The Last Samurai (67 page)

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.

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.

I thought that I was beginning to get the hang of this. I had started by picking the wrong kind of father, but now I knew what to look for I could build up a collection of 20 or so. I felt ashamed, really ashamed of all the years I’d spent trying to identify the father who happened to be mine, instead of simply claiming the best on offer.

Today as I was riding the Circle Line a man came running down the stairs at Embankment. He ran into the car followed by three men. He ran along the car, dodging poles, and at the last moment dashed out again. The doors closed on the three men, who swore.

Hate to do it to him, in a way, said 1.

Still, he’s not being exactly cooperative, said 2.

I had recognised his face. It was Red Devlin.

Red Devlin had reported on atrocities in Lebanon, and then he had been transferred to Azerbaijan and kidnapped the first day. He had been held captive for five years and then he had taught one of his captors to play chess, and then he had escaped over mountains and desert. Then he had come back to Britain and gone into hiding and he had come out of hiding to publish a book six months later. It had only just come out in hardback, so I didn’t know whether it talked about ragged urchins.