My Uncle Oswald

19

WE WENT DOWNSTAIRS and got into the motor car. I drove to the rue Laurent-Pichet and stopped the car about twenty yards short of number eight, on the other side of the street. We examined the house. It was a large stone building with a black front door. “Off you go,” I said. “And good luck. He’s on the second floor.”

Yasmin got out of the car. “This banana’s a bit uncomfortable,” she said.

“Now you know what it’s like to be a man,” I said.

She turned away and strode toward the house with her hands in her trouser pockets. I saw her try the door. It was unlocked, presumably because the place was divided into separate apartments. She went in.

I settled down in the motor car to await the outcome. I, the general, had done all I could to prepare for the battle. The rest was up to Yasmin, the soldier. She was well armed. She carried a double dose (we had finally decided) of Blister Beetle and a long hatpin whose sharp end still -bore the crusted traces of Spanish royal blood which Yasmiri had refused to wipe off.

It was a warm cloudy August evening in Paris. The canvas hood of my blue Citroën torpedo was folded back. My seat was comfortable but I was too fidgety to concentrate on a book. I had a good view of the house and I fixed my eyes upon it with a certain fascination. I could see the large windows on the second floor where Monsieur Proust lived, and the green velvet curtains that were drawn back on either side, but I couldn’t see in. Yasmin was up there now, probably in that very room, and she would be saying, as I had so carefully instructed her to say, “Pray forgive me, monsieur, but I am in love with your work. I have come all the way from England simply to pay homage to your greatness. Please accept this little box of chocolates . . . they are delicious . . . do you mind if I have one . . . and here’s one for you . . .”

I waited twenty minutes. I waited thirty minutes. I was watching the clock. The way Yasmin felt about ‘that little bugger’ as she called him, I reckoned there would be no tête-a -tête and pleasant conversation afterwards, as there had been with Renoir and Monet. This, I reflected, would be a brief sharp visit and possibly a rather painful one for the great writer.

I was correct about its being brief. Thirty-three minutes after Yasmin had gone in, I saw the big black front door opening and out she came.

As she walked toward me, I looked for traces of dishevelment in her clothes. There were none. The snuff-coloured trilby was at the same saucy angle as before and altogether she looked as trim and crisp coming out as she had going in.

Or did she? Was there not a slight lack of bounce in her walk? There was indeed. And was there not a tendency to move those splendid long limbs of hers rather carefully? Unquestionably yes. She was walking, in fact, like a person who had just dismounted from a bicycle after a long ride upon an uncomfortable saddle.

These small observations comforted me. They were evidence, surely, that my gallant soldier had been engaged in fierce combat.

“Well done,” I said as she got into the car.

“What makes you think it was so successful?”

She was a cool one, our Yasmin.

“Don’t tell me it went wrong.”

She didn’t answer me. She settled herself in the seat and closed the car door.

“I have to know, Yasmin, because if you do have the loot I must rush it back quickly and freeze it up.”

She had it. Of course she had it. I rushed it back to the hotel and made fifty exceptional straws. Each straw, according to my microscopic density count, contained no less than seventy-five million sperm. I know they were potent straws because at this very moment, as I write these words nineteen years after the event, I am able to state positively that there are fourteen children running around in France who have Marcel Proust as their father. Only I know who they are. Such matters are great secrets. They are secrets between me and the mothers. The husbands don’t know. It’s a mother’s secret. But my goodness me, you should see those fourteen silly rich ambitious literary-minded mothers. Each one of them, as she gazes proudly upon her Proustian offspring, is telling herself that she has almost certainly given birth to a great writer. Well, she is wrong. All of them are wrong. There is no evidence whatsoever that great writers beget great writers. Occasionally they beget minor writers, but that’s as far as it goes. There is, I think, slightly more evidence that great painters sometimes beget great painters. Look at Teniers and Bruegel and Tiepolo, and even Pissarro. And in music, the wonderful Johann Sebastian had such an overwhelming genius that it was impossible for him not to pass some of it on to his children. But writers, no. Great writers seem to spring more often than not from stony soil—the sons of coal-miners or pork butchers or impoverished teachers. But that simple truth was never going to prevent a small number of wealthy literary-snob ladies from wishing to have a baby by the brilliant Monsieur Proust or the extraordinary Mr. James Joyce. My job, anyway, was not to propagate geniuses but to make money.

By the time I had filled those fifty Proust straws and had immersed them safely in liquid nitrogen, it was nearly nine o’clock at night. Yasmin was now bathed and changed into fine feminine clothes and I took her out to Maxim’s for supper to celebrate our success. She had not yet told me anything of what went on.

My diary from that date informs me that we both started the meal with a dozen escargots. It was mid-August and the grouse were just beginning to come in from Yorkshire and Scotland, so we ordered one each and I told the head-waiter we wanted them blood-rare. The wine was to be a bottle of Volnay, one of my favourite burgundies.

“Now,” I said when we had given our order. “Tell me all.”

“You want a blow by blow account?”

“Every tiny detail.”

There was a bowl of radishes on the table and Yasmin popped one into her mouth and crunched it up. “He had a bell on his door,” she said, “so I rang it. Céleste opened the door and glared at me. You should see that Céleste, Oswald. She’s skinny and sharp-nosed with a mouth like a knife and two small brown eyes that looked me up and down with utter distaste. ‘What is it you wish?’ she said sharply, and I gave her the bit about having travelled from England to bring a present to the famous writer whom I worshipped. ‘Monsieur Proust is working,’ Céleste said and tried to shut the door. I put my foot in it and pushed it open and marched in. ‘I have not travelled all this distance to have a door slammed in my face,’ I said. ‘Kindly inform your master that I am here to see him.’”

“Well done, you,” I said.

“I had to bluff it out,” she said. “Céleste glared at me. “What name?’ she snapped. ‘Mister Bottomley,’ I said, ‘of London.’ I was rather pleased with that name.”

“Apt,” I said. “Did the maid announce you?”

“Oh yes. And out he came into the hall, this funny little pop-eyed bugger, still holding a pen in his hand.”

“What happened next?”

“I immediately launched into the long speech you taught me, starting with, ‘Pray forgive me, monsieur . . .’ but I’d hardly got half a dozen words out when he raised his hand and cried, ‘Stop! I have already forgiven you!’ He was goggling at me as though I were the most beautiful and desirable and spicy little lad he’d ever seen in his life, which I’ll bet I was.”

“Was he speaking in English or French?”

“A bit of each. His English was pretty good, about like my French, so it didn’t matter.”

“And he fell for you right away?”

“He couldn’t take his eyes off me. ‘That will be all, thank you, Céleste,’ he said, licking his lips. But Céleste didn’t like it. She stayed put. She scented trouble.

“‘You may go, Céleste,’ Monsieur Proust said, raising his voice.

“But she still refused to go. ‘You do not wish anything more, Monsieur Proust?’

“‘I wish to be left alone,’ he snapped, and the woman stalked out of the room in a huff.

“‘Pray sit down, Monsieur Bottomley,’ he said. ‘May I take your hat? I do apologize for my servant. She’s a trifle overprotective.’

“‘What is she protecting you from, monsieur?’

“He smiled at me, showing horrid teeth with wide gaps. ‘From you,’ he said softly.

“By golly, I thought, I’m going to be inverted any moment. At this point, Oswald, I seriously considered skipping the Blister Beetle altogether. The man was drooling with lust. If I’d so much as bent down to do up a shoelace, he’d have been on me.”

“But you didn’t skip it?”

“No,” she said. “I gave him the chocolate.”

“Why?”

“Because in some ways they’re easier to handle when they’re under the influence. They don’t quite know what they’re doing.”

“Did the chocolate work well?”

“It always works well,” she said. “But this was a double dose so it worked better.”

“How much better?”

“Buggers are different,” she said.

“I believe you.”

“You see,” she said, “when an ordinary man is driven crazy by the Beetle, all he wants to do is to rape the woman on the spot. But when a bugger is driven crazy by the powder, his first thought is not to start buggering right away. He begins by making violent grabs for the other fellow’s pizzle.”

“A bit awkward, that.”

“Very,” Yasmin said. “I knew that if I let him come near enough to grab me, all he’d get in his hand would be a squashed banana.”

“So what did you do?”

“I kept jumping out of the way,” she said. “And in the end, of course, it became a chase with him chasing me all round the room and knocking things over right and left.”

“Rather strenuous.”

“Yes, and in the middle of it all the door opened and there stood that dreadful little maid again. ‘Monsieur Proust,’ she said, ‘all this exercise is bad for your asthma.’

“‘Get out!’ he yelled. ‘Get out, you witch!’”

“I imagine she’s fairly used to that sort of thing.”

“I’m sure she is,” Yasmin said. “Anyway, there was a round table in the middle of the room and so long as I stayed close to it I knew he couldn’t catch me. Many a girl has been saved from a dirty old man by a round table. The trouble was he seemed to be enjoying this part of it, and soon I got to thinking that a good old chase around the room was probably an essential preliminary for those chaps.”

“A sort of pipe-opener.”

“Right,” she said. “And he kept saying things to me as we circled round and round the table.”

“What sort of things?”

“Dirty stuff,” she said. “Not worth repeating. By the way, putting that banana in was a mistake.”

“Why?”

“Too big a bulge,” she said. “He noticed it at once. And all the time he was chasing me round the table, he kept pointing at it and singing its praises. I was longing to tell him it was just a silly old banana from the Ritz Hotel but that wasn’t on. It was driving him up the wall, that banana, and the Blister Beetle was hitting him harder every second, and suddenly I had another problem on my hands. How in God’s name, I thought, am I going to get the rubbery thing on him before he jumps me? I couldn’t exactly say it was a necessary precaution, could I?”

“Not really.”

“I mean after all, what earthly reason had I even to be carrying the bloody thing?”

“Tricky,” I said. “Very tricky. How did you get out of it?”

“In the end I said to him, ‘Do you want me, Monsieur Proust?’

“‘Yes!’ he screamed. ‘I want you more than anyone in my life! Stop running!’

“‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘First you must put this funny little thing on him to keep him warm.’ I took it from my pocket and slung it across the table. He stopped chasing me and stared at it. I doubt he’d ever set eyes on one before. “What is this?’ he cried.

“‘It’s called a tickler,’ I said. ‘It’s one of our famous English ticklers invented by Mr. Oscar Wilde.’

“‘Oscar Wilde!’ he cried. ‘Ha, ha! A great fellow!’

“‘He invented the tickler,’ I said. ‘And Lord Alfred Douglas helped him.’

“‘Lord Alfred was another fine fellow!’ he cried.

“‘King Edward the Seventh,’ I said, laying it on, ‘carried a tickler on his person wherever he went.’

“‘King Edward the Seventh!’ he cried. ‘My God!’ He picked up the little thing lying on the table. ‘It is good, yes?’

“‘It doubles the rapture,’ I said. ‘Put it on quickly like a good boy. I’m getting impatient.’

“‘You help me.’

“‘No,’ I said. ‘Do it yourself.’ And while he was fiddling around with it, I—well—I absolutely had to make sure he didn’t see the banana and all the rest of it, didn’t I? And yet I knew the dreaded time had come when I was going to have to take my trousers down. . .”

“A bit risky, that.”

“It couldn’t be helped, Oswald. So while he was fiddling around with Oscar Wilde’s great invention, I turned my back on him and whipped down my trousers and assumed what I imagined was the correct position by bending over the back of the sofa . . .”

“My God, Yasmin, you don’t mean you were going to allow him—”

“Of course not,” she said. “But I had to hide my banana and keep it out of his reach.”

“Yes, but didn’t he jump you?”

“He came at me like a battering-ram.”

“How did you dodge it?”

“I didn’t,” she said, smiling. “That’s the whole point.”

“I’m not with you,” I said. “If he came at you like a battering-ram and you didn’t dodge it, then he must have rammed you.”

“He didn’t ram me the way you’re thinking he rammed me,” she said. “You see, Oswald, I had remembered something. I had remembered the story about A. R. Woresley and his brother’s bull and how the bull was fooled into thinking his pizzle was in one place while actually it was in another. A. R. Woresley had grabbed hold of it and directed it somewhere else.”

“Is that what you did?”

“Yes.”

“But surely not into a bag the way Woresley did?”

“Don’t be an ass, Oswald. I don’t need a bag.”

“Of course not . . . no . . . I see what you mean now . . . but wasn’t it a bit tricky? What I mean is . . . you facing the other way and all that . . . and him coming at you like a battering-ram . . . you had to be pretty quick, didn’t you?”

“I was quick. I caught it in mid-air.”

“But didn’t he twig?”

“No more than the bull did,” she said. “Less so, in fact, and I’ll tell you why.”

“Why?”

“First of all, he was going mad with the Beetle, right?”

“Right.”

“He was grunting and snorting and flapping his arms, right?”

“Right.”

“And his head was in the air just like the bull’s, right?”

“Probably, yes.”

“But most important of all, he was assuming I was a man. He thought he was doing it to a man, right?”

“Of course.”

“And his pizzle was in a good place. It was having a good time, right?”

“Right.”

“So in his own mind there was only one place it could be. A man doesn’t have any other place.”

I stared at her in admiration.

“Bound to fool him,” she said. She twisted a snail out of its shell and popped it into her mouth.

“Brilliant,” I said. “Absolutely brilliant.”

“I was rather pleased with it myself.”

“It’s the ultimate deception.”

“Thank you, Oswald.”

“There’s just one thing I can’t fathom,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“When he came at you like a battering-ram, didn’t he take aim?”

“Only after a fashion.”

“But he’s a very experienced marksman.”

“My dear old frump,” she said, “you can’t seem to get it into your head what a man’s like when he’s had a double dose.”

I jolly well can, I told myself. I was behind the filing cabinets when A. R. Woresley got his.

“No,” I said, “I can’t. What is a man like when he’s had a double dose?”

“Berserk,” she said. “He literally doesn’t know what the other end of him’s doing. I could have shoved it in a jar of pickled onions and he wouldn’t have known the difference.”

Over the years I have discovered a surprising but simple truth about young ladies and it is this: The more beautiful their faces, the less delicate their thoughts. Yasmin was no exception. There she sat now across the table from me in Maxim’s wearing a gorgeous Fortuny dress and looking for all the world like Queen Semiramis on the throne of Assyria, but she was talking vulgar. “You’re talking vulgar,” I said.

“I’m a vulgar girl,” she said, grinning.

The Volnay arrived and I tasted it. Wonderful wine. My father used to say never pass up a Volnay by a good shipper if you see one on the wine card. “How did you get away so soon?” I asked her.

“He was very rough,” she said. “Rough and sort of spiky. It felt as though I had a gigantic lobster on my back.”

“Beastly.”

“It was horrid,” she said. “He had a heavy gold watchchain across his waistcoat which kept grinding into my spine. And a big watch in the waistcoat pocket.”

“Not good for the watch.”

“No,” she said. “It went crunch. I heard it.”

“Yes, well . . .”

“Terrific wine this, Oswald.”

“I know. But how did you get away so quickly?”

“That’s bound to be a problem with the younger ones after they’ve had the Beetle,” she said. “How old is this fellow?”

“Forty-eight.”

“In the prime of life,” she said. “It’s different when they’re seventy-six. At that age, even with the Beetle, they soon grind to a halt.”

“But not this chap?”

“God, no,” she said. “Perpetual motion. A mechanical lobster.”

“So what did you do?”

“What could I do? It’s either me or him, I said. So as soon as he’d had his explosion and delivered the goods, I reached into my jacket pocket and got out the trusty hatpin.”

“And you let him have it?”

“Yes, but don’t forget it had to be a backhander this time and that wasn’t so easy. It’s hard to get a good swing.”

“I can see that.”

“Luckily my backhand’s always been my strongest point.”

“At tennis you mean?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And you got him first time?”

“Deep to the baseline,” she said. “Deeper than the King of Spain. A winner.”

“Did he protest?”

“Oh my God,” she said, “he squealed like a pig. And he danced round the room clutching himself and yelling, ‘Céleste! Céleste! Fetch a doctor! I have been stabbed!’ The woman must have been looking through the keyhole because she came bursting in at once and rushed up to him crying, ‘Where? Where? Let me see!’ And while she was examining his backside, I ripped the all-important rubbery thing off him and dashed out of the room pulling up my trousers as I went.”

“Bravo,” I said. “What a triumph.”

“Bit of a lark actually,” she said. “I enjoyed it.”

“You always do.”

“Lovely snails,” she said. “Great big juicy ones.”

“The snail farms put them on sawdust for two days before they sell them for eating,” I said.

“Why?”

“So the snails can purge themselves. When did you get the signed notepaper? Right at the beginning?”

“At the beginning, yes. I always do.”

“But why did it say boulevard Haussmann on it, instead of rue Laurent-Pichet?”

“I asked him that myself,” she said. “He told me that’s where he used to live. He’s only just moved.”

“That’s all right, then,” I said.

They took the empty snail-shells away and soon afterwards they brought on the grouse. By grouse I mean red grouse. I do not mean black grouse (blackcock and greyhen) or wood grouse (capercaillie) or white grouse (ptarmigan). These others are good, especially the ptarmigan, but the red grouse is the king. And provided of course they are this year’s birds, there is no meat more tender or more tasty in the entire world. Shooting starts on the twelfth of August, and every year I look forward to that date with even greater impatience than I do to the first of September, when the oysters come in from Colchester and Whitstable. Like a fine sirloin, red grouse should be eaten rare with the blood just a shade darker than scarlet, and at Maxim’s they would not like you to order it any other way.

We ate our grouse slowly, slicing off one thin sliver of breast at a time, allowing it to melt on the tongue and following each mouthful with a sip of fragrant Volnay.

“Who’s next on the list?” Yasmin asked me.

I had been thinking about that myself, and now I said to her, “It was going to be Mr. James Joyce, but perhaps it would be nice if we took a short trip down to Switzerland for a change of scenery.”

“I’d like that,” she said. “Who’s in Switzerland?”

“Nijinsky.”

“I thought he was up here with that Diaghilev chap.”

“I wish he was,” I said. “But it seems he’s gone a bit dotty. He thinks he’s married to God, and he walks about with a big gold cross around his neck.”

“What rotten luck,” Yasmin said. “Does that mean his dancing days are over?”

“Nobody knows,” I said. “They say he was dancing at a hotel in St. Moritz only a few weeks ago. But that was just for fun, to amuse the guests.”

“Does he live in a hotel?”

“No, he’s got a villa above St. Moritz.”

“Alone?”

“Unfortunately not,” I said. “There’s a wife and a child and a whole bunch of servants. He’s a rich man. Fabulous sums he used to get. I know Diaghilev paid him twentyfive thousand francs for each performance.”

“Good Lord. Did you ever see him dance?”

“Only once,” I said. “The year the war broke out, 1914, at the old Palace Theatre in London. He did Les Sylphides. Stunning it was. He danced like a god.”

“I’m crazy to meet him,” Yasmin said. “When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “We have to keep moving.”