The Last Samurai

Five billion, and as far as I know I am the only one in all those billions who thinks children should not be in absolute economic subjection to the adults into whose keeping fate has consigned them. I think I should stick around and write a letter to the Guardian.

I said I could write it and sign it Ludo Aged 11.

You can write to the Independent, said Sib. And I’ll write one to the Telegraph signed Robert Donat just on the off-chance.

For someone who believes in the importance of rational argument Sib avoids the issue 9 times out of 10.

She began walking up and down and walking by the piano paused and sat down and started playing a short piece she has been playing off and on for years.

7

I’m a genuine samurai

My father brought out a book about his visit to Easter Island.

Hugh Carey left to walk across Russia alone.

Sorabji got a knighthood.

The painter left to walk across a desert.

Szegeti joined his partner to win the World Bridge Championship 1998 after completing a brief fact-finding mission in Jackson, Mississippi for Nelson Mandela.

People went on with their lives and got on with their jobs.

I didn’t look for another father. I should have gone around saying Open Sesame, but I just wore his jacket and rode the Circle Line around and around and around.

One day I took the Circle Line to Baker Street. It didn’t matter which way I went, so I walked along the Marylebone Road and then turned north. I walked up one street and turned left and down another and turned right and up a third and turned left again. Halfway up the street I heard the sound of a piano.

A herd of octaves fled up and down the keyboard like panicked giraffe; a dwarf hopped on one foot; twelve toads hopped four-footed. I sat on the doorstop while the XXV variations of Alkan’s Festin d’Aesope dazzled an indifferent street. So who’s this? I thought. I had heard Hamelin’s recording of the piece, and I had heard recordings by Reingessen and Laurent Martin and Ronald Smith and I had once heard a broadcast of Jack Gibbons, and when you have heard these recordings you have heard the five people in the world who play it. This wasn’t one of them.

Glenda the Good glided on a gleaming sea drawn by six snowy swans. The Grande Armée crossed Poland on pogo sticks. A woman with a shopping bag walked across the street and up steps. A man with briefcase walked briskly by like an overacting extra.

Six dogs tapdanced on tabletops.

The Variations came to an end. There was a short pause.

A flight of octaves took off like startled flamingoes. No one stopped and stared.

He played variations on the Variations and variations on the variations and he would play one variation next to another next to which it had not originally been juxtaposed.

Are you ready for another fight? No prospects. It could be dangerous.

I stood up and knocked on the door.

A woman came to the door. She said: What to do you want?

I said: I’ve come for my piano lesson.

She said: Oh.

She said: But he doesn’t give lessons.

I said: He’ll see me.

She said: Oh I don’t know

I said: I’ve come for a lesson on Alkan, the once celebrated contemporary of Chopin and Liszt, passed over for the directorship of the Conservatoire through sordid political machinations in favour of a mediocrity and so condemned to a life of bitter obscurity only to die (as legend has it) crushed under a bookshelf while attempting to take down a volume of the Talmud. Only six people in the world today play his music of the six perhaps three are active of the active only one lives in London I have come for a piano lesson with him.

She said: He hasn’t said anything to me.

I said: Oh, go on

She said: Well all right then.

I went through the door. I was in a big room with a bare floor and peeling plaster and a grand piano. Someone sat at the piano—I could only see his legs.

He said:

What do you want?

He raises his sword. He draws it back with a slow sweeping motion.

I said: I had to see you because I’m your son.

He stood up. He was about 25. He was no Mifune lookalike, but it was not likely that I was his son.

He said: What is this shit?

I didn’t know what to say. Then I thought of something to say. I said:

Hey you!

asking me ‘Are you a samurai?’ like that…

what a nerve!

He said: What?

I said:

Even though I look like this, I’m a genuine samurai.

I did not seem to be making much of an impression. I persevered:

Hey, I’ve been looking for you the whole time ever since then

thinking I’d like to show you this.

Look at this.

This genealogy.

A genealogy belonging to my family for generations.

You bastard (you’re making a fool of me)

Look at this. (You’re making a fool of me)