The Last Samurai

For as long as I can remember Sib has been pining for Fraser’s Ptolemaic Alexandria (a superb work of scholarship which no home should be without). It is not available in public libraries (or at least in none known to us) but sometimes we would come across a secondhand copy in a bookshop and visit it on a daily basis. Sib would draw attention to marvellous footnotes on Eratosthenes (who worked out the circumference of the world) or the Alexandra of Lycophron which was a whole poem narrated by Cassandra in a prophetic frenzy and which made so little sense that scholars could never tell whether textual corruption or the madness of Cassandra was to blame for their difficulties, or the Theriaca of Nicander which was a long poem in hexameters about snakes. It was always too expensive, and sooner or later somebody richer would buy it.

Four months ago Sib found another copy and this time she bought it. I don’t know where or what she paid for it—she wouldn’t tell me. She said she would ask to be buried with it but it would be cruel to rob posterity of one of the few copies in existence, she would be willing to bet that if she died 50 years from now Oxford University Press would still be pretending to be about to reprint it, and she said if she had a funeral perhaps I could pass the book around and people could read out interesting passages from it. I promised that if I had any say in the matter it would be read at her funeral.

The last time I had seen the envelope in the drawer had been six months ago; the reason it was no longer there was that in the meantime she had got the book.

I had to watch the rest of the film but I couldn’t concentrate. I don’t know whether it was any good; all I could think about was the envelope and the book.

At last it was over. Sib said Thank you. She said she’d better do some work.

Ptolemaic Alexandria was in a bookcase behind her back. I got out Volume II and opened it to the description of a tragedy portraying the events of Exodus (Fraser quotes an exchange between God and Moses in iambic trimeters), and there it was. To Be Opened In Case of Death.

I thought: If ’twere done, ’twere well ’twere done quickly. I thought: What’s a sealed envelope? A door marked No Entry or Authorised Personnel Only. Something to ignore if the circumstances warrant it.

I put it inside my shirt and went upstairs. When I got to my room I opened the envelope.

It wasn’t Red Devlin. It wasn’t anyone like that.

I remembered one of his books that I hadn’t bothered to finish. He’d gone to Bali. The men there walk barefoot across the lava field of a live volcano. He didn’t. He stood watching them walk across the lava and then he went back to the hotel and wrote about how he’d watched them. He didn’t know any Balinese. He fucked a woman back at the hotel on the basis of three words of Balinese. Maybe she liked nocturnal animals.

4

Steven, age 11

Three days after I learned his name I realised I’d jumped to conclusions. Quite often in travel books the writer goes from being naive or ignorant or cowardly to doing something quite brave later on. It was stupid to judge him with so little to go on. So I went to the library to look for the rest of his books. Sibylla is right, he’s very popular—they have everything he’s written, but only two books were there.

Right beside them on the shelf was my old favourite, Journey into Danger! I must have read that about 20 times. Well, too bad.

I took down The Lotus-Eaters. There was a picture of my father on the back, taking up the whole back cover. He stared frowning into the distance. He was less handsome than I’d imagined, but it might be a bad picture.

An Antique Land had a different picture on the back. Another audition for the Tyrone Power school of acting.

If the books had been fiction the librarian probably wouldn’t have let an 11-year-old borrow them, but because they were travel writing it did not occur to her to object. She was used to my borrowing from the grown-up section, especially travel books; she probably didn’t realise these were X-rated.

I read the two books I’d found, and then I got three more at the Barbican, and I read the latest one at the Marylebone Library because I didn’t have a ticket. By the end of the week I had read all my father’s books.

Well. I have to admit I’d hoped to find some spark of genius or heroism unnoticed by Sibylla. I wanted to open a page and think But this is brilliant! This didn’t happen. I kept reading anyway. I don’t know what I was hoping to find.

When I didn’t find anything in the books I thought he might be different in person.

He had been married to his first wife when he met my mother, it had ended, and he had married again and moved to another house. So even if I could have discovered the location of the Medley, it would now be occupied only by his ex-wife.