by Roald Dahl
"Let's do this very very slowly," she said. "Let's drive ourselves crazy with anticipation."
His eyes rested a moment on her face, then travelled away, all the way down the length of her body, and she saw him smile.
"Shall we be very stylish and dissipated, Conrad, and order a bottle of champagne? I can ask room service to bring it up, and you can hide in the bathroom when they come in."
"No," he said. "You've had enough to drink already. Stand up, please."
The tone of his voice caused her to stand up at once.
"Come here," he said.
She went close to him. He was still sitting on the bed, and now, without getting up, he reached forward and began to take off the rest of her clothes. He did this slowly and deliberately. His face had become suddenly rather pale.
"Oh, darling," she said, "how marvellous! You've got that famous thing! A real thick clump of hair growing out of each of your ears! You know what that means, don't you? It's the absolutely positive sign of enormous virility!" She bent down and kissed him on the ear. He went on taking off her clothes-the bra, the shoes, the girdle, the pants, and finally the stockings, all of which he dropped in a heap on the floor, The moment he had peeled off her last stocking and dropped it, he turned away. He turned right away from her as though she didn't exist, and now he began to undress himself.
It was rather odd to be standing so close to him in nothing but her own skin and him not even giving her a second look. But perhaps men did these things. Ed might have been an exception. How could she know? Conrad took off his white shirt first, and after folding it very carefully, he stood up and carried it to a chair and laid it on one of the arms. He did the same with his undershirt. Then he sat down again on the edge of the bed and started removing his shoes. Anna remained quite still, watching him. His sudden change of mood, his silence, his curious intensity, were making her a bit afraid. But they were also exciting her. There was a stealth, almost a menace in his movements, as though he were some splendid animal treading softly toward the kill. A leopard.
She became hypnotized watching him. She was watching his fingers, the surgeon's fingers, as they untied and loosened the laces of the left shoe, easing it off the foot, and placing it neatly half under the bed. The right shoe came next. Then the left sock and the right sock, both of them being folded together and laid with the utmost precision across the toes of the shoes. Finally the fingers moved up to the top of the trousers, where they undid one button and then began to manipulate the zipper. The trousers, when taken off, were folded along the creases, then carried over to the chair. The underpants followed.
Conrad, now naked, walked slowly back to the edge of the bed, and sat. Then at last, he turned his head and noticed her. She stood waiting…and trembling. He looked her slowly up and down. Then abruptly, he shot out a hand and took her by the wrist, and with a sharp pull he had her sprawled across the bed.
The relief was enormous. Anna flung her arms around him and held on to him tightly, oh so tightly, for fear that he might go away. She was in mortal fear that he might go away and not come back. And there they lay, she holding on to him as though he were the only thing left in the world to hold on to, and he, strangely quiet, watchful, intent, slowly disentangling himself and beginning to touch her now in a number of different places with those fingers of his, those expert surgeon's fingers. And once again she flew into a frenzy.
The things he did to her during the next few moments were terrible and exquisite. He was, she knew, merely getting her ready, preparing her, or as they say in the hospital, prepping her for the operation itself, but oh God, she had never known or experienced anything even remotely like this. And it was all exceedingly quick, for in what seemed to her no more than a few seconds, she had reached that excruciating point of no return where the whole room becomes compressed into a single tiny blinding speck of light that is going to explode and tear one to pieces at the slightest extra touch. At this stage, in a swift rapacious parabola, Conrad swung his body on top of her for the final act.
And now Anna felt her passion being drawn out of her as if a long live nerve were being drawn slowly out of her body, a long live thread of electric fire, and she cried out to Conrad to go on and on and on, and as she did so, in the middle of it all, somewhere above her, she heard another voice, and this other voice grew louder and louder, more and more insistent, demanding to be heard: "I said are you wearing something?" the voice wanted to know.
"Oh darling, what is it?"
"I keep asking you, are you wearing something?"
"Who, me?"
"There's an obstruction here. You must be wearing a diaphragm or some other appliance."
"Of course not, darling. Everything's wonderful. Oh, do be quiet."
"Everything is not wonderful, Anna."
Like a picture on the screen, the room swam back into focus. In the foreground was Conrad's face. It was suspended above her, on naked shoulders. The eyes were looking directly into hers. The mouth was still talking.
"If you're going to use a device, then for heaven's sake learn to introduce it in the proper manner. There is nothing so aggravating as careless positioning. The diaphragm has to be placed right back against the cervix."
"But I'm not wearing anything!"
"You're not? Well, there's still an obstruction."
Not only the room but the whole world as well seemed slowly to be sliding away from under her now.
"I feel sick," she said.
"You what?"
"I feel sick."
"Don't be childish, Anna."
"Conrad, I'd like you to go, please. Go now."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"Go away from me, Conrad!"
"That's ridiculous, Anna. Okay, I'm sorry I spoke. Forget it."
"Go away!" she cried, "Go away! Go away! Go away!"
She tried to push him away from her, but he was huge and strong and he had her pinned.
"Calm yourself," he said. "Relax. You can't suddenly change your mind like this, in the middle of everything. And for heaven's sake, don't start weeping."
"Leave me alone, Conrad, I beg you."
He seemed to be gripping her with everything he had, arms and elbows, hands and fingers, thighs and knees, ankles and feet. He was like a toad the way he gripped her. He was exactly like an enormous clinging toad, gripping and grasping and refusing to let go. She had seen a toad once doing precisely this. It was copulating with a frog on a stone beside a stream, and there it sat, motionless, repulsive, with an evil yellow gleam in its eye, gripping the frog with its two powerful front paws and refusing to let go "Now stop struggling, Anna. You're acting like a hysterical child. For God's sake, woman, what's eating you?"
"You're hurting me!" she cried.
"Hurting you?"
"It's hurting me terribly!"
She told him this only to get him away.
"You know why it's hurting?" he said.
"Conrad! Please!"
"Now wait a minute, Anna. Allow me to explain.
"No!" she cried. "I've had enough explaining!"
"My dear woman.
"No!" She was struggling desperately to free herself, but he still had her pinned.
"The reason it hurts," he went on, "is that you are not manufacturing any fluid. The mucosa is virtually dry.
"Stop!"
"The actual name is senile atrophic vaginitis. It comes with age, Anna. That's why it's called senile vaginitis. There's not much one can do…"
At that point, she started to scream. The screams were not very loud, but they were screams nevertheless, terrible, agonized stricken screams, and after listening to them for a few seconds, Conrad, in a single graceful movement, suddenly rolled away from her and pushed her to one side with both hands. He pushed her with such force that she fell on to the floor.
She climbed slowly to her feet, and as she staggered into the bathroom, she was crying "Ed!…Ed!…Ed!… " in a queer supplicating voice. The d
oor shut.
Conrad lay very still listening to the sounds that came from behind the door. At first, he heard only the sobbing of the woman, but a few seconds later, above the sobbing, he heard the sharp metallic click of a cupboard being opened. Instantly, he sat up and vaulted off the bed and began to dress himself with great speed. His clothes, so neatly folded, lay ready at hand, and it took him no more than a couple of minutes to put them on. When that was done, he crossed to the minor and wiped the lipstick off his face with a handkerchief. He took a comb from his pocket and ran it through his fine black hair. He walked once round the bed to see if he had forgotten anything, and then, carefully, like a man who is tiptoeing from a room where a child is sleeping, he moved out into the corridor, closing the door softly behind him.
Bitch
I HAVE so far released for publication only one episode from Uncle Oswald's diaries. It concerned, some of you may remember, a carnal encounter between my uncle and a Syrian female leper in the Sinai Desert. Six years have gone by since its publication and nobody has yet come forward to make trouble. I am therefore encouraged to release a second episode from these curious pages. My lawyer has advised against it. He points out that some of the people are still living and are easily recognizable. He says I will be sued mercilessly. Well, let them sue. I am proud of my uncle. He knew how life should be lived. In a preface to the first episode I said that Casanova's Memoirs read like a Parish Magazine beside Uncle Oswald's diaries, and that the great lover himself, when compared with my uncle, appears positively undersexed. I stand by that, and given time I shall prove it to the world. Here then is a little episode from Volume XXIII, precisely as Uncle Oswald wrote it: PARIS Wednesday Breakfast at ten. I tried the honey. It was delivered yesterday in an early Sèvres sucrier which had the lovely canary-coloured ground known as Jon quille. "From Suzie,' the note said, "and thank you.' It is nice to be appreciated. And the honey was interesting. Suzie Jolibois had, among other things, a small farm south of Casablanca, and was fond of bees. Her hives were set in the midst of a plantation of cannabis indica, and the bees drew their nectar exclusively from this source. They lived, those bees, in a state of perpetual euphoria and were disinclined to work. The honey was therefore very scarce. I spread a third piece of toast. The stuff was almost black. It had a pungent aroma. The telephone rang. I put the receiver to my ear and waited. I never speak first when called. After all, I'm not phoning them. They're phoning me.
"Oswald! Are you there?"
I knew the voice. "Yes, Henri," I said. "Good morning."
"Listen!" he said, speaking fast and sounding excited. "I think I've got it! I'm almost certain I've got it! Forgive me if I'm out of breath, but I've just had a rather fantastic experience. It's all right now. Everything's fine. Will you come over?"
"Yes," I said. "I'll come over." I replaced the receiver and poured myself another cup of coffee. Had Henri really done it at last? If he had, then I wanted to be around to share the fun.
I must pause here to tell you how I met Henri Bione. Some three years ago I drove down to Provence to spend a summer weekend with a lady who was interesting to me simply because she possessed an extraordinarily powerful muscle in a region where other women have no muscles at all. An hour after my arrival, I was strolling alone on the lawn beside the river when a small dark man approached me. He had black hairs on the backs of his hands and he made me a little bow and said, "Henri Biotte, a fellow guest."
"Oswald Cornelius," I said.
Henri Biotte was as hairy as a goat. His chin and cheeks were covered with bristly black hair and thick tufts of it were sprouting from his nostrils. "May I join you?" he said, falling into step beside me and starting immediately to talk. And what a talker he was! How Gallic, how excitable. He walked with a mad little hop, and his fingers flew as if he wanted to scatter them to the four winds of heaven, and his words went off like firecrackers, with terrific speed. He was a Belgian chemist, he said, working in Paris. He was an olfactory chemist. He had devoted his life to the study of olfaction.
"You mean smell?" I said.
"Yes, yes!" he cried. "Exactly! I am an expert on smells. I know more about smells than anyone else in the world!"
"Good smells or bad?" I asked, trying to slow him down.
"Good smells, lovely smells, glorious smells!" he said. "I make them! I can make any smell you want!"
He went on to tell me he was the chief perfume blender to one of the great couturiers in the city. And his nose, he said, placing a hairy finger on the tip of his hairy proboscis, probably looked just like any other nose, did it not? I wanted to tell him it had more hairs sprouting from the noseholes than wheat from the prairies and why didn't he get his barber to snip them out, but instead I confessed politely that I could see nothing unusual about it.
"Quite so," he said. "But in actual fact it is a smelling organ of phenomenal sensitivity. With two sniffs it can detect the presence of a single drop of macroylic musk in a gallon of geranium oil."
"Extraordinary," I said.
"On the Champs Elysées," he went on, "which is a wide thoroughfare, my nose can identify the precise perfume being used by a woman walking on the other side of the street."
"With the traffic in between?"
"With heavy traffic in between," he said.
He went on to name two of the most famous perfumes in the world, both of them made by the fashion-house he worked for. "Those are my personal creations," he said modestly. "I blended them myself. They have made a fortune for the celebrated old bitch who runs the business."
"But not for you?"
"Me! I am but a poor miserable employee on a salary," he said, spreading his palms and hunching his shoulders so high they touched his earlobes. "One day, though, I shall break away and pursue my dream."
"You have a dream?"
"I have a glorious, tremendous, exciting dream, my dear sir!"
"Then why don't you pursue it?"
"Because first I must find a man farsighted enough and wealthy enough to back me."
Ah-ha, I thought, so that's what it's all about. "With a reputation like yours, that shouldn't be too difficult," I said.
"The sort of rich man I seek is hard to find," he said. "He must be a sporty gambler with a very keen appetite for the bizarre."
That's me, you clever little bugger, I thought. "What is this dream you wish to pursue?" I asked him. "Is it making perfumes?"
"My dear fellow!" he cried. "Anyone can make perfumes! I'm talking about the perfume! The only one that counts!"
"Which would that be?"
"Why, the dangerous one, of course! And when I have made t, I shall rule the world!"
"Good for you," I said.
"I am not joking, Monsieur Cornelius. Would you permit me to explain what I am driving at?"
"Go ahead."
"Forgive me if I sit down," he said, moving toward a bench. "I had a heart attack last April and I have to be careful."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Oh, don't be sorry. All will be well so long as I don't overdo things."
It was a lovely afternoon and the bench was on the lawn near the riverbank and we sat down on it. Beside us, the river flowed slow and smooth and deep, and there were little clouds of waterflies hovering over the surface. Across the river there were willows along the bank and beyond the willows an emerald-green meadow, yellow with buttercups, and a single cow grazing. The cow was brown and white.
"I will tell you what kind of perfume I wish to make," he said. "But it is essential I explain a few other things to you on the way or you will not fully understand. So please bear with me a while." One hand lay limp upon his lap, the hairy part upward. It looked like a black rat. He was stroking it gently with the fingers of the other hand.
"Let us consider first," he said, "the phenomenon that occurs when a dog meets a bitch in heat. The dog's sexual drive is tremendous. All self-control disappears. He has only one thought in his head, which is to fornicate on the spot, and
unless he is prevented by force, he will do so. But do you know what it is that causes this tremendous sex-drive in a dog?"
"Smell," I said.
"Precisely, Monsieur Cornelius. Odorous molecules of a special conformation enter the dog's nostrils and stimulate his olfactory nerveendings. This causes urgent signals to be sent to the olfactory bulb and thence to the higher brain centres. It is all done by smell. If you sever a dog's olfactory nerve, he will lose interest in sex. This is also true of many other mammals, but it is not true of man. Smell has nothing to do with the sexual appetite of the human male. He is stimulated in this respect by sight, by tactility, and by his lively imagination. Never by smell."
"What about perfume?" I said.
"It's all rubbish!" he answered. "All those expensive scents in small bottles, the ones I make, they have no aphrodisiac effect at all upon a man. Perfume was never intended for that purpose. In the old days, women used it to conceal the fact that they stank. Today, when they no longer stink, they use it purely for narcissistic reasons. They enjoy putting it on and smelling their own good smells. Men hardly notice the stuff. I promise you that."
"I do," I said.
"Does it stir you physically?"
"No, not physically. Aesthetically, yes."
"You enjoy the smell. So do I. But there are plenty of other smells I enjoy more the bouquet of a good Lafite, the scent of a fresh Cornice pear, or the smell of the air blowing in from the sea on the Brittany coast."
A trout jumped high in midstream and the sunlight flashed on its body. "You must forget," said Monsieur Biotte, "all the nonsense about musk and ambergris and the testicular secretions of the civet cat. We make our perfumes from chemicals these days. If I want a musky odour I will use ethylene sebacate. Phenylacetic acid will give me civet and benzaldehyde will provide the smell of almonds. No sir, I am no longer interested in mixing up chemicals to make pretty smells."
For some minutes his nose had been running slightly, wetting the black hairs in his nostrils. He noticed it and produced a handkerchief and gave it a blow and a wipe. "What I intend to do," he said, "is to produce a perfume which will have the same electrifying effect upon a man as the scent of a bitch in heat has upon a dog! One whiff and that'!! be it! The man will lose all control. He'll rip off his pants and ravish the lady on the spot!"