[BBC：100部英国人最喜欢的文学作品].The.Twits

Roald Dahl The Twits Hairy Faces Whata lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays. When a man grows hair all over his face it is impossible to tell what he really looks like. Perhaps that's why he does it. He'd rather you didn't know. Then there's the problem of washing. When the very hairy ones wash their faces, it must be as big a job as when you and I wash the hair on our heads. So what I want to know is this. How often do all these hairy-faced men wash their faces? Is it only once a week, like us, on Sunday nights? And do they shampoo it? Do they use a hairdryer? Do they rub hair-tonic in to stop their faces from going bald? Do they go to a barber to have their hairy faces cut and trimmed or do they do it themselves in front of the bathroom mirror with nail-scissors? I don't know. But next time you see a man with a hairy face (which will probably be as soon as you step out on to the street) maybe you will look at him more closely and start wondering about some of these things. Mr Twit Mr Twit was one of these very hairy-faced men. The whole of his face except for his forehead, his eyes and his nose, was covered with thick hair. The stuff even sprouted in revolting tufts out of his nostrils and ear-holes. Mr Twit felt that this hairiness made him look terrifically wise and grand. But in truth he was neither of these things. Mr Twit was a twit. He was born a twit. And now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever. The hair on Mr Twit's face didn't grow smooth and matted as it does on most hairy-faced men. It grew in spikes that stuck out straight like the bristles of a nailbrush. And how often did Mr Twit wash this bristly nailbrushy face of his? The answer isnever , not even on Sundays. He hadn't washed it for years. Dirty Beards As you know, an ordinary unhairy face like yours or mine simply gets a bit smudgy if it is not washed often enough, and there's nothing so awful about that. But a hairy face is a very different matter. Thingscling to hairs, especially food. Things like gravy go right in among the hairs and stay there. You and I can wipe our smooth faces with a flannel and we quickly look more or less all right again, but the hairy man cannot do that. We can also, if we are careful, eat our meals without spreading food all over our faces. But not so the hairy man. Watch carefully next time you see a hairy man eating his lunch and you will notice that even if he opens his mouth very wide, it is impossible for him to get a spoonful of beef-stew or ice-cream and chocolate sauce into it without leaving some of it on the hairs. Mr Twit didn't even bother to open his mouth wide when he ate. As a result (and because he never washed) there were always hundreds of bits of old breakfasts and lunches and suppers sticking to the hairs around his face. They weren't big bits, mind you, because he used to wipe those off with the back of his hand or on his sleeve while he was eating. But if you looked closely (not that you'd ever want to) you would see tiny little specks of dried-up scrambled eggs stuck to the hairs, and spinach and tomato ketchup and fish fingers and minced chicken livers and all the other disgusting things Mr Twit liked to eat. If you looked closer still (hold your noses, ladies and gentlemen), if you peered deep into the moustachy bristles sticking out over his upper lip, you would probably see much larger objects that had escaped the wipe of his hand, things that had been there for months and months, like a piece of maggoty green cheese or a mouldy old cornflake or even the slimy tail of a tinned sardine. Because of all this, Mr Twit never went really hungry. By sticking out his tongue and curling it sideways to explore the hairy jungle around his mouth, he was always able to find a tasty morsel here and there to nibble on. What I am trying to tell you is that Mr Twit was a foul and smelly old man. He was also an extremely horrid old man, as you will find out in a moment. Mrs Twit Mrs Twit was no better than her husband. She did not, of course, have a hairy face. It was a pity she didn't because that at any rate would have hidden some of her fearful ugliness. Take a look at her. Have you ever seen a woman with an uglier face than that? I doubt it. But the funny thing is that Mrs Twit wasn't born ugly. She'd had quite a nice face when she was young. The ugliness had grown upon her year by year as she got older. Why would that happen? I'll tell you why. If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely. Nothing shone out of Mrs Twit's face. In her right hand she carried a walking-stick. She used to tell people that this was because she had warts growing on the sole of her left foot and walking was painful. But the real reason she carried a stick was so that she could hit things with it, things like dogs and cats and small children. And then there was the glass eye. Mrs Twit had a glass eye that was always looking the other way. The Glass Eye You can play a lot of tricks with a glass eye because you can take it out and pop it back in again any time you like. You can bet your life Mrs Twit knew all the tricks. One morning she took out her glass eye and dropped it into Mr Twit's mug of beer when he wasn't looking. Mr Twit sat there drinking the beer slowly. The froth made a white ring on the hairs around his mouth. He wiped the white froth on to his sleeve and wiped his sleeve on his trousers. 'You're plotting something,' Mrs Twit said, keeping her back turned so he wouldn't see that she had taken out her glass eye. 'Whenever you go all quiet like that I know very well you're plotting something.' Mrs Twit was right. Mr Twit was plotting away like mad. He was trying to think up a really nasty trick he could play on his wife that day. 'You'd better be careful,' Mrs Twit said, 'because when I see you starting to plot, I watch you like a wombat.' 'Oh, do shut up, you old hag,' Mr Twit said. He went on drinking his beer, and his evil mind kept working away on the latest horrid trick he was going to play on the old woman. Suddenly, as Mr Twit tipped the last drop of beer down his throat, he caught sight of Mrs Twit's awful glass eye staring up at him from the bottom of the mug. It made him jump. 'I told you I was watching you,' cackled Mrs Twit. 'I've got eyes everywhere so you'd better be careful.' The Frog To pay her back for the glass eye in his beer, Mr Twit decided he would put a frog in Mrs Twit's bed. He caught a big one down by the pond and carried it back secretly in a box. That night, when Mrs Twit was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, Mr Twit slipped the frog between her sheets. Then he got into his own bed and waited for the fun to begin. Mrs Twit came back and climbed into her bed and put out the light. She lay there in the dark scratching her tummy. Her tummy was itching. Dirty old hags like her always have itchy tummies. Then all at once she felt something cold and slimy crawling over her feet. She screamed. 'What's the matter with you?' Mr Twit said. 'Help!' screamed Mrs Twit, bouncing about. 'There's something in my bed!' 'I'll bet it's that Giant Skillywiggler I saw on the floor just now,' Mr Twit said. 'Thatwhat ?' screamed Mrs Twit. 'I tried to kill it but it got away,' Mr Twit said. 'It's got teeth like screwdrivers!' 'Help!' screamed Mrs Twit. 'Save me! It's all over my feet!' 'It'll bite off your toes,' said Mr Twit. Mrs Twit fainted. Mr Twit got out of bed and fetched a jug of cold water. He poured the water over Mrs Twit's head to revive her. The frog crawled up from under the sheets to get near the water. It started jumping about on the pillow. Frogs love water. This one was having a good time. When Mrs Twit came to, the frog had just jumped on to her face. This is not a nice thing to happen to anyone in bed at night. She screamed again. 'By golly itis a Giant Skillywiggler!' Mr Twit said. 'It'll bite off your nose.' Mrs Twit leapt out of bed and flew downstairs and spent the night on the sofa. The frog went to sleep on her pillow. The Wormy Spaghetti The next day, to pay Mr Twit back for the frog trick, Mrs Twit sneaked out into the garden and dug up some worms. She chose big long ones and put them in a tin and carried the tin back to the house under her apron. At one o'clock, she cooked spaghetti for lunch and she mixed the worms in with the spaghetti, but only on her husband's plate. The worms didn't show because everything was covered with tomato sauce and sprinkled with cheese. 'Hey, my spaghetti's moving!' cried Mr Twit, poking around in it with his fork. 'It's a new kind,' Mrs Twit said, taking a mouthful from her own plate which of course had no worms. 'It's called Squiggly Spaghetti. It's delicious. Eat it up while it's nice and hot.' Mr Twit started eating, twisting the long tomato-covered strings around his fork and shovelling them into his mouth. Soon there was tomato sauce all over his hairy chin. 'It's not as good as the ordinary kind,' he said, talking with his mouth full. 'It's too squishy.' 'I find it very tasty,' Mrs Twit said. She was watching him from the other end of the table. It gave her great pleasure to watch him eating worms. 'I find it rather bitter,' Mr Twit said. 'It's got a distinctly bitter flavour. Buy the other kind next time.' Mrs Twit waited until Mr Twit had eaten the whole plateful. Then she said, 'You want to know why your spaghetti was squishy?' Mr Twit wiped the tomato sauce from his beard with a corner of the tablecloth. 'Why?' he said. 'And why it had a nasty bitter taste?' 'Why?' he said. 'Because it wasworms !' cried Mrs Twit, clapping her hands and stamping her feet on the floor and rocking with horrible laughter. The Funny Walking-stick To pay Mrs Twit back for the worms in his spaghetti, Mr Twit thought up a really clever nasty trick. One night, when the old woman was asleep, he crept out of bed and took her walking- stick downstairs to his workshed. There he stuck a tiny round piece of wood (no thicker than a penny) on to the bottom of the stick. This made the stick longer, but the difference was so small, the next morning Mrs Twit didn't notice it. The following night, Mr Twit stuck on another tiny bit of wood. Every night, he crept downstairs and added an extra tiny thickness of wood to the end of the walking-stick. He did it very neatly so that the extra bits looked like a part of the old stick. Gradually, but oh so gradually, Mrs Twit's walking-stick was getting longer and longer. Now when something is growing very slowly, it is almost impossible to notice it happening. You yourself, for example, are actually growing taller every day that goes by, but you wouldn't think it, would you? It's happening so slowly you can't even notice it from one week to the next. It was the same with Mrs Twit's walking-stick. It was all so slow and gradual that she didn't notice how long it was getting even when it was halfway up to her shoulder. 'That stick's too long for you,' Mr Twit said to her one day. 'Why so it is!' Mrs Twit said, looking at the stick. 'I've had a feeling there was something wrong but I couldn't for the life of me think what it was.' 'There's something wrong all right,' Mr Twit said, beginning to enjoy himself. 'Whatcan have happened?' Mrs Twit said, staring at her old walking-stick. 'It must suddenly have grown longer.' 'Don't be a fool!' Mr Twit said. 'How can a walking-stick possibly grow longer? It's made of dead wood, isn't it? Dead wood can't grow.' 'Then what on earth has happened?' cried Mrs Twit. 'It's not the stick, it'syou !' said Mr Twit, grinning horribly. 'It'syou that's gettingshorter ! I've been noticing it for some time now.' 'That's not true!' cried Mrs Twit. 'You're shrinking, woman!' said Mr Twit. 'It's not possible!' 'Oh yes it jolly well is,' said Mr Twit. 'You're shrinking fast! You're shrinkingdangerously fast! Why, you must have shrunk at least a foot in the last few days!' 'Never!' she cried. 'Of course you have! Take a look at your stick, you old goat, and see how much you've shrunk in comparison! You've got theshrinks , that's what you've got! You've got the dreadedshrinks !' Mrs Twit began to feel so trembly she had to sit down. Mrs Twit Has the Shrinks As soon as Mrs Twit sat down, Mr Twit pointed at her and shouted, 'There you are! You're sitting in your old chair and you've shrunk so much your feet aren't even touching the ground!' Mrs Twit looked down at her feet and by golly the man was right. Her feet were not touching the ground. Mr Twit, you see, had been just as clever with the chair as he'd been with the walking- stick. Every night when he had gone downstairs and stuck a little bit extra on to the stick, he had done the same to the four legs of Mrs Twit's chair. 'Just look at you sitting there in your same old chair,' he cried, 'and you've shrunk so much your feet are dangling in the air!' Mrs Twit went white with fear. 'You've got theshrinks !' cried Mr Twit, pointing his finger at her like a pistol. 'You've got them badly! You've got the most terrible case of shrinks I've ever seen!' Mrs Twit became so frightened she began to dribble. But Mr Twit, still remembering the worms in his spaghetti, didn't feel sorry for her at all. 'I suppose you know whathappens to you when you get the shrinks?' he said. 'What?' gasped Mrs Twit. 'What happens?' 'Your headshrinks into your neck . . . 'And your neckshrinks into your body . . . 'And your bodyshrinks into your legs . . . 'And your legsshrink into your feet. And in the end there's nothing left except a pair of shoes and a bundle of old clothes.' 'I can't bear it!' cried Mrs Twit. 'It's a terrible disease,' said Mr Twit. 'The worst in the world.' 'How long have I got?' cried Mrs Twit. 'How long before I finish up as a bundle of old clothes and a pair of shoes?' Mr Twit put on a very solemn face. 'At the rate you're going,' he said, shaking his head sadly, 'I'd say not more than ten or eleven days.' 'But isn't thereanything we can do?' cried Mrs Twit. 'There's only one cure for the shrinks,' said Mr Twit. 'Tell me!' she cried. 'Oh, tell me quickly!' 'We'll have to hurry!' said Mr Twit. 'I'm ready. I'll hurry! I'll do anything you say!' cried Mrs Twit. 'You won't last long if you don't,' said Mr Twit, giving her another grizzly grin. 'What is it I must do?' cried Mrs Twit, clutching her cheeks. 'You've got to bestretched ,' said Mr Twit. Mrs Twit Gets a Stretching Mr Twit led Mrs Twit outdoors where he had everything ready for the great stretching. He had one hundred balloons and lots of string. He had a gas cylinder for filling the balloons. He had fixed an iron ring into the ground. 'Stand here,' he said, pointing to the iron ring. He then tied Mrs Twit's ankles to the iron ring. When that was done, he began filling the balloons with gas. Each balloon was on a long string and when it was filled with gas it pulled on its string, trying to go up and up. Mr Twit tied the ends of the strings to the top half of Mrs Twit's body. Some he tied round her neck, some under her arms, some to her wrists and some even to her hair. Soon there were fifty coloured balloons floating in the air above Mrs Twit's head. 'Can you feel them stretching you?' asked Mr Twit. 'I can! I can!' cried Mrs Twit. 'They're stretching me like mad.' He put on another ten balloons. The upward pull became very strong. Mrs Twit was quite helpless now. With her feet tied to the ground and her arms pulled upwards by the balloons, she was unable to move. She was a prisoner, and Mr Twit had intended to go away and leave her like that for a couple of days and nights to teach her a lesson. In fact, he was just about to leave when Mrs Twit opened her big mouth and said something silly. 'Are you sure my feet are tied properly to the ground?' she gasped. 'If those strings around my ankles break, it'll be goodbye for me!' And that's what gave Mr Twit his second nasty idea. Mrs Twit Goes Ballooning Up 'There's enough pull here to take me to the moon!' Mrs Twit cried out. 'To take you tothe moon !' exclaimed Mr Twit. 'What a ghastly thought! We wouldn't want anything like that to happen, oh dear me no!' 'We most certainly wouldn't!' cried Mrs Twit. 'Put some more string around my ankles quickly! I want to feel absolutely safe!' 'Very well, my angel,' said Mr Twit, and with a ghoulish grin on his lips he knelt down at her feet. He took a knife from his pocket and with one quick slash he cut through the strings holding Mrs Twit's ankles to the iron ring. She went up like a rocket. 'Help!' she screamed. 'Save me!' But there was no saving her now. In a few seconds she was high up in the blue sky and climbing fast. Mr Twit stood below looking up. 'Whata pretty sight!' he said to himself. 'How lovely all those balloons look in the sky! And what a marvellous bit of luck for me! At last the old hag is lost and gone for ever.' Mrs Twit Comes Ballooning Down Mrs Twit may have been ugly and she may have been beastly, but she was not stupid. High up there in the sky, she had a bright idea. 'If I can get rid of some of these balloons,' she said to herself, 'I will stop going up and start to come down.' She began biting through the strings that held the balloons to her wrists and arms and neck and hair. Each time she bit through a string and let the balloon float away, the upward pull got less and her rate of climb slowed down. When she had bitten through twenty strings, she stopped going up altogether. She stayed still in the air. She bit through one more string. Very, very slowly, she began to float downwards. It was a calm day. There was no wind at all. And because of this, Mrs Twit had gone absolutely straight up. She now began to come absolutely straight down. As she floated gently down, Mrs Twit's petticoat billowed out like a parachute, showing her long knickers. It was a grand sight on a glorious day, and thousands of birds came flying in from miles around to stare at this extraordinary old woman in the sky. Mr Twit Gets a Horrid Shock Mr Twit, who thought he had seen his ugly wife for the last time, was sitting in the garden celebrating with a mug of beer. Silently, Mrs Twit came floating down. When she was about the height of the house above Mr Twit, she suddenly called out at the top of her voice, 'Here I come, you grizzly old grunion! You rotten old turnip! You filthy old frumpet!' Mr Twit jumped as though he'd been stung by a giant wasp. He dropped his beer. He looked up. He gaped. He gasped. He gurgled. A few choking sounds came out of his mouth. 'Ughhhhhhhh!' he said. 'Arghhhhhhhh!Ouchhhhhhhh !' 'I'll get you for this!' shouted Mrs Twit. She was floating down right on top of him. She was purple with rage and slashing the air with her long walking-stick which she had somehow managed to hang on to all the time. 'I'll swish you to a swazzle!' she shouted. 'I'll swash you to a swizzle! I'll gnash you to a gnozzle! I'll gnosh you to a gnazzle!' And before Mr Twit had time to run away, this bundle of balloons and petticoats and fiery fury landed right on top of him, lashing out with the stick and cracking him all over his body. The House, the Tree and the Monkey Cage But that's enough of that. We can't go on for ever watching these two disgusting people doing disgusting things to each other. We must get ahead with the story. Here is a picture of Mr and Mrs Twit's house and garden