The Last Samurai (64 page)

Then you lost? said Szegeti, and the boy, too, thought that she had lost.

I lost, she said. She went to the mirror and began to pull off the moustache.

I lost, and I lost, and I lost. And then I won.

From the pockets of the suit she took sheaf after sheaf of notes, and stacked them on the dressing table. Numéro vingthuit, she said, il ne m’a pas tout à fait oubliée. They were sheafs of 500 franc notes.

I must go to bed, she said. I have nothing to wear.

I thought: It’s
not
just the money.

I thought: I can always sell the heart another time.

I thought: I can’t wait to see the look on his face!

Being deported sounds rather traumatic but Szegeti had been through it so many times before I thought he would probably not let it interfere with his normal pursuits. I knew he played bridge a lot at the Portland Club, so I got off the Circle Line at Baker Street and went to the Marylebone Library to look up the Portland Club in the phone book. One should never despise the obvious, so I tried the residential directory first, but of course a man who wanted to avoid nuisance calls from the type of head of state who typically gets 99.9% of the vote from an adoring populace, not to mention the Bhutanese, American, French, German, Danish and now Belgian embassies, and not mentioning last but not least the World Bank, UN and WHO, was not listed. The Portland Club was at 42 Half Moon Street.

I took the Jubilee Line to Green Park and walked to Half Moon Street. It was about 1:30. I sat on the curb across the street from the Portland Club and began to peruse
The Solid State
by H. M. Rosenberg.

I thought: Who knows WHAT will happen?

Szegeti was not only a chronic diplomat and cardplayer, he had had dozens, hundreds or thousands of affairs depending on your source (Szegeti/
The Sun
/Sadaam Hussein). He couldn’t keep track of them all; for all he knew one of his exes
might
have had a child. He might accept me as his son! Perhaps I would be able to tell the story of the moustache as a story about my grandmother.

People went in and out of the Portland Club, but none looked like Szegeti. At about 4:00 a taxi drew up in front of the club and a man in a white suit stepped out. It was Szegeti.

Six hours went by. I was starving. I forced myself to read H. M. Rosenberg,
The Solid State
. I tried not to think about food.

At about 11:00 Szegeti came out. He was with another man. The other man was saying: I just thought if I led the king it would open up the diamonds.

Diamonds?

It was the only suit they hadn’t bid.

Neither they had, said Szegeti with a sigh. One would not like to think the spirit of adventure had wholly died out in the modern game, but when one considers the unaccountable, indeed the apparently insuperable reluctance of the average player to bid a suit on a void or singleton! Not to mention the pusillanimity of the partnership de nos jours which meanly settles for a suit where it has found a fit rather than moving on to explore uncharted waters. We live in a degenerate age.

Last time you said I should obviously have led the king.

Did I? Then I take it all back. You must certainly lead the king every chance you get. No need to mull over your lead if you’ve a king in your hand. If anyone looks surprised you may say that you have it on my authority that to lead the king is the quintessence of sound play. But here is my taxi.

He got into the taxi, and it drove off.

I had no idea where it was going.

The man left behind was staring after it. I ran up behind him and said breathlessly:

Excuse me! I was told to deliver something urgently to Mr. Szegeti at his club and now I’ve just missed him—do you know where he’s going?

Haven’t a clue. He’s gone off Caprice; you could try Quaglino’s. Do you play bridge?

No. Where’s Quaglino’s?

Oh good Lord, you can’t—that is, he’s in a filthy mood about something or other and if he’s meeting someone he won’t want you barging in. Why don’t you leave it at the club?

Where’s Quaglino’s?

Isn’t it rather late for you to be out?

Where’s Quaglino’s?

He probably isn’t there anyway.

Then it doesn’t matter if you tell me where it is, does it?

No, well, Bury Street, if you must know.

Where’s that?

Miles away.

I went back to Green Park. The Tube would close in an hour. He would probably go off in a taxi again and I would not be able to follow because I only had my Travelcard and a pound. Still, maybe something would turn up.

I asked at the assistance window where Bury Street was and the man said it was just around the corner. I looked at the local area map and sure enough it was just around the corner, about a ten-minute walk from Half Moon Street. Would anyone take a taxi for that kind of distance? But it was my only lead so I walked up Piccadilly and down St. James’s Street and over to Bury Street, and I looked at Quaglino’s but you couldn’t see much from the outside. I couldn’t tell whether anyone in a white suit was inside or not.

I sat on a doorstep across the street from Quaglino’s and tried to read
The Solid State
, but the light was too bad. So I started reciting
Iliad
1. I am planning to learn the whole thing in case I am thrown in jail some day.

People went in and out of Quaglino’s. I finished
Iliad
1; it was still only 12:30. A couple of people stopped and asked if I was all right. I said I was. I started going through weak Arabic verbs. My favourites are the double and triple weak verbs because they practically shut down in the imperative, but I made myself start with initial hamza and work through.

It was a good thing I did. An hour went by; I thought he must have gone somewhere else. I might as well go home. But I’d reached my favourite verb in the whole language & I thought I would go through that first and give it just a little longer. The strange thing about
is this: here is a triliteral verb in which all three letters are ya; a verb which only occurs in Form II, with the middle ya
reduplicated
(unfortunately this means the final ya is then written alif, but you can’t have everything); a verb which means ‘to write the letter ya’ (Wright) or ‘to write a beautiful ya’ (Haywood and Nahmad)! This has got to be the best verb in the language—and Wehr doesn’t even bother to put it in the dictionary! Wright, believe it or not, only mentions it to say he isn’t going to discuss it because it’s rare! Blachère doesn’t even mention it! Haywood/Nahmad is the only one to give it decent coverage, and even they don’t give the imperative. They do give the jussive, which apparently is yuyayyi; I think this means the imperative would be yayyi. So I sat across from Quaglino’s saying yayya yayyat yayyayta yayyayti yayyaytu quietly to myself, and I thought that if he didn’t come out by the end I’d go through Form IX (which Blachère calls nettement absurde) just for the fun of it & maybe Form XI which is the intensified form of IX & presumably so absurd it’s off the charts. IX is for colours & deformities & XI is to be blackest black or whitest white. The painter would have liked that. He could do a piece called Let IX = XI. Let Deformity = Colour. Forget it.

Anyway I’d reached yuyayyi, and had just started thinking about going on to ihmarra to be red ihmaarra to be blood red, when Szegeti came out of Quaglino’s with a woman.

She said:

Of course I’ll drop you off.

He said:

You’re an angel.

She said:

Don’t be silly. But you’ll have to tell me how to go, I always get lost in those little streets.

I held my breath and he said:

Well, you know Sloane Street?

She said:

Of course.

They were walking down the street away from Piccadilly. I followed on the other side of the street, and he said:

Well, you turn right onto Pont Street and then it’s your fourth left—couldn’t be easier.

I said: EUREKA!

I said: Sloane Street, Pont Street, fourth left. Sloane Street, Pont Street, fourth left. Sloane Street, Pont Street, fourth left.

She said:

I’m sure we’ll get there somehow.

I followed them to a National Car Park. I waited by the exit so that I saw her dark blue Saab come out. Then I started walking to Knightsbridge. It was a long shot but I thought maybe she would not just drop him off but go in and if she did and I waited long enough I would see where she came out.

I got to Pont Street at about 2:15. The fourth left was Lennox Gardens. There was no sign of the Saab.

I decided to wait until the next day anyway and hope that I would see him leave. I walked back to Sloane Street where I had seen a pay phone but it only took coins. I went back to Knightsbridge and found a phone that took phonecards and called Sibylla. I said I was in Knightsbridge and needed to be there early in the morning so I thought I would just stay there but I did not want her to think I was being held hostage or sold into sexual bondage to a ring of paedophiles.

Sibylla did not say anything for a very long time. I knew what she was thinking anyway. The silence stretched out, for my mother was debating inwardly the right of one rational being to exercise arbitrary authority over another rational being on the ground of seniority. Or rather she was not debating this, for she did not believe in such a right, but she was resisting the temptation to exercise such power sanctioned only by the custom of the day. At last she said: Well then I’ll see you tomorrow.

There was a locked garden in Lennox Gardens. I went over the fence and lay down on the grass behind a bench. The years of sleeping on the ground paid off: I fell asleep instantly.

At about 11:00 the next morning Szegeti came out of a block of flats at the end of the street and turned the corner.

When I got home Sibylla had finished
Carpworld
. She sat in the soft chair in the front room huddled over
Teach Yourself Pali
. Her face was as dark and empty as the screen.

I thought I should be sympathetic but I was too impatient. What’s the use of being so miserable? What’s the point? Why can’t she be like Layla Szegeti? Anything would be better than this. Is this supposed to be for my sake? How can it be for my sake if I hate it? It would be better to be wild and daring and gamble everything we had. I wish she would sell everything we had and take it to a casino and bet it all on a single turn of the wheel.