Have You Seen Diana Naked?

8

9 a.m., August 23

Christopher Polack, the captian of SS George Washington, was standing on the open deck and chatting amicably with Madame de Blayac, when he noticed Anna Pavlova, who, dressed in a leotard, was exercising at the ship's railing, using it as a ballet bar.

"Here's your guardian angel, madam," he pointed to the ballerina. "I think I should say a few words of respect to her for her brave act she performed yesterday while protecting your property."

"Good morning, Miss Pavlova," said Captain Polack as they approached the ballerina.

"Morning, Captain," said Anna, getting up from the frontal splits. "Greetings, Madame de Blayac."

She shook hands with both of them.

"Just having a little workout in the open air," Anna smiled. "I have to keep myself in shape."

"You're certainly in excellent shape, Miss Pavlova," said the captain. "The way you handled that burglar only confirms it. You did a very brave thing yesterday."

"Oh, no," Anna Pavlova waved her hand. - There was nothing brave about it, believe me. To tell you the truth, I was very frightened at that moment."

"No need to be so shy, my dear," said Madame de Blayac. "You are a real heroine! To defeat that brute so easily!"

"By the way, what happened to him?" asked Anna, and put her foot on the railing to begin to do torso bends, each time nimbly reaching her head to her ankle.

"We, of course, have detained him. He's under guard in one of the vacant cabins," replied Captain, watching Anna's agile movements with admiration. "We'll hand him over to the police as soon as we dock in New York."

"Captain, I've just had a wonderful idea," declared Madame de Blayac. "I know we're having a show in the Social Hall tonight. I think we should make Anna the guest of honor, and give her all the necessary honors before all the other guests. Everyone aboard the ship should know our heroine."

"Oh, please, I'd like as few people as possible to know what happened," Anna said as she took her foot off the railing and put it on the deck. "A similar incident happened to me in Paris, and there was a lot of unnecessary hype about it. We'd better keep it quiet this time."

"Okay, we'll keep your little feat a secret," Captain Polak smiled. "In any case, I invite you, Anna, to be a guest at our show tonight. One of the performers is Ganapati Sharma, a magician and mystic from India. I think it's going to be a terrific evening."

"Look who's coming our way," exclaimed Madame de Blayac. "It's Doctor Freud himself! The famous psychiatrist from Vienna."

"Morning, Herr Freud," Captain Polack greeted the psychoanalyst. "Would you care to join us for a minute?"

Sigmund Freud walked up to them and shook hands with each of the company.

"You see, Doctor, I would like to ask you for a little help," said Captain Polak. "There was an attempted burglary of one of the staterooms on the ship. The criminal has been apprehended and taken into custody. We intend to keep him detained for the rest of our voyage, after which, no doubt, he will be brought to trial."

"And how can I be useful in all this?" inquired Freud.

"This guy claims he has some mental problem of a sexual nature. I think you might be interested in interviewing him."

"Is he dangerous?"

"Not at all. He's just a thief, not a murderer."

"What is the essence of his sexual problem?"

"You see, Herr Freud, I wouldn't like to talk about it in front of the ladies, except that he was badly injured in a man's most vulnerable place."

"You mean his testicles, I suppose?" Freud looked curiously at the captain.

Christopher Polack nodded his head affirmatively.

"Okay, I'll try to interview and psychoanalyze him," said Sigmund Freud.

Doctor Watson entered the cabin and immediately fell onto his bunk.

"Sherlock," he addressed his friend, who was sitting in the chair by the porthole, "all these years, constantly assisting you in solving the most diverse crimes, I've tried to master your deductive method of reasoning, and not in vain, I can assure you. Today I applied your method to the whole situation around us and came to some odd conclusion.

"And what is your conclusion, my dear Watson?"

"Having made a chain of logical deductions, I've come to the only possible conclusion about you and me. We don't exist, I mean you and me, my dear Holmes. We're just a figment of someone's imagination. Someone's sexually perverted imagination. Someone has invented us and all our adventures, as Homer invented the Trojan War. Yesterday I read a poem in a magazine in the library. It was written by a writer named Arthur Conan Doyle. I liked it and learned it by heart. Listen to this:

The cheese mites asked how the cheese got there,

And warmly debated the matter;

The Orthodox said that it came from the air,

And the Heretics said from the platter.

They argued it long and they argued it strong,

And I hear they are arguing now;

But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese,

Not one of them thought of a cow.'"

"I don't understand you a bit, Watson," Holmes gave out a deep sigh. "I can't see what my deductive method has to do with your brain farts."

"Holmes, it's so obvious - there always must be the cow somewhere beyond, somewhere outside all this cheese we're staying in. We can't see her, but she definitely must be there. We must find the cow first, and only after that start our search for Professor Moriarty. We have to find the one who invented us."

"Watson, are you drunk?"

"I just smoked some junk at the stern of the boat with that mystic from India, some Sharma-Barma or something like that. At first he wanted to fuck me, your wife, by the way, but I was strict and cold, so we just smoked Indian weed, and after that a lot of things opened up to me.

"Like what?"

"I saw myself as a bee, a busy bee flying from flower to flower, gathering sweet nectar, collecting pollen and pollinating all those blossoms around. I was transferring pollen from plant to plant, thus helping them reproduce. I was a flying organ of reproduction, a winged penis, spreading the sperm of plants all around. Then the absolute truth was revealed to me. I'm none other than a winged penis in a woman's dress."

Sherlock Holmes rose from his chair, stepped up to his friend and shook him by the shoulder.

"Watson, I think I want some of that shit you've been smoking with that Sharma-Barma of yours, too."