The Umbrella Man and Other Stories
Read The Umbrella Man and Other Stories Online
Authors: Roald Dahl
A DANGEROUS WAGER . . .
“No, no. I make you a good bet. I am rich man and I am sporting man also. Listen to me. Outside de hotel iss my car. Iss very fine car. American car from your country. Cadillac—”
“Hey, now. Wait a minute.” The boy leaned back in his deck chair and he laughed. “I can’t put up that sort of property. This is crazy.”
“Not crazy at all. You strike lighter ten times running and Cadillac is yours. You like to have dis Cadillac, yes?”
“Sure, I’d like to have a Cadillac.” The boy was still grinning.
“All right. Fine. We make a bet and I put up my Cadillac.”
“And what do I put up?”
The little man carefully removed the red band from his still unlighted cigar. “I never ask you, my friend, to bet something you cannot afford. You understand?”
“Then what do I bet?”
“I make it very easy for you, yes?”
“OK. You make it easy.”
“Some small ting you can afford to give away, and if you happen to lose it you would not feel too bad. Right?”
“Such as what?”
“Such as, perhaps, the little finger on your left hand.”
“My what?” The boy stopped grinning.
—from “Man from the South”
Books by Roald Dahl
The BFG
Boy: Tales of Childhood
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Danny the Champion of the World
Dirty Beasts
The Enormous Crocodile
Esio Trot
Fantastic Mr. Fox
George’s Marvelous Medicine
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
Going Solo
James and the Giant Peach
The Magic Finger
Matilda
The Minpins
The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets
Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes
Skin and Other Stories
The Twits
The Umbrella Man and Other Stories
The Vicar of Nibbleswicke
The Witches
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More
Roald Dahl
speak
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Speak
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First published in Great Britain as
The Great Automatic Grammatizator
by Hamish Hamilton Limited, 1996
First published in the United States of America by Viking, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998
Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000
This edition published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2003, 2010
Copyright © Roald Dahl Nominee Limited, 1996
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following stories from
Kiss Kiss
: “Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat,” “The Landlady,” and “Royal Jelly,” copyright © 1959 by Roald Dahl; copyright renewed 1987 by Roald Dahl. “Parson’s Pleasure,” copyright © 1958 by Roald Dahl; copyright renewed 1986 by Roald Dahl. “The Way Up to Heaven,” copyright © 1954 by Roald Dahl; copyright renewed 1982 by Roald Dahl. By permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
“The Great Automatic Grammatizator,” “Man from the South,” “Taste,” and “Neck” were published in
Someone Like You
(Knopf). Copyright © 1948, 1949, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1961 by Roald Dahl.
“The Butler,” “The Umbrella Man,” and “Vengeance Is Mine Inc.” were published in
More Tales of the Unexpected
(Michael Joseph, London). Copyright © 1973, 1980 by Roald Dahl.
“Katina” was published in
Over to You
(Reynal & Hitchcock). Copyright © 1946 by Roald Dahl.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Dahl, Roald
The umbrella man and other stories / Roald Dahl.
p. cm.
Summary: Thirteen stories, selected for teenagers, from Dahl’s adult writings, including “The Great Automatic Grammatizator,” “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat,” and “Vengeance Is Mine Inc.”
1. Short stories, English. [1. Short stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.D1515Um 1998 97-32549 CIP AC
ISBN: 978-1-101-63628-2
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
ONTENTS
The Great Automatic Grammatizator
Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat
“Well, Knipe, my boy. Now that it’s finished, I just called you in to tell you I think you’ve done a fine job.”
Adolph Knipe stood still in front of Mr. Bohlen’s desk. There seemed to be no enthusiasm in him at all.
“Aren’t you pleased?”
“Oh yes, Mr. Bohlen.”
“Did you see what the papers said this morning?”
“No sir, I didn’t.”
The man behind the desk pulled a folded newspaper towards him, and began to read: “The building of the great automatic computing engine, ordered by the government some time ago, is now complete. It is probably the fastest electronic calculating machine in the world today. Its function is to satisfy the ever-increasing need of science, industry, and administration for rapid mathematical calculation which, in the past, by traditional methods, would have been physically impossible, or would have required more time than the problems justified. The speed with which the new engine works, said Mr. John Bohlen, head of the firm of electrical engineers
mainly responsible for its construction, may be grasped by the fact that it can provide the correct answer in five seconds to a problem that would occupy a mathematician for a month. In three minutes, it can produce a calculation that by hand (if it were possible) would fill half a million sheets of foolscap paper. The automatic computing engine uses pulses of electricity, generated at the rate of a million a second, to solve all calculations that resolve themselves into addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. For practical purposes there is no limit to what it can do . . . ”
Mr. Bohlen glanced up at the long, melancholy face of the younger man. “Aren’t you proud, Knipe? Aren’t you pleased?”
“Of course, Mr. Bohlen.”
“I don’t think I have to remind you that your own contribution, especially to the original plans, was an important one. In fact, I might go so far as to say that without you and some of your ideas, this project might still be on the drawing boards today.”
Adolph Knipe moved his feet on the carpet, and he watched the two small white hands of his chief, the nervous fingers playing with a paper clip, unbending it, straightening out the hairpin curves. He didn’t like the man’s hands. He didn’t like his face either, with the tiny mouth and the narrow purple-coloured lips. It was unpleasant the way only the lower lip moved when he talked.
“Is anything bothering you, Knipe? Anything on your mind?”
“Oh no, Mr. Bohlen. No.”
“How would you like to take a week’s holiday? Do you good. You’ve earned it.”
“Oh, I don’t know, sir.”
The older man waited, watching this tall, thin person who stood so sloppily before him. He was a difficult boy. Why couldn’t he stand up straight? Always drooping and untidy, with spots on his jacket, and hair falling all over his face.
“I’d like you to take a holiday, Knipe. You need it.”
“All right, sir. If you wish.”
“Take a week. Two weeks if you like. Go somewhere warm. Get some sunshine. Swim. Relax. Sleep. Then come back, and we’ll have another talk about the future.”
Adolph Knipe went home by bus to his two-room apartment. He threw his coat on the sofa, poured himself a drink of whisky, and sat down in front of the typewriter that was on the table. Mr. Bohlen was right. Of course he was right. Except that he didn’t know the half of it. He probably thought it was a woman. Whenever a young man gets depressed, everybody thinks it’s a woman.
He leaned forward and began to read through the half-finished sheet of typing still in the machine. It was headed “A Narrow Escape,” and it began “The night was dark and stormy, the wind whistled in the trees, the rain poured down like cats and dogs . . . ”
Adolph Knipe took a sip of whisky, tasting the malty-bitter flavour, feeling the trickle of cold liquid as it travelled down his throat and settled in the top of his stomach, cool at first, then spreading and becoming warm, making a little area of warmness in the gut. To hell with Mr. John Bohlen anyway. And to hell with the great electrical computing machine. To hell with . . .
At exactly that moment, his eyes and mouth began slowly to open, in a sort of wonder, and slowly he raised his head and became
still, absolutely motionless, gazing at the wall opposite with this look that was more perhaps of astonishment than of wonder, but quite fixed now, unmoving, and remaining thus for forty, fifty, sixty seconds. Then gradually (the head still motionless), a subtle change spreading over the face, astonishment becoming pleasure, very slight at first, only around the corners of the mouth, increasing gradually, spreading out until at last the whole face was open wide and shining with extreme delight. It was the first time Adolph Knipe had smiled in many, many months.
“Of course,” he said, speaking aloud, “it’s completely ridiculous.” Again he smiled, raising his upper lip and baring his teeth in a queerly sensual manner.