Somersault (10 page)

Only the young woman seemed unperturbed. She must have sensed the unusual roughness in Ikuo and seen the way the waiter acted, like a beaten dog with his tail between his legs, yet she didn’t flinch or even seem tense.

“The names Patron and Guide
are
a little unusual,” she said calmly, “and people who don’t know about the incident they were involved in tend not to want to have anything to do with them. People who actually meet them, though, find them quite extraordinary. To give you an example, my Indian dance teacher doesn’t dance himself anymore, but once he accompanied a dance troupe he used to choreograph, a troupe that’s become one of the mainstays of Indian dance, on a trip to Japan. I’d been going to his dance seminar in Madras since I was in high school, and my teacher was worried when he heard I wasn’t studying under a dance teacher here but was living with these religious leaders. When he came to see Patron, Guide, and me at our place, though, he was impressed.”

“By Patron?” Ikuo asked, his face no longer red.

“By both of them. He said that in Indian mythology there’s a duo much like them.”

“You mean playing the roles of Patron and Guide?”

“Not exactly. I think he meant their faces, bodies, the way they talk and move and walk. The combination of the two of them.”

“Since your teacher’s a dance teacher then, he can perceive the secrets hidden behind physical movement?”

“Physical expression, you might call it,” the young woman answered. “He can detect the inner being of people by how they move. He showed a lot of respect for Patron and Guide and even danced for them in the annex they built for me to practice dance in. The teacher’s students, the musicians who accompanied him, were quite bowled over. They hadn’t seen him dance for ages.”

“Did those students accompany him?” Kizu asked. “Maybe they had some premonition that he was going to dance.”

“When I saw that they’d brought their instruments, I had a feeling that maybe he would dance. I mean, what with meeting Patron and Guide and all. Maybe he sensed this and had his students prepare for it.”

Several varieties of intricate dessertlike hors d’oeuvres were brought to their table. Ikuo polished off one dish in a single bite and turned to the next. The young woman possessed a healthy appetite too, assimilating the fuel she needed like an automatic machine.

Next they were served foie gras topped by a dark wine-colored sauce. The waiter had made a point of emphasizing that it was flown in from France. Ikuo gobbled his up quickly, and Kizu transferred his own to Ikuo’s plate,
eating instead some warmed vegetables he’d covered with the sauce. The young woman gazed at this, her mouth slightly open in what seemed to be her usual expression as she pondered things.

“I don’t like Patron eating rich foods either,” she said.

After this, they ate the final dish in silence—a moose steak that, by chance, they had all ordered from the two choices on the menu. Kizu followed the young people’s lead. Ikuo must have been mulling over things to say while they ate, for just as they began their after-dinner coffees he burst out again with an unexpected question.

“The names Patron and Guide—have they used these names ever since they first started the church?”

“I don’t think so,” she answered. “In the church they used others.”

“So even though they left the church they still maintain the ties they made to it and use those names. In other words, the game continues?”

The young woman took her coffee cup from her still slightly parted lips and returned it to the saucer. She stared fixedly at Ikuo. Kizu found it hard to separate his imagination from his memory of events, but he was sure that fifteen years before he’d seen the same look in her eyes.

“It’s not
a game
,” she said. “If you define a game as
play
, something done for fun, then no, these two men weren’t playing a game these past ten years—they suffered too much for that. True, they left the church, and Patron is as we speak planning to begin a new movement. And Guide’s collapse has been a major shock to him.... Anyhow, to start a religious movement you need a committed core of followers. We’re that first core of people now who are committed to Patron. Do you really imagine such a small group has the leisure to
play games?”

“What kind of teacher of mankind will Patron be in this new movement? And where will Guide lead humanity?”

“The world is on a path to destruction,” the young woman said. “Patron is planning to be mankind’s teacher in these perilous times. And Guide, assuming he recovers, will be his right-hand man. They’ve suffered the past ten years in order to discover this new way.…

“Now it’s
my
turn to ask a question. You asked what roles Patron and Guide will play in this new movement. Why did you want to know this? Or is this just your own game to pass the time while we’re eating?”

Ikuo turned red again but spoke with conviction. “I’ve been living my whole life with the idea that the end of the world isn’t that far off,” he said, “and I always wanted to be there to experience it. So why is it strange for someone like me to be interested in what the Patron and Guide of mankind are planning to do?”

“It’s true,” Kizu broke in. “He
has
been thinking about the end of the world for a long while. Remember, he’s the child who destroyed the plastic model of a megalopolis he’d so carefully constructed. After he smashed that model to bits, isn’t it understandable for him to have a vision of the destruction of Tokyo? Though I suppose you could label that just a child’s game.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t a game,” the young woman answered Kizu, “since any kind of event—once it takes place in reality—leaves traces behind, especially with children.” He found himself staring at her waxlike ears as she turned and focused on Ikuo. “I understand you gave a lot of thought to the end of the world, but have you ever belonged to any group that actually dwells on the end time? Any Christian denominations, for example?”

“I’ve put out a few feelers.”

“What to do you mean by
that?”
she retorted.

“I mean I don’t belong to any religious group now, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t tried out a few.”

Kizu expected the young woman to feel rebuffed and pursue the matter more, but she didn’t. Instead she looked at Ikuo with interest and said calmly, “I’d say you didn’t meet me again just out of nostalgia for something that happened fifteen years ago. I think you’re seriously checking out Patron and Guide. How about visiting our office as a next step? Meeting Guide’s out of the question now, but I’d be happy to introduce you to Patron. I know I’m repeating myself, but he’s gone through so many trying experiences that I can’t be too careful.”

2

Ikuo and Kizu stood under the eaves of the restaurant, the zelkova tree dripping copiously, and said goodbye to the girl. She flipped open her umbrella, and the two men ran out into the pouring rain and made a dash for the nearby parking lot. If Kizu had been alone he would have had one of the waiters bring his car around, but he decided to keep pace with his young companion’s way of doing things.

“It seems to me that having a religious leader’s office in a residential area like this might make the residents upset enough to force him out—not the old-time residents, maybe, but the nouveau riche. But she seems pretty carefree.”

Ikuo said this as they drove past a crowded intersection, hemmed in by a bank on one side and a train station on the other, and caught sight of the girl and her practiced dancer’s gait.

“Maybe it’s because they’re not holding any religious activities there now,” Kizu speculated. “She said they were in the planning stages of a new movement. When this so-called Patron and Guide were involved in the scandal where they apostatized, they did have their headquarters downtown, as I recall. I remember reading about it in
The New York Times
. After they renounced their faith they must have wanted a quiet place to live. They call it an office, but apparently it’s also their residence.”

Two days before—to the kidding of his apartment’s super, who chided him for his pointless faithfulness to the American economy—Kizu had purchased a brand-new Ford Mustang, the same car he drove in the States, and had promised to let Ikuo do the driving, but since he wasn’t used to a steering wheel on the left, today Kizu took the wheel. Besides, Kizu figured that part of Ikuo’s forwardness at lunch was the wine talking.

As they headed toward Shibuya, Kizu asked Ikuo about something he hadn’t quite understood during his conversation with the girl.

“As I explained earlier, Ikuo, I really do believe you’ve been thinking about the end of the world ever since you were a child. And that what happened fifteen years ago is not unrelated to that.

“What strikes me as odd, though, is that you don’t seem to recall much about the Somersault incident ten years ago. I read about it in the papers in the United States, so it must have been big news in Japan. The
Times
said it was widely reported on Japanese TV, and that Patron’s remarks on television also played a major role.”

“At the time it was called the Church of the Savior and the Prophet,” Ikuo said. “I realized today when I was talking with that girl that I heard about it through the media.”

“Then why didn’t you put out feelers, as you put it, to that church? Because it wasn’t that well known before the leaders’ renunciation?”

“For me, at least, it wasn’t,” Ikuo said. “I first heard of it when the leaders publicly announced they weren’t saviors or prophets after all, and everything they’d preached was a bunch of bull. I watched the reports afterward that made fun of them and just felt contempt for people who’d do what they did. I really wanted to know what mankind should do, faced with the end of the world, and—I don’t know—perhaps I felt betrayed.”

Kizu glanced at Ikuo’s face. His tone of voice indeed contained a hint of a grudge.

“So what about the young lady? Seeing her after fifteen years—”

“I was surprised she was just as I remembered her,” Ikuo said, his voice now calm. “It was like looking at your painting; her eyes were still like faded India ink, her mouth still open as if that were the correct way to breathe.”

“Ha! She does seem to like to keep her mouth open, doesn’t she. And her eyes!” Kizu said, as if ever the artist, continuing the sketch. “When they look at you they turn even darker.”

“I also had a feeling of déjà vu, as if I knew exactly how she would turn out when she grew up.”

Kizu understood exactly what he meant. Déjà vu neatly summed up his own feelings when he met Ikuo again and discovered he was the young boy from so long ago.

“She’s definitely unique, isn’t she?” Kizu said. “I knew that the first time we talked on the phone. Her job—her lifestyle choice, I guess you’d say—is pretty extraordinary, too.”

“Do you think she believes in the new teachings of that old leader who did a Somersault?” Ikuo asked. “For the sake of her dance, even though he hasn’t restarted his religious movement yet?”

“Are you going to accept her challenge and go meet this Patron?”

“I haven’t really thought about it,” Ikuo said. “First of all, I really don’t know much about this Somersault.”

“Shall I give a little lecture, then, based on what I know from
The New York Times?
The media over here treated the leaders’ recantation entirely as a scandal, and I think that’s what you remember. The
Times
correspondent, though, was really fascinated by the story. The religious group had been founded by two middle-aged men. One of them formulated their basic doctrine based on his mystical experiences. Over time he refined this. The second man’s job was verbal expression of the mystical experiences the first man had. He was also the one who took care of the day-to-day running of the church.

“The
Times
correspondent reported on their church for a year. He got to know the two leaders well; he’s the one, in fact, who dubbed them Patron and Guide. I imagine he used these names because calling them Savior and Prophet would have provoked some serious negative reactions from his American readers. After the Somersault the two of them adopted these names themselves; they weren’t fond of their earlier names, anyway.

“Anyhow, just around the time the correspondent was wrapping up his reporting, the Somersault incident occurred. What happened was that the two leaders negotiated with the authorities to inform on some potentially dangerous activities of a radical faction within their church.

“It was on a much smaller scale than Aum Shinrikyo, but the research facility they owned in Izu became the focal point of the radical faction’s activities, the cornerstone of which was their plan to occupy a nuclear power plant. One of the people at the research center had a PhD in physics. They
wanted to turn a nuclear plant into an atomic bomb to force the leaders’ teachings on all Japanese, or at least to preach the need for universal repentance now that the end of the world was drawing near. Or maybe by blowing up two or three nuclear plants they felt they could make everyone experience how very near the end of the world was. Their entire plan for repentance was based on this. Radical political groups all have the same basic idea, don’t they—pushing the country into crisis? But here the target was nuclear power plants. From the beginning this was an apocalyptic teaching.

“The church’s leaders found they couldn’t suppress the radical faction that had sprung up among them, so they went to the police. Sensing this might happen, the radical faction dispersed throughout the country. No one knew when or where they might attack a nuclear plant. At this point the leaders asked to hold a press conference. They indicated ahead of time what they planned to do and asked for full-scale coverage. I’m sure the authorities helped out in this as well.

“The first leader—Patron, as he’s called now—sat in front of the cameras on live TV and told the church’s radical faction members scattered throughout the country to abandon their plans to occupy a nuclear plant. We are neither saviors nor prophets, he said. Everything we’ve preached till now has been one big joke. We abandon the church. Everything we’ve said and done was a silly prank. Now that we’ve confessed, we want you to stop believing.