The Last Samurai

He said I must be alone in the white and the silence. He walked out into the snow and he walked for miles and he was seen by a polar bear, which is one of the swiftest and fiercest killers on earth. He saw it coming toward him with its fur dirty yellowish white against the pure white snow, and then a shot rang out and it fell down dead. The stationmaster had followed him and had shot the bear as it attacked. It lay on the snow with red spots of blood on its fur, and there were drops of red blood on the snow.

Then the painter had gone back to England. He had seen white and he had seen red and he went back to England to see more red.

He went to a slaughterhouse and he said to the manager that he wanted some blood. The manager asked how much blood he wanted, and he said he wanted enough to fill a bathtub, and the manager said he was sorry but this was too small a quantity to make it worth his while. The slaughterhouse sold its blood to the makers of sausages and haggises and pet food, and it sold it in hundreds and thousands of gallons, and it was not worth his while to sell 40 or 50 gallons of blood to fill a bathtub.

The painter thought that if it was not worth his while to sell 40 or 50 gallons he would not notice if they went missing. He waited at a pub near the slaughterhouse, and at about 7:00 a man came in with traces of blood on his hands. The painter bought him a drink, and gradually he raised the question of blood, and the man said he would see what he could do. The painter had a small white van that he sometimes used to transport paintings. He drove it to the street by the slaughterhouse, and the next day the man stayed late under some pretext, and then he came to a back door. The painter had brought five plastic bins for garden rubbish, and the man filled them with blood; it took the two of them to get them in the van. The man went with the painter to his house, and helped him to get the bins upstairs. They poured the blood into the bath and the man left.

The painter laid out sheets of paper on the floor of his studio, and he put sheets of paper on the floor from the bathroom to the studio, and on the floor of the bathroom. Then he went to the bathroom and put a video camera on a stand. He started it, and he got into the bath. He sat down in the blood, hands on the rim of the bath, and then he lay down, and he took his hands off the rim, and he turned his legs sideways until he was entirely beneath the surface. He said later that he opened his eyes, but it was not as red as he had hoped. It was not as red as he had expected.

Then he sat up, and blood streamed from his hair and down his face, and he opened his eyes facing the camera.

He stood up, and he stepped out of the bath, and he walked over the paper to his studio, and he lay down now on one piece of paper and now on another. The marks on the last sheets of paper were few and light, because most of the blood had come off and the rest had begun to dry.

When the sheets of paper had dried he put them away and put more down. He returned to the bathroom and took off the bloody clothes and dropped them to the floor, and he got into the bath again. He went through the same procedure.

He did this again and again until there was only a little puddle of blood in the bath. He scooped what he could into a cup and put it on the edge of the tub, and then he ran water and filled the bath to the brim and got into the water, and now the camera recorded his bloody body lying at the bottom of the clear water.

Then he got out and walked over the paper and lay on the paper.

He went back to the bath and let out the water and filled it again and got in it again.

When all the blood had been washed away he filled the bath one more time with clear water, and into it he poured the cup of blood.

Then he let out the bloody water, and he sold the first set of bloody canvas for £150,000. It was called Let Brown = Red.