The Last Samurai (53 page)

I’d known the times table up to 20 by the time I was 4, but I was too disgusted to say so. I said: Oh, you mean you wanted to know the
product
of 6 and 7.

What did you think I meant? he asked.

I don’t know, that’s why I asked what you meant, I said.

You’ll soon get that sort of nonsense knocked out of you at school, he said.

I said I had always heard that logical thought was discouraged in schools. I could not believe someone so stupid had been to find the lost silent tribe; no wonder they hadn’t wanted to talk to him.

He kept shooting me fierce glances out of narrowed eyes as he stumped up and down. What’s the capital of Peru? he said abruptly.

Oh, does it have a capital? I said.

Oh—my—God.

Madrid? I said. Barcelona? Kiev?

What is the country
coming
to?

Buenos Aires! I said. Santiago! Cartagena—no that’s Brazil isn’t it don’t tell me I’ll have it in a minute it isn’t, it wouldn’t be Acapulco would it no forget I said that it’s on the tip of my tongue don’t tell me it’s coming ancient holy city of the Zincas
Casablanca
.

He said: Lima.

I said: I thought Casablanca didn’t sound quite right, ask me another one.

He said I must give him my mother’s phone number and he would have a word with her.

I said I would rather not.

He said: What you want is neither here nor there.

I wanted to get this over. I hadn’t come for money but I had to say something so I said: Look, I really didn’t come here to discuss my education. I know the product of 7 and 6 is 42, and 13 × 17 is 221 and 18 × 19 is 342 and I know the binomial theorem and I know

is the Bernoulli equation for inviscid incompressible irrotational flow. I plan to learn to work as a member of a team when the other members of the team are out of their teens. My mother doesn’t know I came here, she didn’t want you to be bothered. But she’s going insane at her work. I want to buy a mule and go down the Andes. I thought you might help.

The last thing I wanted was to be alone in the Transural with this lunatic. I also couldn’t see myself confiding my ambition to go to Oxford at the age of 11. But I had to say something.

Go down the Andes on a mule? That doesn’t sound very in character, he said. Are you sure this isn’t something you want?

Yes it’s something I want, I said.

Well, the best piece of advice I can give you is never rely on anyone but yourself for anything you want out of life, he said. Everything I’ve got I’ve got by my own efforts. You don’t grow up by having people hand you things on a platter.

By the time I grow up it may be too late, I said.

You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, he said, and he stopped pacing to stand beside me. One hand gripped the back of the sofa; I saw that a finger was missing. He’d probably offered a piece of advice to a member of the Lost Silent Tribe.

That’s what worries me, I said.

Well there’s nothing I can do, he said. Nobody ever did anything for me and it never did me any harm. It made me what I am today.

I was glad we weren’t fighting with real swords. If we had been this might have killed me. I said I would bear that in mind.

He said: I’ve got a son already. He’d be older than you are if he’s still alive. Not by much, but he’s already a man—they grow up fast.

He said: When a boy reaches 12 he goes through an initiation ceremony. He’s stripped to the waist and flogged—not a lot, just five or six welts to make the back bleed. Then he’s tied up. There’s a beastly stinging fly that’s attracted by blood—of course they gather. If the boy cries out he gets another lash. It’s over when he’s been silent for a day. You’ll see them stretched out, backs solid with the feeding flies—sometimes they’re unconscious for the last 12 hours or so, sometimes the father will slap a boy awake to make sure they don’t get off lightly. It’s hard to be a man there.

I said: Yeah, I hear they don’t even use case endings.

He said: Who told you that?

It’s in the book, I said.

No it’s not in the book, he said.

I heard it somewhere, I said.

She must have told you. I don’t suppose she told you how I found out.

He grinned at me; his teeth were yellow and brown beneath the moustache.

She said you hid behind a tent, I said.

I tried that, he said. I got nowhere. Then one day the mother of the boy came to me. She’d sold him again to some traders—they don’t like impure blood in the tribe. But she was curious all the same—that’s what had got her in trouble the first time. She couldn’t stay away. I got her to teach me a few words and one thing led to another. The women spat at her and pulled her hair when they found out. Anyway we’d lie about in the grass and I’d copy something she’d said and she’d slap me or laugh at me for copying her. Then I overheard a couple of men talking to each other and realised what was going on. I laughed till I cried. Then she got pregnant. She made me leave. Probably sold the little bastard to the Chinese. If so he won’t have been initiated, he said, and he grinned, and he said, If these things happen to anyone why shouldn’t they happen to my son?

I said: In that case why should you care whether I know the multiplication table and why should you care whether I go to school?

He said: There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t take her with me, and they’d have killed me if I’d stayed. This is different. Your mother has been completely irresponsible.

I began to laugh.

Steps approached the front door, which opened. The door to the room opened while I was still laughing, and the woman in pink came in.

What’s going on? she asked.

This is my son, he said.

No I’m not, I said.

What do you mean? he said.

Have you seen Seven Samurai?

No.

I have, said the woman.

It was a test, I said. I couldn’t tell my real father because it was true.

I don’t begin to understand, said the woman, and the man said

In some parts of the world you’d be flogged for this.

I said it was not necessary to leave England to find people who did stupid things.

Who are you? he said angrily. What’s your name?

David, I said without thinking.

I don’t understand, he said angrily. Did you want money? You made it up to get money?

Of course I want money, I said, though there were other things I wanted more. How am I supposed to buy a mule without money?

But why in God’s name—

I did not know what to say. Because you were a linguist, I said. I heard the story about the case endings and I thought you’d understand. Of course you don’t understand. I’ve got to go.

But it’s got to be true, he said. How could you know about the case endings? She must have told you. It must be true. Where is she?

I’ve got to go, I said.

He said: No, don’t go.

I said: Do you still play chess?

He said: She told you about the
chess
?

I said: What?

The woman said: Hugh—

He said: What does it take to get a cup of tea in this house?

She said: I was just going, but she looked at me as she went.

He said: What did she tell you about the chess?

I said: Do you mean you let him win?

He said: Didn’t she tell you?

I said: She said you didn’t let him win.

He said: Of course I didn’t let him win, and he stumped up and down the rug.

He said: He won 10 games out of 10. He stopped saying What am I going to do; he sat smiling at the board. He said I do what you do better than you can yourself, and you can’t do what I do at all. I thought Where would you be if it weren’t for me, you stupid bastard?

I said You talk a good game.

He said Meaning?

I said Is it a game because I say it’s a game? And I said that if I treated it as a game because I thought it was a game and he treated it as a game not because he thought it was a game but because I said it was —

And he said Yes

— which of us was doing the thing he thought he did

And he said Yes

and that was the last thing I said to him

Before the exam, I said.

Yes, he said.

What was the last thing he said to you? I asked.

None of your business.

What did my mother say? I said.

I can’t remember. Some daft thing.

What? I said hoping it would be something Sibylla couldn’t possibly have said.

I can’t remember. Something sympathetic.

I wanted to ask whether the woman had looked bored, but I thought he probably wouldn’t have noticed.

He said: Tell me where she is. I’ve got to see her again

I said: I’ve got to go

He said: You’ve got to tell me

I opened the door and went down the front hall. I could hear him behind me. I broke into a run and slipped on a silky rug that slid on the polished wood and got my balance and caught at the first Chubb lock and I could hear him behind me coming fast. I snapped open the first lock and I opened the second Chubb lock and the third Chubb lock with both hands and I got the door open just as his hand gripped my shoulder.

I twisted away and pulled myself free. I crossed the walk in three strides and vaulted over the gate and when I looked back he was just standing at the door. He looked at me across the birdbath and the rosebushes and then he turned.

The door shut. It was just a boring house on a boring street of houses with their closed white doors.

I stumbled down the street. He had not killed to learn those moodless verbs and uninflected nouns, but he had brought a slave into existence for their sake.

I walked back to Notting Hill Gate and I took the Circle Line.

I decided not to apply to Oxford to read classics at the age of 11.

Sibylla asked what had happened to my skateboard. I thought of the long line of closed doors, the house for sale, the long grass. I knew I couldn’t go back. I said it had got stolen. I said it didn’t matter. I kept thinking of the boy who wasn’t my brother.

I thought of the prisoners of fate who couldn’t hope for better luck.

I thought: Why would I even WANT a father. At least I was free to come and go. Sometimes I’d pass a council bus with a message on the back: SOUTHWARK: WHERE TRUANCY IS TAKEN SERIOUSLY, and I’d walk north across Tower Bridge to the City, where truancy was not taken seriously. What kind of father would put up with that? I should quit while I was ahead.

I had stopped sleeping on the floor. I had stopped eating grasshoppers au gratin with a sauce of sautéed woodlice. Sibylla kept asking if something was wrong. I said nothing was wrong. The thing that was wrong was that nothing was ever going to change.

I decided to do something Hugh Carey would not have done at age 11. I thought if I worked through the Schaum Outline series on Fourier analysis that would be safe enough because according to Sib it is not taught in schools. HC had probably never studied it at all. I thought maybe I would do Lagrangians just to be on the safe side. Maybe I would do some Laplace transforms too.

Sibylla was typing
Tropical Fish Hobbyist
. No one was going to take me galloping across the Mongolian steppe. No one was going to take me to the North Pole any time soon.

One day I went with Sibylla to Tesco’s.

A brilliant white light beat pitilessly down, like the fierce desert sun at midday on the French Foreign Legion; the glittering floor dazzled the eye with the cruel desert glare.

We walked slowly through the cereals.

Vast boxes of cornflakes and bran flakes rose on either side; as we reached the muesli a cart turned the corner and turned into the aisle, propelled by a fat woman and followed by three fat children. One was crying into a fat fist, and two were arguing about Frosties and Breakfast Boulders, and the woman was smiling.