The Last Samurai

She said: Anything follows from a false premise. If you accept that American novels should be written in English then it also follows that the Pope is a Jew.

I said: Well in that case Seven Samurai can’t be any good because it’s in black and white and Japanese. You’re being completely inconsistent. I thought: This is insane. Why don’t we just talk about the decline of traditional Zulu raindances or mutations in inland water algae in the Urals or some other randomly chosen completely irrelevant subject? I have a right to know who he is whoever he is.

She said: I wish you wouldn’t say the first thing that comes into your head, Ludo. There is an obvious difference between someone who works within the technical limitations of his time which are beyond his control and someone who accepts without thinking limitations which are entirely within his own power to set aside.

She said: It may have escaped your notice but I am trying to watch one of the masterpieces of modern cinema.

The farmers see a crowd of people. A samurai has gone to the river’s edge to be shaved by a monk.

Mifune pushes his way through the crowd and squats scratching his chin.

Katsushiro asks his neighbour what’s happening.

I said So you think Proust would have been better with some English and German added in & she looked at me with burning eyes & I said Why don’t we talk about the impact of tourism on the traditional Zulu raindance why don’t you test me on 50 capitals of the world this is completely irrelevant I have a right to know.

She looked at me with burning eyes.

I said: Well just tell me this. He didn’t rape you did he? (Everything I know about delicacy I learned at my mother’s knee.) For one horrible moment I thought he really had: increase Rikichi factor by power of 10.

She said: No.

I said: So there must have been something you liked about him. He must have had SOME redeeming quality.

She said: That’s one way of looking at it.

I said: What other way is there of looking at it?

She said: In our society one of the most highly prized virtues if not the most highly prized virtue is that of sleeping with someone you don’t desire for free, if it is prized in people who have to do it surely it would be a supererogatory virtue in someone who wasn’t even married.

I said: Is that what you did?

She said: Well, I was trying to be polite.

I was not going to be struck speechless now. I said: What word has escaped the barrier of your teeth?

She said: There is a strange taboo in our society against ending something merely because it is not pleasant—life, love, a conversation, you name it, the etiquette is that you must begin in ignorance & persevere in the face of knowledge, & though I naturally believe that this is profoundly wrong it’s not nice to go around constantly offending people.

I had heard this a million times. I said: Does that mean there WASN’T anything you liked about him?

She said: How can you be so sure something you don’t know is something you want to know? Look at Oedipus.

I said: What are you afraid of, that I’ll kill him or sleep with him?

She said, or rather riposted: Well, I wouldn’t sleep with him if I were you, and she said: Tiresias has spoken.

There is a strange taboo in our society against matricide.

She rewound the video ostentatiously to the place where I had interrupted.

The thief runs from the barn and falls down dead.

The parents of the child rush forward to take it.

Mifune rushes forward brandishing his sword. He jumps up and down on the body.

The samurai walks off without a backward look.