Somersault (83 page)

Patron offered the book, then put his hand on the footrest of the barber chair and turned it around. He knelt down on the floor in front of Morio, who with a sweaty, stern look on his face lay slumped over, limp in the chair. Sweat trickled down from Patron’s pale neck to his back, and though he faced away from Kizu, unmoving, Kizu knew he was being urged to leave.

4

As Kizu cut across the courtyard’s flagstone path, he saw a slim woman standing erect under the lamplight beyond the reviewing stands. A strange sight to see, considering the hour. Taking care not to startle her or take her unawares, Kizu deliberately rattled the loose iron railing on the stairs as he descended, and as he did so he realized that the woman was Ms. Asuka, who must have awoken at the sound he made going out and come to look for him.

Actually, when Ms. Asuka came out from behind the reviewing stands to where the lamplight reached and turned toward him, though she didn’t show a bewildered smile, her body language showed she was, indeed, flustered, and she reluctantly raised a hand in greeting.

“Well, imagine a young woman standing all alone like this in the middle of the night, beside a mountain lake,” Kizu said, answering her gesture. “Nobody just saunters up here—aren’t you afraid of wild animals?”

“Wolves are extinct here, and otters don’t attack people,” Ms. Asuka replied quietly, her voice mixed in with the hearty sound of cicadas. “I was worried about you.”

“I saw a light in the chapel and went to investigate. Patron was there and we talked for a while. Ah . . . I see. You were imagining a depressed old man jumping in the lake? But I’m a lucky old man, whose terminal cancer has disappeared!”

“These past few days, though,” Ms. Asuka said, “this lucky old man has been a bit gloomy.”

Something black moved at Ms. Asuka’s feet. Looking carefully they saw three or four small frogs at the base of the streetlamp.

“At any rate it doesn’t look like I’ll be drowning myself anytime soon,” Kizu said. “Once you understood this you turned your attention to observing these frogs, didn’t you? You’re quite the visual artist.”

“Once I came down, the thought of climbing up into that shadowy grove of trees gave me the creeps. I heard voices from the chapel so I decided to wait.”

The frogs sat there silently, heads up, the pulse in their necks visible. Bugs were descending toward them in black streaks or flashes of iridescence. One frog closest to the bugs suddenly moved, gulping down a bug from the air. Looking up at the streetlight one could see a clump of bugs like a single dark spot. Only a few of them were swooping down toward the frogs, perhaps finding the strength to fly again once they descended to the top of the light, or maybe being wafted away on a breeze rising from the lake.

Out of the group of frogs, all neatly maintaining their positions, one frog held a small gold bug that had fallen and lay upside down on the dam and, suddenly agitated, clawed at its throat with his front legs; one of the other frogs turned to face the spit out bug, but before it could anything about it the bug spread its wings and inscribed an arc into the dark night air.

Ms. Asuka, a smile clearly showing on her long face now, started to lead the way.

“What did you talk about for so long?” she asked, shining a flashlight to light the way for Kizu.

“We talked about how the Jonah in the triptych looks like the Jonah drawn by an artist named Watts. Patron showed me the book and I think he’s right. It was Morio who originally pointed it out.”

“I’d like to hear more and don’t plan to go to bed right away,” Ms. Asuka said, “so how about joining me for a drink?” And by the time they arrived at the home on the north shore, they’d agreed to do so.

They pulled two chairs over to one end of the study desk in the bedroom, and Ms. Asuka brought out two cans of cold beer and two double shot glasses of whiskey. They each mixed the beer and the whiskey in whatever proportion suited them.

Ms. Asuka spread open the book Kizu had borrowed from Patron and, sipping her drink with her thin lips, gazed at the copy of the inserted frontispiece. She read a little of the text, her smile replaced by a serious, almost sullen look.

Then she raised her face. “My, did the prophet Jonah really end up doing all these things? It’s different from the book of Jonah that Ikuo doesn’t like, the one that ends with Jonah accepting the Lord’s harmonious sermonizing.”

She passed the book over to Kizu, who read aloud a part that Patron had underlined.

“The theologian Gregorius recognized one more special characteristic of Jonah, saying that ‘Jonah foresaw the fall of Israel and sensed that the blessings of the prophets would pass to the heretics. He withdrew from evangelizing, questioned the state of his church, discarding the ancient high place and position of the tower of rapture, and threw himself into the sea of grief.’”

“No matter which Jonah is the real one, persons named Jonah are born to suffer,” Ms. Asuka said, holding the copy of the frontispiece between her slim fingers. “This drawing really shows that kind of Jonah. Almost
too
clearly, in fact.… The part about the heretics is pretty important too, don’t you think?”

Kizu couldn’t grasp the point of her question.

Even before the medical researcher at the institute in the United States had pointed out the possibility that he had cancer, Kizu had felt something not quite right inside him and wasn’t able to take strong drink anymore. Now, in the feeling of relief after being liberated from the disease, he was drinking whisky cut with beer, but he knew he couldn’t hold his liquor like he once could. Ms. Asuka’s face, though, took on a nice rosy color, an uncharacteristically youthful clinging gaze in her eyes as she forcefully made her point.

“Ever since Patron quoted from the letter to the Ephesians, everyone’s started studying it. While you were in the hospital, Mrs. Shigeno’s study group was particularly popular. I’m not a Christian, but even I joined in. According to what I heard there, what’s important about this particular letter, one of the epistles attributed to Paul, is that it’s a letter aimed at proselytizing the Gentiles—heretics, in Jewish eyes. The New Men at this time were the ones who were able to overcome the discord between Gentiles and Jews. Jonah ran counter to this trend.

“Deep down, Ikuo may very well not agree with the direction this Church of the New Man is taking. Though as the twentieth century draws to a close, the Japanese are still all heretics.”

“If the prophet Jonah were alive today,” Kizu said, “he’d say the whole planet’s run by heretics. With groups of heretics attacking each other, skirmishing over who’s more legitimate. And even among the heretics in this little outof-the-way mountain area we find groups like the Technicians, the Quiet Women, and Ikuo and the Fireflies trying to establish themselves with Patron.”

“The summer conference promises to be stormy, doesn’t it?” Ms. Asuka said, pouring the last of her whiskey into her glass of beer. “Also while you were in the hospital, Professor, I heard a lecture by Asa-san about this person called the Former Gii and how he was stymied at every step. Which is why when I saw you go down to the lake tonight I had some troubled notions about what might happen.”

“I heard the same thing: that Asa-san pulled up Brother Gii’s body from the surface of the lake the day after a storm.”

“I wouldn’t have the strength to do something like that,” Ms. Asuka said pensively, “but at least I’d have wanted to video it. In the morning, as long as there was enough light.”

Kizu poured the remaining whiskey into his beer. “The corpse, you mean? It
does
seem like it’s true what they say about the
power of the land
stimulating the creativity of newcomers!”

The two of them were silent, drinking their whiskey-darkened beer, draining their glasses in time with each other. The area around Ms. Asuka’s eyes grew faintly pink, something Kizu found erotic.

“I apologize for going on about my own personal fantasy,” she said.

“That’s all right. I’d have to say I have even more intense fantasies than that,” Kizu said, feeling his face flushed with drink. “Once I found that cancer was no longer controlling my destiny, it made me feel uneasy, as if the bottom had dropped out of my life. If Patron hadn’t been in the chapel and I’d made my way back here—and with the Fireflies looking after the dam the water’s filled it all the way to the edge, well . . .”

“Sometimes the water in the Hollow turns black, which Asa-san says is an evil omen. And the water does seem darker than when I arrived.” Saying this, Ms. Asuka gave her usual close-lipped smile, shook her head, gathered up the glasses on the tray, and withdrew.

A lot of lessons learned today, Kizu mused. All he had to do was remove his trousers. Back in his pajamas, he laid his drunken body down to rest.

30: Memories of Guide

1

It was decided to hold the summer conference the first week of August, with registration beginning on Friday morning and the conference running through Sunday at the Hollow. A preliminary meeting was scheduled for July 10 at the lodge run by Maki Town to explain the plans for the conference to the local authorities and some of the young leaders of the area, particularly those involved in the river preservation movement. Newspaper and TV reporters from Matsuyama were also slated to attend.

On the day of the meeting Ogi remained behind in the office, though he and Dancer were the ones in charge of arranging the meeting. New members of the Fireflies, who had helped out the day Kizu was released from the hospital, were formed into a security squad, which was also put in charge of transportation to the Old Town. It took less than thirty minutes to drive from the Hollow to the lodge in the hills surrounding the basin where Maki Town lay. Still, with Patron participating, the security squad left nothing to chance and came up with a detailed plan.

The car with Patron and Dancer was sandwiched in between two others, this followed by a minivan carrying Ms. Tachibana and Morio, Ms. Asuka, Dr. Koga, Mrs. Shigeno, and Mr. Hanawa (who was in charge of production at the Farm) and, bringing up the rear, Kizu in a car loaded with security squad members and with Gii in the front passenger seat.

Maki Town had already had a hotel at the time a national soccer tournament was held there but built this lodge in addition; the word was that after that one tournament the place had never again been full. Now, though, all two hundred and fifty rooms were booked solid for the three-day conference.
The head of the Kansai headquarters of the church, Mr. Soda, had been in charge of construction of the lodge and had close connections with the town leaders.

A banquet hall, spacious enough for a wedding reception, was set aside for the meeting. In front of the chairs lined up on the main floor was a low raised platform for the church members to sit on. The media were assigned seats behind the town authorities and other interested parties.

The mayor made a few opening remarks, and then Dr. Koga, seated on the dais between Patron and Dancer, took the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are the Church of the New Man, the name given to the church by the leader we call Patron. This summer conference has given us the opportunity to meet with the town authorities and future local leaders. We are grateful to you, Mr. Mayor, and all of you, for taking time out of your busy schedules to join us today; we’re also joined today by members of the media.

“We’d like to proceed with a question-and-answer format. However, please be advised that Patron will not be directly answering any questions. In his stead, each of us will field questions based on our own area of expertise. Now I’d like to turn things over to the young woman called Dancer, her professional name within the church, who works most closely with Patron.”

Dr. Koga started to pass the microphone to her in front of Patron, but she leaned back to take it from behind, and the audience burst out laughing. Kizu understood what a popular local figure Dr. Koga was through his work at the clinic in town.

Dancer’s hair had been dyed by Mrs. Tagawa with brown mixed in with the natural black, and she had on an open-collared floral-print blouse.

The comic role Dr. Koga had just played in this mix-up, and Dancer’s calm reaction, underscored all the more the dignified way in which she prepared to speak.

“There is a reason Patron has on sunglasses,” she began. “Those of you in the media taking pictures, please refrain from using a flash.

“The upcoming summer conference will be the first national meeting of the Church of the New Man, as well as an opportunity for the local community to get to know us, so Patron is preparing a sermon for the occasion. The concentration required for this is the same needed for the trances that used to be at the core of his religious activities and is one of the ascetic practices he’s engaged in at present.

“Those of us in the inner circle of the church are eagerly anticipating Patron’s sermon, which will be the climax of the conference. We have the deepest gratitude and respect for Patron for undergoing the emotional and
physical strain involved in concentrating as deeply as he is now. This intense concentration every day makes his eyes overly sensitive to light, thus the dark glasses. Despite this sensitivity, Patron has been kind enough to join us here today. He’s doing this because there are two points he’d like to make clear to you. They are as follows:

“Item one is that our church is not being threatened by any opposing groups. I’m sure all of you have read this in the newspapers and elsewhere, but a combative stance by a radical faction over certain issues led to the sacrifice of a person very dear to us, Guide; these issues, however, have been partly resolved.

“The so-called former radical faction, people who were at the Izu Research Institute, are here now, devoting themselves to building our new church. Dr. Koga is one of these people, which should give you an idea of the sort of group we’re talking about. So rest assured there’s no danger of any attack by an opposing group that will throw the summer conference into confusion. Nevertheless, we do want to take precautions regarding security. In this regard we’re receiving help from a local organization called the Fireflies.