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Authors: Roald Dahl

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The BFG (4 page)

BOOK: The BFG
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‘What on earth are they doing?’ Sophie asked.
‘Nothing,’ said the BFG. ‘They is just moocheling and footcheling around and waiting for the night to come. Then they will all be galloping off to places where
people
is living to find their suppers.’
‘You mean to Turkey,’ Sophie said.
‘Bonecrunching Giant will be galloping to Turkey, of course,’ said the BFG. ‘But the others will be whiffling off to all sorts of flungaway places like Wellington for the booty flavour and Panama for the hatty taste. Every giant is having his own favourite hunting ground.’
‘Do they ever go to England?’ Sophie asked.
‘Often,’ said the BFG. ‘They say the English is tasting ever so wonderfully of crodscollop.’
‘I’m not sure I quite know what that means,’ Sophie said.
‘Meanings is not important,’ said the BFG. ‘I cannot be right all the time. Quite often I is left instead of right.’
‘And are all those beastly giants over there really going off again tonight to eat people?’ Sophie asked.
‘All of them is guzzling human beans every night,’ the BFG answered. ‘All of them excepting me. That is why you will be coming to an ucky-mucky end if any of them should ever be getting his gogglers upon you. You would be swallowed up like a piece of frumpkin pie, all in one dollop!’
‘But eating people is horrible!’ Sophie cried. ‘It’s frightful! Why doesn’t someone stop them?’
‘And who please is going to be stopping them?’ asked the BFG.

 

‘Couldn’t you?’ said Sophie.
‘Never in a pig’s whistle!’ cried the BFG. ‘All of those man-eating giants is enormous and very fierce! They is all at least two times my wideness and double my royal highness!’
‘Twice as high as you!’ cried Sophie.
‘Easily that,’ said the BFG. ‘You is seeing them in the distance but just wait till you get them close up. Those giants is all at least fifty feet tall with huge muscles and cockles alive alive-o. I is the titchy one. I is the runt. Twenty-four feet is puddlenuts in Giant Country.’
‘You mustn’t feel bad about it,’ Sophie said. ‘I think you are just great. Why even your toes must be as big as sausages.’
‘Bigger,’ said the BFG, looking pleased. ‘They is as big as bumplehammers.’
‘How many giants are there out there?’ Sophie asked.
‘Nine altogether,’ answered the BFG.
‘That means,’ said Sophie, ‘that somewhere in the world, every single night, nine wretched people get carried away and eaten alive.’
‘More,’ said the BFG. ‘It is all depending, you see, on how big the human beans is. Japanese beans is very small, so a giant will need to gobble up about six Japanese before he is feeling full up. Others like the Norway people and the Yankee-Doodles is ever so much bigger and usually two or three of those makes a good tuck-in.’
‘But do these disgusting giants go to every single country in the world?’ Sophie asked.
‘All countries excepting Greece is getting visited some time or another,’ the BFG answered. ‘The country which a giant visits is depending on how he is feeling. If it is very warm weather and a giant is feeling as hot as a sizzlepan, he will probably go galloping far up to the frisby north to get himself an Esquimo or two to cool him down. A nice fat Esquimo to a giant is like a lovely ice-cream lolly to you.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Sophie said.
‘And then again, if it is a frosty night and the giant is fridging with cold, he will probably point his nose towards the swultering hotlands to guzzle a few Hottentots to warm him up.’
‘How perfectly horrible,’ Sophie said.
‘Nothing hots a cold giant up like a hot Hottentot,’ the BFG said.
‘And if you were to put me down on the ground and I was to walk out among them now,’ Sophie said, ‘would they really eat me up?’
‘Like a whiffswiddle!’ cried the BFG. ‘And what is more, you is so small they wouldn’t even have to chew you. The first one to be seeing you would pick you up in his fingers and down you’d go like a drop of drain-water!’
‘Let’s go back inside,’ Sophie said. ‘I hate even watching them.’
The Marvellous Ears
Back in the cave, the Big Friendly Giant sat Sophie down once again on the enormous table. ‘Is you quite snuggly there in your nightie?’ he asked. ‘You isn’t fridgy cold?’
‘I’m fine,’ Sophie said.
‘I cannot help thinking,’ said the BFG, ‘about your poor mother and father. By now they must be jipping and skumping all over the house shouting “Hello hello where is Sophie gone?”’
‘I don’t have a mother and father,’ Sophie said. ‘They both died when I was a baby.’
‘Oh, you poor little scrumpiet!’ cried the BFG. ‘Is you not missing them very badly?’
‘Not really,’ Sophie said, ‘because I never knew them.’
‘You is making me sad,’ the BFG said, rubbing his eyes.
‘Don’t be sad,’ Sophie said. ‘No one is going to be worrying too much about me. That place you took me from was the village orphanage. We are all orphans in there.’
‘You is a norphan?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many is there in there?’
‘Ten of us,’ Sophie said. ‘All little girls.’
‘Was you happy there?’ the BFG asked.
‘I hated it,’ Sophie said. ‘The woman who ran it was called Mrs Clonkers and if she caught you breaking any of the rules, like getting out of bed at night or not folding up your clothes, you got punished.’
‘How is you getting punished?’
‘She locked us in the dark cellar for a day and a night without anything to eat or drink.’
‘The rotten old rotrasper!’ cried the BFG.
‘It was horrid,’ Sophie said. ‘We used to dread it. There were rats down there. We could hear them creeping about.’
‘The filthy old fizzwiggler!’ shouted the BFG. ‘That is the horridest thing I is hearing for years! You is making me sadder than ever!’ All at once, a huge tear that would have filled a bucket rolled down one of the BFG’s cheeks and fell with a splash on the floor. It made quite a puddle.
Sophie watched with astonishment. What a strange and moody creature this is, she thought. One moment he is telling me my head is full of squashed flies and the next moment his heart is melting for me because Mrs Clonkers locks us in the cellar.
‘The thing that worries
me
,’ Sophie said, ‘is having to stay in this dreadful place for the rest of my life. The orphanage was pretty awful, but I wouldn’t have been there for ever, would I?’
‘All is my fault,’ the BFG said. ‘I is the one who kidsnatched you.’ Yet another enormous tear welled from his eye and splashed on to the floor.
‘Now I come to think of it, I won’t actually be here all that long,’ Sophie said.
‘I is afraid you will,’ the BFG said.
‘No, I won’t,’ Sophie said. ‘Those brutes out there are bound to catch me sooner or later and have me for tea.’
‘I is
never
letting that happen,’ the BFG said.
For a few moments the cave was silent. Then Sophie said, ‘May I ask you a question?’
The BFG wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand and gave Sophie a long thoughtful stare. ‘Shoot away’ he said.
‘Would you please tell me what you were doing in our village last night? Why were you poking that long trumpet thing into the Goochey children’s bedroom and then blowing through it?’
‘Ah-ha!’ cried the BFG, sitting up suddenly in his chair. ‘Now we is getting nosier than a parker!’
‘And the suitcase you were carrying,’ Sophie said. ‘What on earth was
that
all about?’
The BFG stared suspiciously at the small girl sitting cross-legged on the table.
‘You is asking me to tell you whoppsy big secrets,’ he said. ‘Secrets that nobody is ever hearing before.’
‘I won’t tell a soul,’ Sophie said. ‘I swear it. How could I anyway? I am stuck here for the rest of my life.’
‘You could be telling the other giants.’
‘No, I couldn’t,’ Sophie said. ‘You told me they would eat me up the moment they saw me.’
‘And so they would,’ said the BFG. ‘You is a human bean and human beans is like strawbunkles and cream to those giants.’
‘If they are going to eat me the moment they see me, then I wouldn’t have time to tell them anything, would I?’ Sophie said.
‘You wouldn’t,’ said the BFG.
‘Then why did you say I might?’
‘Because I is brimful of buzzburgers,’ the BFG said. ‘If you listen to everything I am saying you will be getting earache.’
‘Please tell me what you were doing in our village,’ Sophie said. ‘I promise you can trust me.’
‘Would you teach me how to make an elefunt?’ the BFG asked.
‘What
do
you mean?’ Sophie said.
‘I would dearly love to have an elefunt to ride on,’ the BFG said dreamily. ‘I would so much love to have a jumbly big elefunt and go riding through green forests picking peachy fruits off the trees all day long. This is a sizzling-hot muckfrumping country we is living in. Nothing grows in it except snozzcumbers. I would love to go somewhere else and pick peachy fruits in the early morning from the back of an elefunt.’
Sophie was quite moved by this curious statement.
‘Perhaps one day we will get you an elephant,’ she said. ‘And peachy fruits as well. Now tell me what you were doing in our village.’
‘If you is really wanting to know what I am doing in your village,’ the BFG said, ‘I is blowing a dream into the bedroom of those children.’

Blowing a dream?
’ Sophie said. ‘What
do
you mean?’
‘I is a dream-blowing giant,’ the BFG said. ‘When all the other giants is galloping off every what way and which to swollop human beans, I is scuddling away to other places to blow dreams into the bedrooms of sleeping children. Nice dreams. Lovely golden dreams. Dreams that is giving the dreamers a happy time.’
‘Now hang on a minute,’ Sophie said. ‘Where do you get these dreams?’
‘I collect them,’ the BFG said, waving an arm towards all the rows and rows of bottles on the shelves. ‘I has billions of them.’
‘You can’t
collect
a dream,’ Sophie said. ‘A dream isn’t something you can catch hold of.’
‘You is never going to understand about it,’ the BFG said. ‘That is why I is not wishing to tell you.’
‘Oh, please tell me!’ Sophie said. ‘I
will
understand! Go on! Tell me how you collect dreams! Tell me everything!’
The BFG settled himself comfortably in his chair and crossed his legs. ‘Dreams,’ he said, ‘is very mysterious things. They is floating around in the air like little wispy-misty bubbles. And all the time they is searching for sleeping people.’
‘Can you see them?’ Sophie asked.
‘Never at first.’
‘Then how do you catch them if you can’t see them?’ Sophie asked.
Ah-ha,’ said the BFG. ‘Now we is getting on to the dark and dusky secrets.’
‘I won’t tell a soul.’
‘I is trusting you,’ the BFG said. He closed his eyes and sat quite still for a moment, while Sophie waited.
‘A dream,’ he said, ‘as it goes whiffling through the night air, is making a tiny little buzzing-humming noise. But this little buzzy-hum is so silvery soft, it is impossible for a human bean to be hearing it.’

 

‘Can
you
hear it?’ Sophie asked.
The BFG pointed up at his enormous truck-wheel ears which he now began to move in and out. He performed this exercise proudly, with a little proud smile on his face. ‘Is you seeing these?’ he asked.
‘How could I miss them?’ Sophie said.
‘They maybe is looking a bit propsposterous to you,’ the BFG said, ‘but you must believe me when I say they is very extra-usual ears indeed. They is not to be coughed at.’
‘I’m quite sure they’re not,’ Sophie said.
‘They is allowing me to hear absolutely every single twiddly little thing.’
‘You mean you can hear things I can’t hear?’ Sophie said.
BOOK: The BFG
13.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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