a glass of champagne as a cooler. The Russian was languidly dressing herself and wandering round my room looking at this and that.

  'What are all these red pills in this bottle?' she asked me.

  'They're none of your business,' I said.

  'When am I going to see you again?'

  'Never,' I said. 'I told you my rules.'

  'You are being disagreeable,' she said, pouting. 'Tell me what these pills are for or I also will become disagreeable. I will throw them all out the window.' She picked up the bottle that contained five hundred of my precious Blister Beetle pills just made that morning and she opened the window.

  'Don't,' I said.

  'Then tell me.'

  'They are tonic pills for men,' I said. 'Pick-me-ups, that's all.'

  'Why not for women also?'

  'They're only for men.'

  'I shall try one,' she said, unscrewing the bottle-top and tipping out a pill. She popped it into her mouth and washed it down with champagne. Then she continued putting on her clothes.

  She was fully dressed and was adjusting her hat in front of the looking-glass when suddenly she froze. She turned and faced me. I lay where I was, sipping my drink, but I was now watching her closely and with some trepidation.

  She remained frozen for maybe thirty seconds, staring at me with a cold hard dangerous stare. Then all at once, she reached both hands up to her neckline and ripped her silk dress clean off her body. She tore off her underclothes. She flung her hat across the room. She crouched. She began to move forward. She came softly across the room toward me with the slow deliberate tread of a tigress stalking an antelope.

  'What's up?' I said. But by now I knew very well what was up. Nine minutes had gone by and the pill had hit her.

  'Steady on,' I said.

  She kept coming.

  'Go away,' I said.

  Still she kept coming.

  Then she sprang, and all I could see in those first few moments was a blurred flurry of legs and arms and mouth and hands and fingers. She went quite mad. She was wild with lust. I hauled in my canvas and lay there trying to ride out the storm. That wasn't good enough for her. She began to throw me around all over the place, snorting and grunting as she did so. I didn't like it. I'd had my fill. This must stop, I decided. But I still had a terrific job pinning her down. In the end, I got her wrists locked behind her back and I carried her kicking and screaming into my bathroom and held her under the cold shower. She tried to bite me but I gave her an uppercut to the chin with my elbow. I held her under that freezing shower for at least twenty minutes while she went on yelling and swearing in Russian all the time.

  'Had enough?' I said at last. She was half drowned and pretty cold.

  'I want you!' she spluttered.

  'No,' I said. 'I'm going to keep you here until you cool down.'

  Finally she gave in. I let her go. Poor girl, she was shivering terribly and she looked a sight. I got a towel and gave her a good rub down. Then a glass of brandy.

  'It was that red pill,' she said.

  'I know it was.'

  'I want some of them to take home.'

  'Those are too strong for ladies,' I said. 'I will make you some that are just right.'

  'Now?'

  'No. Come back tomorrow and they'll be ready.'

  Because her dress was ruined, I wrapped her in my overcoat and drove her home in the De Dion. Actually, she had done me a good turn. She had demonstrated that my pill worked just as well on the female as it did on the male. Probably better. I immediately set about making some Ladies' Pills. I made them half the strength of the Men's Pills, and I turned out one hundred of them, anticipating a ready market. But the market was even more ready than I had anticipated. When the Russian woman came back the next afternoon, she demanded five hundred of them on the spot!

  'But they cost two hundred and fifty francs each.'

  'I don't care about that. All my girl friends want them. I told them what happened to me yesterday and now they all want them.'

  'I can give you a hundred, that's all. The rest later. Do you have money?'

  'Of course I have money.'

  'May I make a suggestion, madame?'

  'What is it?'

  'If a lady takes one of these pills on her own, I fear she may appear unduly aggressive. Men don't like that. I didn't like it yesterday.'

  'What is your suggestion?'

  'I suggest that any lady who intends taking one of these pills should persuade her partner also to take one. And at exactly the same time. Then they'll be all square.'

  'That makes good sense,' she said.

  It not only made good sense, it would also double the sales.

  'The partner,' I said, 'could take a larger pill. It's called the Men's Pill. That's simply because men are bigger than women and need a bigger dose.'

  'Always assuming,' she said, smiling a little, 'that the partner is a male.'

  'Whatever you like,' I said.

  She shrugged her shoulders and said, 'Very well, then, give me also one hundred of these Men's Pills.'

  By gum, I thought, there's going to be some fun and frolics around the boudoirs of Paris tonight. Things were hot enough with just the man getting himself all pilled-up but I shuddered to think what was going to happen when both parties took the medicine.

  It was a howling success. Sales doubled. They trebled. By the time my twelve months in Paris were up, I had around two million francs in the bank! That was one hundred thousand pounds! I was now nearly eighteen. I was rich. But I was not rich enough. My year in France had shown me very clearly the path I wanted to follow in my life. I was a sybarite. I wished to lead a life of luxury and leisure. I would never get bored. That was not my style. But I would never be completely satisfied unless the luxury was intensely luxurious and the leisure was unlimited. One hundred thousand pounds was not enough for that. I needed more. I needed a million pounds at least. I felt sure I would find a way to earn it. Meanwhile, I had not made a bad start.

  I had enough sense to realize that first of all I must continue my education. Education is everything. I have a horror of uneducated people. And so in the summer of 1913,1 transferred my money to a London bank and returned to the land of my fathers. In September, I went up to Cambridge to begin my undergraduate studies. I was a scholar remember, a scholar of Trinity College, and as such I had a number of privileges and was well-treated by those in authority.

  It was here at Cambridge that the second and final phase of my fortune-making began. Bear with me a little longer and you shall hear all about it in the pages to come.

  7

  My chemistry tutor at Cambridge was called A. R. Woresley. He was a middle-aged, shortish man, paunchy, untidily dressed and with a grey moustache whose edges were stained yellow ochre by the nicotine from his pipe. In appearance, therefore, a typical university don. But he struck me as being exceptionally able. His lectures were never routine. His mind was always darting about in search of the unusual. Once he said to us:

  'And now we need as it were a tompion to protect the contents of this flask from invading bacteria. I presume you know what a tompion is, Cornelius?'

  'I can't say I do, sir,' I sa
id.

  'Can anyone give me a definition of that common English noun?' A. R. Woresley said.

  Nobody could.

  'Then you'd better look it up,' he said. 'It is not my business to teach you elementary English.'

  'Oh, come on, sir,' someone said. 'Tell us what it means.'

  'A tompion,' A. R. Woresley said, 'is a small pellet made out of mud and saliva which a bear inserts into his anus before hibernating for the winter, to stop the ants getting in.'

  A strange fellow, A. R. Woresley, a mixture of many attitudes, occasionally witty, more often pompous and sombre, but underneath everything there was a curiously complex mind. I began to like him very much after that little tompion episode. We struck up a pleasant student-tutor relationship. I was invited to his house for sherry. He was a bachelor. He lived with his sister who was called Emmaline of all names. She was dumpy and frowsy and seemed to have something greenish on her teeth that looked like verdigris. She had a kind of surgery in the house where she did things to people's feet. A pedicurist, I think she called herself.

  Then the Great War broke out. It was 1914 and I was nineteen years old. I joined the Army. I had to, and for the next four years I concentrated all my efforts on trying to survive. I am not going to talk about my wartime experiences. Trenches, mud, mutilation and death have no place in these journals. I did my bit. Actually, I did well, and by November 1918, when it all came to an end, I was a twenty-three-year-old captain in the infantry with a Military Cross. I had survived.

  At once, I returned to Cambridge to resume my education. The survivors were allowed to do that, though heaven knows there weren't many of us. A. R. Woresley had also survived. He had remained in Cambridge doing some sort of wartime scientific work and had had a fairly quiet war. Now he was back at his old job of teaching chemistry to undergraduates, and we were pleased to see one another again. Our friendship picked up where it had left off four years before.

  One evening in February 1919, in the middle of the Lent term, A. R. Woresley invited me to supper at his house. The meal was not good. We had cheap food and cheap wine, and we had his pedicurist sister with verdigris on her teeth. I would have thought they could have lived in slightly better style than they did, but when I broached this delicate subject rather cautiously to my host, he told me that they were still struggling to pay off the mortgage on the house. After supper, A. R. Woresley and I retired to his study to drink a good bottle of port that I had brought him as a present. It was a Croft 1890, if I remember rightly.