by Helen Dewitt
and he would say Listen to this
and he would read out a sentence which was like Yesterday with Brahmsian harmony or the Percy Faith Orchestra playing Satisfaction by special request
and I would say He is like a man who plays the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata so slowly he makes mistakes, these logical fallacies are more glaring because he has so much the air of taking his time
and Liberace would say But listen to this
and he would read out a lovely sentence full of logical mistakes
and I would say Or rather he is like a man who plays the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata with dazzling virtuosity & complete ignorance of the music, Schnabel’s teacher once told him that he was a musician but he would never be a pianist & this writer is exactly the opposite
and Liberace would say Yes, but listen to this
and he would read out a sentence which was the work of a stupid virtuoso
and he never did seem to see what I meant. Lord Leighton was like this and like that and the other & he was like a man who piles mattresses on a pebble & I was like the princess & the pea, I was not going to say something about English & the American novel to be told I was engaging so I drank my drink and when Liberace had finished reading he talked for a while about Lord Leighton.
Now I am sure or rather I have no reason to doubt that if I had told Liberace about Ludo he would have done some decent thing. And yet— The fact is that 99 out of 100 adults spare themselves the trouble of rational thought 99% of the time (studies have not shown this, I have just invented the statistics so I should not say The fact is, but I would be surprised if the true figures were very different). In a less barbarous society children would not be in absolute economic subjection to the irrational beings into whose keeping fate has consigned them: they would be paid a decent hourly wage for attending school. As we don’t live in that enlightened society any adult, and especially a parent, has a terrible power over a child—how could I give that power to a man who—sometimes I thought I could and once I even picked up the phone but when I thought about it I just couldn’t. I would hear again his breathtaken boyish admiration for lovely stupidity his unswerving fidelity to the precept that ought implies cant and I just couldn’t.
Liberace talked on and on and on. Gradually as we drank more drinks Liberace talked more and more and more and asked more and more if he was boring me, and as a result it seemed less and less possible to leave, because if he wasn’t boring me why would I want to leave?
Then I thought, there must be some other way not to listen to all this, and of course there was a way. Surely Liberace had brought me back here to pick me up. It would be rude to put a hand over his mouth, but if I were to put my mouth on his mouth this would stop him talking just as well without being rude. His eyes were large, a clear glass green, rimmed with black like the eyes of a nocturnal animal; it seemed as though, if I only kissed him, not only would I not have to listen to him, but I would somehow be closer to the animal with these beautiful eyes.
He said something, and paused, and before he could say anything else I kissed him and there was a sudden, wonderful silence. It was silent except for the silly little laugh of Liberace, but once he had laughed it was over whereas there was no end to his conversation.
I was still drunk, and I was still trying to think of things I could do without being unpardonably rude. Well, I thought, I could sleep with him without being rude, and so I responded in a suitable manner as he unbuttoned the buttons of my dress.
This was a terrible mistake.
The wind is howling. A cold rain is falling. The brown paper window pane is flapping in the fierce rain and wind.
We are sitting in bed watching a masterpiece of modern cinema. I sat at the computer for three hours this morning, & allowing for interruptions typed maybe an hour and a half. At last I said I was going upstairs to watch Seven Samurai & L said he would too. L has read Odyssey 1–10; he has read the story of the Cyclops six times. He has also read a voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, three chapters of Algebra Made Easy, and a few pages each of Metamorphoses, Kalilah wa Dimnah and I Samuel following some scheme which I don’t understand, and every single one involves a constant stream of questions.
I know or at least tell myself that it is better than Japanese (since at least I know the answers to maybe 80% of the questions), & I know I told him to do it. It took him a year to read the Iliad so I do not know how I could have known he would read 10 books of the Odyssey in three weeks.
It occurs to me that the Book of Jonah is just four pages long. Questions on Hebrew have got to be better than questions on Japanese. Wonder if it’s too late to say I really meant Jeremiah.
I should be typing Advanced Angling as they want it back by the end of the week, but it seems important to preserve my sanity. It would be a false economy to forge ahead with typing until maddened to frenzy by an innocent child.
Also in the interests of sanity I have written nothing 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 sud
denly 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 work.
Yes but you always ask questions.
I promise I won’t ask questions.
That’s what you always say. You stay here and watch Seven Samurai and I’ll go downstairs and do some work
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Kambei doesn’t want to take Katsushiro. They can’t take a child. Rikichi wants to take him. Gorobei says it’s child’s play. Heihachi says if they treat him as an adult he’ll grow into an adult.
I’m sorry but it has got to be done. You don’t have to watch Seven Samurai, if you would rather just sit in bed you can. Do you want me to turn it off?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Kambei gives in. 5 has never fought before.
All right then, I’ll see you in a little while.
PLEASE let me come
I’m sorry
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
6 is standing at the door. The master swordsman has decided to come. You never know why Kyuzo changed his mind.
PLEASE let me come PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE I PROMISE I won’t ask any questions I PROMISE
No.
I went downstairs and turned on the computer and I typed in a piece about angling in weed and another on bait. For the whole hour I could hear him howling upstairs, to a background of the samurai theme. At last I couldn’t stand it.
I went upstairs and I said All right, you can come downstairs.
He kept crying into the pillow.
I picked up the remote control and turned off the video. I picked him up and kissed him and I said Please don’t cry, and I took him downstairs to the warmer room with the gas fire. I said Would you like a hot drink, what about a cup of tea? Or hot chocolate, would you like some hot chocolate?
He said Hot chocolate.
I made him a cup of hot chocolate and I said What are you going to work on?
He said very softly Samuel.
I said Good. He got out the dictionary and the Tanach and Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar and he sat down near the fire to read.
I went back to the computer to type, and behind me I could hear the rustle of pages as he looked up word after word after word without asking questions.
An hour went by. I got up to have a cup of tea, and he said Is it all right if I ask a question now?
I said Sure.
He asked a question and he asked another question and he asked another question, and in connection with one of the questions I opened Gesenius to look at tithpa’el verbs, having looked at this and answered the question I began to leaf through the book. I would have liked to cry into a pillow myself, and with a sore heart I began to read these words of comfort:
§49. The Perfect and Imperfect with Waw Consecutive.
1. The use of the two tense-forms, as is shown more fully in the Syntax (§§106, 107, cf. above, §47, note on a), is by no means restricted to the expression of the past or future. One of the most striking peculiarities in the Hebrew consecution of tenses1 is the phenomenon that, in representing a series of past events, only the first verb stands in the perfect, and the narration is continued in the imperfect. Conversely, the representation of a series of future events begins with the imperfect, and is continued in the perfect.
The author of the grammar discussed this marvellous grammatical feature with a kind of stiff scholarly charm, so that he would (for example) explain in a little footnote that ‘the other Semitic languages do not exhibit this peculiarity, excepting the Phoenician, the most closely related to Hebrew, and of course the Moabitish dialect of the Mêša ‘inscription’— just the three words ‘excepting the Phoenician’ were better than hours of the kind of help you can get on a helpline.
This progress in the sequence of time, is regularly indicated by a pregnant and (called wāw consecutive1), which in itself is really only a variety of the ordinary wāw copulative, but which sometimes (in the imperf.) appears with a different vocalization.
I was beginning to feel almost not too bad.
I finished the section & then I turned to the cross-references in Syntax & then I read this and that & when I looked up two hours had gone by. L was sitting by the fire reading about David and Jonathan and singing a little song.
I gave him lunch and then another half hour had gone by. I returned to the computer & typed for three hours with only occasional questions from L. I took a short break and typed for half an hour; I took a break for dinner and typed for two hours; I put L to bed at 9:00 and went back downstairs at 9:30 and typed for three hours and then I went back upstairs.
It seemed to be rather cold.
I did not see how I could leave him upstairs in the morning and I also did not see how I could bring him downstairs.
The Alien whispered It’s only fair to give the other side a chance.
The Alien whispered He’s not a bad man.
I did not really want to go to bed knowing I was just going to wake up the next day. I put on three sweaters and rewound the video. PLAY.
A striking peculiarity of the film is that though it is called Seven Samurai it is not really about seven samurai. Bandits are about to attack the village and only one farmer wants to fight; without him there would be no story. Rikichi glared from the screen with burning eyes; his pale face glowed in the cold dark room.
1This name best expresses the prevailing syntactical relation, for by wāw consecutive an action is always represented as the direct, or at least temporal consequence of a preceding action. Moreover, it is clear from the above examples, that the wāw consecutive can only be thus used in immediate conjunction with the verb. As soon as wāw, owing to an insertion (e.g. a negative), is separated from the verb, the imperfect follows instead of the perfect consecutive, the perfect instead of the imperfect consecutive. The fact that whole Books (Lev., Num., Josh., Jud., Sam., 2 Kings, Ezek., Ruth, Esth., Neh., 2 Chron.) begin with the imperfect consecutive, and others (Exod., 1 Kings, Ezra) with wāw copulative, is taken as a sign of their close connexion with the historical Books now or originally preceding them. Cf., on the other hand, the independent beginning of Job and Daniel. It is a merely superficial description to call the wāw consecutive by the old-fashioned name wāw conversive, on the ground that it always converts the meaning of the respective tenses into its opposite, i.e. according to the old view, the future into the preterite, and vice versa.
Interlude
My mother’s father was a jeweler. He was a handsome, shrewd-looking man; he was an accomplished amateur musician. He spoke excellent English, but he could hear his own accent and he knew there was something comical about it.
Buddy said he did not want to be an accountant and his father told him he had no idea the amount of work it took to be a professional musician. Five years you studied the violin his father said and did you practice five minutes? Five years piano.
Something looked through my grandfather’s eyes and it said Werner and du and mein Kind in tones of tenderness
and authority. Buddy could more or less understand what was being said but he could not argue back, he tried to think of something from Schubert lieder or Wagner but it all seemed too melodramatic. Something looked through my grandfather’s eyes. It said Being an accountant, it’s not the end of the world.
Something looked at my Uncle Danny. Something looked at my aunts and it said A secretary, is that so terrible?
Linda had seen four before her do something that was not so terrible and already there was something about them, their whole lives ahead of them and the best thing cut off, as if something that might have been a Heifetz had been walled up inside an accountant and left to die.
Doom. Doom. Doom.
My father got straight to the point. He argued passionately that Linda would never forgive herself if she did not give herself this chance.
Our lives are ruined, said my father, are you going to let the same thing happen to you? He argued passionately and used words like “hell” and “damn”, strong words for the time, and there was something masculine and forceful about it.
What do you think? said Linda, and she looked at Buddy.
Buddy said: I think you should go.
—because of course if she went anywhere she would go to the Juilliard.
My father said: Of course she should go. She can be in New York by noon. Linda said she could pretend to be going downtown to look for a sweater, because she had just been saying she needed a new sweater.
My father said he would drive her to the station.
Buddy said he would come too in case anybody asked any questions.
Linda said: If anybody asks you just say I went to look for a sweater.
