by Hitoshi Goto
Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers,
That owe yourselves, your lives and services
To this imperial throne. There is no bar
To make against your highness’ claim to France
But this, which they produce from Pharamond,
‘In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant:’
‘No woman shall succeed in Salique land:’
Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze
To be the realm of France, and Pharamond
The founder of this law and female bar.
Yet their own authors faithfully affirm
That the land Salique is in Germany,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe;
Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons,
There left behind and settled certain French;
Who, holding in disdain the German women
For some dishonest manners of their life,
Establish’d then this law; to wit, no female
Should be inheritrix in Salique land:
Which Salique, as I said, ‘twixt Elbe and Sala,
Is at this day in Germany call’d Meisen.
Then doth it well appear that Salique law
Was not devised for the realm of France:
(excerpt from Scene II, Act I, “Henry V”)
“This is the logic from the English side. It is highly critical of the French use of the dusty old Salic Law as a shield to deny the right of succession to female members of the royal family. As I said before, Salic Law was a body of law from a part of the Germanic family, and it was odd to use it to assert legitimacy.”
“It certainly was odd,” Erika agreed.
“Originally this body of law was established in a place known today as Saxony. However, since England had many queens, not least Elizabeth, it’s not as if they would recognise Salic Law.”
“I understand all this, but it’s not fair on women.”
Well, then, you can solve a symbolic mystery in the clues left by your father.”
“Which one?” she asked, looking thoughtful.
“The one we were just talking about. Why English cuisine is so bad.”
“Right. That was one of the clues.”
“If I were to answer, I’d say it’s due to the industrial revolution.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the great nations of Europe under the influence of Salic Law, there were no female monarchs in France and Germany. Even now, in politics and business there is a thick ceiling preventing women from sitting in the top seat along with men. But England is different. There has been a succession of queens in Elizabeth I, Victoria, Elizabeth II, and no doubt there’ll be a woman prime minister in the future. You could say that it’s a country where women wear the trousers.”
“Yes, it’s well known that women are active in Britain. I suppose it might have something to do with the application of Salic Law. But what has that got to do with English cuisine?”
“It’s fine for women to get on in the world, but the result is that they have less time to devote to cooking. At the time of the industrial revolution, women from all ranks of society, from the aristocracy to the working class, were all active. It wasn’t just a succession of queens, but women were brought in to supplement the workforce.”
“Hmm, I see.”
“So, food wasn’t something to enjoy, but provisions in order to survive. There’s also the theory that mothers no longer handed down their recipes. Even in Japan, the expression ‘mom’s food’ will probably disappear from the lexicon.”
I noticed a slight scowl on Erika’s face.
“Okay, I get that. The story of Salica Law. Countries where women can succeed to the throne, and those where they can’t. But what has that got to do with anything? After all, Hitler’s children were twin boys, weren’t they?”
“No. You’re right, but you’ve got it wrong.”
“What?”
“According to my deductions, Romulus refers to twins, but not two boys—there was a boy and a girl.”
†
Erica looked confused, so I started by explaining Romulus to her.
“As I said before, the Romulus that was raised by a wolf wasn’t just the founder of Rome, but also had a younger brother, Remus. Eva Braun also gave birth to twins, but this time they were a boy and a girl. Only all but a very few people thought there was just one boy. Only twelve people who knew there was also a girl. Of course, utmost importance was placed on raising the boy. For the Nazis, women only existed to give birth to and raise males. Their position in society was low, and of course, Hitler’s successor had to be male. The boy was carefully raised in Bavaria. His daughter was, to put it bluntly, insurance in case anything happened to the boy. And so it was decided to raise her in Guernsey.”
“Why? Wouldn’t it have been safer to raise her in Germany?”
“But that wouldn’t do. Look, Bormann and Ribbentrop had it all worked out. Apart from the boy, Hitler’s daughter also had to go to a country where she would have the possibility of rising to the very top. Which meant a country not bound by Salic Law. It had to be a country with enough international influence to enable the Nazis to be rebuilt. There were a lot of German immigrants in South America, true, but the Latin culture was quite different from Germany. The best option would be the Anglo-Saxon global power Britain, close in terms of culture and history. After all, the Anglo Saxons had their roots in present-day Germany, since the birthplace of the Saxons was Saxony. Britain was an enemy country in this war, but the Anglo Saxons were originally close to Germans. Also, in order to accustom the child to British culture, it would be best to raise her in the only British territory under German occupation.”
“So, they had that English maid.”
“Somehow she got wind of the fact that the little girl being raised by the Manteuffels was of a special bloodline. That’s why she was eliminated by Sonnenberger.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
“Sonnenberger et al feared the secret being exposed, and so removed Hitler’s daughter from the couple’s care and took her away to who knows where. Our guess that the Manteuffels were sad about the child having being moved is probably correct. As Sonnenberger said, the Gutenberg printing press could start turning at any moment. That’s why they also eliminated the Manteuffels. Those are the lengths they would go to conceal the existence of Hitler’s daughter. They didn’t want a waxwork of her to be exhibited at Madame Tussaud’s after the war, did they? Let alone alongside John Haigh, the contemporary vampire from 79 Gloucester Road, in the room of villains.”
“But,” Erika protested. “If they lost the war, Hitler’s daughter wouldn’t be able to reach a high position in society, would she? It’s a class society, so even if she hid her origins, they would probably know she was originally German. Attaining a high position in government would be hard.”
“The Nazis would already have thought of that, though. Even if they hadn’t yet seen Agatha Christie’s The Witness for the Prosecution,” I added, my voice becoming shrill. “But there’s another Anglo Saxon global power other than England that isn’t bound by Salic Law, isn’t there?”
Erika looked uncomprehending for a few moments, then her eyes grew round. “You don’t mean…”
I nodded. “Hitler’s daughter must be living somewhere on this planet—probably in the United States. Hiding her origin, of course. Their objective was the United States. If she’s still alive, she must be twenty-four now.”
“In America? Really?” Erika still looked disbelieving.
“Yes. If your father heard this, he’d be shocked, I’m sure.
She was speechless.
†
After a while we left the café. As always, I thanked the owner. As if he was my father, still looking amazed, gave me an encouraging pat on my back as I left.
Certainly the talk of Hitler’s daughter must have come as a shock, but really we had no proof, and for Erika and I it concerned a country far away from ours, so I was beginning to feel that maybe we didn’t really need to probe into it any further. Even if the girl was living somewhere in the US, she was probably hiding her identity, and quite possibly she herself had been raised not knowing who she was. That thought made me feel a little more comfortable. Erika seemed to be thinking the same, or rather, she seemed impressed that I’d managed to solve all the mysteries in her father’s Memorandum. At least she looked that way to me.
Meanwhile, she kept walking. Seeing my questioning look, she said, “Just a little further now. Do you want to ask me where we are going?”
“Ah, sure.”
“My house.”
“What? Why?” I asked.
But she changed the subject. “It’s great, you’ve solved a fifty-year old mystery!”
“What are we going to do?”
“Have you forgotten? It, too, was written in my father’s memorandum. The secret would be okay for ten or twenty years, but if it went on for fifty years it was probably too late. There was that riddle too, right?”
It was true. Maybe the only remaining unsolved riddle…
“Yes, I remember. But what has that got to do with it?” I said, then suddenly a light bulb went off in my head. “You mean wine?”
“That’s right. There’s one bottle left of what my grandfather in Saint-Malo gave him. It’s a 1928 Chateau Latour, you know!”
“Really? Just ripe for the drinking!”
I felt my step lighten as we walked on to Erika’s house.
March 1990
Kichijoji, Tokyo
“Mr. Iwasawa, I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”
I had just come out of the Lonlon exit of Kichijoji Station. I was standing at ease waiting when I heard the voice come flying over my shoulder.
I turned to see her standing there, smiling broadly. Her soft chestnut-coloured hair, clear blue eyes, a head rather smaller than the average Japanese woman’s, and her straight shoulders. Her name was Mari Tomii, the only daughter of Professor Tomii. Her mother’s maiden name was Erika Hoshino, the only daughter of the artist Yasuo Hoshino, who was active in Europe before the war, and her French mother Catherine. Mari was the artist’s granddaughter.
I had just seen her two months earlier when she came to London, but I had the feeling she had grown up a bit since then. I worked for the London office of a foreign-owned consulting company, and was currently on a visit back home to Japan.
As I recall, it must have been four years previously. At that time I was a fourth-year student at S University in Kichijoji, and I’d met her for the first time that April at an event to attract freshmen recruits to our club. I was taking my turn manning our desk in the small space in front of the lecture hall. I can still clearly recall the scene. Feeling someone’s presence, I looked up from the book I was reading and saw her standing there against a faint but refreshing spring sunlight, and she was wearing a springlike green and yellow sweater.
Normally such a healthy attractive girl would be the manager of the baseball team or join the tennis club or get any number of other offers. For what unknown reason that April’s freshman’s fair, however, she chose our club. It was a dark introverted history club made up of just ten male students. This year’s theme was the rather bleak sounding “Religious Conflict in Medieval Europe,” so maybe she wanted to get an idea of what kind of activity we did.
I was forgetting one important thing. Her father was a professor at the university I attended. Professor Tomii still taught European history. His lectures were really popular, more his accounts of his adventures and rich experiences abroad than for the content of his talks on European history. His natural curiosity got him into trouble—no, I should say rather that it was thanks to his curiosity that he experienced adventures to rival those of the Count of Monte Cristo, although I don’t know how he found the time. He himself would never admit it, but his powers of deduction are legendary. He is well known as an amateur sleuth who has solved a number of difficult cases by using to the limit his rich knowledge of history, culture, and languages cultivated while living many years in Europe. And boy has he got one exceptionally cute daughter…
Comparing myself to him, I have to think Heaven’s dispensation is unfair.
After having a coffee in Coffee Hall Kugutsusou, Mari and I headed to the university. By chance her father was walking towards us from the direction of the lines of zelkova trees. His silver grey hair parted at the side was flecked with white, and he wore silver-rimmed glasses. His face was attractive, with firm features, and with a hint of something of the child in him. I hadn’t yet seen a photo of his wife, the daughter of a French mother, let alone seen her in person, but by all reports she was extremely beautiful. But even if her mother hadn’t been beautiful, it was clear that any daughter of this man would be attractive. I was so envious.
I bowed deeply to the professor.
March 2003
Kichijoji, Tokyo
The day that shocking news broke, I happened to have taken a day off work. It was soon after I returned from my regular barbers, Cut Studio Fuji. I was lying on the sofa gazing absently at the photo of my father-in-law Professor Tomii taken at the time of his retirement.
Suddenly there was a newsflash on the TV.
I turned my head to look at the TV. On the screen was President Healey announcing an airstrike on Iraq.
I looked at the Mucha poster calendar next to the TV and checked the date. 20 March. The lithograph of a young woman with round eyes and her wavy blonde hair parted in the middle smiled out at me, the very opposite extreme of war.
“She rapidly rose to this position from being Senator for Ohio. A fortunate woman indeed,” my wife Mari said as she watched the TV.
“Ohio…a state with a lot of people descended from German immigrants, isn’t it?” I muttered casually, but Mari didn’t seem to hear.
“Her scarf really suits her. It looks French,” Mari said, interested as ever in fashion.
“Can’t be,” I told her. “She’s just decided to forcibly start a war against France’s fierce opposition at the United Nations Security Council.”
“So she did. Well, it must be US made. It’s a lovely design, and goes really well with that stylish blue suit. Oh look, there’s a logo on it, at the bottom.”
“L.A.H.—must be short for Leslie Allison Healey. Her own brand. It’s surprisingly smart.”
“Hang on a minute,” Mari interrupted me. “I’ve seen L.A.H. somewhere before, I’m sure of it.”
“Where was it?”
“I told you about my grandfather’s memorandum, didn’t I? I think it was in there.”
“You mean, the story about your grandfather’s adventures in Europe? When he solved a number of murders one after the other?”
“Yes. My father solved the biggest mystery, which my grandfather hadn’t been able to. He even used the Salic Law from medieval Europe….”
Mari looked as though she was furiously trying to reel in the thread of her memory.
Finally she exclaimed, “Got it!” Her voice was shaking with tension. “It was in a parade in Paris during the war that he saw those three letters—Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, in other words, Hitler’s SS bodyguards. And it just happens to be in a major power in which Salic Law
doesn’t apply…”
Her voice trailed off.
On 20 March 2003, in the absence of any UN resolution, British and American forces opened hostilities against the Hussein administration. On the twenty-fifth, whipped by a sandstorm, American forces advanced to Najaf 160 km south of Baghdad, where they clashed with Iraq forces. From the morning on 7 April, Iraq time, the Americans sent a unit from the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division made up of sixty-five M1A1 Abrams tanks and 40 Bradley Fighting Vehicles to storm central Baghdad. Part of the unit gained control of the Republican Palace on the west bank of the Tigris, effectively destroying Hussein’s government. In the evening of 1 May, President Healey arrived by jet onto the USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of San Diego and addressed the crew. “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed,” she said, announcing the end of the war on the forty-fourth day since hostilities opened. She added, “The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001, and a triumph of freedom and democracy over dictators. We will never allow Hitler to rise again in the world.”