My Uncle Oswald Read online

  'What's the point of all this?'

  'The point is,' Yasmin said, 'I don't in the least mind being jokey about jokers. I don't mind treating them a little rough either if I have to. But I'll be damned if I'm going to start sticking hatpins into men like Renoir and Conrad and Stravinsky. Not after what I saw today.'

  'What did you see today?'

  'I told you, I saw a really great and wonderful old man.'

  'And he smote you.'

  'You're damn right he did.'

  'Let me ask you this, did he have a good time?'

  'Amazing,' she said. 'He had an amazing time.'

  'Tell me what happened.'

  'No,' she said. 'I don't mind telling you about the jokers. But the non-jokers are private.'

  'Was he in a wheelchair?'

  'Yes. And now he has to strap the paintbrush to his wrist because he can't hold it in his fingers.'

  'Because of arthritis?'

  'Yes.'

  'And you gave him the Blister Beetle?'

  'Of course.'

  'It wasn't too much for him?'

  'No,' she said. 'When you're that age you have to have it.'

  'And he gave you a picture,' I said, pointing to the brown paper parcel.

  She unwrapped it now and held it up for me to see. It was a small unframed canvas of a young rosy-cheeked girl with long golden hair and blue eyes, a wondrous little picture, a magic thing, a marvel to look at. A warm glow came out of it and filled the entire room. 'I didn't ask him for it,' Yasmin said. 'He made me take it. Isn't it beautiful?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'It is beautiful.'

  16

  The effect that Renoir had upon Yasmin during that dramatic visit to Essoyes did not, thank heaven, take all the fun out of our future operations. I myself have always found it difficult to treat anything too seriously and I believe the world would be a better place if everyone followed my example. I am completely without ambition. My motto - 'It is better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task' - should be well known to you by now. All I want out of life is to enjoy myself. But before one can achieve this happy end one must obviously get hold of a lot of money. Money is essential to a sybarite. It is the key of the kingdom. To which the carping reader will almost certainly reply, 'You say you are without ambition, but do you not realize that the desire for wealth is in itself one of the most obnoxious ambitions of them all?'

  This is not necessarily true. It is the manner in which one acquires wealth that determines whether or not it is obnoxious. I myself am scrupulous about the methods I employ. I refuse to have anything to do with moneymaking unless the process obeys two golden rules. First, it must amuse me tremendously. Second, it must give a great deal of pleasure to those from whom I extract the loot. This is a simple philosophy and I recommend it wholeheartedly to all business tycoons, casino operators, Chancellors of the Exchequer and Budget Directors everywhere.

  Two things stood out vividly during this period. First, the unusual sense of fulfilment Yasmin was getting from each artist she visited. She would emerge from house or studio with eyes shining like stars and a bright red rose on each cheek. All of which caused me to ruminate many times upon the sexual dexterity of men of outstanding creative genius. Did this prodigious creativity of theirs spill over into other fields? And if so, did they know deep secrets and magic methods of exciting a lady that were beyond the reach of ordinary mortals like me? The red roses upon Yasmin's cheeks and the shine in her eyes made me suspect, a trifle reluctantly let me say, that this was so.

  The second surprising facet of the whole operation was its extraordinary simplicity. Yasmin never seemed to have the slightest trouble in getting her man to deliver the goods. Mind you, the more one thinks about this, the more obvious it becomes that she never was going to have any trouble in the first place. Men are by nature polygamous creatures. Add to that the well-substantiated fact that supreme creative artists tend to be more viripotent than their fellows (just as they also tend to be heavier drinkers) and you can begin to see why no one was going to give Yasmin much of an argument. So what do you have? You have a bunch of supremely gifted and therefore hyperactive artists loaded with the very finest Sudanese Blister Beetle who find themselves staring goggle-eyed at a young female of indescribable beauty. They were jiggered. They were scrambled and dished up on buttered toast from the moment they swallowed the fatal chocolate. I am positive that the Pope of Rome himself, in the same situation, would have had his cassock off in nine minutes flat just like the rest of them.

  But I must go back for a moment to where we left off.

  After Renoir, we returned to our headquarters at the Ritz in Paris. From there we went after old Monet. We drove out to his splendid house at Giverny and I dropped Yasmin off at the gates in the approved fashion. She was inside for over three hours, but I didn't mind that. Knowing there would be lots of other long waits like this coming along, I had installed a small library in the back of the car-a complete Shakespeare, some Jane Austen, some Dickens, some Balzac and the latest Kipling.

  Yasmin emerged at last and I saw she had a large canvas under one arm. She was walking slowly, just sauntering along the sidewalk in a dreamy sort of way, but when she came closer, the first thing I noticed was that old glint of ecstasy in her eyes and the brilliant roses on her cheeks. She looked like a nice tame tigress who had just swallowed the Emperor of India and had liked the taste.

  'Everything all right?'

  'Fine,' she murmured.

  'Let's see the picture.'

  It was a shimmering study of waterlilies on the lake in Monet's Giverny garden, a real beauty.

  'He said I was a miracle worker.'

  'He's right.'

  'He said I was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his life. He asked me to stay.'

  Monet's semen, as it turned out, had a better count than Renoir's in spite of him being a year older, and I was fortunate in being able to make twenty-five straws. Admittedly, each straw had the minimum count of only twenty million sperm, but they would do. They would do very well. They would be worth hundreds of thousands, I reckoned, those Monet straws, in the years to come.

  Then we had a stroke of luck. In Paris at this time there was a dynamic and extraordinary producer of ballets called Diaghilev. Diaghilev had a talent for spotting great artists, and in 1919 he was regrouping his company after the war and preparing a new repertory of ballets. He had gathered around him for this purpose a group of remarkably gifted men. For example, at that very moment: Igor Stravinsky had come up from Switzerland to write the music for Diaghilev's Pulcinella. Pablo Picasso was designing the sets.

  Picasso was also doing the sets for Three-Cornered Hat.

  Henri Matisse had been hired to design the costumes and the decor for Le Chant de Rossignol.

  And another painter we had not heard of called Andre Derain was busy preparing the sets for La Boutique Fantasque.

  Stravinsky, Picasso and Matisse were all on our list. On the theory that Monsieur Diaghilev's judgement was probably sounder than ours, we decided to put Derain's name on as well. All of these men were in Paris.

  We took Stravinsky first. Yasmin walked right in on him while he was working at the piano on Pulcinella. He was more surprised than angry. 'Hello,' he said. 'Who are you?'

  'I have come all the way from England to offer you a chocolate,' she said.

  This absurd remark, which Yasmin was to use on many other occasions, disarmed completely this kind and friendly man. The rest was simple, and although I longed for salacious details, Yasmin remained mute.

  'You might at least tell me what he was like as a person.'

  'Sparkling bright,' she said. 'Oh, he was so sparkling bright and so quick and clever. He had a huge head and a nose like a boiled egg.'

  'Is he a genius?'

  'Yes,' she said, 'he's a genius. He's got the spark, the same as Monet and Renoir.'

  'What is this spark?' I said. 'Where is it? Is it in the eyes?'


  'No,' she said. 'It isn't anywhere special. It's just there. You know it's there. It's like an invisible halo.'

  I made fifty straws from Stravinsky.

  Next it was Picasso's turn. He had a studio at that time in the Rue de la Boetie and I dropped Yasmin off in front of a rickety-looking door with brown paint peeling off it. There was no bell or knocker so Yasmin simply pushed it open and went in. Outside in the car I settled down with La Cousine Bette which I still think is the best thing the old French master ever wrote.

  I don't believe I had read more than four pages when the car door was flung open and Yasmin tumbled in and flopped on to the seat beside me. Her hair was all over the place and she was blowing like a sperm whale.

  'Christ, Yasmin! What happened?'

  'My God!' she gasped. 'Oh, my God!'

  'Did he throw you out?' I cried. 'Did he hurt you?'

  She was too out of breath to answer me at once. A trickle of sweat was running down the side of her forehead. She looked as though she'd been chased around the block four times by a maniac with a carving knife. I waited for her to simmer down.

  'Don't worry,' I said. 'We're bound to have one or two washouts.'

  'He's a demon!' she said.

  'What did he do to you?'

  'He's a bull! He's like a little brown bull!'

  'Go on.'

  'He was painting on a huge canvassy thing when I went in and he turned round and his eyes opened so wide they became circles and they were black and he shouted "Ole" or something like that and then he came towards me very slowly and sort of crouching as though he was going to spring...'

  'And did he spring?'

  'Yes,' she said. 'He sprang.'

  'Good Lord.'

  'He didn't even put his paintbrush down.'

  'So you had no chance to get the mackintosh on?'

  'Afraid not. Didn't even have time to open my purse.'

  'Hell.'

  'I was hit by a hurricane, Oswald.'

  'Couldn't you have slowed him down a bit? You remember what you did to old Woresley to make him keep still?'

  'Nothing would have stopped this one.'

  'Were you on the floor?'

  'No. He threw me on to a filthy sofa thing. There were tubes of paint everywhere.'

  'It's all over you now. Look at your dress.'

  'I know.'

  One couldn't blame Yasmin for the failure, I knew that. But I felt pretty ratty all the same. It was our first miss. I only hoped there wouldn't be many more.

  'Do you know what he did afterwards?' Yasmin said. 'He just buttoned up Kis trousers and said, "Thank you, mademoiselle. That was very refreshing. Now I must get back to my work." And he turned away, Oswald! He just turned away and started painting again!'

  'He's Spanish,' I said, 'like Alfonso.' I stepped out of the car and cranked the starting-handle and when I got back in again Yasmin was tidying her hair in the car mirror. 'I hate to say it,' she said, 'but I rather enjoyed that one.'

  'I know you did.'

  'Phenomenal vitality.'

  'Tell me,' I said, 'is Monsieur Picasso a genius?'

  'Yes,' she said. 'It was very strong. He will be wildly famous one day.'

  'Damn.'

  'We can't win them all, Oswald.'

  'I suppose not.'

  Matisse was next.

  Yasmin was with Monsieur Matisse for about two hours and blow me if the little thief didn't come out with yet another painting. It was sheer magic, that canvas, a Fauve landscape with trees that were blue and green and scarlet, signed and dated 1905.

  'Terrific picture,' I said.

  'Terrific man,' she said. And that was all she would say about Henri Matisse. Not a word more.

  Fifty straws.

  17

  My travelling container of liquid nitrogen was beginning to fill up with straws. We now had King Alfonso, Renoir, Monet, Stravinsky and Matisse. But there was room for a few more. Each straw held only 1/4cc of fluid and the straw itself was only slightly thicker than a matchstick and about half as long. Fifty straws stacked neatly in a metal rack took up very little room. I decided we could accommodate three more batches on this trip and I told Yasmin we would be visiting Marcel Proust, Maurice Ravel and James Joyce. All of them were living in the Paris area.

  If I have given the impression that Yasmin and I were paying our visits more or less on consecutive days, that is wrong. We were, in fact, moving slowly and carefully. Usually about a week went by between each visit. This gave me time to investigate thoroughly the next victim before we moved in on him. We never drove up to a house and rang the bell and hoped for the best. Before we made a call, I knew all about the man's habits and his working hours, about his family and his servants if he had any, and we would choose our time with care. But even then Yasmin would occasionally have to wait outside in the motor car until a wife or a servant came out to go shopping.

  Monsieur Proust was our next choice. He was forty-eight years old, and six years back, in 1913, he had published Du Cote de chez Swann. Now he had just brought out A l'Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs. This book had been received with much enthusiasm by the reviewers and had won him the Goncourt Prize. But I was a bit nervous about Monsieur Proust. My inquiries showed him to be a very queer duck indeed. He was independently wealthy. He was a snob. He was anti-semitic. He was vain. He was a hypochondriac who suffered from asthma. He slept until four in the afternoon and stayed awake all night. He lived with a faithful watchdog servant called Celeste and his present address was an apartment at No 8 bis Rue Laurent-Pichet. The house belonged to the celebrated actress Rejane, and Rejane's son lived in the flat immediately below Proust, while Rejane herself occupied the rest of the place.

  I learned that Monsieur Proust was, from a literary point of view, totally unscrupulous and would use both persuasion and money to inspire rave articles about his books in newspapers and magazines. And on top of all this, he was completely homosexual. No woman, other than the faithful Celeste, was ever permitted into his bedroom. In order to study the man more closely, I got myself invited to a dinner at the house of his close friend, Princess Soutzo. And there I discovered that Monsieur Proust was nothing to look at. With his black moustache, his round bulging eyes and his baggy little figure, he bore an astonishing resemblance to an actor on the cinematograph screen called Charlie Chaplin. At Princess Soutzo's, he complained a lot about draughts in the dining-room and he held court among the guests and expected everyone to be silent when he spoke. I can remember two incredible pronouncements he made that evening. Of a man who preferred women, he said, 'I can answer for him. He is completely abnormal.' And another time, I heard him say, 'Fondness for men leads to virility.' In short, he was a tricky fellow.

  'Now wait just a minute,' Yasmin had said to me when I told her all this. 'I'll be damned if I'm going to take on a bugger.'

  'Why not?'

  'Don't be so stupid, Oswald. If he's a raging hundred per cent fairy...'

  'He calls it an invert.'

  'I don't care what he calls it.'

  'It's a very Proustian word,' I said. 'Look up "to invert" in the dictionary and you'll find the definition is "to turn upside down".'

  'He's not turning me upside down thank you very much,' Yasmin said.

  'Now don't get excited.'

  'Anyway, it's a waste of time,' she said. 'He wouldn't even look at me.'

  'I think he would.'

  'What d'you want me to do, dress up as a choirboy?'

  'We'll give him a double dose of Blister Beetle.'

  'That's not going to change his habits.'

  'No,' I said, 'but it'll make him so bloody horny he won't care what sex you are.'

  'He'll invert me.'

  'No, he won't.'

  'He'll invert me like a comma.'

  'Take a hatpin with you.'

  'It's still not going to work,' she said. 'If he's a genuine twenty-four carat queer, then all women are physically repulsive to him.'

  'It'
s essential we get him,' I said. 'Our collection won't be complete without fifty Proust straws.'

  'Is he really so important?'

  'He's going to be,' I said. 'I'm sure of it. There'll be a strong demand for Proust children in the years to come.'

  Yasmin gazed out of the Ritz windows at the cloudy-grey summer sky over Paris. 'If that's the case, then there's only one thing for it,' she said.

  'What's that?'

  'You do it yourself.'

  I was so shocked I jumped.

  'Steady on,' I said.

  'He wants a man,' she said. 'Well, you're a man. You're perfect. You're young, you're beautiful and you're lecherous.'

  'Yes, but I am not a catamite.'

  'You don't have the guts?'

  'Of course I've got the guts. But field work is your province, not mine.'

  'Who said so?'

  'I can't cope with a man, Yasmin, you know that.'

  'This isn't a man. It's a fairy.'

  'For God's sake!' I cried. 'I'll be damned if I'll let that little sod come near me! I'll have you know that even an enema gives me the shakes for a week!'

  Yasmin burst into shrieks of laughter. 'I suppose you're going to tell me next,' she said, 'that you have a small sphincter.'

  'Yes and I'm not having Mr Proust enlarge it, thanks very much,' I said.

  'You're a coward, Oswald,' she said.

  It was an impasse. I sulked. Yasmin got up and poured herself a drink. I did the same. We sat there drinking in silence. It was early evening.

  'Where shall we have dinner tonight?' I said.

  'I don't care,' she said. 'I think we ought to try to solve this Proust thing first. I'd hate to see this little bugger get away.'

  'Do you have any ideas?'

  'I'm thinking,' she said.

  I finished my drink and got myself another. 'You want one?' I said to her.

  'No,' she said. I left her to go on thinking. After a while she said, 'Well now, I wonder if that will work.'

  'What?'

  'I've just had a tiny little idea.'

  'Tell me.'

  Yasmin didn't answer. She stood up and walked over to the window and leaned out. She stayed leaning out of that window for fully five minutes, immobile, deep in thought, and I watched her but kept my mouth shut. Then all of a sudden I saw her reach behind her with her right hand, and the hand started snatching at the air as though she were catching flies. She didn't look round as she did this. She just went on hanging out of the window and snatching away at those invisible non-existent flies behind her.