Authors: Roald Dahl

Tags: #children

The BFG (5 page)

BOOK: The BFG

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‘You is
deaf as a dumpling
compared with me!’ cried the BFG. ‘You is hearing only thumping loud noises with those little earwigs of yours. But I am hearing
all the secret whisperings of the world
!’

‘Such as what?’ Sophie asked.

‘In your country’ he said, ‘I is hearing the footsteps of a ladybird as she goes walking across a leaf.’

‘
Honestly
?’ Sophie said, beginning to be impressed.

‘What’s more, I is hearing those footsteps
very loud
,’ the BFG said. ‘When a ladybird is walking across a leaf, I is hearing her feet going
clumpety-clumpety-clump
like giants’ footsteps.’

‘Good gracious me!’ Sophie said. ‘What else can you hear?’

‘I is hearing the little ants chittering to each other as they scuddle around in the soil.’

‘You mean you can hear ants talking?’

‘Every single word,’ the BFG said. ‘Although I is not exactly understanding their langwitch.’

‘Go on,’ Sophie said.

‘Sometimes, on a very clear night,’ the BFG said, ‘and if I is swiggling my ears in the right direction,’ – and here he swivelled his great ears upwards so they were facing the ceiling – ‘if I is swiggling them like this and the night is very clear, I is sometimes hearing faraway music coming from the stars in the sky.’

A queer little shiver passed through Sophie’s body. She sat very quiet, waiting for more.

‘My ears is what told me you was watching me out of your window last night,’ the BFG said.

‘But I didn’t make a sound,’ Sophie said.

‘I was hearing your heart beating across the road,’ the BFG said. ‘Loud as a drum.’

‘Go on,’ Sophie said. ‘Please.’

‘I can hear plants and trees.’

‘Do
they
talk?’ Sophie asked.

‘They is not exactly talking,’ the BFG said. ‘But they is making noises. For instance, if I come along and I is picking a lovely flower, if I is twisting the stem of the flower till it breaks, then the plant is screaming. I can hear it screaming and screaming very clear.’

‘You don’t mean it!’ Sophie cried. ‘How awful!’

‘It is screaming just like you would be screaming if someone was twisting
your
arm right off.’

‘Is that really true?’ Sophie asked.

‘You think I is swizzfiggling you?’

‘It is rather hard to believe.’

‘Then I is stopping right here,’ said the BFG sharply. ‘I is not wishing to be called a fibster.’

‘Oh no! I’m not calling you anything!’ Sophie cried. ‘I believe you! I do really! Please go on!’

The BFG gave her a long hard stare. Sophie looked right back at him, her face open to his. ‘I believe you,’ she said softly.

She had offended him, she could see that.

‘I wouldn’t ever be fibbling to you,’ he said.

‘I know you wouldn’t,’ Sophie said. ‘But you must understand that it isn’t easy to believe such amazing things straight away.’

‘I understand that,’ the BFG said.

‘So do please forgive me and go on,’ she said.

He waited a while longer, and then he said, ‘It is the same with trees as it is with flowers. If I is chopping an axe into the trunk of a big tree, I is hearing a terrible sound coming from inside the heart of the tree.’

‘What sort of sound?’ Sophie asked.

‘A soft moaning sound,’ the BFG said. ‘It is like the sound an old man is making when he is dying slowly.’

He paused. The cave was very silent.

‘Trees is living and growing just like you and me,’ he said. ‘They is alive. So is plants.’

He was sitting very straight in his chair now, his hands clasped tightly together in front of him. His face was bright, his eyes round and bright as two stars.

‘Such wonderful and terrible sounds I is hearing!’ he said. ‘Some of them you would never wish to be hearing yourself! But some is like glorious music!’

He seemed almost to be transfigured by the excitement of his thoughts. His face was beautiful in its blaze of emotions.

‘Tell me some more about them,’ Sophie said quietly.

‘You just ought to be hearing the little micies talking!’ he said. ‘Little micies is always talking to each other and I is hearing them as loud as my own voice.’

‘What do they say?’ Sophie asked.

‘Only the micies know that,’ he said. ‘Spiders is also talking a great deal. You might not be thinking it but spiders is the most tremendous natterboxes. And when they is spinning their webs, they is singing all the time. They is singing sweeter than a nightingull.’

‘Who else do you hear?’ Sophie asked.

‘One of the biggest chatbags is the cattlepiddlers,’ the BFG said.

‘What do they say?’

‘They is argying all the time about who is going to be the prettiest butteryfly. That is all they is ever talking about.’

‘Is there a dream floating around in here now?’ Sophie asked.

The BFG moved his great ears this way and that, listening intently. He shook his head. ‘There is no dream in here,’ he said, ‘except in the bottles. I has a special place to go for catching dreams. They is not often coming to Giant Country.’

‘How do you catch them?’

‘The same way you is catching butteryflies,’ the BFG answered. ‘With a net.’ He stood up and crossed over to a corner of the cave where a pole was leaning against the wall. The pole was about thirty feet long and there was a net on the end of it. ‘Here is the dream-catcher,’ he said, grasping the pole in one hand. ‘Every morning I is going out and snitching new dreams to put in my bottles.’

Suddenly, he seemed to lose interest in the conversation. ‘I is getting hungry,’ he said. ‘It is time for eats.’

Snozzcumbers

‘But if you don’t eat people like all the others,’ Sophie said, ‘then what
do
you live on?’

‘That is a squelching tricky problem around here,’ the BFG answered. ‘In this sloshflunking Giant Country, happy eats like pineapples and pigwinkles is simply not growing. Nothing is growing except for one extremely icky-poo vegetable. It is called the snozzcumber.’

‘The snozzcumber!’ cried Sophie. ‘There’s no such thing.’

The BFG looked at Sophie and smiled, showing about twenty of his square white teeth. ‘Yesterday’ he said, ‘we was not believing in giants, was we? Today we is not believing in snozzcumbers. Just because we happen not to have actually
seen
something with our own two little winkles, we think it is not existing. What about for instance the great squizzly scotch-hopper?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Sophie said.

‘And the humplecrimp?’

‘What’s that?’ Sophie said.

‘And the wraprascal?’

‘The what?’ Sophie said.

‘And the crumpscoddle?’

‘Are they animals?’ Sophie asked.

‘They is
common
animals,’ said the BFG contemptuously. ‘I is not a very know-all giant myself, but it seems to me that you is an absolutely know-nothing human bean. Your brain is full of rotten-wool.’

‘You mean cotton-wool,’ Sophie said.

‘What I mean and what I say is two different things,’ the BFG announced rather grandly. ‘I will now show you a snozzcumber.’

The BFG flung open a massive cupboard and took out the weirdest-looking thing Sophie had ever seen. It was about half as long again as an ordinary man but was much thicker. It was as thick around its girth as a perambulator. It was black with white stripes along its length. And it was covered all over with coarse knobbles.

‘Here is the repulsant snozzcumber!’ cried the BFG, waving it about. ‘I squoggle it! I mispise it! I dispunge it! But because I is refusing to gobble up human beans like the other giants, I must spend my life guzzling up icky-poo snozzcumbers instead. If I don’t, I will be nothing but skin and groans.’

‘You mean skin and
bons
,’ Sophie said.

‘I
know
it is bones,’ the BFG said. ‘But please understand that I cannot be helping it if I sometimes is saying things a little squiggly. I is trying my very best all the time.’ The Big Friendly Giant looked suddenly so forlorn that Sophie got quite upset.

‘I’m sorry’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’

‘There never was any schools to teach me talking in Giant Country,’ the BFG said sadly.

‘But couldn’t your mother have taught you?’ Sophie asked.

‘My
mother
!’ cried the BFG. ‘Giants don’t have mothers! Surely you is knowing
that
.’

‘I did
not
know that,’ Sophie said.

‘Whoever heard of a
woman
giant!’ shouted the BFG, waving the snozzcumber around his head like a lasso. ‘There never was a woman giant! And there never will be one. Giants is always men!’

Sophie felt herself getting a little muddled. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘how were you born?’

‘Giants isn’t born,’ the BFG answered. ‘Giants
appears
and that’s all there is to it. They simply
appears
, the same way as the sun and the stars.’

‘And when did you appear?’ Sophie asked.

‘Now how on earth could I be knowing a thing like that?’ said the BFG. ‘It was so long ago I couldn’t count.’

‘You mean you don’t even know how
old
you are?’

‘No giant is knowing that,’ the BFG said. ‘All I is knowing about myself is that I is very old, very very old and crumply Perhaps as old as the earth.’

‘What happens when a giant dies?’ Sophie asked.

‘Giants is never dying,’ the BFG answered. ‘Sometimes and quite suddenly, a giant is disappearing and nobody is ever knowing where he goes to. But mostly us giants is simply going on and on like whiffsy time-twiddlers.’

The BFG was still holding the awesome snozzcumber in his right hand, and now he put one end into his mouth and bit off a huge hunk of it. He started crunching it up and the noise he made was like the crunching of lumps of ice.

‘It’s filthing!’ he spluttered, speaking with his mouth full and spraying large pieces of snozzcumber like bullets in Sophie’s direction. Sophie hopped around on the table-top, ducking out of the way.

‘It’s disgusterous!’ the BFG gurgled. ‘It’s sickable! It’s rotsome! It’s maggotwise! Try it yourself, this foulsome snozzcumber!’

‘No, thank you,’ Sophie said, backing away.

‘It’s all you’re going to be guzzling around here from now on so you might as well get used to it,’ said the BFG. ‘Go on, you snipsy little winkle, have a go!’

Sophie took a small nibble. ‘Uggggggggh!’ she spluttered. ‘Oh no! Oh gosh! Oh help!’ She spat it out quickly. ‘It tastes of frogskins!’ she gasped. ‘And rotten fish!’

‘Worse than that!’ cried the BFG, roaring with laughter. ‘To me it is tasting of clockcoaches and slime-wanglers!’

‘Do we really have to eat it?’ Sophie said.

‘You do unless you is wanting to become so thin you will be disappearing into a thick ear.’

‘Into
thin
air,’ Sophie said. ‘A thick ear is something quite different.’

Once again that sad winsome look came into the BFG’s eyes. ‘Words,’ he said, ‘is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life. So you must simply try to be patient and stop squibbling. As I am telling you before, I know exactly what words I am wanting to say, but somehow or other they is always getting squiff-squiddled around.’

‘That happens to everyone,’ Sophie said.

‘Not like it happens to me,’ the BFG said. ‘I is speaking the most terrible wigglish.’

‘I think you speak beautifully’ Sophie said.

‘You do?’ cried the BFG, suddenly brightening. ‘You really do?’

‘Simply beautifully’ Sophie repeated.

‘Well, that is the nicest present anybody is ever giving me in my whole life!’ cried the BFG. ‘Are you sure you is not twiddling my leg?’