The Last Samurai (52 page)

Now the Fraenkel Room at this time said Sib had a long table covered with a mauve corded cloth like a cheap Sears bedspread, and a black and white photo of Fraenkel on the wall.

HC took one look at the picture and another at the people there and he said Oh my God and walked out.

That is, said Sib, he said Oh my God let’s get out of here, and though she knew Skarp-Hedin would complain that she did not love him she had said Yes let’s get out and they had both walked out.

HC had gone off again she said and now he was back. Sibylla said of HC that he could go for months without human contact, and if he made contact the first thing he wanted to know was how his interlocutor handled sequence of tenses, and the second was whether he used a subjunctive.

I said: What happened to RD?

Sibylla said: Oh he got a job on one of the dictionaries. You can see him around the Bodleian.

I said: Was he at the seminar?

She said: Oh he goes to all the seminars.

I said: Did they say anything?

She said: Well, RD asked the speaker a question about Phrynichus.

I said: Did they say anything to each OTHER?

She said: Of course they didn’t say anything to each other. As soon as HC saw who was there he said Oh my God let’s get out of here.

I said: Did you play chess?

She said: No, we didn’t play chess.

I thought about this for a while and I said: What’s the youngest anyone has ever gone to Oxford? Sibylla said she didn’t know, in the Middle Ages it was more like a boarding school & she thought a lot of boys would be sent there at 12 or so. She thought a girl had gone to read mathematics at the age of 10 a few years ago.

I said: 10!

She said: I think she’d been taught by her father, who was a mathematician.

If
I
had had a mathematician for a father I could probably have beaten the record.

I said: Well what’s the youngest anyone ever did classics?

Sib said she didn’t know.

I said: Younger than 11?

It seems unlikely, said Sib, but we can only surmise.

I said: Do you think I could go?

Sib said: Well you probably
could
but how would you ever learn quantum mechanics?

I said: But if I got in at 11 people would say all my life that I got in at 11!

Sib said: They certainly would. She said: Or I could give you a piece of paper certifying that you read
Sugata Sanshiro
in the original Japanese at the age of 6 and all your life people would say you read
Sugata Sanshiro
in Japanese at the age of 6.

I said: What do I have to do to get in? Do I have to read a lot about chess endings?

Sib said: Well, it worked for RD.

Sib seemed to have no interest at all in helping me set a record. I argued with her for a long time until at last she said: Why are you saying all this to me? Do whatever you want. If you pay £35 you can go to as many lectures as you want; the RATIONAL thing to do would be to pay £35 or whatever it is, get the lecture lists, go to whatever looks interesting, collect reading lists, go through the reading lists, decide on the basis of evidence which lecturers are moderately competent teachers, decide on the basis of evidence which fields you are interested in & who is doing interesting work in those fields; collect further evidence at OTHER universities (assuming THEY let in paying guests) by going to lectures given by the interesting people to see whether they are reasonably competent teachers & then decide where to go when you are about 16.

SIXTEEN! I said.

Sib began to talk about boring people she knew who had got jobs at Oxford & someone brilliant who had just gone to Warwick.

I did not say WARWICK! but Sib said drily that I would have of course to weigh very carefully the benefit of studying with someone brilliant against the undoubted drawback that people would merely say all my life (if they bothered to mention so uninteresting a fact) that I had gone to Warwick at the age of 16.

I could see that at any moment she was going to start talking about
Sugata Sanshiro
so I said quickly that we could talk about it some other time.

I said: Aren’t you supposed to be typing
The Modern Knitter
?

Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure; all take their turns of retardation, said Sib. I’m up to 1965.

I said: I thought you were going to finish it by the end of the week.

Perhaps no extensive and multifarious performance, said Sib, was ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker’s mind. He that runs against Time, has an antagonist not subject to casualities.

Sib went to the computer and typed for five minutes or so and then she stood up and sat on the sofa and turned on the video.

Kambei raised the bowl of rice. I understand, he said. No more shouting. I’m not going to waste this rice. Fair enough, said my father.

Tough-looking samurai strode up and down the street. In a doorway stood the farmers, impressed, Katsushiro, impressed, Kambei, arms crossed, unimpressed. Thanks, said my father. I mean that.

Kambei sat inside facing the door. He handed Katsushiro a heavy stick. Hide behind the door, he said. Get in position. Take the overhead-sword stance. Hit the samurai when he comes in, hard. No holding back! As hard as you can. Fair e

I stared at the screen. Katsushiro stood behind the door. I stood up and began walking up and down while a samurai came through the door and parried the blow.

Now I did not hear my father’s voice or see his face; though the film had moved on I saw in my mind a street full of tough-looking samurai, and Kambei in a doorway watching the street.

In my mind I saw Katsushiro standing behind the door with a stick. I saw Kyuzo slicing through a blustering second-rater. But a
good
samurai will parry the blow.

I thought: I could have James Hatton after all!
Or
Red Devlin. Or both!

I thought: I could have anyone I wanted!

I thought: Opening middle game endgame.

I thought: A good samurai will parry the blow.

I thought: A good samurai will parry the blow.

I looked at Sib’s paper & it said that HC was about to walk across the former Soviet Union, and that he was planning to go alone.

I thought, HE could fight with swords. Here I thought was a man to challenge, a man who knew 50 languages, a man who had faced death a hundred times, a man impervious to praise and ridicule alike. Here was a man who on meeting his son for the first time would SURELY encourage him to go to Oxford at the age of 11, or at least take him on an expedition instead.

The paper did not say where he was staying.

I called his publisher and asked whether there would be any book signings. I counted on the charm of my childish voice to elicit the information I required, and in fact after a short time I was given a list of places where books would be signed.

He was signing books the next day at the Waterstone’s in Notting Hill Gate.

I took the Circle Line and ascended to the street.

I went to the book signing, and as I expected HC left on foot. He was as tall as she had said and covered ground fast, but I had expected that too and had brought my skateboard.

The house was large and white, with white pillars. In front was a little square of grass and roses around a paved stone circle, with a birdbath in the middle of the flagstones. There was nowhere to leave my skateboard. I walked ten houses down to a For Sale sign and hid my skateboard in the long grass and then walked back.

I rang the doorbell, and a woman with shining hair and jewellery and makeup and a pink dress came to the door.

I stared at her in surprise. I hadn’t known he was married. Or it could be his sister.

I said I had come to see Hugh Carey.

She said: I’m awfully sorry, he isn’t seeing anybody.

I said I was sorry and I went away and retreated up the street. Later the woman in pink came out and went to a car and got in it and drove away. I went back to the house and rang the bell.

He came to the door and said What do you want.

His face was creased and brown and there was a badly healed scar down one cheek. His eyes blazed blue. His eyebrows were shaggy, he had a straggling moustache. His hair was bleached very light, and there were white hairs in it.

What do you want? he said again.

I have to talk to you, I said. I knew that if I walked away I would despise myself for the rest of my life.

He said he could spare a few minutes and I followed him inside. I don’t know what I expected but I was surprised by the shining wooden floors and thick rugs and stuffed sofas. An interesting form of the subjunctive is not something you can bring back as a trophy but still this was not what I had expected.

We went into a room with a black and white marble floor and a pale yellow sofa and he gestured to the sofa and said again What do you want.

I looked into that face of stone and knew I was about to die. He would see instantly through the lie and be filled with contempt. I thought of him walking across China with the boy, and walking across Kazakhstan with a tiny band of men; it was cheap and contemptible to play a trick on someone like that. I should make some excuse and leave.

Kambei tells Rikichi to call a samurai to a fight. He sits inside waiting. He tells Katsushiro to stand just inside the door with a stick. A good samurai will parry the blow
.

I thought that if I were a coward I really would be my father’s son.

I said: I wanted to see you because I’m your son.

You’re my—

I was dead.

Eyes like the burnished blade of a sword blazed in his hard face. I was dead.

His mouth tightened. I was dead.

At last he spoke.

How the hell did that happen? he said irritably. She told me she had everything taken care of.

She forgot that she’d taken the pill a day late the day before, I said truthfully. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

Women! he said contemptuously. You must be older than you look, it can’t have been later than 83 which would make you—

13 and 10 months, I said. I look young for my age.

Well, and so tell me about yourself, he said heartily. Where do you go to school? What are your interests?

I don’t go to school, I said. I study at home.

I was about to explain that I already knew Greek, French, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, Russian and some Latin (in no particular order), plus a smattering of 17 or 18 others, when he exploded.

Oh my GOD! he exclaimed in horror. What is the stupid woman thinking of? Do you know ANYTHING? What’s 6 × 7?

What do you mean? I asked cautiously. I hadn’t done much on philosophy of number yet.

Oh—my—God.

He began pacing up and down the room, with a heavy-footed, slightly lame step—I remembered that he had covered thousands of miles on foot. He said: We’ve got to get you into a school pronto, my young friend. He said: Don’t get any ideas. I couldn’t possibly stump up school fees. He said: I hear some of the state schools aren’t bad. He said: My God, I knew the whole times table up to 12 by the time I was 6.