My Uncle Oswald Read online

  Then suddenly, in the absolute stillness that prevailed, Yasmin's small sweet voice began to sing 'Un bel di vedremo'. The effect was stunning. In that place, in that atmosphere, in the dark night beside the lake outside Puccini's window, I was moved beyond words. I saw the composer freeze. The pen was in his hand against the paper and the hand froze and his whole body became motionless as he sat listening to the voice outside the window. He didn't look round. I don't think he dared to look round for fear of breaking the spell. Outside his window a young maiden was singing one of his favourite arias in a small clear voice in absolutely perfect pitch. His face didn't change expression. His mouth didn't move. Nothing about him moved while the aria was in progress. It was a magic moment. Then Yasmin stopped singing. For a few seconds longer Puccini remained sitting at the piano. He seemed to be waiting for more, or for a sign of some sort from outside. But Yasmin didn't move or speak either. She simply stood there with her face upturned to the window, waiting for the man to come to her.

  And come to her he did. I saw him put down his pen and rise slowly from the piano stool. He walked to the window. Then he saw Yasmin. I have spoken many times of her scintillating beauty, and the sight of her standing out there so still and serene must have come as a glorious shock to Puccini. He stared. He gaped. Was this a dream? Then Yasmin smiled at him and that broke the spell. I saw him come suddenly out of his trance and I heard him say, 'Dio mio come bello!' Then he jumped clear out of the window and clasped Yasmin in a powerful embrace.

  That was more like it, I thought. That was the real Puccini. Yasmin was not slow to respond. Then I heard him say softly to her in Italian, which I'm sure Yasmin didn't understand, 'We must go back inside. If the piano stops playing for too long a time, my wife wakes up and becomes suspicious.' I saw him smile at this, showing fine white teeth. Then he picked Yasmin up and hoisted her through the window and climbed in after her.

  I am not a voyeur. I watched A. R. Woresley's antics with Yasmin for purely professional reasons, but I had no intention of peeping through the window at Yasmin and Puccini. The act of copulation is like that of picking the nose. It's all right to be doing it yourself but it is a singularly unattractive spectacle for the onlooker. I walked away. I climbed the ladder and dropped over the fence and went for a stroll along the edge of the lake. I was away about an hour. When I returned to the ladder there was no sign of Yasmin. When three hours had gone by, I climbed back into the garden to investigate.

  I was creeping cautiously between the bushes when suddenly I heard footsteps on the gravel path and Puccini himself with Yasmin on his arm walked past me not ten feet away. I heard him saying to her in Italian, 'No gentleman is going to permit a lady to walk back to Lucca all alone at this time of night.'

  Was he going to walk her back to the hotel? I followed them to see where they were going. Puccini's motor car was standing in the drive in the front of the house. I saw him help Yasmin into the passenger seat. Then, with a great deal of fuss and match-striking, he got the acetylene headlamps alight. He cranked the starting-handle. The engine fired and ticked over. He unlocked the gates, jumped into the driver's seat and off they went with the motor roaring and revving.

  I ran out to my own car and got the thing started. I drove fast towards Lucca but I never caught up with Puccini. In fact, I was only halfway there when he passed me on his way home again, alone this time.

  I found Yasmin at the hotel.

  'Did you get the stuff?'

  'Of course,' she said.

  'Give it to me quickly.'

  She handed it over and by dawn I had made one hundred Puccini straws of good quality. While I was working on them, Yasmin sat in an armchair in my room drinking red Chianti and giving her report.

  'Great time,' she said. 'Really marvellous. I wish they were all like him.'

  'Good.'

  'He was so jolly,' she said. 'Lots of laughs. And he sang me a bit from the new opera he's doing.'

  'Did he say what he's calling it?'

  'Turio,' she said. 'Turidot. Something like that.'

  'No trouble from the wife upstairs?'

  'Not a peep,' she said. 'But it was so funny because even when we were plunged in passion on the sofa, he had to keep reaching out every now and again to bang the piano. Just to let her know he was working hard and not banging some woman.'

  'A great man, you think?'

  'Terrific,' Yasmin said. 'Stupendous. Find me another like him.'

  From Lucca we headed north for Vienna, and on the way we called on Sergei Rachmaninov in his lovely house on Lake Lucerne.

  'It's a funny thing,' Yasmin said to me when she came back to the car after what had obviously been a fairly energetic session with the great musician, 'it's a funny thing, but there's an amazing resemblance between Mr Rachmaninov and Mr Stravinsky.'

  'You mean facially?'

  'I mean everything,' she said. 'They've both got small bodies and great big lumpy faces. Enormous strawberry noses. Beautiful hands. Tiny feet. Thin legs. And gigantic pizzles.'

  'Is it your experience so far,' I asked her, 'that geniuses have larger pizzles than ordinary men.'

  'Definitely,' she said. 'Much larger.'

  'I was afraid you'd say that.'

  'And they make better use of them,' she said, rubbing it in. 'Their swordsmanship is superb.'

  'Rubbish.'

  'It's not rubbish, Oswald. I ought to know.'

  'Aren't you forgetting they've all had the Beetle.'

  'The Beetle helps,' she said. 'Of course it helps. But there's no comparison between the way a great creative genius handles his sword and the way an ordinary fellow does it. That's why I'm having such a nice time.'

  'Am I an ordinary fellow?'

  'Don't get grumpy,' she said. 'We can't all be Rachmaninov or Puccini.'

  I was deeply wounded. Yasmin had pricked me in my most sensitive area. I sulked all the way to Vienna, but the sight of that noble city soon restored my humour.

  In Vienna, Yasmin had an hilarious encounter with Dr Sigmund Freud in his consulting room at Berggasse 19, and I think this visit merits a brief description.

  First of all, she made a proper application for an appointment with the famous man, stating that she was in urgent need of psychiatric treatment. She was told there would be four days to wait. So I arranged for her to fill in the time by calling first upon the august Mr Richard Strauss. Mr Strauss had just been appointed co-director of the Vienna State Opera and he was, according to Yasmin, rather pompous. But he was easy meat and I got fifty excellent straws from him.

  Then it was Dr Freud's turn. I regarded the celebrated psychiatrist as being in the semi-joker class and saw no reason why we shouldn't have a bit of fun with him. Yasmin agreed. So the two of us cooked up an interesting psychiatric malady for her to be suffering from, and in she went to the big greystone house on Berggasse at two-thirty on a cool sunny October afternoon. Here is her own description of the encounter as she told it to me later that day over a bottle of Krug after I had frozen the straws.

  'He's a goosey old bird,' she said. 'Very severe looking and correctly dressed, like a banker or something.'

  'Did he speak English?'

  'Quite good English but with that dreadful German accent. He sat me down on the other side of his desk and right away I offered him a chocolate. He took it like a lamb. Isn't it odd, Oswald, how every one of them takes the chocolate without any argument?'

  'I don't think it's odd,' I said. 'It's the natural thing to do. If a pretty girl offered me a chocolate, I'd take it.'

  'He was a hairy sort of fellow,' Yasmin said. 'He had a moustache and a thick pointed beard which looked as though it had been trimmed very carefully in front of a mirror with scissors. Whitish-grey it was. But the hair had been cut well back from his mouth above and below so that the bristles made a sort of frame for his lips. That's what I noticed above everything else, his lips. Very striking, those lips of his, and very thick. They looked like a pair of false lips mad
e out of rubber which had been stuck on over the real ones.

  ' "So now fraulein,' he said, munching away at his chocolate, "tell me about this so urgent problem of yours."

  ' "Oh, Dr Freud, I do hope you can help me!" I cried, working myself up at once. "Can I speak to you frankly?"

  ' "That's vot you are here for," he said. "Lie down on that couch over there, please, and just let yourself go."

  'So I lay down on the goddamn couch, Oswald, and as I did so I thought well anyway I'm going to be in a reasonably comfy place for once when the fireworks start.'

  'I see your point.'

  'So I said to him, "Something terrible is wrong with me, Dr Freud! Something terrible and shocking!"

  ' "And vot is that?" he asked, perking up. He obviously enjoyed hearing about terrible and shocking things.

  ' "You won't believe it," I said, "but it is impossible for me to be in the presence of a man for more than a few minutes before he tries to rape me! He becomes a wild animal! He rips offmy clothes! He exposes his organ... is that the right word?"

  ' "It is as good a word as any," he said. "Continue, fraulein."

  ' "He jumps on top of me!" I cried. "He pins me down! He takes his pleasure of me! Every man I meet does this to me, Mr Freud! You must help me! I am being raped to death!"

  ' "Dear lady," he said, "this is a very common fantasy among certain types of hysterical vimmen. These vimmen are all frightened of having physical relations with men. Actually, they long to indulge in fornication and copulation and all other sexy frolics but they are terrified of the consequences. So they fantasize. They imagine they are being raped. But it never happens. They are all firgins."

  ' "No, no!" I cried. "You are wrong, Dr Freud! I'm not a virgin! I'm the most over-raped girl in the world!"

  ' "You are hallucinating," he said. "Nobody has ever raped you. Vy you do not admit it and you will feel better instamatic-ally?"

  ' "How can I admit it when it isn't true?" I cried. "Every man I've ever met has had his way with me! And it'll be just the same with you if I stay here much longer, you see if it isn't!"

  ' "Do not be ridiculous, fraulein," he snapped.

  ' "It will, it will!" I cried. "You'll be as bad as all the rest of them before this session's over!"

  'When I said that, Oswald, the old buzzard rolled his eyes up at the ceiling and smiled a thin supercilious smile. "Fantasy, fantasy," he said, "all fantasy."

  ' "What makes you think you're so right and I'm so wrong?" I asked him.

  ' "Allow me to explain a little further," he said, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands across his tummy. "In your subconscious mind, my dear fraulein, you believe that the masculine organ is a machine-gun..."

  ' "That's just about what it is so far as I'm concerned!" I cried. "It's a lethal weapon!"

  ' "Exactly," he said. "Now vee are getting somewhere. And you also believe that any man who points it at you is going to pull the trigger and riddle you with bullets."

  ' "Not bullets," I said. "Something else."

  ' "So you run away," he said. "You reject all men. You hide from them. You sit all alone through the nights..."

  ' "I do not sit alone," I said. "I sit with my lovely old Doberman Pincher, Fritzy."

  ' "Male or female?" he snapped.

  ' "Fritzy's a male."

  ' "Vorse than ever," he said. "Do you with this Doberman Pincher indulge in sexual relations?"

  ' "Don't be so daft, Dr Freud. Who do you think I am?"

  ' "You run avay from men," he said. "You run avay from dogs. You run avay from anything that an organ has..."

  ' "I've never heard such codswallop in all my life!" I cried. "I am not frightened of anyone's organ! I do not think it's a machine-gun! I think it's a bloody nuisance, that's all! I'm fed up with it! I've had enough!"

  ' "Do you like carrots, fraulein?" he asked me suddenly.

  ' "Carrots?" I said. "Good God. Not particularly, no. If I do have them I usually dice them. I chop them up."

  ' "Vot about cucumbers, fraulein?"

  ' "Pretty tasteless," I said. "I prefer them pickled."

  ' "Ja ja," he said, writing all this down on my record sheet. "It may interest you to know, fraulein, that the carrot and the cucumber are both very powerful sexuality symbols. They represent the masculine phallic member. And you are vishing either to chop it up or to pickle it!"

  'I tell you, Oswald,' Yasmin said to me, 'it was as much as I could do to stop myself screaming with laughter. And to think people actually believe this horseshit.'

  'He believes it himself,' I said.

  'I know he does. He sat there writing it all down on a large sheet of paper. Then he said, "And vot also have you got to tell me, fraulein?"

  ' "I can tell you what I think is wrong with me," I said.

  ' "Proceed, please."

  ' "I believe I have a little dynamo inside me," I said, "and this dynamo goes whizzing round and round and gives off a terrific charge of sexual electricity."

  ' "Very interesting," he said, scribbling away. "Continue please."

  ' "This sexual electricity is of such high voltage," I said, "that as soon as a man comes close to me, it jumps across the gap from me to him and it jiggers him up."

  ' "Vot is meaning, please, jiggers him up?"

  ' "It means it excites him," I said. "It electrifies his private parts. It makes them red hot. And that's when he starts to go crazy and he jumps on me. Don't you believe me, Dr Freud?"

  ' "This is a serious case," the old geezer said. "It is going to take many psychoanalytical sessions on the couch to make you normal."

  'Now all this time, Oswald,' Yasmin said to me, 'I was keeping an eye on my watch. And when eight minutes had gone by, I said to him, "Please don't rape me, Dr Freud. You ought to be above that sort of thing."

  ' "Do not be ridiculous, fraulein," he said. "You are hallucinating again."

  ' "But my electricity!" I cried. "It's going to jigger you up! I know it is! It's going to jump across from me to you and electrify your private parts! Your pizzle will become red hot! You will rip my clothes off! You will have your way with me!"

  ' "Stop this hysterical shoutings at once," he snapped and he got up from his desk and came and stood near where I was lying on the couch. "Here I am," he said, spreading out his arms. "I am not harming you, am I? I am not trying to jump upon you, yes?"

  'And at that very moment, Oswald,' Yasmin said to me, 'the Beetle suddenly hit him and his doodly came alive and stuck out as though he had a walking-stick in his trousers.'

  'You timed it lovely,' I said.

  'Not bad, was it? So I thrust out my arm and pointed an accusing finger and shouted, "There! It's happening to you, you old goat! My electricity has jolted you! Will you believe me now, Dr Freud? Will you believe what I am saying?"

  'You should have seen his face, Oswald. You really should have seen it. The Beetle was hitting him and the sex-crazy glint was coming into his eyes and he was beginning to flap his arms like an old crow. But I'll say this for him. He didn't jump me right away. He held off for at least a minute or so while he tried to analyse what the hell was happening. He looked down at his trousers. Then he looked up at me. Then he started muttering. "This is incredible!... amazing!... unbelievable!... I must make notes... I must record every moment. Vere is my pen, for God's sake? Vere is the ink? Vere is some paper? Oh, to hell with the paper! Please to remove your clothes, fraulein! I cannot vait any longer!" '

  'Must have shaken him,' I said.

  'Shook him rigid,' Yasmin said. 'It was undermining one of his most famous theories.'

  'You didn't hatpin him, did you?'

  'Of course not. He was really very decent about it all. As soon as he'd had his first explosion, and although the Beetle was still hitting him hard, he jumped away and ran back to his desk stark naked and began writing notes. He must be terrifically strong-minded. Great intellectual curiosity. But he was completely foxed and bewildered by what had happened to him.'


  ' "Do you believe me now, Dr Freud?" I asked him.

  ' "I have to believe you!" he cried. "You have opened up a whole new field with this sexual electricity of yours! This case will make history! I must see you again, fraulein."

  ' "You'll jump me," I said. "You won't be able to stop yourself."

  ' "I know," he said, smiling for the first time. "I know that, fraulein, I know."'

  I got fifty first-class straws from Dr Freud.

  21

  From Vienna we drove north in the pale autumn sunshine to Berlin. The war had been over for only eleven months and the city was bleak and dreary, but we had two important persons to visit here and I was determined to collar them. The first was Mr Albert Einstein, and at his house in Haberlandstrasse 9, Yasmin had a pleasant and successful encounter with this amazing fellow.

  'How was it?' I said, asking her the usual question in the car.

  'He had a great time,' she said.

  'Didn't you?'

  'Not really,' she said. 'He's all brains and no body. Give me Puccini any day.'

  'Will you please try to forget that Italian Romeo.'

  'Yes, Oswald, I will. But I'll tell you what's odd. The brainy ones, the great intellects behave quite differently to the artistic ones when the Beetle hits them.'

  'How?'

  'The brainy ones stop and think. They try to figure out what on earth has happened to them and why it's happened. The artists just take it for granted and plunge right in.'

  'What was Einstein's reaction?'

  'He couldn't believe it,' she said. 'In fact he smelled a rat. He's the very first one who has ever suspected us of jiggery-pokery. Shows how bright he is.'

  'What did he say?'

  'He stood there and looked at me from under those bushy eyebrows and he said, "There is something extremely fishy here, fraulein. This is not my normal reaction to a pretty visitor."

  ' "Doesn't that depend on how pretty she is?" I said.

  ' "No, fraulein, it does not," he said. "Was that an ordinary chocolate you gave me?"

  ' "Perfectly ordinary," I said, quaking a bit. "I had one myself."