Somersault (15 page)

Ogi was born and raised in Tokyo during the Japanese economic boom and had graduated from college at the height of the Bubble Economy, but he
still had no idea what scale this Culture and Sports Center—built jointly by Japanese Railway and a private railroad line—would be. As he climbed the stairs running between the two railroad stations, he was taken aback at the mammoth building rising in front of him. According to a pamphlet he picked up, the center contained a large concert hall boasting a pipe organ brought over from Germany, a medium-size theater and some smaller ones, and, in a separate building, a hotel with an international conference center with facilities for simultaneous interpreting. The two identical postmodern buildings were linked, and the connecting office, outfitted with a kitchen, was where he found the woman he’d talked with, Mrs. Tsugane.

Ogi proffered one of his old business cards, explaining that though he was working now for Patron, he had ties to the foundation on the card. Mrs. Tsugane stared fixedly at him, a searching look on her face. Ogi felt a wave of nostalgia looking at this woman’s narrow face, which despite its finely chiseled features had a soft profile. Even more so, her dark, damp hair, falling in a gentle wave, sent a clear memory of something, he wasn’t sure what, running through him.

Mrs. Tsugane, noticing him looking at her hair, casually explained that she’d been for a swim during her lunch hour. She seemed a bit embarrassed at her own vitality, the lithe way she moved her body, clearly trained in high school or college sports—all of which fit perfectly her open laughter on the phone. Overall she seemed a well-brought-up intelligent woman.

Mrs. Tsugane said that the two women Ogi wanted to meet would be a little late, so she’d go ahead and tell him what she knew about the Moosbrugger Committee. “The committee began as a reading circle set up to discuss Musil’s
A Man Without Qualities,”
she began, “and took its name from the name of a character in the novel, a strange person involved in sex crimes. The members included people with backgrounds in sociology and psychology as well as housewives who loved literature.

“When the committee was formed, they planned mainly to have talks with a retired member of the police force who had been involved in a major sex crime investigation. Soon they were able to directly hear from the criminal himself, which made the name of the committee all the more fitting.

“However, relations with rather peculiar individuals brought about some difficult problems. At one point it became necessary to give an honorarium to one of the guests they’d invited. Because the committee itself didn’t have the funds, they made do with a contribution by one individual, but this gave rise to all sorts of complications. As these mounted, the Moosbrugger Committee found itself at a standstill. The two members who are on their way to see you now—one of whom was the woman who made that contribution—were
the members who, after Patron and Guide incurred the censure of society with the Somersault, began to be interested in them and planned to invite them as guests. As I said earlier, the two women are members of other cultural groups besides the Moosbrugger Committee, so don’t worry if you don’t arrive at any definite conclusion talking with them today—it’s not like they’re going out of their way to come here.”

Just as Mrs. Tsugane concluded her neat summary, the two women entered the office, one of them a modest yet obviously strong-willed woman in her thirties, the other, younger, a large, ashen-faced woman who, perhaps because of her makeup, Ogi found hard to characterize. Mrs. Tsugane introduced them, the first woman as Ms. Tachibana, the second as Ms. Asuka. Mrs. Tsugane drew out the older of the two women to talk about what led her to send a letter to Patron. Mrs. Tsugane handled this in a considerate yet efficient manner that increased Ogi’s admiration for this experienced career woman.

Ms. Tachibana looked straight at Ogi through egg-shaped glasses; she sounded as if she’d prepared her remarks in advance.

“When the Moosbrugger Committee was originally formed—I wasn’t yet a member then—their first guest speaker was a member of Patron’s church. He was quite a strange character, which made him perfect for the committee: so much so they dubbed him ‘Our Own Moosbrugger.’ After he heard Patron’s sermons, this man came to the outrageous conclusion that, with the world about to end, it didn’t matter what sort of terrible things you did—in fact, those acts might even be of value—and he committed a crime. He’d served his time in jail and was out at this point, and we paid him an honorarium to speak to us about his experiences. I became a member the third time he spoke to us. I think he got the nickname Our Own Moosbrugger because he appeared so many times.

“At our meetings, someone raised the idea that it would be interesting to hear from the leader of the church the man belonged to, to hear his opinion about all this. We discussed it further, and this being a time when media reports on the Somersault were still fairly fresh in people’s minds, we put two and two together and realized that the church leader on TV and the leader of Our Own Moosbrugger’s church were one and the same. Maybe from the beginning it was unrealistic to ask this former leader who’d renounced his own church to come speak to us, seeing as how it’d be difficult for him to compare the radical faction that caused him so much trouble and a person like Our Own Moosbrugger.

“Still, the committee began to make preparations for his visit, came to me for advice, and that’s how I ended up a member. The reason they came to me was that I’d talked to Ms. Asuka here, whom I’d met at the documentary
film society at the center, and told her that I’d heard Patron give a sermon to a small gathering—this was before the Somersault, of course—and had been quite moved. Ms. Asuka makes films; actually, she’s making her own documentary about the main speaker at the committee, Our Own Moosbrugger. She’s a very self-assured woman and has a job that ordinary people would never think of doing, in order to earn the funds needed to finance her film. She’s the person who contributed the honorarium. At any rate, I was the one who sent the letter to Patron, using the name of the man who was the representative of the committee. You might think I thought that with Patron out of the church he might consider coming to talk with our group, but that wasn’t my motivation at all; I just wanted to meet him myself.”

“Did Patron write back?” Ogi asked.

“They waited a long long time and only now have a reply,” Mrs. Tsugane put in.

“That’s right. Over a thousand days. So—would it be possible for him to visit our group?”

“Patron’s restarting his religious activities for the first time in a decade,” Ogi said, “and he’s contacting those people who wrote to him during that time. So it might be possible.”

“If he were to come, we’d have to get our committee up and running again. Not to bother him with old tales of Our Own Moosbrugger but to listen to one of his wonderful sermons.”

“I’d like to film his sermons too, since you’ve told me, Ms. Tachibana, how powerful a figure he is.” Though her name had come up in the conversation, Ms. Asuka had remained silent, her flat face impassive in its greasepaintlike makeup. Now her remarks went immediately to the point.

Though her tone and voice were more affable than the other two women’s, Mrs. Tsugane’s next remarks brought Ogi up short.

“I understand that this Patron, as you call him, is getting back into religious activities,” she said, “but if your visit here to the Moosbrugger Committee is for the purpose of recruiting converts, we can’t allow the committee to use any of the conference rooms at the center. Outside of the meeting, of course, anyone is free to become a member.”

It finally struck Ogi, whose innocence was in keeping with the nickname his colleagues had given him, what his role had become—a religious canvasser.

“Just as when I wrote that letter,” Ms. Tachibana said, “that isn’t the reason why I want him to visit us. And I don’t think that’s where the interests of the other members lie, either.” In the overly hot central heating, strands of loose hair were plastered to her sweaty, pale forehead.

Ms. Asuka nodded in silent agreement.

“It’s just that if we’re going to have a relationship from now on,” said Mrs. Tsugane, “I need you to understand that the Culture and Sports Center is a public facility.”

Mrs. Tsugane said something next that, in one stroke, clarified the vaguely familiar feeling Ogi’d had ever since he met her; her face, too, was filled with a bright, wistful smile.

“When you were still a fresh-faced boy, Mr. Ogi, I sometimes saw you at your family’s summer cottage in the Nasu Plateau. I tried to be friendly toward you, and according to your sister-in-law you liked me, too. . . and now look at you—grown into a wonderful young man.”

After Ogi arrived back at his apartment, one station beyond the office at Seijo on the Odakyu Line, and began preparing dinner, the vivid memories Mrs. Tsugane’s remarks revived in him suddenly hit home. In the summer after his first year of high school, at their summer cottage in the Nasu Plateau, Ogi’s whole family, from his father—head of the medical department at a public university—on down, were friends with a designer of hospital furniture who often came to stay with them. This year the man brought along his young wife Mrs. Tsugane. Her family had a summer home in the same area, and she and her husband were friends of Ogi’s brother and sister-in-law. Ogi wasn’t part of the two young couples’ activities, since he was younger.

One day, when the young couples had changed into swimsuits at the house and gone to a nearby heated pool, Ogi went into the rest room connected to the bath and discovered the designer’s wife’s discarded white tank top, soft denim skirt, and a pair of panties with a flowery watercolor design in a laundry hamper. Seized by a sudden impulse, Ogi stuffed the skimpy pair of panties in his pocket. That night he easily slipped the panties—two pieces of cloth connected by bits of elastic—onto his skinny body, and slept with them on, enveloped in a warm comfortable feeling, as if once more he were a happy baby. The next day, though, feelings of remorse clutched at him, and knowing that this panty thievery would not go unnoticed, he returned alone to Tokyo.

Every summer after that, Ogi begged off going to the summer cottage, saying he was busy with extracurricular activities.

2

When Ogi told her about the Moosbrugger Committee’s proposal, Dancer said that while it might be possible for Patron to visit the committee, she
wanted to wait before she broached the topic. For the time being, Patron had to concentrate on his discussions concerning their new plans with Guide, who had quickly recovered and had been released from the hospital. Ogi, always meticulous when it came to their office work, wanted to get in touch with the Culture and Sports Center to let them know not to expect a quick reply. But he had another, more emotional, motive for calling: Mrs. Tsugane’s voice on the phone, he had to admit, gave him a tingly feeling all over.

“I think you should get in touch with Ms. Tachibana directly,” Mrs. Tsugane told him, and gave him the telephone number; Ms. Tachibana worked in the library of a Jesuit university in Yotsuya.

“She’s a very capable woman,” Mrs. Tsugane went on, “and has been living for a long time with her handicapped younger brother. She isn’t doing this as an act of self-sacrifice but because she feels it’s the best way she and her brother can become more independent. Ms. Asuka is also a free spirit, with her own special way of putting that freedom into practice. As Ms. Tachibana implied, Ms. Asuka is involved in adult entertainment, saving up the funds she needs to make her own films.… They’re such opposites it makes me wonder how they’ve come to rely on each other so much as members of the committee.…

“Well, now that you know all this background, I’m sure you’ll find plenty to talk about. After you do I’d like you to come see
me
. You do owe me something, right? Ha!”

Ogi got in touch that day with Ms. Tachibana’s office, and they met the following day, after she finished work, outside the side gate to the university. They sat down for a talk on a bank that overlooked a moat, amid a line of cherry trees whose leaves had turned.

Ms. Tachibana had on a white and navy blue suit too subdued for her age, and, in contrast to her introspective demeanor, she strode toward him with firm, determined steps.

Ogi began by explaining to her about the young woman they all called Dancer, how she took care of Patron’s daily needs and was responsible for many of the activities they had planned for the future, and then he gave her the message Dancer had asked him to relay. He apologized for his ambivalent reply the other day. Ms. Tachibana wasn’t interested in talking about the Moosbrugger Committee, but wanted to explain why it was important for her, as an individual, to meet with Patron. Ogi readily agreed. Despite his youth, he was an excellent listener.

“I was once a student at this university,” Ms. Tachibana began, “and a little more than ten years ago, just before the Somersault, when my brother and I were still living with our parents, an acquaintance invited me to a small gathering where Patron spoke.

“I wasn’t a believer at the time, and though his sermon really moved me, it didn’t convert me. At any rate, I’d become friends with the mother of a mentally challenged child who worked at the same welfare office where I took my brother, and she was the one who took me to the gathering. This mother wasn’t a believer either.

“Life wasn’t easy for me then, because of my brother. He could only use a few words, and has the cognitive ability of a four- or five-year-old, his motor skills about the same. But he has perfect pitch and composes music. He’d already begun composing at the time. Once there was a concert at the Welfare Center and the volunteer pianist advised me to send copies of my brother’s compositions to a famous composer, which I did right away. The composer wrote back, saying the melodies were exquisite, and also sent me a copy of a book he wrote. I brought the book with me. Here’s what it says.”