The Last Samurai

by Helen Dewitt

  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 dro
ve 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 pr
etty 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.