The Last Samurai

The thing that was almost impossible to believe was that he was really saying this. A Nobel Prize winner was saying he thought I could do anything. A Nobel Prize winner was glad I was his son. The whole time he was saying it, even though he was saying it seriously, he would suddenly break into a smile as if he had been saving the smile for the son he had always wanted and never had. He was brilliant and he thought I was brilliant. He looked like a movie star and he thought I looked exactly like him. Instead of testing me on capitals of the world he was talking about what it would take to do the most expensive science in the universe. Sometimes I thought, well if he wants to be my father why shouldn’t he be my father? Or I’d think that any moment now he would suddenly decide to test me on Lagrangians and realise I wasn’t his son after all.

He said: You’ve got to be able to believe— It’s not just that the people who write the cheques don’t like science. They are elected by people who don’t like science. They are reported by papers edited by innumerate middlebrows who are prepared to read the odd snippet about dinosaurs. You have got to be able to believe that the papers which report their decisions are prepared to publish an astrology column each day which neither the publishers of the paper nor its readers believe to be entirely without foundation.

He said: What you’ve got to understand is that you simply can’t afford to act as if you were dealing with adults. You’re not dealing with people who want to understand how something actually happens to work. You’re dealing with people who would like you to rekindle a childlike sense of wonder. You’re dealing with people who would like you to eliminate anything tiresome and mathematical because it will impede the rekindling of a—

The phone rang. He said: Excuse me just a moment.

He went round and picked it up. He said: Yes? Oh no, not at all, I think it went pretty well, I don’t think we’ve anything to worry about from that quarter. He said he’d get me something in writing by the end of the week so you’ve a few days’ grace.

There was a short pause and then he laughed. He said: You can’t possibly expect me to comment on that—no, no, just get it in as soon as you can. Right. Cheerio.

He came back. He was frowning and smiling slightly.

He said: There’s a cheap jibe people make sometimes at Christian fundamentalists, they say if you think the Bible is literally the word of God and that the word of God is more important than any other thing how can you possibly not learn the languages God chose for the original text, well if you think there’s a Creator and if you think that matters you’ve only to look around you to see the language it thinks in. It’s been thinking in mathematics for billions of years. Of course when you get right down to it you can’t beat the religious for sheer wanton contempt for Creator and Creation alike—

He broke off and hesitated, and he said: I think you said she didn’t tell you—that is, what did she say exactly?

I said: Well

He said: It doesn’t matter. You’ve a right to know. I owe you that much.

I thought: I’ve got to stop this

I said: No—

He said: No let me finish. This isn’t easy for me, but you’ve a right to know

I thought: I’ve got to stop this

but Sorabji had had so much practice on the programme stopping people who were trying to stop him that I did not know what to do.

I said: No. I said: You don’t have to tell me anything.

I said: I’m not really your son.

He said: God knows I deserve that. You’ve every right to be bitter.

I said: I’m not bitter, I’m just stating a fact.

He said: All right, a fact, but what about this— and he smacked the pages of Fourier analysis with his hand and said That’s a fact too, you can’t just walk away from it. The relationship’s there whether you like it or not. You know that as well as I do or you wouldn’t be here. Well you may as well know all the facts,

and he began striding up and down the room and talking very fast to keep me from trying to interrupt—

He said: My wife is a wonderful woman. A wonderful woman. She’s always done her part and God knows I entered the marriage with my eyes open. It was an arranged marriage—my father wanted to help out an old business associate, and also though he’d married out himself—perhaps because he’d married out himself—he wanted me to marry a Zoroastrian and for one reason or another he hadn’t seen anyone suitable here. I don’t mean there was any pressure, don’t get the wrong idea about this, my father realised I’d been brought up to be thoroughly Westernised. He just asked me to meet her, he said she was a beautiful girl, well educated, delightful personality, of course if I didn’t like her there was no more to be said but it wouldn’t hurt to meet the girl, he’d pay all my expenses to fly out to Bombay and we could just take it from there.