Keiko had graduated whilst the resentment of this incident still lay coiled in Yoneko’s breast. Before her graduation, the school rustled with rumours that her elder sister had become a prostitute serving the needs of the US troops, but Keiko displayed no reaction whatever.
Yoneko’s subsequent detailed knowledge of Keiko’s career was based on the newspaper articles she had read at the time of the famous kidnapping incident seven years before. After leaving school, Keiko had gone to work in the Ginza PX, and within six months had married an American officer some fifteen years older than herself. At the time, Yoneko had felt that an evil fate seemed to dog Keiko, and that she was herself in part responsible. Subsequently, she had heard from one of the other girls that Keiko’s venture into international marriage had failed, but she had no idea of her current whereabouts.
In her letter to Keiko, Yoneko made no reference to the kidnapping incident, but merely enquired after her present circumstances. She then touched lightly on the affair of the nylon stockings, and addressed the letter to Keiko’s family home. She did not expect to get a reply—it would be another of those letters which were returned to her from time to time marked ‘Gone away. Return to sender.’
But she received a reply very shortly afterwards. After her divorce, Keiko had gone back to her parents’ home. She wrote about her school memories, and then went on as follows:
Teacher, you will certainly think my next request to be precipitate and stupid. I’m sure you’ll think I haven’t grown up at all, and am still just as self-centred as ever—please forgive me if you do.
You must have heard how, some years ago, my only son George was stolen from me by some unknown kidnapper. Seven years have passed, during which I have not enjoyed one day of peace in my heart. I keep trying to convince myself that I should give him up for lost, that it’s best to forget him, but somehow I just can’t. Deep inside me, I feel sure that George is still alive and well, somewhere, and that somewhere is in Japan.
Since returning to my family, they have constantly urged me to remarry, but I just can’t with this heavy burden on my mind. I have spent all this time leaving no stone unturned in my search for my son.
When George was kidnapped, my former husband was the only person who spoke to the criminals. Looking back on it, I feel that if only I could have heard their voices, then perhaps I could have done something, but of course I just couldn’t think straight at the time.
The kidnapping was all my fault. If only I had been more careful! At my husband’s suggestion, I was having all my front teeth bridged, and so I was going to St Mark’s Hospital every day. About a week before, George had begun to complain of toothache, so I made an appointment and took him with me that morning. They attended to him first, and then it was my turn. George didn’t want to stay in the waiting room all that time, so I took him back to the car and left him there.
The dentist was particularly slow that day, fussing over whether he’d done a good job or not, and so it was a full thirty minutes before I got away. When I got back to the car, there was no sign of George. I asked around the neighbourhood, but no one had seen him.
Of course, he was then four years old, just the age when children like to do things by themselves, and he was never one to settle in any place for long. So I thought he had left the car of his own accord and was playing somewhere around the hospital.
Nonetheless, I phoned my husband right away, but unfortunately he was out of his office. Presuming that George would make his way back to the hospital, I reported his disappearance at the reception desk and then went back to the waiting room.
I waited till it got dark, but there was no sign of the boy. I tried to call my husband several times, but to no avail. In the end l drove back to our house in Denenchofu, and just as I got back my husband walked in.
As soon as he heard my story, my husband decided to go to the local police station. But just at that moment, those devils of kidnappers telephoned the house. If the call had been a few seconds later, I would have taken it and would have heard the kidnapper’s voice. But as luck would have it, my husband was right by the phone when it rang. He picked up the receiver and listened, his face becoming grimmer all the time. Finally, he just said ‘All right’ and put the phone down. He then took my hands between his and earnestly bade me to do what he told me if we were ever to see George alive again. At the time, I went along with what he said, thinking it best under the circumstances. He said that if we were to save our son’s life, I must promise not to contact the police, as he had done.
Well, as you know, the criminals broke their side of the promise. They betrayed us. We couldn’t contact the police and get their help, but just had to wait for the one who phoned to contact us again—which he never did.
Even though it may be like crying over spilt milk, looking back now I really wish that I had insisted on calling the police right away. At the time, I didn’t want to go against my husband for fear of hurting him, but within a year of George’s disappearance our marital life came to an end anyway. We divorced, and the alimony he agreed to pay me left me with no financial worries, so that I was able to devote myself to searching for George. I went up and down the length and breadth of Japan, visiting every Christian orphanage and school where mixedblood children are to be found, but all to no avail.
Those about me pointed out that a half-caste child could not just get lost in the crowd like a pure-blooded Japanese, and that there was no point in aimlessly searching without even the basis of a rumour to go on. I could not but accept the logic of their view, but nonetheless it was unacceptable to me and I carried on just the same.
In addition, the police were doing their best to find George, but without success.
I had felt sure that sometime, somehow or other, I would hear about George. But as the days and months and years passed with no tidings whatever, I began to give up hope and even resign myself to the prospect of never hearing from him again.
And then, just recently, two things happened that rekindled my hopes. First of all, I still make it my habit to pass by my old house in Denenchofu at least once a day, and walk about the neighbourhood in the faint hope that George might just remember his past and turn up in the area. Well, I was in that vicinity the other day when a young man who wore the uniform of one of our best universities called out to me across the street.
I took it he was mistaking me for someone else until he made it clear that he recognised me as George’s mother. Then I remembered him. He was Fumio Kurokawa, the son of our old daily maid. Although he was some four years older than George, he used to come and play with him from time to time.
He expressed his sympathy to me concerning George, and then told me how he happened to be in the neighbourhood:
‘It’s ages since I’ve been round here, but we’ve been having our annual classmates’ reunion at my primary school. Everything seems to have changed since our day! Big shiny new concrete buildings, and half the teachers are new. However, they’d got out some of our old work—pictures we’d painted, test papers, essays and so forth. And, do you know what, one of my early compositions was on display—“My little foreign friend” it was called, and it was all about George! So it’s really rather appropriate that I should bump into you again after all these years!’
He went on to describe what he’d written, and one thing really made me think. You see, he’d described in detail how I used to go to the dentist every morning at that time, and how I used to take George with me. There was our daily life being set down in a Japanese child’s essay, detail by detail, and all without our knowing.
Furthermore, the essay subject was specially set for him by his teacher, a Miss Chikako Ueda, who no longer teaches there.
Well, since then, I’ve been thinking more and more about young Kurokawa’s essay. And the more I think about it, the more I feel convinced that there is some link between that essay and George’s disappearance. It’s as if, after all these years, I’ve suddenly found the traces of
a footprint of my vanished child.
I fully realise that this is just a wild fancy, and I promise you I am trying to resign myself to the inevitable. But a drowning man will clutch at any straw, and the fact that you wrote to me on the same day seems possibly to be more than a mere coincidence.
I don’t mean just the letter itself, although it aroused sweet memories in my heart to receive a letter from my old teacher. When I saw your address on the back of the envelope, I suddenly realised that you are living in the same apartment block as the teacher who set Fumio Kurokawa to write an essay on his little foreign friend all those years ago. I am not a religious person, but at that moment I began to tremble all over—it seemed as if, at last, Divine Providence was beginning to take a hand in my affairs.
After seven years of darkness, I think I can at last see a little ray of light ahead.
Of course, I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that Miss Chikako Ueda was directly involved in the kidnapping. I just wonder if she remembers letting anyone else see that essay at that time. So if you happen to speak to her at any time, I wonder if you could raise the subject delicately and see what you can find out.
I beg you to excuse the self-centredness of a woman who has lost her only child and, if it is not too much trouble, to do what you can to help me.
Yours sincerely,
Keiko Kawauchi
It would not be going too far to say that this letter altered the whole course of the rest of Yoneko Kimura’s life. She had written several hundred rather meaningless letters to her former pupils just to pass the time; now at last one of them was to bear dramatic fruit.
Although they lived in the same building, they were on different floors, so Yoneko knew very little about Chikako Ueda. She had passed her in the hallway a few times, that was all.
She spent the next week collecting information on her quarry, discreetly questioning her neighbours and the receptionists. The following facts emerged:
She had quit her job as a primary school teacher six years previously, giving out that she was getting married.
But there had been no sign of a suitor, let alone a marriage, and she had subsequently spent most of her time locked in her room alone.
She had for the last few years begun to act and speak in a rather strange way, casting doubts on her mental stability.
All of which being so, Yoneko realised that no purpose would be served by approaching Chikako direct. Not that this would have been easy, as Chikako’s whole course of behaviour and way of life seemed to be contrived in order to avoid meeting or talking with anyone. It did indeed seem as if she had something to hide.
Yoneko decided to keep Chikako under close observation for a time before proceeding further. She wrote back to Keiko, telling her of what she had learned and asking her former pupil to leave the matter entirely in her hands. She said that she would share with her the grief and pain that Keiko had suffered. This was all very well, but of course she had absolutely no idea of what she might be called upon to do when the time came. For the time being, all she could do was to try and get a peep inside Chikako’s room.
She continued her practice of writing one letter a day to her former students, but with less enthusiasm than before. On her way out to post them every morning, she would glance at the master key and secretly envy the receptionist within whose power it lay to enter every room in the block.
It was essential that she should get her hands on that key.
A few days later, Yoneko was to be found at the bottom of the stairway, peering down through the receptionist’s hatch. Miss Tojo was on duty; as usual, she was sitting with her head lowered as if concentrating on some book or document on the desk. But more to the point, the master key, readily identifiable from its red ribbon and large wooden tag, was also on the desk. This was in accordance with a resolution passed by the residents’ association shortly after the Suwa Yatabe incident.
Yoneko went up to the receptionist’s window. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but could I just have a look at the fourth-floor gas bills for last month?’ she asked. (She had just taken up a three-month spell of duty as committee member for the fourth floor.)
‘Miss Suzuki is complaining that her bill was too high last month. She says her meter must have been misread. She’s not the kind to take no for an answer, so if you don’t mind…’ she explained.
‘No trouble at all. After all, it’s my job—I’ll certainly go and have a look.’ Miss Tojo got up and went to the back of the room and began to rummage in the filing cabinet. The master key lay within reach of Yoneko’s hand. Could she make the switch now, she wondered. She stretched her hand through the window.’
Two days earlier, she had been listening outside Chikako’s door on the fifth floor when Miss Tojo had suddenly appeared. As Chikako’s room was second from the far end of the corridor, Yoneko had nowhere to hide. She started to try and cover up her unwarranted presence there by asking Miss Tojo who was the fifth-floor committee representative, but she need not have worried. As luck would have it, Miss Tojo was holding the master key and in search of a witness before she used it. The rule was that the witness should either be from a neighbouring room or a committee member. So, far from being curious as to why Yoneko was on the fifth floor, she was delighted to find her there. It so happened that Miss Haru Santo, who occupied the room next to Chikako’s, had telephoned to say that she had left her electric stove on. They let themselves in, and indeed found the stove on and the kettle boiled nearly dry.
‘It’s not particularly the fire risk that worried her—after all, there’s not much danger of that. No, it was the fear of incurring a high electricity bill that got her. She pretends to earn her living teaching Japanese to foreigners, but we know better than that, don’t we!’ Miss Tojo switched the stove off as she spoke.
Yoneko understood the implications of her last remark. Some while back, one of the other residents had visited one of the main Tokyo cinemas and, going to the toilet, had been surprised to find that the cleaner there bore a striking resemblance to Miss Santo. But the cleaner had made good her escape before any words could be exchanged.
Yoneko knew little more about Miss Santo apart from the fact that she had snow-white hair and was a fervent adherent of a new spiritualist sect called the ‘Sanreikyo’.* Perhaps her unusually white hair owed something to her fanaticism; at all events, she was a slightly creepy little old woman.
There was a small altar by the black curtain festooned with weird talismans; on top of it, there was a religious offering of rice wine. The whole room reeked of incense. All in all, it fully resembled what one would imagine the apartment of a devotee of a new religion to be like, and the fact that such a mundane reason as an electric stove had led her there caused Yoneko to find her surroundings even more strange.
‘But I’m glad people phone me without embarrassment when such things occur,’ said Miss Tojo, as she locked the door. ‘Since that fire in Miss Ishiyama’s room, it’s just as well to take full precautions.’
‘Yes—and it’s just as well you have a master key. What a convenient thing that is! You can get into anyone’s room…’ Yoneko replied vacuously, but the power of the master key had begun to obsess her.
‘Not just convenient; it’s a disaster if it gets mislaid. Just think of that recent incident where we found it still in the lock on the inside of Miss Yatabe’s room! We still haven’t got to the bottom of that one, but what a peculiar set of circumstances that was! We took every care, but it still vanished. You know, the builders of this place were ahead of their time. Just think how long it would take if there were no master key, and if we had to search through a hundred and fifty keys every time there was a problem like this! It showed real imagination to make one key to fit all the locks. Look, I’ll show you how it differs from all the other keys—do you see this groove here, at the tip?’
And she went prattling on about how this building had been the first in Japan to employ such a master key. And how essential a thing this h
ad been at the time for an apartment block reserved solely for the use of unmarried young women.
Yoneko Kimura spent that evening considering how she could get her hands on that master key, which could solve her problem. Eventually she came up with a plan.
Since the key spent the daytime under the nose of the receptionist, and the nights in a locker, the only apparent way to get hold of it was to break into the office at night and steal it from the locker. But this would involve forcing two locks, which was beyond her power. So if it had to be stolen by daytime, one would have to remove it by force, which she also had to rule out. There remained the possibility of explaining the whole thing frankly to the receptionist and asking for the loan of the key. Nonetheless, however correct her motivation, the receptionist would almost certainly abide by the rules and refer the matter to the residents’ committee for a decision. The request would almost certainly be rejected on the grounds of protection of privacy.
And so there was only one way left—sleight of hand. When the master key had been used to enter Miss Santo’s room, Yoneko had for the first time got a close look at it. Apart from a slight difference of patina, it hardly seemed any different from all the individual keys, including her own, used about the building. What distinguished it from the others was the wooden tag tied to it with a red ribbon.
The Master Key Page 9
