The Last Samurai

I looked up to see how L was getting on. Odyssey 13–24 was lying face down on the bench; L was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t remember when I had seen him last. I thought of going to look for him, but then this would mean leaving the one place he knew to look for me.

I looked at the Odyssey to see how far he had got. My chances of not teaching him Japanese did not look good. I began leafing idly through White Fang.

After a while I heard a voice I knew.

Would you like to hear me count to a thousand in Arabic? said the voice.

I thought you said your mum was in Room 61?

She is.

Then we’ll have to leave it for another time.

When?

Some other time. Is this your little boy?

A security guard was standing in front of me, as was L.

I said: Yes.

L said: I went to the toilet all by myself.

I said: Good for you.

Guard: You’ll never guess where I found him.

I: Where did you find him?

Guard: You’ll never guess in a million years.

I: Where?

Guard: All the way down in the basement in one of the restoring rooms. Seems he must have nipped down the stairs and gone through one of the staff doors.

I: Oh.

Guard: No harm done, but you ought to keep a closer eye on him.

I: Well, there’s no harm done.

Guard: No, but you ought to keep a closer eye on him.

I: Well, I’ll bear that in mind.

Guard: What’s his name?

I wish people wouldn’t ask that kind of question.

When I was pregnant I kept thinking of appealing names such as Hasdrubal and Isambard Kingdom and Thelonius, and Rabindranath, and Darius Xerxes (Darius X.) and Amédée and Fabius Cunctator. Hasdrubal was the brother of Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with elephants in the 3rd century BC to wage war with Rome; Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a 19th-century British engineer of genius; Thelonius Monk was a jazz pianist of genius; Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath; Darius was a Persian king, as was Xerxes; Amédée is the first name of the narrator’s grandfather in A la recherche du temps perdu, and Fabius Cunctator was the Roman general who saved the Roman state from Hannibal by delaying. They all had names one should really not give to a child, and once he was born I had to think fast.

I thought that ideally it should be a name which could work whether he was serious and reserved or butch, a name like Stephen which could be Steve or David which could be Dave. The problem was that I liked David better than Stephen, and Steve better than Dave, and I couldn’t get round it by calling him Stephen David or David Stephen because a series of two trochees with a v in the middle would sound ridiculous. I couldn’t call him David and Steve for short; that would be quaint. People kept coming up to the bed saying what’s his name, and I would say, Well, I was thinking of Stephen, or I was thinking about David, and on one occasion it turned out the person was a nurse with a form who wrote down whatever it was I was thinking about and took it away again and that was that.

They did give me the birth certificate when I left and it was one or the other. When I got home it was obvious that his name was actually Ludovic so I called him that having really no choice in the matter.

I now replied evasively: I call him Ludo.

Guard: Well, keep an eye on Ludo in future.

I: Well, thank you for your help. I think we’ll just go to Room 34 and look at the Turners if you don’t mind. Thank you again for your help.

It was much easier when he was small. I had one of those Kanga carriers; in warm weather I would type at home with him in front and in cold weather I would go to the British Museum and sit in the Egyptian gallery near the changing room, reading Al Hayah to keep my hand in. Then at night I would go home and type Pig Fancier’s Monthly or Weaseller’s Companion. And now four years have gone by.

4

19, 18, 17

1 March, 1993

19 days to my birthday.

I am reading Call of the Wild again. I don’t like it as well as White Fang but I have just finished White Fang again.