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 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.