My Uncle Oswald Read online

  'What's the point of all this?'

  'The point is,' Yasmin said, 'I don't in the least mind being jokey about jokers. I don't mind treating them a little rough either if I have to. But I'll be damned if I'm going to start sticking hatpins into men like Renoir and Conrad and Stravinsky. Not after what I saw today.'

  'What did you see today?'

  'I told you, I saw a really great and wonderful old man.'

  'And he smote you.'

  'You're damn right he did.'

  'Let me ask you this, did he have a good time?'

  'Amazing,' she said. 'He had an amazing time.'

  'Tell me what happened.'

  'No,' she said. 'I don't mind telling you about the jokers. But the non-jokers are private.'

  'Was he in a wheelchair?'

  'Yes. And now he has to strap the paintbrush to his wrist because he can't hold it in his fingers.'

  'Because of arthritis?'

  'Yes.'

  'And you gave him the Blister Beetle?'

  'Of course.'

  'It wasn't too much for him?'

  'No,' she said. 'When you're that age you have to have it.'

  'And he gave you a picture,' I said, pointing to the brown paper parcel.

  She unwrapped it now and held it up for me to see. It was a small unframed canvas of a young rosy-cheeked girl with long golden hair and blue eyes, a wondrous little picture, a magic thing, a marvel to look at. A warm glow came out of it and filled the entire room. 'I didn't ask him for it,' Yasmin said. 'He made me take it. Isn't it beautiful?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'It is beautiful.'

  16

  The effect that Renoir had upon Yasmin during that dramatic visit to Essoyes did not, thank heaven, take all the fun out of our future operations. I myself have always found it difficult to treat anything too seriously and I believe the world would be a better place if everyone followed my example. I am completely without ambition. My motto - 'It is better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task' - should be well known to you by now. All I want out of life is to enjoy myself. But before one can achieve this happy end one must obviously get hold of a lot of money. Money is essential to a sybarite. It is the key of the kingdom. To which the carping reader will almost certainly reply, 'You say you are without ambition, but do you not realize that the desire for wealth is in itself one of the most obnoxious ambitions of them all?'

  This is not necessarily true. It is the manner in which one acquires wealth that determines whether or not it is obnoxious. I myself am scrupulous about the methods I employ. I refuse to have anything to do with moneymaking unless the process obeys two golden rules. First, it must amuse me tremendously. Second, it must give a great deal of pleasure to those from whom I extract the loot. This is a simple philosophy and I recommend it wholeheartedly to all business tycoons, casino operators, Chancellors of the Exchequer and Budget Directors everywhere.

  Two things stood out vividly during this period. First, the unusual sense of fulfilment Yasmin was getting from each artist she visited. She would emerge from house or studio with eyes shining like stars and a bright red rose on each cheek. All of which caused me to ruminate many times upon the sexual dexterity of men of outstanding creative genius. Did this prodigious creativity of theirs spill over into other fields? And if so, did they know deep secrets and magic methods of exciting a lady that were beyond the reach of ordinary mortals like me? The red roses upon Yasmin's cheeks and the shine in her eyes made me suspect, a trifle reluctantly let me say, that this was so.

  The second surprising facet of the whole operation was its extraordinary simplicity. Yasmin never seemed to have the slightest trouble in getting her man to deliver the goods. Mind you, the more one thinks about this, the more obvious it becomes that she never was going to have any trouble in the first place. Men are by nature polygamous creatures. Add to that the well-substantiated fact that supreme creative artists tend to be more viripotent than their fellows (just as they also tend to be heavier drinkers) and you can begin to see why no one was going to give Yasmin much of an argument. So what do you have? You have a bunch of supremely gifted and therefore hyperactive artists loaded with the very finest Sudanese Blister Beetle who find themselves staring goggle-eyed at a young female of indescribable beauty. They were jiggered. They were scrambled and dished up on buttered toast from the moment they swallowed the fatal chocolate. I am positive that the Pope of Rome himself, in the same situation, would have had his cassock off in nine minutes flat just like the rest of them.

  But I must go back for a moment to where we left off.

  After Renoir, we returned to our headquarters at the Ritz in Paris. From there we went after old Monet. We drove out to his splendid house at Giverny and I dropped Yasmin off at the gates in the approved fashion. She was inside for over three hours, but I didn't mind that. Knowing there would be lots of other long waits like this coming along, I had installed a small library in the back of the car-a complete Shakespeare, some Jane Austen, some Dickens, some Balzac and the latest Kipling.

  Yasmin emerged at last and I saw she had a large canvas under one arm. She was walking slowly, just sauntering along the sidewalk in a dreamy sort of way, but when she came closer, the first thing I noticed was that old glint of ecstasy in her eyes and the brilliant roses on her cheeks. She looked like a nice tame tigress who had just swallowed the Emperor of India and had liked the taste.

  'Everything all right?'

  'Fine,' she murmured.

  'Let's see the picture.'

  It was a shimmering study of waterlilies on the lake in Monet's Giverny garden, a real beauty.

  'He said I was a miracle worker.'

  'He's right.'

  'He said I was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his life. He asked me to stay.'

  Monet's semen, as it turned out, had a better count than Renoir's in spite of him being a year older, and I was fortunate in being able to make twenty-five straws. Admittedly, each straw had the minimum count of only twenty million sperm, but they would do. They would do very well. They would be worth hundreds of thousands, I reckoned, those Monet straws, in the years to come.

  Then we had a stroke of luck. In Paris at this time there was a dynamic and extraordinary producer of ballets called Diaghilev. Diaghilev had a talent for spotting great artists, and in 1919 he was regrouping his company after the war and preparing a new repertory of ballets. He had gathered around him for this purpose a group of remarkably gifted men. For example, at that very moment: Igor Stravinsky had come up from Switzerland to write the music for Diaghilev's Pulcinella. Pablo Picasso was designing the sets.

  Picasso was also doing the sets for Three-Cornered Hat.

  Henri Matisse had been hired to design the costumes and the decor for Le Chant de Rossignol.

  And another painter we had not heard of called Andre Derain was busy preparing the sets for La Boutique Fantasque.

  Stravinsky, Picasso and Matisse were all on our list. On the theory that Monsieur Diaghilev's judgement was probably sounder than ours, we decided to put Derain's name on as well. All of these men were in Paris.

  We took Stravinsky first. Yasmin walked right in on him while he was working at the piano on Pulcinella. He was more surprised than angry. 'Hello,' he said. 'Who are you?'

  'I have come all the way from England to offer you a chocolate,' she said.

  This absurd remark, which Yasmin was to use on many other occasions, disarmed completely this kind and friendly man. The rest was simple, and although I longed for salacious details, Yasmin remained mute.

  'You might at least tell me what he was like as a person.'

  'Sparkling bright,' she said. 'Oh, he was so sparkling bright and so quick and clever. He had a huge head and a nose like a boiled egg.'

  'Is he a genius?'

  'Yes,' she said, 'he's a genius. He's got the spark, the same as Monet and Renoir.'

  'What is this spark?' I said. 'Where is it? Is it in the eyes?'