Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She stared at me, pretending to be astonished.

  “No,” she said. “It isn’t.”

  But I knew that she was lying.

  If it would have taken some time to treat Ms Ms successfully, then how much longer would it have taken to deal with the third and final case I should like to recount – that of Big Hans. I choose this name for him to distinguish him from Freud’s celebrated patient-by-proxy, Little Hans. The problem posed by Big Hans was one of personality disorder, which is always recalcitrant, and almost always beyond help. One cannot change one ’s personality – it is, to use a popular metaphor, the stack of cards dealt out in life which one simply has to accept.

  Hans was the son of an Austrian immigrant, who had set up a chain of bakeries throughout Sydney and Melbourne and who had prospered greatly. He was his parents’ only child – or so he thought – and he was given all the attention which such a position often attracts. In particular, his parents went to the trouble of bringing out from Austria a nurse called Irmgard, who smelled of starch, and strudel, and who embodied all the traditions of the Austrian nursery. Irmgard, who was in her early twenties when she arrived in Australia, was Tyrolean, and doted on Hans, or her Kleiner Hanslein, as she insisted on calling him.

  Self: Irmgard was always there, you say? She attended to your every need?

  Hans: Yes. She woke me up in the morning and gave me my bath. She spurned modern plumbing, and preferred to fill a large tin tub and stand it in the middle of the room. Then she took off my pyjamas and washed me all over with her special, sweet-smelling soap that she had sent out from home.

  Self: And how long did this go on for?

  Hans: Until I was eighteen.

  Self: I see. Please continue. Tell me more about Irmgard.

  Hans: She was very beautiful, and the photographs prove that this was really so and that it’s not just my rosy memory of her. She had flaxen hair and a wonderful complexion. My mother used to say that Irmgard was prachtvoll aus, and that you would never find an Australian girl who had a skin like that. She warned Irmgard against the sun, with the result that I think she spent most of her time indoors.

  After the bath, she dressed me. We would spend some time in front of my wardrobe, choosing what I was to wear that day. Irmgard was in charge of my clothing and she bought something new virtually every week. She had a sister who was a seamstress in Vienna, and she regularly sent out clothes which Irmgard had specially designed for me. She liked to dress me in an outfit of the style which Kaiser Franzi had worn when he was a child. It was full of buttons and cuffs, and we loved putting it on.

  She made up little songs for me, one of which we called “The Dressing Song”. It was partly in German – a pretty odd sort of German – and partly in English – she liked to play with English words, which seemed very strange to her ear. She had an excellent voice, and she taught me to sing too. I committed the words to memory before I knew their meaning, and I have never forgotten them. Here’s one.

  Mein kleiner Hans, Fancy pants!

  Pretty Hans, King of France!

  Oben-pants

  Unter-pants –

  Let us dress

  Den Kleinen Hans!

  Self: What about the other songs? Were they all along the same lines?

  Hans: Yes, more or less. Some were better than others. I thought “The Dressing Song” was rather good, but my favourite was “The Bath Song”. Would you like to hear the words?

  Self: It could be helpful. In fact, I think these songs are really very important. I take it that you sang this particular song at bath time?

  Hans: Yes. Evening bath time. Irmgard sang it.

  Kleiner Hans, mit seinem Scruggel

  Macht ein bischen Schmickel-Schmuckel;

  Naughty Billy, mit seinem Villy,

  Macht einen kleinen pantlich Hilly!

  Self: An intriguing little song. But what about friends? Did you know many boys of your age?

  Hans: Yes, quite a few. I used to get laughed at a bit, particularly when I was dressed up in my Kaiser Franzi outfit. In fact, when Irmgard took me for walks in the suburb in which we lived she used to carry a small imitation gun. When boys jeered at me, or laughed, she would pull this gun out of her handbag and point it at them. It gave them a terrible fright. Later on, she got hold of a starting pistol, and actually fired blanks at them.

  Self: So you relied on Irmgard for protection?

  Hans: Yes. But only until I was about six or seven. Then I worked out a way of looking after myself. I paid several larger boys to beat up any boy who laughed at me. This worked wonderfully, and I always had more than enough money to pay for my protection. One boy, who lived close to us, was very good at this. He carried a knife and would actually stab other boys in the buttocks at my request. I paid him handsomely.

  One might think, of course, that the upbringing described by Hans would be a custom-made background for the development of a predominantly homosexual orientation, and that the tormenting boys, so feared in his early childhood, would later become the sought-after objects of desire. Why stab boys in the buttocks? The answer is self-evident: that which you wish to touch, but which is denied to you, you punish. Hence the imagery common in a certain sort of erotic literature of boys bending over to be spanked.

  But such conclusions would be quite wrong in relation to Hans: he liked girls, and found them sexually attractive, as Irmgard was to find out. That is why she stopped bathing him at eighteen. (Irmgard, by contrast, liked boys, whom she could pamper; when Hans became eighteen he ceased to be a boy and became a man, and therefore a threat.)

  One could hardly describe this background as normal, and it was not surprising that when Hans began to go on dates with girls a certain pathology appeared. Once again, in confirmation of the point I made earlier on, dating proved to be the catalyst of distress.

  Hans: I started to take girls out when I was seventeen. Irmgard discouraged it – she was fearfully jealous I think – but I took no notice of her. She said that girls were interested in only one thing. I said that I thought that was what girls said about boys, but she just said Tutsch! Tutsch! which is what she always said when she disagreed with anything one said. It was impossible to argue with her.

  I no longer let her choose my clothes for me, but what I wore was still very important to me and I took a lot of trouble with my outfits. I used to like light blues, as these matched my colouring generally. I also liked russet browns and pale greens.

  I spent a lot of time on my grooming. I had seventeen different brushes, and eight combs. I also had special lotions, which I used on different days. Monday was sandalwood. Tuesday was Bay Rum. And so on.

  Self: Very ritualistic. Why did you spend so much time and energy on all this?

  Hans: Because I wanted to look my best, of course – particularly when I took a girl out. They liked it too. They thought I was very smart, and they liked the way I smelled. No other boy smelled like that, they said.

  We used to go to coffee bars and sit there for hours. I would sit near the window, if possible, so that I could see my reflection. Sometimes this irritated a girl, who would say something like: “I don’t know why you bother to go out with me if all you’re going to do is look at your reflection in the window.” I would laugh at this sort of thing. “Suit yourself, honey,” I would say. “You suit yourself. Lots of pebbles on the beach for Hansi!”

  Had Hans said nothing more, the diagnosis would nevertheless have been confirmed beyond doubt. The narcissistic personality – an extremely difficult, unhappy condition for all concerned. Hans was in love with himself and would find no happiness until he had resolved that unsatisfactory relationship – a relationship which, by its very nature, was incapable of resolution! The implications, moreover, would reach further. Narcissus may be forever trapped in his own unhappiness, but he causes a great deal more unhappiness for others. He will search and search, and never find what he is looking for, because the person he is looking for is himself. And the prob
lem with looking for oneself, is that the search is inherently impossible, because one can never see oneself from outside. Only the mirror is any help in that way, and Narcissus knows that the mirror is the cheapest of tricks. Poor Hans; but then:

  Hans: I used to go out on five or six dates a week. Often I went with different girls in the same week, and that required planning – not to say cunning. I had to be careful that I would not go to the same coffee bar twice in succession, in case the girl I had been with the previous day would come looking for me there. They couldn’t keep away from me. Yes, I did feel unhappy about it, but I couldn’t really stop myself. It was as if I was looking for somebody – somebody who wasn’t anywhere in Melbourne, or even Australia!

  I suppose that some of the girls had reason to be annoyed with me. One, in particular, seemed to have it in for me more than the others …

  It is not unusual to find that the narcissistic personality gives rise in others to feelings of hostility. Some people resent being used for the self-gratification of the narcissist, and will try to do something about it. Often it’s a gesture of desperation, though, which may have quite unexpected results …

  Hans: This girl, this real bitch, called me up and told me that there was somebody who was very keen to meet me. But this person was shy and couldn’t bring herself to ask me out. If I went round to her place, then, I would not be disappointed.

  Who could resist an invitation like that? I certainly couldn’t, and so I agreed to go that Saturday evening to an address which she gave me. I would be expected, she said – her friend couldn’t wait.

  I rang the door bell and it was opened – by myself. It was as if I was looking into a mirror. This fellow was exactly like me, exactly. He was my double.

  We looked at one another for a while, our mouths open. Then he said: “They said it was a girl coming. I didn’t expect you …” And I, of course, could have said the same thing, but I was completely at a loss for words. We were the victims of a cruel joke. This girl must have thought that I fancied myself.

  Self: You must have been very happy, though, to see yourself standing there.

  Hans: A bit, I suppose. But I still felt humiliated at what I saw as an insult. And I was worried, too, about this person who looked like me.

  Self: You were worried because he looked like you, but wasn’t you. So he was a rival.

  Hans: If you say so. Anyway, I went away feeling pretty angry. And I still feel angry, which is why I’ve come to see you. Can you do something to help me?

  Self: No. Nothing.

  There is a postscript to the story of Large Hans. A few weeks ago I received a letter from him in which he said that he had made an extraordinary discovery. He had just been informed by his parents that they had been keeping something from him – that he had a twin brother who had died at birth. Hans knew now that he had found him, on that ill-fated meeting. Yet even this knowledge did not make him happy.

  “I’m not looking for my brother,” he wrote. “The last thing I want to find is a brother.”

  Now everything was clear. I had been quite ready to blame Irmgard for the development of Hans’ narcissism, but that was probably only part of the story. Hans knew that there was another him – he had met him in the womb and then he had lost him. And he had seen, in the womb, that his brother was his double. When, on growing up, he found that his brother simply wasn’t there, then he knew, intuitively, that there was something missing – and that something looked exactly like himself. The ground was prepared for the narcissistic personality; Irmgard, her tin tub, her songs, and her Kaiser Franzi outfit merely cast the die that was already prepared.

  I thought for some time that there was little that I could do for Hans, but suddenly I thought of advice which might just help. I invited him back to see me, and gave him my recommendation.

  “Stop looking in vain for satisfaction in other people,” I said. “Stop dating girls. Date yourself!”

  He looked at me suspiciously.

  “You mean I should go out … just by myself? Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I mean. You’ll be much happier – I’m sure of it.”

  He appeared to think for a moment.

  “So I should go out and just … just dance by myself – that sort of thing?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You’ll enjoy that. Also, take yourself out to dinner. Take yourself to the cinema. You’re the person you really like, you know. Just accept that.”

  He smiled, clearly pleased at the suggestion.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “Maybe I’ve been wasting my time on all these dates with others.”

  “Of course you have. You’re just right for yourself, Hans. I can assure you of that.”

  “And it’ll be cheaper,” he said. “Think of the money I’ll save!”

  “Yes,” I said. “Fifty per cent.”

  His brow darkened. “But what about sex?” he said. “What about …”

  I was prepared for this. “Who do you really want to find in your bed when you wake up in the morning, Hans? Whose head on your pillow? Answer me truthfully.”

  Hans smiled. “I suppose it’s me. Yes, me. My own head.”

  “Well there you are,” I said, adding: “You’re happier now, Hans, aren’t you?”

  He smiled.

  “A whole lot,” he said.

  Calwarra

  They did not live in Calwarra – which everybody simply called “town” – but about five or six miles out of it, along one of those dusty, half-paved roads that seemed to go on forever but led finally into the mallee scrub, to nowhere really. Their turning, marked only by a rickety signpost, was immediately after the grain siding, which was their landmark.

  “First on the left, after the silos” – it was an easy, foolproof way of directing visitors, who were rare anyway.

  As a small child, she had played in their shadows, and had always thought of them as their silos, but of course they belonged to the town. It was here that the grain from all the surrounding farms was brought and loaded into the trains that would haul it off to port for shipment. For a few weeks of the year they were the centre of activity, as the harvest was brought in; for the rest of the year they stood deserted. Even then, though, the silos were the proof of the town’s importance – its economic rationale. This is what explained Calwarra, what entitled it to exist in a country where a place could not be allowed to survive merely because it had always been there.

  She lived alone with her father, who was sixty three now and ready to retire, if he could. Her mother had died shortly after her twelfth birthday, taken from them after an illness that had been brutally short. Afterwards, her father had retreated within himself, burying himself in his work on the land. Female relatives had offered to take her, and one aunt had even arrived at the farm and unwittingly pled her case within her niece ’s earshot.

  “You can’t look after a girl, Jack,” she had said. “Girls aren’t like boys. They need other women. They need somebody who can advise them on things. A father can’t – he just can’t – no matter how well-intentioned.”

  She had heard her father fight back.

  “She’s my child. This is her home. Damn it – a father’s got a right to his own child, hasn’t he? Have they done away with that now, have they? Have they?”

  The aunt had changed tack. “She’ll never forgive you if you keep her cooped up here. You’re spoiling her chances. If she came to me down in Ballarat, then she’d grow up knowing how to get along, to make friends, to run a house. Things like that.”

  He had been silent for a moment. Then: “She can run this house. She’ll get all the experience she needs – right here, where she belongs.”

  “But it’s no life for a girl, Jack – see reason.”

  He had paused again before coming up with the reply that ended the discussion.

  “All right,” he said. “You ask her. You ask her whether she wants to stay here, where her home is
– or go off to Ballarat with you. You ask her. They say we must consult children nowadays, don’t they? All right. If she says she’ll go with you, then you can take her. If she says she wants to stay, then she stays.”

  Her heart gave a leap. Of course she would say no: let them ask her, just let them ask her. Then they’d find out. But the aunt, realising, as did her brother, that children rarely choose to leave the familiar, knew that there was no point in posing the question. And so she snorted her resignation, muttering dire warnings as to what happened to girls who stayed on farms and never had the chance of a proper education. Then they moved to some other topic – some discussion about a disputed inheritance and the perfidy of a distant relative – and she lost interest, sitting alone in her room, the door still ajar, her quiet sobs for her mother unheard by the adults in the living room.

  To the secret disappointment of his sisters, he managed well. Thwarted in their plans, only one of them ever complimented him, and grudgingly at that.

  “She’s turning out well, Jack,” she had said, when they met at a family wedding. “It can’t have been easy for you.”

  But he had, in reality, found it easier than he had thought. He drove her into town, to school, each morning, and was never late in picking her up in the afternoon, whatever was happening on the farm. He bought her clothes himself, leaving the choice up to her, and she was always well turned out. He had waited grimly for the teenage rebellion, for arguments over staying out late, about accepting lifts back after parties from boys who had just passed their driving tests; but none of this came. Her friends – or such of them as he met – seemed pleasant and well-mannered. They were the children of other farmers, or of people in the town, and there were no surprises there. They had parties, of course, but on these occasions she was able to stay in town with friends, and she was always back on time, when she said she would be back. With a pang, he realised one day that under his nose, almost unnoticed, she had grown into her mother – a quiet, uncomplaining person, who could do everything and who took life in her stride.