17 December, 1992
We took the Tube again today. It was boring. I read Odyssey 17 part of the time and the rest of the time White Fang. On the way home I asked Sibylla if my father was Russian, Hungarian, Finnish, Basque, Icelandic, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Swedish, Danish or Bengali. She said No.
94 days to my birthday.
3
We Never Get Off at Embankment to Go to McDonald’s
and around and around and around and a
L is up to Odyssey 17. This is so bad for him. Hundreds of people saying wonderful marvellous far too young what a genius. It seems to me that it is does not take miraculous intelligence to master the simple fact that ’Oδυσσε
Anyway I have been watching Seven Samurai once a week with L to counteract the deplorable influence of the Circle Line. But today something terrible happened.
A woman sitting across from me saw the Reader of Handwritten Japanese sitting unopened in my lap and said Are you studying Japanese & I said Sort of.
Nine green bottles hanging on the wall
I said I was mainly learning the language so I could understand Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and also (if it ever came out on video) Mizoguchi’s Five Women Around Utamaro which I had watched five days in a row when it showed at the Phoenix, and that I was also interested in a text called Tsurezuregusa by a 14th-century Buddhist priest.
NINE GREEN BOTTLES HANGING ON THE WALL
She said Oh and she said she had seen Seven Samurai though not the other one and what a marvellous film
I said Yes
and she said It’s a little on the long side but what a marvellous film, of course it’s basically so simple isn’t it I suppose that’s the source of its appeal, sort of like the Three Musketeers, an elite band—
and I said WHAT?
and she said Sorry?
ELITE BAND! I said staring aghast
and she said there was no need to shout.
And if ONE GREEN BOTTLE should accidentally fall
There’ll be EIGHT GREEN BOTTLES hanging on the wall
I began to imagine L seeing all kinds of things in the film which would not be incompatible with throwing a person from a plane on orders from a third party
EIGHT GREEN BOTTLES HANGING ON THE WALL
I said politely but firmly I think if you see the film again you will find that the samurai are not, in fact, an elite band. Lesser directors have of course succumbed to the glamour of the eliteness of a band, with predictable results; not Kurosawa.
She said there was no need to take that tone
EIGHT GREEN BOTTLES HANGING ON THE WALL
& I said politely Essentially the film is about the importance of rational thought. We should draw our conclusions from the evidence available rather than from hearsay and try not to be influenced by our preconceptions. We should strive to see what we can see for ourselves rather than what we would like to see.
She said What?
And if one green bottle should accidentally fall
I said Also, we should remember that appearances can be deceptive. We may not have all the relevant evidence. Just because somebody is smiling doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be better off dead.
She said I really don’t think
SEVEN GREEN BOTTLES, HANGING ON THE WALL
I said Let’s say A sees his wife, B, burned alive at time t. A survives. Later we see A singing in a local ritual. C, observing the ritual, thinks A has come out ahead. We infer that C is not in full possession of the facts & has been influenced by his own preconceptions since
She said It all seems rather clinical
I said Clinical!
THERE’LL BE SIX GREEN BOTTLES, HANGING ON THE WALL
She said & isn’t this rather morbid—
I pointed out that if she were thrown into a tank of man-eating sharks she would not think it morbid to consider the possibility of exit from the tank.
After all we both when it comes down to it we both think it’s a marvellous film, she said pleasantly.
I was afraid she might give some other example but luckily the train pulled into Moorgate and this was her stop.
SIX GREEN BOTTLES, HANGING ON THE WALL
SIX GREEN BOTTLES
[Could be worse. He could be singing 100 bottles of beer on the wall, instead of a song that not only counts down, but starts at 10.]
277 degrees above absolute zero.
I said All right, we’ll take the Circle Line again, and we had another argument about Cunliffe.
I: Look, there’s no point in bringing a dictionary when there is no place to put it. You can’t use it if you are holding it in your lap with the book on top. We tried that before and it didn’t work.
L: Please
I: No
L: Please
I: No
L: Please
I: No
L: Please
I: No
The ideal thing would be to go somewhere with tables, such as the Barbican or South Bank Centre—but it is impossible to go to either without being faced at every turn with bars and cafés and restaurants and ice-cream vendors, all selling expensive appealing food which L wants & we cannot afford.
Please No Please No Please
I thought about another day like the last 17, 10 hours of marvellous wonderful far too young what a genius; I thought about another day like yesterday, more marvellous wonderful far too young what a genius plus nonsense about elite bands not to mention 10 hours explaining every single word/visiting toilet inaccessible to pushchair/ smiling pleasantly through 273 verses (10 + 0 + –262) of the green bottles song. Could I be sure that he would not start up again at –263 or rather would anyone familiar with the child offer even straight odds that he would not? No.
So I said All right, forget the Circle Line. We’ll take Cunliffe and we’ll go to the National Gallery, but I don’t want you to say ONE WORD. And no running through doors that say No Entry or Authorised Personnel Only. We’ve got to be inconspicuous. We’ve got to look as though we’ve come to look at the paintings. We’ve been looking at the paintings and our feet are tired so we’re just sitting down to rest our feet. We’re just sitting down to rest our feet so we can get up and look at more paintings.
Natürlich, said the Phenomenon.
I’ve heard that one before, said I, but I put Cunliffe under the pushchair along with Odyssey 13–24, Fergus: Dog of the Scottish Glens, Tar-Kutu, Marduk, Pete, WOLF!, Kingdom of the Octopus, SQUID!, The House at Pooh Corner, White Fang, Kanji ABC, Kanji from the Start, A Reader of Handwritten Japanese, this notebook and several peanut butter and jam sandwiches. I put L in the pushchair with Les Inséparables and we set off.
We are now sitting in front of Bellini’s Portrait of the Doge. L is reading Odyssey 18, consulting Cunliffe at intervals—infrequent intervals. I have been looking at the Portrait of the Doge—somebody’s got to.
I have brought things to read myself but the room is so warm I keep falling asleep and then jerking awake to stare. In a half-dream I see the monstrous heiskaihekatontapus prowling the ocean bed, pentekaipentekontapods flying before it, Come back & fight like a man, it jeers, I can beat you with one hand tied behind my back (heh heh heh). Strange to think Thatcher could work on three hours sleep, five hours & I am an idiot. Should never never never have told him to read all those things—but too late to retract.
I think the guard looks suspicious.
Pretend to take notes.