My Uncle Oswald Part 1

MY UNCLE OSWALD.

by Roald Dahl.

I.

I AM BEGINNING, once again, to have an urge to salute my Uncle Oswald. I mean, of course, Oswald Hendryks Cornelius deceased, the connoisseur, the bon vivant, the collector of spiders, scorpions and walking-sticks, the lover of opera, the expert on Chinese porcelain, the seducer of women, and without much doubt the greatest fornicator of all time. Every other celebrated contender for that t.i.tle is diminished to a point of ridicule when his record is compared with that of my Uncle Oswald. Especially poor old Casanova. He comes out of the contest looking like a man who was suffering from a severe malfunction of his s.e.xual organ.

Fifteen years have pa.s.sed since I released for publication in 1964 the first small excerpt from Oswald's diaries. I took trouble at the time to select something unlikely to give offence, and that particular episode concerned, if you remember, a harmless and rather frivolous description of coitus between my uncle and a certain female leper in the Sinai desert.

So far so good. But I waited a full ten years more (1974) before risking the release of a second piece. And once again I was careful to choose something that was, at any rate by Oswald's standards, as nearly as possible suitable for reading by the vicar to Sunday school in the village church. That one dealt with the discovery of a perfume so potent that any man who sniffed it upon a woman was unable to prevent himself from ravis.h.i.+ng her on the spot.

No serious litigation resulted from the publication of this little bit of trivia. But there were plenty of repercussions of another kind. I found my mailbox suddenly clogged with letters from hundreds of female readers, all clamouring for a drop of Oswald's magic perfume. Innumerable men also wrote to me with the same request, including a singularly unpleasant African dictator, a British left-wing cabinet minister, and a cardinal from the Holy See. A Saudi-Arabian prince offered me an enormous sum in Swiss currency, and a man in a dark suit from the American Central Intelligence Agency called on me one afternoon with a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills. Oswald's perfume, he told me, could be used to compromise just about every senior Russian statesman and diplomat in the world, and his people wanted to buy the formula.

Unfortunately, I had not one drop of the magic liquid to sell, so there the matter ended.

Today, five years after publication of that perfume story, I have decided to permit the public yet another glimpse into my uncle's life. The section 1 have chosen comes from Volume XX, written in 1938, when Oswald was forty-three years old and in the prime of life. Many famous names are mentioned in this one, and there is obviously a grave risk that families and friends are going to take offence at some of the things Oswald has to say. I can only pray that those concerned will grant me indulgence and will understand that my motives are pure. For this is a doc.u.ment of considerable scientific and historical importance. It would be a tragedy if it never saw the light of day.

Here then is the extract from Volume XX of the Diaries of Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, word for word as he wrote it:

_London, July 1938_

HAVE JUST RETURNED from a satisfactory visit to the Lagonda works at Staines. W. 0. Bentley gave me lunch (salmon from the Usk and a bottle of Montrachet) and we discussed the extras for my new V12. He has promised me a set of horns that will play Mozart's "_Son gia mille e tre_" in perfect pitch. Some of you may think this to be a rather childish conceit, but it will serve as a nice incentive to be reminded, every time I press the b.u.t.ton, that good old Don Giovanni had by then deflowered 1003 buxom Spanish damsels. I told Bentley that the seats are to be upholstered in fine-grain alligator, and the panelling to be veneered in yew. Why yew? Simply because I prefer the colour and grain of English yew to that of any other wood.

But what a remarkable fellow this W. O. Bentley is. And what a triumph it was for Lagonda when he went over to them. It is somehow sad that this man, having designed and given his name to one of the finest cars in the world, should be forced out of his own company and into the arms of a rival. It means, however, that the new Lagondas are now peerless, and I for one would have no other machine. But this one isn't going to be cheap. It is costing me more thousands than I ever thought it possible to pay for an automobile.

Yet who cares about money? Not me, because I've always had plenty of it. I made my first hundred thousand pounds when I was seventeen, and later I was to make a lot more. Having said that, it occurs to me that I have never once throughout these journals made any mention of the manner in which I became a wealthy man.

Perhaps the time has come when I should do this. I think it has. For although these diaries are designed to be a history of the art of seduction and the pleasures of copulation, they would be incomplete without some reference also to the art of money-making and the pleasures attendant thereon.

Very well, then. I have talked myself into it. I shall proceed at once to tell you something about how I set about making money. But just in case some of you may be tempted to skip this particular section and go on to juicier things, let me a.s.sure you that there will be juice in plenty dripping from these pages. I wouldn't have it otherwise.

Great wealth, when uninherited, is usually acquired in one of four ways--by chicanery, by talent, by inspired judgement, or by luck. Mine was a combination of all four. Listen carefully and you shall see what I mean.

In the year 1912, when I was barely seventeen, I won a scholars.h.i.+p in natural sciences to Trinity College, Cambridge. I was a precocious youth and had taken the exam a year earlier than usual. This meant that I had a twelvemonth wait doing nothing, because Cambridge would not receive me until I was eighteen. My father therefore decided that I should fill in the time by going to France to learn the language. I myself hoped that I should learn a fair bit more than just the language in that splendid country. Already, you see, I had begun to acquire a taste for rakery and wenching among the London debutantes. Already, also, I was beginning to get a bit bored with these young English girls. They were, I decided, a pretty pithiess lot, and I was impatient to sow a few bushels of wild oats in foreign fields. Especially in France. I had been reliably informed that Parisian females knew a thing or two about the act of lovemaking that their London cousins had never dreamed of. Copulation, so rumour had it, was in its infancy in England.

On the evening before I was due to depart for France, I gave a small party at our family house in Cheyne Walk. My father and mother had purposely gone out to dinner at seven o'clock so that I might have the place to myself. I had invited a dozen or so friends of both s.e.xes, all of them about my own age, and by nine o'clock we were sitting around making pleasant talk, drinking wine, and consuming some excellent boiled mutton and dumplings. The front doorbell rang. I went to answer it, and on the doorstep there stood a middle-aged man with a huge moustache, a magenta complexion, and a pigskin suitcase. He introduced himself as Major Grout and asked for my father. I said he was out to dinner. "Good gracious me," said Major Grout. "He has invited me to stay. I'm an old friend."

"Father must have forgotten," I said. "I'm awfully sorry. You had better come in."

Now I couldn't very well leave the Major alone in the study reading _Punch_ while we were having a party in the next room, so I asked him if he'd care to come in and join us. He would indeed. He'd love to join us. So in he came, moustache and all, a beaming jovial old boy who settled down among us quite comfortably despite the fact that he was three times the age of anyone else present. He tucked into the mutton and polished off a whole bottle of claret in the first fifteen minutes.

"Excellent vittles," he said. "Is there any more wine?"

I opened another bottle for him, and we all watched with a certain admiration as he proceeded to empty that one as well. His cheeks were swiftly turning from magenta to a very deep purple and his nose seemed to be catching on fire. Halfway through the third bottle, he began to loosen up. He worked, he told us, in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and was home on leave. His job had to do with the Sudan Irrigation Service, and a very hot and arduous business it was. But fascinating. Lots of fun, y'know. And the wogs weren't too much trouble so long as one kept the old shambok handy all the time.

We sat round him, listening and not a little intrigued by this purple-faced creature from distant lands.

"A great country, the Sudan," he said. "It is enormous. It is remote. It is full of mysteries and secrets. Would you like me to tell you about one of the great secrets of the Sudan?"

"Very much, sir," we said. "Yes, please."

"One of its great secrets," he said, tipping another gla.s.s of wine down his throat, "a secret that is known only to a few old-timers out there like myself and to the natives, is a little creature called the Sudanese Blister Beetle or to give him his right name, _Cantharis vesiccitoria sudanii_."

"You mean a scarab?" I said.

"Certainly not," he said. "The Sudanese Blister Beetle is a winged insect, as much a fly as a beetle, and is about three-quarters of an inch long. It's very pretty to look at, with a brilliant iridescent sh.e.l.l of golden green."

"Why is it so secret?" we asked.

"These little beetles," the Major said, "are found only in one part of the Sudan. It's an area of about twenty square miles, north of Khartoum, and that's where the hashab tree grows. The leaves of the hashab tree are what the beetles feed on. Men spend their whole lives searching for these beetles. Beetle hunters, they are called. They are very sharp-eyed natives who know all there is to know about the haunts and habits of the tiny brutes. And when they catch them, they kill them and dry them in the sun and crunch them up into a fine powder. This powder is greatly prized among the natives, who usually keep it in small elaborately carved Beetle Boxes. A tribal chief will have his Beetle Box made of silver."

"But this powder," we said, "what do they do with it?"

"It's not what _they_ do with _it_," the Major said. "It's what _it_ does to _you_. One tiny pinch of that powder is the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world."

"The Spanish Fly!" someone shouted. "It's the Spanish Fly!"

"Well, not quite," the Major said, "but you're on the right track. The common Spanish Fly is found in Spain and southern Italy. The one I'm talking about is the _Sudanese Fly_, and although it's of the same family, it's a different kettle of fish altogether. It is approximately ten times as powerful as the ordinary Spanish Fly. The reaction produced by the little _Sudanese_ fellow is so incredibly vicious it is dangerous to use even in small doses."

"But they do use it?"

"Oh G.o.d, yes. Every wog in Khartoum and northwards uses the old Beetle. White men, the ones who know about it, are inclined to leave it alone because it's so d.a.m.n dangerous."

"Have _you_ used it?" someone asked.

The Major looked up at the questioner and gave a little smile under his enormous moustache. "We'll come to that in a moment or two, shall we?" he said.

"What does it actually do to you?" one of the girls asked.

"My G.o.d," the Major said, "what doesn't it do to you? It builds a fire under your genitals. It is both a violent aphrodisiac and a powerful irritant. It not only makes you uncontrollably randy but it also guarantees you an enormous and long-lasting erection at the same time. Could you give me another gla.s.s of wine, dear boy?"

I leaped up to fetch more wine. My guests had suddenly become very still. The girls were all staring at the Major, rapt and motionless, their eyes s.h.i.+ning like stars. The boys were staring at the girls, watching to see how they would react to these sudden indiscretions. I refilled the Major's gla.s.s.

"Your father always kept a decent cellar," he said. "And good cigars, too." He looked up at me, waiting.

"Would you like a cigar, sir?"

"That's very civil of you," he said.

I went to the dining-room and fetched my father's box of Montecristos. The Major put one in his breast pocket and another in his mouth. "I will tell you a true story if you like," he said, "about myself and the Blister Beetle."

"Tell us," we said. "Go on, sir."

"You'll like this story," he said, removing the cigar from his mouth and snipping off the end of it with a thumbnail. "Who has a match?"

I lit his cigar for him. Clouds of smoke enveloped his head, and through the smoke we could see his face dimly, but dark and soft like some huge over-ripe purple fruit.

"One evening," he began, "I was sitting on the veranda of my bungalow way upcountry about thirty miles north of Khartoum. It was hot as h.e.l.l and I'd had a hard day. I was drinking a strong whiskey and soda. It was my first that evening, and I was lying back in the deck chair with my feet resting on the little bal.u.s.trade that ran round the veranda. I could feel the whiskey hitting the lining of my stomach, and I can promise you there is no greater sensation at the end of a long day in a fierce climate than when you feel that first whiskey hitting your stomach and going through into the bloodstream. A few minutes later, I went indoors and got myself a second drink, then I returned to the veranda. I lay back again in the deck chair. My s.h.i.+rt was soaked with sweat but I was too tired to take a shower. Then all of a sudden I went rigid. I was just about to put the gla.s.s of whiskey to my lips and my hand froze, it literally froze in mid-air, and there it stayed with my fingers clenched around the gla.s.s. I couldn't move. I couldn't even speak. I tried to call out to my boy for help but I couldn't. Rigor mortis. Paralysis. My entire body had turned to stone."

"Were you frightened?" someone asked.

"Of course I was frightened," the Major said. "I was b.l.o.o.d.y terrified, especially out there in the Sudan desert miles from anywhere. But the paralysis didn't last very long. Maybe a minute, maybe two. I don't really know. But when I came to as it were, the first thing I noticed was a burning sensation in the region of my groin. 'Hullo,' I said, 'what the h.e.l.l's going on now?' But it was pretty obvious what was going on. The activity inside my trousers was becoming very violent indeed and within another few seconds my member was as stiff and erect as the mainmast of a topsail schooner."

"What do you mean, your _member?_" asked a girl whose name was Gwendoline.

"I expect you will catch on as we go along, my dear," the Major said.

"Carry on, Major," we said. "What happened next?"

"Then it started to throb," he said.

"What started to throb?" Gwendoline asked him.

"My member," the Major said. "I could feel every beat of my heart all the way along it. Pulsing and throbbing most terribly it was, and as tight as a balloon. You know those long sausage-shaped balloons children have at parties? I kept thinking about one of those, and with every beat of my heart it felt as if someone was pumping in more air and it was going to burst."

The Major drank some wine. Then he studied the ash on his cigar. We sat still, waiting.

"So of course I began trying to puzzle out what might have happened," he went on. "I looked at my gla.s.s of whiskey. It was where I always put it, on top of the little white-painted bal.u.s.trade surrounding the veranda. Then my eye travelled upward to the roof of the bungalow and to the edge of the roof and suddenly, presto! I'd got it! I knew for certain what must have happened."

"What?" we said, all speaking at once.

"A large Blister Beetle, taking an evening stroll on the roof, had ventured too close to the edge and had fallen off."

"Right into your gla.s.s of whiskey!" we cried.

"Precisely," the Major said. "And I, thirsting like mad in the heat, had gulped him down without looking."

The girl called Gwendoline was staring at the Major with huge eyes. "Quite honestly I don't see what all the fuss was about," she said. "One teeny weeny little beetle isn't going to hurt anyone."

"My dear child," the Major said, "when the Blister Beetle is dried and crushed, the resulting powder is called cantharidin. That's its pharmaceutical name. The Sudanese variety is called cantharidin sudanii. And this cantharidin sudanii is absolutely deadly. The maximum safe dose for a human, if there is such a thing as a safe dose, is one minim. A minim is one four-hundred-eightieth of a fluid ounce. a.s.suming I had just swallowed one whole fully grown Blister Beetle, that meant I'd received G.o.d knows how many hundreds of times the maximum dose."

"Jesus," we said. "Jesus Christ."

"The throbbing was so tremendous now, it was shaking my whole body," the Major said.

"A headache, you mean?" Gwendoline said.

"No," the Major said.

"What happened next?" we asked him.

"My member," the Major said, "was now like a whitehot rod of iron burning into my body. I leaped up from my chair and rushed to my car and drove like a madman for the nearest hospital, which was in Khartoum. I got there in forty minutes flat. I was scared fartless."

"Now wait just a minute," the Gwendoline creature said. "I'm still not quite following you. Exactly why were you so frightened?"

Boy, what a dreadful girl. I should never have invited her. The Major, to his great credit, ignored her completely this time.

"I dashed into the hospital," he went on, "and found the casualty room where an English doctor was st.i.tching up somebody's knife wound. 'Look at this!' I cried, taking it out and waving it at him."

"Waving _what_ at him, for heaven's sake?" the awful Gwendoline asked.

"Shut up, Gwendoline," I said.

"Thank you," the Major said. "The doctor stopped st.i.tching and regarded the object I was holding out to him with some alarm. I quickly told him my story. He looked glum. There was no antidote for Blister Beetle, he informed me. I was in grave trouble. But he would do his best. So they stomach-pumped me and put me to bed and packed ice all around my poor throbbing member."

"Who did?" someone asked. "Who's they?"

"A nurse," the Major answered. "A young Scottish nurse with dark hair. She brought the ice in small rubber bags and packed it round and kept the bags in place with a bandage."

"Didn't you get frostbite?"

"You can't get frostbite on something that's practically red hot," the Major said.

"What happened next?"

"They kept changing the ice every three hours day and night."

"Who, the Scottish nurse?"

"They took it in turns. Several nurses."

"Good G.o.d."

"It took two weeks to subside."

"Two weeks!" I said. "Were you all right afterwards, sir? Are you all right now?"

The Major smiled and took another sip of wine. "I am deeply touched," he said, "by your concern. You are obviously a young man who knows what comes first in this world, and what comes second. I think you will go far."

"Thank you, sir," I said. "But what happened in the end?"

"I was out of action for six months," the Major said, smiling wanly. "But that is no hards.h.i.+p in the Sudan. Yes, if you want to know, I'm all right now. I made a miraduious recovery."

That was the story Major Grout had told us at my little party on the eve of my departure for France. And it set me thinking. It set me thinking very deeply indeed. In fact, that night, as I lay in bed with my bags all packed on the floor, a tremendously daring plan began rapidly to evolve in my head. I say "daring" because by G.o.d it d.a.m.n well was daring when you consider I was only seventeen years old at the time. Looking back on it now, I take my hat off to myself for even contemplating that sort of action. But by the following morning, my mind was made up.