The Master Key

by Masako Togawa

  He then turned around, and called Miss Yatabe to him. Yoneko observed how, once Miss Yatabe had sat in front of the priest, all the strength seemed to leave her body and throughout the session she seemed to be frozen in terror.

  The little medium now proceeded to arrange two candlesticks, one on either side of Suwa Yatabe. She then nodded to Tomiko Iyoda, who lit the candles and then switched off the electric light in her room. Up until now, it had seemed like a meeting of a discussion group, but with the room in total gloom apart from the two flickering candles, the atmosphere now became eerie.

  Yoneko sensed a cold breeze on her neck. She looked around, and was just in time to observe the slight form of Haru Santo slipping in through the door. Haru’s hair shone ghostly white in the candlelight as she crept to the cushion beside Yoneko and sat down.

  ‘Link hands with your neighbours!’ The priest’s voice was full of vibrant power. From Yoneko’s left, a clammy hand reached through the darkness and gripped hers. It was Haru Santo who had thus grasped her. Looking to her right, Yoneko could just make out the features of one of the people who had come at the same time as she had, but a sense of revulsion prevented her from reaching out and taking her hand.

  ‘Someone is not cooperating. The seance cannot begin until all hands are linked. Do as I say!’

  The priest’s voice had become stern and authoritative. Yoneko could not but obey him, unpleasant as it made her feel.

  On her left, Haru Santo was chanting the opening lines of a Buddhist Sutra. All around, the others present began to follow suit, until the room reverberated with their nasal tones.

  Yoneko began to feel slightly nauseated by the whole proceeding. Someone had lit a bundle of incense sticks, and their powerful scent began to pervade the room.

  The priest stood up and spoke.

  ‘Suwa Yatabe, forasmuch as thou hast besought this seance, come now and prostrate thyself before me so that thy spirit shall pass into my keeping.’

  He reached down and placed his hands on Suwa’s head as he spoke.

  She began to mumble disjointedly. From time to time, she seemed to be referring to a violin. At last she fell silent, at which point Thumbelina stood up and began to moan and sway and, eventually, raising her hands on high, to dance in a manner suggesting great exhaustion. In the flickering candlelight, there was something magical about the dance, with two white wrists flickering like butterflies in the gloom. Her long black hair swished from side to side, occasionally falling forward so as to totally obscure her face, then parting slightly to reveal a pale forehead.

  Haru Santo began to tremble and shudder, and as she was clasping Yoneko’s hand tightly in her clammy grasp, the movement communicated itself to Yoneko’s body.

  Suddenly, the medium raised her voice to a piercing scream and fell flat on her face. She lay still, but it seemed to Yoneko that she had begun to foam at the mouth, though it might have just been spittle. Her beautiful features, or what could be seen of them through the strands of black hair that lay across her face, seemed to be contorted with pain. Then her tiny body began to shudder and, grinding her teeth the while, she emitted a strange sound.

  ‘Hee, Hee, Hee! Hee, Hee, Hee!’

  It sounded like an unpleasant laugh slowed down. Yoneko felt most disturbed. All around her, this strange performance was having the identical effect upon the audience, who sat very still and silent and watched dubiously.

  ‘The seance is now over. Release your hands.’ The voice of the priest echoed sonorously in the dark room.

  Yoneko took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her hands. She felt relieved that it was over, and wished that someone would turn on the electric light, but it looked as if this sect preferred to conduct its business by candlelight. Suddenly she could not bear to stay for a second longer, and she rushed to the lobby and struggled into her shoes, expecting to be halted by a command from the priest, but no one paid her any attention. She opened the door and went out. As soon as she breathed the fresh cold air in the corridor, she felt better.

  Within, the sect was continuing its meeting, but Yoneko made her way straight back to her room.

  What had she in common with the people in that room, with all their talk of prophecies and revelations and the world of spirits?

  She sat down by her desk and reached for the list of her former pupils. But all of a sudden she seemed to have lost the will to continue her series of ‘letters from your past’.

  Yoneko spent the next two days doing nothing, and hardly daring to leave her room for fear of bumping into Tomiko Iyoda or other members of the Three Spirit Faith. From time to time she overcame her reluctance and went out to have a look at Chikako Ueda’s room on the fifth floor. But she had almost given up hope of making any progress in that direction.

  On the third day, she was cooking herself a late breakfast when there was a knock on her door. She opened it to find Tomiko Iyoda outside, her face wreathed in smiles.

  ‘What a delicious smell. You’re toasting new bread, I suppose!’ And without more ado she kicked off her sandals and stepped into the room. Yoneko followed her, apologising as she went.

  ‘I do hope you’ll forgive me for leaving so suddenly the other night, after you’d gone to the trouble of asking me. I suddenly felt indisposed.’

  There was nothing for it but to offer her unwelcome guest a seat.

  ‘Not at all, not at all. Don’t mention it. It quite often happens that way to beginners: the unaccustomed contact with the spirit world overcomes them at first.’

  And without the slightest reserve she sat down, looking curiously around the room as she did so, and helped herself to a piece of Yoneko’s toast.

  ‘But I felt you’d like to hear the upshot of the seance—it’s most interesting, I can assure you. Of course, you realise that funny noise—“Hee Hee”—was a voice from the spirit world? It sounded sad to me, but after you’d gone His Reverence played it back over the tape recorder and explained that in the language of the spirit world that particular sound represents the crackling of flames.

  ‘His Reverence told us that this signified that the missing object had been burned. At which point, Miss Yatabe, the one who’d lost whatever it was—a violin, I suppose—suddenly came out of her trance. Well, that should be enough to convince anybody that our seances are genuine, I feel. But there’s more and better to come! Would you believe it! Today we had absolute proof of the truth of what His Reverence said. And it happened right before our very eyes—yes, I was there, and saw it, too! Look, I wouldn’t have told you this before, but I occasionally had my doubts too, you know. But not any more after this! O how lucky and happy I feel! That’s why I rushed straight here to share the good news with you!’

  She paused for a sip of tea, and then straightening her fat body she went on:

  ‘Well, you know there’s an old brick-built incinerator in the inner courtyard? Yes, well, it’ll have to come down because of the moving of the building, so since this morning the labourers have been raking out the ashes and what do you think they found? A violin case! Who could have put such a thing there? Well, it was badly scorched because although it was deep in the ashes, the heat of the fire had reached it. And the poor violin inside was scorched and warped, and the varnish was blistered. There it was, a worldfamous instrument of which there are hardly any left, all ruined! Well, Miss Tojo from the front desk said that Miss Yatabe would be the one to know about it, and of course she was dead right, because that was the violin which Miss Yatabe had lost, or rather which had been stolen from her that time when someone broke into her room using the master key, do you remember?

  ‘Poor Miss Yatabe! When she saw the state that violin was in, her knees crumpled and she sat on the floor and cried. For not only was it a famous instrument, but she had received it from her teacher years and years ago. Well, I suppose she shouldn’t be blamed, but in her place my first sentiments would be to wonder at the powers of the spirit world and marvel at how His Reverence has penetra
ted its hermetic secrets! More than the violin itself, his knowing how it would turn out—that’s what would move me!

  ‘I mean, that little medium can speak with the tongues of spirits, and of the dead, but there are many who can do that. But His Reverence can understand the language of that world! That is the real miracle if you ask me! It takes the wisdom and experience of someone like him to do that!’

  Miss Iyoda seemed to be overcome by her own eloquence. Gradually she calmed down and then took her leave, urging Yoneko to be sure and attend the next seance.

  ‘Now that this has got about, people are coming from all over the building asking if a seance can be held for them. Miss Ueda from the fifth floor is joining us—Miss Santo, one of our most faithful believers, has persuaded her to come. Miss Santo says we all have a positive duty to persuade our neighbours to come, but you know how it is with neighbours—the closer you live to them, the harder it is to make such approaches.’

  And she was off to spread the tidings amongst the believers on the third floor.

  The news that Chikako Ueda was to attend the next seance gave Yoneko fresh hope. If she had joined the group, then she must be hoping to find out something by means of a seance. So if Yoneko went on attending, then one day Chikako might ask for a seance, and her secret might be revealed. It would take time, but seemed the best and least risky course of action under the circumstances.

  Yoneko had thus all but given up her original plan to use the master key to search Chikako’s room when, as luck would have it, something happened that very evening to make her change her mind again.

  Yoneko had been out to the public bathhouse, and was returning just before the front door was to be locked at eleven pm. Passing into the hall, she suddenly noticed something which she had overlooked before.

  Just inside the door was a full set of mail boxes, one for each apartment. On the flap of each there was a tag, marked ‘In’ on one side and ‘Out’ on the other, the original purpose having been for residents to change the tag around as they went in or out. Now the paint was faded and on some of them one could no longer read the writing, and so recently people had given up changing the tags when they went out.

  Yoneko was looking at the hundred or so boxes and contemplating on how the old practice had died out when she suddenly realised that there was one exception to this rule—Chikako Ueda! Her box read ‘Out’.

  At that time she imagined it was just an oversight, but the next day she couldn’t help looking when she went downstairs, and saw that Chikako’s box now read ‘In’.

  Unless someone was playing practical jokes—and this seemed unlikely—there was only one solution to the problem: Chikako Ueda, who was said never to leave the building, had gone out last night and deliberately changed her tag around!

  From this fact, Yoneko could develop two hypotheses. Firstly, Chikako probably took great pains to switch around her tag when she went in or out. This could not just be from force of habit. Yoneko, who had lived a life of solitude for so long, was nonetheless still a good judge of human nature. She reasoned that at first, in the pride of one’s new room, one would change the tag every time one entered or left, and that this would go on for a day or so, but would wear thin after a week or so and more or less vanish after two months. And after two years of solitude, who on earth would bother with such a little thing?

  And so it wasn’t just habit. There had to be a reason, and Yoneko guessed that Chikako was waiting for a visitor.

  Her second hypothesis was based on the fact that Chikako only went out just before lock-up time. There had to be a reason for this, too.

  She found the answer to this one quite simply. Miss Tamura told her that Chikako would go out once or twice a week to a nearby late-night drapers and obtain her supplies for the embroidery she did in her apartment to keep body and soul together.

  ‘You know, she’s so worried about someone calling when she’s out that she even leaves her key in the mail box every time she leaves the building! But no one has visited her for years and years. She’s an odd one, that’s for sure,’ confided the receptionist.

  When she heard this, Yoneko wished that Miss Tamura had told the story much sooner, although there was no way she could complain about it to her! Perhaps she need never have stolen the master key and undergone the subsequent tribulations. But then, even if Chikako left the key in her mail box, it was right opposite the receptionists’ desk, and so it would have been no easy task to remove it and replace it without being seen.

  She resolved once again to use the master key to get inside Chikako’s room.

  As far as the master key was concerned, Yoneko could detect no change in Miss Tojo’s attitude towards her since she had switched the keys under her nose, and so presumed that she was not under any suspicion. Also, since the committee had tried the false master key in every door in the building and it had failed to fit even one lock, there was a general presumption that the key had come from outside, and on this vague basis the matter had been allowed to rest. So Yoneko felt that it would now be quite safe for her to use the master key whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  She changed her tactics, and no longer went patrolling around Chikako Ueda’s room on the fifth floor. Instead, she made it her habit to pass by the front door between half-past ten and eleven every night and check up on Chikako’s letter box.

  Three days later, her plan worked. She went downstairs to find that Chikako’s tag read ‘Out’.

  She looked out of the front door. There was no sign of Chikako. Around the building, the earth excavated for the move lay in damp brown piles around the conveyors, and the air smelled of freshly turned soil. It was time to make her visit.

  She hurried back into the building. The tag on Chikako’s box was still moving slightly, so she could not have been gone long. Yoneko hurried to her own room on the fourth floor and collected a torch, a pencil and a notepad. She felt quite calm about what she was going to do. Even if someone saw her going into Chikako’s room, she would act as if it was the most natural thing in the world; the last thing she should do would be to look guilty about it. If she behaved like that, then no one would suspect her. She felt quite courageous and resolute as she climbed the staircase.

  She passed a woman in a nightdress in the corridor of the fifth floor. The woman was carrying a toothbrush, and disappeared into the communal washplace. Without letting this disturb her, Yoneko went straight to Chikako Ueda’s door and inserted the key in the lock. There was nobody around, and Yoneko felt how easy it had turned out to be. She stepped inside the darkened room, closed the door, switched on the torch and looked at her watch. It was ten-forty pm. That gave her ten minutes, during which she must complete her search of Chikako Ueda’s room. But what should she concentrate her searches on in that short time?

  She swung the torch around the room, focussing the beam on the dusty walls. Obviously the first thing to look for would be a diary. On one side of the room there stood a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. She decided to look inside the drawers.

  In the middle of the room there was a low table with a linen towel spread over crockery. It looked like a place setting under the towel, and she lifted it up to find that this was indeed the case, but it was not the kind of setting she had expected in this spinster’s room, for the cup was a large one and the chopsticks were of black lacquer and also large. In short, the place was set for a man and not for a woman.

  Beside the setting were a few cans of food, a tin opener and a rice tub.

  Yoneko felt a cold shiver run down her back. She was inexplicably frightened by this discovery. In order to confirm her suspicions, she opened the rice tub; as she had guessed, it was empty.

  When one lives alone, one gets into the habit of talking to oneself. This gives the illusion that one has a companion, and so helps overcome the feeling of solitude. What Yoneko had now discovered seemed to be more or less the same thing. Chikako Ueda, by making a little ritual of setting out dinner for a visitor ev
ery night, was fighting her loneliness. But a meaningless ritual would not have this effect—it had to have some basis of fact upon which the fantasy could be built. Some years before, Chikako must have prepared supper for a man who had gone out and never come back. There could be no other rational explanation and Yoneko was convinced that she had discovered something of import.

  Next, she tried the smallest drawers in the chest. One was locked and she did not waste precious time trying to open it. The other was full of old receipts and nothing else.

  She went towards the window, where there was a writing desk and a bookcase. She let the torch beam play over the book shelves, but from reading the spines of the books it was clear that they were only old school textbooks. There was a pile of notebooks, covered in dust, on the desk, but these were just children’s exercise books of the type used for setting homework.

  On the other side there was a newer looking exercise book. The word Elegies was written on the title page. There then followed two pages of translations from foreign poets; all the works were of sufficient fame for Yoneko to be familiar with them. On the third page, no author’s name appeared, but there was a poem entitled ‘To a child buried on 29 March’. Yoneko felt that this might prove to be of more interest to her, because of the date and the reference to a child, so she read the whole poem:

  TO A CHILD BURIED ON 29 MARCH

  We

  Buried you

  In the bed

  Of a dried-up lake

  We laid you to rest for ever…

  But

  The dried bed

  Cracked, and sometimes

  The sound of your tears

  Leaks through and we can hear you…

  Why

  Did not the merciful heavens

  Sprinkle rain at least once upon your dust?