by
Helen DeWitt
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My admirer says that’s wonderful & that it’s so important for small children to have a sense of achievement, & then drawing me slightly aside says that all the same it’s important to keep a sense of proportion, one needs to strike a balance, dangerous to carry things to extremes, moderation in all things, not that she means to interfere.
By the looks of things I have about three days’ grace before I start teaching Japanese to a child with no sense of proportion whatsoever.
A week went by. I have heard it said that small children have no powers of concentration. What in God’s name is to keep a small child from concentrating on something? L anyway was a monomaniac. He would leap out of bed at 5:00 in the morning, put on four or five sweaters, go downstairs to get out his eight Schwan Stabilo highlighters and get to work. At about 6:30 or so he would rush upstairs to report on his progress waving a fluorescent page in my face and I disapproving of the type of parent who fobs a child off with Wonderful Wonderful would murmur Wonderful and then disarmed by a face like a new penny ask questions. Elephant stampede up and down stairs for a couple of hours & time to get up.
For the next seven and a half hours Yamamoto played Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor, & sometimes he seemed to play it exactly the same five times running but next to the sound of a bell or an electric drill or once even a bagpipe and sometimes he played it one way next to one thing and another way next to another. Some of these sounds were produced at the time and others were recordings, and after six and a half hours he stopped stopping to start the other sounds: a tape began to run & he kept playing. The tape was of traffic and footsteps & people talking and he played Op. 10 No. 1 nine times while it ran, and naturally you could see that you couldn’t really hear how he was playing it or even how he was dealing with the two phrases. At 5:45 the tape came to an end and the piece came to an end and there was silence for 20 seconds or so, and then he played the piece so that you heard it after and over the silence. This went on for six minutes and then he stopped and there was a moment of silence and then he raised his hands to the keys.
You expected to hear Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor for the 60th time, but instead were shocked to hear in quick succession Op. 10 No. 2 in D major, Op. 10 No. 3 in B minor and Op. 10 No. 4 in B major, and you only heard them once each. It was as if after the illusion that you could have a thing 500 ways without giving up one he said No, there is only one chance at life once gone it is gone for good you must seize the moment before it goes, tears were streaming down my face as I heard these three pieces each with just one chance of being heard if there was a mistake then the piece was played just once with a mistake if there was some other way to play the piece you heard what you heard and it was time to go home.
I said, ‘Well, I have only read the Iliad and the Odyssey in Greek and De Amicitia and Metamorphoses 1–8 in Latin and Moses and the Bullrushes and Joseph and his Manycoloured Coat and Jonah and I Samuel in Hebrew and Kalilah wa Dimnah and 31 Arabian Nights in Arabic and just Yaortu la Tortue and Babar and Tintin in French and I have only just started Japanese.’
Ms. Thompson smiled at me. She is very pretty. She has wavy blond hair and blue eyes. She said usually people would not study Arabic or Hebrew or Japanese at school at all and they would usually not start French or Greek or Latin until the age of twelve or so!
I was absolutely amazed!!!! I said that J. S. Mill had begun Greek at the age of three.
Ms. Thompson asked who was J. S. Mill!!!!!!!!
I explained that Mr. Mill was a Utilitarian who died 120 years ago.
28 September
Today when I got to school Miss Lewis said it was important for people to do their own work and what was she to think when she found that five other children had 111 × 111 and 1111 × 1111 and 11111 × 11111 on their addition sheets. I said they would appear to have used the distributive principle of multiplication. Miss Lewis said I must understand that it was important for people to work at their own rate. I said I did understand. Miss Lewis said, ‘Good.’
I worked out that I have spent 12 days in school which is 84 hours so I could have read 8400 lines of the Odyssey. I could have read Herodotus or ad Nicoclem or Cyropaedia and Memorials of Socrates. I could have finished Algebra Made Easy. I could have started Calculus Made Easy. I could have mastered all the Japanese characters thoroughly.
The thing that is worrying me is that J. S. Mill did not go to school. He was taught by his father and that was why he was 25 years ahead of everybody else.
I decided to take the Argonautica to school.
29 September
Today I took the Argonautica to school. Miss Lewis took it away and made me take it home again at the end of the day.
30 September
Today I could have read Book 2 of the Argonautica.
I’ve been telling her for years about Dervla Murphy who rode through the Andes on a mule with her eight-year-old daughter. My father probably does that kind of thing the whole time for a living. The most we’ve ever done is hitchhike through France. My father might like the chance to spend some time with the son he never knew he had. We could go to the source of the Amazon by canoe, or trek overland to the Arctic Circle, or live six months with the Masai (my Masai is pretty good). I know 54 edible plants, 23 edible mushrooms and 8 insects that you can keep down if you don’t think about what you’re eating; I think I could live off the land in any continent. For the last two years I’ve been sleeping on the ground outside even in the winter, and I walk for an hour without shoes every day to toughen my feet, and I’ve practised climbing trees and buildings and telephone poles. If she would just tell me who he is I could stop wasting my time on things that might just happen to come in handy and concentrate on the things I actually need to know. I’ve had to learn five major trade languages and eight nomadic languages just in case. It’s insane.
I thought about this for a while and I said: What’s the youngest anyone has ever gone to Oxford? Sibylla said she didn’t know, in the Middle Ages it was more like a boarding school & she thought a lot of boys would be sent there at 12 or so. She thought a girl had gone to read mathematics at the age of 10 a few years ago.
I said: 10!
She said: I think she’d been taught by her father, who was a mathematician.
If I had had a mathematician for a father I could probably have beaten the record.
Kambei raised the bowl of rice. I understand, he said. No more shouting. I’m not going to waste this rice. Fair enough, said my father.
Tough-looking samurai strode up and down the street. In a doorway stood the farmers, impressed, Katsushiro, impressed, Kambei, arms crossed, unimpressed. Thanks, said my father. I mean that.
Kambei sat inside facing the door. He handed Katsushiro a heavy stick. Hide behind the door, he said. Get in position. Take the overhead-sword stance. Hit the samurai when he comes in, hard. No holding back! As hard as you can. Fair e
I stared at the screen. Katsushiro stood behind the door. I stood up and began walking up and down while a samurai came through the door and parried the blow.
Now I did not hear my father’s voice or see his face; though the film had moved on I saw in my mind a street full of tough-looking samurai, and Kambei in a doorway watching the street.
In my mind I saw Katsushiro standing behind the door with a stick. I saw Kyuzo slicing through a blustering second-rater. But a good samurai will parry the blow.
I thought: I could have James Hatton after all! Or Red Devlin. Or both!
I thought: I could have anyone I wanted!
I thought: Opening middle game endgame.
I thought: A good samurai will parry the blow.
I thought: A good samurai will parry the blow.
I said: How do you know about the case endings?
Sib said: What case endings?
I said: Of the lost silent tribe, they’re not in the book
Sib said: lau …
I said: And the chess isn’t in the book
Sib said: Isn’t Robert Donat on TV tonight?
I said: Did HC tell you after the seminar?
Sib said: This thing by Renan is mysterious. It seems to me that philosophical Greek would be more troublesome to translate into Latin than Arabic. What we should do is compare a Latin translation of, say, Plato with one in Arabic and maybe some passage of Maimonides on a related subject and see which is more awkward.
I said: The chess
Sib said: Look Ludo, an Illinois Fried Chicken!
She sailed to Bombay and it was not at all what she had expected. The Club defied description. So did the people. Also, it was rather hot. That is, she had expected it to be hot, but she had expected it to be cooler. But she looked up the rudest man she had ever met and this time they got on like a house on fire. She said that now that she had set foot in the country she could say whatever she liked and he said he was delighted to hear that she had overcome the diffidence which had afflicted her on a previous occasion. She said something rather cutting and he said something quite rude. She knew he was brilliant because her brother had said he was one of the most brilliant mathematicians he knew, but though he was brilliant and rude he was not condescending. Her brother’s other friends were unfailingly charming, so that she could not talk to one without instantly afterwards taking out a horse and setting it at a six-foot fence. She had never met a man who could open his mouth without imperilling the life of a horse.