Roald Dahl - My Uncle Oswald

“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 Rachmaninoff 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. Rachmaninoff 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 great equipment.”

“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 be grumpy,” she said. “We can’t all be Rachmaninoff 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 a 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 made out of rubber which had been stuck on over the real ones.

“‘So now, frãulein,’ he said, munching away at his chocolate, ‘tell me about this so urgent problem of yours.’

“‘Oh, Doctor 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, Doctor 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 off my clothes! He exposes his organ—is that the right word?’

“‘It is as good a word as any,’ he said. ‘Continue, fräulein.’

“‘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, Doctor 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, Doctor 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 vu1 feel better instamatically?’

“‘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, fräulein,’ 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 is 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 fräulein, 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.’