“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.’

“‘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.’”