Snozzcumbers
‘But if you don’t eat people like all the others,’ Sophie said, ‘then what do you live on?’
‘That is a squelching¹ tricky² 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 guzzling³ up icky-poo snozzcumbers instead. If I don’t, I will be nothing but skin and groans

分享到：