The Last Samurai (40 page)

genealogy exclamatory particle said Sib

kono yar
ō
baka ni shiyagatte nandei

kono
, this,
yar
ō
boor, bumpkin,
kono yar
ō
you swine according to Sanseido,
baka
idiot most popular Japanese swear word according to
Japanese Street Slang, baka ni suru
is literally you’re making a fool of me but ruder in Japanese, don’t fuckin’ fuck with me according to
Japanese Street Slang
, so if
shiyagatte
is the offensive form of
suru
it’s probably even ruder,
nandei
whatever.

The subtitles don’t really seem to capture the flavour, said Sib.

Anyway you get the picture, I said, and Sib said But you’ve only done a couple of lines, how can you stop after two lines of one of the CENTRAL SCENES of the FILM?

oK, oK, oK I said. The great thing about having two parents is that each protects you from the other. If I had a father he would notice that I was getting fed up and say Leave the boy alone, Sibylla. Or he would say tactfully I’m going over to the park to kick a ball around before it gets dark and he would offer to explain the scene to Sib himself later on.

Where are we up to? said Sib.

We’re up to where Kambei looks at the scroll, I said.

Sib went back to the beginning of the scene again and replayed it and she said she still couldn’t understand a word. I think you’re making all this up said Sib

I said it’s probably Mifune’s delivery that’s giving you trouble

& Sib said she would not hear a word against Mifune

I said Kurosawa said himself

& Sib said yes but it is part of the character and do go on.

I said would you mind if I just wrote it down neatly for you

Sib said she wouldn’t mind so I wrote it down starting at ‘You’re this Kikuchiyo born in the second year of Tensho,’ and I transliterated everything because Sib has a tendency to forget the kana from time to time. It seemed to be getting rather complicated to explain so I said I thought I would do the rest later and Sib said OK. She rewound the film to the very beginning of the scene, where Katsushiro begs to go, we can’t take a child says Kambei, at the end of it all I’ve no parents, no family—I’m alone in the world, & Heihachi looks up to see Kyuzo standing silently at the door.

Did you know that E. V. Rieu has Odysseus address his companions as lads? said Sib.

You may have mentioned it, I said.

These subtitles said Sib seem to stand at a similarly respectful distance from what the characters actually say. I am going to try not to think about it. One good thing though is that it hardly affects some of the best things about the film, look at Miyoguchi standing silently in the door, he is like a great actor of silent film I have no idea how many LINES they gave Kyuzo but the lines are completely beside the point. How long did it take you to work out what everybody was saying?

I said I didn’t know. I spent a whole day on one scene one day and after that it got easier.

Well how many times did you watch this scene said Sib

& I said I didn’t know, not that many, maybe 50

The film reached Manzo’s return to the village to cut off Shino’s hair. This is supposed to make her look like a boy and so of no interest to the samurai. It’s not much of a disguise. Sibylla is bored by Shino; she stopped the video and said she had to work.

She turned on the computer and began typing in text from
Practical Caravanning
1982. Rikichi factor 5. She looked about the way you’d expect someone to look who’d once made a terrible mistake.

She might be waiting for my birthday, which was only a day away. Or maybe I could pretend to sudden insight into the defects of Lord Leighton and Lord Leighton—the writer was obviously the author of the magazine article she once showed me.

If I said anything about the Moonlight Sonata or Yesterday or drapery it would be a dead giveaway, but suppose I said: the problem is that they are classicistic rather than classic, pursuing both truth and beauty not for themselves but because manifested in these forms in the great works of the past. It would be harder, of course, to seem as though I saw these faults from a state of grace, but maybe she would overlook that.

I picked up the postcard and gave it a piercing look, as though suddenly struck by something. As a matter of fact there did seem to be rather a lot of cloth in the air. Now all I had to do was casually comment on this superfluity of airborne material in a way that would show not only pity for the perpetrator but a grace beyond pity.

PRACTICAL CARAVANNING said Sibylla. What in God’s name is practical about caravanning and why in God’s name should the word ‘Practical’ be thought to add appeal to the activity am I yet again a market of one?
Impractical Caravanning. Impractical Boating. Impractical Knitting
. I would buy any of the above and I have not the slightest interest in knitting, boating or, God help me, caravanning.

I unfolded the magazine article yet again. This was a lot harder. Moonlight Sonata, I said to myself. Yesterday. I read through it trying to see what she had seen.

The horror! The horror! said Sibylla.

She had been typing for about 5 minutes. Earnings for the day so far: about £1.35.

If I interrupted the most likely thing was not that she would change her mind but that she would go back to watching Seven Samurai.

I went back upstairs. She didn’t look up.

I looked everywhere in her room, but I couldn’t find the envelope.

Today is my birthday. Sibylla hasn’t said anything. I thought she might when I opened my presents, but she didn’t.

I said: I think what’s wrong with Lord Leighton is that he is classicistic rather than classic, pursuing both truth and beauty not for themselves but because manifested in these forms in the great works of the past. Something similar seems to be wrong with the author of the magazine article.

Hmm said Sibylla.

I was afraid she was going to say in what way similar so I said quickly:

I’m sorry I said the tape was crap. He deserves our pity.

Sibylla looked as though she was trying not to laugh.

I said: What do I have to say?

She said: You’re looking for something in the wrong place.

I said: I just want to know who he is.

She said: Are you telling me you don’t care what he’s like? You’ve read hundreds of travel books. Who’s the worst writer you can think of?

I didn’t even have to think.

Val Peters, I said.

He had had an affair with a Cambodian girl with one leg and he had written a book about Cambodia and the girl and the stump with poetic evocations of what remained of the countryside and the leg. This was the worst book I had ever read. It wasn’t really that he was a bad writer, though—even though I was only eight I could see he was quite a good writer.