by Roald Dahl
‘Before we begin,’ he said, ‘I will present to de – to de referee de key of de car.’ He produced a car key from his pocket and gave it to me. ‘De papers,’ he said, ‘de owning papers and insurance are in de pocket of de car.’
Then the coloured maid came in again. In one hand she carried a small chopper, the kind used by butchers for chopping meat bones, and in the other a hammer and a bag of nails.
‘Good! You get dem all. Tank you, tank you. Now you can go.’ He waited until the maid had closed the door, then he put the implements on one of the beds and said, ‘Now we prepare ourselves, yes?’ And to the boy, ‘Help me, pleess, with dis table. We carry it out a little.’
It was the usual kind of hotel writing desk, just a plain rectangular table about four feet by three with a blotting pad, ink, pens and paper. They carried it out into the room away from the wall, and removed the writing things.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘a chair.’ He picked up a chair and placed it beside the table. He was very brisk and very animated, like a person organizing games at a children’s party. ‘And now de nails. I must put in de nails.’ He fetched the nails and he began to hammer them into the top of the table.
We stood there, the boy, the girl, and I, holding Martinis in our hands, watching the little man at work. We watched him hammer two nails into the table, about six inches apart. He didn’t hammer them right home; he allowed a small part of each one to stick up. Then he tested them for firmness with his fingers.
Anyone would think the son of a bitch had done this before, I told myself. He never hesitates. Table, nails, hammer, kitchen chopper. He knows exactly what he needs and how to arrange it.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘all we want is some string.’ He found some string. ‘All right, at last we are ready. Will you pleess to sit here at de table?’ he said to the boy.
The boy put his glass away and sat down.
‘Now place de left hand between dese two nails. De nails are only so I can tie your hand in place. All right, good. Now I tie your hand secure to de table – so.’
He wound the string around the boy’s wrist, then several times around the wide part of the hand, then he fastened it tight to the nails. He made a good job of it and when he’d finished there wasn’t any question about the boy being able to draw his hand away. But he could move his fingers.
‘Now pleess, clench de fist, all except for de little finger. You must leave de little finger sticking out, lying on de table.’
‘Ex-cellent! Ex-cellent! Now we are ready. Wid your right hand you manipulate de lighter. But one momint, pleess.’
He skipped over to the bed and picked up the chopper. He came back and stood beside the table with the chopper in his hand.
‘We are all ready?’ he said. ‘Mister referee, you must say to begin.’
The English girl was standing there in her pale blue bathing costume right behind the boy’s chair. She was just standing there, not saying anything. The boy was sitting quite still holding the lighter in his right hand, looking at the chopper The little man was looking at me.
‘Are you ready?’ I asked the boy.
‘I’m ready.’
‘And you?’ to the little man.
‘Quite ready,’ he said and he lifted the chopper up in the air and held it there about two feet above the boy’s finger, ready to chop. The boy watched it, but he didn’t flinch and his mouth didn’t move at all. He merely raised his eyebrows and frowned.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’
The boy said, ‘Will you please count aloud the number of times I light it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll do that.’
With his thumb he raised the top of the lighter, and again with the thumb he gave the wheel a sharp flick. The flint sparked and the wick caught fire and burned with a small yellow flame.
‘One!’ I called.
He didn’t blow the flame out; he closed the top of the lighter on it and he waited for perhaps five seconds before opening it again.
He flicked the wheel very strongly and once more there was a small flame burning on the wick.
‘Two!’
No one else said anything. The boy kept his eyes on the lighter. The little man held the chopper up in the air and he too was watching the lighter.
‘Three!’
‘Four!’
‘Five!’
‘Six!’
‘Seven!’ Obviously it was one of those lighters that worked. The flint gave a big spark and the wick was the right length. I watched the thumb snapping the top down on to the flame. Then a pause. Then the thumb raising the top once more. This was an all-thumb operation. The thumb did everything. I took a breath, ready to say eight. The thumb flicked the wheel. The flint sparked. The little flame appeared.
‘Eight!’ I said, and as I said it the door opened. We all turned and we saw a woman standing in the doorway, a small, black-haired woman, rather old, who stood there for about two seconds then rushed forward, shouting, ‘Carlos! Carlos!’ She grabbed his wrist, took the chopper from him, threw it on the bed, took hold of the little man by the lapels of his white suit and began shaking him very vigorously, talking to him fast and loud and fiercely all the time in some Spanish-sounding language. She shook him so fast you couldn’t see him any more. He became a faint, misty, quickly moving outline, like the spokes of a turning wheel.
Then she slowed down and the little man came into view again and she hauled him across the room and pushed him backwards on to one of the beds. He sat on the edge of it blinking his eyes and testing his head to see if it would still turn on his neck.
‘I am sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I am so terribly sorry that this should happen.’ She spoke almost perfect English.
‘It is too bad,’ she went on. ‘I suppose it is really my fault. For ten minutes I leave him alone to go and have my hair washed and I come back and he is at it again.’ She looked sorry and deeply concerned.
The boy was untying his hand from the table. The English girl and I stood there and said nothing.
‘He is a menace,’ the woman said. ‘Down where we live at home he has taken altogether forty-seven fingers from different people, and he has lost eleven cars. In the end they threatened to have him put away somewhere. That’s why I brought him up here.’
‘We were only having a little bet,’ mumbled the little man from the bed.
‘I suppose he bet you a car,’ the woman said.
‘Yes,’ the boy answered. ‘A Cadillac’
‘He has no car. It’s mine. And that makes it worse,’ she said, ‘that he should bet you when he has nothing to bet with. I am ashamed and very sorry about it all.’ She seemed an awfully nice woman.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘then here’s the key of your car.’ I put it on the table.
‘We were only having a little bet,’ mumbled the little man.
‘He hasn’t anything left to bet with,’ the woman said. ‘He hasn’t a thing in the world. Not a thing. As a matter of fact I myself won it all from him a long while ago. It took time, a lot of time, and it was hard work, but I won it all in the end.’ She looked up at the boy and she smiled, a slow sad smile, and she came over and put out a hand to take the key from the table.
I can see it now, that hand of hers; it had only one finger on it, and a thumb.
The Soldier
It was one of those nights that made him feel he knew what it was like to be a blind man: not the shadow of an image for his eyes to discern, not even the forms of the trees visible against the sky.
Out of the darkness he became aware of small rustling noises in the hedge, the breathing of a horse some distance away in the field, the soft thud of a hoof as it moved its foot; and once he heard the rush of a bird flying past him low overhead.
‘Jock,’ he said, speaking loud. ‘We’ll go home now.’ And he turned and began to walk back up the slope of the lane, the dog pulling ahead, showing the way in the dark.
It must be nearly midnight, he
thought. That meant that soon it would be tomorrow. Tomorrow was worse than today. Tomorrow was the worst of all because it was going to become today – and today was now.
Today had not been very nice, especially that business with the splinter.
Stop it, he told himself. There isn’t any sense thinking about it. It doesn’t do anyone any good thinking about things like that. Think about something else for a change. You can kick out a dangerous thought, you know, if you put another in its place. Go right back as far as you can go. Let’s have some memories of sweet days. The seaside holidays in the summer, wet sand and red buckets and shrimping nets and the slippery seaweedy rocks and the small clear pools and sea anemones and snails and mussels and sometimes one grey translucent shrimp hovering deep down in the beautiful green water.
But how could that splinter have got into the sole of his foot without him feeling it?
It is not important. Do you remember hunting for cowries along the margin of the tide, each one so fine and perfect it became a precious jewel to be held in the hand all the way home; and the little orange-coloured scallops, the pearly oyster shells, the tiny bits of emerald glass, a live hermit crab, a cockle, the spine of a skate, and once, but never to be forgotten, the dry seawashed jawbone of a human being with teeth in it, white and wonderful among the shells and pebbles. Oh Mummy, look what I’ve found! Look, Mummy, look!
But to go back to the splinter. She had really been rather unpleasant about that.
‘What do you mean, you didn’t notice?’ she had asked, scornful.
‘I just didn’t notice, that’s all.’
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me if I stick a pin into your foot you won’t feel it?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
And then she had jabbed him suddenly in the ankle with the pin she had been using to take out the splinter, and he hadn’t been watching so he didn’t know about it till she had cried out in a kind of horror. And when he had looked down, the pin was sticking into the flesh all by itself behind the ankle-bone, almost half of it buried.
‘Take it out,’ he had said. ‘You can poison someone like that.’
‘You mean you can’t feel it?’
‘Take it out, will you?’
‘You mean it doesn’t hurt?’
‘The pain is terrible. Take it out.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I said the pain is terrible. Didn’t you hear me?’
Why did they do things like that to him?
When I was down beside the sea, a wooden spade they gave to me, to dig the sandy shore. My holes were empty as a cup, and every time the sea came up, till it could come no more.
A year ago the doctor had said, ‘Shut your eyes. Now tell me whether I’m pushing this toe up or down.’
‘Up,’ he had said.
‘And now?’
‘Down. No, up. I think it’s up.’
It was peculiar that a neuro-surgeon should want to play with his toes.
‘Did I get them all right, doctor?’
‘You did very well.’
But that was a year ago. He had felt pretty good a year ago. The sort of things that happened now never used to happen then. Take, for example, just one item – the bathroom tap.
Why was the hot tap in the bathroom on a different side this morning? That was a new one.
It is not of the least importance, you understand, but it would be interesting to know why.
Do you think she could have changed it over, taken a spanner and a pipe-wrench and sneaked in during the night and changed it over?
Do you? Well – if you really want to know – yes. The way she’d been acting lately, she’d be quite capable of doing that.
A strange and difficult woman, that’s what she was. Mind you, she used not to be, but there’s no doubt at all that right now she was as strange and difficult as they come. Especially at night.
Yes, at night. That was the worst time of all – the night.
Why, when he put out his right hand in bed at night, could his fingers not feel what they were touching? He had knocked over the lamp and she had woken up and then sat up suddenly while he was feeling for it on the floor in the dark.
‘What are you doing now?’
‘I knocked over the lamp. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh Christ,’ she had said. ‘Yesterday it was the glass of water. What’s the matter with you?’
Once, the doctor had stroked the back of his hand with a feather, and he hadn’t been able to feel that either. But he had felt it when the man scratched him with a pin.
‘Shut your eyes. No – you mustn’t look. Shut them tight. Now tell me if this is hot or cold.’
‘Hot.’
‘And this?’
‘Cold.’
‘And this?’
‘Cold. I mean hot. Yes, it’s hot, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right,’ the doctor had said. ‘You did very well.’
But that was a year ago.
Why were the switches on the walls, just lately, always a few inches away from the well-remembered places when he felt for them in the dark?
Don’t think about it, he told himself. The only thing is not to think about it.
And while we’re on the subject, why did the walls of the living-room take on a slightly different shade of colour each day?
Green and blue-green and blue; and sometimes – sometimes slowly swimming like colours seen through the heat-haze of a brazier.
One by one, neatly, like index cards out of a machine, the little questions dropped.
Whose face appeared for one second at the window during dinner? Whose eyes?
‘What are you staring at?’
‘Nothing,’ he had answered. ‘But it would be nice if we could draw the curtains, don’t you think?’
‘Robert, what were you staring at?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why were you staring at the window like that?’
‘It would be nice if we could draw the curtains, don’t you think?’ he had answered.
He was going past the place where he had heard the horse in the field and now he could hear it again: the breathing, the soft hoof thuds, and the crunch of grass-cropping that was like the noise of a man munching celery.
‘Hello old horse,’ he said, calling loud into the darkness, ‘Hello old horse over there.’
Suddenly he heard the footsteps behind him, slow, long-striding footsteps close behind, and he stopped. The footsteps stopped. He turned around, searching the darkness.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘You here again?’
In the quiet that followed he could hear the wind moving the leaves in the hedge.
‘Are you going my way?’ he said.
Then he turned and walked on, the dog still pulling ahead, and the footsteps started after him again, but more softly now, as though the person were walking on toes.
He stopped and turned again.
‘I can’t see you,’ he said, ‘because it’s so dark. Are you someone I know?’
Again the silence, and the cool summer wind on his cheeks, and the dog tugging on the leash to get home.
‘All right,’ he called. ‘You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. But remember I know you’re there.’
Someone trying to be clever.
Far away in the night, over to the west and very high, he heard the faint hum of an aeroplane. He stopped again, head up, listening.
‘Miles away,’ he said. ‘Won’t come near here.’
But why, when one of them flew over the house, did everything inside him come to a stop, and his talking and what he was doing, while he sat or stood in a sort of paralysis waiting for the whistle-shriek of the bomb. That one after dinner this evening.
‘Why did you duck like that?’ she had asked.
‘Duck?’
‘Why did you duck? What are you ducking for?’
‘Duck?’ he had said again. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’<
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‘I’ll say you don’t,’ she had answered, staring at him hard with those hard, blue-white eyes, the lids dropping slightly, as always when there was contempt. The drop of her eyelids was something beautiful to him, the half-closed eyes and the way the lids dropped and the eyes became hooded when her contempt was extreme.
Yesterday, lying in bed in the early morning, when the noise of gunfire was just beginning far away down the valley, he had reached out with his left hand and touched her body for a little comfort.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Nothing, dear.’
‘You woke me up.’
‘I’m sorry.’
It would be a help if she would only let him lie closer to her in the early mornings when he began to hear the noise of gunfire.
He would soon be home now. Around the last bend of the lane he could see a light glowing pink through the curtain of the living-room window, and he hurried forward to the gate and through it and up the path to the front door, the dog still pulling ahead.
He stood on the porch, feeling around for the door-knob in the dark.
It was on the right when he went out. He distinctly remembered it being on the right-hand side when he shut the door half an hour ago and went out.
It couldn’t be that she had changed that over too? Just to fox him? Taken a bag of tools and quickly changed it over to the other side while he was out walking the dog?
He moved his hand over to the left – and the moment the fingers touched the knob, something small but violent exploded inside his head and with it a surge of fury and outrage and fear. He opened the door, shut it quickly behind him and shouted ‘Edna, are you there?’
There was no answer so he shouted again, and this time she heard him.
‘What do you want now? You woke me up.’
‘Come down here a moment, will you. I want to talk to you.’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ she answered. ‘Be quiet and come on up.’
‘Come here!’ he shouted. ‘Come here at once!’
‘I’ll be damned if I will. You come here.’
The man paused, head back, looking up the stairs into the dark of the second floor. He could see where the stair-rail curved to the left and went on up out of sight in the black towards the landing and if you went straight on across the landing you came to the bedroom, and it would be black in there too.