The Last Samurai

I went downstairs. I came into a dark room in the middle of the building. The only light was from the door, so I felt my way toward it. Now I was in another room with broken windows, cold grey light showing more crumbling concrete and rubble. There was a stack of boards along one wall piled almost to the ceiling, all cracked and warped, and on the floor beside them were little mounds of what looked like dust. I went to have a closer look, and they seemed to be heaps of tiny flakes of paint.

Now I heard a noise. It was a regular, metallic noise—the sound of a tool on stone. I followed it through another door into the next room, and the next, and the next, but there were only more piles of board, more silted paint. Then I went through another door and by the far wall a man in a black knitted hat and a faded black boiler suit sat on a milk crate. He seemed to have a chisel, or possibly just a screwdriver, in one hand, and he was chipping paint off the wall. I saw that the walls were painted a kind of shiny black up to a height of about five feet, except that for about five feet behind him, and the whole of the wall before that, which showed bare concrete, and a mound of chipped flakes of paint ran along the floor like the trail of a mole.

I said

Excuse me, can you tell me where I can find Mr. Watkins?

He said

What you see is what you get.

I did not know what to say. I said

Was it lamb’s blood?

He laughed.

Yes, as a matter of fact. What made you think of that?

I said

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you fully trusting in his grace this hour?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you washed in the blood,

In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?

Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

He said

I didn’t know those were the words, but yes.

I said

Those aren’t all the words. There are two other verses. It goes:

Are you walking daily by the Saviour’s side?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Do you rest each moment in the crucified?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin

And be washed in the blood of the Lamb

There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean

O be washed in the blood of the Lamb!

Are you washed in the blood, In the soul-cleansing blood is the chorus.

He said

Funnily enough no one ever thought to ask. Funny, don’t you think? You should’ve seen the look on his face when I asked for it.

He said

It was quite a job setting it up. They’ve not got much—couple pints, maybe—must’ve taken 50 of the little buggers.

He said

I wanted to see what difference a fact about the medium would make to what the thing was about. In the event that seemed banal. I thought well sod it, Rembrandt could start off doing Lot’s wife and turn it into Bathsheba and the Elders, I’ve changed my mind that’s all.

I said

Susanna.

He said

What?

I said

Susanna and the Elders. Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who was sent into battle by King David so that he could have an affair with his wife.

He said

Whatever. The point being, when I thought about it, it was too fucking much. I mean, I really couldn’t give a toss about religion. I cared about colour. I cared about that bear, I did. I could have killed the wanker who shot him. To be fair, I probably wouldn’t have liked being mauled, but if he’d wanted to do me a favour he’d have shot me and left me for the bear. It would have been more use. Nice meal for the bear, and I could’ve stayed. It was so white there. White drifting about and frozen solid and getting inside your skin.

He put down the screwdriver and took out a packet of cigarettes.

He said

Do you smoke?

I said

No.

He lit a cigarette and said

My manners may be rough but there are limits. Here was someone who’d followed me for two days and saved my life, and anyway I was I admit a little shaken as I’d been planning on freezing to death, I didn’t think I could insist on staying. So I left that white place and when I got back to England I wasn’t thinking too straight. I knew I’d have to go on to red, but I wasn’t thinking straight and I let my thinking get tangled up in a cliché, and while I was still confused I went to the slaughterhouse and set the thing up and got the slaughterhouse to get me the blood of 50 lambs.

He said

Well I realised as soon as I got on with it that it was a mistake. Banal, irrelevant, but I wasn’t going through all that again. I thought of going back and asking for cow’s blood or sheep’s blood or horse’s blood and going through it all again and I couldn’t be bothered.

He said

So I thought I’d just leave that out and see what happened, but if anyone asked I’d tell the truth. I don’t lie about my work. I was sort of surprised no one did twig it, but people aren’t very interested in belief so maybe it’s not so surprising.

He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, picked up the screwdriver and began chipping away at the wall.

He took out the cigarette and ground it out underfoot.

He said