He said
Well I realised as soon as I got on with it that it was a mistake. Banal, irrelevant, but I wasn’t going through all that again. I thought of going back and asking for cow’s blood or sheep’s blood or horse’s blood and going through it all again and I couldn’t be bothered.
He said
So I thought I’d just leave that out and see what happened, but if anyone asked I’d tell the truth. I don’t lie about my work. I was sort of surprised no one did twig it, but people aren’t very interested in belief so maybe it’s not so surprising.
He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, picked up the screwdriver and began chipping away at the wall.
He took out the cigarette and ground it out underfoot.
He said
Is that why you’re here? To satisfy your curiosity?
I wanted to say yes.
I could imagine him lowering himself into the bathful of blood, and I couldn’t imagine him sending the boatman down to a pocket of blue. I was glad to have no part of him. But I had come and I couldn’t go away without doing what I’d come to do.
I drew my bamboo sword and raised it.
I said
I came to satisfy my curiosity.
I drew it back in a slow sweeping motion.
I said
I wanted to see you because I’m your son.
And he said
Out of?
And I said weak with relief
Sorry?
And he said
Who’s the alleged mother?
I said
You probably wouldn’t remember. She said you were both drunk at the time.
He said
How convenient.
I said
Never mind.
He said
You came here for money didn’t you? You thought you could stick me. You’d better pick better next time.
I said
It’s not so easy. If you pick a person to whom you could be obliged you may be disappointed.
I said
Have you seen Seven Samurai?
He said
No.
So I explained about the film and he said
I don’t understand.
I said
You sent the boatman down to see the pocket of blue. He said he’d seen pictures and you said it wasn’t enough. I thought you’d see why I want to go by mule through the Andes. I thought it would be worth fighting with bamboo swords.
He said
So I won.
I said
If we’d fought with real swords I’d have killed you.
He said
But we weren’t.
It was true that I was not his son and that it was a trick.
I thought that he probably did not know the film very well.
Kambei tests the samurai who interest him: Katsushiro stands behind the door with a stick.
His first choice is a good fighter and no coward—he comes through the door and parries the blow. He is offended by the trick and insulted by the idea of fighting for three meals a day. But the second spots the trick without coming through the door and he laughs, and he accepts out of interest in the samurai.
I said
You have certainly seen through the trick. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I hope you find what you’re looking for
though I thought that a man with his money who had bought this grey building and its grey light would look a long time for colour here. I thought that he could probably get more money for his chippings.
I turned and walked back through the three dark rooms to the stairs, and went down to the ground floor. I had reached the gate when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs behind me.
I fumbled for the lock and turned it at last and pushed the door open, and it caught on a chain and recoiled. I closed it and undid the chain and ran into the street. I began to run down the street.
I heard footsteps behind me and sprinted ahead. His legs were longer. A hand gripped my arm and we stopped.
The sky was now completely grey. The sky was grey, and the street was grey, and a big glass office building reflected grey sky, grey street, grey man, grey boy. His face was leaden and ugly, dead and dry in the nasty light.
He said
Come on then. I’ll take you to Atlantis.
He began running again, pulling me along. He ran through a lot of little streets and then we came out in Brick Lane. He began to run up the street, past the sari shops and Indian sweets shops and Islamic book shops and at last he ran up the steps of a brick building and dragged me through the door.
It was bright white, perhaps not polar white. To our right a flight of stairs ran up. To our left a door through which we went; a small entrance, walls covered with cards, another door.
We went through this door, and now we were in a very high, very long room, and along its walls and on racks across the floor were pots and tubes and sticks and papers in hundreds and hundreds of colours. We were standing by the cash register. Two people in a queue turned and stared, and one salesman said
Mr. Watkins!
And the other said
Can I help you?
And he said
No.
Then he said
Yes. I need a knife. A Stanley knife.
And while an assistant hurried to get this he was walking through the room.
His hand still gripped my arm, though not so tightly. He stopped by a display and read out ‘chrome yellow’ and he said
I wonder what the real thing looks like, eh my old son?
And he walked on to the back of the room where there were racks of paper.
He was walking fiercely between the racks of colours, not looking after that remark. There were large sheets of handmade paper with rose hips and other dried flowers pressed into them. There were pieces of paper of smaller sizes on a side table. He took one and looked at it and took it and he bought this and the knife. Then he resumed walking around and the sales assistant hovered at our heels until he told him to stop. He would pause behind a case and then someone would come around the case.
At last he said
All right. All right. All right.
His hand now circled my wrist loosely. He walked through the air as if it were water, by jars of colours for painting silk, and white fringed silk scarves in cellophane for painting, and white silk ties for handpainting, and white silk hearts in cellophane.
He stopped and he began to laugh a breathy scratchy laugh like the stubble on his face.
No cheap jokes, he said.
He said
This will do. This is just what I was looking for.
He picked up a silk heart and he took £10 out of his pocket and handed it to a salesperson. He had to use his other hand to get the money, so he dropped his hold on me. Now he went up a short flight of steps, then up another step to a platform overlooking the store, and I followed him up to the top. On the platform were three round black tables and three chairs with cane seats. There was a table against the wall with two coffee machines and a sign that said Help yourself to coffee and Milk in the Fridge; next to the table was a fridge. A couple of small speakers sent Virgin FM scratchily out.
He pulled a second chair to one of the tables and sat down. I sat down.
He tore open the cellophane with his teeth and unwrapped the white silk heart. He pulled the Stanley knife free of its cardboard.
He said
You know my agent? He can tell you who’d give money for this; he’ll find someone who’d like to buy it.
He held his thumb up. He breathed on it, and then he ground it onto the white silk.
He said
You know the old joke. I suffered for my art and now it’s your turn.
He gripped my thumb tightly. I thought he would do the same with my thumb: it was dirty enough from my climbing. He held it so tightly it hurt, and before I understood what he meant he had seized the knife and slashed my thumb with the blade.
A big gout of blood welled out of the cut. He let it gather on the blade and then he took this away and did something on the silk, and then he scooped up more blood with the knife and transferred it to the silk, and he did this nine or ten times. Then he put the knife aside and he brought my bloody thumb down on the silk beside the black mark he had made.