The Last Samurai

by Helen Dewitt

  It said at the end that Yamamoto was appearing that night at the Royal Festival Hall.

  L though not complaining looked miserable. I kept thinking about the enchantingly beautiful fragments which could not be part of the finished whole. I kept thinking of the Mazurkas against a background of percussion in its purest form. Then I thought I should be attentive to the needs of my child, who looked absolutely miserable.

  I said: How would you like to go to the South Bank Centre?

  L looked surprised.

  I said: We can get a table to work at, and afterwards we can go to a concert.

  He said: I don’t want to go to a concert.

  I said: You can have a table all to yourself.

  He said: Can I have an ice cream?

  I said: Yes

  He said: Can I have Häagen-Dazs?

  I said: Yes. If they have it.

  He said: Done.

  I said: OK. Try to act like a rational human being.

  We went to the Royal Festival Hall and I found a table as far as possible from any place selling something to eat. Ludo spread out Call of the Wild, White Fang, Fergus, Pete, Tar-Kutu, Marduk, SQUID!, SHARK!, WOLF!, KILLER WHALE!, and True Tales of Survival on a separate table. Every so often he ran off to run up and downstairs then came back then ran off then came back to work on Odyssey 24. Oh well.

  I had already bought Ludo a pencil flashlight at Embankment. I now bought two tickets for the concert at the cheapest price. At 8:00 I checked the pushchair, minus Call of the Wild, at the cloakroom over stiff opposition from an unhelpful attendant, and I explained to Ludo that if he got bored he could read Call of the Wild. I took him to the toilet and he said he didn’t have to go. I pointed out that he now knew where the toilets were, & I said that if he needed to go in the middle of the concert he could go because we had aisle seats.

  I bought a programme because I thought it might have some more interesting remarks by Yamamoto. The programme for the evening was: Beethoven: 15 Variations in E and Fugue on a Theme from Prometheus, Op. 35 (Eroica Variations); Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9; Webern: Variations for Piano, Op. 27. Interval. Brahms Ballades, Op. 10: No. 1 in D minor, based on the old Scottish ballad Edward; No. 2 in D major; No. 3 in B minor; No. 4 in B major.

  There was a certain feeling of suspense (or at least I thought there was) as the concertgoers walked through the doors, because people were half expecting to see a collection of drums. Instead there was only a grand piano. Yamamoto walked onstage and there was a round of applause. He sat down and began to play the Eroica Variations.

  The Eroica Variations came to an end and there was a round of applause. Yamamoto walked offstage and returned and sat down. He began to play the Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann.

  The Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann came to an end and there was a round of applause. Yamamoto walked offstage and returned and sat down. He began to play Webern’s Variations for Piano, Op. 27.

  The Variations for Piano came to an end in six minutes flat and there was a round of applause. Yamamoto walked offstage and it was time for the interval.

  I bought Ludo an ice cream and I read the Scottish ballad Edward, which was reprinted in the programme.

  The interval came to an end. It was about 9:00.

  We walked back into the hall and there was a soft noise as of eight out of ten people laughing softly in quick succession in the audience. There were a lot of things on stage that had not been there before. There were a lot of drums, and a set of hand bells, and two glasses of water on a stand—you couldn’t take in everything all at once. Yamamoto came back onstage to a round of applause and sat down and began to play.

  At first I thought he had begun to play Op. 10 No. 1 based on the old Scottish ballad Edward, a piece I had never heard before. I realised after a while that this was not what he was doing. He was playing a couple of bars—maybe five or six chords—over and over. I had no idea whether these featured in Op. 10 No. 1 or not. Sometimes you see a painting where the painter has put paint on the canvas and then scraped almost all of it away; at first he seemed to be scraping the sound away until there was almost nothing there, but even the softest sound on a piano dies away & 9 or 10 times he seemed to bring in a pedal at different stages of this dying so that you heard the other chords over different forms of the first, or he used the sustaining pedal or no pedal at all. It was hard to know what was going on—I thought maybe this phrase did come from Op. 10 No. 1 and you were supposed to see that these were variations, but though in a sense they were variations they were not a piece. This went on for about 20 minutes or half an hour. Then there was a pause, and then he began to do the same thing with a different phrase. This went on for about 20 minutes or half an hour. Then there was a pause, and then he began to play a piece which seemed likely to be Op. 10 No. 1 based on the Scottish ballad Edward, and which did contain the two phrases he had been playing for the last hour. This went on for seven minutes. He stopped and there was a round of applause.

  Yamamoto stood up & walked upstage to a drum and struck the drum, and in the aftermath of the soft boom he returned to the piano and sat down and began to play Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor. This went on for five minutes. He stopped and there was a round of applause and a lot of people left.

  It was about 10:15. Ludo said Didn’t he play that before and I said Yes and he said Why did he play it again and I said I’ll explain later and somebody laughed and said he’d love to be a fly on the wall. Ludo went back to reading Call of the Wild.

  For the next seven and a half hours Yamamoto played Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor, & sometimes he seemed to play it exactly the same five times running but next to the sound of a bell or an electric drill or once even a bagpipe and sometimes he played it one way next to one thing and another way next to another. Some of these sounds were produced at the time and others were recordings, and after six and a half hours he stopped stopping to start the other sounds: a tape began to run & he kept playing. The tape was of traffic and footsteps & people talking and he played Op. 10 No. 1 nine times while it ran, and naturally you could see that you couldn’t really hear how he was playing it or even how he was dealing with the two phrases. At 5:45 the tape came to an end and the piece came to an end and there was silence for 20 seconds or so, and then he played the piece so that you heard it after and over the silence. This went on for six minutes and then he stopped and there was a moment of silence and then he raised his hands to the keys.

  You expected to hear Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor for the 60th time, but instead were shocked to hear in quick succession Op. 10 No. 2 in D major, Op. 10 No. 3 in B minor and Op. 10 No. 4 in B major, and you only heard them once each. It was as if after the illusion that you could have a thing 500 ways without giving up one he said No, there is only one chance at life once gone it is gone for good you must seize the moment before it goes, tears were streaming down my face as I heard these three pieces each with just one chance of being heard if there was a mistake then the piece was played just once with a mistake if there was some other way to play the piece you heard what you heard and it was time to go home.

  The three pieces were over in about 20 minutes. He took his hands from the keys and the room was absolutely silent.

  At last he stood up and bowed and there was a round of applause from the 25 people left in the room. He walked to the centre of the stage and picked up a microphone, and he said:

  I think the trains will be running by now. I hope you all get home safely. Thanks for staying.

  He put the microphone down & walked to the box with the two glasses of water & took a sip from one, and then he put it back and walked offstage.

  I thought: How can he ever play in public again?

  I started thinking about the best way to get home, should I cross the river & take the District Line or maybe it would actually be easier to walk right up to Tottenham Court Road & catch a Number 8, & then I remembered that I had moved since I last went to a concert &
that I now had a son. The reason this had slipped my mind was that the seat beside me was empty.

  I made my way calmly toward the nearest exit where a couple of ushers were talking in low, angry voices. I asked if they had seen a little boy. They said they had not. I asked politely whether he could be paged, and one said not at this time of the morning. I was about to demand hysterically that he be paged when my eye was caught by my programme, on which was the following reassuring message:

  Dear Sibylla I am tired so I have decided to walk home.

  I thought: Let’s think about this rationally. There is no point in getting worried or upset when for all I know he may be safe at home. First I will get the pushchair & go home, and then if he is not there I can decide whether to get worried.

  I got the pushchair from the cloakroom & I took a taxi home so that I would know as soon as possible whether to be worried. The house was still locked & he did not have a key. I opened the door and went inside. I thought: Well, of course if he got in somehow he would be upstairs in bed, so I went upstairs. He was lying asleep in his bed still wearing his clothes. His window was open. He had scraped the skin on one cheek.

  I went back downstairs and I thought: Let’s think about this rationally. This has been terrifying but should I tell him never to do it again just because I was terrified? What are the risks that were run? Traffic: negligible at that time of night. Muggers: possible but surely less likely to attack a small child than (say) a man likely to be carrying cash or wearing an expensive watch. Rapists: possible but surely less likely to attack a small child than (say) me & I would not have thought I was running a big risk if I had walked home. Kidnappers: distinguish possible from likely. Satanists: distinguish possible from likely. Type of person who enjoys inflicting pain on the defenceless: distinguish possible from likely.

  Then I thought: Anyway this is stupid. When am I ever going to go to a concert? So why scare him with a lot of things that might have happened? I’ll just say that if it happens again he should ask me for money for a taxi because it’s a long walk home. And thinking of taxis I realised that I had spent some £35 that I could not afford. I turned on the computer and I turned to page 27 of The Poodle Breeder, 1972 (Vol. 48, No. 3): ‘Clipping the Country Poodle—Secrets of Success’.

  Ludo got up at 11:00. I went on typing until 2:00. That was about seven hours which was good going for the day, and paid off for the concert and taxi and ice cream. I thought: 1: If I could do this every day I would have hours left over and 2: If I could play a piece 60 times in seven hours I could probably learn to play the piece. I had a longing to hear again Brahms’ Ballade Op. 10 No. 2 which I had heard only once at the concert the night before.

  I took Ludo to the Barbican & I borrowed Brahms Piano Works Vol. 1 & took it home. As I had done so much typing already that day & as I had had no sleep I thought I would try to play the piece, and I began to play just one little phrase over and over. I tried to vary it this way & that but it always sounded pretty much the same except sometimes with a few mistakes and sometimes with several and once in a while with none. I played the phrase again and again until at last I could play it with a lot of mistakes every single time and when I had played it with a lot of mistakes for the tenth time in a row Ludo began to laugh.

  I turned around on the chair and looked at him. He was still laughing.

  I thought I would probably hit him if I stayed in the room, so I went upstairs into the bathroom and shut the door. It was bitterly cold. I put down the toilet lid and sat on it.

  I once read somewhere about some research that was done on baby monkeys who were given cloth surrogate mothers which became monsters: one expelled jets of air—one had an embedded wire frame that sprang out and threw the baby to the floor—another ejected sharp brass spikes on command. The response of the baby monkeys was always the same: they clung ever more tightly to the monster, or if thrown off waited for spikes to disappear & returned to cling to their mother. Though sometimes I think I am the monster of spikes & wire & jets of air that is not so bad for the researchers were not able, through these methods, to produce psychopathology in the young monkeys, but perhaps

  The researchers stopped working with mothers of cloth & went on to produce monstrous mothers of flesh, they reared female monkeys in isolation & arranged for their impregnation & when the babies were born some mothers were indifferent & others were brutal or lethal they would crush the infant’s skull with their teeth or smash its face to the floor & rub it back & forth and what if

  I thought: Let’s think about this rationally or rather let’s not think about this at all. I thought: I have not slept for a long time, I will go to bed and when I wake up everything will look different.

  I thought: This research raises more questions than it answers, the thing that would be really interesting would be a psychological profile of the type of person who instead of occupying himself with Aristarchus and Zenodotus and Didymus addresses himself to producing psychopathology in the infant monkey. I tried to persuade myself that the chief researcher was probably a pre-Spock baby, I thought there was a doctor pre-Spock who for a while held the influential theory that a baby should be held to a timetable & fed according to timetable regardless of cries screams etc., but I would have liked to know for sure. What was to stop Ludo from reading of monkeys placed for 45 days in a vertical chamber with stainless-steel sides producing severe and persistent psychopathological behaviour of a depressive nature for 9 months or more & determining that much remained to be done in examining the relative importance of chamber size, chamber shape, duration of confinement, age at time of confinement & other factors & how could I be sure that on reaching adulthood he would not always be looking for a surrogate monkey for a mother

  I slept for a long time and when I woke up I felt better.

  I thought: He starts school in the fall.

  I thought if I went downstairs I would probably not bite his head off so I went downstairs.

  Ludo was sitting on the floor.

  He said I’ve finished Odyssey 24!

  I said cordially That’s WONDERFUL

  and because I always do what I say I’ll do I said Well, shall I teach you the hiragana?

  And he said It’s all right, I already know it.

  I said What?

  He said I learned it myself. Out of the Japanese Reader.

  I said Well, do you want me to teach you the katakana?

  He said I know that too. It wasn’t too hard.

  I said When did you do this?

  He said A couple of weeks ago. I thought I would spare you the hassle.

  I said that was wonderful. I said Write it down for me now so I can see you got it right,

  and he wrote on a piece of graph paper the little grid of hiragana and the little grid of katakana and he said See? It’s easy.

  I looked at it and it looked right so I said That’s fantastic. I kissed him four or five thousand times & I said Aren’t you smart? I said What else do you know? Do you know lots of words?

  He said he knew some words. He said he knew Tadaima and Ohaiyogozaimasu and Konnichiwa and Sayonara and Tada kassen ni wa zuibun deta ga.

  I said this was very good. I said Well do you want me to show you some kanji?

  He said I think I can probably do it myself.

  I knew what this meant, it meant for all my good intentions I had been a monster. I said I’m sure you can do it yourself. I said Well would you like me to explain the system?

  He said OK.

  I explained the system.

  7

  End of the Line

  I came downstairs early to get ready for his birthday.

  I put things away for three hours and I found various notes I had made for posterity. I am not sure how helpful they will be for posterity—but on reflection I think the thing to do is approach the subject in a systematic way once he is in school. He starts in a few months; the fact is that in five consecutive hours I could say everything that needs to be said. I h
ave put the notes in a file.

  Ludo is still sleeping—he stayed up till 3:00 in the morning last night because it was the night before his birthday and I said he could stay up as late as he wanted. I will watch a video until he gets up.

  40 bandits stop on a hill above a village in Japan. They decide to raid it after the barley harvest. A farmer overhears.

  A village meeting is held. The farmers despair.

  1 leaps to his feet with burning eyes.

  Let’s make bamboo spears! Let’s kill all the bandits!

  You can’t, says 2.

  Impossible, says 3.

  A soft rain is falling. The brown paper window pane is fluttering in the air.

  The farmers consult the village patriarch.

  He tells them to find hungry samurai.

  4 farmers go in search of samurai: Rikichi of burning eyes, Yohei (can’t), Manzo (impossible) and no name.

  I think spring is here.

  The farmers see a crowd of people. A samurai has gone to the river’s edge to be shaved by a monk.

  A man with a moustache and a sword pushes his way through the crowd and squats scratching his chin. (It’s Toshiro Mifune)

  This is really shocking. I fell asleep 10 minutes into a masterpiece of modern cinema, and when I woke up the whole recruitment section was over.

  STOP. REWIND.

  Signs of life in the next room.

  STOP. PLAY.

  The master swordsman has changed his mind, you don’t know why. 6 samurai get ready to leave for the hills in the morning.

  In comes a gambler, who says they’ve found a really tough samurai.

  Katsushiro picks up a stick and strides to the door: one last test.

  Gambler: That’s unfair

  Kambei: If he’s as good as you say he’ll parry the blow

  Gambler: But he’s drunk