Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator Read online

  'Without what?' snapped Grandma Georgina.

  'Without a leg to stand on,' said Mr Wonka. 'So I rolled up my sleeves and set to work once more in the Inventing Room. I mixed and I mixed. I must have tried just about every mixture under the moon. By the way, there is a little hole in one wall of the Inventing Room which connects directly with the Testing Room next door, so I was able all the time to keep passing stuff through for testing to whichever brave volunteer happened to be on duty. Well, the first few weeks were pretty depressing and we won't talk about them. Let me tell you instead what happened on the one hundred and thirty-second day of my labours. That morning, I had changed the mixture drastically, and this time the little pill I produced at the end of it all was not nearly so active or alive as the others had been. It kept changing colour, yes, but only from lemon-yellow to blue, then back to yellow again. And when I placed it on the palm of my hand, it didn't jump about like a grasshopper. It only quivered, and then ever so slightly.

  'I ran to the hole in the wall that led to the Testing Room. A very old Oompa-Loompa was on duty there that morning. He was a bald, wrinkled, toothless old fellow. He was in a wheel-chair. He had been in the wheel-chair for at least fifteen years.

  ' "This is test number one hundred and thirty-two!" I said, chalking it up on the board.

  'I handed him the pill. He looked at it nervously. I couldn't blame him for being a bit jittery after what had happened to the other one hundred and thirty-one volunteers.'

  'What had happened to them?' shouted Grandma Georgina. 'Why don't you answer the question instead of skidding around it on two wheels?'

  'Who knows the way out of a rose?' said Mr Wonka. 'So this brave old Oompa-Loompa took the pill and, with the help of a little water, he gulped it down. And then, suddenly, the most amazing thing happened. Before my very eyes, queer little changes began taking place in the way he looked. A moment earlier, he had been practically bald, with just a fringe of snowy white hair around the sides and the back of his head. But now the fringe of white hair was turning gold and all over the top of his head new gold hair was beginning to sprout, like grass. In less than half a minute, he had grown a splendid new crop of long golden hair. At the same time, many of the wrinkles started disappearing from his face, not all of them, but about half, enough to make him look a good deal younger, and all of this must have given him a nice tickly feeling because he started grinning at me, then laughing, and as soon as he opened his mouth, I saw the strangest sight of all. Teeth were growing up out from those old toothless gums, good white teeth, and they were coming up so fast I could actually see them getting bigger and bigger.

  'I was too flabbergasted to speak. I just stood there with my head poking through the hole in the wall, staring at the little Oompa-Loompa. I saw him slowly lifting himself out of his wheel-chair. He tested his legs on the ground. He stood up. He walked a few paces. Then he looked up at me and his face was bright. His eyes were huge and bright as two stars.

  ' "Look at me," he said softly. "I'm walking! It's a miracle!"

  ' "It's Wonka-Vite!" I said. "The great rejuvenator. It makes you young again. How old do you feel now?"

  'He thought carefully about this question, then he said, "I feel almost exactly how I felt when I was fifty years old."

  ' "How old were you just now, before you took the Wonka-Vite?" I asked him.

  ' "Seventy last birthday," he answered.

  ' "That means," I said, "it has made you twenty years younger."

  ' "It has, it has!" he cried, delighted. "I feel as frisky as a froghopper!"

  ' "Not frisky enough," I told him. "Fifty is still pretty old. Let us see if I can't help you a bit more. Stay right where you are. I'll be back in a twink."

  'I ran to my work-bench and began to make one more pill of Wonka-Vite, using exactly the same mixture as before.

  ' "Swallow this," I said, passing the second pill through the hatch. There was no hesitating this time. Eagerly, he popped it into his mouth and chased it down with a drink of water. And behold, within half a minute, another twenty years had fallen away from his face and body and he was now a slim and sprightly young Oompa-Loompa of thirty. He gave a whoop of joy and started dancing around the room, leaping high in the air and coming down on his toes. "Are you happy?" I asked him.

  ' "I'm ecstatic!" he cried, jumping up and down. "I'm happy as a horse in a hay-field!" He ran out of the Testing Room to show himself off to his family and friends.

  'Thus was Wonka-Vite invented!' said Mr Wonka. 'And thus was it made safe for all to use!'

  'Why don't you use it yourself, then?' said Grandma Georgina. 'You told Charlie you were getting too old to run the factory, so why don't you just take a couple of pills and get forty years younger? Tell me that?'

  'Anyone can ask questions,' said Mr Wonka. 'It's the answers that count. Now then, if the three of you in the bed would care to try a dose...'

  'Just one minute!' said Grandma Josephine, sitting up straight. 'First I'd like to take a look at this seventy-year-old Oompa-Loompa who is now back to thirty!'

  Mr Wonka flicked his fingers. A tiny Oompa-Loompa, looking young and perky, ran forward out of the crowd and did a marvellous little dance in front of the three old people in the big bed. 'Two weeks ago, he was seventy years old and in a wheel-chair!' Mr Wonka said proudly. 'And look at him now!'

  'The drums, Charlie!' said Grandpa Joe. 'Listen!

  They're starting up again!'

  Far away down on the bank of the chocolate river, Charlie could see the Oompa-Loompa band striking up once more. There were twenty Oompa-Loompas in the band, each with an enormous drum twice as tall as himself, and they were beating a slow mysterious rhythm that soon had all the other hundreds of Oompa-Loompas swinging and swaying from side to side in a kind of trance. They then began to chant: 'If you are old and have the shakes,

  If all your bones are full of aches,

  If you can hardly walk at all,

  If living drives you up the wall,

  If you're a grump and full of spite,

  If you're a human parasite,

  THEN WHA T YOU NEED IS WONKA-VITE!

  Your eyes will shine, your hair will grow,

  Your face and skin will start to glow,

  Your rotten teeth will all drop out

  And in their place new teeth will sprout.

  Those rolls of fat around your hips

  Will vanish, and your wrinkled lips

  Will get so soft and rosy-pink

  That all the boys will smile and wink

  And whisper secretly that this

  Is just the girl they want to kiss!

  But wait! For that is not the most

  Important thing of which to boast.

  Good looks you'll have, we've told you so,

  But looks aren't every thing, you know.

  Each pill, as well, to you will give

  AM EXTRA TWENTY YEARS TO LIVE!

  So come, old friends, and do what's right!

  Let's make your lives as bright as bright!

  Let's take a dose of this delight!

  This heavenly magic dynamite!

  You can't go wrong, you must go right!

  IT'S WILLY WONKA'S WONKA-VITE!'

  14

  Recipe for Wonka-Vite

  'Here it is!' cried Mr Wonka, standing at the end of the bed and holding high in one hand a little bottle. 'The most valuable bottle of pills in the world! And that, by the way,' he said, giving Grandma Georgina a saucy glance, 'is why I haven't taken any myself. They are far too valuable to waste on me.'

  He held the bottle out over the bed. The three old ones sat up and stretched their scrawny necks, trying to catch a glimpse of the pills inside. Charlie and Grandpa Joe also came forward to look. So did Mr and Mrs Bucket. The label said:

  They could all see the pills through the glass. They were brilliant yellow, shimmering and quivering inside the bottle. Vibrating is perhaps a better word. They were vibrating so rapidly that each
pill became a blur and you couldn't see its shape. You could only see its colour. You got the impression that there was something very small but incredibly powerful, something not quite of this world, locked up inside them and fighting to get out.

  'They're wriggling,' said Grandma Georgina. 'I don't like things that wriggle. How do we know they won't go on wriggling inside us after we've swallowed them? Like those Mexican jumping beans of Charlie's I swallowed a couple of years back. You remember that, Charlie?'

  'I told you not to eat them, Grandma.'

  'They went on jumping about inside me for a month,' said Grandma Georgina. 'I couldn't sit still!'

  'If I'm going to eat one of those pills, I jolly well want to know what's in it first,' said Grandma Josephine.

  'I don't blame you,' said Mr Wonka. 'But the recipe is extremely complicated. Wait a minute... I've got it written down somewhere...' He started digging around in the pockets of his coat-tails. 'I know it's here somewhere,' he said. 'I can't have lost it. I keep all my most valuable and important things in these pockets. The trouble is, there's such a lot of them...' He started emptying the pockets and placing the contents on the bed - a homemade catapult... a yo-yo... a trick fried-egg made of rubber... a slice of salami... a tooth with a filling in it... a stinkbomb... a packet of itching-powder...'It must be here, it must be, it must,' he kept muttering. 'I put it away so carefully... Ah! Here it is!' He unfolded a crumpled piece of paper, smoothed it out, held it up and began to read as follows:

  RECIPE FOR MAKING WONKA-VITE

  Take a block of finest chocolate weighing one ton (or twenty sackfuls of broken chocolate, whichever is the easier). Place chocolate in very large cauldron and melt over red-hotfurnace . When melted, lower the heat slightly so as not to burn the chocolate, but keep it boiling. Mow add the following, in precisely the order given, stirring well all the time and allowing each item to dissolve before adding the next:

  THE HOOF OF A MANTICORE

  THE TRUNK (AND THE SUITCASE) OF AN ELEPHANT

  THE YOLKS OF THREE EGGS FROM A WHIFFLE-BIRD

  A WART FROM A WART-HOG

  THE HORN OF A COW (IT MUST BE A LOUD HORN) THE FRONT TAIL OF A COCKATRICE

  SIX OUNCES OF SPRUNGE FROM A YOUNG SLIMESCRAPER

  TWO HAIRS (AND ONE RABBIT)

  FROM THE HEAD OF A

  HIPPOCAMPUS

  THE BEAK OF A RED-BREASTED WILBATROSS

  A CORN FROM THE TOE OF A UNICORN

  THE FOUR TENTACLES OF A QUADROPUS

  THE HIP (AND THE PO AND THE POT) OF A HIPPOPOTAMUS

  THE SNOUT OF A PROGHOPPER

  A MOLE FROM A MOLE

  THE HIDE (AND THE SEEK) OF A SPOTTED WHANGDOODLE

  THE WHITES OF TWELVE EGGS FROM A TREE-SQUEAK

  THE THREE FEET OF A SNOZZ-WANGER (IF YOU CAN'T GET THREE FEET, ONE YARD WILL DO) THE SQUARE-ROOT OF A SOUTH AMERICAN ABACUS

  THE FANGS OF A VIPER (IT MUST BE A VINDSCREEN VIPER) THE CHEST (AND THE DRAWERS) OF A WILD GROUT

  When all the above are thoroughly dissolved, boil for a further twenty-seven days but do not stir. At the end of this time, all liquid will have evaporated and there will be left in the bottom of the cauldron only a hard brown lump about the size of a football. Break this open with a hammer and in the very centre of it you will find a small round pill. This pill is WONKA-VITE.

  15

  Good-bye Georgina

  When Mr Wonka had finished reading the recipe, he carefully folded the paper and put it back into his pocket. 'A very, very complicated mixture,' he said. 'So can you wonder it took me so long to get it just right?' He held the bottle up high and gave it a little shake and the pills rattled loudly inside it, like glass beads. 'Now, sir,' he said, offering the bottle first to Grandpa George. 'Will you take one pill or two?'

  'Will you solemnly swear,' said Grandpa George, 'that it will do what you say it will and nothing else?'

  Mr Wonka placed his free hand on his heart. 'I swear it,' he said.

  Charlie edged forward. Grandpa Joe came with him. The two of them always stayed close together. 'Please excuse me for asking,' Charlie said, 'but are you really absolutely sure you've got it quite right?'

  'Whatever makes you ask a funny question like that?' said Mr Wonka.

  'I was thinking of the gum you gave to Violet Beauregarde,' Charlie said.

  'So that's what's bothering you!' cried Mr Wonka. 'But don't you understand, my dear boy, that I never did give that gum to Violet? She snatched it without permission. And I shouted, "Stop! Don't! Spit it out!" But the silly girl took no notice of me. Now Wonka-Vite is altogether different. I am offering these pills to your grandparents. I am recommending them. And when taken according to my instructions, they are as safe as sugar-candy!'

  'Of course they are!' cried Mr Bucket. 'What are you waiting for, all of you!' An extraordinary change had come over Mr Bucket since he had entered the Chocolate Room. Normally he was a pretty timid sort of person. A lifetime devoted to screwing caps on to the tops of toothpaste tubes in a toothpaste factory had turned him into a rather shy and quiet man. But the sight of the marvellous Chocolate Factory had made his spirits soar. What is more, this business of the pills seemed to have given him a terrific kick. 'Listen!' he cried, going up to the edge of the bed. 'Mr Wonka's offering you a new life! Grab it while you can!'

  'It's a delicious sensation,' Mr Wonka said. 'And it's very quick. You lose a year a second. Exactly one year falls away from you every second that goes by!' He stepped forward and placed the bottle of pills gently in the middle of the bed. 'So here you are, my dears,' he said. 'Help yourselves!'

  'Come on!' cried all the Oompa-Loompas together.

  'Come on, old friends, and do what's right!

  Come make your lives as bright as bright!

  Just take a dose of this delight!

  This heavenly magic dynamite!

  You can't go wrong, you must go right!

  IT'S WILLY WONKA'S WONKA-VITE!'

  This was too much for the old people in the bed. All three of them made a dive for the bottle. Six scrawny hands shot out and started scrabbling to get hold of it. Grandma Georgina got it. She gave a grunt of triumph and unscrewed the cap and tipped all the little brilliant yellow pills on to the blanket on her lap. She cupped her hands around them so the others couldn't reach out and snatch them. 'All right!' she shouted excitedly, counting them quickly. 'There's twelve pills here! That's six for me and three each for you!'

  'Hey! That's not fair!' shrilled Grandma Josephine. 'It's four for each of us!'

  'Four each is right!' cried Grandpa George. 'Come on, Georgina! Hand over my share!'

  Mr Wonka shrugged his shoulders and turned his back on them. He hated squabbles. He hated it when people got grabby and selfish. Let them fight it out among themselves, he thought, and he walked away. He walked slowly down toward the chocolate waterfall. It was an unhappy truth, he told himself, that nearly all people in the world behave badly when there is something really big at stake. Money is the thing they fight over most. But these pills were bigger than money. They could do things for you no amount of money could ever do. They were worth at least a million dollars a pill. He knew plenty of very rich men who would gladly pay that much in order to become twenty years younger. He reached the riverbank below the waterfall and he stood there gazing at the great gush and splash of melted chocolate pouring down. He had hoped the noise of the waterfall would drown the arguing voices of the old grandparents in the bed, but it didn't. Even with his back to them, he still couldn't help hearing most of what they were saying.

  'I got them first!' Grandma Georgina was shouting. 'So they're mine to share out!'

  'Oh no they're not!' shrilled Grandma Josephine. 'He didn't give them to you! He gave them to all three of us!'

  'I want my share and no one's going to stop me getting it!' yelled Grandpa George. 'Come on, woman! Hand them over!'

  Then came the voice of Grandpa Joe, cutting in sternly through the rabble. 'Stop this at once!' he orde
red. 'All three of you! You're behaving like savages!'

  'You keep out of this, Joe, and mind your own business!' said Grandma Josephine.

  'Now you be careful, Josie,' Grandpa Joe went on. 'Four is too many for one person anyway.'

  'That's right,' Charlie said. 'Please, Grandma, why don't you just take one or two each like Mr Wonka said, and that'll leave some for Grandpa Joe and Mother and Father.'

  'Yes!' cried Mr Bucket. 'I'd love one!'

  'Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful,' said Mrs Bucket, 'to be twenty years younger and not have aching feet any more! Couldn't you spare just one for each of us, Mother?'

  'I'm afraid not,' said Grandma Georgina. 'These pills are specially reserved for us three in the bed. Mr Wonka said so!'

  'I want my share!' shouted Grandpa George. 'Come on, Georgina! Dish them out!'

  'Hey, let me go, you brute!' cried Grandma Georgina. 'You're hurting me! Ow!... ALL RIGHT! All right! I'll share them out if you'll stop twisting my arm... That's better... Here's four for Josephine... and four for George... and four for me.'

  'Good,' said Grandpa George. 'Now who's got some water?'

  Without looking around, Mr Wonka knew that three Oompa-Loompas would be running to the bed with three glasses of water. Oompa-Loompas were always ready to help. There was a brief pause, and then: 'Well, here goes!' cried Grandpa George.

  'Young and beautiful, that's what I'll be!' shouted Grandma Josephine.

  'Farewell, old age!' cried Grandma Georgina. 'All together now! Down the hatch!'

  Then there was silence. Mr Wonka was itching to turn around and look, but he forced himself to wait. Out of the corner of one eye he could see a group of Oompa-Loompas, all motionless, their eyes fixed intently in the direction of the big bed over by the Elevator. Then Charlie's voice broke the silence. 'Wow!' he was shouting. 'Just look at that! It's... it's incredible!'

  'I can't believe it!' Grandpa Joe was yelling. 'They're getting younger and younger! They really are! Just look at Grandpa George's hair!'

  'And his teeth!' cried Charlie. 'Hey, Grandpa! You're getting lovely white teeth all over again!'

  'Mother!' shouted Mrs Bucket to Grandma Georgina. 'Oh, Mother! You're beautiful! You're so young! And just look at Dad!' she went on, pointing at Grandpa George. 'Isn't he handsome!'