Lord of All Things Read online

  So Charlotte crept away. She was so bored. She went out onto the terrace, sat down in the shadow of the wall, and watched the gardener watering the flowers by the pool. She could take a swim. But she had done that so many times recently that she no longer cared to. After a while she crept back to her mother, who was still lying motionless in the dark.

  “Yumiko could take me to the museum,” she suggested warily.

  Mother sat up, startled. “What? Mon Dieu! You and your museums all the time! What kind of child are you? No normal child volunteers to go to a museum.”

  She hadn’t actually said no, Charlotte realized. If there was any chance at all of making the day worthwhile, this was it. “But Yumiko could take me, couldn’t she? She knows Tokyo. She can look after me.”

  Silence. Sour, suffering silence.

  “It was a mistake to employ a Japanese nanny,” Mother murmured bitterly.

  “Yumiko is very nice,” Charlotte retorted. That wasn’t completely true, but most of the time she was easy to get along with.

  “She’s a silly cow!” Mother screamed all of a sudden and threw a cushion across the room, then another right behind it. “Can’t you see I’m not well? Can’t you just leave me alone? Don’t you have homework to do? Don’t you have lessons, damn it all?”

  No, there was no saving the day now. Charlotte fled without another word.

  After one more walk through the vast, dark apartment, she crept off to her room. Homework? She didn’t have any homework. It was the holidays, even for children like her who had a private tutor. That was the whole problem. She picked up a doll from the end of her bed, where she kept all the things she didn’t have a proper place for. It was a doll Papa had given her as a present when they had to move from Delhi to Tokyo. Charlotte didn’t even know what to call it. When she got the doll, it had been wearing its long blond hair in a hair band with the name Denise written across it, but Charlotte thought that was a stupid name for a doll.

  “Well then, what do you want to do?” asked Charlotte, looking curiously at the doll. She pressed the button on its back that made it talk.

  “I want to go dancing,” the blond doll declared.

  “Dancing? We’re not even allowed out of the house, so put that idea out of your head.”

  “Come on, let’s have a party,” the doll demanded.

  “A party?” Charlotte shook the doll, frustrated. What a stupid squeaky voice it had. “Are you crazy? We have to be quiet, because Mother’s got a headache. We can’t even go to the museum.”

  “Isn’t life wonderful?”

  That was the moment when all of Charlotte’s anger and disappointment popped inside her like a bubble. Screaming with rage, she hurled the doll across the room. “You’re a silly cow!” she yelled after it. “You don’t understand a thing!”

  The very next moment she was sorry, but the harm was done: its head hung down, snapped off, with a tangle of wires sticking out. The hair had come off, along with one arm.

  “It serves you right,” Charlotte declared. “A child should not contradict her mother.”

  There was nothing she could do about it; the doll with no name was a wreck. Charlotte looked around, helpless. What should she do with the broken bits? It would be a bad idea to leave them lying around; her mother would see the damage this evening when she kissed her good-night and tell her off. But if the doll wasn’t even there, then she wouldn’t even notice, what with all the other dolls Charlotte had. She fetched a plastic bag, stuffed the bits into it, and hurried out of the room and down the stairs to the side door where she knew the housekeepers put out the trash.

  There was the girl. Hiroshi held his breath.

  She emerged from the same door she had vanished into that night. She was holding something in her hand, an orange plastic bag from the Daiei supermarket. And she seemed to be feeling guilty about something, the way she peered around to all sides, listening, lurking. She didn’t look in his direction. Hiroshi stared at her. How pale her skin was. And how her long black hair shone! She looked like an angel by daylight as well. What was her name, he wondered? And what did she do inside all day long?

  She started to move. She scampered over to the bins that stood in a corner between the house and a sliding gate, lifted one of the lids, and flung the plastic bag inside. A moment later she was back inside the house.

  Hiroshi slumped back, disappointed. That had all been too quick. He hadn’t even seen her face properly, since she had been glancing in all directions. What was in the bag that she had thrown away so furtively? He could find that out, if he was brave enough. And having waited this long, he would be stupid not to be brave.

  Hiroshi jumped up, slipped his shoes on, and ran out of the apartment. He knew every nook and cranny of his neighborhood, of course. And he had walked all the way around the embassy countless times. There was a huge, green sliding gate at the main entrance with spikes on top, behind which the French flag was visible on a pole. Beyond the gate to the right was a street that led to the Meguro toll road, so narrow that a car could only just go down it. It was a lane really, flanked by houses and their little front gardens on one side and the embassy wall on the other. It was an old wall, with a great fringe of spikes on the top. No point trying to climb that.

  But there was one spot where the wall curved slightly inward to leave room for a huge, old tree. It was easy enough to climb up between the trunk and the wall, and he was hidden from sight, too. Up at the top, the frame that held the spikes in place had rusted away a bit because it was always damp from the tree, and a piece of the framework had snapped. Someone small enough, like Hiroshi, could wriggle through.

  Of course, it wasn’t allowed. He knew that. You needed special permission to enter the embassy compound, and you had to carry a pass with you when you did. Mother had a pass, written in Japanese and French, saying exactly where she was allowed to go inside the building, which in her case was limited to the laundry room and housekeeping areas. But he didn’t actually plan to enter the compound. Just a little bit. Right on the edge. He would just have a look to see what the girl had thrown away, and then he’d slip away.

  Well, if he were honest, he had to admit he’d been here often enough. He couldn’t resist the challenge—over time he had explored the whole compound. It wasn’t difficult, given that there were trees and bushes everywhere where a child could hide easily enough. The only tricky bit was keeping out of the way of all the cameras. His mother would be dreadfully angry if she ever found out. The hardest part was getting down to the ground on the other side of the wall. It needed a rope, which had to be left hanging from the spikes so that he could climb back up again later.

  The embassy garden was like an enchanted otherworld. It was strange to think only a wall divided it from the everyday world. But Hiroshi didn’t have time today to revel in the enchantment. He had to hurry—for all he knew, the garbage was just about to be collected. He slipped between the compound wall and a little, low, windowless building that must have had something to do with the heating, since a tangle of white metal pipes led out from it in all directions. From there he scrambled through the bushes until he reached the edge of the patch of lawn where he had seen the girl standing in the rain. He peered up at the windows. Was there somebody there? He couldn’t see anyone. He scurried across the lawn and the narrow strip of fine, white gravel in front of the building, lifted the lid of the second garbage bin from the right, and fished out the orange supermarket bag. Then he scuttled back to the safety of the bushes with his prize. The whole operation had lasted less than twenty seconds.

  Full of curiosity, he opened the bag. A doll? The remains of a doll, rather. Odd. He had always thought girls loved their dolls. It was news to him that they smashed them to pieces. He inspected the bits, pondering the matter as he fitted them back together. The head was broken off, but perhaps he could stick it back on again. The doll was obviously supp
osed to talk, but the speech unit no longer worked. Hiroshi thought of his new toolbox, the kit that he had wanted so much. Perhaps he could use it to make some repairs. He would take the broken doll back with him.

  It took him three days to repair the doll. He did it in secret, of course, during the day while his mother was at work. When she came home, she was happy to see him no longer sitting by the window but busy with his tool kit, though she never saw what had him so absorbed—he always hid the doll away in good time.

  Hiroshi finished the job at about ten o’clock on the third day, a Friday. It was a neat bit of repair work, he decided; you could hardly spot it. The doll looked as good as new. And it was working again. When he pressed the big button between the shoulders, it spoke various phrases in a melodious language he didn’t recognize.

  What should he do with it now? He would have to give it back to the girl, but it only dawned on him then that this would be a much greater challenge than actually repairing the damage. He would have to leave his apartment block carrying the doll. If someone from his class saw him with it, he’d never get over the embarrassment. He felt sick even thinking about it. Maybe it would be better just to throw it away—after all, that’s what the girl had done; she may not even want it back. She clearly didn’t like it.

  Hiroshi went back to the window, looked down at the embassy garden, and thought of all the time he had spent standing here waiting, of the night she had stood down there in the rain. No. No, he wouldn’t throw the doll away; he would just bring it back in the same bag in which he had found it. And he could hand it in at the main gate. It wasn’t far, and the security guards would take care of the rest.

  He broke into a sweat as soon as he stepped out the front door with the bag in his hand, but surely that was just because it was so baking hot outside. There was nobody in sight. He didn’t really need to hurry, but then again he wanted to get the thing off his hands as soon as possible. Maybe there was a mailbox and he could just drop it in? Of course, there wasn’t. He knew that; he’d been past the embassy often enough. He had no choice but to ring the bell at the sentry box.

  A man appeared at the thick glass window. Not a Japanese. He opened his mouth and said something, and it took Hiroshi a while to understand he was trying to ask him what he wanted in Japanese. Hiroshi bowed politely, as he had been taught to do with grown-ups he didn’t know.

  “Hello, sir,” he said. He held up the bag. “I found something that belongs to the ambassador’s daughter. I would like to give it to you so that she gets it back, if that is not too much trouble.”

  The man stared at him stonily. It was obvious he hadn’t understood a word.

  “Nan desu ka?” he asked, or at least something that sounded like it. “What do you want?”

  As Hiroshi began to repeat what he had said, the man raised his hand and cut him off midsentence, then turned around to call for someone. A moment later another guard appeared, Japanese this time, who took over behind the pane of glass.

  “Well? What do you want?” the man asked rudely. “This isn’t a playground. Move along.”

  Hiroshi paid no attention to his glowering expression. He was used to being glowered at; he had had plenty of practice ignoring it at school. “It’s about the ambassador’s daughter,” he said.

  The glower turned into a glare of suspicion. “What are you talking about?”

  “She lost a doll and I found it.” He had no choice but to open the bag and take the doll out for a moment so the man could see what he was talking about. Then Hiroshi dropped it quickly back into the bag. “I thought she would like to have it back.”

  The man made a face. His cheeks were pitted with old acne scars. “What’s this all about? Where did you get the doll?”

  “I found it.” Hiroshi waved his hand vaguely in the direction of his block. “Over there.”

  “And how do you know whose it is?”

  “I was looking out of my window when I saw a girl lose it. She lives in this house.” Hiroshi pointed toward the ambassadorial villa, though he could only see part of the roof from where he was standing at the main entrance.

  “That is impossible. The daughter of the honorable ambassador only very rarely leaves the house, and when she does, she certainly does not take her…dolls with her.” He spat the word out with audible disdain.

  Hiroshi realized the guard felt embarrassed as well. He almost laughed out loud.

  “It was a girl about my age,” he said. “A European with long black hair. I’ve seen the same girl on the lawn in front of the house.”

  The guard considered all this. “Good,” he said at last and pressed a button that opened the iron door in front of Hiroshi. “Come inside.”

  Hiroshi swallowed hard as he stepped across the threshold. A barrier divided the sentry post inside in two, and the only way from one side of the room to the other was through a metal detector. There was also an X-ray belt for luggage, just like at the airport.

  The guard stepped in front of Hiroshi and put out his hand. “Show me.”

  Hiroshi handed him the bag. The man opened it and lifted up the doll to see whether there was anything underneath it, but he didn’t take it out. It was clear he didn’t like touching it; he handled the bag as though it held some noisome substance.

  “I’ll have to X-ray this,” the man said, looking sternly at Hiroshi. “You really just found it? Are you quite sure nobody gave it to you and told it to bring it here?”

  “Quite sure,” Hiroshi said. “I found it.” That was even true, sort of.

  “What’s your name?”

  Crap. He hadn’t thought that they would ask him that. There was nothing he could do but to answer the question.

  “Kato Hiroshi,” he answered. “My mother works here in the embassy. In the laundry.” They would have found out anyway.

  “And what’s your mother’s name?”

  “Kato Miyu.”

  The man consulted his computer. “I see,” he said at last. “Mrs. Kato from the laundry. I know her.” All the same he wrote the name down before putting the bag with the doll through the X-ray machine.

  Hiroshi watched with curiosity and wondered, not for the first time, how a machine like that worked. There was no clear explanation of it in any of the books he had read. It had something to do with electromagnetic radiation, he knew that much—but how could radiation show whether explosives were hidden in something? It was high time they started studying physics in school.

  The guard didn’t find explosives in the doll or anything else suspicious. He came through the metal detector, picked up the bag from the belt, and put it down on a table. “I’ll pass it along,” he promised.

  By the sound of it, he was more likely to just throw it in the trash as soon as Hiroshi was through the door, but he no longer cared what they did with it.

  “Charlotte!”

  Her mother’s voice. With an ominous undertone to it. Charlotte switched off the television and stayed sitting for a moment. Could she get away with pretending she hadn’t heard? Probably not. She got up quietly and went to her mother, albeit slowly and on tiptoe.

  “Charlotte Malroux,” her mother called again. “Please come here immediately.”

  “I’m coming,” Charlotte called as she entered the room they called the Yellow Salon. But her mother wasn’t there. She finally found her standing in the front hallway.

  She gave a start. Mother was holding her doll in her hand—the blond doll with no name. Except that it no longer looked broken.

  “I never gave you permission to go out in the street,” Mother said sharply.

  Charlotte blinked in astonishment. “What? I’ve never gone out in the street!”

  Mother held up the doll. “A boy saw you lose this. He handed it in at the gate.”

  “What?” What was going on here? Charlotte shook her head. “But I never went o
ut!”

  “Don’t lie. I can’t abide that.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  Mother came toward her, looked down at her sternly, and held the doll up in front of her eyes. “This is your doll, isn’t it? I remember quite well that your father brought it back for you from Paris.” Paris. The way she said it made it sound as though the dratted doll was special for that reason alone.

  Charlotte put out her hand to take it, but her mother held it up out of reach. “How did he get ahold of it if you didn’t go outside?”

  “I don’t know.” Hesitantly, she added, “The doll was broken.”

  “Broken? What do you mean, broken?”

  “I dropped it.” Now she was lying. No. She just wasn’t telling the whole truth: that was different. “Part of the head broke off. After that it couldn’t talk anymore. I left it out in the garden.” That wasn’t completely untrue, at least—after all, the trash bins were out in the garden, sort of.

  Mother examined the doll. She was probably thinking the gardener had found the doll and put it out with the trash, and that that was how the doll had gotten out into the street, where the boy found it.

  “Hmm,” Mother mused, running her finger around the doll’s neck. “Someone must have repaired it. I can see the break here, and it’s been glued back in place.” She pressed the button at the back and the doll said, “Aren’t I pretty?”

  Charlotte stretched out her hand, and this time she got the doll back. She hugged it tight and shut her eyes for a moment. “It was the boy,” she declared. “He repaired the doll. He’s been watching me from his window the whole time.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Mother, baffled. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  Hiroshi and his mother were just sitting down to dinner when the doorbell rang. Hiroshi went to open it. It was Mr. Inamoto, the head of the company Mother worked for, a cleaning business that had had the French embassy contract for a long time.