Roald Dahl - My Uncle Oswald

“‘So you run avay,’ 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 pinscher, Fritzy.’

“‘Male or female?’ he snapped.

“‘Fritzy’s a male.’

“‘Vorse than ever,’ he said. ‘Do you with this Doberman pinscher indulge in sexual relations?’

“‘Don’t be so daft, Doctor 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, fräulein?’ 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, fräulein?’

“‘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, fräulein, 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, fräulein?’

“‘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, Doctor 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, Doctor Freud. You ought to be above that sort of thing.’

“‘Do not be ridiculous, fräulein,’ 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 old 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, Doctor 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 sexcrazy 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 analyze 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 remove your clothes, fräulein! 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, Doctor Freud?’ I asked him.

“‘I have to believe you!’ he cried. ‘You have opened up a whole new field vith this sexual electricity of yours! This case vill make history! I must see you again, fräulein!’

“‘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, fräulein. I know.’”

I got fifty first-class straws from Dr. Freud.

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 at 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 from 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, fräulein. This is not my normal reaction to a pretty visitor.’

“‘Doesn’t that depend on how pretty she is?’ I said. “‘No, fräulein, it does not,’ he said. ‘Was that an ordinary chocolate you gave me?’

“‘Perfectly ordinary,’ I said, quaking a bit. ‘I had one myself.’

“The little chap was strongly hotted up by the Beetle, Oswald, but like old Freud, he managed to hold off in the beginning. He paced up and down the room muttering, “What is happening to me? This is not natural. . . . There is something wrong. . . . I would never allow this. . . .’