Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator c-2 Read online

  '"Look at me," he said softly. "I'm walking! It's a miracle!"

  '"It's Wonka-Vite!" I said. "The great rejuvenator. It makes you young again. How old do you feel now?"

  'He thought carefully about this question, then he said, "I feel almost exactly how I felt when I was fifty years old."

  '"How old were you just now, before you took the Wonka-Vite?" I asked him.

  '"Seventy last birthday," he answered.

  "That means," I said, "it has made you twenty years younger."

  '"It has, it has!" he cried, delighted. "I feel as frisky as a froghopper!"

  '"Not frisky enough," I told him. "Fifty is still pretty old. Let us see if I can't help you a bit more. Stay right where you are. I'll be back in a twink."

  'I ran to my work-bench and began to make one more pill of Wonka-Vite, using exactly the same mixture as before.

  '"Swallow this," I said, passing the second pill through the hatch. There was no hesitating this time. Eagerly, he popped it into his mouth and chased it down with a drink of water. And behold, within half a minute, another twenty years had fallen away from his face and body and he was now a slim and sprightly young Oompa-Loompa of thirty. He gave a whoop of joy and started dancing around the room, leaping high in the air and coming down on his toes. "Are you happy?" I asked him.

  '"I'm ecstatic!" he cried, jumping up and down. "I'm happy as a horse in a hay-field!" He ran out of the Testing Room to show himself off to his family and friends.

  'Thus was Wonka-Vite invented!' said Mr Wonka. 'And thus was it made safe for all to use!'

  'Why don't you use it yourself, then?' said Grandma Georgina. 'You told Charlie you were getting too old to run the factory, so why don't you just take a couple of pills and get forty years younger? Tell me that?'

  'Anyone can ask questions,' said Mr Wonka. 'It's the answers that count. Now then, if the three of you in the bed would care to try a dose…'

  'Just one minute!' said Grandma Josephine, sitting up straight. 'First I'd like to take a look at this seventy-year-old Oompa-Loompa who is now back to thirty!'

  Mr Wonka flicked his fingers. A tiny Oompa-Loompa, looking young and perky, ran forward out of the crowd and did a marvellous little dance in front of the three old people in the big bed. 'Two weeks ago, he was seventy years old and in a wheel-chair!' Mr Wonka said proudly. 'And look at him now!'

  'The drums, Charlie!' said Grandpa Joe. 'Listen! They're starting up again!'

  Far away down on the bank of the chocolate river, Charlie could see the Oompa-Loompa band striking up once more. There were twenty Oompa-Loompas in the band, each with an enormous drum twice as tall as himself, and they were beating a slow mysterious rhythm that soon had all the other hundreds of Oompa-Loompas swinging and swaying from side to side in a kind of trance. They then began to chant:

  'If you are old and have the shakes,

  If all your bones are full of aches,

  If you can hardly walk at all,

  If living drives you up the wall,

  If you're a grump and full of spite,

  If you're a human parasite,

  THEN WHAT YOU NEED IS WONKA-VITE!

  Your eyes will shine, your hair will grow,

  Your face and skin will start to glow,

  Your rotten teeth will all drop out

  And in their place new teeth will sprout.

  Those rolls of fat around your hips

  Will vanish, and your wrinkled lips

  Will get so soft and rosy-pink

  That all the boys will smile and wink

  And whisper secretly that this

  Is just the girl they want to kiss!

  But wait! For that is not the most

  Important thing of which to boast.

  Good looks you'll have, we've told you so,

  But looks aren't everything, you know.

  Each pill, as well, to you will give

  AN EXTRA TWENTY YEARS TO LIVE!

  So come, old friends, and do what's right!

  Let's make your lives as bright as bright!

  Let's take a dose of this delight!

  This heavenly magic dynamite!

  You can't go wrong, you must go right!

  IT'S WILLY WONKA'S WONKA-VITE!'

  14

  Recipe for Wonka-Vite

  'Here it is!' cried Mr Wonka, standing at the end of the bed and holding high in one hand a little bottle. 'The most valuable bottle of pills in the world! And that, by the way,' he said, giving Grandma Georgina a saucy glance, 'is why I haven't taken any myself. They are far too valuable to waste on me.'

  He held the bottle out over the bed. The three old ones sat up and stretched their scrawny necks, trying to catch a glimpse of the pills inside. Charlie and Grandpa Joe also came forward to look. So did Mr and Mrs Bucket. The label said:

  WONKA-VITE

  Each pill will make you YOUNGER by exactly 20 years

  CAUTION!

  Do not take more than the amount recommended by

  Mr. Wonka

  They could all see the pills through the glass. They were brilliant yellow, shimmering and quivering inside the bottle. Vibrating is perhaps a better word. They were vibrating so rapidly that each pill became a blur and you couldn't see its shape. You could only see its colour. You got the impression that there was something very small but incredibly powerful, something not quite of this world, locked up inside them and fighting to get out.

  'They're wriggling,' said Grandma Georgina. 'I don't like things that wriggle. How do we know they won't go on wriggling inside us after we've swallowed them? Like those Mexican jumping beans of Charlie's I swallowed a couple of years back. You remember that, Charlie?'

  'I told you not to eat them, Grandma.'

  'They went on jumping about inside me for a month,' said Grandma Georgina. 'I couldn't sit still!'

  'If I'm going to eat one of those pills, I jolly well want to know what's in it first,' said Grandma Josephine.

  'I don't blame you,' said Mr Wonka. 'But the recipe is extremely complicated. Wait a minute… I've got it written down somewhere…' He started digging around in the pockets of his coat-tails. 'I know it's here somewhere,' he said. 'I can't have lost it. I keep all my most valuable and important things in these pockets. The trouble is, there's such a lot of them…' He started emptying the pockets and placing the contents on the bed - a homemade catapult… a yo-yo… a trick fried-egg made of rubber… a slice of salami… a tooth with a filling in it… a stinkbomb… a packet of itching-powder… 'It must be here, it must be, it must,' he kept muttering. 'I put it away so carefully… Ah! Here it is!' He unfolded a crumpled piece of paper, smoothed it out, held it up and began to read as follows:

  RECIPE FOR MAKING WONKA-VITE

  Take a block of finest chocolate weighing one ton (or twenty sackfuls of broken chocolate, whichever is the easier). Place chocolate in very large cauldron and melt over red-hot furnace. When melted, lower the heat slightly so as not to burn the chocolate, but keep it boiling. Now add the following, in precisely the order given, stirring well all the time and allowing each item to dissolve before adding the next:

  THE HOOF OF A MANTICORE

  THE TRUNK (AND THE SUITCASE) OF AN ELEPHANT

  THE YOLKS OF THREE EGGS FROM A WHIFFLE-BIRD

  A WART FROM A WART-HOG

  THE HORN OF A COW (IT MUST BE A LOUD HORN)

  THE FRONT TAIL OF A COCKATRICE

  SIX OUNCES OF SPRUNGE FROM A YOUNG SLIMESCRAPER

  TWO HAIRS (AND ONE RABBIT) FROM THE HEAD OF A HIPPOCAMPUS

  THE BEAK OF A RED-BREASTED WILBATROSS

  A CORN FROM THE TOE OF A UNICORN

  THE FOUR TENTACLES OF A QUADROPUS

  THE HIP (AND THE PO AND THE POT) OF A HIPPOPOTAMUS

  THE SNOUT OF A PROGHOPPER

  A MOLE FROM A MOLE

  THE HIDE (AND THE SEEK) OF A SPOTTED WHANGDOODLE

  THE WHITES OF TWELVE EGGS FROM A TREE-SQUEAK

  THE THREE FEET OF A SNOZZWANGER (IF YOU