The Last Samurai

by Helen Dewitt

  I asked, ‘Was he a good writer?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Sibylla, ‘He’s a lousy writer, he goes to all these amazing places and sees tumbledown cottages and ragged urchins and girls with coltlike grace. But what a terrible thing to happen.’

  Suddenly I had an idea.

  Only time will tell.

  21 September

  1 × 11 × 11

  11 × 11 = (10 × 11) + (1 × 11) = 121

  111 × 111 = (100 × 111) + (10 × 111) + (1 × 111) = 12321

  1111 × 1111 = (1000 × 1111) + (100 × 1111) + (10 × 1111) +

  (1 × 1111) = 1234321

  11111 × 11111 × 123454321

  111111 × 111111 = 12345654321

  1111111 × 1111111 = 1234567654321

  11111111 × 11111111 = 123456787654321

  111111111 × 111111111 = 12345678987654321

  22 September

  11 × 11 = 121

  11 × 111 = 1221

  11 × 1111 = 12221

  11 × 11111 = 122221

  23 September

  111 × 111 = 12321

  111 × 1111 = 123321

  111 × 11111 = 1233321

  111 × 111111 = 12333321

  1111 × 1111 = 1234321

  1111 × 11111 = 12344321

  11111 × 111111 = 1234554321

  111111 × 1111111 = 123456654321

  1111111 × 11111111 = 12345677654321

  24 September

  111111111 × 11 = 1222222221

  111111111 × 111 = 12333333321

  111111111 × 1111 = 123444444321

  111111111 × 11111 = 1234555554321

  111111111 × 111111 = 12345666654321

  111111111 × 1111111 = 123456777654321

  111111111 × 11111111 = 1234567887654321

  111111111 × 111111111 = 12345678987654321

  MY THIRD WEEK AT SCHOOL

  27 September

  Today as soon as I got into class Miss Lewis took me to one side and said, ‘Stephen, I want you to make a real effort to be a cooperative member of the class.’

  I said it was hardly necessary to remind me of this as Dr. Bandura had underlined the importance of cooperative behaviour. Miss Lewis said, ‘Good.’

  28 September

  Today when I got to school Miss Lewis said it was important for people to do their own work and what was she to think when she found that five other children had 111 × 111 and 1111 × 1111 and 11111 × 11111 on their addition sheets. I said they would appear to have used the distributive principle of multiplication. Miss Lewis said I must understand that it was important for people to work at their own rate. I said I did understand. Miss Lewis said, ‘Good.’

  I worked out that I have spent 12 days in school which is 84 hours so I could have read 8400 lines of the Odyssey. I could have read Herodotus or ad Nicoclem or Cyropaedia and Memorials of Socrates. I could have finished Algebra Made Easy. I could have started Calculus Made Easy. I could have mastered all the Japanese characters thoroughly.

  The thing that is worrying me is that J. S. Mill did not go to school. He was taught by his father and that was why he was 25 years ahead of everybody else.

  I decided to take the Argonautica to school.

  29 September

  Today I took the Argonautica to school. Miss Lewis took it away and made me take it home again at the end of the day.

  30 September

  Today I could have read Book 2 of the Argonautica.

  1 October

  Today I could have read Book 3 of the Argonautica.

  2 October

  Today was Saturday. I read Book 1 of the Argonautica. It is longer than I thought. I read up to line 558 and I mastered 30 Japanese characters thoroughly and the rest of the time I practised tying knots.

  3 October

  Today was Sunday. I read Book 1 of the Argonautica up to line 1011 and I mastered another 30 Japanese characters and I practised some more knots and I read Half Mile Down.

  MY FOURTH WEEK AT SCHOOL

  4 October

  Today I could have finished the Argonautica.

  3

  9999997= 999993000020999965000034999979000006999999

  11 October, 1993

  Today Miss Lewis gave me a note to take to Sibylla. She said this could not go on.

  I gave the note to Sibylla and I do not know what it said but I do not think Miss Lewis told her what really happened. Sibylla read the note and she said, ‘What!’ and then she looked at me and said, ‘Well, you must feel good after throwing so many people around.’

  I said, ‘Well, do you want me to go and die? Do you want me to jump out a window?’

  Sibylla said now that I was 6 I was old enough to act like a rational human being.

  I said Miss Lewis told me to be a cooperative member of the class but when I tried to help people she said they should do their own work but when I tried to do my own work and take Algebra Made Easy to class she said I should try to be more involved and be a cooperative member of the class. I said, ‘We are supposed to be working at our own speed but whenever I try she tells me to stop and whenever I ask a question she does not know the answer. She does not know anything I do not know already so I don’t think there is any point in going to school.’

  Sibylla said, ‘But you’ve only been at school a month. How do you know Miss Lewis doesn’t know anything you don’t know? You can’t possibly make up your mind on so little evidence.’

  I said, ‘Well, how much more evidence do you need?’

  Sibylla said, ‘What?’

  I said, ‘How much more evidence? Do you want me to go for another week or another two weeks or how long?’

  Sibylla said, ‘I think you are legally required to go until you are 16.’

  Sibylla said, ‘Please don’t cry,’ but at first I couldn’t stop. No wonder Miss Lewis doesn’t know anything because we have to go whether she knows anything or not.

  I said, ‘Let’s take two people about to undergo 10 years of horrible excruciating boredom at school, A dies at the age of 6 from falling out a window and B dies at the age of 6 + n where n is a number less than 10, I think we would all agree that B’s life was not improved by the additional n years.’

  Sibylla started walking up and down.

  I said, ‘I could just take some books and ride the Circle Line or go to a museum by myself every day. Or I could take the bus over to the Royal Festival Hall and work there, and I could save up my questions and you could just explain things for an hour a day.’

  Sibylla said, ‘I’m sorry but you are too small to go out by yourself.’

  I said I could work here and I wouldn’t be in the way. I said, ‘What if I promised to ask just 10 questions a day and only at one time it would hardly take any time at all.’

  Sibylla said, ‘No.’

  I said 5 questions which was still more than Miss Lewis ever answered and Sibylla shook her head and I said, ‘Well, I won’t ask any questions ever again, if I ever ask a question you can make me go back to school but I promise I won’t.’

  Sibylla just said she was sorry.

  I said, ‘What kind of argument is that?’

  Sibylla said, ‘There is an argument but it is not one I can discuss with you. You will have to go to school and do the best you can.’

  She said she would go and talk to Miss Lewis tomorrow after school.

  12 October, 1993

  Today Sibylla came after school to talk to Miss Lewis. Miss Lewis said I should go to the other end of the class but Sibylla said, ‘No.’

  Miss Lewis said, ‘All right, then.’ She said I was a disruptive element in the class. She said there were other things in life besides academic achievement and that often children who had been forcefed at an early age had trouble adjusting to their peers and were often socially maladjusted all their lives.

  ‘La formule est banale,’ I said.

  Miss Lewis said, ‘That will do, Stephen.’ She said she was prepared to adapt the programme to stimulate a gifted child but
that it must be made clear to me that whatever my achievements they did not give me the right to disrupt the class and interfere with the learning process of the other children. She said that whenever I was in a group with other children she invariably found that the other children had failed to remain on task. She said she would make every effort to integrate me into the class but that she could not do this if everything she tried to achieve during the day was undermined as soon as I went home, and that it would only work if there was a genuine partnership between home and school.

  I said, ‘Does that mean I don’t have to go to school any more?’

  Sibylla said, ‘Lu— Stephen. We can’t, that is even if I wanted you to stop working with Miss Lewis which I don’t we can’t afford to hire people who know about quantum mechanics and we especially can’t afford it on £5.50 an hour.’

  I said, ‘Although the capacity to think vastly expands human capabilities, if put to faulty use, it can also serve as a major source of personal distress. Many human dysfunctions and torments stem from problems of thought. This is because, in their thoughts, people often dwell on painful pasts and on perturbing futures of their own invention. They burden themselves with stressful arousal through anxiety-provoking rumination. They debilitate their own efforts by self-doubting and other self-defeating ideation. They constrain and impoverish their lives through phobic thinking.’

  Sibylla said I should not just quote things uncritically, the writer seemed to assume there was no such thing as an unsolicited memory, an assumption for which there seemed to be no evidence whatsoever.

  I said that was exactly why it would be better for me not to go to school, I needed to learn to argue like J. S. Mill.

  Miss Lewis said that while she did not mean to belittle what Sibylla had achieved there was a real danger of being cut off from reality.

  Sibylla said Miss Lewis did not know what it was like to go to school in the type of place that was excited to be getting its first motel.

  Miss Lewis said, ‘What?’

  Sibylla said when she was growing up she only ever went to one school that even taught Greek and you had to have three years of French or Spanish and two years of Latin when she only had one year of French so she had to say she had two years of French and Latin lessons with a defrocked Jesuit priest from Quebec and forge a letter from the priest and most people couldn’t learn Arabic or Hebrew or Japanese even if they invented a defrocked Jesuit priest.

  Miss Lewis said, ‘I think we are getting a little off the subject here. What do you think is the effect on a child who is progressing satisfactorily at Key Level Two and in fact is doing work if anything ahead of her age group, what do you think is the effect, as I say, on a child who has every reason to take pride in her achievements and have her self-confidence bolstered when Stephen comes up with a page covered with problems in six or seven figures and tells her there is no point in doing a problem unless the answer won’t fit on the display of a calculator? To say nothing of the effect on children who are having difficulty with the material. I have one boy who has been working his way through the alphabet one letter at a time and just last week he finally reached the stage where he could recognise all the letters with confidence, well, I am not saying Stephen necessarily means to be unkind but what do you think the effect is if Stephen starts writing all the names of the dinosaurs in Greek and explaining that a lot of the letters are the same? If you want my opinion that boy has more of an accomplishment to be genuinely proud of in that single alphabet than Stephen with dozens, but he was absolutely devastated. Weeks of work undone at a stroke. It has got to stop. Stephen has got to understand that there is more to life than how much you know.’

  I said, ‘Does that mean I don’t have to go to school any more?’

  Sibylla said, ‘I couldn’t agree with you more, we have been watching Seven Samurai on a weekly basis for about a year.’

  Miss Lewis said, ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Sibylla said, ‘Well, as I’m sure you know the whole issue of a skill in Kurosawa is highly— Why look, you’ve got a little book about samurai in the classroom, how marvellous!’

  She picked up SAMURAI WARRIORS off my desk and she began to peruse it.

  Miss Lewis said, ‘I think we should.’

  Suddenly Sibylla exclaimed in accents of horror, ‘WHAT!’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Miss Lewis.

  ‘EXPERT IN A DIFFERENT COMBAT SKILL!’ cried Sibylla.

  ‘What?’ reiterated Miss Lewis.

  ‘How can they SLEEP AT NIGHT,’ said Sibylla, ‘having foisted this FABRICATION on unsuspecting SCHOOLCHILDREN! It says each of the samurai is an expert in a different combat skill. Combat skill my foot. What’s Katsushiro’s, the STICK? Or Heihachi’s—the AXE? What a SHAME he had to leave it behind with its owner so he couldn’t actually use it on the ENEMY.’

  Miss Lewis said, ‘I really think.’

  Sibylla said, ‘It’s only the merest CHANCE that we happen to know the facts of the matter, for all we know the school is crammed to the rafters with books full of mistakes on subjects where my son might have been hoping to LEARN something he didn’t already KNOW, which I had SUPPOSED was the object of EDUCATION. Oh what am I to do?’

  Miss Lewis said, ‘I really don’t think.’

  Sibylla said, ‘You might as well call a book the GENIUS OF SHAKESPEARE and then explain to a Japanese schoolchild that Laertes is the hero of HAMLET under the impression that he is the more INTERESTING CHARACTER. Oh what shall I do?’

  Miss Lewis said, ‘I think we’ve talked enough for one day. Stephen, I want you to think very carefully about what has been said.’

  I said I would think about it very carefully.

  If I ever have a son and he wants to leave school I will let him because I will remember what it is like.

  We went home and Sibylla walked up and down.

  ‘What shall I do?’ she said. ‘What shall I do?’

  I said, ‘Maybe I should just study at home.’

  Sibylla said, ‘Hmm.’ She said, ‘Let us consult Mr. Richie,’ and she gave me another page about Sugata Sanshiro to read.

  The hero is a man actively engaged in becoming himself—never a very reassuring sight. The villain, on the other hand, has already become something. Everything about Tsukigata suggests that he has arrived. There is not a wasted gesture, not an uncalculated movement. He has found what is to his advantage and acts accordingly. Sugata, by comparison, is all thumbs.

  Kurosawa’s preference is the preference we all have for the formed man. In the ordinary film this man would be the hero. But he is not and, despite his admiration, Kurosawa has told us why. One of the attributes of all of his heroes, beginning with Sugata, is that they are all unformed in just this way. For this reason, all of his pictures are about education—the education of the hero.

  After this superb battle … one might expect the picture to end with some kind of statement that he has at last grownup, that he has arrived, that he has become something—the great judo champion. This would be the logical Western conclusion to a film about the education of a hero.

  Kurosawa, however, has seen that this cannot be true. A hero who actually becomes is tantamount to a villain—for this was the only tangible aspect of the villain’s villainy. To suggest that peace, contentment, happiness, follows a single battle, no matter how important, is literally untrue—and it would limit Sugata precisely because of the limitations suggested in the words “happiness” or “judo champion.”

  I asked, ‘Is that enough?’

  Sibylla said, ‘That’s enough. What do you think it all means?’

  I thought if I get this right I don’t have to go to school. I’ve got to get this right. I looked at the page to stall for time.

  I said, ‘It means that it is literally untrue to suggest that peace, contentment, happiness, follows a single battle, no matter how important, and that a hero who actually becomes is tantamount to a villain.’

  Sibylla said, ‘A hero
who actually becomes what?’

  I said, ‘Becomes a villain?’

  Sibylla said, ‘Oh what shall I do?’

  I said, ‘Becomes himself?’

  Sibylla said, ‘What shall I DO?’

  I said, ‘Becomes a great judo champion?’

  Sibylla said, ‘What shall I DO?’

  I said, ‘Becomes happy! Becomes content! Becomes a hero! Becomes something!!!!’

  Sibylla said, ‘WHAT shall I DO?’

  I thought about 10 years in school and I said, ‘I think what it’s really saying is that you can’t understand something until you go through it. You think you know what something is about and that’s why you do it but then when you do it you realise it’s about something else. What it’s saying is that that’s why it’s important to study judo.’

  Sibylla said, ‘JUDO! Why there’s a judo club just up the road! So you COULD study judo COULDN’T you.’

  To tell the truth I think I would rather study tae kwon do, but I said, ‘Yes.’

  Sibylla said, ‘It does not solve everything but at least it solves one thing. You will meet other children your age in a structured and moral environment and strive to achieve satori. It would not be actually wrong for me to teach you at home.’

  She walked up and down. I could see something was bothering her.