Somersault (57 page)

Neither Mrs. Shigeno—her earlier smile now replaced by a look of concentration—nor the intrepid Ms. Oyama—head bowed and fingers moving ceaselessly—spoke up to help Kizu. To break the momentary tension, Dancer spoke instead.

“Professor Kizu hasn’t just come here as a lark. He’s suffering from a severe case of cancer, and yet he’s been doing all he can. He’d been planning to teach an art class, for both the local children and the church’s children, and I imagine he finds the fact that your children aren’t coming a great disappointment.”

“Well, then, maybe he should consider taking in older students,” Mrs. Shigeno suggested, and the gentle mood of the discussion was restored.

2

Dr. Koga had asked Kizu for a painting for his clinic, based on a sketch he liked, and after it was finished, Kizu took it over himself to the riverside. He had had the frame made in the woodworking shop that, he was told, had originally been set up by the former Base Movement, a workshop that had for a time been absorbed into the Church of the Flaming Green Tree and
afterward continued as an independent operation. Kizu was quite impressed that the cultural movement begun in this mountainous region by young people some forty years ago had been so carefully maintained. Apply a little stimulus, he mused, and in a short time it could easily be revived on a larger scale.

One of the Technicians who had been helping outfit the clinic fixed a nail on the freshly painted wooden wall, and Dr. Koza and Kizu hung the painting on it. Dr. Koga looked steadily at the work, a portrait of Ikuo, naked from the waist up.

“Is this work a study for a tableau?”

“I did the sketch with that in mind,” Kizu replied. “I haven’t done any real painting for a long time, and I haven’t formed any particular plan. In my own defense I should say that I’m searching as I draw.”

“As long as you continue in this vein,” Dr. Koga said, “I have no doubt you’ll end up with a magnificent painting.... Since models all have a unique shape, character, and movement, is your main focus then the
outer
surface? Or are you influenced by the
inner
world of the model?”

“I’m not sure I make a distinction between the two. Especially with this model. It’s as if as I drew his shape I gradually came to a greater understanding of his inner being, which leads me to confirm how very appealing he is.”

“Now that you’ve settled here, why not use it as an opportunity to begin a large-scale painting? There’s a lot of space to hang such a work in the chapel.”

“That’s a thought,” Kizu replied. He appeared to be considering the suggestion seriously. “A series of events happened in Tokyo, but well before that I was planning to paint a tableau based on a biblical theme. The first time I met Ikuo, in fact, he told me he was interested in the illustrations of the Bible I’d done for a children’s picture book.”

Although the walls and ceiling were freshly painted, the desks and chairs neat and tidy, the clinic overall had an old-fashioned look to it. Dr. Koga was seated beside the window looking out on the road, but since the Technicians had taken all the chairs for patients out to the courtyard to repair them, the only place for Kizu to sit was on the examination bed. Dr. Koga looked at him with invigorated eyes. All of a sudden, as if finally getting to the heart of the matter, he said, “How about using Ikuo as your model for Jonah? He seems to have an unusual interest in that book.”

“We’ve discussed the book of Jonah before. He’s talked about it with you too?”

“There seems to be some reason behind his interest,” Dr. Koga said, suppressing a faint smile but not adding any details.

Kizu changed the topic. “Were you aware that the women’s group that’s moved into the Hollow does not include all the women who were living along the Odakyu Line?”

“I’d heard something about that. One of the fellows in my group is a friend of one of the women, and after they moved here they had a lot to talk about.”

“It must have taken a great deal of resolve for them to break up the group they’d lived with for ten years, leave the children behind, and come here.”

“It’s the same with the Technicians—only half of those remaining from the former radical faction at Izu have moved here. There’s another thing I’ve been thinking about, Professor Kizu. According to the mayor, there used to be a movement to change people’s lifestyles here called the Base Movement.”

“As a matter of fact,” Kizu responded, “the frame for this painting came from the woodworking shop that was started by them and was later absorbed by the Church of the Flaming Green Tree.”

“Don’t you think what we’re trying to do here is to build a kind of
base
ourselves—for a new church? There will be lots of people who don’t move here but who come on a pilgrimage to this holy site to hear Patron’s sermons, so in that sense this place will function as a kind of home base.”

“Patron told me he’s going to be busy with some sort of project here for the next six months or a year,” Kizu said. “I don’t think he said this just to encourage a sick person like myself.”

Dr. Koga examined Kizu with the conscientious eyes of a veteran physician and then turned his gaze outside, to the peeling wall of the now-unused sake warehouse across the narrow road, a wall that had a quiet antique look.

“Ikuo has the same idea,” Dr. Koga said. “He was interested in the house we had after we were forced to leave the Izu facility, less a secret hiding place than a kind of liaison office, and dropped by to see us. He negotiated a lot of things between us and Patron’s office. It seemed clear enough at the last meeting that his goal was to connect up with the more radical members of the faction.

“I was surprised to find that the members who moved here as a group are all intent on working at the Farm. But that sort of thing happens, I suppose. I don’t expect that’ll mean they’ll be going the way of the Quiet Women, praying all the time. They have a plan of action, though they’re not insisting on any outward, daring type of thing. They’re like a bunch of bored dilettantes, hard to get worked up about anything.

“The gathering where they debated Guide aggravated the opposition within the group and forced them to split in two. They all agreed to the debate, and even members who had never shown their faces at our liaison office
showed up for it. But once the meeting started it was the more radical group that took over. The moderate faction’s motivation for attending, to hear about Patron’s recent religious activities, went out the window. In the recording of the brutalizing that Dancer spoke of, there was a proposal made to let Guide go. I sided with the moderate faction on this. But a dispute arose and we were kept from further participation, after which the tragedy unfolded.

“With the interrogation of Guide still continuing at that point, it’s no wonder people say it was irresponsible for the moderates to withdraw. Especially for me, as a doctor. But Guide really wanted us to leave. I think deep down his attitude was similar to that of the moderate faction, myself included, who wanted somehow to express ourselves after Patron’s ten years of silence. I think he let them interrogate and torment him at will because he wanted, if worse came to worst, to let them find shelter in a place where the authorities wouldn’t pursue them.

“Guide accepted the invitation for the meeting, after all, but was less concerned about me and the moderate faction than in searching out some accommodation, some third way, with a group that even after ten years was still pretty radical. Wasn’t it precisely because those radical members would be there that he accepted the invitation at such short notice? But Guide’s third way and the expectations of the radical group were completely at odds, which explains what took place.”

“The more I listen to you,” Kizu said, “the more I feel the reason Ikuo got close to you all was because he was attracted to these more extreme remnants of the radical faction.”

“To me,” Dr. Koga said, “Ikuo is a Jonah-type personality, which leads me to hope you’d express this in your painting. I guess I’m hoping your painting will help me grasp who he really is. He’s going to play an important role in Patron’s new church, but there’s one thing about him I don’t quite understand that I’d like to—”

The two calm men at the open entrance door next to the reception area had finished their preparations for bringing in the chairs from outside. Dr. Koga’s expression became brisk and businesslike as he turned his attention to the practical matters at hand, and Kizu bid him a swift farewell and withdrew from the clinic.

3

Kizu, painting in hand, had gotten a ride to the clinic from Ogi, who was on his way to the Old Town, but on the way back he had no choice but to
walk home along the river. Groups of two or three junior high school students were coming toward him, the boys in matching smocks, the girls in navy blue uniforms and wine-colored mufflers. Their clothes struck Kizu as shabby.

On the heights on the other side of the Kame River was the cross-Shikoku highway bypass, with a ceaseless flow of huge trucks racing down the road. On the road on Kizu’s side of the river, in contrast, there was only a scattering of cars and light trucks. With its view of the lush greenery behind the homes on the mountainside, the road was pleasant enough to walk down, but the children’s rough and violent ways wiped the area’s unique qualities away.

After he’d passed the T-shaped intersection that led to the bridge, Kizu located a general store that, while its frontage was the same as the stores to both sides of it, extended, as he could see through the glass door, much farther back. Thinking to buy something for the next day’s breakfast, he went inside. Dancer had told him that this little market carried ham and bacon, as well as vegetables and eggs, produced by the Flaming Green Tree Farm.

To the right of the entrance was a cash register of the kind Kizu remembered seeing at the entrance to the public bath he frequented as a student, next to which squatted a person facing the interior of the store. This white-haired old woman showed no interest in Kizu as he entered. He was hit by a wave of nostalgia as he gazed at the simple displays. The shelves had the usual items—snacks, instant noodles, meats, fish, and pickled vegetables—but instead of appealing to the shopper, the products seemed shoved back in the shadows.

The fresh produce section was especially cramped, as was the meat section, with only packages of pork cut into bite-size chunks, slices of salted salmon, and half-dried, darkly glistening sardines. Every time Kizu returned to Japan he felt something akin to car sickness when confronted with the overflow of goods in Tokyo supermarkets. Used to life in America, he always found himself stirred up by the vitality of Japanese consumerism. The vast gulf between that and this village market made Old Town look like a ghost town.

However, as he made one circuit of the chilly, dusty aisles, he came across a shelf and stand set apart in one corner, the only display that seemed alive. On the shelf were packs of hams and bacon, butter in glass jars,
eggs
, and mounds of cabbages, carrots, onions, and other vegetables, as well as still warm-to-the-touch freshly baked bread, the kind sold in the supermarket in Aoyama as French Country Bread.

Kizu picked up a jar of butter; the label on it had a colored woodblock print of a tree and the logo
FRUIT OF THE RAIN TREE
. Kizu selected some meat, butter, eggs, and vegetables from that display shelf, and when he took his
shopping basket over to the register the old woman lifted her gray head, her wizened face still lively, and said proudly, “You won’t find roast ham better than this in the city!”

“It does look good. Why do you keep it shoved back in the corner?” Kizu asked.

“It’s not shoved in a corner; it’s just that only certain people buy it. Since new people are moving here from the city now, I was going to increase my order, but Satchan from the Farm—not a very friendly type, I can tell you—said she’s going to negotiate directly with the new church’s cafeteria!”

Kizu paid for his purchases. As he was about to collect his paper bag of groceries, the old woman lifted rheumy eyes that seemed to cling to him and said, “You’re the painting teacher, aren’t you? I understand you’re famous! The junior high is very happy such an important person’s come to town, but they also say to keep the door open when they’re alone with you, Professor. The assistant principal said this, and to the boys, no less! What a distressing thing!”

Kizu was taken aback by the old woman’s sudden comment. But with the good grace of a man his age, he was able to roll with the punches.

“Well, it’s only natural,” he said, “that people who’ve lived here for a long time want to keep an eye on people from the city bringing in their own religion.”

The old woman suppressed a faint smile, but went with the tack Kizu was taking.

“If you go upriver from here and over the pass, just before the Hollow, where you all are, there’s a house above a tall stone wall, right? We call it the Mansion to distinguish it from the other houses. A lot of unusual people have come out of that line, including one man who went on to college and became a diplomat, and then his son came back here to start a church! The ham and butter you just bought were made by people related to that diplomat’s son. Their church isn’t around anymore, so if you build this new church you can expect people to say things for a while.”

“I suppose it’s only to be expected that we wouldn’t be very welcome,” Kizu said, trying to put an end to the conversation. He was finding her a bit too much, but the old woman wasn’t about to let him get away so easily.

“No, no. We’re not that kind of people! People in Maki Town came here with handbills. I put them up for a day but then took them down. I buy goods from them, so I had to post them, but I’m not opposed to a new church being started here! All the food you bought—and you bought a lot, didn’t you?—was made by former church people; this woman named Satchan who runs the Farm, they say her son got his power from his father, the one who built the old church here!”