Somersault (73 page)

“I thought it was strange that Morio didn’t sit beside Ikuo to turn pages—don’t they do that in most concerts?—but pretty soon I realized why. When the music started, Morio buried his face in Patron’s shins, which were stretched out on the footrest. Ms. Tachibana, afraid maybe that her brother was having an attack, crouched down beside him. Before long Patron rested his hands on the tops of their two heads, both of which had the same round shape when you looked at them from behind.

“When the music was over, before they went into the silent prayer time, Patron gave a short sermon from where he sat. He said that Morio had said the music they’d just heard ‘captured on paper the sound that echoes in the ears of one’s soul when it ascends to heaven at the end time.’ He said he heard this from Ms. Tachibana, ‘but as we listen to this music aren’t we all sharing the experience right here and now of ascending to heaven? This is a wonderful prelude to our prayers.

“‘It’s meaningless,’ he went on, ‘to ask which is more real, the experience of ascending to heaven at the end of the world or what we’ve experienced through this music. Ms. Tachibana has taught me that the end time is both experienced countless times, and as a onetime event. I’d like you to really feel this, think deeply about it,
live
it.’

“After Patron said this, a rustle of agreement rose up, especially from the Quiet Women, and the meeting moved into the prayer portion. But you know what? I couldn’t
stand
it!”

Kizu and Ikuo were both startled and stared at her. Undeterred, everything about Asa-san revealed the unyielding stance of an old woman determined not to compromise. Despite the rainy-season cold blowing down from the forest, the skin around her eyes was flushed. Clearly struggling to suppress her emotions, though, a different sort of expression came over Asa-san’s sunburnt, freckled face.

“I’ve worked hard to get you all accepted here, so I think I have the right to oppose something I don’t like that’s about to happen. And as someone who convinced the faction that opposed your move here, I’d say I have the
duty
to do so too. No doubt my husband would say that if something bad happens it’s due to my hastiness, but before it does I have to speak out. Professor, you keep your distance from the various groups within the
church, so I thought you’re the best one to talk to about this. I’m sure Ikuo has a different way of looking at the situation, but I’m happy at least that you heard me out.”

She was already getting to her feet. She didn’t seem to be expecting any quick and easy answers.

A moment earlier they had heard Ms. Asuka welcoming a new visitor at the door. Kizu soon realized it was Gii. Ms. Asuka seemed to be holding the young man back until Asa-san stopped speaking.

Asa-san turned to Gii, who was still standing in the entrance. (He had driven himself up, and Asa-san, as the wife of the former principal of the junior high, was about to give him some candid advice).

“My, you certainly got up to the Hollow quickly!” she said. “Didn’t you just finish school? No matter how much you might want to see Ikuo, you young people are our future, you know, so you’d better be careful!” Then she left.

3

It was obvious that Gii wasn’t old enough to have a license, but everyone who mattered, from the authorities along the riverside to the patrolmen in the police station, turned a blind eye to the young man’s driving. Coming from the city, Ms. Asuka found it amusing that this little local community made an exception for Gii, though she was also, naturally enough, worried. As Gii walked into the room, her voice could be heard from behind him.

“Don’t forget what Asa-san told you. Remember that council member who said if he gets on the bad side of you and your friends, the adults who have a weakness for children won’t support him in the election? It scares me to imagine what you’ll be like when you grow up.”

“If I
do
grow up,” Gii said pointedly. “My mother apparently told Asa-san not to let me become too attached to Ikuo,” he went on to tell Kizu and the others as he came into the bedroom. “But she isn’t very logical most of the time.”

“Asa-san’s logic is fine,” Ikuo scolded.

Despite the scolding, Ikuo motioned Gii over to the seat vacated by Asa-san and turned to speak with Kizu, ignoring Gii in a relaxed guys-only way.

“Early this morning,” Ikuo began, “I went to check out the extension to the piggery they’re building at the Farm. They’ve had to build it in the highest
spot around because of the foul odor, and with the rain I wasn’t sure our little truck would make it up the slope. Right after I got there, one of their leaders, Mr. Hanawa, who accompanied those of us who came by train, asked me a question. I was impressed then by how attentive he seemed, but he also is a bit uncompromising, the way he won’t say a word to the Fireflies, for instance, even when he has them help out.”

Gii nodded in agreement.

“What he asked me,” Ikuo went on, “was this: ‘Why is Patron so special to you? Here you are, building a barn for pigs up on the top of a ridge, but is he really worth all this?’ ‘How about
you?’
I shot back, and he said that they’ve long seen Patron as their intermediary with God and they don’t recognize the Somersault as valid.

“‘The first time you met Patron,’ he said, ‘was after the Somersault, when he wasn’t having any deep trances and was just an ordinary person, and even after you moved here with him all he’s done is give these evasive, fuzzy sermons. So where is the charisma to rouse people to a new faith? Except for the Sacred Wound. . .’

“As I listened to Mr. Hanawa’s questions,” Ikuo said, “it struck me that maybe he thinks I’m a spy. All I could do, I figured, was tell him the truth.

“‘When I was a child,’ I told him, ‘I heard a voice that had to be that of God. And when I was fourteen I definitely heard God’s voice, though my reaction to it left something to be desired. And when I was sixteen I thought now I would respond to it, and I did something that couldn’t be undone.

“‘But now I don’t think I really heard God’s voice when I was sixteen; I’ve never heard it since. Perhaps this was for the best, since I was able to go on without it, but with graduation from college at hand, and my life’s work set out in front of me, I sensed that I couldn’t go on any more. If I didn’t return to the call I heard at fourteen, my life would be a sham.

“‘When I awakened to this, I struggled with the idea, but I had no way of making the voice of God appear again. Established churches and cults were no help to me in my quest. Either they kicked me out or laughed at me, or else I was the one to wash my hands of
them
.

“‘Just by chance, I ran across Patron and Guide, and here I am. I came here because I have the hope that Patron—connected to God until the Somersault—will be, to borrow your words, the intermediary for me with God. If it doesn’t work out, it wasn’t meant to be. But for me there’s no other choice.

“‘I’m particularly drawn to the way Patron—all by himself—cut off the pipeline connecting him and God. For the past ten years all he’s done is suffer, as much as it’s humanly possible to suffer. Sometimes I think maybe this suffering has taken shape as his Sacred Wound.’

“Once I’d finished saying all this, Mr. Hanawa asked me another question. ‘After the so-called Somersault, Patron apparently didn’t have any deep trances that brought him face-to-face with God. But from the beginning we didn’t accept the Somersault. We’re confident that before long Patron will become the mediator for God once more. We base this on our long experience living in the church. But how do you know,’ he asked me, ‘that the voice of God that Patron might transmit to you, and the voice of God you heard when you were a child telling you to do
something that couldn’t be undone
, are really one and the same?’

“‘I learned that from all
of you,”
I answered. ‘When you pray, you Technicians always have religious texts from a lot of different religions with you; sometimes you even quote from books by scientists—in your case, Mr. Hanawa, it was a mathematics book, wasn’t it? Dr. Koga told me that this stems from your conviction that, quite simply, God is
one
.

“‘I feel exactly the same way. They’re all one and the same: the God whose call messed me up as a child, Patron and Guide’s God whom they made a fool of and yet clung to as they suffered. And the God that Jonah debated thousands of years ago.’”

“How did Mr. Hanawa react? And the Technicians?” Kizu asked.

“They just laughed.”

“Damn them!” Gii said angrily.

Ignoring this, Ikuo went on. “If they don’t kick me out as a spy, the preparations for the summer conference should go smoothly. I just hope the Quiet Women see things the same way.”

That evening, as she served dinner, Ms. Asuka butted in, something she rarely did. “I think Ikuo went into such detail about his conversation with the Technicians because he wanted to educate Gii,” she said. “I think he’s quite considerate in that way. Mr. Hanawa might be too, for all we know.”

“When Ikuo came to work for Patron at the Tokyo office,” Kizu said, “and even when he moved here, I don’t think he knew
what
it was he sought from Patron. It was still taking shape within him. He gets worked up; that’s why he talks so much.”

“But if you go to the dining hall,” Ms. Asuka said, “you’ll find out it’s not just Ikuo who’s excited. It’s like everyone’s a smoldering fire. Patron’s wound was what started it all, though your symptoms, too, Professor, were a factor. There’s a palpable urgency in the air.

“Asa-san seemed tense too, today, when she came to see me. She had told me that the first thing she wanted to talk to you about, Professor, was
her worries over the Quiet Women. I think you need to talk one-on-one with Patron about this excitement that’s taken hold of the Hollow. I’ve just moved here, so everything is quite strange to me, but I agree with Asa-san. There’s something about it I just don’t like.”

Ms. Asuka looked down as she refilled Kizu’s coffee cup on the tray, and as she did so her profile, now cleansed of the greasepaintlike make-up she used in her former life, looked graceful. Her usual smile was missing as well, the smile that downplayed whatever she’d just said.

“I’m afraid I don’t have the strength to make it over to the south shore,” Kizu said.

“Then let’s have Patron come over here. When I pressed Dancer about when Patron would be posing for you again, she said it all depended on your condition.”

“Have you been able to meet with Patron directly?” Kizu asked.

“I’m sure people will think I’m a hopelessly pushy woman, but I asked permission through Dancer and was allowed to videotape Patron’s Sacred Wound. It was my first job since I came here. On the tape, Patron is naked from the waist up and Morio is wiping the wound with gauze that has a penicillin ointment on it. The outlines of the Sacred Wound are quite distinct, kind of a kitschy color, and the whole thing’s quite wonderful. As I filmed I was able to talk with Patron and learned something surprising. I thought he’d already started the new church, but he said he hasn’t yet.”

“Since we moved to the Hollow, Patron’s said quite a lot about the new church, though,” Kizu said. “The Technicians are busy with their own work, the Quiet Women are getting deeper into the sort of prayer meetings that have Asa-san worried, and I must admit I interpreted all this activity in the same way as you—that the new church had already been established.”

“Patron seems to want to use the summer conference as the venue for officially launching the new church,” Ms. Asuka said. “The office has the same idea, and Ikuo has talked with me about recording the whole conference on video. Though we’d have to budget for people to handle the sound and the lights.”

“There aren’t many days left, but maybe Patron’s planning something really remarkable for the summer conference,” Kizu said. “Maybe all the excitement that’s swirled up since people found out about the Sacred Wound has had an influence on him. I guess I’d better hurry up and finish my triptych.”

“I’ll go talk with the office staff, then, about having him come over to your studio to model. This Sacred Wound fever even seems to be getting to
me
, doesn’t it?”

4

If tomorrow there’s a break in the rainy season and it’s warm and sunny, I’ll come to your studio to model for you
. Patron had entrusted this message to Ms. Asuka, on her way home after lunch the next day, much to Kizu’s surprise. The weather was fine the next day, and though the surface of the lake, bloated by the rains, was a dirty brown, it clearly reflected the cylindrical chapel and the long walls of the monastery.

Early that morning a large ruddy-faced man with cropped white hair showed up on the north shore and with steady strides made a circuit of the grounds around the house. He seemed to be appraising the trees, washed to a brilliant green by the rains that had only ended two days before, and when his gaze met that of Kizu, who was reading in bed, they nodded a greeting to each other. The man was Asa-san’s husband, the former principal of the junior high school, who’d come to trim around the house. He looked a little chilly in his long-sleeved high-collared shirt, but once he started working he had to wipe the sweat away with the towel draped around his neck.

He started by pruning the trees visible from the window that faced the lake. As he trimmed, the rich white flowers of the camellia and the pomegranate, the latter a faded light purple due to lack of sunshine, emerged from the overgrown clump of greenery. Next year, Kizu thought, I won’t be around to see these flowers. He turned his gaze outside from time to time, to find the petals of the camellias, wrapped in pods and now exposed to the sun, trimmed in a neat horizontal line that was attractive enough, but lacking its previous otherworldly feeling.

In the afternoon Ms. Asuka threw open the window facing the lake to see how warm it had gotten, and the room was filled with the volatile fragrance of newly cut branches. For the first time since his most recent illness, Kizu had on the jeans and loose cotton shirt he favored when doing some serious drawing.