Roald Dahl - My Uncle Oswald

“Agreed,” I said. “But by the time a man becomes a recognized genius, his father is dead.”

“So your scheme is fraudulent.”

“We’re out to make money,” I said, “not to breed geniuses. These women aren’t going to want Sibelius’s father’s sperm anyway. What they’ll be after is a nice hot injection of twenty million living spermatozoa from the great man himself.”

A. R. Woresley had his awful pipe going now and clouds of smoke enveloped his head. “I will admit,” he said, “yes, I am prepared to grant you that you could find wealthy female buyers for the sperm of geniuses and royalty. But your entire bizarre scheme is unfortunately doomed to failure for the simple reason that you will be unable to obtain your supplies of sperm. You don’t seriously believe that great men and kings will be prepared to go through the . . . the extremely embarrassing motions of producing an ejaculation of sperm for some totally unknown young man.”

“That’s not the way I’ll do it.”

“How will you do it?”

“The way I’ll do it, not a single one of them will be able to resist becoming a donor.”

“Rubbish. I’d resist it.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” I put a thin slice of apple in my mouth and ate it. I raised the glass of port to my nose. It had a bouquet of mushrooms. I took a sip and rolled it on my tongue. The flavour filled my mouth. It reminded me of pot-pourri . For a few moments I was captivated by the loveliness of the wine I was tasting. And what a remarkable follow-through it had after the swallow. The flavour lingered in the back of the nose for a long time. “Give me three days,” I said, “and I guarantee that I’ll have in my possession one complete and genuine ejaculation of your own sperm together with a statement signed by you certifying it is yours.”

“Don’t be so foolish, Cornelius. You can’t make me do something I don’t want to do.”

“That’s all I’m prepared to say.”

He squinted at me through the pipe smoke. “You wouldn’t threaten me in some way, would you?” he said. “Or torture me?”

“Of course not. The act would be of your own free will. Would you like to bet me that I won’t succeed?”

“Of my own free will, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll bet you anything you like.”

“Right,” I said. “The bet is that if you lose, you promise the following: firstly, to withhold publication until we’ve each made a million. Secondly, to become a full and enthusiastic partner. Thirdly, to supply all the technical knowledge necessary for me to set up the sperm vault.”

“I don’t mind making a promise I’ll never have to keep,” he said.

“Then you promise?”

“I promise,” he said.

I paid the bill and offered to drive A. R. Woresley home in my motor car. “Thank you,” he said, “but I have my bicycle. We poor dons are not as affluent as some.”

“You soon will be,” I said.

I stood on Trinity Street and watched him pedalling away into the night. It was still only about nine thirty p.m. I decided to make my next move immediately. I got into the motor car and headed straight for Girton.

GIRTON, in case you don’t know it, was and still is a ladies’ college and a part of the university. Within those sombre walls there dwelt in 1919 a cluster of young ladies so physically repulsive, so thick-necked and long-snouted I could hardly bring myself to look at them. They reminded me of crocodiles. They sent shivers down the back of my neck as I passed them in the street. They seldom washed and the lenses of their spectacles were smudged with greasy fingermarks. Brainy they certainly were. Many were brilliant. To my mind, that was small compensation.

But wait.

Only one week before, I had discovered among these zoological specimens a creature of such dazzling loveliness I refused to believe she was a Girton girl. Yet she was. I had discovered her in a bunshop at lunchtime. She was eating a doughnut. I asked if I might sit at her table. She nodded and went on eating. And there I sat, gaping and goggling at her as though she were Cleopatra herself reincarnated. Never in my short life had I seen a girl or a woman with such a stench of salacity about her. She was absolutely soaked in sex. It made no difference that there was sugar and doughnut all over her face. She was wearing a mackintosh and a woolly scarf but she might just as well have been stark naked. Only once or twice in a lifetime does one meet a girl like that. The face was beautiful beyond words, but there was a flare to the nostrils and a curious little twist of the upper lip that had me wriggling all over my chair. Not even in Paris had I met a female who inspired such instant lust. She went on eating her doughnut. I went on goggling at her. Once, but only once, her eyes rose slowly to my face and there they rested, cool and shrewd, as if calculating something, then they fell again. She finished her doughnut and pushed back her chair.

“Hang on,” I said.

She paused, and for a second time those calculating brown eyes came up and rested on my face.

“What did you say?”

“I said hang on. Don’t go. Have another doughnut . or a Bath bun or something.”

“If you want to talk to me, why don’t you say so?”

“I want to talk to you.”

She folded her hands in her lap and waited. I began to talk. Soon she joined in. She was a biology student at Girton and, like me, she had a scholarship. Her father was English, her mother Persian. Her name was Yasmin Howcomely. What we said to one another is irrelevant. We went straight from the bunshop to my rooms and stayed there until the next morning. Eighteen hours we stayed together and at the end of it all I felt like a piece of pemmican, a strip of desiccated dehydrated meat. She was electric, that girl, and wicked beyond belief. Had she been Chinese and living in Peking, she could have gotten her Diploma of Merit with her hands tied behind her back and iron shackles on her feet.

I went so dotty about her that I broke the golden rule and saw her a second time.

And now it was twenty to ten in the evening and A. R. Woresley was bicycling home and I myself was in the porter’s lodge at Girton asking the old porter kindly to inform Miss Yasmin Howcomely that Mr. Oswald Cornelius wished to see her on a matter of the most urgent nature.

She came down at once. “Hop in the car,” I said. “We have things to talk about.” She hopped in and I drove her back to Trinity where I gave the Trinity porter half a sovereign to look the other way as she slid past him to my rooms.

“Keep your clothes on,” I said to her. “This is business. How would you like to get rich?”

“I’d like it very much,” she said.

“Can I trust you completely?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You won’t tell a soul?”

“Go on,” she said. “It sounds like fun already.”

I then proceeded to tell her the entire story of A. R. Woresley’s discovery.

“My God!” she said when I had finished. “This is a great scientific discovery! Who the hell is A. R. Woresley? He’s going to be world famous! I’d like to meet him!”

“You soon will,” I said.

“When?” Being herself a bright young scientist, she was genuinely excited.

“Wait,” I said. “Here’s the next installment.” I then told her about my plans for exploiting the discovery and making a fortune by starting a sperm vault for the great geniuses of the world and all the kings.

When I had finished, she asked me if I had any wine. I opened a bottle of claret and poured a glass for each of us. I found some good dry biscuits to go with it.

“It’s sort of a funny idea, this sperm vault of yours,” she said. “But I’m afraid it’s not going to work.” She proceeded to put forward all the same old reasons that A. R. Woresley had given me earlier in the evening. I allowed her to spout on. Then I played my ace of spades.