The Last Samurai

He said: He wasn’t, no, but there was never any question of my being anything else. Consider the matter from my mother’s point of view. One day she is an oppressed schoolgirl with disgusting food to eat, an ugly uniform, exclusively female companions all kitted out in the same depressing attire and the heady prospect of putting on Racine’s Bérénice for entertainment; no sooner does she sell her crucifix than, shazam! she wins hundreds of thousands of francs and has delicious meals, glorious clothes and a handsome and charming Hungarian at her feet. You couldn’t ask for a clearer sign from God.

I said: That doesn’t follow at all. If there were a divine being it would hardly arrange to communicate through a series of events which might just as well have come about through pure coincidence, and on the other hand a series of events which could come about through pure coincidence can hardly be evidence of either the wishes or existence of such a being.

He said: Not at all. You’re completely missing the point. I’m not a philosopher or a theologian, so I don’t know what one would look for in an uncontrovertible message from above; the question is what would convince a 17-year-old and a gambler and God the all-seeing all-knowing naturally did not waste time beaming syllogisms into the mind of a girl who found 10 minutes of Italian a crashing bore.

I said: But if God had just voted for Islam why did she marry your father?

But they were madly in love, he said. He sounded as though he’d never heard such a stupid question in his life.

He laughed. And anyway the Hungarian was part of the sign, so it was obviously God’s will.

I liked this piece of logic but I was glad Sibylla wasn’t there to hear it.

He said: You laugh, but you’re still missing the point. The point isn’t that she saw what God wanted and did it because he wanted it, like a simpering little dévote. She saw which way her luck lay. She wasn’t going to argue with that and neither was my father. I can see you think that’s frivolous, but if you’d got out of as many tight spots as I have with no better protection than a diplomatic immunity you’d invented five minutes before you’d take luck a damn sight more seriously than any arguments.

I still didn’t want him to kick me out so I put a couple of pastries on my plate and tactfully changed the subject and said:

How did you like Seven Samurai?

And he said:

It is a terrible film. Terrible.

And I said:

But it’s a work of genius.

He had lit another cigarette and now he raised it to his lips with the suavity of a dandy of Meiji Japan. He said: That is precisely my objection to this terrible work.

He said: I was at university at the time, in pursuit of a very beautiful, very earnest girl. I persuaded her to go out with me, but she was very serious about her studies and could only leave them for something even more serious. Seven Samurai was showing at the Phoenix for one night, and one night only: she proposed we go to that.

Consider my dilemma! That was the night of the University Bridge Club, and I had faithfully promised my partner to be there. A first-rate player, but a very short temper, and matters were at a very delicate stage—all the world had run mad for revolving discards, and Jeremy wished to follow fashion—he had devised a system of fiendish intricacy which was to be ours if I could not somehow persuade him to abandon it. The worst time in the world, in short, to annoy him, or leave him open to the influence of the fools in the club who favoured the wretched system.

But this was a chance which might not come again, and I’d been after the girl for weeks. She wouldn’t take me seriously, you see, and this was a girl who, if she could not take you seriously, would not take you at all.

Well, I knew I was a fool, and certainly in the grand scheme of things bridge was a great deal closer to my heart than this wretched girl, but I agreed anyway. We went to see Seven Samurai. I knew as soon as it began that I had made a terrible mistake.

Scenes, black and white, of peasant misery rose upon the screen, and superimposed on them dreadful visions of all the appalling results to which the discard system might lead. Hand after hand flashed into my mind—nightmarish hands in which our opponents, in easily defeatable contracts, made unmakable slams doubled redoubled and vulnerable—had unearned overtricks poured into their astonished laps—and where was I while disaster loomed? Fiddling while Rome burned.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it now—I might as well try to enjoy myself.