The Last Samurai (68 page)

It doesn’t matter really, said 3. We’ll catch him at his house.

Right you are, said 1.

They got off after four or five stops and I followed them to a street with semi-detached houses. A small crowd of people were standing outside one. The three men joined them.

At the other end of the street a man hurtled around the corner and stopped dead. Then he began to walk forward, very slowly. He stopped in front of the house and said something I couldn’t hear. The men crowded round. I thought of going forward and saying This man is a Norwegian citizen! or My father is the Polish vice-consul! but I could not see that it would help. Even a real Danish consul could not have helped him now.

He opened a gate in a hedge and disappeared inside.

Most of the crowd dispersed. A few stayed behind.

I threw Lee and Brian at judo today. Lee is 14, and Brian is 13 but taller and heavier.

I told Sibylla & she asked what my teacher had said. I said he had said it was very good.

Sibylla said that didn’t sound very character-building. I said most authorities on child psychology said a child should be given encouragement and reinforcement. Sib said Bandura and who else? I said everybody else. I didn’t say that the authorities also said a parent had to be able to set limits because I was afraid she might suddenly decide to make up for lost time and set a lot of limits.

Sibylla said: Well just remember Richie, becoming the great judo champion is not the end of the story.

I said I didn’t think I was the great judo champion just because I could beat Lee and Brian at Bermondsey Boys Junior Judo.

Sibylla said: It isn’t a question of beating X and Y. What if there’s no one you can’t beat? It’s a question of perfecting your skill and achieving satori. What on earth are they teaching you in this class?

I said we mainly concentrated on learning how to throw people to the ground. Sib said: Must I do
everything
myself? She was grinning from ear to ear.
Carpworld
was a thing of the past. I decided not to tell her I was beating everyone at piquet 9 times out of 10.

I have been going by the house every day for two weeks. There are still a couple of people hanging around in the street. Sometimes people go in and out of the house—mainly a woman, a girl and a boy. Once he came out and walked to the corner and turned around and came back. Once he came out and looked up at the sky and stood looking up at the sky for about ten minutes. Then he turned around and went back into the house. Once he came out in a tracksuit and ran off down the street and came back walking about fifteen minutes later. Once he came out in a suit and tie and walked briskly away.

I went over to the house to watch for a while. This time all of them came out the gate: Red Devlin, his wife and the boy and girl. He had his arm around his wife’s shoulder. He said: What a spectacularly beautiful day! The wife and the girl said: It’s lovely! and the boy said: Yeah.

I have been spending a lot of time watching his house. There is a bus stop with a bench up the street; I sit there mainly working on solid state physics. My concentration is almost back to normal.

I was outside the house today when a taxi pulled up. They all came out and put suitcases in the taxi and his family got in and he said: Have a wonderful time.

The wife said: I wish you were coming too

And he said: Well, I may join you

And the taxi drove off.

It’s now or never.

I went to the house and knocked on the door but there was no answer. I thought he was probably there so I went around to the back of the house. I couldn’t see him through any of the ground floor windows, so I climbed a tree. He was standing in a bedroom with his back to the window. He left the bedroom to go into the bathroom. There were three or four bottles of pills on the dresser and a bottle of Evian. The bottles had been emptied onto the dresser; there were probably a couple of hundred pills.

He came back into the room with another bottle of pills. He struggled with the child-proof cap, and then he struggled to get a wad of cotton wool out, and then he poured another fifty pills onto the dresser. He poured out a glass of water and picked up a couple of pills. Then he laughed and put them down. He took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. Then he left the room.

I couldn’t see what kind of pills he was planning to take.

There was a kind of narrow ornamental stone moulding around the house underneath the windows on each floor. One of the windows was open on the next floor, and a branch hung over the roof. The moulding wasn’t much over an inch wide but the mortar was crumbling between the bricks so I thought there would be good handholds. I climbed up and went out the branch and lowered myself onto the moulding. Then I inched along to the window. In one place there was a lot of ivy growing over the moulding and for a moment I thought I’d have to go back—there was nowhere to put a foot, and it was impossible to get through to the wall for a grip. But when I pulled on the ivy it was tough and thick, so I took hold of that and went hand over hand. Then back to the moulding. I slipped in the window. I went through the door and ran down the stairs, not bothering to be quiet. At first I couldn’t find the right room—the first door I tried was a study and the next was a broom closet. Then I found the bedroom. He was back there now. He had a drink in his hand.

I said: What are you doing?

He said without surprise: What does it look like I’m doing?

I said: Is that paracetamol?

He said: No.

I said: I think aspirin is also a bad idea.

He said: It’s not aspirin.

I said: Then it’s probably all right.

He laughed. He sounded surprised to be surprised. He said: Who are you?

There was no going back.

I said

I’m your son.

He said

No you’re not. My son doesn’t look anything like you.

I said

I’m another one.

He said

Oh, I see.

He said

Wait a minute, that’s impossible. There was definitely just the one boy when I went away. One boy and one girl. You’re not going to tell me you’re five years old. Besides, if she’d had another child while I was away she’d have told me.

One thing was clear: if there was one thing guaranteed to make everything a hundred times worse, it was saying Well actually I’m not your son after all. I said: Not by your wife. I said: My mother told me you were my father. Maybe she made a mistake. It would have been about 12 years ago.

He said

Oh, now I see.

He finished the drink and put the glass down.

This isn’t a very good time, he said. I can’t put it out of my mind, you see. But I can’t let people know. They don’t like to see it. I don’t like to see that they don’t like to see it. They can see I don’t like to see that they don’t like to see it.

He said

I’ve already got too many people to protect. I can’t take on any more. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go away.

I said

I don’t want you to protect me.

He said

What does that mean? That I can talk about it? What do you want.

I said

I wanted to see you.

He said

You’ve seen me so you can go away

I said I would go away

He said

Do you know how old I am? 37. I could live another 40 years. 50 years. People live to be 100.

He said

I see it every day. It never goes away. These eyes have seen, that is they’ve been in the same room with, that is you’ve seen Lear, maybe, people flinch when Gloucester is blinded. What do you think it’s like to see the bloody socket where a thumb went? He was crying with the other eye. You’re not haunted by Lear, I mean it doesn’t come back to haunt you, whereas the real thing—you see it day after day after day. You think of something else again and again and again. It’s not the blood, it’s the fact that a human did that.

He said

You need something to set against it. When you’ve seen that much badness you need something to set against it—some dazzling glorious act of goodness—not to redeem your faith in humanity, whatever that might mean, but just to make you stop feeling sick.

He said

It’s not fair on my family. They’re fine. I mean they’re perfectly OK. They’re not bad. It’s been hard on them, and they’ve responded pretty well. But not dazzling. Well, why should they be dazzling? But I feel sick.