The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl Volume 2 Read online

  "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 as that, but after many hours of practice, Mr Bohien 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 Bohien 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 Bohien, 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 Bohien," 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 twothirds 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 Bohien. 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 Bohien 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 was 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 star