Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl Read Free Book Online Page A

air. Her features, which must have been quite pleasant
once, had now gone completely. The mouth was slack, the
cheeks loose and flabby, and the whole face gave the impression
of having slowly but surely sagged to pieces through
years and years of joyless married life. They walked on for a
while in silence.
      
“Take your time when you get inside,” Landy said. “He
won’t know you’re in there until you place your face directly
above his eye. The eye is always open, but he can’t move it at
all, so the field of vision is very narrow. At present we have
it looking straight up at the ceiling. And of course he can’t
hear anything. We can talk together as much as we like. It’s
in here.”
      
Landy opened a door and ushered her into a small square
room.
      
“I wouldn’t go too close yet,” he said, putting a hand on
her arm. “Stay back here a moment with me until you get
used to it all.”
      
There was a biggish white enamel bowl about the size of
a washbasin standing on a high white table in the centre of
the room, and there were half a dozen thin plastic tubes
coming out of it. These tubes were connected with a whole
lot of glass piping in which you could see the blood flowing
to and from the heart machine. The machine itself made a
soft rhythmic pulsing sound.
      
“He’s in there,” Landy said, pointing to the basin, which
was too high for her to see into. “Come just a little closer.
Not too near.”
      
He led her two paces forward.
      
By stretching her neck, Mrs Pearl could now see the surface of
the liquid inside the basin. It was clear and still, and on it there
floated a small oval capsule, about the size of a pigeon’s egg.
      
“That’s the eye in there,” Landy said. “Can you see it?”
      
“Yes.”
      
“So far as we can tell, it is still in perfect condition. It’s his
right eye, and the plastic container has a lens on it similar to
the one he used in his own spectacles. At this moment he’s
probably seeing quite as well as he did before.”
      
“The ceiling isn’t much to look at,” Mrs Pearl said.
      
“Don’t worry about that. We’re in the process of working
out a whole programme to keep him amused, but we don’t
want to go too quickly at first.”
      
“Give him a good book.”
      
“We will, we will. Are you feeling all right, Mrs Pearl?”
      
“Yes.”
      
“Then we’ll go forward a little more, shall we, and you’ll
be able to see the whole thing.”
      
He led her forward until they were standing only a couple
of yards from the table, and now she could see right down
into the basin.
      
“There you are,” Landy said. “That’s William.”
      
He was far larger than she had imagined he would be, and
darker in colour. With all the ridges and creases running over

his surface, he reminded her of nothing so much as an
enormous pickled walnut. She could see the stubs of the four
big arteries and the two veins coming out from the base of
him and the neat way in which they were joined to the plastic
tubes; and with each throb of the heart machine, all the tubes
gave a little jerk in unison as the blood was pushed through
them.
      
“You’ll have to lean over,” Landy said, “and put your pretty
face right above the eye. He’ll see you then, and you can smile
at him and blow him a kiss. If I were you I’d say a few nice
things as well. He won’t actually hear them, but I’m sure he’ll
get the general idea.”
      
“He hates people blowing kisses at him,” Mrs Pearl said. “I’ll
do it my own way if you don’t mind.” She stepped up to the
edge of the table, leaned forward until her face was directly
over the basin, and looked straight down into William’s eye.
      
“Hallo, dear,” she whispered. “It’s me—Mary.”
      
The eye, bright as