The Last Samurai

I said: My mother says you look like Robert Donat. Are you related?

He stared at me. He said: So you— He said: Might I ask why?

I explained about Seven Samurai.

I don’t know what he was expecting. He said: That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t make any sense.

I said I thought it made sense.

He looked down at the pages of Fourier analysis and spread them slightly on the table with his hand. Then he crumpled them up suddenly and dropped them in the bin. He said: So I have no son.

He said: Of course it would have been quite impossible for her, I should have seen that at once.

He looked at me.

I said: I’m sorry.

He said: Come here.

I stayed where I was. I said: I tried to tell you.

He said: It’s stupid, if you were going to make it up what was the point of telling me?

I said: Is it still natural to put me in contact with the right sort of people?

He looked at me. He didn’t say anything. His face was quite cold and expressionless, as if something was calculating behind it.

He said at last in an expressionless voice: You have a piece of information which you shouldn’t have. You may think that piece of information is dangerous to me.

He said: I would advise you to be careful what you say. I think you will find if you try to use it that it will prove extremely dangerous to you.

I said I wasn’t planning to use it and that I had tried to stop him. I thought that there had to be something I could say. He had been so excited about the Fourier analysis before; I couldn’t see why it made such a difference if the person who had done it did not happen to share 50% of his genes. I sensed that this was not the moment to make this point. I said I just wanted— I said my own father tended to get the special and general theories of relativity confused.

Sorabji just looked at me.

I said I didn’t really know him, it was more of a genetic relationship, and I just thought—

He just looked at me. I thought he was probably not really listening to me; he was probably just thinking that there was nothing he could do.

I said: You don’t know what would have happened. Maybe it was the right thing to do. She could have gone insane. Maybe you saved her life. Just because you said the wrong thing doesn’t mean you were wrong about—

I didn’t even see his arm move. He got me on the side of the head with his open hand, knocking me across the room to the floor. I rolled out of the fall back onto my feet but he was already there. He hit me on the other side of my head and knocked me to the floor again. He was there before I could get up this time, but I tripped him and he fell heavily. Mainly on me.

I couldn’t move because he was lying on top of me. A clock which I hadn’t noticed was ticking in the room. It kept ticking. Nothing happened. He was panting as if he’d been in a worse fight; his eyes were glittering in his head. I didn’t know what he would do.

There was a knock at the door, and his wife said: George?

He said: I’ll just be two seconds, darling.

I could hear her footsteps retreating down the hall. I realised I could have shouted something. His eyes were still glittering—

The clock was still ticking.

Suddenly he let go of me and leapt lightly to his feet. I scrambled away across the room but he didn’t come after me. He was standing by the desk with his hands in his pockets. He smiled at me and said pleasantly and conversationally:

I’m sorry, that was completely out of line. I’m sorry I got carried away. My temper flares up and then it’s over, I never hold a grudge.

My head was still ringing.

His hair had fallen into his face; his eyes were sparkling. He looked like Robert Donat in The 39 Steps; he looked the way he’d looked earlier, when he’d talked about the atom and Fourier analysis.

He said: Of course you should be put in touch with the right people.

I said: So I could still go into astronomy?

He laughed. He said: I’d hate to think I’d put you off!

He raised an eyebrow in a sort of quizzical, self-mocking way. His eyes were sparkling with amusement, as if there was nothing calculating behind them.

I just hoped I wasn’t going to have a black eye.

I said: Should I still apply to Winchester? Do you still want to give me a reference?

He was still smiling. He said: Yes, you should certainly apply.

He smiled and said: Be sure to mention my name.

3

A good samurai will parry the blow

Robert Donat was on again Thursday at 9:00. Sib watched enthralled. I was reading Scientific American.

There was an article about a man who had done research in Antarctica and was about to go back. There was an article by a man who had done pioneering work on the solar neutrino problem. I would read a paragraph or two and then turn to another page.

Sometimes I thought about the girls who were not my sisters, and sometimes I thought about Dr. Miller, but most of the time I thought of the Nobel Prize-winning Robert Donat lookalike turning through the pages of Fourier analysis, looking at me with flashing eyes, telling me I was brilliant and I was exactly the way he was at that age. I couldn’t tell from the articles in Scientific American whether their authors thought Sesame Street was not the right level; I couldn’t tell whether they had an ill-timed obsession with petroleum by-products; but I didn’t have to read even a paragraph to know I’d never find another one like Sorabji.

I put down Scientific American and picked up my book on aerodynamics. Sometimes I thought I understood it and sometimes it was hard to follow, and when it was hard to follow it wasn’t easy to tell what would help; the thing that would really help would be to be able to ask someone who didn’t sum up the mathematics required as 18th 19th century stuff. Any idiot can learn a language, all you have to do is keep going and sooner or later it all makes sense, but with mathematics you have to understand one thing to understand another, and you can’t always tell what the first thing is that you have to understand. And even then either you see it or you don’t. You can waste a lot of time trying to work out what you need to know, and a lot more time just trying to see it.

If I hadn’t said anything to Sorabji I wouldn’t ever have had to waste time that way ever again. In the first place I would have gone to Winchester at the age of 12, and in the second place whenever I had a question I could have asked someone who not only knew the answer but couldn’t do enough for his longlost son. And if I’d just seen Sorabji on another night—if I’d just spent one more day on the periodic table—I wouldn’t have seen Dr. Miller, and I wouldn’t have heard any phone calls, and I wouldn’t have known there was anything to see or hear. I could have stopped wasting time and been the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize. Instead I was going to have to do everything myself.

I had another look at the Kutta-Joukowski theorem. It wasn’t so much that I knew for a fact that I wanted to win a Nobel Prize. It’s just that if you’re not going to win a Nobel Prize you might as well do something else worth doing with the time, such as going up the Amazon or down the Andes. If you can’t go down the Andes you might as well do something else worth doing, such as having a shot at a Nobel Prize. Whereas this was just stupid.

I put down my book on aerodynamics.

Sorabji looked out from the screen with flashing eyes.

I thought suddenly that it was stupid to be so sentimental.

What we needed was not a hero to worship but money.

If we had money we could go anywhere. Give us the money and we would be the heroes.

In the morning I decided to go the library. A day one way or the other was not going to have a significant effect on my chances of either winning a Nobel Prize or going down the Amazon. My chances of earning a lot of money soon were slim to non-existent. I thought I would read one of my old favourites just for fun.

Journey into Danger! was out so I got Half Mile Down instead.

I took the book to read on the Circle Line, and I turned to the first descent in the bathysphere before starting the whole book again.

It was of an indefinable translucent blue quite unlike anything I have ever seen in the upper world, and it excited our optic nerves in a most confusing manner. We kept thinking and calling it brilliant, and again and again I picked up a book to read the type, only to find that I could not tell the difference between a blank page and a coloured plate. I brought all my logic to bear, I put out of mind the excitement of our position in watery space and tried to think sanely of comparative colour, and I failed utterly. I flashed on the search-light, which seemed the yellowest thing I have ever seen, and let it soak into my eyes, yet the moment it was switched off, it was like the long vanished sunlight—it was as though it had never been—and the blueness of the blue, both outside and inside our sphere, seemed to pass materially through the eye into our very beings. This is all very unscientific; quite worthy of being jeered at by optician or physicist; but there it was … I think we both experienced a wholly new kind of mental reception of colour impression.

And I suddenly thought of someone who had made a lot of money out of reading this paragraph in Half Mile Down.

I thought of someone who had never pretended to be a hero.

He was a painter. He had read the passage from Dr. Beebe which I had read. He had read this passage and he had said:

How can I paint when I don’t know what I paint?

He said:

I paint not things in the world but colour. How can I paint colour if I don’t know what it should look like? Is blue paint merely to represent blue?

And he had said that he must find a bathysphere, or something, that would take him down to see blue.

He had found a centre for oceanography and they had refused to let him go down. And he had gone to the yard and talked to the boatman, and the boatman liked Picasso’s Blue Period. The boatman would have taken him out at night, but then there would have been no blue. One weekend the oceanographers went to a conference and the boatman took him out and sent him down. And when he came up he said to the boatman Have you seen the blue, and the boatman said No. And he said You must see this. I can’t paint this so you must see it. You must show me how to send this capsule up and down and you must go down. The boatman was nervous but excited. He showed him how to send the capsule up and down and he stood by while the painter practised and sent the capsule up and down. Then the boatman got into the capsule and the painter winched it over the side.

The painter never painted what he saw, for he said it could not be done.

The boatman said:

I had often sent down Dr. Cooper and the research students over the years. Sometimes a student would say This is amazing. They might say it the first time or two. But there was a lot of work to be done recording observations. Sometimes they worked with the light out, dictating observations into a machine, and other times they had a light on. I had seen a lot of photographs, and once or twice I had watched TV programmes about oceanography—I took an interest because of my connection with the field, but to tell the truth it had never had an overwhelming appeal. I went scuba diving once on a holiday in the Bahamas.

When I was growing up we had a picture from Picasso’s Blue Period, and that has always been my favourite period in which he worked. Later I bought lots of books about Picasso, and the Blue Period was always my favourite. I never wanted to paint; I wanted to follow the sea. As a lad I went out on a yacht working for Dickie Lomax, as he then was, and later I was offered the job by the Oceanography Department. Sometimes it seemed to me that Dr. Cooper and his students were just making an excuse to go out to sea and go down in the capsule; they had to make up research projects to get money to do it. Sometimes I felt like saying Look, why make everything so complicated, why not just learn to sail a boat?

So when Mr. Watkins came to me I responded to him, because I thought he wasn’t making excuses—he just wanted to go down there. I don’t know if Picasso would have gone down, but I respected Mr. Watkins for wanting to do it.

I was very surprised when he suggested I go down, and quite nervous at the prospect. I didn’t like the idea of leaving the helm to someone with so little experience. I told him I’d seen the photographs, but he kept saying No, No, that’s not good enough, you must see for yourself.

At last I thought Well, it’s now or never, isn’t it? Because there was no way the professor was going to send me down just to have a look. It was a calm day, and I thought Well, if it’s got to be, so be it. So I got into the capsule, and Mr. Watkins winched me down.

As I said before, I’d been scuba diving in the Bahamas on a holiday. This was different. You might think you would get the full effect better actually being in the water, and that might be true up to a point. But in the capsule you were inside a pocket of air. What it felt like was being in a pocket of blue light—light that was blue the way water is wet.

When I came up I got out of the capsule and he made a questioning gesture at it. I nodded and he got in and I winched him down for the last time. It was only now that I realised how low the fuel supply was. The winch runs off a generator, and we’d sent the capsule down more often than the researchers usually did—they usually went down and stayed down making observations. I sat watching the needle on the dial get closer to empty, and when I started bringing the capsule up he said not yet. So I waited and started to bring it up and he said Not yet, but I had to. Just as I brought it up to the surface the motor conked out. So he climbed back on board, and I pointed to the gauge, and he nodded and sat down. I had to take us back to land under sail. The whole time we were going neither of us said a word.

The boatman said later that though later you wanted to find words for it, at the time it was so beautiful that, or rather beautiful would be a word that you would use later but at the time it was so much bigger than that that it would have hurt to talk. He said that one thing he respected in Mr. Watkins was that he had seen just in the look in his eyes that he had seen how big it was and that it would hurt to talk. A lot of people would have had to make a joke or something, but we both knew it was too big for that and we both knew we knew it.

There were other stories about this painter, because after this he decided he could not paint blue. He decided that he must see white, and this time he persuaded the pilot of a plane to fly him to a station in the far North of Canada.

He said I must be alone in the white and the silence. He walked out into the snow and he walked for miles and he was seen by a polar bear, which is one of the swiftest and fiercest killers on earth. He saw it coming toward him with its fur dirty yellowish white against the pure white snow, and then a shot rang out and it fell down dead. The stationmaster had followed him and had shot the bear as it attacked. It lay on the snow with red spots of blood on its fur, and there were drops of red blood on the snow.

Then the painter had gone back to England. He had seen white and he had seen red and he went back to England to see more red.

He went to a slaughterhouse and he said to the manager that he wanted some blood. The manager asked how much blood he wanted, and he said he wanted enough to fill a bathtub, and the manager said he was sorry but this was too small a quantity to make it worth his while. The slaughterhouse sold its blood to the makers of sausages and haggises and pet food, and it sold it in hundreds and thousands of gallons, and it was not worth his while to sell 40 or 50 gallons of blood to fill a bathtub.

The painter thought that if it was not worth his while to sell 40 or 50 gallons he would not notice if they went missing. He waited at a pub near the slaughterhouse, and at about 7:00 a man came in with traces of blood on his hands. The painter bought him a drink, and gradually he raised the question of blood, and the man said he would see what he could do. The painter had a small white van that he sometimes used to transport paintings. He drove it to the street by the slaughterhouse, and the next day the man stayed late under some pretext, and then he came to a back door. The painter had brought five plastic bins for garden rubbish, and the man filled them with blood; it took the two of them to get them in the van. The man went with the painter to his house, and helped him to get the bins upstairs. They poured the blood into the bath and the man left.

The painter laid out sheets of paper on the floor of his studio, and he put sheets of paper on the floor from the bathroom to the studio, and on the floor of the bathroom. Then he went to the bathroom and put a video camera on a stand. He started it, and he got into the bath. He sat down in the blood, hands on the rim of the bath, and then he lay down, and he took his hands off the rim, and he turned his legs sideways until he was entirely beneath the surface. He said later that he opened his eyes, but it was not as red as he had hoped. It was not as red as he had expected.

Then he sat up, and blood streamed from his hair and down his face, and he opened his eyes facing the camera.

He stood up, and he stepped out of the bath, and he walked over the paper to his studio, and he lay down now on one piece of paper and now on another. The marks on the last sheets of paper were few and light, because most of the blood had come off and the rest had begun to dry.

When the sheets of paper had dried he put them away and put more down. He returned to the bathroom and took off the bloody clothes and dropped them to the floor, and he got into the bath again. He went through the same procedure.

He did this again and again until there was only a little puddle of blood in the bath. He scooped what he could into a cup and put it on the edge of the tub, and then he ran water and filled the bath to the brim and got into the water, and now the camera recorded his bloody body lying at the bottom of the clear water.

Then he got out and walked over the paper and lay on the paper.

He went back to the bath and let out the water and filled it again and got in it again.

When all the blood had been washed away he filled the bath one more time with clear water, and into it he poured the cup of blood.

Then he let out the bloody water, and he sold the first set of bloody canvas for £150,000. It was called Let Brown = Red.

He had been pretty well known before, which was why the new departure sold for £150,000, and when Let Brown = Red sold for £150,000 people became very interested in the other pieces, which had other interesting titles, and all of them sold for even more. The general consensus at the end of the day was that the most interesting pieces were the later ones, when the blood was drying, or when it was diluted with water, but there were two camps, and some liked the bold crude earlier pieces better. Everyone liked the photocollage of the bath which went for £250,000 and the video installation. The paintings all had interesting names, and nothing was called Bloodbath or This is Not Red because he was too clever to be obvious. And later when he was interviewed he said that all the colours around us were dead, but with blood it was easier to see, and that sometimes you had to risk banality to be clear. Then he said everyone remembered the colour of blood when they saw brown, but that no one remembered any other colour when they saw any other colour. And then he filled a bathtub with blue paint and he did the same thing and he called it Let Blue = Blue.

Let Blue = Blue was felt to be more subtle and poignant than Let Brown = Red, and it was also the kind of thing some people felt more comfortable installing in a domestic setting. Individual pieces sold for about £100,000, and an anonymous American buyer bought a complete set for £750,000, and the painter was now very rich.

What people expected, obviously, was that he would now do something similar with white, maybe a white canvas with nothing on it which was not painted but just entitled, the title would obviously be Let White = White. He now had the stature where he could do something like this. That is, it was something anybody could do, but he could do it and get upwards of £100,000 for it. He was not someone who liked the obvious, however, and for many years refused to produce this inevitable work. Instead he tried to look for other colours: he was now rich enough so that he could afford drugs however expensive, and he did LSD mainly and some others that brought colours to life again. It would not exactly be true to say they stopped him working, since work was not exactly what was needed to produce Let White = White, or even the sly Untitled which a few people had predicted. He went to the States and people made jokes, they said he would be politically engaged now, he would paint Let Black = White and it would be very exciting. Instead he did a lot of cocaine because he said he needed to see the world the way the people who could afford to buy his paintings saw his paintings, and he was arrested and charged with attempted bribery, as well as possession, because he had told the policewoman on duty she could make a lot of money if she quietly made off with his fingerprints and mugshot.

The fact was that after Let Blue = Blue did so well he had sent a little piece to the Boatman. He had dipped his thumb in blue paint and put the thumb print on a piece of rough paper. Then he had drawn 50cc of blood from his arm with one of those needles they use for blood samples, and he had dipped a pen in it and written at the bottom, Let Blue = Blue. With it he sent a postcard saying You brought me up too soon. Now the piece was small, but it was absolutely unique. The Boatman did not like it as well as Picasso in his Blue Period, so he sold it for £100,000, and with that he bought a small yacht of his own and eventually a bathysphere, so that he was able to go into the pocket of blue whenever he liked.

The painter never saw blue again.

Sibylla took me with her when she went to see Let Brown = Red at the South Bank Gallery, but I was too young to appreciate it. Then when I was about eight we saw Let Blue = Blue at the Serpentine in 1995. Sibylla thought Let Brown = Red and Let Blue = Blue should be the Nativity and Crucifixion of the next half century and that it would receive better treatment by later artists. I was able to appreciate it now but he was still not my favourite painter.

But now I remembered that he had sent something to the Boatman, and I remembered especially the way he had insisted the Boatman should see for himself, and I remembered the way he had walked for miles into the white. I thought that if I asked for money to go through the Andes by mule I might get it.

The painter had had a studio in an old warehouse on Butler’s Wharf across from Tower Bridge. Then the site was redeveloped—this was before he had started making millions of pounds out of the death of colour. So he had moved to an old factory off the Commercial Road, and he had found the bathtub in a skip and had taken it there and plumbed it in himself. Then the property market fell through just as Let Brown = Red came out, and by the time of Let Blue = Blue repossessions were falling thick and fast. So now the painter was able to buy a whole warehouse off Brick Lane which a developer had been planning to develop. This was where the painter went when he came to London, although most of the time he lived in New York. Sometimes he flew to South Africa or Polynesia, but it never seemed to help.

I had read that he was back in London for a retrospective of his work at the Whitechapel Art Gallery.

I took the Circle Line to Liverpool Street and ascended to the street.

First I went to the exhibition to be on the safe side. It was one with an entry fee—that was how big he was, and that was how fast things were in the art world. He had been exciting and promising at St. Martin’s and in his early twenties, but if he had not done Let Brown = Red when he was 27 he would now have been disappointing and forgotten, and because he had they were already doing a retrospective and comparing him to Yves Klein.

After I had seen the exhibition I went up to the desk and I said: Where’s Mr. Watkins?

The girl behind the desk smiled at me.

She said: I don’t think he’s here. He came for the opening of course but he doesn’t come every day.

I said: But I’ve got a message for him from Mr. Kramer. I thought he’d be here, I’ve been looking for him everywhere. Do you know where I can find him?

She said: If you want to leave it with me I can see that he gets it.

I said: But it’s urgent. Mr. Kramer told me to put it in his hands. Isn’t his studio just up the street?

She said: I’m not sure I can give you that information.

I said: Well, call Mr. Kramer’s office and I’ll get it from them.

She dialled the number, and it was busy. She tried a few more times, and it was busy. Some people came up to ask her for help. She helped them and dialled the number and it was busy.

I said: Look, I know you’re just doing your job. But what’s the worst that can happen? On the one hand, Mr. Kramer sent me, and Mr. Watkins loses a million-dollar deal. Or he didn’t send me, and Mr. Watkins gets a strange kid asking him for an autograph. I mean, is that so terrible? Is it a million dollars terrible?

She laughed.

You’re terrible, she said.

She wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

All right, she said. You can tell me the truth now. Did Mr. Kramer send you?

I said: Of course he sent me.

I pulled an envelope out of my pocket.

See? So I’d better get going.

She said: No, wait, and she handed me another piece of paper.

I ran out the door.

The factory had a big rusting double gate, big enough for lorries to get through, and a little door cut into one gate. It was locked. I rang the bell a couple of times and I banged on the gate, but no one came.

I went up to the side street and turned right, and then I turned right again on the street behind. This had also been bought by a developer and now a wooden fence closed off a row of terrace houses. The name of a security firm was on the fence, but there were gaps in the wood where boards had been torn away; and bushes growing through the gaps. I slipped through. There was a hole where a house had been, and the houses to either side were propped with metal scaffolding. I climbed through to the back. There was the back wall of the factory with glass at the top.

There was an old apple tree at the back of what had been a garden. I climbed up until I could look over the wall.

I was looking down on a concrete-paved yard, with dandelions and grass growing in the cracks. At the back of the warehouse was a metal fire escape, and a lot of broken windows.

The ground on the other side of the wall was at a lower level than on this side—there was probably a 20-foot drop from the top of the wall. But the wall was of very old bricks, and a lot of the mortar had come out.

I worked my way out the branch until it was dipping down on the other side of the wall, and I swung down to hang by my arms and tried to find a toehold in the wall. I found something for one foot, then the other, and then I found holds for my fingers. I worked my way down, going from brick to brick. Then I went over to the building.

Getting in wasn’t so hard. I went up a drain pipe to the fire escape, then went up a flight of stairs and in a broken window.

I was beginning to wonder if I was in the right place. Maybe the girl at the Whitechapel had tricked me after all. I was in a room with a concrete floor, and piles of rubble in the corner. I went from room to room, and all were the same.

I went downstairs. I came into a dark room in the middle of the building. The only light was from the door, so I felt my way toward it. Now I was in another room with broken windows, cold grey light showing more crumbling concrete and rubble. There was a stack of boards along one wall piled almost to the ceiling, all cracked and warped, and on the floor beside them were little mounds of what looked like dust. I went to have a closer look, and they seemed to be heaps of tiny flakes of paint.

Now I heard a noise. It was a regular, metallic noise—the sound of a tool on stone. I followed it through another door into the next room, and the next, and the next, but there were only more piles of board, more silted paint. Then I went through another door and by the far wall a man in a black knitted hat and a faded black boiler suit sat on a milk crate. He seemed to have a chisel, or possibly just a screwdriver, in one hand, and he was chipping paint off the wall. I saw that the walls were painted a kind of shiny black up to a height of about five feet, except that for about five feet behind him, and the whole of the wall before that, which showed bare concrete, and a mound of chipped flakes of paint ran along the floor like the trail of a mole.

I said

Excuse me, can you tell me where I can find Mr. Watkins?

He said

What you see is what you get.

I did not know what to say. I said

Was it lamb’s blood?

He laughed.

Yes, as a matter of fact. What made you think of that?

I said

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you fully trusting in his grace this hour?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you washed in the blood,

In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?

Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

He said

I didn’t know those were the words, but yes.

I said

Those aren’t all the words. There are two other verses. It goes:

Are you walking daily by the Saviour’s side?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Do you rest each moment in the crucified?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin

And be washed in the blood of the Lamb

There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean

O be washed in the blood of the Lamb!

Are you washed in the blood, In the soul-cleansing blood is the chorus.

He said

Funnily enough no one ever thought to ask. Funny, don’t you think? You should’ve seen the look on his face when I asked for it.

He said

It was quite a job setting it up. They’ve not got much—couple pints, maybe—must’ve taken 50 of the little buggers.

He said

I wanted to see what difference a fact about the medium would make to what the thing was about. In the event that seemed banal. I thought well sod it, Rembrandt could start off doing Lot’s wife and turn it into Bathsheba and the Elders, I’ve changed my mind that’s all.

I said

Susanna.

He said

What?

I said

Susanna and the Elders. Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who was sent into battle by King David so that he could have an affair with his wife.

He said

Whatever. The point being, when I thought about it, it was too fucking much. I mean, I really couldn’t give a toss about religion. I cared about colour. I cared about that bear, I did. I could have killed the wanker who shot him. To be fair, I probably wouldn’t have liked being mauled, but if he’d wanted to do me a favour he’d have shot me and left me for the bear. It would have been more use. Nice meal for the bear, and I could’ve stayed. It was so white there. White drifting about and frozen solid and getting inside your skin.

He put down the screwdriver and took out a packet of cigarettes.

He said

Do you smoke?

I said

No.

He lit a cigarette and said

My manners may be rough but there are limits. Here was someone who’d followed me for two days and saved my life, and anyway I was I admit a little shaken as I’d been planning on freezing to death, I didn’t think I could insist on staying. So I left that white place and when I got back to England I wasn’t thinking too straight. I knew I’d have to go on to red, but I wasn’t thinking straight and I let my thinking get tangled up in a cliché, and while I was still confused I went to the slaughterhouse and set the thing up and got the slaughterhouse to get me the blood of 50 lambs.

He said

Well I realised as soon as I got on with it that it was a mistake. Banal, irrelevant, but I wasn’t going through all that again. I thought of going back and asking for cow’s blood or sheep’s blood or horse’s blood and going through it all again and I couldn’t be bothered.

He said

So I thought I’d just leave that out and see what happened, but if anyone asked I’d tell the truth. I don’t lie about my work. I was sort of surprised no one did twig it, but people aren’t very interested in belief so maybe it’s not so surprising.

He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, picked up the screwdriver and began chipping away at the wall.

He took out the cigarette and ground it out underfoot.

He said

Is that why you’re here? To satisfy your curiosity?

I wanted to say yes.

I could imagine him lowering himself into the bathful of blood, and I couldn’t imagine him sending the boatman down to a pocket of blue. I was glad to have no part of him. But I had come and I couldn’t go away without doing what I’d come to do.

I drew my bamboo sword and raised it.

I said

I came to satisfy my curiosity.

I drew it back in a slow sweeping motion.

I said

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

And he said

Out of?

And I said weak with relief

Sorry?

And he said

Who’s the alleged mother?

I said

You probably wouldn’t remember. She said you were both drunk at the time.

He said

How convenient.

I said

Never mind.

He said

You came here for money didn’t you? You thought you could stick me. You’d better pick better next time.

I said

It’s not so easy. If you pick a person to whom you could be obliged you may be disappointed.

I said

Have you seen Seven Samurai?

He said

No.

So I explained about the film and he said

I don’t understand.

I said

You sent the boatman down to see the pocket of blue. He said he’d seen pictures and you said it wasn’t enough. I thought you’d see why I want to go by mule through the Andes. I thought it would be worth fighting with bamboo swords.

He said

So I won.

I said

If we’d fought with real swords I’d have killed you.

He said

But we weren’t.

It was true that I was not his son and that it was a trick.

I thought that he probably did not know the film very well.

Kambei tests the samurai who interest him: Katsushiro stands behind the door with a stick.

His first choice is a good fighter and no coward—he comes through the door and parries the blow. He is offended by the trick and insulted by the idea of fighting for three meals a day. But the second spots the trick without coming through the door and he laughs, and he accepts out of interest in the samurai.

I said

You have certainly seen through the trick. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I hope you find what you’re looking for

though I thought that a man with his money who had bought this grey building and its grey light would look a long time for colour here. I thought that he could probably get more money for his chippings.

I turned and walked back through the three dark rooms to the stairs, and went down to the ground floor. I had reached the gate when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs behind me.

I fumbled for the lock and turned it at last and pushed the door open, and it caught on a chain and recoiled. I closed it and undid the chain and ran into the street. I began to run down the street.

I heard footsteps behind me and sprinted ahead. His legs were longer. A hand gripped my arm and we stopped.

The sky was now completely grey. The sky was grey, and the street was grey, and a big glass office building reflected grey sky, grey street, grey man, grey boy. His face was leaden and ugly, dead and dry in the nasty light.

He said

Come on then. I’ll take you to Atlantis.

He began running again, pulling me along. He ran through a lot of little streets and then we came out in Brick Lane. He began to run up the street, past the sari shops and Indian sweets shops and Islamic book shops and at last he ran up the steps of a brick building and dragged me through the door.

It was bright white, perhaps not polar white. To our right a flight of stairs ran up. To our left a door through which we went; a small entrance, walls covered with cards, another door.

We went through this door, and now we were in a very high, very long room, and along its walls and on racks across the floor were pots and tubes and sticks and papers in hundreds and hundreds of colours. We were standing by the cash register. Two people in a queue turned and stared, and one salesman said

Mr. Watkins!

And the other said

Can I help you?

And he said

No.

Then he said

Yes. I need a knife. A Stanley knife.

And while an assistant hurried to get this he was walking through the room.

His hand still gripped my arm, though not so tightly. He stopped by a display and read out ‘chrome yellow’ and he said

I wonder what the real thing looks like, eh my old son?

And he walked on to the back of the room where there were racks of paper.

He was walking fiercely between the racks of colours, not looking after that remark. There were large sheets of handmade paper with rose hips and other dried flowers pressed into them. There were pieces of paper of smaller sizes on a side table. He took one and looked at it and took it and he bought this and the knife. Then he resumed walking around and the sales assistant hovered at our heels until he told him to stop. He would pause behind a case and then someone would come around the case.

At last he said

All right. All right. All right.

His hand now circled my wrist loosely. He walked through the air as if it were water, by jars of colours for painting silk, and white fringed silk scarves in cellophane for painting, and white silk ties for handpainting, and white silk hearts in cellophane.

He stopped and he began to laugh a breathy scratchy laugh like the stubble on his face.

No cheap jokes, he said.

He said

This will do. This is just what I was looking for.

He picked up a silk heart and he took £10 out of his pocket and handed it to a salesperson. He had to use his other hand to get the money, so he dropped his hold on me. Now he went up a short flight of steps, then up another step to a platform overlooking the store, and I followed him up to the top. On the platform were three round black tables and three chairs with cane seats. There was a table against the wall with two coffee machines and a sign that said Help yourself to coffee and Milk in the Fridge; next to the table was a fridge. A couple of small speakers sent Virgin FM scratchily out.

He pulled a second chair to one of the tables and sat down. I sat down.

He tore open the cellophane with his teeth and unwrapped the white silk heart. He pulled the Stanley knife free of its cardboard.

He said

You know my agent? He can tell you who’d give money for this; he’ll find someone who’d like to buy it.

He held his thumb up. He breathed on it, and then he ground it onto the white silk.

He said

You know the old joke. I suffered for my art and now it’s your turn.

He gripped my thumb tightly. I thought he would do the same with my thumb: it was dirty enough from my climbing. He held it so tightly it hurt, and before I understood what he meant he had seized the knife and slashed my thumb with the blade.

A big gout of blood welled out of the cut. He let it gather on the blade and then he took this away and did something on the silk, and then he scooped up more blood with the knife and transferred it to the silk, and he did this nine or ten times. Then he put the knife aside and he brought my bloody thumb down on the silk beside the black mark he had made.

He lifted my hand and dropped it on the table. He retracted the blade of the knife and put the knife in his pocket.

On the white silk were the two thumbprints, one black one red with a cut across it. Underneath was written in wet letters

Washed white in the Blood of the Lamb

4

A good samurai will parry the blow

Looking for a father had turned out to be an unexpectedly high-risk activity. Stand behind the door, Kambei tells Katsushiro. Bring down the stick as hard as you can, it will be good training for you. Any more training and I might not live to see 12.

A week went by and we got three red bills on the same day. Sibylla called the project and asked when she could expect her cheque for £300 and the person she talked to was rather snide and said if they took as long to pay as she did to do the work she would probably get the cheque around Christmas. So Sibylla said she would send in 10 issues of Carpworld by the end of the week and the rest the week after that. They sent the cheque for £300 and Sibylla paid off the bills and we had £23.66 to keep going until she got paid for Carpworld.

I was reading a book on solid state physics. Sibylla gave it to me for my birthday because it said inside the front cover that the extension of our understanding of the properties of solids at the microscopic level is one of the important achievements of physics this century and because she had found a damaged copy on sale for £2.99. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite the bargain it looked, because the blurb went on to say: Dr. Rosenberg’s book requires only a fairly basic background in mechanics, electricity, and magnetism, and atomic physics along with relatively intuitive ideas in quantum physics. Sibylla thinks no one is put off by difficulty only by boredom and if something is interesting no one will care how hard it is; it is certainly an absorbing subject but to follow it you really need at least some kind of introductory materials on the above-mentioned subjects. I was getting rather frustrated but I thought I would rather die than sell the heart, not because I wanted to keep it but because it would be horrible to take money for it.

I came in one night after a useless day at the Museum of Science and Technology. Considering they charge an entrance fee you’d think they’d hire people who knew about science and technology, I thought the attendants would be able to help me when I ran into trouble but the one I asked couldn’t.

I was thinking about the Umklapp process, or thinking about it as much as you can think about it if you don’t have a fairly basic background in mechanics, electricity, and magnetism, and atomic physics along with relatively intuitive ideas in quantum physics. The Umklapp process relates to groups of waves that cross each other’s paths: there is little or no interference when the waves are in a linear medium, i.e. one in which the displacement at any point is proportional to the applied force. The waves are said to be harmonic, and the energy of the wave is proportional to the square of its amplitude; the displacement of the medium at any point can be obtained by adding the sums of the amplitudes of the individual waves at that point. If the medium is not exactly linear, on the other hand, the principle of superpositon no longer applies, and the waves are said to be anharmonic. The Umklapp process is a special case of this: if the sum of two oncoming phonons is large enough, their resultant will be a phonon with the same total energy, but travelling in the opposite direction!

The staff at the museum had not been very helpful when I had asked questions, and I knew that Sibylla would not be able to help. I was wondering whether I should try to get into a school. I came into the house and Sibylla sat at the computer with the 12 issues of Carpworld 1991 to her left and the 36 issues of Carpworld 1992 1993 and 1994 to the right. The screen was dark. I opened the door and she said:

He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

She said:

The sun’s rim dips, the stars rush out

At one stride comes the dark.

She asked if I had had a good day. I said I was reading The Solid State by H. M. Rosenberg. She asked if she could see it, and when I handed it over she looked inside. She said: What is a phonon?

I said: They are quanta of lattice vibrational energy.

They died as men before their bodies died, said Sibylla.

I said: What?

Never mind, said Sibylla. I believe that the body can survive 30 hours of typing Carpworld into a computer, for mine seems to be still of a piece.

She was flipping through the book and now she said: Oh, listen to this!

However carefully we prepare a specimen, using extremely high purity materials and very specially controlled methods of crystal growth, one form of defect will always be present—that due to the thermal vibration of the atoms. At any instant in time the atoms are never exactly at their correct lattice sites. At room temperature they are vibrating with approximately simple harmonic motion at around 10¹³Hz about an origin which is at the geometrical lattice position. Even at very low temperatures the zero-point motion of the atoms is still present.

This is delightful, said Sibylla. If you were at school they would not let you read a book like this, they would keep you from reading it by involving you in sport. And look! It was written in 1976, so that Liberace might have read it in his intellectually malformative years and profited thereby, instead of allowing his mind to solidify, we may say, to the state where the cerebratory atoms spent their time perpetually away from their correct lattice sites. I wish I understood this, said Sibylla, and she flashed a bitter look at Carpworld 1991, but I’m glad that you have come upon it so young. Approximately simple harmonic motion—it sounds so Platonic, doesn’t it? Plato says—oh what does Plato say? Or it may be the Stoics. But I think Plato says something about it in the Timaeus. And she looked even more bitterly at Carpworld 1992-94, and she said at last: Well anyway I know what Spinoza says, he says—and she stopped. And she said: Well I can’t remember the precise words but what he says is that the mind when it becomes conscious of its own weakness is saddened. Mens blankety blankety blank tristatur.

Her face was pinched and grey. Her eyes were burning. The next day I took the heart out and put it in my backpack and left the house.

I took the Circle Line and when it stopped at Farringdon I stayed on. I didn’t want to go to the agent but I was going to have to do it. Sometimes I thought the problem wasn’t really money but then I remembered that someone had saved Sib’s life because it wasn’t worth killing yourself over money.

Someone left an Independent behind at Baker Street so I went around another time doing the crossword.

The train reached Farringdon. I started reading the paper. Red Devlin had come out of hiding and was publishing a book about his experiences as a hostage. There was an article about nationalism and intervention. There was a short column about Mustafa Szegeti, who had been reprimanded by the authorities in West Papua for claiming to be Belgian consul and issuing a number of Belgian visas in that capacity. Suspicions had been aroused; the Belgian embassy in Jakarta had denied any connection with Szegeti, who was in fact of Egyptian and Hungarian descent and bridge correspondent for the Independent. When asked why he had impersonated a member of the Belgian diplomatic corps he had replied: Well, someone had to.

This was exactly like Szegeti. He had been arrested in Burma when I was six for claiming to be a delegate from the United Nations, and in Brazil when I was seven he had passed himself off as an American commercial attaché, and he had been self-appointed deputy director of the World Bank in Uganda and Bhutanese ambassador extraordinary to Mozambique. He had helped large numbers of people to escape death and torture and flee to reluctant asylums with imaginative documentation.

That was obviously not the way he made his living.

Szegeti had learned bridge as a boy from his parents, both avid players. His mother was Egyptian, his father Hungarian. They were wealthy, but compulsive gamblers, and had lived in constant uncertainty and excitement.

They had lived in magnificent hotels when they could afford it and often when they could not. On arriving they always insisted on having a grand piano installed in the suite so that his mother could play Brahms when she was not playing roulette. They ordered lavishly from room service. Sometimes Szegeti had not seen his parents for days at a time; sometimes they had not gone outside for a week, getting up to gamble and leaving the gambling to go to bed.

His mother wore only designer clothes. Once when she had pawned all her jewellery she pawned the clothes too. Men had to wear evening dress to the casino; women were not allowed to wear trousers. She put on her husband’s black tie. She did not even have the money to buy a false beard. She cut off her hair, and she glued a few wisps to her upper lip, and she went to the casino with the money raised from the clothes. She was gone for two days.

She came at last to the room. Instead of a two days’ growth of beard she had only wisps of black hair coming loose from the glue. Her black hair stood in spikes. She came to the room—they had not dared to call room service for two weeks, they had been living on half-finished boxes of chocolates and leftover breadsticks—and she threw one chip on the bed.

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

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

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

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

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

I thought: It’s not just the money.

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

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

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

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

I thought: Who knows WHAT will happen?

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

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

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

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

Diamonds?

It was the only suit they hadn’t bid.

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

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

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

He got into the taxi, and it drove off.

I had no idea where it was going.

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

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

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

No. Where’s Quaglino’s?

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

Where’s Quaglino’s?

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

Where’s Quaglino’s?

He probably isn’t there anyway.

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

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

Where’s that?

Miles away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She said:

Of course I’ll drop you off.

He said:

You’re an angel.

She said:

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

I held my breath and he said:

Well, you know Sloane Street?

She said:

Of course.

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

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

I said: EUREKA!

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

She said:

I’m sure we’ll get there somehow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The next day I went back to Knightsbridge. He had left at 11:00 the day before so I thought I’d better get there before 11:00.

I got there at 9:00, but I couldn’t get in. There was a speaker phone and a buzzer: Szegeti was on the third floor. I sat on the steps to wait. Half an hour went by. I stood by the speaker phone as if looking for a name. Twenty minutes went by.

At 9:56 a woman with a bag of shopping let herself in and I followed her through. I headed for the stairs to avoid awkward questions: I ran up the stairs three at a time.

At 10:00 I went up to the door and rang the bell.

A man in a white uniform came to the door. He said:

What do you want?

I said I had come to see Mr. Szegeti.

He said: Mr. Szegeti is not receiving callers.

I said: When would be a good time to come?

He said: It is not for me to speculate. Would you like to leave your card?

But now a voice from another room called out something in Arabic. I could tell it was Arabic but I couldn’t understand it; this was annoying as I thought my Arabic was pretty good. I had read 1001 of the Thousand and One Nights and the Muqaddimah and a lot of Ibn Battuta and I read Al Hayah whenever Sib bought a copy to keep her hand in. The voice must have said something like It’s all right, I’ll take care of it, because the man in white bowed and walked away, and Szegeti came into the hall. He was wearing a red and gold brocade robe; his hair was wet; he was wearing a lot of perfume. My opponent was a dandy of the Meiji period. This was it.

I wanted to meet you, I said.

He said: How very flattering. It’s rather early, though, don’t you think? In the days when people paid morning calls they paid them in the afternoon, you know. The custom has died out, but this civilised conception of the day is preserved in the description of a performance beginning at four o’ clock as a matinee. You wouldn’t expect a matinee to begin at ten in the morning.

No, I said.

As it happens, however, you would have been doomed to disappointment had you come at a more suitable time. I have an appointment at two—hence my unseasonably matutinal appearance. Why did you want to meet me?

I took a breath. He raises the bamboo sword. He draws it back with beautiful economy.

I’m your son, I said. I could not breathe.

He paused. He was perfectly still.

I see, he said. Do you mind if I smoke? This is rather sudden.

Sure.

He took a gold case—a gold case, not a pack—from a pocket. He opened it: the cigarettes had dark paper, and a gold band near one tip.

He took out a cigarette; closed the case; tapped the cigarette on the case; put the case back in his pocket. He took out a gold lighter. He put the cigarette in his mouth; cracked the lighter; held the flame to the tip. All this time he did not look at me. He put the lighter back in his pocket. He inhaled on the cigarette. He still hadn’t looked at me. At last he looked at me. He said:

Would it be indelicate to ask your mother’s name?

She didn’t want you to know, I said. I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind. I must have hurt her very badly.

No, she—she just realised it was over and thought there was no point. She had enough money and didn’t want to trouble you.

How extraordinary. If we’d parted on bad terms I could understand if she’d felt miffed, but you say there was nothing of that kind. And yet she chose not to tell me something rather momentous. She must have a very low opinion of me—I am glad it has not prejudiced you against me.

No, no, I said. She said she didn’t know you very well.

Then she must have assumed the worst, surely?

He was taking slow drags on the cigarette, then speaking, then smoking again.

I’m sorry to question you so closely, but you must see that this is rather wounding to say the least. I freely admit that I have none of the uxorious virtues, but that’s scarcely synonymous with an abdication of obvious responsibilities—I’d always thought the women I’d known had understood the sort of man I was. I’m not a very deep character, you know—it’s pretty easy to get my measure on short acquaintance, and if women don’t like it they don’t stick around for very long—certainly not long enough to get to a bedroom. Or is that just shorthand for a one-night stand?

Yes, I said.

I see, yes, that makes a little more sense.

He smoked again.

If you’ll forgive the question, though, am I the only candidate?

She was working in an office with mainly women, I said. Then she met you at a party.

And was swept off her feet. And this was when? How old are you?

Twelve years ago. 11.

And where? In London?

I think so.

There’s just one thing I can’t quite understand. What harm could there be in telling me the name of a woman I knew so briefly? Why should your mother care?

I’m not sure.

I see.

He stubbed out the cigarette.

It’s all nonsense, isn’t it?

I was silent.

What put you up to it, a newspaper?

No—

You want money?

No.

I felt slightly shocked. It had happened so quickly.

Have you ever seen Seven Samurai?

A long time ago. What about it?

Do you remember the scene where Kyuzo has the duel?

I’m afraid I can’t remember their names.

Kyuzo is the one who isn’t interested in killing people.

I forced myself to speak slowly.

He fights a match with another samurai with a bamboo sword. He wins, but the other man claims it was a draw. So Kyuzo says, If we’d been fighting with real swords I’d have killed you. So the other samurai says, All right, let’s fight with real swords. So Kyuzo says, It’s silly, I’ll kill you. So the other samurai draws his sword, and they fight with real swords, and he’s killed.

Yes?

So I went to see my real father three months ago, just to see him. I didn’t say who I was. I was standing in his study, and I thought, I can’t say I’m his son, because it’s true.

He had been watching me with very bright, alert eyes and an impassive face. His eyes brightened further.

You could say it to me because it wasn’t true? he said. I see!

He saw it in a single second. He laughed suddenly.

But this is marvellous!

He glanced at his watch (gold of course).

Come in and tell me more about it, he said. I must hear more. Was I your first victim?

The fourth, I said.

I caught myself about to apologise and stopped myself from saying something idiotic.

The first three were terrible, I said which was a little like an apology. Two believed me and one didn’t. They were all terrible. Then I said it wasn’t true and they didn’t understand.

You astonish me.

Then I thought of you. I hadn’t before because I don’t play bridge.

Don’t you? Pity.

I thought you’d understand. I mean, I thought if you didn’t believe it you’d still understand.

He laughed again.

Have you any idea how many paternity claims I’ve faced?

No.

Neither have I. I lost count after the third. Usually it’s the alleged mother who presents herself, with the utmost reluctance you understand, for the sake of the child.

The first time it happened was dreadful. I’d never seen the woman before in my life, or at least I’d no recollection. Instead of at once being suspicious I was horribly embarrassed—how shocking to have so little recall of a tender moment! She said it had been a few years—how wounding, you know, if she had changed so much for the worse!

At any rate I came to my senses sufficiently to ask a few questions. The thing looked more and more fishy. Then I had what I thought was a stroke of genius. I fancied myself a perfect Solomon!

I said: Very well, if the child is mine, leave it with me. I undertake to bring him up on condition that you make no further contact with either of us.

My thought was, that no mother would surrender her child on such terms to a perfect stranger. I’d scarcely uttered the words when I saw my mistake—saw the terrible temptation in the girl’s eyes. It was then that I knew for a fact that the child wasn’t mine: it was like playing an ace first trick and watching a rank beginner agonise over whether to trump. My heart was in my mouth, I can tell you!

What would you have done if she’d accepted? I asked.

I’d have had to take it, of course. Play or pay—not a very noble principle, perhaps, but only consider the sacrifice required to abandon it, for the mere paltry momentary advantage of ridding myself of this unexpected encumbrance. Life is such a chancy business, you may lose everything you have at any moment—if a stroke of luck can rob you of whatever it is you live by, where does that leave you? Easy enough to say now, but by God I was sweating bullets as I looked at the homely little brat—it’s an absolutely infallible rule, by the way, that the infants brought forward in these circumstances are ugly as sin. Its mother holds out a little red-faced, squalling thing and assures you without a blush that there is a striking resemblance. Without being unduly vain I like to think I am at least passable; it’s a terrible blow to the self-confidence to find the imposture not rejected out of hand for sheer implausibility. It is a point in your favour that you did not offer me that insult. Is your mother pretty?

Yes, I said, though it did not seem the right word. So what happened? Did she go away?

Eventually. She told me she could not let me take the child because she thought I was an immoral person. It seemed rather a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but I was too relieved to object. I assured her at once that I led a life of unparalleled viciousness, and that a child introduced to this sink of iniquity could not fail to be irredeemably corrupted. I claimed to be a regular user of a host of pharmaceutical products; I said my sexual appetite had become so jaded it could not be roused if there were fewer than four billowy beauties in the bed; I described in lurid detail sexual practices with which I will not sully your ears, to use an unhappily or, you may think, happily outmoded expression.

I was trying to keep a straight face.

And that worked?

Like a charm! Whatever the temptation to be rid of the child, she could not deliver it up to such a monster without losing face. Instead she went off and sold the story to the tabloids—how she could not reconcile it with her conscience to take money from a father of such depravity. Of course the papers adored it. I wish I’d kept a few—I remember one absolutely killing headline about Five-in-a-bed Father. I saw it unexpectedly on a newsstand and simply screamed with laughter—but like a fool I didn’t buy a few hundred to send to friends. We live and learn. Of course, it’s true that she hadn’t retracted the claim and I suppose it may have given one or two people the wrong idea, but escape seemed cheap at the price.

Have you had breakfast?

Yes.

I haven’t. Have another with me.

All right.

It came as a shock to hear my own voice. Then I thought this was impolite.

Thank you.

The pleasure is mine.

I followed him through the flat. I had spent most of every winter I could remember sitting in one museum or another looking or pretending to look at the exhibits, and I was beginning to feel right at home. There were swords with Maghribi inscriptions on the blades. There was a spectacular Qur’an in Eastern Kufic on a small table. There was an equally spectacular collection of ceramics on walls, shelves and a few more strategically placed small tables, most of them again ornamented in Kufic script in its Eastern and most stylised form. Wherever a wall was not taken up with a priceless sword or piece of pottery it was taken up with a priceless Persian miniature. I thought of the heart. Maybe I could persuade Szegeti to part with some small, unmissable objet d’art and I could sell that instead.

We reached the dining room. There was a telephone on a table by the door. He lifted the receiver and spoke into it, asking someone for another place setting.

At any rate, he resumed, leading the way to the table, after that I became much more circumspect. I made it my policy to behave with perfect courtesy throughout—nothing is more infuriating to someone who is doing something quite outrageous. Goaded by frustration, they betray themselves sooner or later. There is really no need, I find, to be crude or offensive.

Practice makes perfect, I said.

Very kind of you. As you see, it’s merely a by-product of a rather chequered career. I daresay your first couple of attempts were much worthier types who hadn’t been involved with more than a few women. Naturally they took the whole thing much more au sérieux.

He began putting food on his plate and gestured for me to do the same. I’d never seen so much food at a single meal. About three dozen eggs had been scrambled, boiled, poached, fried, Benedicted, omeletted and whatever else you can do with an egg & then placed on silver chafing dishes to keep warm. Twenty or thirty pastries had been arranged in a tasteful mountain in a basket. Three pale green melons had been hollowed out, the edges scalloped, and the halves filled with fruit carved into crescent moons and stars. There was another big basket of fruit au naturel, most of it the kinds we never bought at Tesco’s because they were 99p a shot. There was a revolving silver stand with two kinds of mustard, three kinds of chutney, five kinds of honey and twelve kinds of jam. There were crêpes with seven different fillings. There was smoked salmon, and something that I thought might be a kipper. There were glass pitchers with freshly squeezed orange, pineapple, tomato, guava and mango juice. There was silver pots of coffee, tea and hot chocolate, and a silver bowl of whipped cream for the hot chocolate.

I decided to start with a melon, a cheese omelette, three pastries, guava juice and hot chocolate.

I said: You thought she wouldn’t believe twenty at a time?

He said: Why should one be less comfortable in one’s home than in a decent hotel?

I said: Why should five in a bed be thought particularly immoral? Is it because a non-adulterous act is possible for at most one of the women? Or because the women might engage in homosexual practices and this is thought to be contrary to the will of a divine being?

He said: 9 times out of 10 a woman would prefer not to be told something she would rather not know.

He said: 99 times out of 100 it’s more useful to know what people think is wrong. You’ve got to be able to read your opponent’s mind in a tight spot; it’s no use thinking how he ought to play his hand.

I poured out some more hot chocolate and took another pastry.

How did you take up a diplomatic career? I asked with exquisite tact.

He laughed.

Oh, it was sheer accident. I was on a cruise with some friends. The ship developed engine problems, and we ended up stranded in a smallish town in Guatemala. Now obviously we could have got home—the company would have paid airfare out of Guatemala City—but in fact there were some really delightful people in the town. One of the big guns there was a keen bridge player, and of course rather cut off—he really couldn’t do enough for us. Parties were thrown, there was a dance—better than the ship in a lot of ways. Of course a lot of the passengers cleared off, but Jeremy and I hung around.

Our host was British, but he’d married a local woman. He grew bananas—everyone did, pretty much—and he’d also been made British consul. No one else spoke much English, and we didn’t speak a word of Spanish, but it didn’t matter, of course, for bridge.

Well, when we’d been there a couple of weeks I got the idea of riding out into the countryside—the roads were bad to non-existent and he did a fair bit of overseeing the estate on horseback. I borrowed a horse—a big strong thing with no breeding to speak of but plenty of stamina. The saddle was a big square leather box with an enormous silver-studded pommel—not very elegant, but comfortable. Off I rode with a boy from the plantation as guide. We headed for the mountains. The boy began to get nervous after a while and made gestures that we should go back—remember I knew scarcely a word of Spanish. I ignored him—we were just getting to higher ground, and I was determined to get above the plain.

We got up into the hills at last, and got to a small village. There was no one about. I was rather thirsty, so I dismounted and began looking for a place with water. A woman came running out of a house, tears pouring down her face—she said something I did not understand and pointed up the road.

I mounted again and headed up the road. My guide flatly refused to come. I turned a corner of the road and saw—well, I saw things that make worse hearing than my hypothetical exploits with multiple companions. There were soldiers, and a lot of graves, and peasants digging at gunpoint. They saw me, and shots were fired—of course I galloped off at once.

He put three spoons of sugar in his coffee cup and poured coffee over it. He broke open a croissant and spread butter and guava conserve on it.

He said:

I say of course, and that’s the way it felt at the time—nothing I could do, the only thing was to save my skin. But it got at me the whole way back. I kept thinking, what if just riding onto the field had stopped it? What if a witness was enough to stop it? But it was such a godforsaken place. They could have shot me and thrown me in a ditch and nobody the wiser. But I kept going over it, back and forth, the whole way back. I can’t tell you what it’s like to see something like that—that horrible place that God had turned his back on. I thought: I’m damned if I spend the rest of my life telling myself I’m not yellow. I thought: there’s got to be something I can do.

I got back to the plantation near dusk and told my host what I’d seen. He said some of the other landowners were clearing Indians off or trying to—they’d got some new machinery in, didn’t need so many people with machetes. The Indians were resisting, sticking to their villages, they’d brought soldiers in—they were being killed—nothing to be done—government frightfully corrupt.

Well, of course it was obvious there was no point going to the authorities or reporting the incident. There still didn’t seem to be much point in galloping in to save the day single-handed. But suddenly I had a stroke of genius. You’ve heard of Raoul Wallenberg?

No?

Of course you’re very young. He was Swedish consul in Budapest in WW II. The Nazis arrived and started shipping Jews out to concentration camps. Wallenberg promptly started issuing Swedish passports! Jews would be actually standing in queues on the railway platform waiting to be packed off to the slaughterhouse—and there was Wallenberg saying to the SS: This man is a Swedish citizen, I forbid you to take him! Of course not one of them knew a word of Swedish! Priceless!

At any rate, I pointed out to my friend that nothing could be simpler—we’d only to ride up with a supply of British passports, hand the things out and Bob’s your uncle!

This put my host on the spot. He said a lot of rubbish I can’t remember—something about his position being a sacred trust—at least, I don’t think he used the word ‘sacred’, but you get the picture. Now I put it to you that one could scarcely represent the Queen more honourably than by extending her protection to a pack of wretched peasants being massacred by armed thugs! I put it to him—he was most unhappy about it, but really felt he couldn’t. The fact was that he’d been there too long—felt he had too much to lose, that it would make his position intolerable. I’ve said he’d married a local woman—she may have been related to some of the culprits.

He could see I wasn’t very happy about it, and the thing is, it did have an appeal for him. Finally he struck a bargain. He said he’d stake me the contents of a certain chest on a game of piquet. He couldn’t precisely recall its contents; if I could win it, they were mine. I was to stake a thousand pounds.

I agreed to this since there wasn’t much else I could do, but it was a maddening proposition. Piquet is not a bad game—probably one of the best for two—but chance plays a much higher part in it than in bridge, and in any case it wasn’t a game I’d ever paid much attention to, so that the scope it did allow for skill did not give me much advantage. If we’d been playing bridge I’d have been sure enough of winning, though he wasn’t a bad player; as it stood I couldn’t be at all confident.

The game was hell from first to last. My cards were bad, and I was not playing brilliantly—I followed the principles of best play and lost steadily. It began to look as though I would lose the thousand pounds and be no closer to helping the poor bastards I’d seen. At last, when I was down to my last fifty, I thought to myself, The hell with this, I’ll play against the odds—either God wants them rescued or he doesn’t, I may as well find out as quickly as possible.

Of course my luck changed at once. We’d been playing five hours—it took only three to win back the money, and three after that to win the chest. We both felt like death by the end—my head was throbbing, eyes as dry as stones—and he looked worse. He can’t have thought what he was about when he suggested it, you know—that he should play for a thousand quid and the right to consign a group of innocent people to perdition. God knows what it was like defending that for 11 hours. He tossed the cards down at the end—he wouldn’t look at me—said he’d see me in the morning, and went to bed. Just at the door he turned back. He said if anyone harmed a British subject he must object to the authorities in the strongest possible terms.

I went at once to the chest—there was a whole stack of passports, and some sort of official-looking stamp.

They were the old-fashioned type of passport—God knows how long he’d had them, I shouldn’t be surprised if the consulship, and the passports with them, had been passed down from father to son since the last century—with a description instead of a photo. I let myself sleep four hours. In the morning I spent a few hours filling in the descriptions, writing hair: black, eyes: black; complexion: swarthy 50 or 60 times. I left the names blank, stuffed them in a couple of saddle bags, and rode off.

Well, you should have seen the look on those soldiers’ faces when the first peasant brought out his British passport! I’d had my friend teach me enough Spanish for ‘This man is a British subject’—there I stood among the black-haired, black-eyed, swarthy-complexioned loyal subjects of the Queen trying not to laugh my head off. The marvellous thing about it was that they couldn’t prove it wasn’t so—certainly none of them had any Guatemalan papers.

It did some good. Some of the Indians actually came to Britain on those wretched passports. Some went off into the hills to join a guerrilla group.

Anyway, having pulled off a trick like that once I got a taste for it. We’re such cowards in front of a piece of paper these days—my mother was an Egyptian, and my father was from Hungary, both countries with a particularly impressive tradition of bureaucracy, and it gave me an indescribable frisson to cock a snook at the official channels. Once you’ve tried it you realise how easy it is! Half the time no one bothers to challenge you—if you say you’re the Danish consul it won’t even occur to most people to doubt it. I felt ashamed, really ashamed of all the times I hadn’t claimed to be a partipotentiary of some foreign power of other.

I said:

Did it work at all in West Papua before you were deported?

He said:

Well, the visas got some people out of the country, but getting them into Belgium was pretty sticky. Shouldn’t have picked Belgium, really, they’ve no sense of humour worth speaking of, but I was bored with being a Dane of Inuit extraction, and there’d been a picture of me in Hello! with Paola which I thought might give the story credibility, and anyway my French isn’t half bad. My mother went to a Swiss finishing school, you see—her mother was Lebanese, and frightfully cosmopolitan—and the girls were all made to study French, German and English, with Italian for bad behaviour. That was how she met my father, as a matter of fact. She got sentenced to a week of Italian for some frightful breach of school regulations, walked straight out the door and found a lift down to Monte—reasoning, you know, that if she were independently wealthy she wouldn’t have to be finished. She pawned the little gold crucifix she’d worn at the school—she was Muslim, of course, but it was more in the way of a fashion accessory—and spent the money, what there was of it, on chips. 28, that was her number. She couldn’t lose. My father had been losing all week, but he saw the way the wind was blowing and switched to 28—he knew better than to let his luck slip once it had changed and followed her out when she left. My father had reason to curse the school; my mother took an instant antipathy to Hungarian, a language the school, she said, would not have inflicted on a girl had she enacted the 120 Journées de Sodome, and refused to learn a word of it; having heard the Arabic language put through the wringer of my father’s strong Hungarian accent she declared her native tongue off-limits, and insisted that he confine his atrocities to English and to French (German he despised, though he spoke it well), in which languages my parents conversed to the exclusion of all others for the whole of their married life.

I gathered that he did not want to talk about West Papua.

I was afraid he would throw me out any minute, so I took a couple of crêpes and a croissant and I said diplomatically:

Was your father Muslim too? I saw you had an 11th-century Qur’an so I assumed you were.

He said: He wasn’t, no, but there was never any question of my being anything else. Consider the matter from my mother’s point of view. One day she is an oppressed schoolgirl with disgusting food to eat, an ugly uniform, exclusively female companions all kitted out in the same depressing attire and the heady prospect of putting on Racine’s Bérénice for entertainment; no sooner does she sell her crucifix than, shazam! she wins hundreds of thousands of francs and has delicious meals, glorious clothes and a handsome and charming Hungarian at her feet. You couldn’t ask for a clearer sign from God.

I said: That doesn’t follow at all. If there were a divine being it would hardly arrange to communicate through a series of events which might just as well have come about through pure coincidence, and on the other hand a series of events which could come about through pure coincidence can hardly be evidence of either the wishes or existence of such a being.

He said: Not at all. You’re completely missing the point. I’m not a philosopher or a theologian, so I don’t know what one would look for in an uncontrovertible message from above; the question is what would convince a 17-year-old and a gambler and God the all-seeing all-knowing naturally did not waste time beaming syllogisms into the mind of a girl who found 10 minutes of Italian a crashing bore.

I said: But if God had just voted for Islam why did she marry your father?

But they were madly in love, he said. He sounded as though he’d never heard such a stupid question in his life.

He laughed. And anyway the Hungarian was part of the sign, so it was obviously God’s will.

I liked this piece of logic but I was glad Sibylla wasn’t there to hear it.

He said: You laugh, but you’re still missing the point. The point isn’t that she saw what God wanted and did it because he wanted it, like a simpering little dévote. She saw which way her luck lay. She wasn’t going to argue with that and neither was my father. I can see you think that’s frivolous, but if you’d got out of as many tight spots as I have with no better protection than a diplomatic immunity you’d invented five minutes before you’d take luck a damn sight more seriously than any arguments.

I still didn’t want him to kick me out so I put a couple of pastries on my plate and tactfully changed the subject and said:

How did you like Seven Samurai?

And he said:

It is a terrible film. Terrible.

And I said:

But it’s a work of genius.

He had lit another cigarette and now he raised it to his lips with the suavity of a dandy of Meiji Japan. He said: That is precisely my objection to this terrible work.

He said: I was at university at the time, in pursuit of a very beautiful, very earnest girl. I persuaded her to go out with me, but she was very serious about her studies and could only leave them for something even more serious. Seven Samurai was showing at the Phoenix for one night, and one night only: she proposed we go to that.

Consider my dilemma! That was the night of the University Bridge Club, and I had faithfully promised my partner to be there. A first-rate player, but a very short temper, and matters were at a very delicate stage—all the world had run mad for revolving discards, and Jeremy wished to follow fashion—he had devised a system of fiendish intricacy which was to be ours if I could not somehow persuade him to abandon it. The worst time in the world, in short, to annoy him, or leave him open to the influence of the fools in the club who favoured the wretched system.

But this was a chance which might not come again, and I’d been after the girl for weeks. She wouldn’t take me seriously, you see, and this was a girl who, if she could not take you seriously, would not take you at all.

Well, I knew I was a fool, and certainly in the grand scheme of things bridge was a great deal closer to my heart than this wretched girl, but I agreed anyway. We went to see Seven Samurai. I knew as soon as it began that I had made a terrible mistake.

Scenes, black and white, of peasant misery rose upon the screen, and superimposed on them dreadful visions of all the appalling results to which the discard system might lead. Hand after hand flashed into my mind—nightmarish hands in which our opponents, in easily defeatable contracts, made unmakable slams doubled redoubled and vulnerable—had unearned overtricks poured into their astonished laps—and where was I while disaster loomed? Fiddling while Rome burned.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it now—I might as well try to enjoy myself.

Cast your mind back to this film for one moment. Identify, if you can, a suitable moment at which to place your arm around the shoulders of your companion and kiss her. You cannot? No more could I. After half an hour, no suitable moment presenting itself, I chose an unsuitable moment—I was rebuked. With nothing to distract me, my mind returned with ever greater foreboding to my partner, at that very moment imbibing pernicious heresy from the lips of our fellow club members. The beautiful face of the girl stared raptly at the screen.

To my unutterable chagrin, I realised that I was completely superfluous to her enjoyment of the occasion; and that for all the good it did me I might as well have spent the evening profitably ridding my partner’s mind of error. In fact I could easily have gone to bridge club, left a little early, and met the girl at the end of the film.

There I was, however, trapped, while it ground inexorably on.

It ended at last. I walked the girl back to her college. She was pensive, silent; I at a loss for words.

Reflect now upon my predicament! The film portrayed a group of down-at-heels warriors who fight, many to die gallantly, amid circumstances of hardship and squalor. I could not but see that I cut no very heroic figure by comparison—and how could I expect that this girl, of all girls, would turn from heroism to my frivolous self? Remember, too, that the only love scenes in the film are presented in a very artificial, unpleasant way—I knew only too well that the girl would now be seeing herself through the clinical camera of Kurosawa, rather than through my own dazzled eyes.

We reached her college. She said that she wanted to think about the film. We kissed and parted.

A complete fiasco—and what a price I had to pay! Jeremy would scarcely speak to me. He sulked for two weeks—I could do nothing right. I am by nature an optimistic bidder; in the face of cold disapproval optimism withered on the vine, we played with only mediocre results. At last I could bear it no longer. I was forced to agree, against my better judgement, to his mad system of discards. The result was exactly as I had foreseen. We came third in the national championships when we might have come first, and all because I had squandered an evening watching that abominable film.

Where did you go to university? I asked, for the obvious possibility had occurred to me.

I was at Oxford. I know what you’re thinking—it’s a delightful thought, but surely most unlikely. How old is your mother?

36.

Well, it’s not impossible.

What was the girl’s name?

I think it was Rachel. What is your mother’s name?

I told him my mother’s name.

Are you sure it was Rachel?

No. If your mother goes home after parties and is nice to men of whom she thoroughly disapproves, however, she has changed out of all recognition from the girl I knew, or more likely is someone quite different who would have been a much more agreeable companion, and whom I did not have the good fortune to meet. What does she look like?

She has dark hair and dark eyes.

It’s not impossible. You said she was pretty?

In my mind I saw the beautiful girl glowing in the light of the film. If Sibylla had always watched Seven Samurai she would always have been beautiful, but there is more to life than art.

She’s not really pretty, I said. She’s beautiful. When she’s excited. When she’s bored she looks like someone who’s got two weeks to live. Someone who’s got two weeks to live & is going to spend it begging the doctor for a mercy killing.

He shrugged. You could say that of any woman. They are moody creatures, up one minute down the next—it is what makes them so exasperating and delightful.

Do they all want to die?

They have all said so at one time or another, but whether they mean it! There is not a woman in a thousand who has not said she wanted to die; perhaps one in a thousand has tried to do something about it—and for every thousand who try perhaps one succeeds. There is not much logic in it, but if they were more logical they would be rather dull.

I would have liked to hear him talk this way longer. I would have liked to hear him talk this way about anything, as if you could be impervious to sorrow just by being a man. I said:

It’s not illogical, though, not to act on a desire one thinks immoral. It’s not illogical, having failed to commit an action which may be wrong, to resist the temptation to try again. It might not even be illogical even if one did not think it immoral; one might wish to act with generosity.

I said:

She tried to kill herself once and was stopped. She thinks it might have been better if she had succeeded—she thinks it when people are very banal and boring. Now she can’t because of me.

He laughed, showing his gold-capped teeth.

Are you afraid she will try again?

I wish she were happier. I can’t see why things make her unhappy. But if they do would it not be rational to prefer a short miserable life to a long one?

Perhaps, I said, she would be better dead.

He took out another cigarette. I saw now that when he did not want to answer immediately he became even more collected. He lit it and inhaled and exhaled.

He said:

When you play bridge with beginners—when you try to help them out—you give them some general rules to go by. Then they follow the rule and something goes wrong. But if you’d had their hand you wouldn’t have played the thing you told them to play, because you’d have seen all the reasons the rule did not apply.

He said:

People who generalise about people are dismissed as superficial. It’s only when you’ve known large numbers of people that you can spot the unusual ones—when you look at each one as if you’d never seen one before, they all look alike.

He said:

Do you really want me to pronounce on someone you’ve known for 11 years and I’ve never met, on the basis of a lot of other people I have met?

He said:

Do you seriously expect me to argue with you?

He said:

Look here, I’m not likely to be much good to you on this one. If you need a friend one day give me a shout. In the meantime I’ll give you an arrow against misfortune—I’ll teach you to play piquet.

He took me into another room where there was a little table with a chessboard inlaid into it. He took two packs of cards from a drawer and began explaining the rules of piquet.

He taught me to play piquet.

He won most of the games, but I won some. I got better as we played. He said I picked it up quickly and did not play badly.

At last he said

I must dress. I’ve a two o’clock appointment and it’s nearly four—I mustn’t be too late.

He said

I wish you well. I hope you find what you’re looking for. Look me up in ten years or so. If you’ve learnt bridge and are halfway decent I’ll take you to the Jockey Club.

I went out into the street again. I walked to Sloane Square and I took the Circle Line.

5

A good samurai will parry the blow

I asked Sibylla whether she had seen Seven Samurai at Oxford. She said she had. I asked whether she had gone with someone. She said she couldn’t remember. I said I’d met a man who’d seen it at Oxford with a girl whose name wasn’t definitely not Sibylla.

Maybe I did, said Sib. Yes, now I think of it, I wished I hadn’t. It wasn’t really his kind of thing, and he wanted to hold hands. In Seven Samurai! I ask you!

Was he good looking?

He must have been, said Sib. I made him go home afterward because I wanted to be alone. You can’t do that with a plain man—they look so pathetic and uncertain. The best thing is to go to mediocre films with plain boring people, and to brilliant films with beautiful, dazzlingly witty people—in a way it’s a waste when your attention is otherwise engaged, but at least you can ignore them with a clear conscience.

Was he witty?

For heaven’s sake, Ludo, I was watching one of the masterpieces of modern cinema. How should I know whether the silent person sitting beside me was witty?

She seemed to have made a recovery from Carpworld. The project had sent her International Cricketer which she said was not too bad. I taught her to play piquet. I taught everyone at Bermondsey Boys Junior Judo to play piquet and soon everyone was turning up half an hour early to play piquet before class. I beat Sibylla 2 times out of 3 and everyone else 9 times out of 10. I would probably have won 10 times out of 10, but as Szegeti had said there is quite a high element of chance in the game.

I looked for chances to proclaim myself the son of the Danish ambassador, but none presented itself.

Or I could be the son of a Belgian attaché.

I am ze son of ze Belgian attaché, I murmured. Release this man! My father is the Swedish DCM.

I got a book on bridge out of the library. Szegeti said he would take me to the Jockey Club when I was 21, but I thought if I got really good at the game he might settle for a mature 12. There is a Jockey Club in England, but the Jockey Club is in Paris; I am hoping he meant the French one. I found out what a revolving discard is: when you can’t follow suit & want to tell your partner which suit to lead if he wins the trick, you play a low card in the suit above the desired suit, or a high card in the suit below it, so a low diamond means clubs a high diamond means hearts a low heart means diamonds a high heart means spades and so on. Now that everyone at judo knows piquet I am going to teach them bridge and get some practice.

I thought that I was beginning to get the hang of this. I had started by picking the wrong kind of father, but now I knew what to look for I could build up a collection of 20 or so. I felt ashamed, really ashamed of all the years I’d spent trying to identify the father who happened to be mine, instead of simply claiming the best on offer.

Today as I was riding the Circle Line a man came running down the stairs at Embankment. He ran into the car followed by three men. He ran along the car, dodging poles, and at the last moment dashed out again. The doors closed on the three men, who swore.

Hate to do it to him, in a way, said 1.

Still, he’s not being exactly cooperative, said 2.

I had recognised his face. It was Red Devlin.

Red Devlin had reported on atrocities in Lebanon, and then he had been transferred to Azerbaijan and kidnapped the first day. He had been held captive for five years and then he had taught one of his captors to play chess, and then he had escaped over mountains and desert. Then he had come back to Britain and gone into hiding and he had come out of hiding to publish a book six months later. It had only just come out in hardback, so I didn’t know whether it talked about ragged urchins.

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

Right you are, said 1.

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

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

He opened a gate in a hedge and disappeared inside.

Most of the crowd dispersed. A few stayed behind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The wife said: I wish you were coming too

And he said: Well, I may join you

And the taxi drove off.

It’s now or never.

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

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

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

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

I said: What are you doing?

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

I said: Is that paracetamol?

He said: No.

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

He said: It’s not aspirin.

I said: Then it’s probably all right.

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

There was no going back.

I said

I’m your son.

He said

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

I said

I’m another one.

He said

Oh, I see.

He said

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

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

He said

Oh, now I see.

He finished the drink and put the glass down.

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

He said

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

I said

I don’t want you to protect me.

He said

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

I said

I wanted to see you.

He said

You’ve seen me so you can go away

I said I would go away

He said

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

He said

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

He said

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

He said

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

I said

What about Raoul Wallenberg?

He said

What?

I said

Raoul Wallenberg. The Swedish consul in Budapest who handed out Swedish passports to Jews. This man is a Swedish citizen.

He said

You mean the one the Americans and the Swedes abandoned to the Russians because on top of saving 100,000 Jews he did a little spying for the Americans on the side and neither of them wanted to admit it? He was grand but it’s enough to make you sick

I said

Well what about Szegeti?

And he said

That charlatan?

Mother Theresa? I said.

That nun?

Jaime Jaramillo?

He said Jaramillo was all right. He said

But I haven’t seen it. What I’ve seen is

He said

You go into these situations as a journalist and you keep thinking you should stop reporting and just help. You have to be professional. You tell yourself you’re helping by letting people know what’s happening.

Well, they know what’s happening but it doesn’t do any good. You try to get some people out before it’s too late and you run into a blank wall of officialdom, and nothing does any good. And then it’s not just that you’ve seen stupid thugs with another language and a foreign uniform commit atrocities, but someone pretty much like yourself say I’m sorry there’s nothing I can do. If you’re lucky the person says Well, I’ll write to the Minister.

He said

I don’t want to go on. If I’ve got 50 years ahead of seeing the eye and the leg and the girl and the rest and the best I can hope for is someone promising to write to the Minister I’d be better off if I were out of it now.

I know it will cause a lot of people a lot of pain. Can I go on for 50 years so they can go comfortably on saying I’ve adjusted?

People tell me, you can’t let them win. You made it this far. If you kill yourself they’ve won. But it’s insane. Who the fuck is they? How the fuck does it defeat them if I wake up howling every night?

He said

Maybe reporting does a little good. But does it do enough good to justify living this way? There are plenty of others who’d be glad of my job and could do it well.

I said

Well just as long as you stay off paracetamol.

He said

What?

I said

You should never try to kill yourself with paracetamol. It’s a horrible way to die. People think you just pass out, but actually you don’t lose consciousness, you think nothing’s happened but then a day later your organs shut down. It destroys the liver. Sometimes people change their minds, but it’s too late. I’m not saying you would change your mind; but almost anything is better than dying of paracetamol poisoning.

He laughed.

Where did you pick all that up? he said. He laughed again.

I said

My mother told me.

I said

A guillotine is very quick and pretty painless, though they say the head can be conscious for a minute or so before the blood supply to the brain is drained off. I made a miniature one when I was five with my Meccano set. I think it would be pretty easy to make a big one. Of course, it would be a bit gruesome for the person who found the body. You could call the police if you didn’t want to upset a family member. There’s no way they could reach you in time to stop you.

He laughed. I’ll bear that in mind, he said. Do you know any other good ways?

I’ve heard that drowning is pleasant at the end, I said. A friend of my mother’s was rescued when she was going down for the third time. She said it hurt at first, when her lungs filled with water, but then it was drowsy and lovely. It hurt when they pulled her out and forced the air back into her lungs. That might not be too bad. You could jump off a Channel ferry at night, or maybe it would be nicer to jump off an outboard motor in the Aegean and drown in blue. There might be a few problems for your family if the body wasn’t found, but I expect it would be all right if you left a note.

Yes, he said. He was smiling. That would probably be all right. I’m going to have a drink. What do you want? A Coke?

Thank you, I said.

I followed him downstairs to the kitchen.

You seem to know a lot about it, he said.

I’m better on mechanics than pharmaceuticals, I said. I can make a noose. You want to break the neck rather than suffocate, if possible; apparently that’s quite difficult to achieve with a sheet. My mother thought I should know how in case I was ever put in prison and tortured—I’m terribly sorry.

That’s all right, he said. He drank a lot of the drink. She’s probably right. It’s not a bad thing to know—if you’ve use of your hands. I was tied up the whole time, so it wouldn’t have helped.

Except when you played chess, I said.

No, I was tied up then too. He made my moves for me. Sometimes he’d deliberately move a piece to the wrong square and pretend not to understand if I objected. You wouldn’t have thought I’d have cared, with everything else, but it made me absolutely furious. I’d refuse to play, and he’d beat me. Or he’d beat me if he lost. He didn’t beat me if he beat me.

He said

He was kind of split up. He’d be quite friendly when he brought out the board, and he’d smile. That would last for a few moves and then sometimes he’d start to cheat, and sometimes he’d lose his temper and hit me with the gun, and sometimes. The friendliness was the horrible part, because he’d be hurt, genuinely hurt, when I wasn’t pleased to see him or took offence because he’d beat the shit out of me the day before. And now that I’m back that’s all I see. That horrible friendliness everywhere. All these people who simply don’t realise, it just doesn’t occur to them that

He said

That’s what I mean about the ordinariness. That’s why it’s not enough. It’s not enough to stand up to what’s there, but people go on smiling pleasantly

My wife smiles and I see that horrible friendliness on her face. My children disgust me. They’re delightful, extroverted, confident. They know what they want, and that’s what interests them, and it disgusts me. They allowed me two weeks to be a bit strange, and then they all came to me separately.

My wife said she knew what I’d been through but this was hard on the children. My daughter came to see me and said it was hard on Mum, I didn’t know what they’d been through. My son said it was hard on his Mum and sister.

So then I think, this is bloody ridiculous. It’s unfair. They’re perfectly OK. It’s not their fault. What do you want? Do you want them to be shell-shocked and dreaming of horrors? You want them to be safe from all that. You want all the rest to get away to be ordinary. And I think, we’ve got so much. Let’s celebrate life. We’ve got each other, we’re so bloody lucky. And I throw my arms around them with tears in my eyes and I say, Let’s go along the canal and feed the swans. I’m thinking, we can walk straight out of the house, there’s no one to stop us, and we can walk by the canal because there are no land mines and no one’s shelling us, let’s not waste this. And they all look absolutely appalled because it’s such a totally wet thing to do, but they come to humour me, and of course it’s awful.

He said

When you’ve seen things, or things have been done to you, this badness gets inside you and comes back with you, and then people who’ve never been near a war, people who’ve never struck an animal never mind tortured anyone—people who are completely innocent—get hurt too. The torture comes out as disgust, and it comes out in that gush of sentimentality that chokes them. I see that but I can’t kill the badness, it just sits inside like a poison toad.

He said

Is it really doing them any good to keep the toad alive? Or even if it is can I go through a lifetime of it?

I said

It would obviously be better to die before rather than after years of suffering; no one would condemn an innocent man to a life sentence to make someone else happy; the question is whether it is really the case that nothing will blot out these memories and that nothing could be good enough to make it worth undergoing them. If that’s the question you can’t seriously expect me to know the answer.

He began laughing again. Could I give you a word of advice? he said. Don’t ever apply for a job with the Samaritans.

He could hardly speak for laughing.

My mother, I said, called the Samaritans once and asked whether research had been done on thwarted suicides to find out whether they had spent the time after the incident happily.

What did they say?

They said they didn’t know.

He grinned.

I said

Sibylla said

He said

Who?

I said My mother. She said they should recruit people like Oscar Wilde, only there isn’t anyone like Oscar Wilde. If there were enough people like Oscar Wilde so that you could staff Samaritans with them, no one would want to commit suicide anyway—they would joke themselves out of a job. You could call and someone would say

Do you smoke?

And you’d say

Yes.

And they’d say Good. A man needs an occupation.

My mother called once and the person kept saying Yes and I hear what you’re saying, which would have been reassuring if my mother had been worried about being inaudible.

So my mother said

Do you smoke?

And the Samaritan said

Sorry?

And my mother said

Do you smoke?

And the Samaritan said

No

And my mother said

You should. A man needs an occupation.

And the Samaritan said

Sorry?

And my mother said

That’s all right. It’s your life. If you want to throw it away, fine.

Then she ran out of 10p coins.

I said

It’s your life, but you should give things a chance. You know what Jonathan Glover says.

He said

No, what does Jonathan Glover say? And who is Jonathan Glover?

I said

Jonathan Glover is a modern Utilitarian, and the author of Causing Death and Saving Lives. He says before committing suicide you should change your job, leave your wife, leave the country.

I said

Would it help to leave your job, leave your wife and children, leave the country?

He said

No. It would help a little not to have to fake it all the time. But wherever I went I’d see the same things. I used to think I’d like to see the Himalayas before I died. I thought I’d like to see Tierra del Fuego. The South Pacific—I’ve heard that’s beautiful. But wherever I went I’d see a child clubbed to death with the butt of a rifle and soldiers laughing. There’s nothing I can do to get it out of my mind.

He looked at his glass.

He said

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow

Raze out the written troubles of the brain

Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff

That weighs upon the heart

He said

Therein the patient

Must minister to himself

He put his head on his hand.

He said

It is a pretty story.

He said

The world would be quite a pretty place if the only people tormented by atrocities were those who’d committed them. Would you like another Coke?

I asked whether I could have orange juice instead.

He went to the refrigerator with his glass. He came back with the glass and a can of Coke.

He said

I don’t mean it wasn’t hard on my wife. She had to shoulder responsibility. She had to write a lot of letters to people who weren’t very helpful. She had to keep going for the sake of the children.

I said

Does she want to die?

He said

I don’t think so.

He said after a pause

It changed her a lot. She became much less

He said

Or rather she became much more

He said

That is she turned into the kind of person who

He said

That is she developed a lot of skills. She organised a successful campaign, you know, that is she organised a campaign that was successful as a campaign, it had a lot of supporters who gave money when she wrote to ask them for money and went on demonstrations when she told them there was going to be a demonstration and wrote letters to their MP when she said everyone should write to their MP. The papers published her letters when she wrote letters and they covered the demonstrations when there were demonstrations, and she got interviewed on radio and TV on a regular basis. That kind of thing doesn’t just happen, you know. Anyway once it happens you become quite confident that you can get that kind of thing to happen.

He said

Would you like another Coke?

I said OK.

He came back with another drink. He said he was sorry but they were out of Coke, he had brought me an orange juice instead.

He said

It sort of spoiled things for the campaign, in a way, my just escaping like that. Apparently negotiations had reached quite a promising stage or anyway my wife thinks they looked quite promising, I could have jeopardised everything by just making a run for it. It’s irritating for her to have this have-a-go-Grandad type of attitude to deal with because she thinks it was just luck that it worked whereas she doesn’t think that if a campaign works that’s luck. It’s not that it’s a major irritant, more of a minor irritant, it’s just that I had to keep hiding how happy I was to see the dog. He practically went insane as soon as I came into the room, it was all I could do not to or actually I think I did break down and it wasn’t as if he’d developed any media skills worth mentioning or made a significant contribution to the campaign or anything. What I mean is that my wife had spent, well all of them had spent five years making progress or facing setbacks whereas I’d just spent five years

He said

So obviously when the dog died

He said

Well anyway it’s past history. You’re bored, I’m bored, you’re bored or if you’re not you would be if you’d spent as much time thinking about it

I said

Have you read that book by Graham Greene?

He said

Which book by Graham Greene?

I said

The one where he kills his wife in a mercy killing and is tormented by the memory and then he loses his memory in an explosion?

He said

Oh that one. You read Graham Greene?

I said

Only that one and Travels with My Aunt. I liked Travels with My Aunt better. My mother read the other one and she thought: that’s it, I’ll get amnesia. So she tried banging her head on walls but she couldn’t even knock herself out, and then she remembered that she’d once been knocked out by a car and she could remember everything when she came to. So she read a lot of articles on amnesia but they weren’t very helpful. Then she thought: What about a hypnotist? People are always going to hypnotists and remembering things they’d forgotten that happened to them as a child, or in a previous existence when they were Cleopatra—why shouldn’t it work just as well the other way?

He said

Now there’s a grand idea. You go to the doctor a nervous wreck and come home Cleopatra Queen of the Nile.

I said

So she called the Samaritans.

He said

And what did they say?

I said

They said they didn’t know. So she called a lot of hypnotists and they all said this was an unhealthy attitude & hypnosis as a tool of psychotherapy was aimed at helping people to confront things & no ethical practitioner would contemplate and my mother said well what about an unethical practitioner? Suppose she found a rogue hypnotist, the kind who would fornicate with the unresisting body of his subject and steal her credit cards and her cashcard and ask her cashcard PIN number and take the pearls she got for her 18th birthday, would somebody like that be able to make her forget everything that had happened in the last 10 years or so?

He said

And what did they say?

I said

They hung up.

He said

So then what happened?

I said

She tried to kill herself.

He said

That must have been hard for you.

I said

Oh that was before I was born. I think she regrets it when people make fatuous remarks but now that she has me she thinks it would be irresponsible—sorry.

He said

It doesn’t matter. It’s what anyone would think. I did write the book, you know. I wrote the book and gave a lot of interviews and signed copies—funny the things people will buy.

He stood up and walked up and down. He went to the window and said

What a glorious day!

He said

Do you think sales will go up?

I said the signed copies would be worth more anyway. He said he was a fool not to have thought of it but anyway he’d given all his author’s copies to prominent supporters of the campaign.

I was still feeling bad for having said my mother thought it would be irresponsible, and I was about to say that the cases were different because I didn’t really have a father when I remembered that I’d said he was. Then I thought maybe it would not be too bad to say: Well, I grew up without a father and I’m all right, I mean I don’t think I’d have been better off if somebody had gone through ten years of hell to be there. Then I suddenly thought, that is I suddenly thought that at that very moment Sibylla was at home teaching the Little Prince. What if at that very moment she had taken out a bottle of pills and said if she could not be a person without a past she would be a person with no future and the Little Prince had said That’s all right you go right ahead?

He was still standing by the window. There were four African violets on the sill; he was running his thumb over the fuzz on a leaf. He was whistling under his breath.

I haven’t described him well or at all. He was right in a way that it began to get boring after a while, but in another way it didn’t really matter what he said. You could see that he was someone who could make someone who had seen his male relatives lined up and shot at the age of four and his female relatives raped and then shot want to play chess. When you were with him you wanted to go on being with him whatever he said. When you made a joke and he laughed you wanted to do ten handsprings. I wished I had had him around for ten years or even five even though he was probably the kind of parent who set limits and even though it was hard to imagine him fitting into the kind of lifestyle where you could learn Greek at a reasonable age and even though the one boy and one girl had probably watched Sesame Street and he probably thought it was about the right level. And I started thinking: What if he changed his mind?

Then I thought: What if Sibylla told the Little Prince what she wants to forget? When I asked her she always said Never you mind or Well anyway I don’t know why I complain it’s not as if I was tortured. At least I hadn’t said that. I thought: I want him to try to go on getting over it so I can go on seeing him. I thought it was weak and cowardly to want this and it was weak and cowardly to want the Little Prince to say give it more time and if I were weak and cowardly I really would be my father’s son. But I couldn’t say you go right ahead.

I said

Do you want to give Oscar Wilde a chance?

He said

What?

I said

We could watch The Importance of Being Earnest. I could go to Blockbuster Video and get it out.

He said

That’s OK.

Then he said

Well, OK.

I went out the front door. We kept the video card in my pocket because Sibylla tended to lose things, and I had £1.50. I ran all the way to Blockbuster Video just in case he decided to take the pills before I got back.

The set-up in Blockbuster was different from the one we went to, so it took a while to find the video. They had Seven Samurai, but so many people in it say it’s better to die than face certain misery that I thought it would be better not to risk it. They had Ace Ventura Pet Detective which I had always wanted to see but Sibylla refused to get out; I suspected, however, that this might not be as efficacious as the Wilde. At last I found it. I had to argue for a long time with the girl at the register because our card was for a different branch.

I said

Please. I have to have it. It’s a matter of life and death.

She said

Don’t overdo it

I said

No really it’s for a man who’s thinking of committing suicide he was held hostage and tortured and it haunts him and I thought maybe just maybe The Importance of Being Earnest would do the trick because when my mother feels depressed it cheers her up to walk on the Wilde side.

She said

Really.

I said

Well no not really it’s for my sister she’s doing A-levels and they always ask a question about comparing the play with the film only she never had a chance to see the film. Our dad’s unemployed so she has to work part-time so she never had the time and now the exam is tomorrow, and if she doesn’t do well on the exam she won’t get her grade for university because English is her best subject and it’s too late to do anything about French and Sociology. According to a recent survey in the Independent more and more employers expect employees to have a university degree.

She said

Third time lucky

I said

Well actually it’s for my two little brothers. Siamese twins, they were inseparable from birth and did everything together. If one does something the other must too, but unfortunately their heads are inconveniently placed so that they cannot watch the same television screen at the same time. We tried mirrors but then whichever one got the mirror complained. A disability allowance from a generous government has covered the cost of an extra television and video set, a single copy of Aladdin, and one towel. One night The Importance of Being Earnest in the classic Redgrave/Denison production was shown by the BBC; both twins were able to watch, enthralled. Unfortunately my mother did not have two videotapes on which to record the film—foreseeing trouble, she did not record it at all! To no avail, for having seen it once they must see it again—and a pair of Siamese twins, once enraged, makes a noise which cannot easily be ignored. In despair did my mother venture forth to our local Blockbuster, only to find that they had but a single copy of the film. Fear not, said I, I will go to Notting Hill and get a second copy of the film; they have few enough pleasures as it is, God knows, and my mother agreed, for she was certain that Blockbuster would not let us down.

She said

Why didn’t you say so before

I said

You didn’t ask me before

I set off at my five-minute-mile sprint.

I went up to the front door again and knocked. He came to the door straight away.

He said

I’m sorry, I should have given you some money.

I said that was all right. He looked brighter than he had before. He led me down a hall to a room at the back of the house where they kept the TV and VCR. He had put some crisps in a bowl and some peanuts in another bowl.

I turned on the TV and VCR and put the film in. There were some ads for the Classic Collection and then the film began.

He sat in his chair watching the screen very seriously. He laughed when Lady Bracknell said Should you become engaged I, or your father if his health permits, will inform you of the fact and he laughed at some of the other jokes. After a while I forgot about him.

After a while I looked over to see whether he was enjoying the film.

He had turned his head to one side. His cheeks were wet.

He said

This isn’t going to work.

I turned off the video and pressed rewind.

He said

It’s not going to work and I haven’t got a lot of time. They’re only going for a few days. It was worth a try though.

He said

This has helped in a way, anyway. I’ve some letters to write. I didn’t think I’d be able to because I think the important thing is to say I love them and I find it quite hard to say that because I’ve really only felt anything for the dog since I got back. I’ve said it of course but there’s something that won’t let me make a lie my last word. I think I can live with a penultimate lie. Whereas it can’t hurt you to hear the truth.

He said

This will probably take some time. You can go or stay as you like.

I said I would stay if that was all right.

I followed him upstairs to his desk. He sat down and got out several sheets of paper and wrote Dear Marie.

I went to sit in a chair. I took out Thucydides and began to read the stasis at Corcyra.

A couple of hours went by. I got up and went to the desk; he was looking down at a sheet of paper on which were written the words Dear Marie.

He said

It’s just an accident it turned out this way. I was in Beirut for a long time, but a lot of people were there a long time. Sometimes you think you’ll go berserk watching the it’s frustrating but there’s a lot to do. You spend so much time trying to organise transportation to some place where you hear something’s going on, or trying to make contacts, or trying to anyway you’re always pretty busy, even so it gets to you but then you all get drunk and talk. Once I was caught there was absolutely nothing to do but think. Lie on the floor thinking will Clinton do this will the UN do that without the distraction of if I talk to this person about that jeep. It’s stupid. If I’d gone out and got drunk with some mates before I left it probably wouldn’t have or at least it would always have been but at least it wouldn’t have been anyway other people seem to adjust insofar as you can adjust and I would probably have adjusted.

He said

maladjusted by a simple twist of fate. It’s hard to know what to write.

He said

Is it patronising to say what you think someone would like you to be able to say? Or should I say

He said

You know what I’d really like?

I said

Apart from the obvious

He said

Cheeky bastard aren’t you—sorry.

I said

What?

Then I said Oh. I said It doesn’t matter. What would you really like?

He said:

I’d like some fish and chips. Would you like some fish and chips? Why don’t we go out and get some fish and chips and I’ll finish this when we get back.

I thought this might be a good sign, maybe it was an excuse to put off doing it, maybe he would realise he was making excuses and didn’t really want to do it.

We went out to the High Street. I dropped off the video and we went on to get cod and chips at a place nearby. I thought people probably thought he was my father.

The staple food at home was peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Sometimes we had peanut butter and honey for a change. I was trying to eat my fish as slowly as I could to make it last. He ate two chips and a piece of the fish and he said

This is shite. They’ve done something to it. I can’t eat this.

He was about to throw it away when I said it tasted all right to me. I said I would eat his if he didn’t want it.

He handed it over and we walked through the streets while I ate.

I tried to make it last as long as I could to put off going back. I couldn’t believe I was walking beside Red Devlin, that he had gone through all the years of saying Sure you can and Oh go on and all the years in the cell and the months trekking cross-country to be walking here with me.

Of course, one of the things people had always complained about was that Red Devlin was not at all particular about his friends.

At one time Red Devlin had a friend who belonged to a club. I don’t think it was the Portland but it was that kind of club. They used to go there and have a few drinks and one night they ran into a man who owned a chain of supermarkets. The man was angry and aggrieved because he wanted to open a supermarket in Wales, a supermarket on a scale never before seen west of the Severn, and though he had got planning permission and carried out feasibility studies local residents were making a nuisance of themselves. The supermarket was supposed to be built on a field that wasn’t being used for anything, and the local residents claimed that children played there and that their lives would be blighted if they could play there no more.

Red Devlin’s friend had heard this story or others like it too often to enjoy it and he soon excused himself. Red Devlin continued to talk to the man, who pointed out that children could play anywhere, that it was not as if he were planning to build over a park it was just a field and that he was a businessman.

Red Devlin said: Kids. The things they get up to.

The man said: I am a simple businessman.

Red Devlin said: This round is on me.

The man said: No no—

Red Devlin said: I insist

The man said: I insist

I insist

I insist

I insist

I insist

But Red Devlin insisted and the man was touched because if you are rich everybody thinks you are made of money.

This time Red Devlin didn’t even say Sure you can or Oh go on. The man said: As I was saying, I am only a simple businessman

and Red Devlin said: Your hands are tied.

The man said: Precisely. My hands are tied

and Red Devlin said: With the best will in the world

and the man said: My hands are tied.

Your hands are tied, said Red Devlin.

My hands are tied, said the man.

Your hands are tied, said Red Devlin.

My hands are tied, said the man.

Where is this field again? said Red Devlin.

Wales, said the man.

Much the best place for it, said Red Devlin.

It’s a fantastic location, said the man.

I wish I could see it, said Red Devlin. Shame it’s in Wales.

We could go in my car, said the man, but I gave my driver tomorrow off because I’m in meetings all day.

Same again? said Red Devlin.

This is mine, said the man and Red Devlin said No I insist.

They talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and the man said My hands are tied and Red Devlin said Your hands are tied and This is my round and the man said No I insist and Red Devlin said No I insist.

Then the man said: Wait a minute! We’ll take a taxi!

They took a taxi to Wales and in the taxi the man explained various aspects of the movement of capital, Say a bakery goes bust, he explained, if it goes bust it’s because it does not represent the most effective use of resources in the locality, it goes bust, the stock is sold off, of course I’m taking a very simple example, all the ovens and mixers don’t just vanish off the face of the planet they are bought and used for another business which utilises them in a cost-effective manner new jobs are created somewhere else people forget to look at the bigger picture and Red Devlin agreed that they did.

They reached the field a little before 7:00. The sun was just coming up. In the middle of the field was flattened bare dirt where people played football, and around that grass, with tall weeds and some bushes around the edges of the field and a row of willow trees where the field followed a river. The man explained the advantages of the location for a supermarket and he explained that it was too good an opportunity to pass up and that his hands were tied, and Red Devlin said Your hands are tied.

Then they went into the town to have breakfast. They talked about this and that and from time to time the man would observe that his hands were tied and Red Devlin would agree that they were. At 9:00 the man suddenly remembered why he had given his driver the day off. He began to laugh, and he said a lot of things to Red Devlin which he left to the imagination when he later told the story in ‘My Biggest Mistake’. Then he called his secretary on his mobile to tell her he had food poisoning and could not make his meetings. He hung up and (as he explained in ‘My Biggest Mistake’) said some more things to Red Devlin until the air literally turned blue. He pointed out that Red Devlin did not know the first thing about business and Red Devlin agreed that he did not. The man said My hands are tied and Red Devlin said Your hands are tied.

They walked around the town. There was a wall along the seafront with some rocks at the bottom, and a village green a few feet across. They went back to the field and saw mothers with small children; they went away for lunch and when they came back they saw boys playing football. The man said it was too late to go back. Red Devlin agreed that it was too late to go back. But even though it was too late to go back the field was developed in a much more modest way than originally planned, and though the businessman knew he was every kind of fool he cancelled the supermarket and improved the site only by adding a set of goalposts and some swings and slides. Later the man would occasionally have a drink with Red Devlin and reminisce about Wales and turn the air blue again for old times’ sake.

I remembered this story and I remembered stories about really terrible people Red Devlin had known. There was a story no one knew much about, only a few details had come out after the man in question had been found stabbed to death in a Bangkok canal, and there was a story about a man who had owned a carpet factory in Pakistan a man who prided himself on the quality of his carpets naturally he regretted the necessity but the fact was if you did not use children you did not get the same quality he was a simple businessman his hands were tied and yet one day he set aside the business habits of a lifetime.

I was down to my last chip when I thought I knew what to say.

I said: What if a person was doing something terrible because everybody else did it or anyway some people did it, and then they stopped even though everybody else was doing it and it was dangerous to stop? Wouldn’t that be a dazzling act of goodness?

He said: It could be.

I said: But in that case don’t you see that all the time? Or couldn’t you if you wanted? I thought

I didn’t know how to go on, I was embarrassed to mention all the insane things people had done because they’d talked to Red Devlin.

Red Devlin didn’t say anything. He looked at me, and then he looked at two or three people walking by, and then he looked at the ground.

After a while he said

All I have to do is open my mouth.

He said

That’s what I thought when I was locked up I thought I had to get out because otherwise—

He walked on for a while and then he said

—and when I got out I saw that was what everybody thought they were waiting for me to—

He stopped suddenly on the pavement. He looked at me and he said:

Open Sesame.

I said What?

He said Open Sesame. Here I am back at last to say Open Sesame so people who were just doing what they had to do because everybody has to do what they have to do because everybody is waiting for somebody to say Open Sesame and it’s not a thing that just anybody can say so here I am and I’m saying it and they can stop

I said: I just meant that there was a possibility

He said: That people will do something if they hear the magic words? Or that they will by miraculous dispensation do without the magic words?

I said: That’s not fair. Suppose you were born into a society

He said: Most people are

I said: A slaveowning society

He said: A society of slaves

I said: All I meant was

He said: I liked the Bad Samaritan better. I suppose a Good Samaritan sleeps better nights.

We had turned into his street again, and now he talked to me patiently. He had been saying things that he wanted to say but now he said things he didn’t especially want to say but which he thought would make me sleep better nights. He said patiently

You don’t understand. It’s not a question of what’s fair to expect. Some people do what they do because everybody does it and it doesn’t make them sick that that’s what everybody does it makes them feel trapped once or twice but better most of the time. If somebody says the magic words they wake up for a little while and go to sleep again. You think I should stop feeling sick if somebody does something because they hear the magic words, but it’s not a question of should, it’s a question of what happens. It doesn’t. That is it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t and that’s why I can’t say it any more, I just look at people. Sometimes I look at them thinking What are you waiting for and sometimes I look at them and say What are you waiting for.

We went into the house. We went back upstairs and he explained patiently that if he could go on waking people up for 50 years by saying Open Sesame you could probably say he should do it even if he felt sick but actually he couldn’t say it any more to anyone who was waiting for him to say it. So it just came down to what we had talked about before.

I said: Were you waiting for me to say Open Sesame?

He said: I’m not now, anyway. I’d better write those letters.

He sat down at the desk again and started writing, and I sat down in my chair. It was about midnight. After a while I fell asleep.

I woke up a couple of hours later. There were four or five envelopes on the desk. Red Devlin was sitting on the bed with his back against the wall; I could see the whites of his eyes. I turned on the lamp beside my chair, and now I could see that the pills on the dresser were gone.

He said

Are you my son?

No, I said.

He said

I didn’t think so. I’m glad.

He laughed and said

I didn’t mean that the way it sounds. I just meant you could do better.

That was the last time he laughed. He sat quietly, looking down, as if it tired him to look into a face. I didn’t say I didn’t think I could do better.

After a while his eyes closed.

I waited two or three hours until I was pretty sure there was nothing left but a thing in corduroy trousers and a blue shirt. The clubbed child and the weeping eye and the smiling chessplayer were gone. I took his hand in mine. It was still warm, but cooling. Then I sat on the bed beside him and put his arm over my shoulder.

I sat beside him while the body grew cooler. I thought at one point that if I called a hospital the organs could still be transplanted, but I thought his wife would be upset if she came home to find that even the mortal remains did not remain. In one sense, of course, it is absurd to feel better because the corpse of one’s beloved is anatomically complete; to embrace a dead body with a kidney.

I wished I’d discussed it with him. I did not think his wife would enjoy arriving at a more rational position immediately after discovering the fact of his suicide.

I tried to remember how long it took rigor mortis to set in. I put his arm by his side again and cried on its chilly shoulder. It was all right to do this now that it couldn’t make him feel he had to make an effort, maybe even that he had to go on being sick.

I spent the night beside it. I felt better with the dead thing beside me, reminding me that he had killed the clubbed child and the weeping eye.

In the morning his cheek was ice cold. It was about 5:00 when I woke up; the light was still on. I lay for a little while by the hard, cold thing on the bed, thinking I should get up and do something. I thought: Well anyway he doesn’t have to get up. He’d said once that he woke every morning at 5:00 and lay staring at the ceiling for two or three hours, hoping to fall asleep again and telling himself he might as well get up. After five or ten minutes he would see the smiling chessplayer for the first time that day, and tell himself he might as well get up, and lie staring at the ceiling.

I put on his denim jacket, and emptied the pockets. Then I took the letters from the table and went down the street to post them.

6

A good samurai will parry the blow

I got home one night about 9:00. Sib was typing Sportsboat and Waterski International.

I thought I could slip upstairs, but she looked up. She said: Is something the matter?

I said: No.

She said: So what’s not the matter?

I said: Well

I said: Somebody killed himself. I told him about Jonathan Glover and leaving your wife but he said that wouldn’t help.

Sib said: Well

She put her hand on my shoulder.

I thought: Why am I keeping her here?

I kept thinking that I had let Red Devlin go where he wanted to go and he’d never done anything for me. I kept thinking I should say You go right ahead.

I said: Do you ever think about Jonathan Glover? Maybe you should leave the country and get another job. Go somewhere where you don’t need a work permit.

Sib said: You mean go back to the States? But I don’t want to go back to the States.

I said: Why not?

Sib said: You can’t get Nebraska Fried Chicken. It’s too depressing for words.

I thought I should not let her get away with this. I was still wearing his jacket; Red Devlin wouldn’t have let her get away with this.

I said: You could stop typing British Ostrichkeeper and get another job.

Sib said: There are too many people I don’t want to see. Anyway why are we talking about my problems? Tell me about this person who died. Were you friends?

I said: What’s the point in talking about him? He doesn’t have any problems. There’s no one to have his problems any more. Why don’t you go back?

Sib said: I don’t want to talk about it

Sib said: You know, whenever my father met somebody stupid who’d been to Harvard he took it as a personal insult.

I said: This is a reason not to go back to the States?

Sib said: You should have heard him when they gave a chair to Dr. Kissinger, a man with the blood of millions on his hands.

I said: For this you’re typing British Ostrichkeeper?

Sib said: The thing is

Sib said: It’s just

Sib paced up and down. At last she said: You know, I don’t know if you know this, Ludo, but if you have a motel you can always buy another motel.

I said: What?

Once you’ve got one motel you can always get another, said Sib. And if you can get another you can’t really pass up that kind of opportunity.

I said: What?

Sib said: It’s something you only really understand once you own a motel.

I said: As I was saying

Sib said that her Uncle Buddy had vaguely imagined that making a success of a motel might be a route out of accountancy, and that even at 30 it might not be too late to try something different. She said her mother had imagined that making a success of a motel might be a way of paying for musical training, since with her background she was not likely to win a scholarship anywhere she might actually want to go. She said her father had put up the money for the down payment and her mother and uncle had thrown themselves into making it a success, and one day it turned out her father had spotted the potential in another location.

I said: But

Sib said the thing was that the whole scope for profits in motels lies in spotting previously unspotted potential, and that her father had turned out to have an unsuspected flair for it. She said the potential of a place consisted in its being a place people were going to want to be in a few years’ time, and for it to be unspotted it had to be a place nobody wanted to be when you were buying the building or site for a future motel.

I said: But why

Sib said few places with unspotted potential boasted even an amateur chamber music society, let alone a symphony orchestra, so that musicians were even less likely to want to spend a lot of time in one than all the other people who had—

I waited for Sib to go on. I thought maybe if I didn’t say anything at all she would finally explain.

My father never talked about his father, said Sib. My mother complained constantly about her parents, who were always sending presents of sweaters from Philadelphia.

I waited for Sib to go on, and after a pause she went on:

A brown paper parcel would arrive at a motel going up on the outskirts of Pocatello. ‘Oh, my, God,’ my mother would say, splashing neat Scotch into a glass and drinking it in a single swallow. ‘Well, might as well open the damn thing.’ She would tear open the brown paper, tear open gold paper, open the shallow box from Wanamaker’s and lift from the layers of tissue paper a cashmere sweater in pale lemon or chartreuse or frosted plum, with mother-of-pearl buttons. ‘Well, might as well try the damn thing on,’ she’d say at last, shrugging into it and rucking the sleeves up to her elbows in the what-this-old-thing way she and her friends always wore cashmere sweaters. She’d take out a cigarette, crack a match and light up, sucking the smoke in deep though she always said it played merry hell with the voice. ‘It’s the hypocrisy of it that really gets to me,’ she’d say, and she’d sit down to start a note that began ‘Dear Mom, Thank you so much for the scrumptious sweater’ and sit smoking and staring into space.

I waited for Sib to go on but she didn’t go on. She picked up the remote. ON. PLAY.

I thought: This is an explanation?

STOP.

The thing is, said Sib. She walked up and down.

Do you know what Boulez says somewhere? she said.

No, what does Boulez say somewhere? I said.

Comment vivre sans inconnu devant soi. Not everyone can.

Fine, I said.

Do you know what I said when I woke up? said Sib.

No, I said.

Rage, rage against the dying of the night. You wouldn’t have wanted to hear that from your friend.

No, I said.

On the other hand what’s done is done and here I am and London, with all its shortcomings, is hardly a place of previously unspotted potential. How many people on the planet?

Five billion, I said.

Five billion, and as far as I know I am the only one in all those billions who thinks children should not be in absolute economic subjection to the adults into whose keeping fate has consigned them. I think I should stick around and write a letter to the Guardian.

I said I could write it and sign it Ludo Aged 11.

You can write to the Independent, said Sib. And I’ll write one to the Telegraph signed Robert Donat just on the off-chance.

For someone who believes in the importance of rational argument Sib avoids the issue 9 times out of 10.

She began walking up and down and walking by the piano paused and sat down and started playing a short piece she has been playing off and on for years.

7

I’m a genuine samurai

My father brought out a book about his visit to Easter Island.

Hugh Carey left to walk across Russia alone.

Sorabji got a knighthood.

The painter left to walk across a desert.

Szegeti joined his partner to win the World Bridge Championship 1998 after completing a brief fact-finding mission in Jackson, Mississippi for Nelson Mandela.

People went on with their lives and got on with their jobs.

I didn’t look for another father. I should have gone around saying Open Sesame, but I just wore his jacket and rode the Circle Line around and around and around.

One day I took the Circle Line to Baker Street. It didn’t matter which way I went, so I walked along the Marylebone Road and then turned north. I walked up one street and turned left and down another and turned right and up a third and turned left again. Halfway up the street I heard the sound of a piano.

A herd of octaves fled up and down the keyboard like panicked giraffe; a dwarf hopped on one foot; twelve toads hopped four-footed. I sat on the doorstop while the XXV variations of Alkan’s Festin d’Aesope dazzled an indifferent street. So who’s this? I thought. I had heard Hamelin’s recording of the piece, and I had heard recordings by Reingessen and Laurent Martin and Ronald Smith and I had once heard a broadcast of Jack Gibbons, and when you have heard these recordings you have heard the five people in the world who play it. This wasn’t one of them.

Glenda the Good glided on a gleaming sea drawn by six snowy swans. The Grande Armée crossed Poland on pogo sticks. A woman with a shopping bag walked across the street and up steps. A man with briefcase walked briskly by like an overacting extra.

Six dogs tapdanced on tabletops.

The Variations came to an end. There was a short pause.

A flight of octaves took off like startled flamingoes. No one stopped and stared.

He played variations on the Variations and variations on the variations and he would play one variation next to another next to which it had not originally been juxtaposed.

Are you ready for another fight? No prospects. It could be dangerous.

I stood up and knocked on the door.

A woman came to the door. She said: What to do you want?

I said: I’ve come for my piano lesson.

She said: Oh.

She said: But he doesn’t give lessons.

I said: He’ll see me.

She said: Oh I don’t know

I said: I’ve come for a lesson on Alkan, the once celebrated contemporary of Chopin and Liszt, passed over for the directorship of the Conservatoire through sordid political machinations in favour of a mediocrity and so condemned to a life of bitter obscurity only to die (as legend has it) crushed under a bookshelf while attempting to take down a volume of the Talmud. Only six people in the world today play his music of the six perhaps three are active of the active only one lives in London I have come for a piano lesson with him.

She said: He hasn’t said anything to me.

I said: Oh, go on

She said: Well all right then.

I went through the door. I was in a big room with a bare floor and peeling plaster and a grand piano. Someone sat at the piano—I could only see his legs.

He said:

What do you want?

He raises his sword. He draws it back with a slow sweeping motion.

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

He stood up. He was about 25. He was no Mifune lookalike, but it was not likely that I was his son.

He said: What is this shit?

I didn’t know what to say. Then I thought of something to say. I said:

Hey you!

asking me ‘Are you a samurai?’ like that…

what a nerve!

He said: What?

I said:

Even though I look like this, I’m a genuine samurai.

I did not seem to be making much of an impression. I persevered:

Hey, I’ve been looking for you the whole time ever since then

thinking I’d like to show you this.

Look at this.

This genealogy.

A genealogy belonging to my family for generations.

You bastard (you’re making a fool of me)

Look at this. (You’re making a fool of me)

This is me.

He said Ah.

He said:

This Kikuchiyo it talks about is you?

I said:

That’s right

He said:

Listen, if you’re definitely this Kikuchiyo it talks about

You must be 13 this year

This genealogy, where did you steal it?

I said:

What? It’s a lie! Shit! What are you saying?

He laughed.

I said

You left out some lines

He said

I haven’t seen it in years, Kikuchiyo-san.

I remembered suddenly that according to the Kodansha Romanized Japanese-English Dictionary kisama is [CRUDE] and very insulting, that according to Sanseido’s New Crown Japanese-English Dictionary kono yar meant you swine, and that according to Japanese Street Slang baka was Japan’s most popular swear word, baka ni suru meant don’t fuckin’ fuck with me and shiyagatte was the offensive gerund. I thought I’d better stop while I was ahead.

I went over to look at the piano. It was a Steinway, but it was the only thing in the room apart from a rolled-up sleeping bag and a suitcase.

I said

Did you know that Glenn Gould practically rebuilt CD 318 so that it wouldn’t sound like a Steinway?

He said

Everybody knows that.

He said

Do you play the piano?

I said

Not Alkan.

I said

I can play Straight No Chaser.

He said

It doesn’t matter. I don’t give lessons. I don’t even give concerts.

I said

I wasn’t asking for lessons.

Then I said

Why don’t you give concerts?

He started walking up and down the bare floor. He said

I kept giving the wrong size of concert. People missed their trains and they found it detracted from their enjoyment of the evening.

Then he laughed. He said: I thought a few hours one way or the other couldn’t matter but people don’t like to catch just any train.

He was still walking up and down. He said: People kept giving me good advice.

I said

Why don’t you make a CD?

He stopped by the window. He said

No one would buy the kind of thing I’d like to put on a CD and I can’t afford to make a CD that no one will buy.

I said

Variations on variations on variations

& he said

Something like that.

He said

It’s funny the things people won’t buy.

He started pacing up and down the floor again. He said

When you play a piece of music there are so many different ways you could play it. You keep asking yourself what if. You try this and you say but what if and you try that. When you buy a CD you get one answer to the question. You never get the what if.

He said

It’s the same only worse in Japan. People take the train every day. They get on a train and get off and get on and get off day after day.

He said if that was the thinkable you’d think the unthinkable would be—

He said even if you weren’t interested in music wouldn’t the idea that things could be different—

He stopped by the piano. He said

But actually people don’t really like a piece of music until they’re used to it.

He began picking at one of the thin steel strings of the treble. Ping ping ping ping ping. Ping ping ping

He said

I’m stuck in a rut myself. I’ve been doing this too long. I keep telling myself I should bite the bullet, play some of my party pieces and make a comeback. What’s the use of spending my life in this room?

Ping ping ping

Then I go and look at CDs.

Ping

Hundreds of CDs with whole pieces played once for the thousands of people who want CDs with whole pieces played once.

Ping

So those thousands of people are doing OK and they’ll go on doing OK even if I don’t play my party pieces

Ping ping

But anyone who wants to hear what if can’t hear it anywhere, not in the store not in the world not with that kind of piece

Ping ping ping ping ping

He said

I can’t afford to make a CD that 5 people would buy, but there’s something about playing my party pieces for the thousands of people who can always find party pieces to choose from, there’s something about walking away from the 5

He said

Not that I’m doing them much good in this room.

I said

Well I could afford to make a CD that no one will buy

& he said

What?

He said

Why, do you have £10,000?

I said

I’ve got something that’s worth a lot of money. I could get a lot of money for this,

& I took the painter’s heart out of my backpack. It was in a plastic folder to protect the silk, the white silk was still white and the blood was brown.

He said

What is it?

I explained what it was and he said

I’ve never heard of him, thanks but I can’t accept this

I said he could and he said he couldn’t and I said he could and he said he couldn’t.

I said: But what if

He said: What if what

I said: What if it was a matter of life or death

I said: What if it was a matter of a fate worse than death

He said: What are you talking about?

I said: What if someone called the Samaritans

He said: Who?

I said: The Samaritans. They’re a group of people who think anything is worse than not breathing. You can call them if you’re feeling depressed.

He said: So?

I said: What if a person called the Samaritans and they weren’t very helpful? What if a person kept doing the same thing day after day? What if a person kept riding the Circle Line around and around? What if there was a person who thought the world would be a better place if everyone who would enjoy seeing a Tamil syllabary had access to a Tamil syllabary? What if there was a person who kept changing the subject? What if there was a person who never listened to anything anybody ever said?

He said: Did you have anyone special in mind?

I said I was speaking hypothetically.

He said: And what exactly did you think this hypothetical CD could do for this hypothetical person?

He was smiling. He was strumming the strings of the piano softly.

I said: What if the person got off the Circle Line at Embankment, crossed the bridge to Waterloo, took a train to Paris and went to work for a famous sculptor?

He said: What, because of some stupid CD? What planet are you living on?

I said: The premise was that there were only 5 people on the planet who would buy the CD, obviously most people would not get off at Embankment because of a CD but maybe the type of person who would buy the CD would be the type of person who would.

I said

The type of person who thinks boredom a fate worse than death. The type of person who always wants things to be different. The type of person who would rather die than read Sportsboat and Waterski International.

Oh, he said. That type of person.

He picked out the Seven Samurai theme on the treble strings.

Better not take out an ad in Sportsboat and Waterski International then.

He picked the theme out in the bass.

I said

Look at it this way. You don’t have to make hundreds of CDs. You could just make 10. 5 for you and 5 for me. Then they’d be the only 10 in the world and they’d be valuable. Say we get £10,000 for the heart, say it costs £1,000 to make the CDs, say they sell for £1,000 apiece, we could either maximise our profits or we could even give one away if we happened to know the type of person who didn’t mind missing trains.

He went back to the treble. Ping ping ping PING ping ping PING ping ping ping

He did not seem to be finding the argument persuasive.

I said: I could teach you a language. Would you like to learn a language?

He said: What language?

I said: What language would you like to learn?

He said: What do you recommend?

I said: I could teach you to count to 1000 in Arabic. I said: I know about 20 languages so if there’s some other language you want to learn I might know it. I said: Or I could teach you the periodic table. Or I could teach you survival techniques.

He said: Survival techniques?

I said: I could teach you edible insects.

He said: What if I don’t want to eat an insect?

He went back to the bass. Dum dum dum DUM dum dum DUM dum dum dum

I said: What do you want me to do? Do you want me to come back in 10 years? For all you know it may be too late.

There was a short pause. He looked thoughtfully at the strings of the piano. I thought I was really getting somewhere.

He took his other hand out of his pocket and began picking out an arrangement of the samurai theme on two strings.

I did not know what to say. I said

You could play anything you want on the CD

He said

Or I could play something by special request. Any ideas?

I said

Well

Then I said

You could play something by Brahms.

He said

By Brahms?

I said

Do you know Brahms’ Ballade Op. 10 No. 2 in D major?

He said

What?

I said

Brahms’ Ballade Op. 10 No. 2 in D major? It’s part of a set.

He said

Yes I know.

He turned and rested his arm on the curved wooden side of the piano. He said

Do you know the rest of the set?

I said that was the only one I had heard because I knew someone who played it a lot but of course if he wanted to put the whole set on the CD he could because it was his CD and he had complete artistic control.

He said

I don’t know

I did not know what to say.

I said

I could teach you judo.

He said

I don’t know

I said

I could teach you piquet.

I could teach you Lagrangians.

I did not know what to say.

I said

Make this CD and I’ll teach you to play Straight No Chaser.

He said

Done.