Somersault (74 page)

Patron arrived at Kizu’s house at two-twenty. It had taken exactly twenty minutes for him to go from the south shore along the weir and up the slope on the north shore. Patron had been less concerned, it appeared, about his own physical condition than that of Morio, whose legs were slightly impaired.

Patron was in the best shape he’d been in in quite some time, and emotionally upbeat as well. Kizu had always thought of himself and Patron as virtual contemporaries, but now he had to admit that he was no match for Patron when it came to vitality. Patron had changed into summer clothing, which also added to this impression. Below the stiff collar a deep
U
-shaped
depression was visible, and his maroon shirt stood out under his ice blue jacket. Morio wore an identical set of clothes.

“I’ve really been looking forward to modeling for you,” Patron said, by way of greeting. “Now that I see you I realize you’re fit enough to go back to painting. Shall I sit down here? The sun was so warm I’ll be glad to get out of this jacket and shirt. You don’t want me completely nude, do you?”

Morio smiled happily as if he’d just heard an amusing joke. Ms. Asuka took Patron’s jacket to the bedroom and then adjusted the chair and footstool for him. As he checked the reflected light off the lake, Kizu adjusted the cushion at Patron’s back, while Ms. Asuka brought in another chair for Morio.

Preparations went smoothly, but when they reached the point where Patron was about to remove his shirt and tank top, Kizu couldn’t help but tense up. Patron, though, cheerfully stripped down, removed the palm-sized gauze covering his wound, wrapped it up in fluttering strips of surgical tape, and tossed it on Morio’s lap. Morio took out a plastic bag from his pocket and stuffed the gauze inside.

“This is the first time I’ve been able to get a good look all the way to the bottom of the wound,” Patron remarked. “The antibiotic Dr. Koga gave me seems to be working. Before, I just had this vague notion of the hole being a certain size, wider than it is deep, but now I can see it’s heading straight for the heart. I asked Dr. Koga about this and he said it’s only to be expected—seeing as how it’s a
sacred
wound.

“Well, how would you like me to pose? I understand I’m supposed to supplement Ikuo’s Jonah.”

“Just sit facing me is fine,” Kizu replied, and began sketching. Ms. Asuka stood behind Kizu, videotaping the proceedings. The video camera was completely silent and didn’t bother Kizu. After some twenty minutes Patron spoke up.

“Modeling’s hard if you don’t talk. The last time you sketched me I was only half conscious. Is it all right to talk?”

“That’d be fine,” Kizu said. “Though I’ll mostly listen, if you don’t mind.”

“Seeing you after such a long time reminded me of something I’d wanted to tell you,” Patron said. “It’s delightful to have such a diligent listener.”

Patron spoke smoothly and cheerily, though his topic was quite serious. Kizu had somehow sensed that it would be.

“At the memorial service for Guide, I announced I was starting a new church. You’ll recall how I also said that I’m one of the countless antichrists who will appear at the end of the world and vowed to oversee this new church
as one of these antichrists. I didn’t just blurt this out. It’s something I’ve been pondering for the past decade. It’s not surprising that I restart my church as an antichrist, but I was pretty worked up when I said it, and it’s placed me in quite a predicament. It would be a lot easier if I’d kept this idea of being an antichrist to myself.

“So I had to think and think about the best way to rebuild the church. The process of moving here after the memorial service, getting everything ready, is very likely the final obstacle in my ten years of being in hell. Guide isn’t with me, yet things are moving forward. I felt driven into a corner.”

Listening to all this as he sketched, Kizu noticed Morio, seated diagonally in front of him, begin to stir. His whole body, not just his legs, was impaired, but his movements were always natural. Kizu was a moment late in sensing that something was wrong, but Patron responded immediately.

“I’m afraid I’ve said something to worry you, Morio. I’m just remembering the suffering I’ve had and am telling Professor Kizu about it, that’s all.”

“You’ve posed long enough—that’s plenty,” Kizu said, for the sake of Morio, who still looked up worriedly at the half-naked Patron. “I’d be happy if we could discuss how this sketch might be incorporated into the triptych.”

As Patron slipped down from the high chair, Ms. Asuka passed him a freshly laundered dressing gown, helped Morio up, and led them to the dining table, which had been set up in the bedroom. Tea and pound cake awaited them. As the guests settled into their seats, Ms. Asuka brought the hot water for tea, while Kizu took the triptych panels down from the easel and lined them up in front of the partition. As he did so, Ms. Asuka said, “Why don’t you lie down on the bed and talk? Painting wears you out. You look pale.”

Looking back on it later, Kizu realized it was at this point that something strange was starting to take place in his body. He reluctantly did as she said, though he wasn’t about to let go of the excitement he’d felt since morning or this chance to talk with Patron.

“The foreground of the middle panel shows Ikuo as Jonah. Are you planning to use my image in the open part on the left?” Patron asked.

“That’s right.”

“In other words, I’ll be depicted as the Lord?”

“Since that’s who Jonah quarrels with, yes, it would be the Lord, though my conception has changed a little since I first started. It doesn’t have to be the Lord, exactly, though it
does
have to be someone who transmits God’s will to Jonah.”

“And he goes to all the trouble of showing this wound in his side to convince Jonah?”

“Rather than the biblical Jonah, I’m starting to see it more as the Ikuo-as-Jonah image the Young Fireflies have, Ikuo as the young man awaiting God’s intermediary to give him the word to act.”

“Since I’m less a model for God than for an antichrist,” Patron said, “even if I tell him to act it makes it a complicated sort of instruction, doesn’t it? If you show the antichrist here with a wound in his side debating with Jonah, it’s like you’re depicting this young man as seeing beyond the antichrist to God. This Jonah gives you the feeling that’s entirely possible, what with that inscrutable look on his face.”

“You’re very perceptive,” Kizu said, his comment heartfelt.

“This is changing the subject,” Patron said, “but when Dr. Koga came to check on me, Asa-san came with him to see how I was doing. This was when you were in the clinic, Professor. I mentioned earlier about the depth and width of the wound, but Dr. Koga said this: There are still reports of women and children in Mexico and the Philippines having these kinds of spontaneous wounds, but they’re always superficial. In my case, though, less than half an inch deeper and it might have been fatal.

“And then Asa-san told me this: Brother Gii was an amateur scholar of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
, and he told her there were all sorts of issues involved when the heretic Cato the African committed suicide and was then appointed gatekeeper of the island of Purgatory. According to Plutarch, Cato cut open his own belly and then had a doctor friend sew it back up, only to cut it again himself and commit suicide.

“‘I can’t explain it well,’ she went on, ‘but for Patron to make his own wound worse in order to die—it’s doubly, triply wrong. You can’t let that happen!’ Once she decides to say something, Asa-san’s the kind of person who can get pretty adamant.”

Patron laughed out loud. Unable to join him, Kizu turned a confused smile toward Ms. Asuka. He couldn’t even give a forced laugh, for he was already feeling the rumblings of something uncontrollable happening inside him.

Finding it impossible to follow Patron’s loquaciousness, and so that Patron wouldn’t misinterpret his tense expression, Kizu turned to look out the window. The white camellia flowers were in full bloom, but with the yellow pistils jutting out, as if seeking something, the flowers struck him as disagreeable. He could no longer deal pleasantly with people and things outside him; his entire world was measured solely by the tension rising up in his gut.…

Memories of his recent bout with disease let him know what to expect next, though he knew this time the pain would be even fiercer. Kizu turned
his restless eyes back to the room and saw that only Morio, silently, was watching him closely. Patron was deep in conversation with Ms. Asuka, but to Kizu their voices blended into one.

Feeling desolate and isolated, already in the throes of nausea, he thrust his throat out in anticipation of the groan the first wave of pain would drag out of him.
It’s almost here
. Yellow liquid dribbled down his lips. Kizu saw Morio reach out a hand to Patron’s thigh.

It had come
.

27: Church of the New Man

1

Ogi learned about the awful pain Kizu was suffering when Ms. Asuka called him on the cell phone she’d brought from Tokyo. She’d phoned Dr. Koga as well and asked Ogi to take the car to his clinic. There’s apparently no danger of heart blockage, Dr. Koga had told her, adding that this time he wanted to admit Kizu into the Red Cross Hospital. I’ll have Ikuo arrange for the ambulance, Ms. Asuka replied.

When Dr. Koga and Ogi arrived at the home on the north bank of the Hollow, they found the patient curled up diagonally on the raised bed, half his body draped over the edge. Ms. Asuka was kneeling on the floor, clearly drained of energy, while Patron was seated at the desk in the rear of the room, patting Morio, who knelt at his feet, on the back.

“Except for Ms. Asuka, I’d like everyone to leave the room, including Patron,” Dr. Koga said firmly.

Retreating dejectedly to the studio, Ogi couldn’t help but notice that Patron, and even Morio, looked terribly worn out. Patron had Morio lie down on the sofa but was unable to calm himself; instead of taking a seat in the armchair, he looked through a few of Kizu’s books and picked up and examined the sketches that lay scattered about. Soon he went up to Ogi.

“Would you mind going into the bedroom for me and bringing back the middle painting of the triptych?” he whispered. “Without disturbing Dr. Koga, of course. Bring the drawing he made of me a while ago, too. I think it might give me a hint I’ve been needing.”

Ogi peeked into the room, fearful of disturbing Dr. Koga’s examination, but neither the doctor, looming over the nearly naked patient, nor
Ms. Asuka turned around. Ogi lifted up the middle painting, which was leaning against a divider—the drawing Patron spoke of was taped to it—and when Ms. Asuka finally turned to face him, Ogi nodded to her and withdrew.

Patron took a seat in the backless chair Kizu had set before his easel and gazed at the painting. Morio, too, got up from the sofa, sat down at Patron’s feet, his knees up, and examined the painting. Elbows out, he plugged up his ears with his fingers, perhaps disturbed by the voices coming from the adjoining room.

Ogi himself concentrated on the painting, the largest of the triptych. In the right foreground was a nude, which Ikuo had posed for. On the space to the left was a large sheet of sketchbook paper, a rough sketch Kizu had drawn of Patron from the waist up, the wound on his side clearly visible.

The painting was a painstakingly done portrait of Jonah, and a rough sketch, on the same scale, of a figure facing him. Ogi surmised the two persons were confronting each other.

Ikuo and Ms. Tachibana arrived, and when Ogi went out to the foyer to greet them he experienced a mild disorientation gazing at the real Ikuo so soon after seeing the painting. Tell Dr. Koga the ambulance is here, Ikuo told Ogi. He continued, in a voice audible to Patron, who was looking in their direction from a corner of the studio, “The last time, Kizu put up with the pain alone for so long it affected his heart, but with Dr. Koga coming over so soon they can take him to the Red Cross Hospital this time, don’t you think?”

Dr. Koga stuck his tense face out of the bedroom. “Yes, we should get him to a specialist,” he said. “I’d like Ikuo to come along. Everyone else just wait here until we get in touch.”

Patron’s response seemed a bit of a non sequitur. “We’ll leave it up to you. Professor Kizu is going through a major transformation now, which may very well be a transformation for the good.”

This made Dr. Koga so upset he thrust his gloomy face toward Patron, but he swallowed whatever he was about to say, turned to Ikuo, and asked him to have the stretcher brought in. After Ikuo left, since Dr. Koga didn’t give Patron, Ogi, or Morio permission to come in the bedroom, they could only return to the studio. Ms. Tachibana, though, went along with Dr. Koga and made preparations for moving the patient.

Ikuo led the emergency personnel inside, the work proceeded apace, and the group soon set off for Matsuyama. All the while, Patron and Morio stayed glued to the painting. Ogi saw off the stretcher as far as the ambulance, parked below the weir, his mind filled with what Patron had said.
A major transformation . . . possibly a transformation for the good
. What did he mean? That Kizu was undergoing the inevitable as he faced death, his body racked by the
agony of cancer? When Ogi got back to the house, Patron was just as he’d left him.

Patron stayed that way for a while and then turned, as if awakening, and opened his mouth. He said nothing about the departed Kizu; instead, he asked everyone to assemble in the studio.

“What I’m going to say is something I should tell all the members of the church, but first I’ll say it to you. I’d like you to pretend this is the chapel and I’m delivering a sermon.”

Each of the four people picked out spots in the studio, redolent of oil paint, sitting on the boxlike bed or pulling chairs from the bedroom, settling down to listen to Patron’s words.

“Since moving to the Hollow,” Patron began, “everyone here, including the Technicians and the Quiet Women, has been steadily making preparations for the future. As I watched all this, I felt it was urgent for me to settle on a schedule for officially rebuilding the church. As I said to Professor Kizu just before he fell ill, quite honestly I’ve felt, at times, driven into a corner.