The Last Samurai

I’ve been telling her for years about Dervla Murphy who rode through the Andes on a mule with her eight-year-old daughter. My father probably does that kind of thing the whole time for a living. The most we’ve ever done is hitchhike through France. My father might like the chance to spend some time with the son he never knew he had. We could go to the source of the Amazon by canoe, or trek overland to the Arctic Circle, or live six months with the Masai (my Masai is pretty good). I know 54 edible plants, 23 edible mushrooms and 8 insects that you can keep down if you don’t think about what you’re eating; I think I could live off the land in any continent. For the last two years I’ve been sleeping on the ground outside even in the winter, and I walk for an hour without shoes every day to toughen my feet, and I’ve practised climbing trees and buildings and telephone poles. If she would just tell me who he is I could stop wasting my time on things that might just happen to come in handy and concentrate on the things I actually need to know. I’ve had to learn five major trade languages and eight nomadic languages just in case. It’s insane.

My name is Katsushiro Okamoto. Please, please let me become one of your followers.

Followers? I am Kambei Shimada. I am only a ronin. I have no followers

I thought about Liberace and Lord Leighton and the author of the magazine article. Even if she’s right, what’s bad about these people is that they are bad artists. Maybe my father was a bad writer—but it could be because he had more important things to think about. If you’re travelling across Siberia with a team of huskies you may not have time to polish every word. Sibylla does tend to take art too seriously.

I went up to my room after a while. She has been watching Seven Samurai for the last 10 years and she still has trouble with the Japanese. I could hear it downstairs. I knew she’d be there for at least another hour.

I had once seen an envelope in her room marked To Be Opened In Case of Death. I thought—well surely if she thought she’d be dead she’d say who my father was. I thought—I’ve tried to play by the rules, but this is ridiculous. I could just see myself in 10 years looking at the picture by Lord Leighton and not seeing anything wrong, or trying to find something wrong with one of the greatest writers of our time.

I had practised walking silently. I walked silently across the landing to her room. There’s a drawer where she keeps her passport. I thought the envelope might be there. I crossed the room and opened the drawer.

There was a folder with a thick stack of papers in it.

2

I know all the words

I read through the papers quickly.

There was quite a lot about my father, but she’d thought of a nickname and stuck to it. I kept thinking she’d say who Liberace was, or at least mention the title of one of his books, but she didn’t. Before I could start looking again for the envelope Sibylla called from downstairs

LUDO! ARE YOU UPSTAIRS?

I said

YES

and she said

WOULD YOU MIND BRINGING ME THE DUVET?

I put the folder of papers back in the drawer and took the duvet downstairs. I don’t know what I thought. I think I thought It’s not too late not to know and But I have to know.

The first part of the recruitment was over, the part where Katsushiro stands behind a door with a stick. When I was very little I would practise reading fast from the subtitles and Sibylla would say why do you think he did this and why do you think he did that and why doesn’t Shichiroji have to take the test and why does Gorobei take Heihachi if he says he always runs away? I would say something and she would laugh and say she never thought of that.

Kambei and Katsushiro find two samurai stripping bamboo poles for a match.

The fight begins. Kyuzo raises his pole. X holds his pole over his head and shouts.

Kyuzo draws back his pole. X runs forward.

Kyuzo raises his pole suddenly and brings it down.

X: Sorry, that was a draw

No. I won

Nonsense

If it had been with real swords you’d be dead.

Sibylla put the duvet around her shoulders. She said she would start typing soon.

I wanted to say: Was he really as bad as Liberace?

Liberace was the one thing she’d shown me that I could see was bad. Could my father really be that bad? Could he be worse? I wanted to say: How bad is bad? Is it worse than gap-toothed urchins and coltish grace? Worse than scrap of humanity? Worse than veritable cathedral of ice? I wanted to say: But at least he’s seen the world.