26 April
Today we went to the library. I got Tracks Across Alaska, Ticket to Latvia, Night Train to Turkestan, Idle Days in Patagonia, In the Steps of Stanley, In Search of Genghis Khan and Danziger’s Travels.
12 May
I have finished Sugata Sanshiro. There were some things that I did not understand because Sibylla could not answer a lot of my questions. Sibylla said I was being very quiet these days and she had done an enormous amount of work and we would go to Books Nippon and buy me another book in Japanese. I said I would like to get a book about an octopus. We asked at the counter and the lady said she would see if they had anything. Finally she showed us some books. We think we have bought a book about an octopus but we are not quite sure.
13 May
Today I finished Tracks Across Alaska. I decided to start reading Ticket to Latvia. Sibylla did a lot of typing and then she watched Seven Samurai for a while. When it got to where they get to the village I asked if she had actually read anything by my father. She said not if she could help it. I said what do you mean? She said someone in the office gave her one of his books so she had to read some of it. She said she said to the person that it seemed to have rather a lot of logical mistakes and the person said what difference does it make. I said casually do you still have it? She turned her head and looked at me. Then she said no, I didn’t keep it and looked back at the TV. I said who was the person? She kept looking at the TV. She said she couldn’t remember, they had all been crazy about him.
So all I need to do is find someone who was in the office and ask who they were all crazy about. The only problem is that I think they were all fired. When I am a bit older I can do some detective work and trace them.
14 May
Today was a real false alarm. I was practising my Japanese characters when all of a sudden I noticed that Sibylla was looking at my library books! I held my breath and watched her. After a while she picked up Danziger’s Travels and started turning the pages, and then she went over and sat down! She looked at it with a very sad expression and read pages here and there, sighing from time to time. At one point she said Isfahan under her breath! And then without even looking up she said ironically don’t leap to conclusions.
I said Why won’t you tell me who it is?
She said Because he doesn’t know about you.
I said Why didn’t you tell him?
She said Because I didn’t want to see him again.
I said Why didn’t you want to see him again?
She said I don’t want to talk about it.
Maybe he was about to set out on an expedition when they met. He had raised all the money for the expedition and if she told him about me he would have had to give her the money. But she knew his heart was set on the expedition so she didn’t tell him.
15 May
Sibylla got mad at me today because I asked a question about my father. All I did was ask if he knew any languages. She looked at me and said I want you to hear something. She had been typing but now she got up and said we had to go to the library even though we had just been there yesterday.
We went all the way to the Barbican and into the music library and she asked if they had anything by Liberace. They said they didn’t. Sibylla said this couldn’t wait so we took the Circle Line to King’s Cross and then we took the Piccadilly Line to Piccadilly Circus and we went into Tower Records. They said Liberace was in Easy Listening so we went up to Easy Listening.
They had a lot of things by Liberace but the cheapest was a cassette for £9.99.
£9.99! exclaimed Sibylla holding it in her hand. It breaks my heart but it must be done.
She bought the tape and we went home.
When we got home Sibylla put the tape on the tape player. It was quite old-fashioned music, and before each piece the performer would make a few jokes to the audience. The whole time it was playing Sibylla watched me. When it was over she said, What do you think?
I said it was rather old-fashioned but he played the piano quite well.
Sibylla didn’t say anything. She went to a drawer and took out a postcard. It was a picture of some Greek girls painted by Lord Leighton.
What do you think of this? she said.
I said it was a picture about ancient Greece and they were playing ball.
Anything else? she said.
I said it was quite good the way you could see the wind blowing because of the way he had painted their togas.
Then she got an old magazine out of a drawer. She opened it to a page and said Read this. So I started reading. At first I thought maybe it was something my father had written but it wasn’t about travel.
What do you think? she said.
I said it was rather boring but I supposed it was quite well written.
Sibylla put the magazine on the floor. She said, You will not be ready to know your father until you can see what’s wrong with these things.
I said, When will that be?
She said, I don’t know, millions of people have gone to the grave admiring them.
I said, Well why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?
She said, I won’t say it’s better for you to work it out for yourself, la formule est banale. Even when you see what’s wrong you won’t really be ready. You should not know your father when you have learnt to despise the people who have made these things. Perhaps it would be all right when you have learnt to pity them, or if there is some state of grace beyond pity when you have reached that state.
I said, Let me see the magazine again.
Then I read the whole article, but I couldn’t see anything wrong except that it was boring. I looked at the picture again but I couldn’t see what was wrong. I wanted to listen to the tape again but Sibylla said she could not stand to hear it again in one day.
I said, It’s not fair, nobody else has to wait until they’re old enough to know who their father is.
She said, We should not elevate the fortuitous to the desirable.
I said, How do you know I’m old enough to know YOU?
She said, What makes you think I think you are?
28 May
Sibylla has stopped mastering Japanese characters because she has too much work to do. I have mastered 243 thoroughly. Today she started typing and then she watched me working on my characters and then she sighed and got out a book. Later she put it down and I saw that it was the Autobiography of J. S. Mill. Rather surprisingly when she put it down she got out Mr. Richie’s book and she said, Can you read this? Mr. Richie’s book is in English so obviously I can read it. She said, Well read this for me. So I read a paragraph. It was about the villain in Sugata Sanshiro.
He is a man of the world—which Sugata is certainly not. He is well dressed, wears a moustache, is even slightly foppish. Also, he obviously knows what he is about. He is so good that he need never show his strength. He would not, one feels, ever resort to throwing people around as we know Sugata has done. And yet something is missing in him. Sugata may not know the “way of life” but at least he is learning. This man will never know it. He shows it in little ways. At one point, smoking a cigarette—the mark of a dandy in Meiji Japan—he does not bother to look for an ashtray. Instead, he disposes of his ash in an open flower, part of an arrangement on a nearby table.
Sibylla asked, What do you think it means?
I said, I think it means we should respect nature.
Sibylla asked, What?
I said, The villain puts ash in a flower whereas the hero is inspired by the natural beauty of the world around us.
Sibylla said, Hmmm.
I couldn’t think of what else it could mean and Sibylla didn’t say. After a while she went into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and I went to look at the book by J. S. Mill. It was blood chilling!
J. S. Mill started to learn to read when he was two, just like me, but he started Greek when he was three. I only started when I was four. By the time he was seven he had read the whole of Herodotus, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Memorials of Socrates, some of the lives of the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, portions of Lucian and Isocrates’ ad Demonicum and ad Nicoclem, as well as the first six dialogues of Plato, from the Euthyphro to the Theaetetus!!!! He also read a lot of historians I have never even heard of. He didn’t start the Iliad and Odyssey until later whereas I have read both but they are the only thing I have read. I don’t think he did any Arabic or Hebrew but the things I have read in them are rather easy and anyway I have not read a lot.