My Uncle Oswald

by Roald Dahl

  'No, you don't. And you never will, unless you let me help you.'

  'So what is your plan?'

  'You, sir,' I said, 'have made a great scientific discovery. There's no doubt about that.'

  'You agree it's important?' he said, perking up.

  'Very important. But if you publish your findings, just look what will happen. Every Tom, Dick and Harry all over the world will steal your process for their own use. You won't be able to stop them. It's been the same all through the history of science. Look at pasteurization. Pasteur published. Everyone stole his process. And where did that leave old Pasteur?'

  'He became a famous man,' A. R. Woresley said.

  'If that's all you want to be, then by all means go ahead and publish. I shall retire gracefully from the scene.'

  'With your scheme,' A. R. Woresley said, 'would I ever be able to publish?'

  'Of course. As soon as you've got the million in your pocket.'

  'How long would that be?'

  'I don't know. I'd say five or ten years at the most. After that, you would be free to become famous.'

  'Come on, then,' he said. 'Let's hear about this brilliant scheme.'

  The port was very good. The Stilton was good, too, but I only nibbled it to clear my palate. I called for an apple. A hard apple, thinly sliced, is the best partner for port.

  'I propose that we deal only with human spermatozoa,' I said. 'I propose that we select only the truly great and famous men alive in the world today and that we establish a sperm vault for these men. We will store two hundred and fifty straws of sperm from each man.'

  'What is the point of that?' A. R. Woresley said.

  'Go back just sixty years,' I said, 'to around 1860, and pretend that you and I were living then and that we had the knowledge and the ability to store sperm indefinitely. So which living geniuses, in 1860, would you have chosen as donors?'

  'Dickens,' he said.

  'Go on.'

  'And Ruskin... and Mark Twain.'

  'And Brahms,' I said, 'and Wagner and Tchaikovsky and Dvorak. The list is very long. Authentic geniuses every one of them. Go back further in the century, if you like, to Balzac, to Beethoven, to Napoleon, to Goya, to Chopin. Wouldn't it be exciting if we had in our liquid nitrogen bank a couple of hundred straws of the living sperm of Beethoven?'

  'What would you do with them?'

  'Sell them, of course.'

  'To whom?'

  'To women. To very rich women who wanted babies by one of the greatest geniuses of all time.'

  'Now wait a minute, Cornelius. Women, rich or not, aren't going to allow themselves to be inseminated with the sperm of some long-dead stranger just because he was a genius.'

  'That's what you think. Listen, I could take you to any Beethoven concert you like and I'd guarantee to find half a dozen females there who'd give almost anything to have a baby today by the great man.'

  'You mean spinsters?'

  'No. Married women.'

  'What would their husbands say?'

  'Their husbands wouldn't know. Only the mother would know that she was pregnant by Beethoven.'

  'That's knavery, Cornelius.'

  'Can't you see her,' I said, 'this rich unhappy woman who is married to some incredibly ugly, coarse, ignorant, unpleasant industrialist from Birmingham, and all at once she has something to live for. As she goes strolling through the beautifully kept garden of her husband's enormous country house, she is humming the slow movement of Beethoven's Eroica and thinking to herself, "My God, isn't it wonderful! I am pregnant by the man who wrote that music a hundred years ago!" '

  'We don't have Beethoven's sperm.'

  'There are plenty of others,' I said. 'There are great men in every century, in every decade. It's our job to get them. And listen,' I went on, 'there's one tremendous thing in our favour. You will find that very rich men are nearly always ugly, coarse, ignorant and unpleasant. They are robber bandits, monsters. Just think of the mentality of men who spend their lives amassing million after million - Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, Krupp. Those are the old-timers. Today's batch are just as unattractive. Industrialists, war profiteers. All horrible fellows. Invariably, they marry women for their beauty and the women marry them for their money. The beauties have ugly useless children by their ugly grasping husbands. They get to hate their husbands. They get bored. They take up culture. They buy paintings by the Impressionists and go to Wagner concerts. And at that stage, my dear sir, these women are ripe for the picking. So in steps Oswald Cornelius offering to impregnate them with guaranteed genuine Wagner sperm.'

  'Wagner's dead, too.'

  'I am simply trying to show you what our sperm vault will look like in forty years' time if we start it now, in 1919.'

  'Who would we put in it?' A. R. Woresley said.

  'Who would you suggest? Who are the geniuses of today?'

  'Albert Einstein.'

  'Good,' I said. 'Who else?'

  'Sibelius.'

  'Splendid. And what about Rachmaninov?'

  'And Debussy,' he said.

  'Who else?'

  'Sigmund Freud in Vienna.'

  'Is he great?'

  'He's going to be,' A. R. Woresley said. 'He is already world famous in medical circles.'

  'I'll take your word for it. Go on.'

  'Igor Stravinsky,' he said.

  'I didn't know you knew music.'

  'Of course.'

  'I'd like to propose the painter Picasso in Paris,' I said.

  'Is he a genius?'

  'Yes,' I said.

  'Would you accept Henry Ford in America?'

  'Oh, yes,' I said. 'That's a good one. And our own King George the Fifth.'

  'King George the Fifth!' he cried. 'What's he got to do with it?'

  'He's royal blood. Just imagine what some women would pay for a child by the King of England!'

  'You're being ridiculous, Cornelius. You can't go crashing into Buckingham Palace and start asking His Majesty the King if he would be good enough to provide you with an ejaculation of semen.'

  'You wait,' I said. 'You haven't heard the half of it yet. And we won't stop at George the Fifth. We must have a very comprehensive stock indeed of royal sperm. All the Kings in Europe. Let's see. There's Haakon of Norway. There's Gustav of Sweden. Christian of Denmark. Albert of Belgium. Alfonso of Spain. Carol of Romania. Boris of Bulgaria. Victor Emmanuel of Italy.'

  'You're being silly.'

  'No, I'm not. Wealthy Spanish ladies of aristocratic blood would crave for a baby by Alfonso. It'll be the same in every country. The aristocracy worships the monarchy. It is essential that we have a good stock of royal sperm in our vault. And I'll get it. Don't you worry. I'll get it.'

  'It's a hare-brained and impracticable stunt,' A. R. Woresley said. He put a lump of Stilton in his mouth and swilled it round with port. Thus he ruined both the cheese and the wine.

  'I am prepared,' I said slowly, 'to invest every penny of my one hundred thousand pounds into our partnership. That's how hare-brained I think it is.'

  'You're mad.'

  'You'd have told me I was mad if you'd seen me setting off for the Sudan at the age of seventeen in search of Blister Beetle powder. You would, wouldn't you?'

  That pulled him up a little. 'What would you charge for this sperm,' he said.

  'A fortune,' I said. 'Nobody is going to get a baby Einstein cheap. Or a baby Sibelius. Or a baby King Albert of the Belgians. Hey! I've just had a thought. Would a king's baby be in line for the throne?'

  'He'd be a bastard.'

  'He'd be in line for something. Royal bastards always are. We must charge a packet for a king's sperm.'

  'How much would you charge?'

  'I think about twenty thousand pounds a shot. Commoners would be slightly cheaper. We would have a price list and a range of prices. But kings would be the most expensive.'

  'H. G. Wells!' he said suddenly. 'He's around.'

  'Yes. We might put him on the list.'

/>   A. R. Woresley leaned back in his chair and sipped his port. 'Assuming,' he said, 'just assuming we did have this remarkable sperm vault, who would go out and find the rich women buyers?'

  'I would.'

  'And who would inseminate them?'

  'I would.'

  'You don't know how to do it.'

  'I could soon learn. It might be rather fun.'

  'There is a flaw in this scheme of yours,' A. R. Woresley said. 'A serious flaw.'

  'What is it?'

  'The really valuable sperm is not Einstein's or Stravinsky's. It's Einstein's father's. Or Stravinsky's father's. Those are the men who actually sired the geniuses.'

  'Agreed,' I said. 'But by the time a man becomes a recognized genius, his father is dead.'

  'So your scheme is fraudulent.'

  'We're out to make money,' I said, 'not to breed geniuses. These women aren't going to want Sibelius's father's sperm anyway. What they'll be after is a nice hot injection of twenty million living spermatozoa from the great man himself.'

  A. R. Woresley had his awful pipe going now and clouds of smoke enveloped his head. 'I will admit,' he said, 'yes, I am prepared to grant you that you could find wealthy female buyers for the sperm of geniuses and royalty. But your entire bizarre scheme is unfortunately doomed to failure for the simple reason that you will be unable to obtain your supplies of sperm. You don't seriously believe that great men and kings will be prepared to go through the... the extremely embarrassing motions of producing an ejaculation of sperm for some totally unknown young man...'

  'That's not the way I'll do it.'

  'How will you do it?'

  'The way I'll do it, not a single one of them will be able to resist becoming a donor.'

  'Rubbish. I'd resist it.'

  'No, you wouldn't.'

  I put a thin slice of apple in my mouth and ate it. I raised the glass of port to my nose. It had a bouquet of mushrooms. I took a sip and rolled it on my tongue. The flavour filled my mouth. It reminded me of potpourri. For a few moments I was captivated by the loveliness of the wine I was tasting. And what a remarkable follow-through it had after the swallow. The flavour lingered in the back of the nose for a long time. 'Give me three days,' I said, 'and I guarantee that I'll have in my possession one complete and genuine ejaculation of your own sperm together with a statement signed by you certifying that it is yours.'

  'Don't be so foolish, Cornelius. You can't make me do something I don't want to do.'

  'That's all I'm prepared to say.'

  He squinted at me through the pipe smoke. 'You wouldn't threaten me in some way, would you?' he said. 'Or torture me?'

  'Of course not. The act would be of your own free will. Would you like to bet me that I won't succeed?'

  'Of my own free will, you say?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then I'll bet you anything you like.'

  'Right,' I said. 'The bet is that if you lose, you promise the following: firstly, to withhold publication until we've each made a million. Secondly, to become a full and enthusiastic partner. Thirdly, to supply all the technical knowledge necessary for me to set up the sperm vault.'

  'I don't mind making a promise I'll never have to keep,' he said.

  'Then you promise?'

  'I promise,' he said.

  I paid the bill and offered to drive A. R. Woresley home in my motor car. 'Thank you,' he said, 'but I have my bicycle. We poor dons are not as affluent as some.'

  'You soon will be,' I said.

  I stood on Trinity Street and watched him pedalling away into the night. It was still only about nine-thirty p.m. I decided to make my next move immediately. I got into the motor car and headed straight for Girton.

  10

  Girton, in case you don't know it, was and still is a ladies' college and a part of the University. Within those sombre walls there dwelt in 1919 a cluster of young ladies so physically repulsive, so thick-necked and long-snouted I could hardly bring myself to look at them. They reminded me of crocodiles. They sent shivers down the back of my neck as I passed them in the street. They seldom washed and the lenses of their spectacles were smudged with greasy fingermarks. Brainy they certainly were. Many were brilliant. To my mind, that was small compensation.

  But wait.

  Only one week before, I had discovered among these zoological specimens a creature of such dazzling loveliness that I refused to believe she was a Girton girl. Yet she was. I had discovered her in a bunshop at lunchtime. She was eating a doughnut. I asked if I might sit at her table. She nodded and went on eating. And there I sat, gaping and goggling at her as though she were Cleopatra herself reincarnated. Never in my short life had I seen a girl or a woman with such a stench of salacity about her. She was absolutely soaked in sex. It made no difference that there was sugar and doughnut all over her face. She was wearing a mackintosh and a woolly scarf but she might just as well have been stark naked. Only once or twice in a lifetime does one meet a girl like that. The face was beautiful beyond words, but there was a flare to the nostrils and a curious little twist of the upper lip that had me wriggling all over my chair. Not even in Paris had I met a female who inspired such instant lust. She went on eating her doughnut. I went on goggling at her. Once, but only once, her eyes rose slowly to my face and there they rested, cool and shrewd, as if calculating something, then they fell again. She finished her doughnut and pushed back her chair.

  'Hang on,' I said.

  She paused, and for a second time those calculating brown eyes came up and rested on my face.

  'What did you say?'

  'I said, hang on. Don't go. Have another doughnut... or a Bath bun or something.'

  'If you want to talk to me, why don't you say so.'

  'I want to talk to you.'

  She folded her hands in her lap and waited. I began to talk. Soon she joined in. She was a biology student at Girton and, like me, she had a scholarship. Her father was English, her mother Persian. Her name was Yasmin Howcomely. What we said to one another is irrelevant. We went straight from the bunshop to my rooms and stayed there until the next morning. Eighteen hours we stayed together and at the end of it all I felt like a piece of pemmican, a strip of desiccated dehydrated meat. She was electric, that girl, and wicked beyond belief. Had she been Chinese and living in Peking, she could have gotten her Diploma of Merit with her hands tied behind her back and iron shackles on her feet.

  I went so dotty about her that I broke the golden rule and saw her a second time.

  And now it was twenty to ten in the evening and A. R. Woresley was bicycling home and I myself was in the Porter's Lodge at Girton asking the old porter kindly to inform Miss Yasmin Howcomely that Mr Oswald Cornelius wished to see her on a matter of the most urgent nature.

  She came down at once. 'Hop in the car,' I said. 'We have things to talk about.' She hopped in and I drove her back to Trinity where I gave the Trinity porter half a sovereign to look the other way as she slid past him to my rooms.

  'Keep your clothes on,' I said to her. 'This is business. How would you like to get rich?'

  'I'd like it very much,' she said.

  'Can I trust you completely?'

  'Yes,' she said.

  'You won't tell a soul?'

  'Go on,' she said. 'It sounds like fun already.'

  I then proceeded to tell her the entire story of A. R. Woresley's discovery.

  'My God!' she said when I had finished. 'This is a great scientific discovery! Who the hell is A. R. Woresley? He's going to be world famous! I'd like to meet him!'

  'You soon will,' I said.

  'When?' Being herself a bright young scientist, she was genuinely excited.

  'Wait,' I said. 'Here's the next instalment.' I then told her about my plans for exploiting the discovery and making a fortune by starting a sperm vault for the great geniuses of the world and all the kings.

  When I had finished, she asked me if I had any wine. I opened a bottle of claret and poured a glass for each of us. I foun
d some good dry biscuits to go with it.

  'It's sort of a funny idea, this sperm vault of yours,' she said, 'but I'm afraid it's not going to work.' She proceeded to put forward all the same old reasons that A. R. Woresley had given me earlier in the evening. I allowed her to spout on. Then I played my ace of spades.

  'Last time we met I told you the story of my Parisian caper,' I said. 'You remember that?'

  'The splendid Blister Beetle,' she said. 'I keep wishing you'd brought some back with you.'

  'I did.'

  'You're not serious!'

  'When you use only a pinhead at a time, five pounds of powder goes an awful long way. I've got about a pound left.'

  'Then that's the answer!' she cried, clapping her hands.

  'I know.'

  'Slip them a powder and they'll give us a thousand million of their little squigglers every time!'

  'Using you as the teaser.'

  'Oh, I'll be the teaser all right,' she said. 'I'll tease them to death. Even the ancient ones will be able to deliver! Show me this magic stuff.'

  I fetched the famous biscuit tin and opened it. The powder lay an inch deep in the tin. Yasmin dipped a finger in it and started to put it to her mouth. I grabbed her wrist. 'Are you mad?' I shouted. 'You've got about six full doses sticking to the skin of that finger!' I hung onto her wrist and dragged her to the bathroom and held her finger under the tap.

  'I want to try it,' she said. 'Come on, darling. Just give me a tiny bit.'

  'My God, woman,' I said, 'have you any idea what it does to you!'

  'You already told me.'

  'If you want to see it working, just watch what it does to A. R. Woresley when you give it to him tomorrow.'

  'Tomorrow?'

  'Absolutely,' I said.

  'Whoopee! When tomorrow?'

  'You get old Woresley to deliver and I win my bet,' I said. 'That means he's got to join us. Woresley, you and me. We'll make a great team.'

  'I like it,' she said. 'We'll rock the world.'

  'We'll rock more than that,' I said. 'We'll rock all the crowned heads of Europe. But we must rock Woresley first.'

  'He has to be alone.'

  'No problem,' I said. 'He's alone in the lab every evening between five-thirty and six-thirty. Then he goes home to his supper.'

  'How am I going to feed it to him?' she asked. 'The powder?'

  'In a chocolate,' I said. 'In a delicious little chocolate. It has to be small so that he'll pop the whole thing in his mouth in one go.'

  'And where pray do we get delicious little chocolates these days?' she asked. 'You forget there's been a war on.'