Lord of All Things

by Andreas Eschbach

  That evening, when Hiroshi’s mother came home from work, her back ached so much that she had to lie down. “We washed the curtains from both grand salons today and then hung them up again. That always leaves me feeling half-dead.”

  “Should I go get some painkillers?” Hiroshi offered.

  “Oh no.” She patted the futon beside her. “Sit down and tell me something. What have you been up to all day?”

  Hiroshi came closer, feeling awkward. “You wouldn’t be interested if I was to tell you all the technical stuff.”

  She made a face that was not quite a smile. “I just want you to take my mind off my aches and pains.”

  He stood there in thought, feeling the penknife still in his pants pocket, then sat down, took it out, and showed it to her. “Is it true this belonged to my father?”

  Mother raised her head with difficulty and looked at the knife. “So you’ve got it.”

  “You gave it to me.”

  “Ah yes. So I did.” She sank back down with a groan. “Yes, that belonged to your father.”

  “And how come you had it?”

  “When we flew to America, it was in the pocket of some pants he forgot to pack. Your grandpa and grandma kept all of his things, and I found it when I came back.” She smiled a bittersweet smile at the ceiling. “John was so upset about that. He thought he had left it in a taxi.”

  “Tell me about him,” Hiroshi said, putting the knife back in his pocket. It was a handy little tool, with its multiple screwdrivers, the tweezers, and so on. He could find a use for it.

  “Oh my. What is there to tell? You already know everything. And anyway, didn’t we say that you would tell me something?”

  “No,” said Hiroshi. “Just that I would take your mind off it.”

  His mother shrugged and moaned, turning her head from side to side a little. “This always happens. Every time I feel poorly, Dr. Uchiyama is on holiday.”

  “Did you love him?”

  She sighed and looked at Hiroshi. “Your father? Of course. Very much. I was young and foolish, and he was a handsome man…” She stopped for a moment and blinked rapidly. Her eyes were shining now.

  She began to tell the story. How one day he was standing there in her parents’ living room just as she came home. How she would watch him secretly from her window, see him coming and going but not dare talk to him, because she was afraid her English might not be good enough, or that perhaps she wouldn’t understand his Japanese. How, a little while later, he had turned up, of all places, at the travel agency where she worked, an agency that specialized in trips to Australia.

  She didn’t tell the story of how they first kissed.

  “He insisted that I come to America to meet his parents,” she continued after a long pause, a silence that somehow sounded like a sigh. “I didn’t want to, but he persuaded me in the end. He was the kind of man you couldn’t refuse for long. I couldn’t anyway. So off we went.”

  It was as though she were talking about a death sentence.

  “It was all very strange for me. America, the endless roads, the land stretching away in all directions. And then the Leak family house—no, not a house, a ranch. They were terribly rich, had a hundred rooms, servants, a swimming pool, dozens of cars, horses, a bowling alley. They even had their own movie theater down in the basement…I was quite overwhelmed at first.”

  Hiroshi tried to imagine it. The way she described it, even the French embassy would look small by comparison.

  “His family was very kind when we arrived—or, at least, so I thought. At the time I didn’t know any other Americans apart from your father; I didn’t know they always smile and act friendly. In reality, though, they were totally against our being together, and not only his parents but his brothers and sisters, too. John’s grandfather had fought in the war against Japan. When I happened to run into him on his own one day, he told me he hated the Japanese and that I mustn’t imagine for a moment that anyone in that house would ever agree to John marrying me. If John went ahead and married me anyway, the old man said, he would lose his inheritance, and since he’d never learned any way to make a living, we would starve.”

  “What a horrible thing to say,” said Hiroshi.

  “They were horrible. After running into the grandfather, I realized a lot of the kind things they said were actually insults dressed up in nice words. In a funny way I was relieved, since I understood why I felt so unwelcome.”

  “Why didn’t you just run away with him?”

  “We wanted to. But first John wanted to talk to a lawyer and find out whether his family really could disinherit him, under Texas law. We were just figuring out where to go and what we would do if we did have to fend for ourselves when we both fell ill—first me, and then John the next day. They wouldn’t call a doctor for my sake, but when John got sick, they got one to come out, of course.” She began to rub her sides as though trying to stretch herself out on the futon. “I can still remember. The doctor looked like that American actor John Wayne. He was wearing thick leather boots and a cowboy hat on his head and had a stethoscope around his neck. He wouldn’t let the Leaks order him around, so he went ahead and examined me first. ‘Congratulations, ma’am,’ he said, ‘you’re pregnant.’ Then he examined John and stood right up and said, ‘Get him to the hospital.’ Then they found out that John had a brain tumor, a very aggressive one.”

  Hiroshi swallowed. She had never breathed a word about any of this. It probably meant his father was no longer alive.

  “They operated the same day. It was a very long operation, very complicated, and it didn’t turn out as well as they’d hoped. We sat there in the clinic until at last, long after midnight, one of the doctors came out and gave us the news. He said the tumor was in a particularly sensitive place, that John was in critical condition, and that even if he lived, he would never be the same. Even in the best case, John would need years of care, maybe for the rest of his life.” Hiroshi’s mother covered her face with her hands. “The next day, while his son was lying in a coma in the hospital and the doctors were fighting for his life and nobody knew whether he would be alive the next day or even the next hour, John’s father was talking to me all that time, urging me to have an abortion. He had it all arranged—can you believe it?—the doctor, the clinic, everything. All I had to do was walk out the door and into the car and that would have been it. You would never have been born.”

  Hiroshi rubbed his throat, disquieted. It was a strange thought: never to have been born.

  “At first, I didn’t understand why he wanted me to go through with it or why he was in such a hurry. It was only later that I understood his thinking: if John should die, he didn’t want an extra heir making trouble for his other children. It was all about the money for him, all about the family fortune.” She drew in a long breath, almost choked. “That was the most terrible day of my life. I’ll never forget that fat man sitting there, sweating, trying to persuade me to let them kill my baby. And they were all going along with it—the doctor, the chauffeur, everyone. And all because this man had the money to make them. Because he was rich. He didn’t care about you in the least, didn’t care about me. All he cared about was his money.”

  “And what did you do then?” Hiroshi asked, his heart in his mouth.

  “I escaped.” Her breath was ragged now, and she put her hand on her chest and had to take a few breaths before she could carry on. “John had given me some American money—quite a lot, several hundred dollars—and I still had my plane ticket. When John’s father was called away to the phone—something to do with the business—I ran to my room. I shoved whatever I needed into a bag as though the devil himself were after me, and then I ran down the back stairs and out of the house. I had a great stroke of luck just then, because I ran straight into the arms of a man from Japan. I told him they were trying to make me kill my baby and that I had to get away. He simp
ly took me with him. He was a delivery driver for a supermarket, and he was bringing groceries to the Leak ranch like every week. I hid in his van, and nobody stopped us. He helped me change my flight, and most importantly, he made sure my name was spelled differently so that it wouldn’t be easy for them to find me if they were after me. And that’s how I came back to Tokyo. When I got off the plane, I had just enough money left to get into the city.”

  “Wow,” Hiroshi whispered. That was some story. He would never have guessed his mother had had such adventures.

  She seemed to have forgotten all about him. Her voice was just a whisper by now. “I went and hid with my parents. Then you were born, and I went back into hiding again. For years I was afraid John’s father might send someone to track me down, to do something to you. That’s why I took the job with Inamoto-san; I figured that anybody looking for me would start their investigations in offices, jobs where you have to speak English. I hoped they would never find me in a lowly place like a laundry. Not find me, and not find you.”

  Hiroshi thought about this. “But he would have been able to find Grandpa and Grandma. And they would have known where you were.”

  “That’s why I persuaded them to move away. I figured Minamata was a good long way away.”

  Hiroshi sat there, stunned. No wonder she used to make such a dreadful fuss if he was ten minutes late coming home from kindergarten. She must have been terrified he had been kidnapped.

  “Do you think they’re still after us?” he asked.

  “Oh, they were probably never looking for us at all,” his mother said. “But I was so scared for you.”

  Hiroshi nodded. He could understand that. “And you’ve never liked rich people since.”

  “Yes. That’s right.” She put out her hand and stroked his hair. “Back when I was young, I used to admire rich people. The way they would come into the travel agency, all elegantly dressed with beautiful manners, and I could tell they simply didn’t care how much a trip might cost…I thought life ought to be like that: just doing what you like, collecting possessions and experiences, never mind the cost. And to be honest, I still think that in the back of my mind. I think that life ought to be beautiful. Not about working from morning till night at a job that’s no fun most of the time. But if a life like that means you have to be rich…if a life like that means being so ruthless, so hard-hearted that you’re willing to take whatever you want from anyone else—that you would even kill for it—then the cost is too high. A life that you pay that price for is not life as it ought to be. Do you understand?”

  Hiroshi nodded. “I think I do.” He hesitated. “Did you ever find out what happened to my father?”

  “No,” she said.

  “What do you think happened?”

  “Sometimes I think he’s alive. But if he is, he’s forgotten all about me.” Her eyes were moist, glistening. “You’ve seen Aunt Kumiko; you know what can happen. Someone can be full of life, clever as can be, and then lie in bed for the rest of her days and barely know her own name.”

  Hiroshi looked at the floor and tried to imagine the man he only knew from photographs as a bedridden invalid, helpless and in need of care day and night like Aunt Kumiko. He couldn’t imagine it, didn’t want to imagine it. He thought the whole story was about the saddest thing he’d ever heard.

  For some reason he asked her, “The man who helped you—do you know what his name was?”

  His mother hesitated. “His name was the same as yours,” she said at last. “Hiroshi.”

  “You named me after him?”

  “He saved your life. It was the least I could do.”

  Hiroshi had a great deal to think about over the next few days. He had plenty of time to do so, as there was nothing in Charlotte’s window. The Bon festival was getting ever closer, though, when they would go to Minamata. Just like every year, Mother grew increasingly nervous as the day approached. The suitcases were brought down from the top of the wardrobe, packed, rearranged, then emptied and packed anew. She called her parents every day, talking for hours about when they would arrive, who would meet them, and other such details. And just as she had threatened, she dragged him downtown to buy a new pair of pants, which he hated—all the more so because he was afraid he might miss a chance to see Charlotte.

  “If it were up to you, you’d wear all your clothes until they were rags,” his mother chided as he moped and dragged his feet toward the changing room.

  “If it were up to me,” Hiroshi replied, “clothes would never wear out. And they would grow along with you.”

  “Well, why don’t you invent something like that? But until you do, you’re just going to have to try on a pair or two of pants, like it or not,” she said, holding out another three pairs that looked identical to the ones he’d just tried on.

  But when he had time, when there was nothing else that had to be done, Hiroshi was deep in thought. About his father. About rich and poor, and about whether the world would really be a better place if there were no rich people. Was that what he should wish for? That everybody should be poor? Somehow, that didn’t seem right either.

  “We’re not really poor at all,” he told his mother over breakfast one morning. “I mean, we have everything we want, don’t we?” Just then he recalled the Omnibot that he would have liked to have, the one that cost far too much. “At least, everything we need.”

  Mother nodded. “Yes, but only because I work. If I didn’t work, then next month we would have nothing to eat and the month after that, nowhere to live.”

  “And rich people? Don’t they work?”

  “No. They just boss other people around. They can do that because they’re rich and everyone else needs their money. And the rich have the others work for them so they can stay rich.”

  Hiroshi saw how it all worked. At last he understood what it was all about. “Rich people need poor people to do the work for them!”

  “That’s exactly it,” said his mother and looked at the clock. “And that’s why I have to go now.”

  After she’d gone, Hiroshi sat at the table for a while, feeling as though the sudden insight had almost blinded him. Being rich or poor wasn’t about money the way everybody thought, it was about who did the work. But understanding it that way was depressing, too, because it meant there could never be a world where everyone was rich. In a world like that, nobody would be left to do the work, and the work had to be done.

  After he had cleared away the dishes—another job somebody had to do—he stood at the window for a long time, looking down at the embassy villa and the big garden. He thought about all the magnificent furniture and artwork inside. Even if he didn’t care to live like that himself, he would certainly like to have such a garden one day and all that extra room. But it was a great deal of work to run a house like that. He knew that from what his mother had told him. The embassy employed a gardener, who did nothing but look after the garden all day long. There were cooks and waiters, housekeepers, chauffeurs, security guards, and so on—all so the ambassador’s family didn’t have to lift a finger. For those three people to be rich, a whole lot of other people had to work—people who didn’t have anybody working for them in turn, because they weren’t rich. They were the ones who did all the jobs.

  Hiroshi let his head droop until his forehead was pressing against the cool glass. If he were honest with himself, he didn’t like to work. Not when working meant doing things he didn’t want to do. And most of the time that’s exactly what work meant; he knew that from his mother as well. Washing laundry was not in fact her favorite way of passing the time.

  When it came down to it, he didn’t much like going to school either. All right, every now and then he learned something interesting, but was it worth all the time and effort? If he had just been allowed to spend the same amount of time in a library, he would have learned more and discovered far more interesting things.

/>   And later on in life? You had to work hard at school to get good grades to go to a good university and then get a good degree so that you could get a good job in a good company. That’s what everybody always told him—even his mother. But when he tried to imagine it, really think about what it would be like, he couldn’t. Or at least he couldn’t imagine anything that would persuade him it would be much fun. Being rich, though—rich and free—he could imagine that quite easily, and it would be much better.

  But he didn’t want to have to harden his heart to do it, didn’t want a wicked life like his grandfather in Texas, who had been so worried about the money that he had wanted to kill his own grandson. And he didn’t want other people to have to do without all the good things in life just so he could live well. That was a hard-hearted way to see the world. Whichever way he looked at it, the problem seemed insoluble. Nevertheless, Hiroshi couldn’t stop thinking about it. He could feel his brain almost literally buzzing, as though he might blow a fuse any minute.

  He couldn’t let it go. He ate and drank and thought. When he went to bed, he thought until he fell asleep. When he woke up in the morning, he had the feeling his brain had been thinking away without him all night long. He thought while he was brushing his teeth and when he was going to the bathroom; he thought as he got dressed and while he watched television, and the whole time he felt as though these thoughts of his were turning and turning around like huge millstones grinding one another to a powder.

  He eventually tried to forget the whole thing. He sat down with his toys and his tool kit, leafed through the Omnibot advertising booklet for the thousandth time, and had another go at the broken radio even though he knew he would never be able to fix it as long as he had no replacement parts. He would have to buy them. In the meantime, though, it would do no harm to test the wiring one more time.

  And then that evening, just before he fell asleep, he had the idea all of a sudden. The idea of how it could be done.