The Last Samurai (37 page)

If it had been with real swords you’d be dead
.

Sibylla put the duvet around her shoulders. She said she would start typing soon.

I wanted to say: Was he really as bad as Liberace?

Liberace was the one thing she’d shown me that I could see was bad. Could my father really be that bad? Could he be worse? I wanted to say: How bad is bad? Is it worse than gap-toothed urchins and coltish grace? Worse than scrap of humanity? Worse than veritable cathedral of ice? I wanted to say: But at least he’s seen the world.

I thought of saying to Sibylla, If I’m such a genius why won’t you let me decide for myself? I thought of saying, I thought you disapproved people who purely because they happened to arrive on the planet a few years earlier make other people who happened to arrive on the planet a few years later obey them without persuading them of the justice of their position. I thought you thought disenfranchisement on grounds of age the hallmark of a BARBARIC SOCIETY. I thought of saying, How do you know something I don’t know is something I
don’t
want to know?

In runs the gambler, who says they’ve found a really tough samurai
.

Katsushiro runs to stand behind the door with a stick
.

Gambler: You dirty cheat!

Kambei: If he’s a real samurai he won’t be hit
.

Gambler: But he’s drunk
.

Kambei: A samurai doesn’t get so drunk that he loses his senses
.

A man runs through the door; Katsushiro brings the stick down hard. This samurai doesn’t parry the blow. He falls moaning to the ground
.

This was the first scene I understood. It was because the scroll made me realise I could see the words. Obviously hearing something is just reading backwards, what I mean is, when you read you hear the word in your mind, and when you talk or hear someone say something you see an image of the word in your mind: if someone says
someone
you see a word in Roman letters, and if they say
philosophia
you see φι
οσοφíα, and if they say
kataba
you see
, you actually see an image of something you read from right to left. But for a long time I didn’t realise this worked with Japanese. I’d hear
Nihon
in my head if I saw
on the page, say, but I didn’t realise I could see something in my head if I heard something. Anyway Kambei picks up the end and reads from it—what he actually says is ‘Tensh
ō
second year second month seventeenth day born’, he says the sounds
Tensh
ō
ninen nigatsu j
ū
shichinichi umare
and suddenly I realised I could see some of the words, he was seeing them on the scroll and saying them and when he said
ninen nigatsu j
ū
shichinichi
in my mind I could see
. Second year second month seventeenth day. Probably because I was obsessed with Japanese numbers at the time.

For the rest of the film sounds would sort of crystallise here and there around an image and then I went back and tried to work the others out and by the time I was eight the images came into my head for most of the film and I could understand almost all of it.

Mifune recognises Kambei
.

Hey you! Asking me ‘Are you a samurai?’ like that
—
don’t laugh at me
.

Even though I look like this, I’m a genuine samurai
.

Hey
—
I’ve been looking for you the whole time ever since then…. thinking I’d like to show you this [pulls out a scroll]

Look at this

This genealogy

This genealogy of my ancestors handed down for generations

(You bastard, you’re making a fool of me)

Look at this (you’re making a fool of me)

This is me
.

[Kambei, reading] This Kikuchiyo it talks about is you?

[Mifune] That’s right

[Kambei] Born on the seventeenth day of the second month of the second year of Tensho
…
[bursts out laughing]

[Mifune] What’s funny?

[Kambei] You don’t look thirteen

Listen, if you’re definitely this Kikuchiyo you must be thirteen this year
.

[All the samurai burst out laughing]

Where did you steal this?

[Mifune] What! It’s a lie! Shit! What are you saying?

Sibylla said: Can you really understand it?

I said: Of course I can understand it.

Sibylla said: Well what’s he saying then?

and she rewound the video to the place where Mifune staggers to his feet.

I said, Well he says
Yai! Kisama! yoku mo ore no koto o samurai ka nante nukashiyagatte
…
fuzakeruna!

and Sib said for all she knew she might actually know these words, she never recognised a word when she heard it

so I wrote on a piece of paper explaining as I went, he says
yai
hey
!
kisama
you (the Kodansha Romaji says it’s CRUDE and very insulting)
yoku
well
mo
intensifying particle
ore no
me possessive particle
koto
o, thing object particle, i.e. periphrasis for me
samurai
ka
interrogative particle
nante
COLLOQ. for
nan-to
what, how, as in how cold it is
nukashiyagatte
gerund of
nukasu
, to say, i.e. Asking me ‘Are you a samurai?’ like that,
!
fuzakeruna
negative imperative of fuzakeru, to joke, i.e. don’t laugh at me.