“If possible,” Sasaki replied, clearly emboldened by his success.
And then Kozaburo said something that made everybody assembled think they’d lost their hearing for a moment.
“Eiko, have you decided yet who you’re going to marry?”
Naturally, Eiko looked horrified.
“What are you talking about, Daddy? Where did that come from all of a sudden?”
“If you haven’t made your decision yet, how about one of these young men sitting here tonight? How about whoever is able to answer the question I’m about to set them?”
“Daddy, stop joking around!”
“Actually, I’m not joking at all. I’m perfectly serious. This eccentric house, the ridiculous pile of junk I’ve collected that sits in Room 3, that can all be called a joke. But this, right now, is me being serious. Here before you are two fine young men. I would have absolutely no objections to you choosing either one of them. To be honest, I don’t have the energy to object. And if you don’t know which to choose, you have nothing to worry about. Leave it to me. I can choose for you—with a puzzle. I’ve come prepared with a question for that very purpose.”
That’ll do it, thought Kozaburo. Now we’ll see their true colours.
“Of course this is no longer the olden days when the man who solves the riddle gets a reward of the daughter’s hand in marriage. Instead I’ll say that the kind of man who can solve a puzzle like this one will get no objection from me. Apart from that it’s up to my daughter to choose.”
The two young men’s eyes gleamed, possibly reflecting the mountain of gold coins that they had in their sight. In contrast, Kozaburo was inwardly grinning. His full intentions wouldn’t be clear until the puzzle was solved.
“The matter of Eiko aside, I’m very interested in tackling another puzzle,” said Sasaki.
“Not to mention a chance for Mr Togai here to redeem himself… Anyway, this man you see before you both has spent a long life in a forest being buffeted over and over by the wind, and now I’m just a dead tree that has dropped all its leaves. I’ve had enough of all the manoeuvring and haggling that my life requires. I no longer recognize nor care for the marks of what we call ‘good birth’ or ‘pedigree’. It’s what inside that matters. I’ve said it repeatedly, but as you get older, or as your status in society rises, you start to forget about, or cease to care for, the things that others are obsessed with. And so, this quiz I offer not only to Togai and to Sasaki, but also to Mr Ueda and Mr Kajiwara.”
“It makes no difference to me whether a man can solve some puzzle or not,” interrupted Eiko. “If I can’t stand him, I can’t stand him.”
“Well, obviously, my dear. I know you’re not the type to quietly acquiesce if I tell you to marry one of these men.”
“I do what you tell me on other matters, but not this.”
“You’re from a good family, so I know you’re much more discerning than I am. So on that matter I’m completely confident.”
“If I solve the puzzle, may I marry your daughter?”
This last question was from Kikuoka.
“If the young lady is agreeable, then I suppose you may,” said Kozaburo generously. Kikuoka laughed.
And then Kozaburo had one more surprise announcement.
“So please go and call Mr Kajiwara. I’m going to show everyone my room at the top of the tower.”
“What did you say?” Eiko couldn’t believe her ears. “Why are we going up there?”
“Because that’s where the puzzle is.”
Kozaburo got to his feet.
“At any rate,” he added, as if an afterthought, “I’ve got a special trick up my sleeve.”
SCENE 3
The Tower
Kozaburo set off up the stairs from the salon, his guests filing after him. He called back over his shoulder as he climbed.
“My puzzle is a bit of a silly, self-indulgent thing, but it’s something that I was thinking about when I built this house, and I always hoped this day would come. Ladies and gentlemen, next to this building is a tower, which houses my bedroom. At the base of the tower there’s a rather strangely shaped flower bed. Have you ever wondered about its layout? The mystery that I’m challenging you to solve is, One, What is the significance of its design? And Two, Why is it there? That’s all.”
The higher they climbed, the narrower the staircase became, until eventually it came to a dead end. An imposing black door made of iron blocked their way, feeling rather like an exit from this world to the next. The metal had broad horizontal folds over its whole surface, giving the impression of some kind of avant-garde sculpture—a hulking, graceless monument.
Everyone watched as Kozaburo reached for a looped chain that hung from the wall and pulled on it. There was a great rattling sound that seemed to come from a long-gone era, and then something unexpected happened. The assembled guests had expected the door to swing open towards them, hinged on the left or the right, but instead it began to fall slowly away from them—downwards and outwards.
Everyone stayed frozen in one line on the narrow stairs. The staircase was lower on the right side than the left and the roof sloped down over their heads, making the wall appear to lean towards them. Right now everything was disorientating.
Like the second hand of a giant clock, the door very slowly moved from its number twelve position, and continued to revolve downwards. Now there was a second surprise in store for the observers.
What had been visible of the door from the inside—well, if you could call it a door—had been no more than one small section of the whole. As it continued to fall, it became clear that they had been looking at just the lower extremity of a massively tall metal slab. The top reached way up into the heavy black sky and was swallowed up in the darkness. As it fell away from the wall and the gap opened up farther, the noise of the wind was added to the loud rattling of the chain, and a few snowflakes fluttered in. The waiting guests finally began to understand why the operation was taking so long.
The structure was in fact a sort of drawbridge, which led across to the tower. The horizontal folds in the welding weren’t decorative after all; they served a very practical purpose—that of steps in a massive outdoor staircase. The party had climbed the regular stairs from the salon to the top of the main building, but the summit of the neighbouring tower was farther up yet.
The bridge was about to reach its target, and now through the newly exposed rectangular opening, the assembled guests were treated to a view of the night sky. Beyond the madly whirling snowflakes, the turret of the tower loomed out of the darkness, majestic as a religious painting.
The circular tip of the tower looked rather like the highest turret of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Around the outside was a kind of covered walkway with a fenced handrail. From the eaves above the walkway hung several giant icicles, looking disturbingly like vicious fangs in the midst of the furiously whirling powder snow.
With its stunning backdrop, the scene could have been straight out of a hitherto unknown Wagner opera. Behind the tower hung a great black curtain, concealing backstage the northern sea buried in drift ice. The audience was transported to a different time and place—to nineteenth-century northern Europe. Everyone’s attention was on this performance of winter hell playing out beyond the proscenium arch.
Finally, there was a loud clang as the giant bridge made contact with the tower and rested on its parapet.
“Right, the bridge is in place,” Kozaburo called over his shoulder as he set out. “It’s a little steep, so be careful as you climb.”
There was no need for the warning. The guests gripped the handrail as if their lives depended on it, as they inched their way out into the freezing air. The stairway, which led upwards like a ladder placed on a slant, gave the illusion that with so many people climbing at once, it might suddenly lurch sideways and turn upside down. Fearing such a disaster, everyone instinctively clung to the handrail, hoping this would be the one thing that saved them from tumbling to the ground. Glancing down, they saw that they were more than three storeys up, and they became even more terrified. It didn’t deter anyone that the handrail was as cold as ice.