Masako Togawa - The Master Key

And now, thirty years later, those moments were rekindled and Suwa remembered what he had said. Once again she heard his nasal French in her ear—‘I cannot give you a child—it’s impossible for me to do so.’

And now the force and meaning of those words came back to her. ‘I cannot give you a child—it’s impossible for me to do so.’

The realisation made her lose touch with her surroundings, almost as if she was about to faint. The dark woodlands of the park, the hard concrete beneath her feet, the steps, the pillar, all seemed to fade away before her eyes as at last she understood the final meaning of what the Frenchman had said. He could have no child; therefore, no child of his could possibly be alive; now, more than ever, she was all alone in the world.

She began to sob, and made her way down the long stairway, choking back her tears and wondering how she could face the loneliness of her room that night. Suwa Yatabe turned away all her pupils for the next week on the grounds of ill-health. When they saw her pale drawn face peering round the door, they were at first astonished, but then their feelings gave way to jubilation at the thought of having a break from music practice.

It took her a full seven days to get over her experience outside the Concert Hall. She pondered long and painfully over how to unravel the tangled skein of her life. At last she realised that the first step must be to put the mysterious foreigner out of her mind. Once she had made up her mind on that point, she began to feel slightly better, and was at last able to get up from her bed. Going to open the window she discovered a torn piece of black cloth caught in the latch, of a colour and type that could belong to none but Noriko Ishiyama.

The mere sight of that small black scrap of evidence brought to Suwa’s mind the vision of Noriko prowling past her door. For there was no one else in the apartment block who still wore so outmoded a thing as a skirt made of black crêpe de Chine. From the shape of the tear, too—a clean, right-angled rip enclosing the jagged and frayed hem of Noriko’s unique costume—she could be sure of the owner’s identity. And last but not least there was the musty, beggar-woman’s smell—final proof of Noriko’s guilt.

She had no way of knowing why Noriko had entered her room and stolen the violin, nor of how she had come to possess the master key which she had left behind in her flight. She could only imagine that Noriko had scented the violin’s presence in her room through reading that old newspaper article.

She no longer minded so much that Noriko had taken the Guarnerius. For that tramp-like old woman could hardly have any use for the instrument; all Suwa needed to do, she reasoned, would be to confront her with her guilt and secure the prompt return of the violin by means of a few well-chosen threats.

The next morning, after taking a late breakfast, Suwa made her way upstairs to Noriko’s room and knocked on the door. There was no reply, but she refused to be put off and kept up a steady knocking until at last the door was opened. Noriko Ishiyama had plainly just risen from her bed; her hair was in disarray and a little saliva was dribbling from the corner of her mouth. She stood stunned by the sight of her unexpected visitor, whose relentless glare she could feel penetrating beyond her, seeking out the mountainous pile of old papers and cardboard boxes in her room behind her.

Suwa paused to take in the scene, astonished by the sheer volume of Noriko’s collection, before thrusting the torn cloth in front of Noriko’s eyes.

‘Yours, I think?’

Her look seemed to forestall any possibility of denial, but nonetheless Noriko replied, ‘I’ve no idea. I know nothing about it.’

‘It’s no good pretending innocence! That filthy skirt of yours got caught in the window while you were escaping—look, you can see where it tore!’

Suwa pointed down to a jagged rent in the hem of Noriko’s skirt.

‘That’s an old tear! I didn’t tear it in your room, whatever you say!’

‘What’s the point of lying about it? I know perfectly well that you broke into my room and stole the violin. But so far, I’m the only one who knows, so if you’ll just give it back to me, I’ll forget all about it, and no one else need ever know. But if you don’t, then I’m going to tell everybody that it was you who broke into my room, you who stole the master key. Then you’ll be kicked out of your room for sure!’

Noriko just ignored her. She stood tight-lipped and pale, saying not a word.

‘Come on—say something! You’d better—this whole room of yours is full of stolen goods by the look of it.’

‘How dare you say that? What proof have you got, to come here and speak of stolen goods? You’re a fine one to talk, I must say! What a nerve you’ve got! You stole a famous violin, and then come accusing me of theft! I suppose you think you can treat me like this because I’m on Social Welfare? Well, you’d better think again!’

As Noriko spoke, she got more excited, and her body began to tremble violently as her voice rose to a shout. Suwa began to feel that the tables were being turned; the fortress of her own righteous wrath was being battered by Noriko’s anger.

‘Stop trying to evade the issue!’ she replied. ‘If that’s going to be your attitude, I’ll just have to report you to the police.’

‘Oh really? You just try that and see! They’ll find your fingerprints on the violin, and then what will you say? Now get out, and don’t come back, or I’ll scream so that everyone can hear!’

And with that she slammed the door in Suwa’s face. Suwa seethed with impotent rage, but could do no more than retrace her steps back to her own room, muttering curses as she went. ‘Dirty insect! Filthy caterpillar!’

Once back in her own room, she pondered how best to recover the violin. In her mind’s eye she saw the heaped pile of rubbish in Noriko Ishiyama’s room. Without doubt, her precious Guarnerius lay buried somewhere in the middle of that pile.

She thought of starting a fire. If that mass of old paper caught light, Noriko would have to run for her life. And everyone else would be absorbed in rescuing their most valued possessions and fleeing the building. Under cover of the confusion, she might be able to recover the violin. Even if she didn’t, at least she’d have the pleasure of having punished Noriko. Having got this thought into her mind, Suwa set about working out a means to implement her plan. She thought of a way of setting fire to the newspapers in Noriko’s room.

Many years before, when she was still a mere child, Suwa had lived in the country next to a fruit farmer. She remembered how she used to watch her neighbour kill off the insects on the trees. He used to take a long bamboo pole, and fit some benzine-soaked rags to the tip. Lighting this torch, he would burn off the insects before they could harm his cherry trees. In her rage, she could think of no better way of dealing with ‘that caterpillar’.

And so it came about that a day or so later, at about three-thirty am, Suwa put the necessary materials for fire-raising into a bag and taking up a thin bamboo about a yard long made her way back to Noriko’s room. In the silence of the night, even the slightest sound carried, so that it seemed even more likely to awaken suspicion by trying to muffle her steps. So perversely she took no precautions, other than wearing a pair of straw sandals, to conceal the sounds of her progress. She flushed the toilet on the landing of her floor and, under cover of that sound, made her way up to the floor above.

There was no light to be seen from within Noriko Ishiyama’s room. She pressed her ear to the door, but could hear no sound. Suwa squatted down in the corridor and began to unpack the contents of her paper bag. She took out a small bundle of kindling wood, and some torn scraps of rag, and placed them on the floor. She soaked the rags in benzine and then wound them round the kindling wood so that the final result looked like a lollipop. Taking the bamboo, she pushed against the fanlight above the door, until it opened a few inches. As she had expected, it was not locked from within. She let it close again, and then looked around carefully, holding her breath and listening. There was not a sound to be heard, and nothing untoward apart from the strong smell of the benzine. She struck a match; the sound grated in the silence. Then she applied it to the rags, which flared up, lighting her immediate surroundings and throwing a dim light beyond. She bided her time while the kindling wood caught fire, opening the fanlight once again with the bamboo pole and counting up to ten before she threw the burning torch into Noriko’s room. She let the fanlight close again, and paused to await the results of her action, but could see no glimmer of light from within. She walked slowly back to the toilet on the floor below. The window was set at an angle so that she could see the side of the courtyard overlooked by Noriko’s room. It took her a minute or so to get there, and then with careful deliberation she opened the frosted glass window and looked out. Now she would know if her scheme had worked.