Somersault (88 page)

“I know a little about Neoplatonism from the commentaries on Blake’s paintings,” Kizu replied, “where the soul when it ascends to heaven returns
to God’s presence and a community of souls. According to the legends of this region, the soul rests in solitude at the base of the selected tree until the time comes for it to be reborn. In Buddhist transmigration, human souls are also reborn in
animal
bodies, which is different from souls being reborn inside newborn babies. I see the Young Fireflies’ view of life and death, based on the premodern life of the people of this region, as something quite unique.

“Imagine, if you will, a solitary village springing up in the midst of a vast forest and coming up with its own legends as if it were a remote island. The souls of people who live in the village after physical death still remain in the forest that overlooks the valley. And they come down to the valley any number of times. I interpret it as the world of the living and the world of the dead forming, in this topography, a single unit.”

“If it’s that unique a view of life and death, then I guess it
is
a religious philosophy, isn’t it?” the woman said. “As people with an anti-Japanese religious philosophy coming into the area and building a church, didn’t you experience opposition?”

Ms. Sato’s question seemed to want to probe further. Ogi picked up the ball and responded.

“I’ve heard that there was a movement among the townspeople to oppose our move,” he said, in the English he’d learned in college, “but since we’ve actually moved here there’s been next to nothing in the way of harassment.”

“Your statement implies there
was
some. Could you give us some examples?”

“Young people from along the river in the valley, and from hamlets in the forest, had formed a group to revive some of the cultural legends of the area. One element of this group made a sort of. . .
installation
in the chapel designed to menace us. But that was the end of it. There are almost no local people participating in our church, nor have we been proselytizing in the hope that they would join us. In fact, this conference is the first official opportunity for us to get together with the local community.”

“I heard that last night’s wonderful demonstration was done by young people from the community,” the woman reporter went on. “Is this an exception, then, local people who participate in the church?”

“That’s correct,” Ogi said. “And they aren’t members of the church, mind you. As you know, last night’s demonstration was a revival of an ancient rite. Actually they’re the group I was talking about that confronted us early on. The church is very pleased that now our relationship is on the right track. A representative of that group is here today, so why don’t you ask him directly?”

Gii made an endearing yet not frivolous move, as if he were caving in and wanting to flee, which brought on a sympathetic burst of laughter from
the others. Kizu wondered whether he was just pretending to have such a negative reaction to English, but Karen Sato accepted this at face value and added a final comment in Japanese to wind up her questions.

“Your demonstration was—
subarashikatta
—wonderful!”

3

The next person who stood up to ask a question was a Japanese woman who looked to be in her late forties. She was dressed stylishly, but her manner was unassertive, and when she began to speak Kizu was struck by her tone of voice, deeply dyed as it was with an emotional and physical exhaustion resulting, no doubt, from the hardships she’d gone through.

“Patron’s teachings have sustained me over the years,” the woman began. “So much so that at the time of the Somersault, when many people were all upset and left the church, I couldn’t understand why. After his trances, Patron and Guide would craft a message for us. Just hearing a fraction of this I knew how beautiful a person Patron was, how lovely his soul was, and I became a believer.

“Then Patron announced that, though he’d been preaching repentance, he’d been mistaken, that the people of this country had no fundamental relationship with the God who was in charge of the end of the world. Borrowing the God that Westerners believe in, and thinking that we too must do something in order to show our repentance, was no different from children dressing up as adults and putting on a play. You can’t take it seriously, in other words. ‘And all I did,’ Patron went on, ‘was enjoy directing this little children’s play.’ He also said it was laughable that we thought—by acting out some cute little children’s play—that
their
God would deign to pay us a glance. When I saw this announcement on the TV news I thought,
Ah, so that’s what’s been going on!
Because I’d never felt comfortable with the western God, either.

“Despite all this, though, I saw him—the laughingstock of Japan—as still a beautiful person, with a beautiful soul. Could anything be as painful as this: denying everything about yourself?

“I accepted what he said, that everything he’d told us up till then had nothing to do with God. That being the case, a thought struck me. If those weren’t the words of God, they were still the words of a beautiful person, of a beautiful soul. Even if he said he’d only been fooling around, he had the right to do that. He said he knew he was crazy but he still kept on talking and talking, and if that’s the case I think he had even more right to fool around like he did.

“I thought, it’s okay that I was so struck by this unsurpassed, even painful joking, by the words of this unhappy, crazed person. I even felt that what this world needs is a beautiful person just like him, a beautiful crazed soul. Once I’d decided that, my heart melted, and all I hoped was that Patron would be able to find a place where he could be free. And the Somersault no longer bothered me. I stayed in the church, holding dear to me the words that he’d given to us.

“And now, just a little over ten years later, Patron is back. Guide met with a painful death, but that makes it even clearer to me how precious a person has returned. I’m so happy he’s survived to this point. The reason I could be so calm back then, I think, was because I had a premonition that, happily, things would work out as they have.

“I don’t really have a question; I just wanted to tell you all of this. There
is
one more thing I’d like to say, though. Patron has come back to the Church of the New Man and we’re all together again, yet I find the attitude of some of the Quiet Women quite incomprehensible. Yesterday they all gathered in their rooms in the monastery and prayed. The curtains were all shut, the place was dark, and even if you wanted to talk with them you couldn’t because there were men standing guard at the door.

“The same thing’s happening today. And tomorrow evening, when we’ll all be sitting around the lake listening to Patron’s sermon, aren’t the Quiet Women planning to take over the chapel to hold another prayer meeting?

“The Technicians, who also moved here along with Patron, will be listening to the sermon along with everybody else in the stands around the lake. Why do the Quiet Women alone have these special privileges, and why do they ignore their former colleagues who’ve come from so far away? With the Church of the New Man about to be launched, is this really a good idea? I’m asking this for all the women believers from the Kansai headquarters, all of whom have their doubts about this.”

Her question finished, the woman remained standing, awaiting a reply, and Ms. Oyama, who’d been taking notes, raised her head. Normally what struck Kizu about her was her strong-looking body and her no-nonsense look, but now she and the woman asking the questions seemed to share a common fatigue.

“I’m not sure if I can give a satisfactory answer as a representative of the Quiet Women,” Ms. Oyama said, “but I’ll go ahead and try. Ms. Kajima, it’s so nice to see you after so long. I understand how you were able to maintain your religious life at the Kansai headquarters, and it’s through the efforts of you and others like you that we’re able to open our new church in such wonderful facilities. Seeing as how you’re the ones who’ve stayed in the church all along, it might be strange for me to say that I’m happy you’ve come here,
but I do want to convey my heartfelt thanks to everyone who’s participating in the conference.

“When those of us who share the same faith left the church and made the decision to live collectively, we were counting on your joining us. When, at the last moment, you decided not to, I must say we were quite bewildered. After the Somersault, when we were confused, doubting our faith, and suffering, it was
you
, Ms. Kajima, who encouraged us. With Patron and Guide no longer in the church, we were trying to live on our own, relying solely on our faith. Everyone believed you were crucial to our success. When we learned that you wouldn’t be joining us, several people actually dropped out of our group, and even after we started our communal life together as the Quiet Women, we never forgot you. We were distressed and talked over why you didn’t join us.”

“I’d like to be allowed to explain,” said Ms. Kajima, who had remained standing. “Just a moment ago I said I felt it was completely up to Patron where he would go after the Somersault. Truthfully, though, I still had an attachment to him, which is why I grew close to your group, Ms. Oyama. I was convinced that you were still in secret contact with Patron and Guide and that, with no other place to go, they might join you at your commune.

“The last day I was with your group, Mrs. Shigeno gave a sermon—I haven’t had a chance to see her here yet, but I’m happy to hear she’s well. I can never forget how she said she would never forgive Patron and Guide for having done the Somersault. She said that through their communal life they would get an even firmer grasp of the God that Patron and Guide rejected and would show them a thing or two. Everyone was quite stirred up by this.

“I had no ill feelings toward Guide, of course, nor toward Patron. Even having done the Somersault, he was still a beautiful soul. At the same time, I saw him as someone forced to suffer to the point where the Somersault was unavoidable. But someday wouldn’t he come back to us? I kept the words he had told us in mind and tried not to be self-destructive. He said himself that it was all a joke, but once the words were out there, in the public domain as it were, they were mine to deal with as I felt best.… Just around that time I met Mr. Soda and heard that the Kansai headquarters was planning to keep the church organization going.

“I’ll rephrase my question so a practical and bright person like yourself, Ms. Oyama, can answer directly. This is what I want to know: After the Somersault, what kind of spiritual process did the Quiet Women go through to forgive Patron and be able to rejoin him here and become part of his new church? Unless I know this, your secrecy will continue to bother me. I’d also like to ask the Technicians a similar question.”

“We’ve managed to live our communal life for more than ten years now,” Ms. Oyama replied. “As you said, at first we
did
hate Patron and Guide. The power of hatred, in fact, helped bind us together. But in time we overcame those ill feelings, though I’m afraid it’s beyond my ability to analyze the process of how this happened. I say this because each person conquered her feelings in a different way, consistent with how she became converted and the way she had lived her life since.

“Still, there was one impetus all the Quiet Women shared that helped them overcome their feelings of animosity. This was the information that Mrs. Shigeno brought to us—the report that after the Somersault Patron and Guide had descended into hell. We too felt we’d been abandoned, left in a place where we were anxious and suffered. When we heard this information we thought, very naturally, that it made perfect sense. That being the case, we also clung to the hope that Patron and Guide would someday climb up out of the hell they were in and lead us in a new direction.

“Then a terrible thing happened: Guide was murdered, a truly awful event, but we received the notice of the memorial service for Guide, sent from Patron, and for the first time in ten years there was something hopeful to cling to. It was a straight path from the memorial service to this present conference from then on.

“This only means that we Quiet Women need to talk together even more. These past ten years we’ve been in the habit of holding some deep discussions to come up with a group consensus. We’re supposed to see this conference as former church members overcoming the Somersault to launch a new church, right? In our decade of communal living this has got to be the most critical situation we’ve faced.

“That’s why we hold our discussions. And these discussions—of people who’ve lived together for ten years, sharing their pain—we like to hold in private. We really need to talk together—just
us
and no one else. I hope you’ll allow us to do so. And when we meet by ourselves next time, I’m sure one of the topics we’ll be discussing is this very question you’ve put to us.”

“Still, though, I find it ironic that we’re excluded from your discussions,” Ms. Kajima commented.

“Once again, I ask your indulgence,” Ms. Oyama replied. “The Quiet Women will be working, though, at the party being held tonight at the Farm. So if you’d like to talk with us individually, that would be a good time to do so.”

Ms. Kajima didn’t pursue her questioning any further. Instead, she turned her attack to the Technicians.

“The Technicians were the elite at the Izu Research Institute, people I never met or spoke to directly. Which led to me having a one-sided view of all of you. Forgive me for saying this, but the extreme tactics of some of your
colleagues pushed Patron and Guide to the wall, forcing them to do the Somersault. That’s the view of those of us who remained in the church. And then later some of your colleagues—I’m not saying
all
, mind you—put Guide on trial and ended up causing his death. To us it seemed that the years after you left the church didn’t change your way of thinking or your tactics one iota. That made us disappointed and angry.