Free The Last Samurai by Helen de Witt Page B

more for posterity in several days. I have been finding this rather depressing to write—writing of Mozart I thought suddenly of my mother blundering through the accompaniment to Schubert lieder with my Uncle Buddy, Jesus , Buddy, said my mother, what’s the matter , you sing like a Goddamned accountant, and slamming down the lid stormed out of my father’s latest half-finished motel & off down the highway while my Uncle Buddy softly whistled a little tune & said nothing much. What’s the use of remembering that?
    I then thought of a priceless line I’d read somewhere or other: It is my duty as a mother to be cheerful. It is my duty as a mother to be cheerful, & so it is clearly my duty to watch a work of genius & abandon Advanced Angling & composition.
     
    Kambei is samurai 1. He starts to recruit the rest .
    He picks out a samurai in the street. He tells the farmer Rikichi to bring him to a fight. He tells Katsushiro to stand inside the door with a stick and bring it down. He sits inside waiting .
    The samurai comes through the door, seizes the stick and throws Katsushiro to the floor. Kambei tells him the deal; he isn’t interested .
    Kambei picks another samurai .
    Katsushiro stands inside with the stick. Kambei sits waiting .
    2 comes to the door. He sees through the trick; he stands laughing in the street .
    Gorobei knows the farmers have a hard time, but that’s not why he accepts. He accepts because of Kambei .
     
    I say to L: Kurosawa won a prize for a film he made before this one, called Rashomon, about a woman raped by a bandit; in that one he tells the story 4 times, & it’s different each time someone tells it, but in this one he did something more complicated, he only tells the story once but you see it from about 8 points of view, you have to pay attention the whole time to see whether something seems to be true or is just what somebody says is true.
    He says: Uh-huh. He is murmuring snatches of Japanese under his breath, & also reading the subtitles out loud.
     
    3 doesn’t have to pass the test. Shichiroji is an old friend of Kambei’s. He’d given him up for dead .
    Gorobei finds 4 chopping wood to pay for a meal. Heihachi is a second-rate swordsman but he’ll keep them in good spirits .
     
    Kambei and Katsushiro come across two samurai stripping bamboo poles for a match .
    The fight begins. A raises his pole and pauses. B holds his pole over his head and shouts .
    A draws back his pole in a beautiful sweeping movement, and pauses. B runs forward .
    A raises his pole suddenly and brings it down .
    B says it was a draw .
    A says he won. He’d have killed him with a real sword. He walks away .
    B wants to fight with swords .
    A says he’d kill him, it’s stupid .
    B draws his sword and insists .
    A draws his sword .
    He raises it and pauses .
    B holds his sword above his head and shouts .
    A draws back his sword in a beautiful sweeping movement. B runs forward .
    A raises his sword suddenly and brings it down. B falls down dead .
     
    I would like to watch the rest of the film, but there is Advanced Angling to consider. I tell L that I have to go downstairs & put the heater on to type, & that he will have to stay in bed and watch the video. Of course he instantly begs to come too. I say You don’t understand, we need £150 for the rent and £60 for the council tax, that alone is £210 and as you know I make £5.50 an hour before tax, 210 divided by 5.50 is approximately 40—
    38.1818
    38.1818, fine,
    18181818181818
    the point being
    1818181818181818181818181818
    that if I work 10 hours a day for the next 4 days I can get the disks in Monday, we’ll get the cheque on Friday, and we can pay two bills, and if we stretch out the £22.62 we now have in the house we can also buy food.
     
    The master swordsman isn’t interested in killing people. He only wants to perfect his art .
     
    I can’t work with you downstairs. I know you don’t mean to distract me but you do.
    I just want to