Taste

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"Taste" is a short story by Roald Dahl that appeared in the 1953 collection Someone Like You.

There are six people eating a fine dinner at the house of Mike Schofield, a London stockbroker: Mike, his
wife and daughter, an unnamed narrator and his wife (neither of whom speak or take part in the story),
and a wine connoisseur, Richard Pratt. Pratt often makes small bets with Schofield to guess what wine is
being served at the table, but during the night in the story he is uninterested, instead attempting to
socialize with Schofield's eighteen-year-old daughter, Louise.

When Schofield brings the second wine of the night he remarks that it will be impossible to guess where it
is from, but Pratt takes that as a challenge. The tough talk on both sides leads the two to increase the bet
until Pratt declares that he would like to bet for the hand of Schofield's daughter in marriage--if he loses,
he will give Schofield both of his houses. Though his wife and daughter are understandably horrified, Mike
eventually convinces them to accept the bet--it is too good a deal to pass up, especially since the wine
will be impossible to identify.

However, Pratt proceeds to name the district, commune, vineyard, and the year of the wine (though Mike
doesn't turn over the bottle, his reaction appears to be one of disbelief that Pratt could've guessed
correctly). At this moment, however, the maid walks in and returns to Pratt his glasses, which he had left
on the cabinet in the study earlier in the evening where the bottle had been left out to reach room
temperature. (Pratt had picked out this place in the study on an earlier visit as the ideal place to sit the
wine--his glasses being left there reveals that he knew the wine in advance and cheated on the bet.) The
story ends with Mike starting to get angry and his wife telling him to calm down.

Literature Annotations

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 Dahl, Roald 
Poison

Genre Short Story (10 pp.)

Keywords Anesthesia, Communication, Doctor-Patient Relationship, Professionalism, Racism

Harry Pope is afraid to move even a muscle. While lying in bed and reading a book, he notices a krait--Bungarus
Summary caeruleus, a deadly Asian snake--slithering on top of his pajamas. When his companion, Timber, arrives at the
bungalow around midnight, Harry is still petrified with fright. Convinced the snake is asleep on his stomach
beneath the bed sheet, Harry has been lying motionless for hours.

Timber telephones Dr. Ganderbai for help and despite the late hour, the Indian physician promptly makes a house
call. He administers an injection of anti-venom just in case the snake bites Harry. Next, Dr. Ganderbai carefully
infuses chloroform underneath the bed sheet in an attempt to anesthetize the krait. Timber and the doctor then
remove the sheet but no snake is found. Dr. Ganderbai questions the validity of Harry's account and wonders if the
man was merely dreaming. Harry becomes enraged and spews insults including racial slurs. The doctor remains
composed and exits quietly, remarking only that Harry could use a vacation.
Commentary The truth is skewed in this wily story. The physician's bedside manner is "confident and reassuring." He describes
the problem as "a simple matter." Actually, he frets over the situation and struggles to formulate a course of action.
The doctor informs Harry that the anti-venom will protect him but then confesses to Timber that the serum may or
may not save Harry if he is bitten by the snake.

Dr. Ganderbai is a benevolent man even though he distorts the truth to bolster the patient's confidence and comfort
him. He maintains his professional composure when handling a potentially life-threatening clinical situation and
later, an angry patient. The story offers a nice portrait of a physician's house call including images of the doctor's
bag, hypodermic syringe, and meticulous attention to the preparation and administration of an intravenous
injection.

What exactly is the "poison" that the title refers to? Some possibilities include the venom of the krait, fear, and
racism. When it comes to dangerous creatures, this tale suggests that human beings can be the most venomous
species of life on earth.

This is one of Dahl's most famous stories, and one of the most
misunderstood, I think. The entire time you're reading it, you think that the
main conflict is between the men and the krait on Harry's stomach. It's only in
the last few paragraphs, though, that you realize that Dahl's real point is
about racism. Harry Pope is perfectly willing to tolerate Dr. Ganderbai as long
as his life is in danger, but as soon as Ganderbai dares to question the white
man, Harry lets his true colors show. The story is also a masterpiece of

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 tension and suspense. You should check out the radio version sometime.

Spoiler Warning! Timber Woods, the narrator, arrives home at his bungalow

to discover his partner, Harry Pope, lying in bed and acting strangely. Harry
is whispering and sweating all over. He tells Timber that a krait - an
extremely poisonous little snake - crawled onto the bed and is now sleeping
under the sheet on Harry's stomach. Timber gets a knife from the kitchen in
case Harry gets bitten, which he'll use to cut the skin and suck out the
poison. Harry tells him to call the doctor. Doctor Ganderbai agrees to come at
once. Once he arrives, he quickly decides that the first thing to do is inject
Harry with some snakebite serum. Carefully, Ganderbai rolls up Harry's
pajama sleeve and ties on a rubber tourniquet. Harry is struggling not to
move or cough. Ganderbai smoothly inserts the needles and administers the
serum. Outside, the doctor tells Timber that the serum is by no means a
guarantee of safety. They decide to try to anesthetize the snake. The use
chloroform to soak the mattress beneath Harry. The process is agonizing and
takes a long time. Eventually they begin to slowly lift the sheet off Harry.
They see no sign of the snake. "It could be up the leg of his pajamas," says
Ganderbai. At that, Harry goes berserk and leaps to his feet, shaking his legs
violently. When he stops, they realize that he hasn't been bitten and the
snake is nowhere to be seen. "Mr. Pope, you are of course quite sure you
saw it in the first place?" asks Ganderbai. Harry turns red and asks if
Ganderbai is accusing him of being a liar. When the doctor doesn't reply,
Harry begins screaming horrible racist insults at him. The doctor quickly
leaves. Timber stops the doctor outside and apologies for Harry. He thanks
the doctor for his help. "All he needs is a good holiday," Ganderbai says
quietly before driving off.

Source The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl

Publisher Penguin Books India

Edition 1992

Place New Delhi

Published

Miscellaneous This story was first published in 1953.

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Literature Annotations

Dahl, Roald 
The Sound Machine

Genre Short Story (12 pp.)

Keywords Doctor-Patient Relationship, Empathy, Nature, Obsession, Pain, Science Fiction

I like sound. This declaration by the peculiar protagonist, Klausner, speaks volumes about his character. He builds a
Summary device intended to transform inaudible high frequency tones into sounds that can be discerned by the human ear. His
invention is a three-foot long black box resembling a small coffin that contains a complex electronic mechanism.

Klausner takes his machine outdoors to test it. At first, all he hears through the earphones connected to the
contraption is a humming noise, but soon he perceives a shriek each time his neighbor cuts the stem of a rose in her
garden. He decides to experiment further. Klausner strikes a large beech tree with an axe and immediately hears an
unsettling noise similar to a scream. He apologizes to the tree.

Klausner telephones his personal physician and implores him to come immediately. When Dr. Scott arrives,
Klausner asks him to don the earphones. The inventor smacks the tree once more with the axe. Only this time, a
large branch comes crashing down smashing the sound machine to pieces and barely missing Klausner. He asks Dr.
Scott what he heard, but the physician is not sure. Klausner insists that the gash in the tree trunk be sutured, but the
doctor explains he cannot suture through wood. Still holding his axe, Klausner commands the physician to paint the
cut with iodine and check on the tree tomorrow.
Commentary Although the amateur scientist in this story may or may not be crazy, he seems at the very least to be flirting with
madness. His fascination with acoustics and yearning to test a theory become an obsession. Klausner believes there
is a sphere of sound inaudible to humans that is so powerful it would drive people mad to hear it.

Despite the risk, Klausner embraces the opportunity to test his invention. Ponder this description of the experiment:
"As he listened, he became conscious of a curious sensation, a feeling that his ears were stretching out away from his
head" and "that the ears were going up and up towards a secret and forbidden territory, a dangerous ultrasonic region
where ears had never been before and had no right to be." (p. 565)

The sound machine is a catalyst but readers need to decide for themselves just what it does for (or to) Klausner. Has
the apparatus actually provided access to the realm of the ultrasonic and allowed him to listen in on Nature? Or has
the device triggered (or perhaps uncovered) lunacy? With its emphasis on a strange scientist preoccupied with
Nature, the tale is reminiscent of the "mad scientist" stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne. With an obsessive main
character and his heightened sense of hearing, the tale also echoes Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart "The Sound Machine"
slyly admonishes readers that we hear what we want to.
Source The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl

Publisher Penguin Books India

Edition 1992

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 The Way up to Heaven
by
All her life, Mrs. Foster had had an almost pathological fear of missing a train, a plane, a boat. At least
half an hour before she was going, she is ready to leave the house. She could not sit still. She walked
around in the house until her husband finally came out of his study.
 
Mr. Foster was irritated by his wife silly way to act. He made his wife feel even more miserable by
keeping her waiting unnecessarily.
 
Mrs. Foster was going to Paris to visit her daughter, her only child. And she wanted very much to see
her grandchildren too. She wanted to leave New York and live in Paris, but Mr. Foster would never
agree to that. It was a miracle that he agreed to let her fly over there alone for six weeks to visit
them.
 
“Walker, I missing it” Mrs. Foster said.
 
“No, Madam,” the butler said. “I think you’ll make it all right.”
 
When they came nearer to Idlewild the fog became thicker and the car had to slow down. Mrs. Foster
said that she did not make it. An old man said that the plane would not fly in this sort of weather.
 
She jumped out of the car and ran into the airport. There was a mass of unhappy passengers who
were standing around the ticket counters. She found out that her flight was postponed to the next
morning.
 
Next morning Mrs. Foster was up early, and by eight thirty she was ready to leave. Shortly after nine,
her husband appeared.
 
They sat down in the car ready to drive, when he started to lock for a present for his daughter. He
walked into the house locking for it. Then she saw a small white box in the seat where Mr. foster had
sit. She shouted out the door that she had it. Then she went the front door and stopped. She listens to
a sound from the house. Then she ran back to the car and tells the driver to drive. She caught the
plane an soon she was high over the Atlantic.
 
Every week she wrote him a letter. After six weeks she was going to return to America, to her
husband. On the airport she notes that no one to meet her. Then she took a taxi home.
 
She calls a man and said that the lift is stuck between the second and third floor.
 
Mr. foster is a mean man. He knows that his wife is afraid to miss a plane, a boat or something like
that. Everytime she is going to take something like that he tries to scare her. She hates him. She
knows that the lift was stuck, but she just leaves him. She killed him. I would like to do the same like
she did if it was one person who did the same to me.

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A swim http://www.escuela-modelo.com.ar/shortstories3/aswim.htm

"Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat" is a story by Roald Dahl which first appeared in the 1959 issue
of Nugget.
Plot summary Edit
1-Where did Mrs Bixby go once a month?

Mrs. Bixby and her husband, a dentist, live in a flat .Once a month, for years, (eigth years she went by)
Mrs Bixby would get on the train at Pennsylvania Station and travel to Baltimore, supposedly visiting her
old aunt, meanwhile she is having an affair with the Colonel

One day, Mrs. Bixby gets a rare and expensive present from the Colonel: a black, lustrous, and quite
extravagant mink coat. A letter from the Colonel that came in the box with the coat informs Mrs. Bixby that
they can no longer see each other, and suggests she tells her husband the mink coat was a present from
her aunt for Christmas. She is clearly in despair as she reads the letter.

Mrs. Bixby however knows that her aunt is far too poor to be given credit for the purchase of the coat, and
is intent on keeping it. She decides to go to a pawn-broker, and sells the coat for $50. The pawn-broker
gives her a pawn ticket, which she declines to mark with any kind of name, or description. The ticket does
however guarantee her right to claim the coat at any time. She tells her husband that she found the pawn
ticket in the taxi, and he decides it would be best if he redeemed the ticket, in spite of Mrs. Bixby's pleas.

The next day Mr. Bixby goes to the pawn shop to redeem the ticket and claim the object it stands for. Mrs.
Bixby gets her all excited about it and rushes to her husband's office after he's claimed it. Just before she
opens her eyes to see it, he says " It's real mink!". She then opens her eyes to find it is mink, but that it is
merely a small, mangy stole, and not her coat. Mr. Bixby notes both that he will be coming home late that
night, and that since he spent $50 redeeming the ticket, that he will not be able to buy Mrs. Bixby a
Christmas present.

Mrs. Bixby is initially angry at the pawn-broker, thinking that he cheated her and kept the coat. But as Mrs.
Bixby leaves her husband's office a few moments later, Miss Pulteney the secretary walks proudly out of
the office, wearing the black and rare mink coat that the Colonel gave to Mrs. Bixby. It is implied that Mr.

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Bixby is having an affair with Miss Pulteney and decided to give her the coat, buying a tacky fur hat for his
wife instead.

This short story was filmed as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and was the Season 6 opener,
originally broadcast on 9/27/1960 and directed by Hitchcock.