The Last Samurai

by Helen Dewitt

  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.