The Last Samurai

I mounted again and headed up the road. My guide flatly refused to come. I turned a corner of the road and saw—well, I saw things that make worse hearing than my hypothetical exploits with multiple companions. There were soldiers, and a lot of graves, and peasants digging at gunpoint. They saw me, and shots were fired—of course I galloped off at once.

He put three spoons of sugar in his coffee cup and poured coffee over it. He broke open a croissant and spread butter and guava conserve on it.

He said:

I say of course, and that’s the way it felt at the time—nothing I could do, the only thing was to save my skin. But it got at me the whole way back. I kept thinking, what if just riding onto the field had stopped it? What if a witness was enough to stop it? But it was such a godforsaken place. They could have shot me and thrown me in a ditch and nobody the wiser. But I kept going over it, back and forth, the whole way back. I can’t tell you what it’s like to see something like that—that horrible place that God had turned his back on. I thought: I’m damned if I spend the rest of my life telling myself I’m not yellow. I thought: there’s got to be something I can do.

I got back to the plantation near dusk and told my host what I’d seen. He said some of the other landowners were clearing Indians off or trying to—they’d got some new machinery in, didn’t need so many people with machetes. The Indians were resisting, sticking to their villages, they’d brought soldiers in—they were being killed—nothing to be done—government frightfully corrupt.

Well, of course it was obvious there was no point going to the authorities or reporting the incident. There still didn’t seem to be much point in galloping in to save the day single-handed. But suddenly I had a stroke of genius. You’ve heard of Raoul Wallenberg?

No?

Of course you’re very young. He was Swedish consul in Budapest in WW II. The Nazis arrived and started shipping Jews out to concentration camps. Wallenberg promptly started issuing Swedish passports! Jews would be actually standing in queues on the railway platform waiting to be packed off to the slaughterhouse—and there was Wallenberg saying to the SS: This man is a Swedish citizen, I forbid you to take him! Of course not one of them knew a word of Swedish! Priceless!

At any rate, I pointed out to my friend that nothing could be simpler—we’d only to ride up with a supply of British passports, hand the things out and Bob’s your uncle!

This put my host on the spot. He said a lot of rubbish I can’t remember—something about his position being a sacred trust—at least, I don’t think he used the word ‘sacred’, but you get the picture. Now I put it to you that one could scarcely represent the Queen more honourably than by extending her protection to a pack of wretched peasants being massacred by armed thugs! I put it to him—he was most unhappy about it, but really felt he couldn’t. The fact was that he’d been there too long—felt he had too much to lose, that it would make his position intolerable. I’ve said he’d married a local woman—she may have been related to some of the culprits.

He could see I wasn’t very happy about it, and the thing is, it did have an appeal for him. Finally he struck a bargain. He said he’d stake me the contents of a certain chest on a game of piquet. He couldn’t precisely recall its contents; if I could win it, they were mine. I was to stake a thousand pounds.

I agreed to this since there wasn’t much else I could do, but it was a maddening proposition. Piquet is not a bad game—probably one of the best for two—but chance plays a much higher part in it than in bridge, and in any case it wasn’t a game I’d ever paid much attention to, so that the scope it did allow for skill did not give me much advantage. If we’d been playing bridge I’d have been sure enough of winning, though he wasn’t a bad player; as it stood I couldn’t be at all confident.

The game was hell from first to last. My cards were bad, and I was not playing brilliantly—I followed the principles of best play and lost steadily. It began to look as though I would lose the thousand pounds and be no closer to helping the poor bastards I’d seen. At last, when I was down to my last fifty, I thought to myself, The hell with this, I’ll play against the odds—either God wants them rescued or he doesn’t, I may as well find out as quickly as possible.