The Last Samurai

He laughed again.

Have you any idea how many paternity claims I’ve faced?

No.

Neither have I. I lost count after the third. Usually it’s the alleged mother who presents herself, with the utmost reluctance you understand, for the sake of the child.

The first time it happened was dreadful. I’d never seen the woman before in my life, or at least I’d no recollection. Instead of at once being suspicious I was horribly embarrassed—how shocking to have so little recall of a tender moment! She said it had been a few years—how wounding, you know, if she had changed so much for the worse!

At any rate I came to my senses sufficiently to ask a few questions. The thing looked more and more fishy. Then I had what I thought was a stroke of genius. I fancied myself a perfect Solomon!

I said: Very well, if the child is mine, leave it with me. I undertake to bring him up on condition that you make no further contact with either of us.

My thought was, that no mother would surrender her child on such terms to a perfect stranger. I’d scarcely uttered the words when I saw my mistake—saw the terrible temptation in the girl’s eyes. It was then that I knew for a fact that the child wasn’t mine: it was like playing an ace first trick and watching a rank beginner agonise over whether to trump. My heart was in my mouth, I can tell you!

What would you have done if she’d accepted? I asked.

I’d have had to take it, of course. Play or pay—not a very noble principle, perhaps, but only consider the sacrifice required to abandon it, for the mere paltry momentary advantage of ridding myself of this unexpected encumbrance. Life is such a chancy business, you may lose everything you have at any moment—if a stroke of luck can rob you of whatever it is you live by, where does that leave you? Easy enough to say now, but by God I was sweating bullets as I looked at the homely little brat—it’s an absolutely infallible rule, by the way, that the infants brought forward in these circumstances are ugly as sin. Its mother holds out a little red-faced, squalling thing and assures you without a blush that there is a striking resemblance. Without being unduly vain I like to think I am at least passable; it’s a terrible blow to the self-confidence to find the imposture not rejected out of hand for sheer implausibility. It is a point in your favour that you did not offer me that insult. Is your mother pretty?

Yes, I said, though it did not seem the right word. So what happened? Did she go away?

Eventually. She told me she could not let me take the child because she thought I was an immoral person. It seemed rather a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but I was too relieved to object. I assured her at once that I led a life of unparalleled viciousness, and that a child introduced to this sink of iniquity could not fail to be irredeemably corrupted. I claimed to be a regular user of a host of pharmaceutical products; I said my sexual appetite had become so jaded it could not be roused if there were fewer than four billowy beauties in the bed; I described in lurid detail sexual practices with which I will not sully your ears, to use an unhappily or, you may think, happily outmoded expression.

I was trying to keep a straight face.

And that worked?

Like a charm! Whatever the temptation to be rid of the child, she could not deliver it up to such a monster without losing face. Instead she went off and sold the story to the tabloids—how she could not reconcile it with her conscience to take money from a father of such depravity. Of course the papers adored it. I wish I’d kept a few—I remember one absolutely killing headline about Five-in-a-bed Father. I saw it unexpectedly on a newsstand and simply screamed with laughter—but like a fool I didn’t buy a few hundred to send to friends. We live and learn. Of course, it’s true that she hadn’t retracted the claim and I suppose it may have given one or two people the wrong idea, but escape seemed cheap at the price.

Have you had breakfast?

Yes.

I haven’t. Have another with me.

All right.

It came as a shock to hear my own voice. Then I thought this was impolite.

Thank you.

The pleasure is mine.

I followed him through the flat. I had spent most of every winter I could remember sitting in one museum or another looking or pretending to look at the exhibits, and I was beginning to feel right at home. There were swords with Maghribi inscriptions on the blades. There was a spectacular Qur’an in Eastern Kufic on a small table. There was an equally spectacular collection of ceramics on walls, shelves and a few more strategically placed small tables, most of them again ornamented in Kufic script in its Eastern and most stylised form. Wherever a wall was not taken up with a priceless sword or piece of pottery it was taken up with a priceless Persian miniature. I thought of the heart. Maybe I could persuade Szegeti to part with some small, unmissable objet d’art and I could sell that instead.