My Uncle Oswald(68)

“‘I know,’ he said, smiling for the first time. ‘I know that, fräulein. I know.’”

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





23





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. . . .’

“I was draped all over the sofa in a seductive attitude waiting for him to get on with it, but no, Oswald, absolutely not. For about five whole minutes his thinking processes completely blocked out his carnal desires or whatever you call them. I could almost hear the old brain whizzing round as he tried to puzzle it out.

“‘Mr. Einstein,’ I said, ‘relax.’

“You were dealing with the greatest intellect in the world,” I said. “The man has supernatural powers of reasoning. Try to understand what he says about relativity and you’ll see what I mean.”

“We’d be finished if someone twigged what we were doing.”

“No one will,” I said. “There’s only one Einstein.”

Our second important donor in Berlin was Mr. Thomas Mann. Yasmin reported that he was pleasant but uninspiring.

“Like his books,” I said.

“Then why did you choose him?”

“He’s done some fine work. I think his name is going to live.”

My travelling liquid nitrogen suitcase was now crammed full of straws. I had Clemenceau, Foch, Ravel, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Freud, Einstein, and Mann. So once again we rushed back to Cambridge with our precious cargo.

A. R. Woresley was ecstatic. He knew damn well we were onto something big now. All three of us were ecstatic, but I was in no mood to waste time yet with celebrations. “While we’re here,” I said, “we’ll polish off some of the English lads. We’ll start tomorrow.”

Joseph Conrad was possibly the most important of these, so we took him first. Capel House, Orlestone, Kent was his address and we drove down there in mid-November. To be precise, it was November 16th, 1919. I have already said that I am not keen to give a detailed description of too many of our visits for fear of becoming repetitious. I will not break this rule again unless something juicy or amusing comes along. Our visit to Mr. Conrad was neither juicy nor amusing. It was routine, although Yasmin did comment afterwards that he was one of the nicest men she had met so far.

From Kent we drove to Crowborough in Sussex where we nobbled Mr. H. G. Wells. “Not a bad sort of egg,” Yasmin said when she came out. “Rather portly and pontificating, but quite pleasant. It’s an odd thing about great writers,” she added. “They look so ordinary. There’s nothing about them that gives you the slightest clue to their greatness, as there is with painters. A great painter somehow looks like a great painter. But the great writer usually looks like the wages clerk in a cheese factory.”