The Last Samurai (36 page)

Is Red Devlin my father? I asked.

She said:

I don’t want to talk about it.

She did not come to earth. My mother was now on a planet with a deadly atmosphere and gravitational force of 17. Leaning heavily on the chair and looking down at
The Eskimo Book of Knowledge
she said after a pause with a gallant effort:

But what a marvellous language let’s see
kakortarsu
is obviously the white fox so we’ve got
kakortarsu kakortarsuk kakortarsungnik kakortarsuit
and there’s
puije
and
puijit
for seal further up the page it looks like
puije
is the accusative
puijit
is the nominative which would make
kakortarsuit
nominative
piojorniningillo
is vanity on the previous page we seem to have
puijevinit
seal meat
puijevinekarnersaularposelo
you will also gain a greater supply of seal meat I’ve always wanted to learn a agglutinative language

I said: Three’s not enough?

She said: I feel like learning another it’s wonderful to think of a language like this in DAILY USE. She said: I wonder what the Inuit would be for veritable cathedral of ice!

I didn’t say anything.

She said:

Oh LOOK it’s got the Inuit for God Save the King!

The planet Saturn has a gravitational force of only 1.07 and she began to sing

Gûdib saimarliuk

Adanterijavut

NâlengnartoK.

Piloridlarlune

Nertornadlarlune

Ataniotile

Uvaptingnut.

I said:

Is it James Hatton?

JAMES HATTON! said Sibylla. Why the man’s a veritable colossus!

She said:

I’ve got to work.

I got the impression I was wasting my time on
The Eskimo Book of Knowledge
. I thought: Well, maybe this year I’ll pass the test, and I went to look at the postcard of Greek Girls Playing at Ball, by Lord Leighton, which Sibylla had shown me years before. Abstract expressionism this is not, but I still couldn’t see what I was supposed to see. Then I read the magazine article for the 500th time, but I couldn’t see what I was supposed to see. Then I listened to the tape of Liberace, which is obviously complete and utter crap.

Sibylla said: Would you mind not playing that? I’m trying to work.

I said: I can see the tape is crap. Isn’t that enough?

She looked at me.

I said: How do you know you’re not wrong about the other two?

She looked at me.

I said: Why don’t you tell me what you think is wrong so I can decide for myself?

She looked at me with burning eyes.

I said: Why won’t you tell me who he is? Do you want me to promise not to tell him? I have a right to know.

She said: Well I have a right to remain silent.

She said: If you don’t need me for anything I’m going to watch Seven Samurai for a while.

She turned off the computer. It was about 11:30. So far she had spent about 8 minutes typing which at £6.25 an hour meant she had earned about 83p.

She picked up the remote and pressed ON and PLAY.

40 bandits stop on a hill above a village in Japan. They decide to raid it after the barley harvest. A farmer overhears
.

A village meeting is held. The farmers despair
.

Rikichi leaps to his feet with burning eyes
.

Let’s make bamboo spears! Let’s run ’em all through!

Not me, says Yohei
.

Impossible, says Manzo
.

I used to take her word for it. But what if she’s wrong? A new book by the author of the magazine article came out last month. According to the reviews he is one of the greatest writers of our time.

The farmers consult old Giseku
.

I said: According to the reviews the author of the magazine article is one of the greatest writers of our time.

Sibylla said yes and Alma-Tadema fetched more than Michelangelo for a while.

He tells them to find hungry samurai
.

I said: According to one reviewer this writer I am supposed to regard from a state of grace beyond pity is the greatest writer in English in the world today. Another described him as America’s answer to Flaubert. A third referred to him as the great chronicler of the American experience. Nine out of ten reviewers gave him a rating of ‘great’ or better. Five used the word ‘genius’.

She said: Anything follows from a false premise. If you accept that American novels should be written in English then it also follows that the Pope is a Jew.

I said: Well in that case Seven Samurai can’t be any good because it’s in black and white and Japanese. You’re being completely inconsistent. I thought: This is insane. Why don’t we just talk about the decline of traditional Zulu raindances or mutations in inland water algae in the Urals or some other randomly chosen completely irrelevant subject? I have a right to know who he is whoever he is.

She said: I wish you wouldn’t say the first thing that comes into your head, Ludo. There is an obvious difference between someone who works within the technical limitations of his time which are beyond his control and someone who accepts without thinking limitations which are entirely within his own power to set aside.

She said: It may have escaped your notice but I am
trying
to watch one of the masterpieces of modern cinema.

The farmers see a crowd of people. A samurai has gone to the river’s edge to be shaved by a monk
.

Mifune pushes his way through the crowd and squats scratching his chin
.

Katsushiro asks his neighbour what’s happening
.

I said So you think Proust would have been better with some English and German added in & she looked at me with burning eyes & I said Why don’t we talk about the impact of tourism on the traditional Zulu raindance why don’t you test me on 50 capitals of the world this is completely irrelevant I have a right to know.

She looked at me with burning eyes.

I said: Well just tell me this. He didn’t rape you did he? (Everything I know about delicacy I learned at my mother’s knee.) For one horrible moment I thought he really had: increase Rikichi factor by power of 10.

She said: No.

I said: So there must have been something you liked about him. He must have had SOME redeeming quality.

She said: That’s one way of looking at it.

I said: What other way is there of looking at it?

She said: In our society one of the most highly prized virtues if not
the
most highly prized virtue is that of sleeping with someone you don’t desire for free, if it is prized in people who have to do it surely it would be a supererogatory virtue in someone who wasn’t even married.

I said: Is that what you did?

She said: Well, I was trying to be polite.

I was not going to be struck speechless now. I said: What word has escaped the barrier of your teeth?

She said: There is a strange taboo in our society against ending something merely because it is not pleasant—life, love, a conversation, you name it, the etiquette is that you must begin in ignorance & persevere in the face of knowledge, & though I naturally believe that this is profoundly wrong it’s not nice to go around constantly offending people.

I had heard this a million times. I said: Does that mean there WASN’T anything you liked about him?

She said: How can you be so sure something you don’t know is something you want to know? Look at Oedipus.

I said: What are you afraid of, that I’ll kill him or sleep with him?

She said, or rather riposted: Well, I wouldn’t sleep with him if I were you, and she said: Tiresias has spoken.

There is a strange taboo in our society against matricide.

She rewound the video ostentatiously to the place where I had interrupted.

The thief runs from the barn and falls down dead
.

The parents of the child rush forward to take it
.

Mifune rushes forward brandishing his sword. He jumps up and down on the body
.

The samurai walks off without a backward look
.

I’ve been telling her for years about Dervla Murphy who rode through the Andes on a mule with her eight-year-old daughter. My father probably does that kind of thing the whole time for a living. The most we’ve ever done is hitchhike through France. My father might like the chance to spend some time with the son he never knew he had. We could go to the source of the Amazon by canoe, or trek overland to the Arctic Circle, or live six months with the Masai (my Masai is pretty good). I know 54 edible plants, 23 edible mushrooms and 8 insects that you can keep down if you don’t think about what you’re eating; I think I could live off the land in any continent. For the last two years I’ve been sleeping on the ground outside even in the winter, and I walk for an hour without shoes every day to toughen my feet, and I’ve practised climbing trees and buildings and telephone poles. If she would just tell me who he is I could stop wasting my time on things that might just happen to come in handy and concentrate on the things I actually need to know. I’ve had to learn five major trade languages and eight nomadic languages just in case. It’s insane.

My name is Katsushiro Okamoto. Please, please let me become one of your followers
.

Followers? I am Kambei Shimada. I am only a ronin. I have no followers

I thought about Liberace and Lord Leighton and the author of the magazine article. Even if she’s right, what’s bad about these people is that they are bad artists. Maybe my father was a bad writer—but it could be because he had more important things to think about. If you’re travelling across Siberia with a team of huskies you may not have time to polish every word. Sibylla does tend to take art too seriously.

I went up to my room after a while. She has been watching Seven Samurai for the last 10 years and she still has trouble with the Japanese. I could hear it downstairs. I knew she’d be there for at least another hour.

I had once seen an envelope in her room marked To Be Opened In Case of Death. I thought—well surely if she thought she’d be dead she’d say who my father was. I thought—I’ve tried to play by the rules, but this is ridiculous. I could just see myself in 10 years looking at the picture by Lord Leighton and not seeing anything wrong, or trying to find something wrong with one of the greatest writers of our time.

I had practised walking silently. I walked silently across the landing to her room. There’s a drawer where she keeps her passport. I thought the envelope might be there. I crossed the room and opened the drawer.

There was a folder with a thick stack of papers in it.

I read through the papers quickly.

There was quite a lot about my father, but she’d thought of a nickname and stuck to it. I kept thinking she’d say who Liberace was, or at least mention the title of one of his books, but she didn’t. Before I could start looking again for the envelope Sibylla called from downstairs

LUDO! ARE YOU UPSTAIRS?

I said

YES

and she said

WOULD YOU MIND BRINGING ME THE DUVET?

I put the folder of papers back in the drawer and took the duvet downstairs. I don’t know what I thought. I think I thought It’s not too late not to know and But I have to know.

The first part of the recruitment was over, the part where Katsushiro stands behind a door with a stick. When I was very little I would practise reading fast from the subtitles and Sibylla would say why do you think he did this and why do you think he did that and why doesn’t Shichiroji have to take the test and why does Gorobei take Heihachi if he says he always runs away? I would say something and she would laugh and say she never thought of that.

Kambei and Katsushiro find two samurai stripping bamboo poles for a match
.

The fight begins. Kyuzo raises his pole. X holds his pole over his head and shouts
.

Kyuzo draws back his pole. X runs forward
.

Kyuzo raises his pole suddenly and brings it down
.

X: Sorry, that was a draw

No. I won

Nonsense