But I did not even have to ascertain whether this was true or not. After all, I was by then using Miss Kimura to carry out the investigation without her knowing that I was manipulating her behind the scenes. It would be quite enough to plant in her mind the idea that such an essay might have been written.
My brother, the little vestal and I went to great pains to ensure that everything was adequately prepared for the great prophecy which would reveal the child’s tomb. For example, we timed the revelations one by one against the schedule of works for the moving of the building. In this case, we hired a detective agency to report on Keiko Kawauchi. My brother carried out this part of the plan very well. When we learned that Keiko used to visit the neighbourhood of her old home in Denenchofu every day, I decided to pull young Kurokawa out of my conjuror’s hat.
I timed that, too. I kept a close eye on Yoneko Kimura’s progress through the register of her former pupils, and it was only when I knew that she was about to write to Keiko that I produced young Kurokawa. My brother, by dint of his persuasive tongue plus a thousand-yen note, was able to hire a student of the right age to perform the role. He did it quite well enough to convince Keiko that such an essay had been written.
As I used this device to draw together Keiko and Yoneko Kimura, who had been as it were ‘in another part of the forest’, I felt just like a theatrical director using the revolving stage to bring his characters together. And the roots, deep as they were, of these plans went back beyond the reappearance of my brother, right back, indeed, to the time George had been kidnapped. They went back seven years to the time when Yoneko Kimura had stood in the porch reading the evening paper, and looked up and told me ‘The mother of this child who has been kidnapped was a former pupil of mine’. I paid no particular heed at the time, but looking back, it must have been that my subconscious mind was already linking and drawing together Keiko Kawauchi, Yoneko Kimura and Chikako Ueda.
So many years spent in a gloomy office, thinking and plotting, and to what avail? Fate made a fool of me in the end, after all.
Yoneko and I were both made the puppets of mocking fate. You see, when Yoneko rushed down to the bathroom, she got the workmen to dig up the bath, and indeed there was a child buried there, so they called the police.
But after the autopsy, it became hideously clear that we had been deceived. When I think of it, I still beat my head in disgust. Can anyone disagree with me when I say that both Yoneko and I were like children building magnificent sandcastles only to see them washed away by the tides of fate? Why did my three positive facts turn out to be the foundations for a sandcastle?
The papers and magazines have speculated quite enough on how it came about that Chikako Ueda had given birth to a child, and what abnormality it was which caused her to kill it. I will not touch any further upon the matter, particularly as it is distasteful to me. It drains the blood from my veins even to consider that the child I saw being buried was Chikako’s own son.
All I want to know is, whatever happened to the child who was kidnapped? I’m prepared to lose everything which remains to me in return for knowing that. After all, what is left to me? My brother has gone. Haru Santo can no longer peep into Chikako Ueda’s room, for she is no more. Life is just a passing dream, and we are the toys of mocking fate.
Perhaps, after all, there is a God who watches over our doings and who has punished me by changing the body I saw buried for another body. Well, I’d feel happier if I could think it was so. At least, it would give me some comfort to think that I was the victim of a sentient being and not of blind fate.
But my destiny is now clear. I must pass the remaining years of my life, seated at this lonely desk with no one to talk to. All I can do is write this record and then puzzle, and puzzle… all to no avail.
I rack my brains trying to work out what became of the kidnapped child, even though I realise there is no way of knowing.
That way lies madness.
EPILOGUE
In a pleasant suburb of Los Angeles, Major D. Kraft (US Army, Retired) lay back in a deckchair on the lawn of his garden. He puffed at a pipe as he scanned the newspaper, and then he saw, tucked away in the corner of an obscure page of foreign news, a small item concerning Japan.
He looked up at the sky, and fixed his attention on a small cloud. He was remembering a certain Japanese girl. Whenever he thought of her, his conscience was disturbed.
‘Well, I suppose worse things went on during the Occupation,’ he mused. ‘What the hell else could I do? I mean, my wife and I had lived apart so long… and then she suddenly arrives in Japan, and we start up all over. Besides, she was rich, and I had to think about my retirement. A major doesn’t get much of a pension, and anyway I didn’t want to stay in the army for ever. I needed a bit of security for a change.
‘In return, my wife just wanted me to get rid of my Japanese girl, but to bring the child I had had by her over here so we could bring him up as our own. Well, in fact I’d gone through a proper marriage with the Japanese girl, and I didn’t want to be up for bigamy, so it was pretty scary.
‘After I had collected George from the car, I took him straight to the airport and put him on the next plane Stateside. My wife had quite a job calming him down, but that was her problem.
‘Well, I went back to my Japanese home, and I guess I really meant to tell my Japanese wife the truth. But, hell, when I saw her face, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I just said, “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll call the police,” and I was just leaving when the phone rang.
‘Well, I answered it, and it was just one of my buddies inviting me round for a game of poker. My Japanese dame was looking at me, kind of worried-like, and that gave me the idea of the kidnap story. So I just said “OK” and put the phone down and told her that it was the kidnappers, and that if we called the police there was no way we’d get to see George again.
‘Well, then I nearly blew it. I mean, that kid trusted me so much, I got over-confident and ran those ads in the Japanese press, and then some pressman got hold of them and the shit hit the fan. So I had to keep up the story about how if I talked to the police or the press, the kidnappers said I’d never see George again.
‘I then just waited for time to pass, and when things quietened down, I divorced that Japanese wife and went back to the American one.’
He puffed at his pipe.
Just then a little girl ran along the pavement across the road. She was in tears.
‘George is teasing me again!’
Major Kraft looked up, and saw George’s school teacher leading his son towards him by the scruff of his neck.
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Copyright
Pushkin Press
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Original text © 1962 by Masako Togawa
Translated by Simon Grove
Every effort has been made to contact the owner of the rights to this translation. Please contact Pushkin Press if you are the copyright holder.
The Master Key was first published in Japanese by Kodansha in 1962
First English translation publish by Dodd Mead, 1985
First published by Pushkin Press in 2017
ISBN: 978 1 78227 386 8
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