The Last Samurai

He looked at me. He didn’t say anything. His face was quite cold and expressionless, as if something was calculating behind it.

He said at last in an expressionless voice: You have a piece of information which you shouldn’t have. You may think that piece of information is dangerous to me.

He said: I would advise you to be careful what you say. I think you will find if you try to use it that it will prove extremely dangerous to you.

I said I wasn’t planning to use it and that I had tried to stop him. I thought that there had to be something I could say. He had been so excited about the Fourier analysis before; I couldn’t see why it made such a difference if the person who had done it did not happen to share 50% of his genes. I sensed that this was not the moment to make this point. I said I just wanted— I said my own father tended to get the special and general theories of relativity confused.

Sorabji just looked at me.

I said I didn’t really know him, it was more of a genetic relationship, and I just thought—

He just looked at me. I thought he was probably not really listening to me; he was probably just thinking that there was nothing he could do.

I said: You don’t know what would have happened. Maybe it was the right thing to do. She could have gone insane. Maybe you saved her life. Just because you said the wrong thing doesn’t mean you were wrong about—

I didn’t even see his arm move. He got me on the side of the head with his open hand, knocking me across the room to the floor. I rolled out of the fall back onto my feet but he was already there. He hit me on the other side of my head and knocked me to the floor again. He was there before I could get up this time, but I tripped him and he fell heavily. Mainly on me.

I couldn’t move because he was lying on top of me. A clock which I hadn’t noticed was ticking in the room. It kept ticking. Nothing happened. He was panting as if he’d been in a worse fight; his eyes were glittering in his head. I didn’t know what he would do.

There was a knock at the door, and his wife said: George?

He said: I’ll just be two seconds, darling.

I could hear her footsteps retreating down the hall. I realised I could have shouted something. His eyes were still glittering—

The clock was still ticking.

Suddenly he let go of me and leapt lightly to his feet. I scrambled away across the room but he didn’t come after me. He was standing by the desk with his hands in his pockets. He smiled at me and said pleasantly and conversationally:

I’m sorry, that was completely out of line. I’m sorry I got carried away. My temper flares up and then it’s over, I never hold a grudge.

My head was still ringing.

His hair had fallen into his face; his eyes were sparkling. He looked like Robert Donat in The 39 Steps; he looked the way he’d looked earlier, when he’d talked about the atom and Fourier analysis.

He said: Of course you should be put in touch with the right people.

I said: So I could still go into astronomy?

He laughed. He said: I’d hate to think I’d put you off!

He raised an eyebrow in a sort of quizzical, self-mocking way. His eyes were sparkling with amusement, as if there was nothing calculating behind them.

I just hoped I wasn’t going to have a black eye.

I said: Should I still apply to Winchester? Do you still want to give me a reference?

He was still smiling. He said: Yes, you should certainly apply.

He smiled and said: Be sure to mention my name.

3

A good samurai will parry the blow

Robert Donat was on again Thursday at 9:00. Sib watched enthralled. I was reading Scientific American.

There was an article about a man who had done research in Antarctica and was about to go back. There was an article by a man who had done pioneering work on the solar neutrino problem. I would read a paragraph or two and then turn to another page.

Sometimes I thought about the girls who were not my sisters, and sometimes I thought about Dr. Miller, but most of the time I thought of the Nobel Prize-winning Robert Donat lookalike turning through the pages of Fourier analysis, looking at me with flashing eyes, telling me I was brilliant and I was exactly the way he was at that age. I couldn’t tell from the articles in Scientific American whether their authors thought Sesame Street was not the right level; I couldn’t tell whether they had an ill-timed obsession with petroleum by-products; but I didn’t have to read even a paragraph to know I’d never find another one like Sorabji.