by Roald Dahl
‘Look, Mr Bohlen. With the sort of switchboard I’m rigging up, you’ll be able to write any sort of book you want.’
And this was true, for within another couple of months, the genius of Adolph Knipe had not only adapted the machine for novel writing, but had constructed a marvellous new control system which enabled the author to pre-select literally any type of plot and any style of writing he desired. There were so many dials and levers on the thing, it looked like the instrument panel of some enormous aeroplane.
First, by depressing one of a series of master buttons, the writer made his primary decision: historical, satirical, philosophical, political, romantic, erotic, humorous or straight. Then, from the second row (the basic buttons), he chose his theme: army life, pioneer days, civil war, world war, racial problem, wild west, country life, childhood memories, seafaring, the sea bottom and many, many more. The third row of buttons gave a choice of literary style: classical, whimsical, racy, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, feminine, etc. The fourth row was for characters, the fifth for wordage – and so on and so on – ten long rows of pre-selector buttons.
But that wasn’t all. Control had also to be exercised during the actual writing process (which took about fifteen minutes per novel), and to do this the author had to sit, as it were, in the driver’s seat, and pull (or push) a battery of labelled stops, as on an organ. By so doing, he was able continually to modulate or merge fifty different and variable qualities such as tension, surprise, humour, pathos and mystery. Numerous dials and gauges on the dashboard itself told him throughout exactly how far along he was with his work.
Finally, there was the question of ‘passion’. From a careful study of the books at the top of the best-seller lists for the past year, Adolph Knipe had decided that this was the most important ingredient of all – a magical catalyst that somehow or other could transform the dullest novel into a howling success – at any rate financially. But Knipe also knew that passion was powerful, heady stuff, and must be prudently dispensed – the right proportions at the right moments; and to ensure this, he had devised an independent control consisting of two sensitive sliding adjustors operated by foot-pedals, similar to the throttle and brake in a car. One pedal governed the percentage of passion to be injected, the other regulated its intensity. There was no doubt, of course – and this was the only drawback – that the writing of a novel by the Knipe methods was going to be rather like flying a plane and driving a car and playing an organ all at the same time, but this did not trouble the inventor. When all was ready, he proudly escorted Mr Bohlen into the machine house and began to explain the operating procedure for the new wonder.
‘Good God, Knipe! I’ll never be able to do all that! Dammit, man, it’d be easier to write the thing by hand!’
‘You’ll soon get used to it, Mr Bohlen, I promise you. In a week or two, you’ll be doing it without hardly thinking. It’s just like learning to drive.’
Well, it wasn’t quite as easy at that, but after many hours of practice, Mr Bohlen began to get the hang of it, and finally, late one evening, he told Knipe to make ready for running off the first novel. It was a tense moment, with the fat little man crouching nervously in the driver’s seat, and the tall toothy Knipe fussing excitedly around him.
‘I intend to write an important novel, Knipe.’
‘I’m sure you will, sir. I’m sure you will.’
With one finger, Mr Bohlen carefully pressed the necessary pre-selector buttons:
Master button – satirical
Subject – racial problem
Style – classical
Characters – six men, four women, one infant
Length – fifteen chapters
At the same time he had his eye particularly upon three organ stops marked power, mystery, profundity.
‘Are you ready, sir?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m ready.’
Knipe pulled the switch. The great engine hummed. There was a deep whirring sound from the oiled movement of fifty thousand cogs and rods and levers; then came the drumming of the rapid electrical typewriter, setting up a shrill, almost intolerable clatter. Out into the basket flew the typewritten pages – one every two seconds. But what with the noise and the excitement, and having to play upon the stops, and watch the chapter-counter and the pace-indicator and the passion-gauge, Mr Bohlen began to panic. He reacted in precisely the way a learner driver does in a car – by pressing both feet hard down on the pedals and keeping them there until the thing stopped.
‘Congratulations on your first novel,’ Knipe said, picking up the great bundle of typed pages from the basket.
Little pearls of sweat were oozing out all over Mr Bohlen’s face. ‘It sure was hard work, my boy.’
‘But you got it done, sir. You got it done.’
‘Let me see it, Knipe. How does it read?’
He started to go through the first chapter, passing each finished page to the younger man.
‘Good heavens, Knipe! What’s this!’ Mr Bohlen’s thin purple fish-lip was moving slightly as it mouthed the words, his cheeks were beginning slowly to inflate.
‘But look here, Knipe! This is outrageous!’
‘I must say it’s a bit fruity, sir.’
‘Fruity! It’s perfectly revolting! I can’t possibly put my name to this!’
‘Quite right, sir. Quite right.’
‘Knipe! Is this some nasty trick you’ve been playing on me?’
‘Oh no, sir! No!’
‘It certainly looks like it.’
‘You don’t think, Mr Bohlen, that you mightn’t have been pressing a little hard on the passion-control pedals, do you?’
‘My dear boy, how should I know.’
‘Why don’t you try another?’
So Mr Bohlen ran off a second novel, and this time it went according to plan.
Within a week, the manuscript had been read and accepted by an enthusiastic publisher. Knipe followed with one in his own name, then made a dozen more for good measure. In no time at all, Adolph Knipe’s Literary Agency had become famous for its large stable of promising young novelists. And once again the money started rolling in.
It was at this stage that young Knipe began to display a real talent for big business.
‘See here, Mr Bohlen,’ he said. ‘We still got too much competition. Why don’t we just absorb all the other writers in the country?’
Mr Bohlen, who now sported a bottle-green velvet jacket and allowed his hair to cover two-thirds of his ears, was quite content with things the way they were. ‘Don’t know what you mean, my boy. You can’t just absorb writers.’
‘Of course you can, sir. Exactly like Rockefeller did with his oil companies. Simply buy ’em out, and if they won’t sell, squeeze ’em out. It’s easy!’
‘Careful now, Knipe. Be careful.’
‘I’ve got a list here, sir, of fifty of the most successful writers in the country, and what I intend to do is offer each one of them a lifetime contract with pay. All they have to do is undertake never to write another word; and, of course, to let us use their names on our own stuff. How about that.’
‘They’ll never agree.’
‘You don’t know writers, Mr Bohlen. You watch and see.’
‘What about the creative urge, Knipe?’
‘It’s bunk! All they’re really interested in is the money – just like everybody else.’
In the end, Mr Bohlen reluctantly agreed to give it a try, and Knipe, with his list of writers in his pocket, went off in a large chauffeur-driven Cadillac to make his calls.
He journeyed first to the man at the top of the list, a very great and wonderful writer, and he had no trouble getting into the house. He told his story and produced a suitcase full of sample novels, and a contract for the man to sign which guaranteed him so much a year for life. The man listened politely, decided he was dealing with a lunatic, gave him a drink, then firmly showed him to the door.
The second writer on the list, when he saw Knipe wa
s serious, actually attacked him with a large metal paper-weight, and the inventor had to flee down the garden followed by such a torrent of abuse and obscenity as he had never heard before.
But it took more than this to discourage Adolph Knipe. He was disappointed but not dismayed, and off he went in his big car to seek his next client. This one was a female, famous and popular, whose fat romantic books sold by the million across the country. She received Knipe graciously, gave him tea and listened attentively to his story.
‘It all sounds very fascinating,’ she said. ‘But of course I find it a little hard to believe.’
‘Madam,’ Knipe answered. ‘Come with me and see it with your own eyes. My car awaits you.’
So off they went, and in due course, the astonished lady was ushered into the machine house where the wonder was kept. Eagerly, Knipe explained its workings, and after a while he even permitted her to sit in the driver’s seat and practise with the buttons.
‘All right,’ he said suddenly, ‘you want to do a book now?’
‘Oh yes!’ she cried. ‘Please!’
She was very competent and seemed to know exactly what she wanted. She made her own pre-selections, then ran off a long, romantic, passion-filled novel. She read through the first chapter and became so enthusiastic that she signed up on the spot.
‘That’s one of them out of the way,’ Knipe said to Mr Bohlen afterwards. ‘A pretty big one too.’
‘Nice work, my boy.’
‘And you know why she signed?’
‘Why?’
‘It wasn’t the money. She’s got plenty of that.’
‘Then why?’
Knipe grinned, lifting his lip and baring a long pale upper gum. ‘Simply because she saw the machine-made stuff was better than her own.’
Thereafter, Knipe wisely decided to concentrate only upon mediocrity. Anything better than that – and there were so few it didn’t matter much – was apparently not quite so easy to seduce.
In the end, after several months of work, he had persuaded something like seventy per cent of the writers on his list to sign the contract. He found that the older ones, those who were running out of ideas and had taken to drink, were the easiest to handle. The younger people were more troublesome. They were apt to become abusive, sometimes violent when he approached them; and more than once Knipe was slightly injured on his rounds.
But on the whole, it was a satisfactory beginning. This last year – the first full year of the machine’s operation – it was estimated that at least one half of all the novels and stories published in the English language were produced by Adolph Knipe upon the Great Automatic Grammatizator.
Does this surprise you?
I doubt it.
And worse is yet to come. Today, as the secret spreads, many more are hurrying to tie up with Mr Knipe. And all the time the screw turns tighter for those who hesitate to sign their names.
This very moment, as I sit here listening to the howling of my nine starving children in the other room, I can feel my own hand creeping closer and closer to that golden contract that lies over on the other side of the desk.
Give us strength, oh Lord, to let our children starve.
Royal Jelly
First published in Kiss Kiss (1960)
‘It worries me to death, Albert, it really does,’ Mrs Taylor said.
She kept her eyes fixed on the baby who was now lying absolutely motionless in the crook of her left arm.
‘I just know there’s something wrong.’
The skin on the baby’s face had a pearly translucent quality, and was stretched very tightly over the bones.
‘Try again,’ Albert Taylor said.
‘It won’t do any good.’
‘You have to keep trying, Mabel,’ he said.
She lifted the bottle out of the saucepan of hot water and shook a few drops of milk on to the inside of her wrist, testing for temperature.
‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Come on, my baby. Wake up and take a bit more of this.’
There was a small lamp on the table close by that made a soft yellow glow all around her.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Take just a weeny bit more.’
The husband watched her over the top of his magazine. She was half dead with exhaustion, he could see that, and the pale oval face, usually so grave and serene, had taken on a kind of pinched and desperate look. But even so, the drop of her head as she gazed down at the child was curiously beautiful.
‘You see,’ she murmured. ‘It’s no good. She won’t have it.’
She held the bottle up to the light, squinting at the calibrations.
‘One ounce again. That’s all she’s taken. No – it isn’t even that. It’s only three quarters. It’s not enough to keep body and soul together, Albert, it really isn’t. It worries me to death.’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘If only they could find out what was wrong.’
‘There’s nothing wrong, Mabel. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘Of course there’s something wrong.’
‘Dr Robinson says no.’
‘Look,’ she said, standing up. ‘You can’t tell me it’s natural for a six-weeks-old child to weigh less, less by more than two whole pounds than she did when she was born! Just look at those legs! They’re nothing but skin and bone!’
The tiny baby lay limply on her arm, not moving.
‘Dr Robinson said you was to stop worrying, Mabel. So did that other one.’
‘Ha!’ she said. ‘Isn’t that wonderful! I’m to stop worrying!’
‘Now, Mabel.’
‘What does he want me to do? Treat it as some sort of a joke?’
‘He didn’t say that.’
‘I hate doctors! I hate them all!’ she cried, and she swung away from him and walked quickly out of the room towards the stairs, carrying the baby with her.
Albert Taylor stayed where he was and let her go.
In a little while he heard her moving about in the bedroom directly over his head, quick nervous footsteps going tap tap tap on the linoleum above. Soon the footsteps would stop, and then he would have to get up and follow her, and when he went into the bedroom he would find her sitting beside the cot as usual, staring at the child and crying softly to herself and refusing to move.
‘She’s starving, Albert,’ she would say.
‘Of course she’s not starving.’
‘She is starving. I know she is. And Albert?’
‘Yes?’
‘I believe you know it too, but you won’t admit it. Isn’t that right?’
Every night now it was like this.
Last week they had taken the child back to the hospital, and the doctor had examined it carefully and told them that there was nothing the matter.
‘It took us nine years to get this baby, Doctor,’ Mabel had said. ‘I think it would kill me if anything should happen to her.’
That was six days ago and since then it had lost another five ounces.
But worrying about it wasn’t going to help anybody, Albert Taylor told himself. One simply had to trust the doctor on a thing like this. He picked up the magazine that was still lying on his lap and glanced idly down the list of contents to see what it had to offer this week:
AMONG THE BEES IN MAY
HONEY COOKERY
THE BEE FARMER AND THE B. PHARM.
EXPERIENCES IN THE CONTROL OF NOSEMA
THE LATEST ON ROYAL JELLY
THIS WEEK IN THE APIARY
THE HEALING POWER OF PROPOLIS
REGURGITATIONS
BRITISH BEEKEEPERS ANNUAL DINNER
ASSOCIATION NEWS
All his life Albert Taylor had been fascinated by anything that had to do with bees. As a small boy he used often to catch them in his bare hands and go running with them into the house to show to his mother, and sometimes he would put them on his face and let them crawl about over his cheeks and neck, and the astonishing thing about it all was that he never got stu
ng. On the contrary, the bees seemed to enjoy being with him. They never tried to fly away, and to get rid of them he would have to brush them off gently with his fingers. Even then they would frequently return and settle again on his arm or hand or knee, any place where the skin was bare.
His father, who was a bricklayer, said there must be some witch’s stench about the boy, something noxious that came oozing out through the pores of the skin, and that no good would ever come of it, hypnotizing insects like that. But the mother said it was a gift given him by God, and even went so far as to compare him with St Francis and the birds.
As he grew older, Albert Taylor’s fascination with bees developed into an obsession, and by the time he was twelve he had built his first hive. The following summer he had captured his first swarm. Two years later, at the age of fourteen, he had no less than five hives standing neatly in a row against the fence in his father’s small back yard, and already – apart from the normal task of producing honey – he was practising the delicate and complicated business of rearing his own queens, grafting larvae into artificial cell cups, and all the rest of it.
He never had to use smoke when there was work to do inside a hive, and he never wore gloves on his hands or a net over his head. Clearly there was some strange sympathy between this boy and the bees, and down in the village, in the shops and pubs, they began to speak about him with a certain kind of respect, and people started coming up to the house to buy his honey.
When he was eighteen, he had rented one acre of rough pasture alongside a cherry orchard down the valley about a mile from the village, and there he had set out to establish his own business. Now, eleven years later, he was still in the same spot, but he had six acres of ground instead of one, two hundred and forty well-stocked hives, and a small house that he’d built mainly with his own hands. He had married at the age of twenty and that, apart from the fact that it had taken them over nine years to get a child, had also been a success. In fact everything had gone pretty well for Albert until this strange little baby girl came along and started frightening them out of their wits by refusing to eat properly and losing weight every day.