θνητ mortal [masc. dative sing. 2nd declension] μες you [2nd person nominative plural] δ’ [connective particle] but, yet στòν you are [2nd person dual indicative] γρω ageless [M/F nominative dual] τ’ … τε both…and θαντω immortal [M/F nom. dual]
‘forsooth’ [exclamatory particle] ïυα so that δυστυοισι wretched [M. dative plural] μετ’ with νδρσιν men [M. dative plural] λγε’ [= algea] pains, sorrows [neuter accusative plural] χητον you should have [2nd person dual subjunctive]
ο not μíν introductory particle γρ for τí anything [neuter nominative singular] πο anywhere στιν is [3rd person singular present indicative] ïζυρτερον more miserable/ wretched [neuter nom. sing, comparative] νδρς than man [M. genitive singular after comparative adjective]
πντωυ of all things [neuter genitive plural] σσα as many things [neuter nominative plural] τε particle showing generalisation γαĩαν earth [fem. accusative singular] πι upon [here postpositive] πνεíει breathe [3rd person singular present indicative dependent on neuter plural noun] τε κα both and ρπει creep [3rd person sing. pres. indicative]
λλ’ but ο not μν emphatic particle μυ by you [2nd p. dative plural] γε emphatic particle κα and ρμασι chariot [neuter dative plural] δαιδαλοισιν glittering, cunningly made [neuter dative plural]
‘’Εκτωρ Hector Πριαμíδης son of Priam ποχσεται will be carried [3rd p. singular future passive indicative] ο not γρ for σω I will allow [1st p. singular future active indicative]
It seemed to be rather longer than I had expected.
It had also taken a bit longer to write than I had expected (two hours). This still compared favourably with a five-hour unwritable note. I wrote a final paragraph pointing out that for a real Rosetta Stone you would probably want to have a third column with Chinese but unfortunately I did not know any of the characters, and then I said that if he had ever come across the poem of Keats on looking into Chapman’s Homer he would probably be interested and surprised to see that this was what Chapman had written:
De dumty dumty dumty dum love saw their heavy chear,
And (pittying them) spake to his minde; Poor wretched beasts (said he)
Why gave we you t’a mortall king? De dumty dumty dum
De dumty dumty dumty dum de dumty dumty dum?
De dumty dumty dumty dum de dumty dumty dum?
Of all the miserable’st things that breathe and creepe on earth,
No one more wretched is then man. And for your deathless birth,
Hector must faile to make you prise de dumty dumty dum
and then I just said you see how easy it would be I hope you like it Must dash—S and after the S I put an illegible dashing scrawl because I thought there was a good chance he had not caught my name the night before.
Then I put this on a table where he would be bound to see it. It had seemed so plausible and suave when I had had the idea in bed, and yet now I wondered whether Liberace would realise that I was politely implying etc. etc. or whether it just looked outré. Too late, and so good-bye.
I got home and I thought I should stop leading so aimless an existence. It is harder than you might think to stop leading an existence, & if you can’t do that the only thing you can do is try to introduce an element of purposefulness.
Whether Liberace liked the Horses of Achilles I do not know (going by his other remarks it would not surprise me to learn that he felt like Cortez gazing on the Pacific on reading the Chapman). It had made me happy to write down the passage, anyway, & I thought that I could now do this for the whole Iliad and Odyssey with interleaved pages explaining various features of grammar and dialect and formulaic composition. I could print them up for a few thousand pounds and sell them at a market stall and people would be able to read them regardless of whether they had studied French or Latin or some other irrelevant subject at school. Then I could do something similar for other languages which are even harder to study at school than Greek, and though I might have to wait another 30 or 40 years for my body to join the non-sentient things in the world at least in the meantime it would be a less absolutely senseless sentience. OK.
One day Emma invited me into her office for a talk. She explained that she would be leaving the company. What would I do? If her job disappeared, so would mine. I hadn’t been with the firm long enough to be entitled to maternity pay. Was I planning to go back to the States to have the baby?
I did not know what to say.
I didn’t say anything, and Emma made practical suggestions. She said the publisher was launching a project into 20th-century language which involved typing and tagging magazine text for computer; she said she had made inquiries, and thought she could get me smuggled onto this under my work permit. She said there would be no problem about taking the computer to work from the home since the office had been downsized out of existence. She said that she knew of a house whose owner could not afford to fix it and who was afraid it would be occupied by squatters if she did not rent it; she said that the owner would let me have it for £150 a month if I did not ask her to fix it. I did not know what to say. She said she would understand if I wanted to go back to the States to be with my family. I knew what not to say: I did not say no one could understand that, for I would have to be mad to do it. I said: Thank you very much.
I looked up to see how L was getting on. Odyssey 13–24 was lying face down on the bench; L was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t remember when I had seen him last. I thought of going to look for him, but then this would mean leaving the one place he knew to look for me.
I looked at the Odyssey to see how far he had got. My chances of not teaching him Japanese did not look good. I began leafing idly through White Fang.
After a while I heard a voice I knew.
Would you like to hear me count to a thousand in Arabic? said the voice.
I thought you said your mum was in Room 61?
She is.
Then we’ll have to leave it for another time.
When?
Some other time. Is this your little boy?
A security guard was standing in front of me, as was L.
I said: Yes.
L said: I went to the toilet all by myself.
I said: Good for you.
Guard: You’ll never guess where I found him.
I: Where did you find him?
Guard: You’ll never guess in a million years.
I: Where?
Guard: All the way down in the basement in one of the restoring rooms. Seems he must have nipped down the stairs and gone through one of the staff doors.
I: Oh.
Guard: No harm done, but you ought to keep a closer eye on him.
I: Well, there’s no harm done.
Guard: No, but you ought to keep a closer eye on him.
I: Well, I’ll bear that in mind.
Guard: What’s his name?
I wish people wouldn’t ask that kind of question.
When I was pregnant I kept thinking of appealing names such as Hasdrubal and Isambard Kingdom and Thelonius, and Rabindranath, and Darius Xerxes (Darius X.) and Amédée and Fabius Cunctator. Hasdrubal was the brother of Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with elephants in the 3rd century BC to wage war with Rome; Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a 19th-century British engineer of genius; Thelonius Monk was a jazz pianist of genius; Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath; Darius was a Persian king, as was Xerxes; Amédée is the first name of the narrator’s grandfather in A la recherche du temps perdu, and Fabius Cunctator was the Roman general who saved the Roman state from Hannibal by delaying. They all had names one should really not give to a child, and once he was born I had to think fast.
I thought that ideally it should be a name which could work whether he was serious and reserved or butch, a name like Stephen which could be Steve or David which could be Dave. The problem was that I liked David better than Stephen, and Steve better than Dave, and I couldn’t get round it by calling him Stephen David or David Stephen because a series of two trochees with a v in the middle would sound ridiculous. I couldn’t call him David and Steve for short; that would be quaint. People kept coming up to the bed saying what’s his name, and I would say, Well, I was thinking of Stephen, or I was thinking about David, and on one occasion it turned out the person was a nurse with a form who wrote down whatever it was I was thinking about and took it away again and that was that.
They did give me the birth certificate when I left and it was one or the other. When I got home it was obvious that his name was actually Ludovic so I called him that having really no choice in the matter.
I now replied evasively: I call him Ludo.
Guard: Well, keep an eye on Ludo in future.
I: Well, thank you for your help. I think we’ll just go to Room 34 and look at the Turners if you don’t mind. Thank you again for your help.
It was much easier when he was small. I had one of those Kanga carriers; in warm weather I would type at home with him in front and in cold weather I would go to the British Museum and sit in the Egyptian gallery near the changing room, reading Al Hayah to keep my hand in. Then at night I would go home and type Pig Fancier’s Monthly or Weaseller’s Companion. And now four years have gone by.
4
19, 18, 17
1 March, 1993
19 days to my birthday.
I am reading Call of the Wild again. I don’t like it as well as White Fang but I have just finished White Fang again.
I am up to Odyssey 19.322. I have stopped making cards for all the words because there would be too much to carry around but I just make cards for words that look useful. Today we went to the museum and they have a picture of the Odyssey, it is supposed to show the Cyclops but you can’t actually see him. It is called Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus. Ulysses is the Latin name for Odysseus. There was a card on the wall saying you can see Polyphemus on the mountain but you can’t. I told the guard they should change it and he said it was not up to him. I asked who it was up to and he said maybe the head of the gallery. I tried to get Sibylla to take me to see the head but she said he was too busy and it would be more polite to write him a letter, she said I could write him a letter and practise my handwriting. I said why don’t you write a letter. She said he had probably never had a letter from a five-year-old before, if I wrote a letter and signed it Ludo Aged Five he would pay attention to it. I think this is stupid because anybody could sign a letter Aged Five. Sibylla said true, one look at your handwriting and he won’t believe you’re a day over two. She seemed to think this was hysterically funny.
2 March, 1993
18 days to my birthday. I have been on the planet 5 years and 348 days.
3 March, 1993
17 days to my birthday. We rode the Circle Line today because we couldn’t go back to any museums. It was tedious in the extreme. One funny thing that happened is that a lady got into an argument with Sibylla about two men who were about to be flayed alive. Sibylla explained that one of the men dies of heart failure at time t and the other at time t + n after having someone peel off his skin with a knife for n seconds and the lady said pas dev and Sibylla said I should warn you that he speaks French. Then the lady said non um non avanty il ragatso and Sibylla said not forward the boy. Not forward the boy. Not. Forward. The boy. Hmmm. I’m afraid I don’t quite understand, you clearly have a command of Italian idiom which I cannot match and the lady said she thought it was not a suitable subject for discussion in the presence of a small child and Sibylla said oh I see, and that’s how you say it in Italian. Non avanty il ragatso. I must remember that. The lady said what kind of example do you think you are setting and Sibylla said would you mind if we continued this discussion in Italian, I feel that it is not a suitable subject for discussion in the presence of a small child or as they say in Italian non avanty il ragatso. After she got off the train Sibylla said she should not really have been so rude because we should be polite to people however provoking and I should not follow her example but learn to keep my inevitable reflections to myself. She said it was only because she was a bit tired because she had not been getting much sleep and otherwise she would never have been so rude. I am not so sure but I kept my inevitable reflections to myself.
5
We Never Go Anywhere
Early March, winter nearly over. Ludo still following scheme I do not understand: found him reading Metamorphoses the other day though he is only up to Odyssey 22. Seems to have slowed down on Odyssey, has only been reading 100 lines or so a day for past few weeks. Too tired to think of new places to go, where is there besides National Gallery National Portrait Gallery Tate Whitechapel British Museum Wallace Collection that is free? Financially in fairly good position as have typed Advanced Angling 1969–present, Mother and Child 1952–present, You and Your Garden 1932–1989, British Home Decorator 1961–present, Horn & Hound 1920–1976, and am now making good progress with The Poodle Breeder, 1924–1982. Have made virtually no progress with Japanese.
Another argument about Cunliffe. L: Why can’t we go to the National Gallery again?
I: You promised you wouldn’t go through doors marked Authorised Personnel Only.
L: It didn’t say Authorised Personnel Only. It said Staff.
I: Exactly. In other words people who worked there, because the people who work there want to get on with their work without being disturbed by people who don’t work there. If at some stage you decide to reject the theory of a Ludocentric universe do let me know.
We go to Tower Hill to catch a Circle Line train. The Circle Line is experiencing delays, so we sit down & I discover that Ludo has smuggled Kalilah wa Dimnah into the pushchair. He takes it out and starts reading, turning the pages quickly—the vocabulary is pretty easy and repetitive, should really have picked something harder but too late now.
A woman comes up & stares & admires & comments, How on earth did you teach so young a child?
She says she has a 5-year-old herself & presses me for my methods which I explain, such as they are, & she says surely there must be more to it than that.
L: I know French and Greek and Arabic and Hebrew and Latin and I’m going to start Japanese when I finish this book and the Odyssey.
[What?]
L: I had to read 8 books of the Metamorphoses and 30 stories in the Thousand & One Nights and I Samuel and the Book of Jonah and learn the cantellation and do 10 chapters of Algebra Made Easy and now I just have to finish this book and one book of the Odyssey.
[What!!!!?]
My admirer says that’s wonderful & that it’s so important for small children to have a sense of achievement, & then drawing me slightly aside says that all the same it’s important to keep a sense of proportion, one needs to strike a balance, dangerous to carry things to extremes, moderation in all things, not that she means to interfere.
By the looks of things I have about three days’ grace before I start teaching Japanese to a child with no sense of proportion whatsoever.
My admirer is still hovering & hesitating, having struck a blow for moderation she says something or other about her own child who is no genius.
I say What about French, she might like to learn French
& she says I know it sounds awful but I haven’t the time.
I say she is probably expecting too much, why not teach her just one word a day & let her colour it in in a book wherever she finds it, the secret of success is to complete a single simple task on a daily basis.
Is that what you did? she asks looking awestruck at Kalilah wa Dimnah (which is completely ridiculous as it is a very easy text, far too easy in my opinion).
No, I say. But it is still the best method.
Two Circle Line trains came and went and a District Line train pulled in and pulled out on its way to Upminster. She said But how did you get him to do all that work and I explained about the five words and the Schwan Stabilo highlighter & she said Yes but there must be more to it than that, there must be more to it than that—
so that I could not help thinking of things I would rather not think about, such as how hard it is to be nice and how hard it was going to be to be nice.
She seemed to be really interested because now a Barking train came and went and still she was here. She said what she meant was for example she had studied Latin herself, well if you teach a child French the simple task could be a word whereas in an inflected language the grammar was so frightfully complicated surely beyond the grasp of a 4-year-old child.
I said I thought small children liked matching things up, it was not that big a deal, I just explained that the words had to match and he could see that they matched, though of course it probably made more sense when he got used to the idea.
She was smiling sympathetically. What a nice thing to explain to a four-year-old child.
I had not planned to give him a whole declension on the first day as I knew very well what Mr. Ma would think. L seemed to be having such a good time colouring in words with his highlighter, though, and it is always such a relief when a small child finds something to do that it is happy to go on doing, that I wrote out some tables for him (including the dual), with the comforting reflection that Mr. Ma was not there to see it.
I had to consult the dictionary to make sure of finding all the dialect forms and in the end he had lots and lots and lots of words that he could colour in and that was nice.
I told him he could colour in any of the words that he found & then I went back to John Denver leaving Iliad 1–12 on the chair.
Four or five hours went by. After a while I looked up and he was doing something on the floor. I went over to him and he smiled up at me. He had gone back to the beginning of Iliad 1 in my Oxford Classical Text, and he had highlighted his five words and all occurrences of the definite article all the way to the end of Iliad 12, so that every page had blocks of green scattered over it.
He said Where is Volume II? I need to finish this.
I said patiently after a short pause I don’t know where it is, I was looking for it earlier, and I added patiently Perhaps you should learn some more words and go back over Volume I again instead. You could use a different colour. If you need more practice you can go on to Volume II.
He said All right. Can I have ten words this time?
I said Natürlich. You can have as many as you want. This is tremendously good. I thought it would be too hard for you.
He said Of course it’s not too hard for me.
& I looked again at the coloured page and I said
And DON’T YOU DARE colour in ANY OTHER BOOK without ASKING ME FIRST.
That was all I said, & it was too much. A chittering Alien bursts from the breast to devour your child before your eyes. He looked down at the page,
& I returned to my work and he returned to his work.
I had tried to be patient and kind but this was not very nice.
A week went by. I have heard it said that small children have no powers of concentration. What in God’s name is to keep a small child from concentrating on something? L anyway was a monomaniac. He would leap out of bed at 5:00 in the morning, put on four or five sweaters, go downstairs to get out his eight Schwan Stabilo highlighters and get to work. At about 6:30 or so he would rush upstairs to report on his progress waving a fluorescent page in my face and I disapproving of the type of parent who fobs a child off with Wonderful Wonderful would murmur Wonderful and then disarmed by a face like a new penny ask questions. Elephant stampede up and down stairs for a couple of hours & time to get up.
A week as I say went by. One day I snatched a few moments from typing to read Ibn Battuta & L came up and just looked. He didn’t say anything. I knew what this meant: it meant for all my good intentions I had not been very nice. So I said: Would you like to learn it? And he naturally said he would so I went through the whole procedure again, and I gave him a little animal fable to read in Kalilah wa Dimnah. And now each night I would look up the next twenty words in each book and write them down for him so that it would not be so boring for him at 5:00 in the morning.
Four days went by. I tried to be careful but you can’t always be careful and one day I went to look something up in Isaiah. I got out my Tanach and he came over and looked and that was that.
I am reading Let’s Learn Kana—the EASY Way!!!! L is reading Jock of the Bushveld.
I try to imagine presenting this to a small child.
This is not going to work.
6
We Never Do Anything
A week went by and it was a bright, windy day. There were pale green buds on the bare black boughs of the trees. I thought we should get some fresh air but the wind was too bitter.
We took the Circle Line in a counterclockwise direction. I was still struggling to devise a system for explaining the kana (let alone the badly eroded remains of the 262 kanji once known to me let alone the 1,945 kanji in common use in Japan let alone the fragments of grammar gleaned from Kanji from the Start and the Reader of Handwritten Japanese). L was reading Odyssey 24. The problem was not so much a dictionary problem as the fact that L was completely fed up with the Circle Line.
After a couple of hours I began to look through one of the papers. There was an interview of the pianist Kenzo Yamamoto, who was currently on concert tour in Britain.
Whether Yamamoto was taught a simple task on a daily basis I do not know, but he had once been famous for being a prodigy. He was older now, and for the past two years he had just been notorious.
Yamamoto had started winning prizes and giving concerts when he was about 14; when he was 19 he had gone to Chad. He had then returned to concertising & created a sensation at the Wigmore Hall. People had of course gone to the Wigmore Hall expecting a sensation, but they had not expected him to play about 20 minutes of drum music after each of six Mazurkas of a Chopin recital. This was followed by the rest of the advertised programme (which was also expanded slightly to permit an unexpected replay of the six Mazurkas), with the result that the concert ended at 2:30 in the morning & people missed their trains & were unhappy.
After the Wigmore Hall episode his agent was quoted as saying that on a purely personal level he looked on him as a son but on a purely business level there were a lot of considerations, obviously they were both professionals & he wouldn’t be doing him any favours if he continued to handle him purely as a personal favour.
Yamamoto hardly ever gave concerts now & no one knew whether this was his own choice or forced on him by prudent managements. The interviewer of the Sunday Times was trying to probe this and other hot topics while Yamamoto tried to explore the nature of percussion & other musical issues.
ST: I don’t think anyone really understands why you went to Chad—
Yamamoto: Well, my teacher had always emphasised that one should keep the piano from sounding like a percussive instrument—you probably know that Chopin tried to produce the effect of a vocal line on the piano—and for years I kept thinking: But if it’s a percussive instrument why shouldn’t it sound like one?
He said that at the time he had this idea that drums were percussion in its purest form & that he would never understand the piano until he understood percussion in its purest form. He said he had come to see later that in a lot of ways this was an overreaction and that any sound that the instrument could make was obviously a sound it could make so that it was oversimplistic not to let it sound like a voice or a cello to the extent that it could, but at the time he was obsessed with drums & percussion.
ST: Interesting.
Yamamoto said the other thing his teacher had always emphasised had been what she called the backbone of the piece. It was not enough to perfect a beautiful surface which sounded like the human voice or a cello or some other non-percussive instrument because in the final analysis attention should not stop at the surface but be directed to the musical structure.
He said that when he was small he would sometimes work day and night to get some passage the way she wanted, at last he would think Yes, that sounds good & she would say Yes, that is very pretty but where is the music? And she would say of this or that international star, Oh so and so, he’s just a virtuoso, with the utmost contempt, because if someone was not a musician he was a charlatan.
ST: Interesting.
He said: Now the thing is of course I could see what she meant, but later I started to think, Yes, but why are we so afraid of everything and what are we afraid of? We’re afraid of the surface, we’re afraid it will sound like what it is, what terrible thing will happen if we stop running away from these things?
Then when he was 16 he came across a book called Drums over Africa.
Drums over Africa was written by an Australian named Peter McPherson who had travelled around Africa in the early 20s. He took with him a wind-up gramophone and several recordings of Mozart, and the book was full of amusing episodes in which he astounded the natives with the machine or kept his wits about him to keep them from stealing it.
Most of the time people simply admired the machine itself without commenting on the music, but in one village he met a critic. This man said that the music seemed thin and uninteresting, and when he had said it several other people agreed but they could not explain why. At last they brought out a collection of drums and began to play on these—it is common in African music for two competing rhythms to be played simultaneously, but here the players unleashed six or seven. McPherson said it took some time to get used to, but as no one showed the slightest interest in appropriating the gramophone he stayed there for some time. For two months he saw nothing but the small-to-medium-sized drums brought out on the first day, but one day he saw an extraordinary ceremony.
The village was described by McPherson as a 20-day trek from St. Pierre, in a kind of desert scrub, on the edge of a small desert lake, with a sheer rock bluff at the other side, and though the first mountain foothills were maybe 20 miles away this seemed to be the same kind of rock. He had often noticed one hut a little distance from the rest, but when he had once approached it he had been warned away, and he had never seen anyone enter or leave it.
One day in the late afternoon he saw seven men enter the hut. They came out each carrying a drum taller than a man, and they carried the drums in silence to the edge of the lake and set them down in a row on the shore. Then a group of women came from another house. They carried a boy on a pallet; he seemed to have some fever, for he was wasted away and shivered and trembled as they carried him. They were singing a song in which one woman called out a line and then the others called softly back, and they laid the pallet on the shore. They stopped singing and stepped away.
The sun was near the horizon; at any moment it would be dark, for it sets quickly in the tropics. The sky was a deep dark blue. The men tilted the drums against wooden rests; they began to tap the drums very lightly with sticks, and the sound seemed to melt away over the lake. Then they stopped, and at a gesture from the leader they struck the drums a single louder blow. They stopped. Another beat. Another beat. Another beat. When they had struck the drums six times like this the sun vanished and they struck the drums once, very loudly, and stopped. Several seconds went by, until at last, from over the dark water, the sound of the drums came back. Again they struck the drums, and again the sound came back, and when this had happened seven times they laid down their sticks and walked away, and the women picked up the pallet and walked away, and McPherson saw that the boy was dead. In the morning the drums were gone.
Yamamoto said: There was something about this, the idea of percussion in its purest form coming through the air & at the same time over water, and at last hitting rock & coming back, you know coming through this very thin medium & also over a denser one & against a very solid one—& I thought I just have to hear this. I don’t know how but I’ve got to.
For the next few years whenever Yamamoto met someone from Africa he would describe this episode in Drums over Africa but no one seemed to know about percussion in its purest form and the rock and water and air.
When he was 19 it was arranged that he would spend six months studying in Paris. One of the other students was from Chad, and Yamamoto asked again about percussion in its purest form and the student was rather annoyed, because whenever people thought of African music all they thought of was drums.
Drums drums drums, said this friend, if anything the most important element in African music (insofar as it made sense to generalise about African music which it did not) was the voice.
Don’t talk to me about the voice, I said, I am not interested in the voice but in percussion in its purest form, & I told him about the drums & the lake, & I said it was a 20-day trek from a place that used to be called St. Pierre
& he said he did know of a place that used to be called that but it couldn’t be the one because the people in that area had a totally different kind of music, they have these professional musicians, these griots who sing ballads and nothing like what I had described would happen there
& I said But is it a desert and is there a lake
& he said Yes but it can’t possibly be there
& then he said Forget about Africa, you don’t know what you want, I’m getting together some people to put on Boulez’s Eclat/Multiples stick around & you can have the piano
ST: So you went to Chad.
Yamamoto: That’s right.
Yamamoto said that when he finally found the place there was something almost magical about it—the lake was there, and the hill, and the hut a little way apart, and the people who would play a piece of music with six or seven rhythms all at once. The things they played while he was there melted away over the lake, and he never got to hear the other drums.
Yamamoto: I’d managed to set aside two months, which was practically unheard of; got to Chad; incredible hassle getting out to the village, isn’t there some movie about a guy who tries to take Caruso up the Amazon?
ST: Yes?
Yamamoto: With Klaus Kinski?
ST: Yes?
Yamamoto: Well, that gives you some idea, and then to top it all I get maybe two weeks, maximum, in the village with the drums and then Kaboom! It’s gone.
ST: This is the part a lot of people find hard to believe.
Yamamoto: I know, I know, how could I even think of going two months without practising? Sometimes I have trouble believing it myself.
Yamamoto had been staying in the village and one day he bicycled over to the mountains to see some rock paintings, taking a boy from the village as his guide. He had noticed a lot of soldiers around but he had never had the time to be interested in politics. When they got back to the village everyone in it was dead. The boy said they would kill him if they found him and Yamamoto had to help him get away. At first Yamamoto said there was nothing he could do but the boy said you’ve got to help me.
They were alone in a village full of dead bodies. Yamamoto said Don’t you have to beat the drum for them? Or is that only for the dying?
The boy said I am too young, and then he said No, you are right.
He went to the hut. Yamamoto followed him. Inside were seven drums, but five were almost eaten away by termites, and one was quite badly damaged, and only one still stood upright. The boy took it from the hut and set it up on the shore of the lake. It seemed to be made from the trunk of some hardwood tree, though Yamamoto had never seen anything but low twisted bushes of scrub in the area.
The boy tilted the drum back against a stand, and when it was late afternoon he began to strike the drum very lightly with a stick. When the sun was close to the horizon he struck eight louder blows, and then, when the sun dropped below the horizon, he brought the stick down on the drumhead with all his might. Then he held the stick at his side and waited for several seconds, but no sound came back over the water. Again he struck the drum, and again the sound died away over the water and did not return. Then he struck it a third time so hard the drum quivered and trembled, but no sound came back and he dropped the stick in the sand.
No, he said, it will not come back, there is nothing to come back to—
And he said that they must cut it open and he would hide inside and Yamamoto would take the drum with him when he went.
Yamamoto said this was a stupid plan, the boy would be safer just—
But he couldn’t think of some way the boy would be safer.
The boy was 16, the age Yamamoto had been when he first played Carnegie Hall. He said All right, we’ll see what we can do.
The boy took off the top and got inside, and Yamamoto fastened the covering back on. Then he bicycled to another village and he said he needed transportation back to N’Djamena. He managed eventually to get a small truck that could take the drum, and they drove back to the village. The drum stood by the shore. The boy was inside it. The owner of the truck put the drum on the truck and they drove off.
Fifty miles down the road the truck was stopped by troops. They made the driver take the drum off the truck and they said what’s in that. Nothing said Yamamoto it’s just a drum I’m taking back to Japan. All right then play it said one soldier and Yamamoto tapped it lightly with a stick.
A soldier took off the cover but they had fitted another cover just inside so that it looked as though the drum was solid inside.
Yamamoto said: You see there’s nothing there.
A soldier held up his machine gun, aimed at the drum, and fired a round. There was a scream, and then a whimper, and then all the soldiers fired at the drum while splinters flew up and blood seeped out onto the dirt and when they got tired of shooting they stopped and there was silence.
The soldier said: You’re right there’s nothing there.
Yamamoto thought his turn would be next. A soldier swung up his gun by the barrel and hit him once on the head with the handle. He fell to the ground. He said later that he wasn’t afraid at first because he assumed he was going to die. Then he realised that his hands were lying in the dirt next to the boots of a soldier. He thought they would destroy his hands and he could not move for terror. Then three of them kicked him in the ribs, and he passed out.
When he came to the soldiers and the truck were gone. All that was left was the drum riddled with bullets, the ground beside it wet with blood. His papers and money were gone. His hands were all right.
He checked to see that the boy was dead and he was dead. He had nothing to bury him with, so he started walking. He walked for two days without food or water. Twice trucks passed him and refused to stop. At last one stopped and much much later he got back to Paris.
People were prepared to be sympathetic but he alienated everyone by saying Well obviously my trip didn’t work out the way I’d hoped but the one bright spot is that I got back in time to take part in a production of Boulez’s Eclat/Multiples.
Or people would say was it hard to put it behind you and Yamamoto would say Well when I got back Claude said I was stupid to go he said why are you so obsessed with drums drums are beside the point listen to Messiaen’s Mode de valeurs et d’intensités—
—so the first thing I did when I got back was listen to the Messiaen which is about, well basically it’s about the dying sound. That’s what a piano produces, a dying sound. You know, the hammer strikes the string and then it bounces away again and you just have the string vibrating until it stops, and you can just let that happen or you can prolong it with a pedal or and this is where it gets interesting you have the fact that other strings will vibrate in sympathy with certain frequencies & you can just let that happen or you can come in with a pedal at one place or another as it dies—
Or people would say Do you think you’ll ever go back to Africa
and he would say Well I’d like to go back someday because my last visit wasn’t as helpful as I had hoped from a musical point of view.
ST: How did this lead up to what people have called the Wigmore Hall debacle?
Yamamoto: Well my agent had made the booking a long time before. What I thought at this time was that music was not about sound but about perception of sound which means in a sense that to perceive what it is you need also some sense of what it could be but is not which includes other types of sounds and also silence.
ST: The Wigmore Hall?
Yamamoto: To put it another way, let’s just take a little phrase on the piano, it sounds one way if you’ve just heard a big drum and another way if you’ve heard a gourd and another way if you’ve heard the phrase on another instrument and another way again if you’ve just heard nothing at all—there are all kinds of ways you can hear the same sound. And then, if you’re practising, you hear a phrase differently depending on how you’ve just played it, you might play it twenty or thirty different ways and what it actually is at any time depends on all those things it might be—
ST: It sounds a little like Gould’s decision to leave the concert stage because he could get a better piece of music in the recording studio.
Yamamoto: No, not at all, Gould would play the same piece nine or ten times and probably each one would be perfect and different and then using the technology he’d produce a single version which would amalgamate one or more of those, in other words there’s the idea that multiplicity and the possibility of failure and perception of the taking of decisions are only for the performer, what you give the audience is a single thing. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t really matter whether you give them that one thing in a concert hall or in a recording that lets them play around with the settings on their sound system.
ST: The Wigmore Hall?
Yamamoto began to talk about the idea of a fragment, he said for instance when you were working on a piece you might take a section in one direction, let’s say you might keep scaling it down and down until it was barely there & then that barely there section would sometimes be enchantingly beautiful but you would realise when you came to relate it to the next section that you could only get from that to the next section by means of something crass and stupid, some stupid violent crescendo that wasn’t right or even an abrupt transition that wasn’t right or it might be that you could get from one to the other but still you wanted the next part to be hard & bright and you didn’t want something quite so bare before. Well everyone knew there were unfinished pieces Schubert’s unfinished symphony the Mozart Requiem Mahler’s Tenth Moses and Aaron & what made them unfinished was the stupid fact that the composer had not put an end to them, but if you worked on a section & got an enchantingly beautiful version that could not be used what you had in effect was a fragment, a thing that was not part of the finished work. Once you saw that you saw that you could potentially have dozens of fragments that could not be part of the finished work, and what you saw was that it was perceiving these fragments as fragments that made it possible to have a real conception of what wholeness might be in a work—and once you saw this you naturally wanted an audience to see it too because otherwise
ST: But people already complain that people listen to music in too fragmented a way. There’s already a tendency to play single movements. Aren’t you just taking this toward playing not even a movement but just part of a part of a piece? Where does that leave the composer?
Yamamoto said he thought you had to be able to hear how something did not work as part of a bigger thing to hear how it did and it was precisely because people couldn’t hear that that they were willing to let movements be taken out of pieces.
He said: Getting back to Gould I think he had a, maybe horror is the wrong word but something like a contempt for what you could call the surface of a piece, for the aspect of a piece of music that is somehow tied to the instrument, the place where you would see showmanship. The funny thing is that I somehow feel I agree with him more than anyone else even though in a way I totally disagree with him, because I agree that what you can do physically is not the thing that’s interesting. I mean, say you do a run of double octaves and maybe there’s one person in the audience who could do it or maybe nobody else in the auditorium that day could do it, that’s completely uninteresting, but of course if you’ve worked on a piece and thought about it you don’t just (you hope) play it more intelligently you hear it more intelligently, and if you’re the only person in the room really able to hear it that’s horrible. But I think you get around that by showing people as much of the surface as possible
The Sunday Times said: Getting back to the Wigmore Hall
Yamamoto said: Sure, well I said to my agent that I’d really like to play the same piece twenty times or so to give people an idea of the piece and he said even with my name the Wigmore Hall would not be able to sell tickets.
His agent had reminded him of various clauses in his contract and he had reminded him of the obligations of a professional musician.
Yamamoto said: My agent always liked to say that you could count on a Japanese to act like a true professional. He kept saying that the booking had been made and people had already bought tickets in a way that was obviously meant to appeal to a true professional. I thought: What does that mean, to be a true professional? What’s so Japanese about that?
Well, as you probably know the exchange of gifts is quite a big thing in Japan and part of it is that the gift has to be wrapped up the right way. People go there and they miss the point. They think the thing the Japanese are really worried about is wrapping it up to look right it doesn’t matter if what’s inside is a piece of shit. I thought: That’s what I’m supposed to do, they’ve already bought the wrapping paper and now I’m expected to give them a piece of shit that will fit the paper, I’m supposed to be a true professional and feel good about it because I gave them something that would fit the paper. I thought: There’s no point in talking about this.
Well, the big night came and people had bought their tickets to hear I think it was six Chopin Mazurkas the Barcarolle three Nocturnes and a Sonata. I thought: Well as long as I play the Mazurkas Barcarolle Nocturnes and Sonata it can’t matter what else I play. I’m not saying the total package was what I would have chosen but I wanted to have the sound of the piano against the contrast of percussion in its purest form and the Chopin part had already been agreed. So I had I think it was about four hours of the drums and then also six Mazurkas one Barcarolle three Nocturnes one Sonata and six Mazurkas.
ST: With the result that a lot of people missed the 11:52 out of Paddington and were not very happy.
Yamamoto: With the result that people missed the 11:52 out of Paddington.
ST: And now you haven’t given a concert in about two years?
Yamamoto: That’s right.
ST: But you’ve promised the Royal Festival Hall that no one is going to miss their train this time.
Yamamoto: Nobody is going to be walking the streets of London at two in the morning.
ST: Was that hard?
Yamamoto: I feel pretty good about it.
It said at the end that Yamamoto was appearing that night at the Royal Festival Hall.
L though not complaining looked miserable. I kept thinking about the enchantingly beautiful fragments which could not be part of the finished whole. I kept thinking of the Mazurkas against a background of percussion in its purest form. Then I thought I should be attentive to the needs of my child, who looked absolutely miserable.
I said: How would you like to go to the South Bank Centre?
L looked surprised.
I said: We can get a table to work at, and afterwards we can go to a concert.
He said: I don’t want to go to a concert.
I said: You can have a table all to yourself.
He said: Can I have an ice cream?
I said: Yes
He said: Can I have Häagen-Dazs?
I said: Yes. If they have it.
He said: Done.
I said: OK. Try to act like a rational human being.
We went to the Royal Festival Hall and I found a table as far as possible from any place selling something to eat. Ludo spread out Call of the Wild, White Fang, Fergus, Pete, Tar-Kutu, Marduk, SQUID!, SHARK!, WOLF!, KILLER WHALE!, and True Tales of Survival on a separate table. Every so often he ran off to run up and downstairs then came back then ran off then came back to work on Odyssey 24. Oh well.
I had already bought Ludo a pencil flashlight at Embankment. I now bought two tickets for the concert at the cheapest price. At 8:00 I checked the pushchair, minus Call of the Wild, at the cloakroom over stiff opposition from an unhelpful attendant, and I explained to Ludo that if he got bored he could read Call of the Wild. I took him to the toilet and he said he didn’t have to go. I pointed out that he now knew where the toilets were, & I said that if he needed to go in the middle of the concert he could go because we had aisle seats.
I bought a programme because I thought it might have some more interesting remarks by Yamamoto. The programme for the evening was: Beethoven: 15 Variations in E and Fugue on a Theme from Prometheus, Op. 35 (Eroica Variations); Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9; Webern: Variations for Piano, Op. 27. Interval. Brahms Ballades, Op. 10: No. 1 in D minor, based on the old Scottish ballad Edward; No. 2 in D major; No. 3 in B minor; No. 4 in B major.
There was a certain feeling of suspense (or at least I thought there was) as the concertgoers walked through the doors, because people were half expecting to see a collection of drums. Instead there was only a grand piano. Yamamoto walked onstage and there was a round of applause. He sat down and began to play the Eroica Variations.
The Eroica Variations came to an end and there was a round of applause. Yamamoto walked offstage and returned and sat down. He began to play the Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann.
The Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann came to an end and there was a round of applause. Yamamoto walked offstage and returned and sat down. He began to play Webern’s Variations for Piano, Op. 27.
The Variations for Piano came to an end in six minutes flat and there was a round of applause. Yamamoto walked offstage and it was time for the interval.
I bought Ludo an ice cream and I read the Scottish ballad Edward, which was reprinted in the programme.
The interval came to an end. It was about 9:00.
We walked back into the hall and there was a soft noise as of eight out of ten people laughing softly in quick succession in the audience. There were a lot of things on stage that had not been there before. There were a lot of drums, and a set of hand bells, and two glasses of water on a stand—you couldn’t take in everything all at once. Yamamoto came back onstage to a round of applause and sat down and began to play.
At first I thought he had begun to play Op. 10 No. 1 based on the old Scottish ballad Edward, a piece I had never heard before. I realised after a while that this was not what he was doing. He was playing a couple of bars—maybe five or six chords—over and over. I had no idea whether these featured in Op. 10 No. 1 or not. Sometimes you see a painting where the painter has put paint on the canvas and then scraped almost all of it away; at first he seemed to be scraping the sound away until there was almost nothing there, but even the softest sound on a piano dies away & 9 or 10 times he seemed to bring in a pedal at different stages of this dying so that you heard the other chords over different forms of the first, or he used the sustaining pedal or no pedal at all. It was hard to know what was going on—I thought maybe this phrase did come from Op. 10 No. 1 and you were supposed to see that these were variations, but though in a sense they were variations they were not a piece. This went on for about 20 minutes or half an hour. Then there was a pause, and then he began to do the same thing with a different phrase. This went on for about 20 minutes or half an hour. Then there was a pause, and then he began to play a piece which seemed likely to be Op. 10 No. 1 based on the Scottish ballad Edward, and which did contain the two phrases he had been playing for the last hour. This went on for seven minutes. He stopped and there was a round of applause.
Yamamoto stood up & walked upstage to a drum and struck the drum, and in the aftermath of the soft boom he returned to the piano and sat down and began to play Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor. This went on for five minutes. He stopped and there was a round of applause and a lot of people left.
It was about 10:15. Ludo said Didn’t he play that before and I said Yes and he said Why did he play it again and I said I’ll explain later and somebody laughed and said he’d love to be a fly on the wall. Ludo went back to reading Call of the Wild.
For the next seven and a half hours Yamamoto played Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor, & sometimes he seemed to play it exactly the same five times running but next to the sound of a bell or an electric drill or once even a bagpipe and sometimes he played it one way next to one thing and another way next to another. Some of these sounds were produced at the time and others were recordings, and after six and a half hours he stopped stopping to start the other sounds: a tape began to run & he kept playing. The tape was of traffic and footsteps & people talking and he played Op. 10 No. 1 nine times while it ran, and naturally you could see that you couldn’t really hear how he was playing it or even how he was dealing with the two phrases. At 5:45 the tape came to an end and the piece came to an end and there was silence for 20 seconds or so, and then he played the piece so that you heard it after and over the silence. This went on for six minutes and then he stopped and there was a moment of silence and then he raised his hands to the keys.
You expected to hear Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor for the 60th time, but instead were shocked to hear in quick succession Op. 10 No. 2 in D major, Op. 10 No. 3 in B minor and Op. 10 No. 4 in B major, and you only heard them once each. It was as if after the illusion that you could have a thing 500 ways without giving up one he said No, there is only one chance at life once gone it is gone for good you must seize the moment before it goes, tears were streaming down my face as I heard these three pieces each with just one chance of being heard if there was a mistake then the piece was played just once with a mistake if there was some other way to play the piece you heard what you heard and it was time to go home.
The three pieces were over in about 20 minutes. He took his hands from the keys and the room was absolutely silent.
At last he stood up and bowed and there was a round of applause from the 25 people left in the room. He walked to the centre of the stage and picked up a microphone, and he said:
I think the trains will be running by now. I hope you all get home safely. Thanks for staying.
He put the microphone down & walked to the box with the two glasses of water & took a sip from one, and then he put it back and walked offstage.
I thought: How can he ever play in public again?
I started thinking about the best way to get home, should I cross the river & take the District Line or maybe it would actually be easier to walk right up to Tottenham Court Road & catch a Number 8, & then I remembered that I had moved since I last went to a concert & that I now had a son. The reason this had slipped my mind was that the seat beside me was empty.
I made my way calmly toward the nearest exit where a couple of ushers were talking in low, angry voices. I asked if they had seen a little boy. They said they had not. I asked politely whether he could be paged, and one said not at this time of the morning. I was about to demand hysterically that he be paged when my eye was caught by my programme, on which was the following reassuring message:
Dear Sibylla I am tired so I have decided to walk home.
I thought: Let’s think about this rationally. There is no point in getting worried or upset when for all I know he may be safe at home. First I will get the pushchair & go home, and then if he is not there I can decide whether to get worried.
I got the pushchair from the cloakroom & I took a taxi home so that I would know as soon as possible whether to be worried. The house was still locked & he did not have a key. I opened the door and went inside. I thought: Well, of course if he got in somehow he would be upstairs in bed, so I went upstairs. He was lying asleep in his bed still wearing his clothes. His window was open. He had scraped the skin on one cheek.
I went back downstairs and I thought: Let’s think about this rationally. This has been terrifying but should I tell him never to do it again just because I was terrified? What are the risks that were run? Traffic: negligible at that time of night. Muggers: possible but surely less likely to attack a small child than (say) a man likely to be carrying cash or wearing an expensive watch. Rapists: possible but surely less likely to attack a small child than (say) me & I would not have thought I was running a big risk if I had walked home. Kidnappers: distinguish possible from likely. Satanists: distinguish possible from likely. Type of person who enjoys inflicting pain on the defenceless: distinguish possible from likely.
Then I thought: Anyway this is stupid. When am I ever going to go to a concert? So why scare him with a lot of things that might have happened? I’ll just say that if it happens again he should ask me for money for a taxi because it’s a long walk home. And thinking of taxis I realised that I had spent some £35 that I could not afford. I turned on the computer and I turned to page 27 of The Poodle Breeder, 1972 (Vol. 48, No. 3): ‘Clipping the Country Poodle—Secrets of Success’.
Ludo got up at 11:00. I went on typing until 2:00. That was about seven hours which was good going for the day, and paid off for the concert and taxi and ice cream. I thought: 1: If I could do this every day I would have hours left over and 2: If I could play a piece 60 times in seven hours I could probably learn to play the piece. I had a longing to hear again Brahms’ Ballade Op. 10 No. 2 which I had heard only once at the concert the night before.
I took Ludo to the Barbican & I borrowed Brahms Piano Works Vol. 1 & took it home. As I had done so much typing already that day & as I had had no sleep I thought I would try to play the piece, and I began to play just one little phrase over and over. I tried to vary it this way & that but it always sounded pretty much the same except sometimes with a few mistakes and sometimes with several and once in a while with none. I played the phrase again and again until at last I could play it with a lot of mistakes every single time and when I had played it with a lot of mistakes for the tenth time in a row Ludo began to laugh.
I turned around on the chair and looked at him. He was still laughing.
I thought I would probably hit him if I stayed in the room, so I went upstairs into the bathroom and shut the door. It was bitterly cold. I put down the toilet lid and sat on it.
I once read somewhere about some research that was done on baby monkeys who were given cloth surrogate mothers which became monsters: one expelled jets of air—one had an embedded wire frame that sprang out and threw the baby to the floor—another ejected sharp brass spikes on command. The response of the baby monkeys was always the same: they clung ever more tightly to the monster, or if thrown off waited for spikes to disappear & returned to cling to their mother. Though sometimes I think I am the monster of spikes & wire & jets of air that is not so bad for the researchers were not able, through these methods, to produce psychopathology in the young monkeys, but perhaps
The researchers stopped working with mothers of cloth & went on to produce monstrous mothers of flesh, they reared female monkeys in isolation & arranged for their impregnation & when the babies were born some mothers were indifferent & others were brutal or lethal they would crush the infant’s skull with their teeth or smash its face to the floor & rub it back & forth and what if
I thought: Let’s think about this rationally or rather let’s not think about this at all. I thought: I have not slept for a long time, I will go to bed and when I wake up everything will look different.
I thought: This research raises more questions than it answers, the thing that would be really interesting would be a psychological profile of the type of person who instead of occupying himself with Aristarchus and Zenodotus and Didymus addresses himself to producing psychopathology in the infant monkey. I tried to persuade myself that the chief researcher was probably a pre-Spock baby, I thought there was a doctor pre-Spock who for a while held the influential theory that a baby should be held to a timetable & fed according to timetable regardless of cries screams etc., but I would have liked to know for sure. What was to stop Ludo from reading of monkeys placed for 45 days in a vertical chamber with stainless-steel sides producing severe and persistent psychopathological behaviour of a depressive nature for 9 months or more & determining that much remained to be done in examining the relative importance of chamber size, chamber shape, duration of confinement, age at time of confinement & other factors & how could I be sure that on reaching adulthood he would not always be looking for a surrogate monkey for a mother
I slept for a long time and when I woke up I felt better.
I thought: He starts school in the fall.
I thought if I went downstairs I would probably not bite his head off so I went downstairs.
Ludo was sitting on the floor.
He said I’ve finished Odyssey 24!
I said cordially That’s WONDERFUL
and because I always do what I say I’ll do I said Well, shall I teach you the hiragana?
And he said It’s all right, I already know it.
I said What?
He said I learned it myself. Out of the Japanese Reader.
I said Well, do you want me to teach you the katakana?
He said I know that too. It wasn’t too hard.
I said When did you do this?
He said A couple of weeks ago. I thought I would spare you the hassle.
I said that was wonderful. I said Write it down for me now so I can see you got it right,
and he wrote on a piece of graph paper the little grid of hiragana and the little grid of katakana and he said See? It’s easy.
I looked at it and it looked right so I said That’s fantastic. I kissed him four or five thousand times & I said Aren’t you smart? I said What else do you know? Do you know lots of words?
He said he knew some words. He said he knew Tadaima and Ohaiyogozaimasu and Konnichiwa and Sayonara and Tada kassen ni wa zuibun deta ga.
I said this was very good. I said Well do you want me to show you some kanji?
He said I think I can probably do it myself.
I knew what this meant, it meant for all my good intentions I had been a monster. I said I’m sure you can do it yourself. I said Well would you like me to explain the system?
He said OK.
I explained the system.
7
End of the Line
I came downstairs early to get ready for his birthday.
I put things away for three hours and I found various notes I had made for posterity. I am not sure how helpful they will be for posterity—but on reflection I think the thing to do is approach the subject in a systematic way once he is in school. He starts in a few months; the fact is that in five consecutive hours I could say everything that needs to be said. I have put the notes in a file.
Ludo is still sleeping—he stayed up till 3:00 in the morning last night because it was the night before his birthday and I said he could stay up as late as he wanted. I will watch a video until he gets up.
40 bandits stop on a hill above a village in Japan. They decide to raid it after the barley harvest. A farmer overhears.
A village meeting is held. The farmers despair.
1 leaps to his feet with burning eyes.
Let’s make bamboo spears! Let’s kill all the bandits!
You can’t, says 2.
Impossible, says 3.
A soft rain is falling. The brown paper window pane is fluttering in the air.
The farmers consult the village patriarch.
He tells them to find hungry samurai.
4 farmers go in search of samurai: Rikichi of burning eyes, Yohei (can’t), Manzo (impossible) and no name.
I think spring is here.
The farmers see a crowd of people. A samurai has gone to the river’s edge to be shaved by a monk.
A man with a moustache and a sword pushes his way through the crowd and squats scratching his chin. (It’s Toshiro Mifune)
This is really shocking. I fell asleep 10 minutes into a masterpiece of modern cinema, and when I woke up the whole recruitment section was over.
STOP. REWIND.
Signs of life in the next room.
STOP. PLAY.
The master swordsman has changed his mind, you don’t know why. 6 samurai get ready to leave for the hills in the morning.
In comes a gambler, who says they’ve found a really tough samurai.
Katsushiro picks up a stick and strides to the door: one last test.
Gambler: That’s unfair
Kambei: If he’s as good as you say he’ll parry the blow
Gambler: But he’s drunk
Kambei: A good samurai would never get so drunk
A man runs through the door; Katsushiro brings down the stick hard on his head. It’s Toshiro Mifune, who falls to the ground.
Mifune looks at the samurai. He recognises Kambei.
You had the nerve to ask whether I was a samurai
I’m a samurai all right
Don’t go away. I’ll show you something [takes out scroll]
Look at this
Handed down in my family for generations
Mifune is making strange faces and noises now replicated in miniature by my side. Kurosawa is right, he can turn on a dime & watching quicksilver Mifune stern Shimura ardent Kimura I suddenly realise that everything is going to be all right, I am providing my fatherless uncleless boy not with 8 male role models (6 samurai 1 gatecrashing farmer’s son 1 fearless farmer) but 16 (8 characters 8 actors) 17 including Kurosawa who does not appear. Only one of the characters is a perfectionist in the practice of his art but all 8 actors & the director who does not appear show this terrible perfectionism making a total of 17 male role models (not including the extras).
[Kambei, reading] You’re this Kikuchiyo?
Born in the Second Year of Tensho … [bursts out laughing]
You look remarkably old for your age
Looking at you I can hardly believe that you are 13
[All the samurai burst out laughing]
L: Where did you steal this?
L: Who do you think you are, calling me a thief?
Now we are six.
iii
After this superb battle … one might expect the picture to end with some kind of statement that he has at last grown-up, that he has arrived, that he has become something—the great judo champion.
Donald Richie, “Sugata Sanshiro,”
The Films of Akira Kurosawa
1
1, 2, 3
20 March, 1993
Today is my sixth birthday.
I got an Oxford-Duden Japanese Pictorial Dictionary and a little book about a cat in Japanese that was all in kana and a book which I couldn’t tell what it was because it was all in Japanese, but Sibylla said it was Sugata Sanshiro by Tomita Tsuneo. She said I would have to share her kanji dictionary and her Kodansha romanised dictionary and her grammar and she said unfortunately Sugata Sanshiro was not available in English so I might find it rather hard going, but that it seemed to be a marvellous story going by what Mr. Richie says about the film and she got out a book by Mr. Richie and said look at this, can you read this? I asked if it was in English and she said yes so of course I could read it. Apparently there is quite a dramatic scene in the book when Sugata’s judo teacher tells him to kill himself. This is what Mr. Richie says about my book:
He is using all of the correct judo procedures, besting one man after the other. All of this is shown with fast cutting at its most seductive. It is an exhilarating passage. It is like something from the ordinary Japanese fight-picture, only much more skillfully done. We—not yet guessing what the picture is about—think: that Sugata is a real man, a real hero. The crowd thinks so. There are cries of how wonderful he is, how marvelous. Sugata, carried away, attacks one man after the other, always winning.
There is a cut to the judo teacher’s room. Everything is still. He does not move, there is no movement on the screen, and after the furious motion of the sequence directly before it is like an admonition. He sits there, as though waiting, the seconds pass. Then Sugata, his kimono torn, comes in.
Then Sugata does an extraordinary thing. He opens the shoji and without a look backward or below he leaps.
I am really looking forward to reading the book.
The Pictorial Dictionary had a picture of a samurai on the front so first I looked for that. It was quite hard to find because it is in Ethnology, and when I found it the only words it gave were the words for samurai and for armour, and it didn’t even give the character for samurai it just spelled it out in hiragana.
I did not want to say anything to Sibylla because I did not want to hurt her feelings but I think she guessed something because she asked what’s the matter. I said Nothing and she said Doh ka na? very sceptically. Doh ka na? means Really? in Japanese. I showed her the samurai and she said it was absolutely appalling that it did not give the kanji and that it was probably because they thought it was too hard for people, so what I should do was write a letter to the editor and sign it Ludo Age Six. I asked if I could write it on the computer and she said how will he know you are really six? She said to be sure to put the character in my letter so I am going to.
Sibylla is watching Seven Samurai again. I have seen it before several times so I decided to start reading Sugata Sanshiro. We are each going to pick a character every day and master them thoroughly on a daily basis starting tomorrow. Today I just learned two words that Sibylla gave me that come up in the book.
Ju means soft and jitsu means art or skill and do means way and apparently the characters turn up in other compounds. I already know all the hiragana and katakana.
Finally I looked at the first page of the book. Japanese is the hardest language in the world.
I did not want to colour in the characters that I knew because this is the only Japanese book that we have apart from two of Sibylla’s. So I decided to try to find another character in the dictionary and it took about an hour to find it. The characters all look quite similar so it is hard to remember anything if you do not colour them in as you go along. After a while Sibylla looked up. She stopped the video and said what’s the matter. I said Nothing. She came over and looked at the page of the book and said how are you ever going to learn this if you don’t colour in the characters? She said these little Japanese books are so cheap, it only cost a fiver, we can always get another. She said she wanted me to enjoy my birthday, and she said if anything was bothering me I should let her know.
She said I could ask as many questions as I wanted because it was my birthday. I said who is my father? Sibylla said she was sorry, but she could not tell me. She said he was a travel writer and she had only met him once.
I think maybe he is somebody famous.
21 March, 1993
Today we each picked a character. We are going to do this every day until we know them all. There are 1945 and I already know three so if we do two a day we will know them all in 971 days. I wanted to do 20 a day because then we would be finished in three months but Sibylla said no it would be terrible to wake up thinking we had to do 20 whereas we could always do more if we felt like it.
Sibylla picked JIN person/hito person. JIN is the exogenous Chinese lexeme and hito is an indigenous Japanese lexeme.
I picked
yaku flute 17-stroke radical for musical instrument
Unfortunately Halpern does not seem to have any characters that use the radical.
After we had thoroughly mastered our characters I asked Sibylla where she met my father. Apparently Sibylla met my father at a party. Everyone at the party wanted to talk to him but he decided to talk to Sibylla and when she decided to leave the party he decided to leave too.
22 March, 1993
Sibylla picked DAI TAI (big)/ō/(big) and she wanted me to pick TAI huge/futo(i) (thick) because it would be easy to remember.
I picked
JI (imperial seal). I said if I could have
JI (that) she could have but she said we could do them tomorrow.
After breakfast I started going through Sugata Sanshiro. I coloured in Sugata Sanshiro wherever it appeared and also the characters for judo and jujitsu in the second half of the book. The ones I picked have not come up yet.
Today I asked Sibylla about my father but she said she did not want to talk about it. I said at least tell me his first name but she said No. I said she could just tell me the letter it starts with but she said No.
23 March, 1993
TAI huge/futo(i) (thick)
JI (that)
24 March, 1993
Today Sibylla picked SUI (water)/mizu (water). This time she wanted me to pick HYŌ (ice)/kōri (ice)/hi (ice)/kō(ru) (freeze)(!). I said I thought that was boring because it was almost exactly like mizu and Sibylla said that was the whole point. I said if she wanted to pick boring characters she could but I was picking
SŌ (algae, seaweed; elegant expression, rhetorical flourish)/mo (algae, duckweed, seaweed)
I said I would learn if we could also learn
KEN (cocoon)/mayu (cocoon)
25 March, 1993
HYŌ (ice)/kōri (ice)/hi (ice)/kō(ru) (freeze)
KEN (cocoon)/mayu (cocoon)
26 March, 1993
BOKU MOKU (tree, wood)/ki (tree, wood)
taiboku (gigantic tree)
SUI (jade green, emerald green, verdure; kingfisher)
27 March, 1993
SHIN (thick woods)/mori (thick woods)
shinshin deeply forested
KI (turtle, tortoise)/kame (turtle, tortoise)
After we had thoroughly mastered our characters we went to the library. I have been trying all week to find out my father’s name but Sibylla will not even tell me the first letter. I decided to borrow Kon Tiki.
28 March, 1993
Sibylla and I had another argument today about characters. Sibylla said if she picked KA (fire)/hi (fire) and I picked EN (flame,
blaze)/honō (flame, blaze) and if we bore in mind the fact that was the radical magarigawa for river we would understand in an intuitive way why SAI/wazawa(i) meant natural calamity/disaster and we would then see why jinsai was a manmade calamity and kasai was fire or conflagration. I said is Thor Heyerdahl my father? Sibylla said certainly not. I said well if you want to pick all those characters you can, are you picking them? Sibylla said aren’t you? I said if she got four including the radical for river I wanted
EI (shade, gloom)/kage(ri) (shade, gloom)
kanae (ritual cauldron, tripod vessel)/TEI (triangular)
BŌ (toad, frog) and
KO (tiger)/tora (tiger)
I said so are you picking four, and Sibylla said yes because she could not wait four days for the term jinsai which was obviously an indispensable euphemism for small child. I said in that case I wanted
GYAKU (cruel, savage, tyrannical, oppressive)/ shiita (geru) (oppress, persecute, tyrannise, grind down)
instead of
BŌ (toad, frog).
Sibylla said Dozo, jinsai. She obviously thought this was very funny.
29 March. Today I finished Kon Tiki. I have decided to learn how to clean a fish.
30 March. Today Sibylla and I practised cleaning a fish. Sibylla was rather annoyed because I did not want to eat it.
31 March. I have started reading Into the Heart of Borneo. I wanted to practise cleaning a chicken but Sibylla said she was not in the mood. We went to Ohio Fried Chicken instead.
1 April. Sibylla still did not feel like cleaning a chicken today. I asked if my father’s name was Ludo and she said no. I asked if it was David and she said no. I asked if it was Steven and she said no. I said well what is it then and she said Rumpelstiltskin. Then she suggested we go out to Ohio Fried Chicken. I asked if it was really Rumpelstiltskin and she said no.
2 April. Today I finished Into the Heart of Borneo. I have decided to practise sleeping on the floor. I have started Arabian Sands.
3 April. Today I was still reading Arabian Sands. It was interesting. The Bedou do not wear shoes. This is to harden their feet. I asked Sibylla if we could clean a chicken today and she said No.
25 April
I have read Kon Tiki, Into the Heart of Borneo, Arabian Sands, Journey into Danger!, Quest for Adventure!, The Snow Leopard, In Patagonia, Amazon Nights, To Caucasus, Tents on the Steppe, Igloo Winter, With Camel and Compass, Among Pygmies and After Alexander. Today I asked Sibylla if she ever read any of them. She was watching Seven Samurai and I thought she might drop a clue while her mind was otherwise occupied. It was at the part where Kyuzo fights the other samurai. She said she had read In Patagonia. After Kyuzo killed the other samurai she burst out laughing. She said she had never even met Bruce Chatwin. I asked if she had ever met any of the others. She turned and looked at me without a word and then she looked back at the TV.
I am a bit fed up with these Japanese characters as none of them turn up in Sugata Sanshiro. We have mastered 98 so far. A few of Sibylla’s characters have turned up but not one of mine. Also I have looked up most of the characters in the book now and some of them are not even in the dictionary! It is extremely frustrating.
26 April
Today we went to the library. I got Tracks Across Alaska, Ticket to Latvia, Night Train to Turkestan, Idle Days in Patagonia, In the Steps of Stanley, In Search of Genghis Khan and Danziger’s Travels.
12 May
I have finished Sugata Sanshiro. There were some things that I did not understand because Sibylla could not answer a lot of my questions. Sibylla said I was being very quiet these days and she had done an enormous amount of work and we would go to Books Nippon and buy me another book in Japanese. I said I would like to get a book about an octopus. We asked at the counter and the lady said she would see if they had anything. Finally she showed us some books. We think we have bought a book about an octopus but we are not quite sure.
13 May
Today I finished Tracks Across Alaska. I decided to start reading Ticket to Latvia. Sibylla did a lot of typing and then she watched Seven Samurai for a while. When it got to where they get to the village I asked if she had actually read anything by my father. She said not if she could help it. I said what do you mean? She said someone in the office gave her one of his books so she had to read some of it. She said she said to the person that it seemed to have rather a lot of logical mistakes and the person said what difference does it make. I said casually do you still have it? She turned her head and looked at me. Then she said no, I didn’t keep it and looked back at the TV. I said who was the person? She kept looking at the TV. She said she couldn’t remember, they had all been crazy about him.
So all I need to do is find someone who was in the office and ask who they were all crazy about. The only problem is that I think they were all fired. When I am a bit older I can do some detective work and trace them.
14 May
Today was a real false alarm. I was practising my Japanese characters when all of a sudden I noticed that Sibylla was looking at my library books! I held my breath and watched her. After a while she picked up Danziger’s Travels and started turning the pages, and then she went over and sat down! She looked at it with a very sad expression and read pages here and there, sighing from time to time. At one point she said Isfahan under her breath! And then without even looking up she said ironically don’t leap to conclusions.
I said Why won’t you tell me who it is?
She said Because he doesn’t know about you.
I said Why didn’t you tell him?
She said Because I didn’t want to see him again.
I said Why didn’t you want to see him again?
She said I don’t want to talk about it.
Maybe he was about to set out on an expedition when they met. He had raised all the money for the expedition and if she told him about me he would have had to give her the money. But she knew his heart was set on the expedition so she didn’t tell him.
15 May
Sibylla got mad at me today because I asked a question about my father. All I did was ask if he knew any languages. She looked at me and said I want you to hear something. She had been typing but now she got up and said we had to go to the library even though we had just been there yesterday.
We went all the way to the Barbican and into the music library and she asked if they had anything by Liberace. They said they didn’t. Sibylla said this couldn’t wait so we took the Circle Line to King’s Cross and then we took the Piccadilly Line to Piccadilly Circus and we went into Tower Records. They said Liberace was in Easy Listening so we went up to Easy Listening.
They had a lot of things by Liberace but the cheapest was a cassette for £9.99.
£9.99! exclaimed Sibylla holding it in her hand. It breaks my heart but it must be done.
She bought the tape and we went home.
When we got home Sibylla put the tape on the tape player. It was quite old-fashioned music, and before each piece the performer would make a few jokes to the audience. The whole time it was playing Sibylla watched me. When it was over she said, What do you think?
I said it was rather old-fashioned but he played the piano quite well.
Sibylla didn’t say anything. She went to a drawer and took out a postcard. It was a picture of some Greek girls painted by Lord Leighton.
What do you think of this? she said.
I said it was a picture about ancient Greece and they were playing ball.
Anything else? she said.
I said it was quite good the way you could see the wind blowing because of the way he had painted their togas.
Then she got an old magazine out of a drawer. She opened it to a page and said Read this. So I started reading. At first I thought maybe it was something my father had written but it wasn’t about travel.
What do you think? she said.
I said it was rather boring but I supposed it was quite well written.
Sibylla put the magazine on the floor. She said, You will not be ready to know your father until you can see what’s wrong with these things.
I said, When will that be?
She said, I don’t know, millions of people have gone to the grave admiring them.
I said, Well why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?
She said, I won’t say it’s better for you to work it out for yourself, la formule est banale. Even when you see what’s wrong you won’t really be ready. You should not know your father when you have learnt to despise the people who have made these things. Perhaps it would be all right when you have learnt to pity them, or if there is some state of grace beyond pity when you have reached that state.
I said, Let me see the magazine again.
Then I read the whole article, but I couldn’t see anything wrong except that it was boring. I looked at the picture again but I couldn’t see what was wrong. I wanted to listen to the tape again but Sibylla said she could not stand to hear it again in one day.
I said, It’s not fair, nobody else has to wait until they’re old enough to know who their father is.
She said, We should not elevate the fortuitous to the desirable.
I said, How do you know I’m old enough to know YOU?
She said, What makes you think I think you are?
28 May
Sibylla has stopped mastering Japanese characters because she has too much work to do. I have mastered 243 thoroughly. Today she started typing and then she watched me working on my characters and then she sighed and got out a book. Later she put it down and I saw that it was the Autobiography of J. S. Mill. Rather surprisingly when she put it down she got out Mr. Richie’s book and she said, Can you read this? Mr. Richie’s book is in English so obviously I can read it. She said, Well read this for me. So I read a paragraph. It was about the villain in Sugata Sanshiro.
He is a man of the world—which Sugata is certainly not. He is well dressed, wears a moustache, is even slightly foppish. Also, he obviously knows what he is about. He is so good that he need never show his strength. He would not, one feels, ever resort to throwing people around as we know Sugata has done. And yet something is missing in him. Sugata may not know the “way of life” but at least he is learning. This man will never know it. He shows it in little ways. At one point, smoking a cigarette—the mark of a dandy in Meiji Japan—he does not bother to look for an ashtray. Instead, he disposes of his ash in an open flower, part of an arrangement on a nearby table.
Sibylla asked, What do you think it means?
I said, I think it means we should respect nature.
Sibylla asked, What?
I said, The villain puts ash in a flower whereas the hero is inspired by the natural beauty of the world around us.
Sibylla said, Hmmm.
I couldn’t think of what else it could mean and Sibylla didn’t say. After a while she went into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and I went to look at the book by J. S. Mill. It was blood chilling!
J. S. Mill started to learn to read when he was two, just like me, but he started Greek when he was three. I only started when I was four. By the time he was seven he had read the whole of Herodotus, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Memorials of Socrates, some of the lives of the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, portions of Lucian and Isocrates’ ad Demonicum and ad Nicoclem, as well as the first six dialogues of Plato, from the Euthyphro to the Theaetetus!!!! He also read a lot of historians I have never even heard of. He didn’t start the Iliad and Odyssey until later whereas I have read both but they are the only thing I have read. I don’t think he did any Arabic or Hebrew but the things I have read in them are rather easy and anyway I have not read a lot.
The thing that is worrying me is that Mr. Mill was rather stupid and had a bad memory and he grew up 180 years ago. I thought that it was quite unusual for a boy my age to read Greek because a lot of people on the Circle Line were surprised that I was reading it but now I think that this is probably fallacious. Most of the people on the Circle Line did not say anything at all but I thought they would be surprised because the people who said something were surprised. This is stupid because if they were not surprised why would they say something? And now I am supposed to start school in three months.
2
a, b, c
6 September, 1993
Today we went to the school to talk to my teacher. Sibylla was very nervous about it. I think she was worried because she knew I would be behind. Every time I asked her she said not to worry about it. She has an old book called Six Theories of Child Development but it is not very specific.
When we reached the school we encountered an unexpected setback.
We went into the year one classroom and Sibylla introduced herself.
‘I’m Sibylla Newman, and this is Stephen,’ she explained to the teacher, though actually she hadn’t been able to find the birth certificate to make sure before we left.
‘I think you may be his teacher this year,’ she added. ‘I thought I should talk to you.’
The teacher’s name was Linda Thompson. ‘I’ll just check the print-out,’ she replied.
She took out a print-out and perused it.
‘I can’t seem to find Stephen,’ she reported at last!
‘Who?’ queried Sibylla.
‘Stephen? You did say his name was Stephen?’ enquired Ms. Thompson.
‘Oh yes, yes I did,’ confirmed Sibylla. ‘Stephen. Or Steve. It’s a bit soon to tell.’
‘Pardon?’
‘He’s a bit young to reach a final decision.’
‘Are you sure this is the right school?’ asked Ms. Thompson.
‘Well, we live right down the street,’ replied Sibylla.
‘You should have registered for a place last year,’ Ms. Thompson informed her.
‘Good heavens,’ exclaimed Sibylla. ‘I had no idea. But what do I do now?’
Ms. Thompson said she thought all the places were filled.
‘So does that mean he should wait another year?’ enquired Sibylla.
‘Oh no. He’s legally required to attend school. Besides, you wouldn’t want him to fall behind. It’s very important for children to be at the same level as others in their age group.’
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ commented Sibylla. ‘He’s never been to play group or anything. I just did things with him at home, and I’m a little worried …’
‘Oh, he’ll catch up in no time,’ Ms. Thompson assured her. ‘But he really mustn’t miss a year. How old is Stephen now?’
‘Six,’ Sibylla informed her.
‘SIX!’ ejaculated Ms. Thompson. She glanced at me in dismay. ‘Stephen,’ she said cordially, ‘why don’t you go and look at the building blocks down at the end of the classroom?’
‘Surely we should not discuss his education in his absence,’ demurred Sibylla.
Ms. Thompson appeared agitated. She exclaimed, ‘He should have started when he was five!!!’
Sibylla replied, ‘Five! I’m sure I started school when I was six.’
Ms. Thompson observed that in Britain all children started school at the age of five, and that a year or two of nursery school was recommended.
Sibylla queried, ‘So you mean he could have started school last year?’
Ms. Thompson asseverated, ‘Not only could but should, it is extremely important for a child to be with his peers as part of the learning experience.’
This is exactly what it said in the book. ‘During the crucial formative period of children’s lives, the school functions as the primary setting for the cultivation and social validation of cognitive competencies,’ I concurred.
‘What was that?’ questioned Ms. Thompson.
‘I’ll just go and have a word with the head,’ interpolated Sibylla. ‘Lu— Stephen, you wait here.’
I did not want to make Sibylla feel guilty because I had missed a year of school so I thought this would be a good time to find out what I had missed.
I remarked to Ms. Thompson, ‘Could you give me some idea of the material covered in year one because I am afraid I am a long way behind the rest.’
‘I’m sure you’ll adjust beautifully,’ assured Ms. Thompson, with a warm smile.
I persevered, ‘Have they read Isocrates’ Ad Demonicum?’
Ms. Thompson said they had not. I was glad because it sounds hard. I probed, ‘What about the Cyropaedia?’
Ms. Thompson asked what it was. I explained that it was by Xenophon and I did not really know what it was about. Ms. Thompson said she had never heard of anyone reading it in year one.
I enquired, ‘Well, what do people read?’
Ms. Thompson said abilities and interests differed and people read different things.
I said, ‘Well, I have only read the Iliad and the Odyssey in Greek and De Amicitia and Metamorphoses 1–8 in Latin and Moses and the Bullrushes and Joseph and his Manycoloured Coat and Jonah and I Samuel in Hebrew and Kalilah wa Dimnah and 31 Arabian Nights in Arabic and just Yaortu la Tortue and Babar and Tintin in French and I have only just started Japanese.’
Ms. Thompson smiled at me. She is very pretty. She has wavy blond hair and blue eyes. She said usually people would not study Arabic or Hebrew or Japanese at school at all and they would usually not start French or Greek or Latin until the age of twelve or so!
I was absolutely amazed!!!! I said that J. S. Mill had begun Greek at the age of three.
Ms. Thompson asked who was J. S. Mill!!!!!!!!
I explained that Mr. Mill was a Utilitarian who died 120 years ago.
‘Oh, a Victorian,’ commented Ms. Thompson. ‘Well, you know, Stephen, the Victorians placed a much greater value on facts for their own sake than we do. Now we’re more interested in what someone can do with what they know. One of the most important parts of school is just learning to work as a member of a group.’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but Mr. Mill said he was never allowed merely to fill his head with unexamined facts. He was always forced to examine arguments and to justify his position.’
Ms. Thompson remarked, ‘Well, obviously there’s a lot to be said for that, but just the same things have moved on since Victorian times. People just don’t have the time to spend years learning dead languages any more.’
‘That was why Mr. Mill thought people should start when they were three,’ I observed.
Ms. Thompson rejoined, ‘Well, the fact is children develop at different rates, Stephen, and a lot of children would find those subjects rather off-putting. Any school system has to set priorities, so we concentrate on the things that everyone is going to be able to use. We can’t take it for granted that everyone is a genius.’
I explained that Mr. Mill thought that he was not a genius but that he had accomplished a lot because of getting a head start. I said I had not even done as much as Mr. Mill and anybody who read the book could say what was in it so I did not think I could be a genius.
Ms. Thompson answered, ‘The fact is, Stephen, that while your degree of articulateness would not be so surprising in an educated person, the reason it is not surprising is that the average educated person has developed their mind over the course of their education. It is not so common in a boy your age.’
I thought that this was probably a fallacious argument. It was quite hard to explain things to Ms. Thompson. I said, ‘In my opinion this argument is completely fallacious. How can you say that you will not let a stupid person start something until the age of 12 and then say the reason you know they are stupid is they do not know something another person knows because they got to start at the age of 3? In my opinion this is completely preposterous.’
Ms. Thompson asserted, ‘Be that as it may.’
At this point Sibylla returned to the room.
‘It’s all set!’ she exclaimed. ‘I talked to the head and he said they could probably squeeze one more in and that the school always treats every child as an individual.’
‘Obviously we make every attempt,’ began Ms. Thompson.
‘But it looks as though he won’t be in your class.’
‘What a shame,’ regretted Ms. Thompson.
‘Anyway, we won’t take up any more of your time. Come along, David. Everything’s going to be all right.’
MY FIRST WEEK AT SCHOOL
13 September, 1993
Today was my first day at school. I thought maybe now that I was old enough to go to school Sibylla would tell me about my father but she didn’t. Sibylla walked me to school and I was very nervous because if people did not study any languages until they were 12 they must study some other thing and I was a whole year behind.
I thought maybe other people studied more mathematics and science and I had not even finished Algebra Made Easy.
When we got to school Miss Lewis explained that school had started last Thursday. Sibylla said she was sure she had started school on Monday when she was a child.
We didn’t do any science today so I could not tell if that was what people had been doing.
When I got home I started reading The Voyage of the Beagle. This is an excellent book. I have worked out that Charles Darwin could not be my father, because he died in 1882, but I am going to finish the book anyway.
14 September, 1993
Today was my second day at school.
We started the day off by painting pictures of animals. I did a picture of a tarantula with 88 legs. Miss Lewis asked what it was and I explained that it was an oktokaiogdoekontapodal tarantula. I don’t know if there are any real ones, I think this is just something I made up. Then I did another picture. This one was of a heptakaiogdoekontapodal tarantula because the first one got in a fight and lost a leg. Then I did a picture of two monster tarantulas fighting, each one had 55 legs and it took a long time to draw all the legs. Before I had finished Miss Lewis said we should put away our drawings because it was time to do some arithmetic. We were supposed to go to the addition positions and work at our own speed. At addition position 1 you do a worksheet adding 1 to a number and at addition position 2 you add 2 to a number.
When I finished all the worksheets I was the only one at position 9 so I decided to do some multiplication. Addition takes quite a long time to get anywhere unless you are adding big numbers and all the numbers at the positions were quite small. I practised multiplying 99 × 99 and 199 × 199 and some other interesting numbers. I like numbers that are almost some other number.
I read three more chapters of The Voyage of the Beagle tonight. I was too tired to work on Japanese.
15 September
Today was my third day of school. I was still at addition position 9. I decided to practise using the distributive principle of multiplication. The distributive principle of multiplication is in chapter 1 of Algebra Made Easy but it was my own idea to use it with 9 because it is almost 10.
999999 × 999999 = 999998000001
9999999 × 9999999 = 99999980000001
99999999 × 99999999 = 9999999800000001
999999999 × 999999999 = 999999998000000001
9999999999 × 9999999999 = 99999999980000000001
99999999999 × 99999999999 = 9999999999800000000001
999999999999 × 999999999999 = 999999999998000000000001
9999999999999 × 9999999999999 = 99999999999980000000000001
16 September
Today was my fourth day of school.
17 September
Today was my fifth day of school. It was boring.
18 September
Today is Saturday. I mastered 20 characters in Halpern. 417 to go. I told Sibylla I thought I should do some more French and Greek and Latin and Hebrew and Arabic even though I was doing Japanese because apparently I will not get to do them at school until I am 12 and I was afraid I would forget them by then. I thought Sibylla would be appalled but she just said all right. I also pointed out that they probably would not teach me German either until I was 12 so it might be a good idea if she taught me instead. I thought she was going to say I would have to do a lot of Japanese first but instead she said she would show me a little poem because I had been so good all week. The poem was called Erlkönig by Goethe, about a boy who is riding on a horse behind his father and the Erlking keeps calling the boy and the father doesn’t hear and then the boy dies.
19 September
Today was Sunday so I did not have to go to school. I read Amundsen and Scott. I mastered 30 Japanese characters thoroughly and Sibylla commented, ‘Well, at least Mr. Ma will never know, I shudder to think what he would think.’ I asked, ‘Who is Mr. Ma?’ Sibylla said he was the father of a famous cellist. I asked, ‘Is he a travel writer?’ Sibylla said, ‘Not to my knowledge, jinsai.’
MY SECOND WEEK AT SCHOOL
20 September
Today when I got home from school Sibylla was in a terrible state. She said Red Devlin had been taken hostage in Azerbaijan. I asked who was Red Devlin. She said he was a journalist. She said everyone said he could persuade anyone to do anything. He was called Red because he didn’t have red hair and because he was brave to the point of insanity. He had been in Lebanon and then he had gone to Azerbaijan and been kidnapped after three days.
I asked, ‘Was he a good writer?’
‘Oh no,’ said Sibylla, ‘He’s a lousy writer, he goes to all these amazing places and sees tumbledown cottages and ragged urchins and girls with coltlike grace. But what a terrible thing to happen.’
Suddenly I had an idea.
Only time will tell.
21 September
1 × 11 × 11
11 × 11 = (10 × 11) + (1 × 11) = 121
111 × 111 = (100 × 111) + (10 × 111) + (1 × 111) = 12321
1111 × 1111 = (1000 × 1111) + (100 × 1111) + (10 × 1111) +
(1 × 1111) = 1234321
11111 × 11111 × 123454321
111111 × 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 × 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 × 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 × 111111111 = 12345678987654321
22 September
11 × 11 = 121
11 × 111 = 1221
11 × 1111 = 12221
11 × 11111 = 122221
23 September
111 × 111 = 12321
111 × 1111 = 123321
111 × 11111 = 1233321
111 × 111111 = 12333321
1111 × 1111 = 1234321
1111 × 11111 = 12344321
11111 × 111111 = 1234554321
111111 × 1111111 = 123456654321
1111111 × 11111111 = 12345677654321
24 September
111111111 × 11 = 1222222221
111111111 × 111 = 12333333321
111111111 × 1111 = 123444444321
111111111 × 11111 = 1234555554321
111111111 × 111111 = 12345666654321
111111111 × 1111111 = 123456777654321
111111111 × 11111111 = 1234567887654321
111111111 × 111111111 = 12345678987654321
MY THIRD WEEK AT SCHOOL
27 September
Today as soon as I got into class Miss Lewis took me to one side and said, ‘Stephen, I want you to make a real effort to be a cooperative member of the class.’
I said it was hardly necessary to remind me of this as Dr. Bandura had underlined the importance of cooperative behaviour. Miss Lewis said, ‘Good.’
28 September
Today when I got to school Miss Lewis said it was important for people to do their own work and what was she to think when she found that five other children had 111 × 111 and 1111 × 1111 and 11111 × 11111 on their addition sheets. I said they would appear to have used the distributive principle of multiplication. Miss Lewis said I must understand that it was important for people to work at their own rate. I said I did understand. Miss Lewis said, ‘Good.’
I worked out that I have spent 12 days in school which is 84 hours so I could have read 8400 lines of the Odyssey. I could have read Herodotus or ad Nicoclem or Cyropaedia and Memorials of Socrates. I could have finished Algebra Made Easy. I could have started Calculus Made Easy. I could have mastered all the Japanese characters thoroughly.
The thing that is worrying me is that J. S. Mill did not go to school. He was taught by his father and that was why he was 25 years ahead of everybody else.
I decided to take the Argonautica to school.
29 September
Today I took the Argonautica to school. Miss Lewis took it away and made me take it home again at the end of the day.
30 September
Today I could have read Book 2 of the Argonautica.
1 October
Today I could have read Book 3 of the Argonautica.
2 October
Today was Saturday. I read Book 1 of the Argonautica. It is longer than I thought. I read up to line 558 and I mastered 30 Japanese characters thoroughly and the rest of the time I practised tying knots.
3 October
Today was Sunday. I read Book 1 of the Argonautica up to line 1011 and I mastered another 30 Japanese characters and I practised some more knots and I read Half Mile Down.
MY FOURTH WEEK AT SCHOOL
4 October
Today I could have finished the Argonautica.
3
9999997= 999993000020999965000034999979000006999999
11 October, 1993
Today Miss Lewis gave me a note to take to Sibylla. She said this could not go on.
I gave the note to Sibylla and I do not know what it said but I do not think Miss Lewis told her what really happened. Sibylla read the note and she said, ‘What!’ and then she looked at me and said, ‘Well, you must feel good after throwing so many people around.’
I said, ‘Well, do you want me to go and die? Do you want me to jump out a window?’
Sibylla said now that I was 6 I was old enough to act like a rational human being.
I said Miss Lewis told me to be a cooperative member of the class but when I tried to help people she said they should do their own work but when I tried to do my own work and take Algebra Made Easy to class she said I should try to be more involved and be a cooperative member of the class. I said, ‘We are supposed to be working at our own speed but whenever I try she tells me to stop and whenever I ask a question she does not know the answer. She does not know anything I do not know already so I don’t think there is any point in going to school.’
Sibylla said, ‘But you’ve only been at school a month. How do you know Miss Lewis doesn’t know anything you don’t know? You can’t possibly make up your mind on so little evidence.’
I said, ‘Well, how much more evidence do you need?’
Sibylla said, ‘What?’
I said, ‘How much more evidence? Do you want me to go for another week or another two weeks or how long?’
Sibylla said, ‘I think you are legally required to go until you are 16.’
Sibylla said, ‘Please don’t cry,’ but at first I couldn’t stop. No wonder Miss Lewis doesn’t know anything because we have to go whether she knows anything or not.
I said, ‘Let’s take two people about to undergo 10 years of horrible excruciating boredom at school, A dies at the age of 6 from falling out a window and B dies at the age of 6 + n where n is a number less than 10, I think we would all agree that B’s life was not improved by the additional n years.’
Sibylla started walking up and down.
I said, ‘I could just take some books and ride the Circle Line or go to a museum by myself every day. Or I could take the bus over to the Royal Festival Hall and work there, and I could save up my questions and you could just explain things for an hour a day.’
Sibylla said, ‘I’m sorry but you are too small to go out by yourself.’
I said I could work here and I wouldn’t be in the way. I said, ‘What if I promised to ask just 10 questions a day and only at one time it would hardly take any time at all.’
Sibylla said, ‘No.’
I said 5 questions which was still more than Miss Lewis ever answered and Sibylla shook her head and I said, ‘Well, I won’t ask any questions ever again, if I ever ask a question you can make me go back to school but I promise I won’t.’
Sibylla just said she was sorry.
I said, ‘What kind of argument is that?’
Sibylla said, ‘There is an argument but it is not one I can discuss with you. You will have to go to school and do the best you can.’
She said she would go and talk to Miss Lewis tomorrow after school.
12 October, 1993
Today Sibylla came after school to talk to Miss Lewis. Miss Lewis said I should go to the other end of the class but Sibylla said, ‘No.’
Miss Lewis said, ‘All right, then.’ She said I was a disruptive element in the class. She said there were other things in life besides academic achievement and that often children who had been forcefed at an early age had trouble adjusting to their peers and were often socially maladjusted all their lives.
‘La formule est banale,’ I said.
Miss Lewis said, ‘That will do, Stephen.’ She said she was prepared to adapt the programme to stimulate a gifted child but that it must be made clear to me that whatever my achievements they did not give me the right to disrupt the class and interfere with the learning process of the other children. She said that whenever I was in a group with other children she invariably found that the other children had failed to remain on task. She said she would make every effort to integrate me into the class but that she could not do this if everything she tried to achieve during the day was undermined as soon as I went home, and that it would only work if there was a genuine partnership between home and school.
I said, ‘Does that mean I don’t have to go to school any more?’
Sibylla said, ‘Lu— Stephen. We can’t, that is even if I wanted you to stop working with Miss Lewis which I don’t we can’t afford to hire people who know about quantum mechanics and we especially can’t afford it on £5.50 an hour.’
I said, ‘Although the capacity to think vastly expands human capabilities, if put to faulty use, it can also serve as a major source of personal distress. Many human dysfunctions and torments stem from problems of thought. This is because, in their thoughts, people often dwell on painful pasts and on perturbing futures of their own invention. They burden themselves with stressful arousal through anxiety-provoking rumination. They debilitate their own efforts by self-doubting and other self-defeating ideation. They constrain and impoverish their lives through phobic thinking.’
Sibylla said I should not just quote things uncritically, the writer seemed to assume there was no such thing as an unsolicited memory, an assumption for which there seemed to be no evidence whatsoever.
I said that was exactly why it would be better for me not to go to school, I needed to learn to argue like J. S. Mill.
Miss Lewis said that while she did not mean to belittle what Sibylla had achieved there was a real danger of being cut off from reality.
Sibylla said Miss Lewis did not know what it was like to go to school in the type of place that was excited to be getting its first motel.
Miss Lewis said, ‘What?’
Sibylla said when she was growing up she only ever went to one school that even taught Greek and you had to have three years of French or Spanish and two years of Latin when she only had one year of French so she had to say she had two years of French and Latin lessons with a defrocked Jesuit priest from Quebec and forge a letter from the priest and most people couldn’t learn Arabic or Hebrew or Japanese even if they invented a defrocked Jesuit priest.
Miss Lewis said, ‘I think we are getting a little off the subject here. What do you think is the effect on a child who is progressing satisfactorily at Key Level Two and in fact is doing work if anything ahead of her age group, what do you think is the effect, as I say, on a child who has every reason to take pride in her achievements and have her self-confidence bolstered when Stephen comes up with a page covered with problems in six or seven figures and tells her there is no point in doing a problem unless the answer won’t fit on the display of a calculator? To say nothing of the effect on children who are having difficulty with the material. I have one boy who has been working his way through the alphabet one letter at a time and just last week he finally reached the stage where he could recognise all the letters with confidence, well, I am not saying Stephen necessarily means to be unkind but what do you think the effect is if Stephen starts writing all the names of the dinosaurs in Greek and explaining that a lot of the letters are the same? If you want my opinion that boy has more of an accomplishment to be genuinely proud of in that single alphabet than Stephen with dozens, but he was absolutely devastated. Weeks of work undone at a stroke. It has got to stop. Stephen has got to understand that there is more to life than how much you know.’
I said, ‘Does that mean I don’t have to go to school any more?’
Sibylla said, ‘I couldn’t agree with you more, we have been watching Seven Samurai on a weekly basis for about a year.’
Miss Lewis said, ‘I beg your pardon?’
Sibylla said, ‘Well, as I’m sure you know the whole issue of a skill in Kurosawa is highly— Why look, you’ve got a little book about samurai in the classroom, how marvellous!’
She picked up SAMURAI WARRIORS off my desk and she began to peruse it.
Miss Lewis said, ‘I think we should.’
Suddenly Sibylla exclaimed in accents of horror, ‘WHAT!’
‘What is it?’ asked Miss Lewis.
‘EXPERT IN A DIFFERENT COMBAT SKILL!’ cried Sibylla.
‘What?’ reiterated Miss Lewis.
‘How can they SLEEP AT NIGHT,’ said Sibylla, ‘having foisted this FABRICATION on unsuspecting SCHOOLCHILDREN! It says each of the samurai is an expert in a different combat skill. Combat skill my foot. What’s Katsushiro’s, the STICK? Or Heihachi’s—the AXE? What a SHAME he had to leave it behind with its owner so he couldn’t actually use it on the ENEMY.’
Miss Lewis said, ‘I really think.’
Sibylla said, ‘It’s only the merest CHANCE that we happen to know the facts of the matter, for all we know the school is crammed to the rafters with books full of mistakes on subjects where my son might have been hoping to LEARN something he didn’t already KNOW, which I had SUPPOSED was the object of EDUCATION. Oh what am I to do?’
Miss Lewis said, ‘I really don’t think.’
Sibylla said, ‘You might as well call a book the GENIUS OF SHAKESPEARE and then explain to a Japanese schoolchild that Laertes is the hero of HAMLET under the impression that he is the more INTERESTING CHARACTER. Oh what shall I do?’
Miss Lewis said, ‘I think we’ve talked enough for one day. Stephen, I want you to think very carefully about what has been said.’
I said I would think about it very carefully.
If I ever have a son and he wants to leave school I will let him because I will remember what it is like.
We went home and Sibylla walked up and down.
‘What shall I do?’ she said. ‘What shall I do?’
I said, ‘Maybe I should just study at home.’
Sibylla said, ‘Hmm.’ She said, ‘Let us consult Mr. Richie,’ and she gave me another page about Sugata Sanshiro to read.
The hero is a man actively engaged in becoming himself—never a very reassuring sight. The villain, on the other hand, has already become something. Everything about Tsukigata suggests that he has arrived. There is not a wasted gesture, not an uncalculated movement. He has found what is to his advantage and acts accordingly. Sugata, by comparison, is all thumbs.
Kurosawa’s preference is the preference we all have for the formed man. In the ordinary film this man would be the hero. But he is not and, despite his admiration, Kurosawa has told us why. One of the attributes of all of his heroes, beginning with Sugata, is that they are all unformed in just this way. For this reason, all of his pictures are about education—the education of the hero.
After this superb battle … one might expect the picture to end with some kind of statement that he has at last grownup, that he has arrived, that he has become something—the great judo champion. This would be the logical Western conclusion to a film about the education of a hero.
Kurosawa, however, has seen that this cannot be true. A hero who actually becomes is tantamount to a villain—for this was the only tangible aspect of the villain’s villainy. To suggest that peace, contentment, happiness, follows a single battle, no matter how important, is literally untrue—and it would limit Sugata precisely because of the limitations suggested in the words “happiness” or “judo champion.”
I asked, ‘Is that enough?’
Sibylla said, ‘That’s enough. What do you think it all means?’
I thought if I get this right I don’t have to go to school. I’ve got to get this right. I looked at the page to stall for time.
I said, ‘It means that it is literally untrue to suggest that peace, contentment, happiness, follows a single battle, no matter how important, and that a hero who actually becomes is tantamount to a villain.’
Sibylla said, ‘A hero who actually becomes what?’
I said, ‘Becomes a villain?’
Sibylla said, ‘Oh what shall I do?’
I said, ‘Becomes himself?’
Sibylla said, ‘What shall I DO?’
I said, ‘Becomes a great judo champion?’
Sibylla said, ‘What shall I DO?’
I said, ‘Becomes happy! Becomes content! Becomes a hero! Becomes something!!!!’
Sibylla said, ‘WHAT shall I DO?’
I thought about 10 years in school and I said, ‘I think what it’s really saying is that you can’t understand something until you go through it. You think you know what something is about and that’s why you do it but then when you do it you realise it’s about something else. What it’s saying is that that’s why it’s important to study judo.’
Sibylla said, ‘JUDO! Why there’s a judo club just up the road! So you COULD study judo COULDN’T you.’
To tell the truth I think I would rather study tae kwon do, but I said, ‘Yes.’
Sibylla said, ‘It does not solve everything but at least it solves one thing. You will meet other children your age in a structured and moral environment and strive to achieve satori. It would not be actually wrong for me to teach you at home.’
She walked up and down. I could see something was bothering her.
I said, ‘I promise not to ask any questions.’
Sibylla kept walking up and down.
I said, ‘I think it solves everything.’
iv
If we fought with real swords I would kill you
1
Trying to feel sorry for Lord Leighton
The man was almost dead.
He should not have been moved after the accident, but they were short of supplies. They had been travelling now for ten days, stopping only to rest the dogs and to snatch a quick mouthful of pemmican.
Now they were down to their last dog. They had eaten Wolf two days before. Soon it would be Dixie’s turn. But without a dog …
The boy put the thought out of his mind. Cross that bridge when we come to it. At least the wind had died down. The only sounds were the squeak of the runners on the snow, the loud panting of Dixie as she struggled with the unaccustomed load, his own quick breath and the groans of the injured man.
The air was clear as crystal. Was that an igloo in the distance? It must be an Inuit encampment. Only the Inuit stayed so far north so late in the season.
Two hours later they staggered into the settlement.
‘Where are we?’ muttered the man.
‘It’s an Inuit camp,’ the boy replied.
‘Will they speak English?’
‘I speak Inuit,’ said the boy.
‘Good thing I brought you,’ said the man with a ghastly grin.
Two fur-clad figures approached. The boy struggled to remember a few phrases picked up from The Eskimo Book of Knowledge months before.
Taimaimat Kanimajut âniasiortauningine maligaksat sivorlerpângat imaipoK: ANIASIORTIB PERKOJANGIT NALETSIARLUGIT.
The two men turned without a word and returned to their igloos. The only sound was the fine snow drifting through the encampment.
The boy tried again:
Ilapse ilangat killerpat aggangminik âniasiortib mangipserpâ ajoKertorpâselo killeK mangipsertautsainartuksaungmat. Ilanganele killertub mangiptaK pêjarpâ, kingornganelo tataminiarpoK killeK âKivalialugane piungilivaliatuinarmat. Nerriukkisê âniasiortib mangiptaK najumitsainarniarmago uvlut magguk pingasullônêt nâvlugit killeK mamitsiarKârtinagô?
Silence was the only reply.
Desperately he summoned up a few words of greeting from that half-remembered book:
Sorlo inôKatigêksoaKarjmat unuktunik adsigêngitunik taimaktauK ataneKarpoK unuktunik adsigêngitunik, anginerpaujorle tamainit, idluartomik ataniortoK inungnik KaKortanik Kernângajuniglo Kernertaniglo, tagva atanek George, ataniojok Britishit atanioviksoanganut. Tâmna atanerivase.
Suddenly a shot rang out, and the boy fell lifeless to the snow.
As far as I can see, The Eskimo Book of Knowledge is completely useless. ‘The first rule in curing sickness or injury is TO OBEY THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE WHITE MAN.’ When am I ever going to use that? They should have called it A Hundred and One Things Not to Say Where the Inuit Can Hear You.
When one of your people cuts his hand, the Trader covers the wound with a bandage and instructs the man to keep the wound covered. Often the man throws away the bandage and wonders why the wound grows worse instead of better. Do you expect the Trader to hold the bandage round the man’s hand for two or three days until the wound is healed?
That’s going to make us popular.
As there are many different races, so there are many different rulers, but the greatest ruler of all, who governs with justice White Men, Brown Men and Black Men in very many countries, is KING GEORGE the ruler of the British Empire. He is your King.
Another winner. Unfortunately it was the only thing on Inuit I could find. Of course, he may not be going where they speak Inuit. I could work out some of the words and grammar if I knew I was going to need it, but Sibylla still won’t say. It would help if she would just tell me something about him. I can’t believe I’m almost 11 and the only thing I know is that he’s not Thor Heyerdahl.
Not only is King George a man of great prudence and a hard worker; he is also a great hunter. Whether it be in the hunting of fierce animals like the bear, or in the crafty stalking of the deer or in the shooting of partridges while they fly, no man in the British Empire takes surer aim than our King.
AtaneK George silatudlartuinalungilaK angijomiglo suliaKarpaklune, ômajoKsiorteogivorletauK—
OK, that’s an exaggeration. That’s not the only thing I know. I also know he’s not Egon Larsen. He’s not Chatwin. She likes Thubron, so he’s out. I think I’ve narrowed it down to 8 or 9. For a while I thought it was Red Devlin: she always laughs at the gap-toothed urchins, and since he was captured five years ago his wife’s been campaigning for his release, so Sibylla might have thought it was safer not to tell me. But then last week James Hatton got back from the Arctic Circle and wrote an article for the Independent Magazine that used the phrase ‘veritable cathedral of ice’. VERITABLE CATHEDRAL OF ICE shouted Sibylla and she walked up and down saying veritable cathedral of ice and reading out other priceless phrases and suddenly I had a hunch that it was Hatton. So I got The Eskimo Book of Knowledge and started to work on Inuit.
Before returning to London to take pen in hand Hatton walked solo to the North Pole and back without telling anyone where he was going. At one point he was attacked by a walrus. It was so cold the action on his gun wouldn’t work, so he had to throw a knife at it. He got it in one eye (Hatton: ‘Bull’s-eye!’), and then was able to harpoon it. He had to eat some of the meat raw and then trek on another 15 miles, even though he’d been going for 20 hours, because he knew the smell of the blood would attract other predators. At one point the frostbite in one toe was so bad he had to cut it off.
If it is Hatton I’ve wasted years learning Xhosa, Swahili, Zulu, Hausa, Quechua, Faroese and Mongolian. If it isn’t I’m wasting my time on The Eskimo Book of Knowledge. I think I may be wasting my time anyway.
If you hunters used half the CARE of the White Men in setting your traps skilfully and in keeping your furs free from dirt, every Innuit family would gain greater possessions from the Company’s Trader.
If I get us both lynched my long lost father will probably tell his long lost son to get lost and stay lost.
Sibylla is supposed to be typing and is reading the paper. I’ve got the Kanji dictionary on one arm of my chair, and the little Kodansha Romaji on the other. If she asks what I’m reading I’ll tell her, but she probably won’t ask when she sees the Japanese dictionaries; she knows I’ve got a new book on judo. I don’t want to hear about how pay for schoolchildren, the right to death, homosexual marriage and all the other basic requirements of a culture not irredeemably sunk in barbarism will be commonplace by the year 2065.
No wonder your beautiful damsels prefer to marry a good hunter, a man who is an honour to his camp and can provide for his family comforts and new possessions! In all parts of the world such men are favoured by fair damsels—
OH MY GOD! shouted Sibylla. He’s OUT! He ESCAPED! This is WONDERFUL!
And striding up and down she said that Red Devlin had escaped three months ago and had just walked into the British Embassy in Tbilisi. She said: I’ve actually kind of MISSED those gap-toothed urchins toting Kalashnikovs. She was bounding around as though the gravitational force of the planet had suddenly dropped by a third.
I thought: It’s got to be Devlin.
I read one of his books a long time ago. It was called Get Out Before I Throw You Out. He wasn’t much of a writer; his talent was for making outrageous demands which people found impossible to refuse. For instance he once asked to go up with some paratroopers over a war zone and was told this was against all regulations.
Oh go on, said Red Devlin.
X: Oh all right then but no one must know this is strictly on the Q.T.
Red Devlin was equipped with a parachute purely as a safety precaution and then when the paratroopers jumped he jumped out too before anyone could stop him and got some story that no one could have got who had not gone in with the paratroopers. A newspaper hired him on the strength of this story and then fired him for refusing to file some other story, and then another newspaper hired him because he had penetrated a guerrilla hideout by going into a local bar and saying ‘I’d like to visit that guerrilla hideout.’
Barman: Nobody knows where it is. It’s a secret.
Red Devlin: Oh go on, you can tell me.
Barman: Oh all right then, you take the first right— Tell you what, we’ll go in my car.
Sceptics had pointed out that there was only Red Devlin’s word for this, but since most of the people he talked to refused to talk to anyone else you could either argue that he must have been telling the truth or that there was no way to prove that he wasn’t.
Red Devlin had once helped a couple to adopt an orphan from Romania. The couple had visited Romania and seen an orphanage and on their return to Britain they had decided to adopt a little girl. They had immersed themselves in Romanian and they had talked to people who had adopted Romanian children and they had tried to initiate adoption procedures and had been told it was out of the question. Both were women so that they were a man short and one woman too many. The couple argued passionately and described in graphic detail the conditions of the orphanage but rules were rules and there was nothing to be done.
The couple went outside and sat shivering in the sun. And now by a piece of luck Red Devlin came down the street. He had lost a job again so his time was his own.
What’s the matter? said Red Devlin.
They explained and he said he would help them.
The couple were so convinced that rules were rules that they thought he was offering to marry one of them. Red Devlin laughed. He said he was a married man. He said he would go to Romania and get the child. The couple explained patiently that you could not get the child out of Romania or into Britain without the adoption papers.
Is that a fact? said Red Devlin.
Red Devlin knew maybe three words of Romanian. They may have meant ‘Oh go on’ to start with; if they didn’t, they did by the time Red Devlin was through with them. He went to the orphanage and asked for the girl, and each time someone objected he brought out his three words of Romanian and the long and the short of it was that in three days he drove out of Bucharest with the girl beside him.
Some people smuggle children over borders in the boots of cars. Some people dress them as giant dolls, or stuff them in suitcases. Some people stick them under a blanket and hope for the best. Red Devlin would drive up to the border with the girl in the front seat.
Official: Where are her papers?
Red Devlin: She doesn’t have any papers.
Red Devlin would explain the situation.
I’m sorry, but she will have to go back.
Red Devlin would explain the situation again.
Believe me, I sympathise, but there’s nothing I can do.
Sure you can, said Red Devlin. Anyone can say it, but Red Devlin really believed it, and every time he said it people who had only been doing their job stopped doing their job. Back he came to Britain with the girl to discuss the matter with a member of the Social Services.
This was not a pushover. The woman said she was only doing her job and Red Devlin said Oh go on, and instead of saying Oh all right then the woman came back with Rules are rules. Red Devlin said Oh go on again and this time the woman said there was nothing she could do. Red Devlin said Sure you can and the woman said My hands are tied. They talked for a whole hour, and the whole time they talked Red Devlin never once argued passionately or said but SURELY or but can’t you SEE or How would you feel if it were YOUR child. They talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and even after an hour of Red Devlin the woman didn’t say Oh all right then, but she said she would see what she could do. The long and the short of it was that the girl got to stay. There were hundreds of episodes like this but then he had been taken captive and held hostage.
Sibylla said what had probably happened was that they had kept him gagged for five years and then one day someone accidentally took off the gag and Red Devlin said I’d like to go home and they said Oh all right then.
I waited for her to say something else but she just walked up and down and suddenly as she walked by she saw The Eskimo Book of Knowledge.
What’s this? she asked, and picking it up began to look at it and to read out as soon as it pleased White damsels to adorn their necks and shoulders with the soft white fur of the fox, then there were many young men eager to make glad the hearts (and the vanity) of their damsels with gifts of white fox skins; and when their wives were sad, husbands learned to make them happy with gifts of white fox-skins and to say This is amazing and When was it published?
1931 I said.
1931 said Sibylla and this is, let’s see
1998
1998 so that’s 67 years, so in 67 years it will be
2065
2065. Exactly. Just think Ludo in 2065 people will probably consider it absolutely BARBARIC that a child should be condemned to work 12 years without pay in absolute economic subjection to the adults into whose keeping fate has consigned it and BARBARIC that people should be brought into the world into circumstances they did not choose and then COMPELLED to remain REGARDLESS and they will not know which is more surprising, the absolute SILENCE on these subjects at the present time or the absolute RUBBISH routinely published on the subject of marriage between members of the same sex in papers which PURPORT to
Is Red Devlin my father? I asked.
She said:
I don’t want to talk about it.
She did not come to earth. My mother was now on a planet with a deadly atmosphere and gravitational force of 17. Leaning heavily on the chair and looking down at The Eskimo Book of Knowledge she said after a pause with a gallant effort:
But what a marvellous language let’s see kakortarsu is obviously the white fox so we’ve got kakortarsu kakortarsuk kakortarsungnik kakortarsuit and there’s puije and puijit for seal further up the page it looks like puije is the accusative puijit is the nominative which would make kakortarsuit nominative piojorniningillo is vanity on the previous page we seem to have puijevinit seal meat puijevinekarnersaularposelo you will also gain a greater supply of seal meat I’ve always wanted to learn a agglutinative language
I said: Three’s not enough?
She said: I feel like learning another it’s wonderful to think of a language like this in DAILY USE. She said: I wonder what the Inuit would be for veritable cathedral of ice!
I didn’t say anything.
She said:
Oh LOOK it’s got the Inuit for God Save the King!
The planet Saturn has a gravitational force of only 1.07 and she began to sing
Gûdib saimarliuk
Adanterijavut
NâlengnartoK.
Piloridlarlune
Nertornadlarlune
Ataniotile
Uvaptingnut.
I said:
Is it James Hatton?
JAMES HATTON! said Sibylla. Why the man’s a veritable colossus!
She said:
I’ve got to work.
I got the impression I was wasting my time on The Eskimo Book of Knowledge. I thought: Well, maybe this year I’ll pass the test, and I went to look at the postcard of Greek Girls Playing at Ball, by Lord Leighton, which Sibylla had shown me years before. Abstract expressionism this is not, but I still couldn’t see what I was supposed to see. Then I read the magazine article for the 500th time, but I couldn’t see what I was supposed to see. Then I listened to the tape of Liberace, which is obviously complete and utter crap.
Sibylla said: Would you mind not playing that? I’m trying to work.
I said: I can see the tape is crap. Isn’t that enough?
She looked at me.
I said: How do you know you’re not wrong about the other two?
She looked at me.
I said: Why don’t you tell me what you think is wrong so I can decide for myself?
She looked at me with burning eyes.
I said: Why won’t you tell me who he is? Do you want me to promise not to tell him? I have a right to know.
She said: Well I have a right to remain silent.
She said: If you don’t need me for anything I’m going to watch Seven Samurai for a while.
She turned off the computer. It was about 11:30. So far she had spent about 8 minutes typing which at £6.25 an hour meant she had earned about 83p.
She picked up the remote and pressed ON and PLAY.
40 bandits stop on a hill above a village in Japan. They decide to raid it after the barley harvest. A farmer overhears.
A village meeting is held. The farmers despair.
Rikichi leaps to his feet with burning eyes.
Let’s make bamboo spears! Let’s run ’em all through!
Not me, says Yohei.
Impossible, says Manzo.
I used to take her word for it. But what if she’s wrong? A new book by the author of the magazine article came out last month. According to the reviews he is one of the greatest writers of our time.
The farmers consult old Giseku.
I said: According to the reviews the author of the magazine article is one of the greatest writers of our time.
Sibylla said yes and Alma-Tadema fetched more than Michelangelo for a while.
He tells them to find hungry samurai.
I said: According to one reviewer this writer I am supposed to regard from a state of grace beyond pity is the greatest writer in English in the world today. Another described him as America’s answer to Flaubert. A third referred to him as the great chronicler of the American experience. Nine out of ten reviewers gave him a rating of ‘great’ or better. Five used the word ‘genius’.
She said: Anything follows from a false premise. If you accept that American novels should be written in English then it also follows that the Pope is a Jew.
I said: Well in that case Seven Samurai can’t be any good because it’s in black and white and Japanese. You’re being completely inconsistent. I thought: This is insane. Why don’t we just talk about the decline of traditional Zulu raindances or mutations in inland water algae in the Urals or some other randomly chosen completely irrelevant subject? I have a right to know who he is whoever he is.
She said: I wish you wouldn’t say the first thing that comes into your head, Ludo. There is an obvious difference between someone who works within the technical limitations of his time which are beyond his control and someone who accepts without thinking limitations which are entirely within his own power to set aside.
She said: It may have escaped your notice but I am trying to watch one of the masterpieces of modern cinema.
The farmers see a crowd of people. A samurai has gone to the river’s edge to be shaved by a monk.
Mifune pushes his way through the crowd and squats scratching his chin.
Katsushiro asks his neighbour what’s happening.
I said So you think Proust would have been better with some English and German added in & she looked at me with burning eyes & I said Why don’t we talk about the impact of tourism on the traditional Zulu raindance why don’t you test me on 50 capitals of the world this is completely irrelevant I have a right to know.
She looked at me with burning eyes.
I said: Well just tell me this. He didn’t rape you did he? (Everything I know about delicacy I learned at my mother’s knee.) For one horrible moment I thought he really had: increase Rikichi factor by power of 10.
She said: No.
I said: So there must have been something you liked about him. He must have had SOME redeeming quality.
She said: That’s one way of looking at it.
I said: What other way is there of looking at it?
She said: In our society one of the most highly prized virtues if not the most highly prized virtue is that of sleeping with someone you don’t desire for free, if it is prized in people who have to do it surely it would be a supererogatory virtue in someone who wasn’t even married.
I said: Is that what you did?
She said: Well, I was trying to be polite.
I was not going to be struck speechless now. I said: What word has escaped the barrier of your teeth?
She said: There is a strange taboo in our society against ending something merely because it is not pleasant—life, love, a conversation, you name it, the etiquette is that you must begin in ignorance & persevere in the face of knowledge, & though I naturally believe that this is profoundly wrong it’s not nice to go around constantly offending people.
I had heard this a million times. I said: Does that mean there WASN’T anything you liked about him?
She said: How can you be so sure something you don’t know is something you want to know? Look at Oedipus.
I said: What are you afraid of, that I’ll kill him or sleep with him?
She said, or rather riposted: Well, I wouldn’t sleep with him if I were you, and she said: Tiresias has spoken.
There is a strange taboo in our society against matricide.
She rewound the video ostentatiously to the place where I had interrupted.
The thief runs from the barn and falls down dead.
The parents of the child rush forward to take it.
Mifune rushes forward brandishing his sword. He jumps up and down on the body.
The samurai walks off without a backward look.
I’ve been telling her for years about Dervla Murphy who rode through the Andes on a mule with her eight-year-old daughter. My father probably does that kind of thing the whole time for a living. The most we’ve ever done is hitchhike through France. My father might like the chance to spend some time with the son he never knew he had. We could go to the source of the Amazon by canoe, or trek overland to the Arctic Circle, or live six months with the Masai (my Masai is pretty good). I know 54 edible plants, 23 edible mushrooms and 8 insects that you can keep down if you don’t think about what you’re eating; I think I could live off the land in any continent. For the last two years I’ve been sleeping on the ground outside even in the winter, and I walk for an hour without shoes every day to toughen my feet, and I’ve practised climbing trees and buildings and telephone poles. If she would just tell me who he is I could stop wasting my time on things that might just happen to come in handy and concentrate on the things I actually need to know. I’ve had to learn five major trade languages and eight nomadic languages just in case. It’s insane.
My name is Katsushiro Okamoto. Please, please let me become one of your followers.
Followers? I am Kambei Shimada. I am only a ronin. I have no followers
I thought about Liberace and Lord Leighton and the author of the magazine article. Even if she’s right, what’s bad about these people is that they are bad artists. Maybe my father was a bad writer—but it could be because he had more important things to think about. If you’re travelling across Siberia with a team of huskies you may not have time to polish every word. Sibylla does tend to take art too seriously.
I went up to my room after a while. She has been watching Seven Samurai for the last 10 years and she still has trouble with the Japanese. I could hear it downstairs. I knew she’d be there for at least another hour.
I had once seen an envelope in her room marked To Be Opened In Case of Death. I thought—well surely if she thought she’d be dead she’d say who my father was. I thought—I’ve tried to play by the rules, but this is ridiculous. I could just see myself in 10 years looking at the picture by Lord Leighton and not seeing anything wrong, or trying to find something wrong with one of the greatest writers of our time.
I had practised walking silently. I walked silently across the landing to her room. There’s a drawer where she keeps her passport. I thought the envelope might be there. I crossed the room and opened the drawer.
There was a folder with a thick stack of papers in it.
2
I know all the words
I read through the papers quickly.
There was quite a lot about my father, but she’d thought of a nickname and stuck to it. I kept thinking she’d say who Liberace was, or at least mention the title of one of his books, but she didn’t. Before I could start looking again for the envelope Sibylla called from downstairs
LUDO! ARE YOU UPSTAIRS?
I said
YES
and she said
WOULD YOU MIND BRINGING ME THE DUVET?
I put the folder of papers back in the drawer and took the duvet downstairs. I don’t know what I thought. I think I thought It’s not too late not to know and But I have to know.
The first part of the recruitment was over, the part where Katsushiro stands behind a door with a stick. When I was very little I would practise reading fast from the subtitles and Sibylla would say why do you think he did this and why do you think he did that and why doesn’t Shichiroji have to take the test and why does Gorobei take Heihachi if he says he always runs away? I would say something and she would laugh and say she never thought of that.
Kambei and Katsushiro find two samurai stripping bamboo poles for a match.
The fight begins. Kyuzo raises his pole. X holds his pole over his head and shouts.
Kyuzo draws back his pole. X runs forward.
Kyuzo raises his pole suddenly and brings it down.
X: Sorry, that was a draw
No. I won
Nonsense
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 φιοσοφíα, 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 ‘Tenshōsecond year second month seventeenth day born’, he says the sounds Tenshō ninen nigatsu jūshichinichi 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 jūshichinichi 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.
I explained that according to Japanese Street Slang shiyagatte was the gerund of shiyagaru, the common contraction of shite agaru, which was the offensive form of the verb suru, to do. So if nukasu was to say nukashiyagatte would be the offensive gerund.
What a wonderful language, said Sib, they seem to have toned it down quite a bit for the subtitles. I knew Japanese Street Slang was a bargain at £6.88.
In other words Asking me ‘Are you a samurai?’ like that—how dare you!
All right, said Sib, & then what?
ore wa na I topic particle emphatic particle Kō, in this way miete, present participle of mieru, appearing mo even, i.e. even appearing like this.
Sib said she might not know much Japanese but she did not believe for one nanosecond that Mifune said Even appearing like this.
I said I did not think consciousness was capable of operating in units of nanoseconds.
Sib said she did not believe it for the smallest unit at which consciousness was capable of operating and then what?
chanto shita, precise, proper, up-to-standard Up-to-standard! said Sib
samurai da, I am, i.e. Even though I look like this I’m a genuine samurai.
Which subtitle is that, said Sib, I don’t recognise any of this.
I said it came up roughly where he said I’m a samurai all right.
Hmm, said Sib.
yai hey ore wa na
I topic particle emphatic particle said Sib
arekara since that time omae no of you koto o thing object particle, i.e. periphrasis for you zutto the whole (time), I said talking fast
sagashitetanda contraction of sagashite ita, I was searching, contraction of no da it is a fact that, no nominalising particle da verb to be zo sentence-final particle expressing strong exclamation generally used only by male speakers, I said even faster
kore o this object particle miseyō plain volitional I’d like to show to, quotative particle applying to previous phrase, omotte na present participle of omou to think plus na emphatic particle, i.e. thinking that I’d like to show you this—
I know all those words, said Sib.
Well, do you want me to just write it down for you? I said. I wrote down a few lines and Sib said I might not be aware of it but writing was generally considered a means of communication & my handwriting in Japanese was even more enigmatic than the scripts I had introduced to English, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Bengali, Russian, Armenian and other languages too numerous to enumerate.
, I said, kore o miro
I know that, said Sib, Look at this
kono keizu, this genealogy, wa na
topic particle particle said Sib
ore sama no
my said Sib
senzo, ancestors daidai counter for generations no possessive particle said Sib
keizu yo
genealogy exclamatory particle said Sib
kono yarō baka ni shiyagatte nandei
kono, this, yarō boor, bumpkin, kono yarō 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.
She said: If that was who it was would you still want to know?
I said: Is that who it is?
She said: VAL PETERS! Why the man’s a veritable Don Swan.
I said: Well then who is it?
She said: You don’t want to know. Why won’t you take my word for it?
I said: Because you’re a market of one.
Sibylla said: Well, you may be right. Would you mind if I had a look at that book on aerodynamics I got you for your birthday?
and without waiting for a reply she took the book from the table and opened it and reading began to smile.
The present was not much of a surprise. Sib came across it at Dillon’s Gower Street and about three pages into the book began to laugh and to pace up and down repeating the words THICK MANTLE OF FEATHERS while the three other people in the room got out of the way. WE APPROXIMATE THE BIRD’S BODY BY A SPHERE OF RADIUS 5CM, said Sib, I had no idea aerodynamics was so entertaining, and under the impression that everyone in Dillon’s would like to share the joke she said Just listen to this example:
Grebes (an example is the common ‘hell-diver’) are among the birds that hunt their prey underwater. Unlike ducks and other surface water birds, whose feathers are completely water repellent, the outer two-thirds of the grebes’ body feathers are wettable. However, like the duck, they require the buoyancy as well as the thermal insulation of the air trapped by a thick mantle of feathers when they are on the surface. In order to facilitate the underwater maneuverability required to catch its prey, the grebe increases its specific gravity to near that of the water by drawing its feathers close to its body (each feather has eight muscles); their partial wettability assists in expelling most of the air, leaving only a thin layer at the skin surface for thermal insulation.
We approximate the bird’s body by a sphere of radius r = 5cm and assume it has a specific gravity of 1.1, and find the thickness Δr of the layer of air under sea level conditions required to bring the specific gravity of the combination to unity.
Did you know that each grebe’s feather has eight muscles? asked Sib.
No, I said.
Did you know that the outer two-thirds of their body feathers were wettable?
No, I said.
I did not point out that everyone within a radius of 10 metres knew it now. I said I didn’t think I was ready for aerodynamics, not because I didn’t think I was ready for aerodynamics but because the cheap books in the room were £20.
Of course you’re ready for it, said Sib flipping through the book. You can tell just from the names of the mathematicians. Bernoulli’s equation—Euler’s equation—Gauss’s divergence theorem—I have no idea what these actually ARE, but essentially the mathematics at the heart of the subject seems to be post-Newtonian developments in calculus, 18th 19th century stuff. How hard can it be? And look, it’s got an appendix on natural prototypes with a discussion of the hummingbird and aerodynamics of insect flight.
I said: When was it published?
1986, said Sibylla.
I said in that case maybe we could get it secondhand at Skoob.
Good point, said Sib. Would you like something on Laplace transforms?
No.
What about Fourier analysis? Not for your birthday, obviously you can’t have Schaum’s Outline Series for your birthday, but just to have? It says it’s a crucial mathematical tool for modern engineering.
No.
We’ll see if they’ve got it at Skoob, said Sibylla, and of course when I opened my presents not only were there the books on aerodynamics, Fourier analysis and Laplace transforms, but also Gordon’s Introduction to Old Norse, Njal’s Saga in Icelandic & in the Penguin, various other bargains and a new skateboard.
I wanted to throw everything on the table to the floor and shout. All I wanted was something that everyone else in the world takes for granted and instead I got Laplace transforms and the aerodynamics of insect flight. I was about to say this when I saw that Sib had stopped smiling and was now holding her head in her hand, even thick mantle of feathers had not kept away whatever it was she didn’t want to think about. I thought I might say something anyway if I stayed, so I went out to ride my skateboard.
3
Funeral Games
Well, now I know.
When I got back to the house Sib said she was going out. I had seen that look on her face before. While at Skoob we had seen a secondhand copy of The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, the brilliant four-volume updated version which had come out in the early 80s, an amazing bargain at just £100. We had had a long argument in which Sibylla had said I ought to have it and I had said we could not afford it and Sibylla had said it was a superb work of scholarship which no home should be without and I had said we could not afford it.
I said: You know we can’t afford The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. Sibylla said she was going to Grant & Cutler. I said we couldn’t afford to go to Grant & Cutler and Sibylla said I didn’t have to come. The last time Sibylla went to Grant & Cutler alone—actually I don’t want to think about the last time Sibylla went to Grant & Cutler alone. I said I thought I’d come too.
You’re right, she said. We can’t afford it
and she turned on the computer and then sat curled up in a chair not doing anything at all.
I thought: This is insane. I thought: Who cares what’s wrong with Lord Leighton? We’ve got to get out of here. But I still didn’t know where she kept the envelope.
I had to do something, so I went out on my bike to Blockbuster Video to see what I could find. At last I found something.
I went back to the house. Sibylla was still sitting in the chair. I said: I got you a video, and I put the cassette in the TV and turned it on.
A copyright warning came and went.
Sib sat up.
OHHHH, said Sib, Tall Men in Tight Jeans!
What? I said.
I haven’t seen this in YEARS, said Sib.
It says on the cover that it’s a western based on the story of Seven Samurai, so I thought you’d like it.
LIKE it! said Sib. I ADORE it. You KNOW how much I like the Tyrone Power school of acting.
Do you want me to take it back? I said.
But it was too late. Sib was sitting alertly on the arm of her chair like a terrier with its eye on the ball. Ball flies through air, terrier flies over ground; terrier gets ball, terrier barks insanely, terrier spends hour growling if anyone tries to get ball & whining if no one shows interest. No sooner had the film begun than gleeful Sib pounced on some point in which it was inferior to Seven Samurai and for the next hour there was an almost constant stream of comment, interrupted only by howls of laughter at each appearance of the recruit from the Tyrone Power school of acting & by occasional silences in which I was meant to disagree so she could argue some more. There may have been some dialogue—if there was, I couldn’t hear it.
Brynner began to recruit men for the job.
It’s a difficult assignment, said Sibylla. It will be hard to find so many tall men in tight jeans.
Will you shut up? I said.
I’m sorry, said Sib shutting up.
Isn’t there ANYTHING you like about it? I said.
How can you ask? said Sib. Not ONE but SEVEN tall men in tight jeans—it’s simply MAGNIFICENT.
Never mind, I said.
And it’s so easy to follow, you can tell which one is the mercenary because he has a stomach.
Never mind, I said.
The villain is the short one, said Sib. The starving peasants are fat. If they were tall and lean it would be too confusing.
I looked at the screen without saying anything.
James Coburn, said Sib. I always like watching James Coburn. And Eli Wallach is brilliant. And then, one of the problems with Seven Samurai is that none of the actors has the faintest idea of how to do Oriental inscrutability. Mifune is HOPELESS, and are the rest any better? Shimura, Kimura, Miyaguchi, Chiaki, Inaba, Kato, Tsuchiya—pathetic. It’s only when you see Tall Men in Tight Jeans that you realise what a handicap it was to Kurosawa in not being able to draw on the genius of Charles Bronson. If he had had an actor with a face like a Japanese woodcut who knows what he might have achieved—
I’m trying to watch the film, I said.
I won’t say another word, said Sib. I’ll be as silent as the grave.
And suddenly I knew where she kept the envelope.
For as long as I can remember Sib has been pining for Fraser’s Ptolemaic Alexandria (a superb work of scholarship which no home should be without). It is not available in public libraries (or at least in none known to us) but sometimes we would come across a secondhand copy in a bookshop and visit it on a daily basis. Sib would draw attention to marvellous footnotes on Eratosthenes (who worked out the circumference of the world) or the Alexandra of Lycophron which was a whole poem narrated by Cassandra in a prophetic frenzy and which made so little sense that scholars could never tell whether textual corruption or the madness of Cassandra was to blame for their difficulties, or the Theriaca of Nicander which was a long poem in hexameters about snakes. It was always too expensive, and sooner or later somebody richer would buy it.
Four months ago Sib found another copy and this time she bought it. I don’t know where or what she paid for it—she wouldn’t tell me. She said she would ask to be buried with it but it would be cruel to rob posterity of one of the few copies in existence, she would be willing to bet that if she died 50 years from now Oxford University Press would still be pretending to be about to reprint it, and she said if she had a funeral perhaps I could pass the book around and people could read out interesting passages from it. I promised that if I had any say in the matter it would be read at her funeral.
The last time I had seen the envelope in the drawer had been six months ago; the reason it was no longer there was that in the meantime she had got the book.
I had to watch the rest of the film but I couldn’t concentrate. I don’t know whether it was any good; all I could think about was the envelope and the book.
At last it was over. Sib said Thank you. She said she’d better do some work.
Ptolemaic Alexandria was in a bookcase behind her back. I got out Volume II and opened it to the description of a tragedy portraying the events of Exodus (Fraser quotes an exchange between God and Moses in iambic trimeters), and there it was. To Be Opened In Case of Death.
I thought: If ’twere done, ’twere well ’twere done quickly. I thought: What’s a sealed envelope? A door marked No Entry or Authorised Personnel Only. Something to ignore if the circumstances warrant it.
I put it inside my shirt and went upstairs. When I got to my room I opened the envelope.
It wasn’t Red Devlin. It wasn’t anyone like that.
I remembered one of his books that I hadn’t bothered to finish. He’d gone to Bali. The men there walk barefoot across the lava field of a live volcano. He didn’t. He stood watching them walk across the lava and then he went back to the hotel and wrote about how he’d watched them. He didn’t know any Balinese. He fucked a woman back at the hotel on the basis of three words of Balinese. Maybe she liked nocturnal animals.
4
Steven, age 11
Three days after I learned his name I realised I’d jumped to conclusions. Quite often in travel books the writer goes from being naive or ignorant or cowardly to doing something quite brave later on. It was stupid to judge him with so little to go on. So I went to the library to look for the rest of his books. Sibylla is right, he’s very popular—they have everything he’s written, but only two books were there.
Right beside them on the shelf was my old favourite, Journey into Danger! I must have read that about 20 times. Well, too bad.
I took down The Lotus-Eaters. There was a picture of my father on the back, taking up the whole back cover. He stared frowning into the distance. He was less handsome than I’d imagined, but it might be a bad picture.
An Antique Land had a different picture on the back. Another audition for the Tyrone Power school of acting.
If the books had been fiction the librarian probably wouldn’t have let an 11-year-old borrow them, but because they were travel writing it did not occur to her to object. She was used to my borrowing from the grown-up section, especially travel books; she probably didn’t realise these were X-rated.
I read the two books I’d found, and then I got three more at the Barbican, and I read the latest one at the Marylebone Library because I didn’t have a ticket. By the end of the week I had read all my father’s books.
Well. I have to admit I’d hoped to find some spark of genius or heroism unnoticed by Sibylla. I wanted to open a page and think But this is brilliant! This didn’t happen. I kept reading anyway. I don’t know what I was hoping to find.
When I didn’t find anything in the books I thought he might be different in person.
He had been married to his first wife when he met my mother, it had ended, and he had married again and moved to another house. So even if I could have discovered the location of the Medley, it would now be occupied only by his ex-wife.
Then I thought he might give a talk somewhere, and I could follow him home. But I thought it would end in drinks, and be hard for me to follow. I could try the hunchbacked midget costume I had to wear when we went to see The Crying Game—but I thought I might have trouble getting into a bar even as a midget sensitive about his height.
Then I had an idea. My father wrote a lot of journalism, and he always got a lot of things wrong. Science held a fatal fascination for him. He had never really mastered the difference between the special and general theories of relativity, but for some reason could not keep from bringing both into his articles whenever he could. Sometimes he would take a word which had both a technical meaning and an ordinary meaning (chaos, string, relativity, positive/negative, half-life, you get the idea) and then take statements applicable to the word in its technical sense to support generalisations about the word in its common sense. Sometimes the technical meaning would be something that could only be expressed in mathematics, so that it didn’t really have a correlate in ordinary language— that never stopped him. It was really just a matter of waiting for his next piece to come out & then writing to correct the mistakes in an engaging, innocent, boyish way, signing the letter Steven aged 11—this would be bound to get a response, and with luck he would put his address on the letter.
The next day was Monday. I went back to the library and went through all the Sunday papers, but there was nothing by my father. I went through all the Saturday papers, but there was nothing there either. Then I went through the papers for Monday, 30 March. Nothing there. I had known who he was for 10 days.
I went back to the library every day to go through the papers. There was nothing by my father. I would stand at the table, leafing through the pages, and sometimes I’d see an interesting story and get excited and suddenly remember. I knew who he was.
On Saturday I went back to the library again, and this time there was a piece in the Independent Magazine on the Galapagos. It talked about extinction and selection. There were lots of logical fallacies, and also some factual mistakes about dinosaurs, and he seemed to have misunderstood the selfish gene theory. Here was my chance!
I wasn’t going to point out the logical errors, which might put his back up, and I decided not to say anything about the part where he mixed up DNA and RNA because I thought that would be too embarrassing, but I thought I could safely point out more abstruse errors of fact, and this would be the type of thing I could sign Steven aged 11. It was hard to know how simply I should put the selfish gene theory: since he hadn’t understood it I didn’t want to make the explanation complicated, but I thought it would sound obnoxious if I stuck to words of one syllable.
I wrote the letter ten times trying to sound clever and not obnoxious. I could have printed it out on the word processor, but I thought my atrocious handwriting might be more appealing, so I wrote the final version out by hand.
It took two days to write. I could have written it in 15 minutes if I hadn’t had to worry about sounding obnoxious. Still, as Sibylla would say, it’s not nice to go around constantly offending people.
A week went by and I thought the Independent might not have passed it on straight away.
A week went by.
A week went by and I thought he must have it by now.
Three days went by and April was over. I thought he might actually be travelling. A day went by and I thought he might have a secretary to deal with correspondence. Four days went by. The secretary might have instructions not to answer letters unaccompanied by SAE.
His letter came the next day.
I took it to my room to read.
The address was handwritten; I thought this looked promising. The envelope was one of those self-stick envelopes; he’d written in black ballpoint. I opened it slowly; there was a sheet of A5, folded once, inside. I unfolded it. It said:
6 May, 1998
Dear Steven,
Thank you for your letter. As you probably know, there are a lot of different theories about why the dinosaurs became extinct. I admit I used the one most convenient for my argument. The point about the selfish gene theory would be fair enough if that was what I was relying on, but in fact Dawkins’ theory does have some rivals.
I hope you won’t be discouraged if I stand my ground. I think it’s wonderful that you show such a grasp of the importance of the theory, and I’m thrilled that you like my writing.
Yours,
Val Peters
I had told myself not to expect anything, but I must have been expecting something. In spite of the article, in spite of all the books, I’d kept hoping for something so brilliant I couldn’t have thought of it myself. I looked down at the piece of paper in my hand with its bold careless signature, and I wished more than anything in the world that it had not been written by my father.
If anyone else had written it, I would have written back to point out that the whole article talked as if selection at the level of genes, individuals and species were the same thing and that he needed to clear up this confusion even if he was arguing against Dawkins as the article claimed to, and I would have pointed out that he hadn’t answered any of my arguments. I still didn’t want to annoy, however, so I let it pass. The crucial thing was that he had put his address at the top of the page. I looked the street up in the A-Z, and it was not far from the Circle Line.
5
For David, with best wishes
I took the Circle Line and I went to my father’s house and stood outside.
I knew I had two half-brothers and a half-sister, but I was pretty sure they lived with their mother. At about 10:30 a woman came out of the house. She got in a car and drove off.
I wasn’t sure whether to go up to the door. I didn’t know what I’d say—I thought I’d blurt out something stupid. I crossed the street and looked at the windows. I couldn’t see any movement. At about 11:00 I saw a face.
At 11:30 the door opened again and a man came out and down the steps. He looked older than I’d imagined him; the pictures I’d seen must have been taken years ago. He was less handsome than I’d imagined, even after the pictures; I’d forgotten that she had been rather drunk by the time she kissed him.
He reached the street and turned right. At the corner he turned right again.
I went back again the next day. I had in my backpack the introduction to aerodynamics, a book on calculus for engineers, the Penguin translation of Njal’s Saga, Brennunjalssaga, Gordon’s Introduction to Old Norse and The Count of Monte Cristo in case I got bored, plus four peanut butter and jam sandwiches and a tangerine. There was a bus stop with a low wall beside it across the street from his house. I sat watching the house, reading Njal’s Saga and flipping back and forth between the Icelandic and the Penguin.
Njal and his sons were at a court called the Althing. Skarp-Hedin, one of Njal’s sons, had killed a priest. I did not really understand how the court worked. Njal’s son-in-law Asgrim and the Njalssons went from booth to booth looking for support. First they went to Gizurr’s booth and then they went to the Olfus booth to see Skapti Thoroddson.
‘Lát heyra at,’ segir Skapti.
‘Let us hear your errand,’ said Skapti.
‘Ek vil biðja ik liðsinnis,’ segir Ásgrímr, ‘at ú veitir mér lið ok mágum mínum.’
‘I need your help,’ said Asgrim, ‘for myself and my kinsmen.’
I had been working on Icelandic for three weeks so it wasn’t too bad. There were some things I couldn’t do without a dictionary. Nothing happened in the house.
‘Hitt hafða ek ætlat,’ segir Skapti, ‘at ekki skyldi koma vandræði yður í híbýli mín.’
‘I have no intention,’ said Skapti, ‘of letting your troubles into my house.’
Ásgrímr segir: ‘Illa er slíkt mælt, at verða mnnum á sízt at liði, er mest liggr við.’
Asgrim said, ‘These are mean words; you are of least use when the need is greatest.’
The postman came to the house with the second post. The woman came to the door to take it; there seemed to be a lot of letters. I ate a peanut butter sandwich.
‘Hverr er sá maðr,’ segir Skapti, ‘er fjórir menn ganga fyrir, mikill maðr ok flleitr, ógæfusamligr, harðligr ok trllsligr?’
‘Who is that man,’ said Skapti, ‘the fifth in the line, that tall, fierce-looking, troll-like man with the pale, ill-starred look?’
Nothing happened in the house.
Hann segir: ‘Skarpheðinn heiti ek, ok hefir ú sét mik jafnan á ingi, en vera mun ek ví vitrari en ú, at ek arf eigi at spyrja, hvat ú heitir. ú heitir Skapti óroddsson, en fyrr kallaðir ú ik Burstakoll, á er ú hafðir drepit Ketil ór Eldu; gerðir ú ér á koll ok bart tjru í hfuð ér. Siðan keyptir ú at prælum, at rísta upp jarðarmen, ok skreitt ú ar undir um nóttina. Síðan fórt ú til órólfs Loptssonar á Eyrum, ok tók hann við ér ok bar ik út í mjlsekkum sínum.’
‘Skarp-Hedin is my name,’ he replied, ‘and you have often seen me here at the Althing. But I must he sharper than you, for I have no need to ask you your name. You are called Skapti Thoroddsson, but once you called yourself Bristle-Head, when you had just killed Ketil of Elda; that was the time you shaved your head and smeared it with tar, and bribed some slaves to cut you a strip of turf to cower under for the night. Later you fled to Thorolf Loptsson of Eyrar, who took you in and then smuggled you abroad in his flour sacks.’
Eptir at gengu eir Ásgrímr út.
With that they all left the booth.
Nothing happened in the house.
Skarpheðinn mælti: ‘Hvert skulu vér nú ganga?’
‘Where shall we go now?’ asked Skarp-Hedin.
‘Til búðar Snorra goða,’ segir Ásgrímr.
‘To Snorri the Priest’s booth,’ said Asgrim.
Njal’s Saga was a bit hard in places but not too hard. The aerodynamics was a real killer. I read a couple of pages but I wasn’t in the mood. Nothing happened in the house.
I went back to Njal’s Saga. Snorri said that their own lawsuits were going badly, but he promised not to take sides against the Njalssons or support their enemies. He said:
‘Hverr er sá maðr, er fjórir ganga fyrir, flleitr ok skarpleitr ok glottir við tnn ok hefir øxi reidda um xl?’
‘Who is that man, fifth in the line, the pale, sharp-featured man with a grin on his face and an axe on his shoulder?’
‘Heðinn heiti ek,’ segir hann, ‘en sumir kalla mik Skarpheðinn llu nafni, eða hvat vilt ú fleira til mín tala?’
‘My name is Hedin,’ he replied, ‘but some call me Skarp-Hedin in full. Have you anything else to say to me?’
Snorri maelti: ‘at at mér, ykki maðr harðligr ok mikilfengligr, en ó get ek, at rotin sé nú ín en mesta gæfa, ok skamt get ek eptir innar æfi.’
‘I think you look very ruthless and formidable,’ said Snorri, ‘but my guess is that you have exhausted your store of good luck, and that you have not long to live.’
The Asgrimssons went from booth to booth with mixed success and each time someone said there is just one thing I’d like to know, who is that ill-starred looking man the fifth in line and each time Skarp-Hedin said something insulting with predictable results. It was quite different from Homer or from Malory because it was very plain but I still rather liked it. There was a glossary in Gordon and some grammatical tips so it was not too bad on the whole.
I read a few more pages and then I read The Count of Monte Cristo for a couple of hours and went home.
I went back the next day and I read three pages of aerodynamics but I wasn’t in the mood. Then I read some more of Njal’s Saga.
At about 12:30 he passed by a window on the ground floor eating a sandwich. I had four peanut butter and jam sandwiches and two banana and Marmite sandwiches and a bag of crisps in my backpack. I ate one of the sandwiches and then read The Count of Monte Cristo. Nothing else happened in the house.
I let two days go by. It was raining hard and cold. Then the weather cleared. I went back to sit on the wall. I had three peanut butter and jam sandwiches, one peanut butter and honey sandwich and a bottle of Ribena.
It started to rain again, so I walked back to the Circle Line and spent the rest of the day reading The Count of Monte Cristo. I could have worked on aerodynamics but I wasn’t in the mood.
Third week of May, typical English cold snap. 283 degrees above absolute zero. I went to the house just to look at it. I saw him talking to the woman in an upstairs room but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I made myself sit reading on the wall just in case I ever had to go to the North Pole.
My teeth started chattering. Magnusson seemed to have used a different text from the one Sibylla had given me; I thought I could work out the extra bits. Then I remembered I wasn’t going to be going to the North Pole. There was nothing going on in the house. I went back to the Circle Line and ate my sandwiches.
I let four days go by and then I had to go back. I sat on the wall and made myself read a whole chapter on aerodynamics just to prove I could still do it. I ate a peanut butter sandwich. I was still reading Njal’s Saga. I hadn’t worked on it very much. It was stupid to stand here. I couldn’t really work, either I should do something or I should go somewhere else where I could work. It would be stupid to go away after standing outside at a bus stop for a week.
Then I knew what I would do.
I would ask my father for an autograph.
I came back the next day, and I took with me a paperback copy of Stout Cortez (the book with the Balinese woman), which I had bought at an Oxfam shop for 50p. I also had Brennu-njalssaga, Magnusson, Gordon, the book on Laplace transforms and a book on edible insects which the library was selling off for 10p. I could spend the rest of the day on the Circle Line. I wasn’t expecting this to take long; it was just something I had to do.
I reached the house at 10:00. A window was open on the ground floor; people were talking quietly. I stood by the wall listening.
Are you sure you don’t want to come? You hardly ever get to see them.
It’s not really my kind of thing. It won’t help if I’m bored out of my skull, and if we do something else they’ll hate me. The only question is, are you sure you don’t mind?
It’s not that I mind, I just thought you’d like to spend some time with them.
I would, obviously, but they’ve got school all week. They’ve got their own ideas about how they spend the weekend. It’s not the end of the world.
A car drew up outside the house and three children got out.
The car drove off.
The children looked up at the house.
Well, come on, said one.
They headed up the walk. The door opened. There was some sort of discussion just inside it. The children came back down the steps with the woman I’d seen before. The man stood in the doorway.
We’ll go to Planet Hollywood when you get back, he said.
They got into a car and drove off. He closed the door.
I was tired of walking up and down the street and watching that door. I didn’t want to walk away again. I was tired of wondering whether it was a bad time. I was tired of wondering whether it would be better to interrupt him before he’d had a chance to start work.
I went to the door and rang the bell. I waited a minute. Then I counted a minute, and then I counted two minutes. I knocked on the door and counted another minute. If he didn’t come I would go away. I thought I’d annoy him if I kept knocking and ringing the bell. Two minutes went by. I turned and went down the steps.
A window shot up on the second floor.
Hang on, I’ll be down in a minute, he shouted.
I went back to the door.
A couple of minutes went by, and the door opened.
What can I do for you? he asked.
His hair was medium brown, with some grey; his forehead was quite deeply lined; there were grey hairs in the eyebrows, and the eyes under them were large and light, a little like a night animal’s. His voice was rather light and soft.
Can I help you? he asked.
I’ve come for the Christian Aid envelope, I found myself saying.
I don’t see it anywhere, he said, not looking. Anyway, we’re not Christians.
That’s OK, I said. I’m a Jewish atheist myself.
All right, I’ll ask, he said smiling now. If you’re a Jewish atheist what are you doing collecting for Christian Aid?
My mother makes me, I said.
But if you’re Jewish, doesn’t your mother have to be Jewish too? he asked.
She is, I said. That’s why she won’t let me steal from Jewish charities.
It worked like a charm. He laughed helplessly. He said: Shouldn’t you save this for Comic Relief?
I said: A red nose is funny? I know, I know, they only laugh when it hurts.
He said: Why do I get the feeling you’re not here for Christian Aid?
I said: I wanted an autograph, but you have to break these things gradually.
He said: You want an autograph? Really? How old are you?
I said: Why, is your signature 15-certificate?
He said: Well, there may be a few people who think my name is a dirty word, but no. You seem a little young, though. Or is this another scam? Are you going to flog it?
I said: Could I get a lot of money for it?
And he said quite confidently: I think you’ll have to wait a while.
I said: Well, I don’t mind. I’ve got a book with me.
I took off my backpack.
He said: Is it a first edition?
I said: I don’t think so. It’s a paperback.
He said: Then it won’t be worth a lot of money.
I said: Well, I guess I’ll just have to keep it.
He said: I guess you will. Come inside and I’ll sign it for you.
I followed him down a corridor to a kitchen at the back of the house. He asked whether I would like anything. I said an orange juice.
He poured two and handed me one. I handed him the book.
He said:
It’s always strange when they come back to you. It’s like sending children out into the world with no idea where they’ll end up. Look at this. Third printing, 1986. 1986! It could have been around the world. Some clapped-out hippy in Kathmandu could have carried it on a trek; passed it to a mate on his way to Australia; a tourist might have picked it up in an airport before meeting one of those cruise ships that go to the Antarctic. What shall I put?
I felt cold. I could say To Ludo, with love from Dad. In ten seconds there would not be an object in the room that was not there now, and yet everything would be different.
He had a pen in his hand and had been through this all before.
The hand that had been now here now there held the pen. His mouth was slightly pursed. He was wearing a blue shirt and brown corduroys.
He said: What’s your name?
David.
Is To David with best wishes all right? he asked.
I nodded.
He scrawled something in the book and handed it back.
I wondered whether I would throw up.
He asked me something about school.
I said I didn’t go to school.
He asked me about that.
I said something about that.
He said something else. He was being pleasant. There seemed to be a lot of grey in his hair; that wouldn’t have been there at the time of the Medley.
I said: Can I see where you work?
He said: Sure. He sounded surprised and pleased.
I followed him up to the top of the house. This was not the same house, but they had gone to his study for the Medley, so some of the books and things would probably be here. I don’t know why I had to see this but I had to see it.
He had the whole top of the house for a study. He showed me his computer. He said he used to have a lot of games on it but he had to take them off because he wasted too much time playing games. He gave me an engaging boyish grin. He showed me his database on different countries. He showed me boxes of record cards for different books.
On a bookshelf I saw 10 books by the author of the magazine article Sibylla had shown me. I walked over and took one off the shelf. It was signed. I said:
Are they all signed?
He said:
I’m a big fan.
He said:
I think he is one of the greatest writers in English this century.
I did not laugh hysterically. I said:
My mother says I will be able to appreciate him when I am older.
He said:
What other books do you like?
I was about to say Other?
ТЕЛЕГРАМКанал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
Бот для удобного поиска книг (если не нашлось на сайте)
Поиск книг
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
Детективы и триллеры, все новинки
Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
Отборные классические книги
Классика
ВКОНТАКТЕБиблиотека с любовными романами, которая наверняка придётся по вкусу женской части аудитории
Любовные романы
Библиотека с фантастикой и фэнтези, а также смежных жанров
Фантастика
Самые популярные книги в формате фб2
Топ фб2
книги