The Last Samurai

by Helen Dewitt

  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.

  Al
l 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 w
ord ‘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.