Somersault (19 page)

Patron’s face was hidden, the delicate nape of his neck covered tightly with a white collar, a jacket half slipping down his rounded back. Kizu remembered seeing that gray jacket during their midnight poetry sessions, but the clothes he had on now were brand new. Perhaps he had several sets. Wearing fine clothes must be a habit he picked up in his former days as an eager missionary. Another thought struck Kizu; namely, that Patron wore these brand-new clothes because he
knew
a deep trance was coming on.

Could this state really be only a preliminary? Patron seemed totally absorbed. He held his body in a way you would never expect from a living
human being. He sat there, utterly still, every semblance of humanity gone, as if he were carved out of wood or wrought out of metal.

“He’s held this position for over ten hours?” Kizu whispered. “Isn’t it painful?”

“He doesn’t seem to feel any pain. But physically there may be some damage. You know, like when kids bite their lips before the anesthetic wears off at the dentist.”

“Why isn’t this considered a deep trance?”

“He’s too calm. In a deep trance his body moves. Before he goes into a deep trance he acts like this for a short while, and then it’s as though he’s tossing and turning in his sleep. That’s the usual pattern. Only when something prevents him from going into a deep trance is he like this, as if he’s in a chrysalis, for such a long time.”

The two of them kept their voices down. Even after they stopped talking, they stayed leaning close to each other, gazing at this unnatural shape in front of them, an object it would be difficult to call a living thing. Guide cleared his throat as if sighing and spoke in a low yet distinct voice. Once, he said, they had had a doctor, a specialist, measure Patron before and after a trance using some specialized equipment. This was twelve or thirteen years ago, done at the request of a TV network. Patron’s brain waves and EKG were incredibly calm, his breathing and pulse barely detectable. For a person to have readings at this level and still be alive, the specialist explained, was truly remarkable.

“What about when he’s in a trance?” Kizu asked.

“We couldn’t attach any measuring instruments,” Guide said. “His movements are so violent that after a deep trance he’s completely spent, physically and emotionally. After he’s come back, he says all sorts of complex things, as if he’s possessed. He says he’s standing in front of a kind of three-dimensional mesh, a display screen on which a blur of light is continuously changing, receiving information.

“Patron seems to confront some kind of white glowing object. When you look at him when he’s like this, it’s as if his body is reacting to each bit of information he’s receiving, moving constantly, never static. It’s too much to bear. When I try to help him interpret all this, I realize the amount and quality of information he receives is amazing. That’s one of his real trances. His fate is to have this very rare ability. This might sound exaggerated, but Patron can freely view the entire course of human history and experience every last detail. He traces it all with his own body. He conveys to us what he’s learned about the history of mankind and even its future, speaking to us—in the
present
—of the end time.”

“What is this blur of light you mentioned?”

“As someone who’s listened to what Patron says after he returns from his trances, transmitting what that’s all about is my job.” Saying this, Guide, who’d been listening to some inner voice, now lifted his head as if to turn his ear to sounds from the world outside.

Kizu heard a car pull up and stop in the road beyond the garden, and several people came quietly into the residence.

“Dancer will take over now,” Guide said. “I’ll see you home, Professor. Ikuo will have to come back later, so I can ride with you and we can talk some more.”

Guide turned once again to the thing, sitting there like a strangely twisted statue, and then faced Kizu. His eyes now adjusted to the dark, Kizu could read the strong emotions rising to the surface in Guide’s face. His expression held, at one and the same time, a fierce penetrating look and a look that could have been either pity or love.

Kizu was about to stand up after Guide when a small, sunburned energetic old doctor came in—a
minitank of a man
, to use a phrase that Kizu and his friends had used when they were boys—together with Dancer. Ignoring their bows, the doctor strode right up to Patron, peered at him, and faced Dancer.

“It’s exactly the same as in the past,” the doctor said, in a nostalgic tone. “If he’s been this way until now, he’ll be okay. But he might have one of his deep trances, so I’ll sleep here tonight in his bed. I’ll keep an eye on him, but I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

3

“About these deep trances again, you said that Patron sees a net that shows the entire history of the human race?” Kizu had had them park his Mustang in the garage and was now in the minivan, with Ikuo at the wheel and Guide alongside him. “No matter how big this white blur of light is, wouldn’t individual people, and the groups they form, be no bigger than a cell? Or is this just some kind of metaphor, a model for a certain historical perspective?”

“It’s neither a metaphor nor a model,” Guide replied. (At that instant, Kizu caught an unexpected whiff of alcohol. Later, when asked, Ikuo said Guide only drank occasionally.) “No matter how minute something might be, Patron actually
sees
it. A cell can’t be seen by the naked eye, but can you use physical parameters to measure what the visionary eye detects? Patron
sees the entire world, from the beginning of time to the very end, as
one whole vision
.

“Inside that would be included, as one particle, you, on the verge of making an important decision about your life, and me, talking here with you. Both present as eternal moments.”

“If I were counting on death to help me escape myself,” Kizu said, “that net would indeed be a kind of hell.”

“I don’t believe Patron is viewing hell in his visions,” Guide replied seriously. “It’s not as if he chooses what to see, as if he’s purposefully interpreting a satellite photograph, but rather that he’s grasping the entire structure of this huge net of blurred white light. That’s the stance he takes, I think, when he’s in a trance.

“After one of his major trances, Patron talked with me about that. It’s not like the blur of light is projected out in space but more like a bottomless hollow. The entire hollow is a kind of spinning and weaving net, and the net with its countless layers is a screen that reveals human existence in one fell swoop, from its beginning to its end, and each point on that net is moving forward. It covers everything from the origins of time—nothing other than the first signs of the Big Bang to come—to the time when everything flows back to the one ultimate being. That whole huge spinning hollow, Patron told me, you could call God. In other words, as he sits there with his head between his knees like a weighed-down fetus, he’s about to embark on a trance in which he’ll come face-to-face with that God.”

“If that’s what God is, it’s just another way of saying there
is
no God.” Ikuo’s eyes looked straight forward as he drove, his taut shoulders, twice the size of Patron’s, filled with the tension of his remark.

“What do you mean, there is no God?” Guide asked him back.

“Saying that God is this hollow of the whole world is the same thing as saying there isn’t any God, right?”

“But by saying that God is this hollow you’re admitting there
is
a God.”

“That might be true of people who accept that huge hollow and think it’s enough,” Ikuo said, “but for people who don’t, it’s the same as saying there is no God.”

“For
you
, in other words.”

“That’s right. For me there is no God.”

“I detect here something other than an abstract debate over the existence of God. What really concerns you is whether God is actively working
in your life
or not.”

“That’s right, you got it,” Ikuo admitted candidly, still stubborn.

Guide didn’t say anything. Kizu couldn’t intervene in their argument. For a while Ikuo drove on, the three of them silent. Kizu caught another whiff of alcohol and noticed that Guide was hiding a small flask of whiskey in his coat pocket. Guide cleared his throat lightly and spoke.

“One sure thing, though, is that the white blur of light Patron confronts in his trances has decided the course of his life.”

“If I confronted a God who’s some huge hollow,” Ikuo said, “well, I can tell you I wouldn’t accept his deciding my life.”

“Isn’t this God that Patron senses in a holistic way, then, also the God you believe can speak to you directly?” Kizu asked. “Soon after I met you, Ikuo, I felt you were thinking about God as the power to grasp
yourself
. And I hoped that your notion of God would be like a passage enabling you to find an entrance to Patron’s vast deep vision: namely, the God he confronts in his trances. Is the God that Ikuo’s thinking of just one part of the all-embracing God that Patron sees?”

“It wouldn’t fit Patron’s definition of God to say one
part
of God,” Guide said. “I spoke of a passage, but I think of it as a bundle of fiber-optic lines, with Ikuo on this side, at the terminus of one line, wondering if he can send a signal to the other side, the terminus of all the lines—in other words, to the enormous structure that is God.”

“If there’s a terminus on the other side, and an infinite number of them on this side, is it really possible that God would send a message directly to me?” Ikuo asked.

Guide was silent as he thought about it. The swaying of the speeding minivan made his head rock back and forth. Kizu could see he was fairly drunk by now, though he didn’t let his drunkenness take over when he spoke.

“This might be a self-centered way of approaching it,” Ikuo said, “but I think the only way to experience God is when the signal comes from his side to ours. Once his voice came to me and I did what it said, but afterward, when there was no response, there was no other way to meet God but to wait for his signal.”

Ikuo stared straight ahead as he drove, his voice no longer angry, as it was a moment before, but filled with a sorrow that pierced Kizu to the quick. Guide might have felt the same way, for he spoke now in a more formal way. “Ikuo, have you spoken to Patron about this?”

“No. I’ve only just started working as his driver, and I haven’t had a chance. Also, I think if I don’t prepare myself before I talk with him, he’ll end up having nothing more to do with me.”

“But you came to work for Patron because you expected someday he might fulfill this longing you have toward God, right?”

“That’s right. I met Dancer through a connection we had from before, but I felt Patron has the power to help us transcend our limits—something not unrelated to God.”

Ikuo’s words were not entirely unexpected, yet as he listened to this earnest confession Kizu was surprised and sympathetic.

“If that’s the case, you should tell Patron exactly how you feel,” Guide said to Ikuo, speaking the exact words of encouragement Kizu had been about to use. “Right now it would appear that Patron is laying the groundwork for a major vision, the kind that has eluded him for so long. At the next opportunity he may be able to interpret God’s message to you in that blurred net of light. I’ll call it
your God
for the time being, but there’s no contradiction between that and Patron’s all-inclusive God.”

Kizu didn’t quite follow Guide’s final words. Ikuo went back to the first remarks, to make sure of what was most critical to him.

“Why would that be significant for me? Is it okay for me to think that he’s interpreting a message from the God who once called out to me and was silent afterward?”

“What’s wrong with that? With Patron trying to undergo a deep trance for the first time in so long, this may be an encouragement to him. Your questions to Patron may spur him on.”

“But if that happened, would it be a good thing?”

“If
what
happened?”

“If I happened to give him a push that affected the way he’s living his life.”

“You’re afraid as an outsider you may have an influence on Patron? Rather than an old person like
me
influencing him, it may very well need to be a young person who’s struggling, working beside him, searching for the way.
The poor in spirit
. That would be you, all right. Though I’ve always seen you as the opposite type.”

Guide was clearly drunk by now, but Ikuo pressed on.

“I don’t want to hear Patron telling me some story just to make me happy.”

“Patron isn’t that clever,” Guide said. “It’s more likely the opposite. If you help him find his direction and give him a shove, that’ll be his way of putting his life back together. Right now Patron’s beginning a new movement. It’s actually been my hope that with his newfound desire to be active again, a young person like yourself who takes these things to heart would give him a
shove in the right direction. Speaking from experience, though, once you get deeply involved with Patron, you won’t come out unscathed. There’s no way to avoid being influenced.”

“So what should I do?” Ikuo asked. “If I were to sit down face-to-face with him, I wouldn’t be able to say a thing. Committing a terrorist act would be a whole lot easier.”

“Summon up the courage to appeal to him,” Guide said. “Right now, Patron is awakening from his preparations for a vision, and the physical and emotional aftereffects will last for some time. But once he’s over that, let’s tell him your thoughts. Professor Kizu will help us too, won’t you?”

Even though he was speeding along in the dark at eighty miles an hour, Ikuo turned around to Kizu and spoke in an urgent, almost pushy, tone.

“Please write a letter for me, explaining why I need to talk with Patron. I haven’t revealed everything to you, Professor, but still I’d like you to write the letter.”

7: A Sacred Wound

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