Lord of All Things

by Andreas Eschbach

  “They didn’t let me in,” Hiroshi replied. “Down at the gate.”

  “Why not? I specifically told them to.”

  “The man claimed my appointment was canceled and tried to send me home.”

  She blinked in astonishment. “How did you get in?”

  Hiroshi paused. “I have a secret entrance. Otherwise, I would never have been able to get your doll from the trash.”

  “Ah.” Her eyes lit up with curiosity, fascination. “You’ll have to show me!”

  They went down to the garden together, and Hiroshi showed her the spot. She pulled herself up the rope to the top of the wall. All you could see from up there was the tree and a little bit of the pavement behind it, but Charlotte was delighted. “We could just climb down here and go and see the city, couldn’t we?”

  “Of course,” said Hiroshi and wondered where they could go. There wasn’t anything very interesting to see nearby. He could show her his school if she wanted to do that.

  Then she hesitated. “Oh well,” she said at last, “maybe some other time.” She lowered herself to the ground on the inside of the wall.

  Hiroshi was relieved. He liked the garden much better than the city all around it. They went back upstairs.

  On the way Charlotte pointed at the house where Hiroshi lived with his mother. “That’s your place, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Hiroshi said.

  She moved her slender white arm slightly to one side so that she was pointing directly to the window above Hiroshi’s bed. “And that’s where you were watching me from when I was standing out in the rain.”

  He looked at her in amazement. “How do you know that?”

  “I just know,” Charlotte replied coquettishly. Then she hugged herself tight, as though she were suddenly cold. “Sometimes I do crazy things like that. Just because I want to. I can’t help it. And then sometimes I don’t even dare to do perfectly ordinary things.”

  “What sort of ordinary things?”

  She shrugged. Somehow, right at that moment Hiroshi thought she looked like a little bird with injured wings. When he was small, he had found a bird like that and wanted to bring it home, but his mother hadn’t let him.

  “Ordinary things,” she said. “Make a phone call. Leave the house. Or wear a particular dress.”

  “But what might happen just because you wear a particular dress?” Hiroshi asked in surprise.

  “Nothing,” said Charlotte.

  He wondered whether he understood what she was telling him. Not really, but somehow that wasn’t important.

  “Are there things you don’t dare to do?” Charlotte asked him.

  Hiroshi thought about it. “At school I steer clear of the big boys who are always starting fights. I’m not strong enough, that’s the trouble. I can’t fight back when they hit me. I’ve got no chance against them. And the teachers never believe you when you say you’ve been bullied.”

  It was good to be able to say that to somebody even if it didn’t change anything. His mother never wanted to hear about that sort of thing. And she absolutely refused to let him take a karate course so that he could learn self-defense. They couldn’t afford it, she had decided.

  Charlotte said, “That’s okay. I’d do the same.”

  The next moment she seemed to have forgotten the topic entirely. “Come on,” she called, setting off at a run. “Let’s go on the swings!”

  Hiroshi ran after her, and they reached the swings at the same time. She had a whole playground all to herself! He had never seen such a thing, never even dreamed about luxury on such a scale. In kindergarten he had always had to share the playgrounds with loads of other kids. Truth be told, he’d never had enough time on the swings, because he could hardly get started before somebody was shooing him away—either the big boys, the bullies, when he was little, or, once he was a big boy himself, the grown-ups, the teachers, telling him he had to let the little ones have a go.

  It was great being rich!

  He swung back and forth, flung himself along the arc, climbing higher each time and feeling that moment of weightlessness at the topmost point and then the way gravity snatched him back in the very next breath, pressing him into the seat. Then he let go as he reached the top of the upswing, simply slipped from the seat, and flew through the air—the best feeling he could ever imagine.

  “That’s great!” Charlotte shrieked.

  But when Hiroshi got up from where he had tumbled onto the grass, he saw Charlotte’s mother was crossing the lawn toward him. Everything about her threatened anger—the way she walked, the look on her face, her posture. Hiroshi stood where he was and waited. The ambassador’s wife didn’t even look at him. She marched over to her daughter, who was already ducking her head, and spoke to her in a sharp voice. Hiroshi couldn’t understand a word, of course, but he could tell Charlotte’s mother was very angry.

  Once her mother had stopped scolding her, Charlotte got off the swing and walked over to him, her shoulders drooping. “She says you have to go.”

  “Oh,” Hiroshi said, disappointed but hardly surprised. “Why?”

  “I don’t know either.”

  She accompanied him a little ways until a guard turned up and grabbed Hiroshi by the arm to lead him away, asking again and again how Hiroshi had gotten into the compound. He didn’t answer, just let himself be led away, his lips clamped tight. As they passed a gate that had opened to let a delivery truck through, Hiroshi tore free. The guard was taken by surprise, and the boy ran.

  That evening his mother scolded him roundly. She had heard what had happened, of course. She, too, wanted to know how he had gotten into the garden, telling him he knew perfectly well he wasn’t allowed there. He didn’t tell her either.

  She snorted in disgust. “It’ll be your fault if I lose my job and we have to move away,” she said accusingly.

  Hiroshi ducked his head and hunched his shoulders even further. Any more of this and his neck would vanish entirely. “Why would you lose your job?”

  “Those are rich folk, and we’re poor. Do you understand that? The best thing is to steer clear of them.”

  “Why is it like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Why are there rich people and poor people?”

  Mother flung up her hands. “The questions you ask! It’s just the way things are, that’s all. It’s always been like that. The ones who can grab the most for themselves are rich, and everybody else is poor.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It does no good to rail against it.”

  Of course, Hiroshi didn’t come the next day.

  Charlotte was so angry with her mother that she didn’t know what to do. And she mustn’t even say anything about it, since her mother was lying down somewhere with her usual headache. Charlotte eventually couldn’t help but go into her room and fling everything off her shelves—everything—in a blind rage, until the floor was littered with toys.

  After that she felt a bit better. A little later she went to work tidying everything up. She put every doll and every plush animal back in its place and gathered up all the games, the dice and cards and little wooden tokens that had fallen from their boxes and scattered across the carpet. She couldn’t bear it when her things were in a mess; it was bad luck not to put everything neatly back where it belonged.

  Once she was done she sat at the window, looked out, and decided she would never be a fine lady again, never again be polite at the receptions for her parents. It would serve her mother right. Why did she have to spoil everything? No, in future she just wouldn’t join in. She wouldn’t even let the hairdresser near her. She would shut herself away in her room, her hair in a mess, and she wouldn’t wash, and she wouldn’t move from the spot no matter how much her mother pleaded or threatened. Eventually, the guests would start arriving downstairs and Mother would have to
go greet them…

  Charlotte sighed. If she were honest with herself, the prospect of sitting all alone in her room while everybody was eating and having fun in the salons downstairs didn’t seem like such a good idea. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe it would be better to find some other way to get back at her mother. Then she heard a noise and pricked up her ears. It sounded as though someone had knocked at the door, but when she went to open it there was nobody there. And, of course, no Hiroshi.

  Hiroshi. That gave her an idea, the kind of idea that stopped her in her tracks and made her hold her breath. She had to think about it very carefully, about whether she really wanted to do it. But by the time she let her breath out again, she had made up her mind.

  She hurried into the garden to where Hiroshi had shown her the gap in the spikes. The rope was still hanging there. She hauled herself up, wriggled through, and climbed down the other side between the tree and the wall. That part was easy. She was outside! It was fantastic. She wanted to whoop with pleasure but knew she’d better keep quiet.

  There was nobody in the alley. She walked over to the apartment block where Hiroshi lived and then stopped in front of the intercom panel, baffled: of course, all the doorbells were labeled in Japanese. What was she supposed to do now? She wondered whether she should just press all the buttons at once and then say sorry if she had to. After all, most people might not even be at home. Just then she heard a sound behind the door and it opened—and there stood Hiroshi.

  “I saw you come,” he said instead of hello.

  Charlotte looked at him. He was bigger than she remembered him. “I thought I could come visit you. If you like.”

  “Yes, of course,” Hiroshi said, opening the door further. “Come in.”

  They went upstairs. The staircase was dark and stiflingly narrow—so this was what real life was like for the Japanese. The apartment they went into was just as small—not much bigger than her bedroom. Through the gap in an open sliding door, Charlotte caught sight of a tiny room with a mattress on the floor and a wardrobe piled high with various things: suitcases, blankets, and so on. The front half of the main room was taken up by a low table, where you would have to kneel to eat, a TV, and a kitchen counter. Then there was a folding screen of white paper stretched over a frame of black wood, and behind that was Hiroshi’s realm: film posters on the wall, a narrow bookcase, and a couple of boxes. One of them was open, and she could see his tools and spare parts. On the windowsill were the pieces of what might once have been a radio.

  “I’m trying to repair that,” Hiroshi explained. “But it’s not easy. I haven’t got the right parts.”

  Charlotte looked around. There was a set of shelves on the wall across from the window; a rolled-up mattress and, above that, a folded set of bedclothes were tucked onto the lowest shelf.

  “Do you have to clear your bed away every morning?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “That way I have more room during the day. I don’t always do it during the school year, but certainly during the holidays.”

  “How long are your holidays?”

  “Till the end of August. I think school starts again on the twenty-fourth. It’s a Tuesday at any rate.”

  Charlotte ran her hand softly over some of the furniture. So many feelings…“And what do you do during the holidays?”

  “Nothing. Build stuff. Read. Think about things.” Hiroshi sighed. “My mother sometimes scolds me for not joining any of the school clubs like the others do, but I just don’t feel like it.”

  “School clubs? What are those?”

  “Oh, they’re for sports. Football, basketball, karate, that sort of thing. Or extra tutoring.”

  “Are you good at school?”

  He shrugged. “I get by.”

  “What do you like to read?”

  “Technical books most of the time. How things work and so on. I can borrow them from the library.”

  It was only then that Charlotte realized what all the film posters on Hiroshi’s wall had in common. Every single one of them featured a robot. One was the golden robot from Star Wars; another showed a little machine standing on a high cliff being struck by lightning from the dark and stormy sky above.

  “You like that sort of thing, don’t you?” Charlotte asked. “How things work.”

  “Yes,” said Hiroshi, pointing at the Star Wars robot. “Do you know that one?”

  “Of course. That’s C-3PO.” She knew about him from Brenda, who had seen the film on video and told her all about it.

  “That’s right. Protocol droid, third class. He’s really just an actor in a costume, though.” Hiroshi pointed at the other robot, the one with the storm cloud. “That’s Number 5. He’s much more interesting. A real robot. He’s supposed to be a military robot, but after he gets struck by lightning, he turns pacifist, and they come after him. He can do really amazing things; for instance, he can read a book in less than a minute. He just goes through it like this”—Hiroshi mimed riffling through pages—“and he can store everything that’s in the book.”

  “I’m not allowed to see films like that,” Charlotte admitted. “My mother says I’m too young.”

  “I even saw it in the theater,” Hiroshi said. “When I get good grades in English, my mother sometimes takes me to the movies over in Shinagawa. They show American films there in English. That’s where I saw this one. It was pretty funny.” He squatted down in front of his shelves, shuffled through a stack of papers, and then showed her a gaudy leaflet with colorful Japanese writing and a picture of a chunky toy robot with a dome-shaped head and sturdy pincer arms.

  “I’d like one of these. It’s an Omnibot. It can carry things around, pour you a drink, and other stuff. It costs fifty thousand yen, though, so I’d never be able to afford it.”

  “What would you do with it?” Charlotte asked.

  “I’d modify it, of course, so that it can do more things. I’d make it a real mechanical servant.”

  The idea clearly fascinated him. Charlotte thought it was strange. But then again she’d always found boys a bit strange. “You could pour me a drink, you know,” she said. “That’s what you do when a lady visits.”

  “Ah,” Hiroshi grunted. He hurried to the fridge and took out a can of soda, which he passed to her. “Here you are.”

  Charlotte wasn’t actually thirsty, and she didn’t much like soda, but there was no refusing it now. She took a sip and looked around again. How tiny everything was here. There was one more sliding door. Charlotte wondered where it led. Probably to the bathroom.

  “We could arrange a signal,” she suggested.

  “What kind of signal?”

  “For when my mother’s not home. Sometimes she goes out in the afternoons.”

  “And your father?”

  “He’s always at work. Anyway, I don’t think he cares very much if you come.” Charlotte went to the window. “Do you see the window of my room? The one with the yellow curtain? When the coast is clear, I’ll put the doll you repaired behind the glass there.”

  “Okay,” said Hiroshi.

  She handed him the can, only half-drunk. “I think I’d better go back now before anybody notices that I’m gone.”

  Two days later Charlotte’s mother asked her whether she wanted to go downtown to go shopping and maybe get an ice cream. “You need another dress for summer, after all.”

  “Can we go to a museum as well?” Charlotte asked.

  Mother rolled her eyes. “No, most definitely not. We’re going to a nice, new shopping mall.”

  “I won’t join you, then, thank you.”

  Later, Charlotte watched from the window as her mother got into the car with Madame Chadal and an interpreter and drove out through the main gate. As soon as they were out of sight, she ran to her room and put Valérie in
the window.

  Hiroshi was there in less than fifteen minutes. “I’ve had an idea,” he said, taking a piece of dark metal from his pocket. The way he held it, it had to be heavy. It turned out to be a magnet—strong enough to send the paper clips skittering around on top of Charlotte’s desk when he held it underneath.

  “I was reading today that human blood contains iron. Did you know that? There’s this stuff called hemoglobin. It’s what makes the blood look red, and it has iron in it.”

  “Really?” Charlotte asked, surprised, and looked at her hands. “Iron?”

  “Yes. Not much, of course, or the magnet would just stick to you. But I thought that it had to be possible to stop the hemoglobin from going round if you held a magnet to a vein.” He put his left forearm on the desk, his palm facing up so that the veins were visible, and then held the magnet just below his wrist. “It should get darker soon.”

  Charlotte found it a strange idea but somehow fascinating, too. She waited, not taking her eyes off his arm for an instant. From time to time Hiroshi lifted up the magnet so they could see underneath.

  “Maybe my skin’s too dark,” he said thoughtfully after a while.

  Charlotte didn’t think his skin was dark at all—not like that of her classmates back in Delhi. But hers was lighter, that was true. She put her forearm next to his. “Try mine.”

  It was a funny feeling to have the magnet at the vein on her wrist where the doctor usually took her pulse and imagine the hemoglobin gathering beneath it. There was nothing to show it was happening, though, on her skin either.

  “Could this be dangerous?” Charlotte asked. “Could I faint or something like that?”

  “I’ll catch you if you faint,” Hiroshi declared.

  They waited a bit longer. It was beginning to get boring.

  “Maybe there’s not enough blood there,” Charlotte ventured. She thought. Where was the skin thinner and the blood flow greater?

  She jumped up, flung open her wardrobe, and stood in front of the mirror inside the door. “The neck! There’s a big vein here, do you see?” She cocked her head to be able to see the side of her own neck. “Here. Hold the magnet right there.”