Young Ogi, accompanied by the American newspaper reporter Fred Parks and Mrs. Tsugane, visited Maki Town for the first time in more than a year. In the intervening time Ogi had married Mrs. Tsugane, so it was strange to keep calling him by his old appellation, though that's what he planned to go by with everyone in the Hollow. The three of them landed at the Matsuyama airport, transferred to the express train, and by the time they got off at Maki Station a December snow was steadily falling, something Ogi had never experienced in Tokyo. The man-made forests that made up most of the mountain ranges surrounding the Maki basin looked as if a brush had been used to sweep polishing powder over the blue-black earth. Despite the heavy snow the air was filled with the approach of a gentle twilight. Snow had piled up in the square in front of the station, and the roads leading out from that spot were already covered in white, with not much traffic at that time of day. No taxis were waiting outside the station.
They'd called ahead from the Matsuyama airport to say they'd be taking the last express train of the day, and since no one was there to greet them Ogi considered phoning again. He wasn't at all sure, though, whether at this time of day Dancer would still be working in the office next to the chapel. She'd gotten married too, to Ikuo, and was now in overall charge of running the Church of the New Man. It was windy as well as snowing, and Fred, who wore only an old trench coat, was grumbling about the cold.
Before long a brand-new Nissan President luxury sedan went past the prefectural road and then turned back toward them. The car scattered newly fallen snow in the intersection in front of the square as it made a wide detour back, coming to a halt in front of the windswept station exit where Ogi and the others were waiting with their luggage.
Mr. Matsuo of the Fushokuji temple opened the driver's door and leaned out to greet them. Then he said, emphatically, "This looks like it'll be the first major snowfall we've had in some time. Even if it weren't snowing so much, taxis don't like to drive to the Old Town. With the recession they've cut back the number of cabs, plus the drivers are still a little bit shy about picking up foreigners. Fm not saying they're prejudiced or anything, it's just that they can't speak English."
Mr. Matsuo got out of the car, dressed in a dark navy-blue jacket, and darted about, helping first Mrs. Tsugane and then Fred into the backseat; he stowed their luggage in the trunk and motioned to Ogi to sit in front. The passenger seat, like all the other seats, was quite plush.
"Weren't you on your way downriver?" Ogi asked hesitantly.
"I was supposed to attend a meeting of the River Conservancy group at the sake manufacturer's place. With the Fireflies busy running the Farm, the Village Association group and I have taken over these duties. But with all this snow, it might be smarter to skip the meeting, don't you think?"
They passed by the newly built overpass at the confluence of the Kame and Maki rivers and then drove upriver along the prefectural road, already covered in four inches of snow. As they drove, Ogi reintroduced Mr. Matsuo, whom he remembered meeting at the summer conference, to Mrs. Tsugane.
Mr. Matsuo went back to talking about the snow.
"Driving through the snow like this makes me think of Morio's music.
He was a very special and pure person, his sister too. Even now the church plays his music all day long to mark events in the daily schedule. Every time I go over to the Hollow to see Ikuo about something, it always amazes me-"
"He composed pieces about the snow?" the always level-headed Mrs.
Tsugane interrupted.
"I think he must have, since he composed lots of short pieces," Mr. Matsuo said kindly to her, following the deferential way Ogi treated his older wife.
"But there's something throughout all of Morio's music that conveys a kind of snowy feeling. There's a saying by the famous Buddhist priest Dogen that one should always be in harmony with the melody of the snow. I think it means that snow is silent, and one should play in concert with that.
"Morio was mentally challenged, but he made up for it with a keen sense of sound," Mr. Matsuo continued. "When he composed his music, I imagine he put things in the real world and things he felt and thought on an equal footing. That's how I feel whenever I hear his music and look at the falling snow. Even if we know we're supposed to be in harmony with the melody of the snow, clever musicians never take it that far, though for Morio that was the most natural thing in the world."
"Fred wants to know which text that quote is from," Mrs. Tsugane said, after she had explained in English to Fred that they'd been talking about the monk Dogen.
"I don't know if there's a translation of it, but it's from the Dogen Osho Koroku. "
"He wants to know if this is different from the Eihei Koroku."
"It's the same."
"He says that maybe snow is often mentioned in Dogen's sermons because of how cold it was in Kyoto and Fukui, where he lived."
"Fred, I underestimated you," Mr. Matsuo said. "I trained at the Eihei Zen temple, but I've never really read the entire text. Learned it instead by ear-in Dogen's teachings there's the term a sixth ear. Do you say that in English? Six ears?"
Fred Parks laughed and didn't pursue the subject any further. In a fine mood, Mr. Matsuo went on about the snow.
"When's it's snowing this hard, the local people know just how much it's going to accumulate. They used to be quite nervous about it, knowing how many days the delivery trucks wouldn't be able to get through. The produce grocer along the river used to put chains on his truck and dash off to buy supplies and be buried in snow on the way back. Sometimes the fire depart- ment would have to be called out.
"Now, though, it's different-see that car coming from the opposite direction? Since the church is doing such a great job of running the Farm, there's no need to get concerned about where the vegetables or eggs are com- ing from. They're even raising char in the spring behind the chapel. So people feel much more secure. Now people along the river and those in the Outskirts as well don't mind if the road's closed.
"That gives you an idea of how much the church has influenced life around here in the past year. Simply put, we don't have to worry about get- ting a steady supply of inexpensive quality items. I'm sure this is obvious to you, coming from the city, but regional cultural differences show up in the distribution of goods; in backwoods places things are shoddy and expensive and you have to wait forever to get them. That's been reversed here. In the bazaar held here every other week you'll find not just folks from the Old Town but even people from Matsuyama coming here to shop instead of the other way around."
Fred was quite interested in all this when Mrs. Tsugane translated the details for him.
"Fred wants to know, after such a tragedy, with children present to wit- ness it, whether the church didn't become alienated from the local people."
Ogi conveyed the question, letting Mrs. Tsugane translate Mr. Matsuo's reply.
"That shows how wise the people in this region can be," Mr. Matsuo said. "Having the Farm is advantageous to them. There was going to be a mass suicide in the chapel, but in the end nothing happened, so the local people aren't going to harp on that forever. The east slope of the Hollow is a center for butterbur, and when it's in season hordes of people come from the river basin and the Outskirts. The people in these parts like to give names to places based on some event that occurred there, and they've given a new name to the mountain stream where they pick these butterbur. They call it Mountain Stream Where Twenty-five Refined Ladies Shat, and they say it's a particu- larly tasty crop of butterbur this year. Ha ha ha!"
Nobody laughed along with him, so the head priest changed to a more prudent topic. "As time passes, just as the achievements of He Who Destroys and Oshikome are now distant events for us, the summer conference will fade into the past and-who knows?-perhaps the only thing to remain will be that place name."
"Much like the Buddhist concept of the evanescence of life," Mrs. Tsugane suggested.
"The power of the land counts for a lot, they say," Mr. Matsuo went on. "The cypress island's been cleaned up, and that's where Patron and Ms. Tachibana and her brother are buried. The memorial was done in relief by the architect who built the chapel and has one of Morio's scores carved on it. The tombstone is surrounded by the lake and faces the chapel, but now it's all covered in snow. In harmony with the melody of the snow, you might say."
By then they'd left the district road, passed over the main bridge, and started down the cross-Shikoku-highway bypass, looking down on houses along the river that, in the snow, had already turned off their lights.
"Are Professor Kizu's remains buried on the island as well?" Mrs.
Tsugane asked. This time Ogi fielded the question.
"He wasn't a member of the church. And Ikuo in particular insisted on wanting Professor Kizu's soul to be free from the realm of God."
"But isn't Ikuo the one who took over as leader of the church after Patron?"
"He's leading the church, having separated the managerial aspect of running it from the spiritual," Mr. Matsuo said in a serious tone. "Ikuo him- self seems to be free from the voice of God. Gii's been selected to take over the spiritual side of the church eventually, and the Quiet Women and the Technicians are teaching him. Gii will be inheriting the Farm from Satchan, so it'll be convenient for the Farm to merge with the church, but I don't think that the managerial side-Ikuo and Dancer, in other words-did this purely out of self-interest.
"Gii has some religious element in him that connects him to Patron, don't you think? And half his genes are from the founder of the Church of the Flaming Green Tree, let's not forget. It's a little tricky to guess how Satchan feels about all this, though Gii's own choice is pretty clear. This spring he didn't go on to high school. The Technicians designed a curriculum they say can take him through high school and college in six years. And Ikuo is apparently drilling him pretty hard in English."
"Fred wants to know what you mean by saying that Ikuo is free of God's voice," Mrs. Tsugane said.
"That much English I can understand," Mr. Matsuo said, summoning up his dignity as head priest. "There's no easy answer, though, even in Japa- nese… If tomorrow it looks like the snow won't be letting up, you'll most likely be staying four or five days. Why don't you ask Ikuo himself? One other thing you should know is that, now that Gii and the other Fireflies are part of the church, they no longer call Ikuo Yonah. "
Mr. Matsuo drove the car through the entrance to the parking lot, com- pletely white in the darkness, and all the way around to the exit. Ogi helped him get their luggage out of the trunk. After quickly thanking Mr. Matsuo, Mrs. Tsugane and Fred hurried into the courtyard of the monastery, trying to avoid the thick flat snowflakes. Anticipating their arrival, the church mem- bers had swept the walk clear of snow. Just then music played, signaling the end of all official activities for the day.
Mr. Matsuo turned his snow-covered head toward the chapel. "Hear that? It's Morio's music."
The music's quiet echo was one with the snowdrifts and the snow fall- ing on the surface of the lake.
The next morning it had stopped snowing. Ogi and Mrs. Tsugane had used the oversized bed that Patron and Morio had pretty much lived in, while Fred happily made do with the Japanese futon they'd laid out for him in the living room on the south side of the house. In the dinette, filled with the lively calls of birds from the snowy woods, Mrs. Tsugane prepared a breakfast of bacon and eggs from the Farm, which had been put in the refrigerator for them. An hour after they heard the music announcing the opening of the dining hall, Fred still showed no signs of getting up, so Ogi and his wife lay in bed waiting for him.
Getting up was all the harder since they'd stayed up late in the heated dining hall talking. The late-night Hollow, lost in snow, had been as sound- less as the bottom of the ocean; the guests were startled each time they heard a piercing crack ring out in the woods. They'd been told what it was- branches of the bamboos in the large grove on the right-hand slope on the way to the Mansion cracking under the weight of the snow-but still it made them jump.
The little banquet held by the church members to welcome Ogi and the others, held two hours after their usual dinnertime, was hosted by Ikuo, Dancer, Dr. Koga, and Gii, and, from the Quiet Women, Ms. Oyama and Ms.
Takada. Mrs. Shigeno was away in Chiba visiting her daughter, who had married a physician.
All the Quiet Women had remained in the Hollow, and now most of the children they'd left behind when they moved to Shikoku had joined them.
Half of the Technicians had left, but in addition to the Fireflies, who'd been moved by Patron's sermon and were now enthusiastic supporters of the church, there were a number of other young people who'd joined, and pro- duction at the Farm was right on schedule. After attending Kizu night and day in his final illness, Ms. Asuka was now back in Tokyo editing the video of the summer conference.
As for Ogi, he had gone back to work at the International Culture Foun- dation and was planning in his spare time to write a book on the establish- ment of the Church of the New Man. He was preparing a first draft based on notes he'd taken from the time he first started working for Patron and Guide at the office in Seijo up to the hectic summer conference at the Hollow. Mrs.
Tsugane had used a word processor to make a fair copy of everything he had written so far.
As everyone involved pondered things anew after the events of the summer, Kizu had felt a renewed sense of the mission Patron entrusted him with- namely, to be historian for the Church of the New Man-and had begun fill- ing sketchbooks with memos of events. After his death Dancer put it all in order. Hearing of Ogi's plan to write a history of the church, Ikuo contacted him by phone to offer the materials for his use.
This is why Ogi and the others had come to the Hollow. Ikuo read over the fair copy of the first draft Ogi brought with him, while Ogi read through Kizu's memos. Afterward they discussed things, and after outlining a gen- eral plan, Ogi went ahead with reworking his first draft, laying great emphasis on Kizu's records and incorporating Ikuo's explanations as well. This was Ogi's own personal project, but once complete it would serve as a good intro- duction to an official church history.
Actually, the groundwork for this agreement had been laid by Mrs.
Tsugane. At the time of their marriage, in place of a wedding ceremony they held a reunion dinner with Mrs. Tsugane and Ogi's family. Ogi's elder brother and his wife, who had introduced her to Ogi in the first place, ordered a cake decorated with a ribbon saying FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PANTIES OF PURE LOVE, in order to tease Ogi. If their trysts deep in the Shikoku woods had come to light, there's no telling how carried away Ogi's brother and sis- ter-in-law would have gotten.
After dinner at a modest Italian restaurant in the Imperial Hotel, Mrs. Tsugane made a firm resolution. She would help her young husband- the one member of the Ogi family, renowned in the medical field, for whom no one had any expectations of success-to achieve his long-held plan, at the same time sweeping away the chagrin she'd felt at being treated so lightly by his family. She'd convinced herself that it was entirely due to the promotion campaign she'd run that her former husband had achieved international rec- ognition, but when it came to Ogi the more relevant question was not when he'd complete the project but whether he'd ever get started. So at this point Mrs. Tsugane suggested that he begin his "History of the Age" by writing a first volume tracing developments from the Somersault to the founding of the Church of the New Man.
At the same time she urged Fred to write an article about the now year- old church, including the horrifying events of the summer conference. Fred was assigned to do this by an American news agency and then asked Mrs.
Tsugane to travel with him as his interpreter to gather material, and that's how the plan to visit the Hollow near the end of the year came about.
After ten that morning Dancer called Ogi's residence with an invita- tion for Ogi, Fred, and Mrs. Tsugane to gather at the chapel with Ikuo and Gii to continue last night's conversation. The slope leading from Patron and Morio's former residence down to the chapel was less than sixteen feet, but as soon as they pushed open the front door they hesitated, looking out at the mound of white glittering in the flood of light. Even if they were to plow their way through it, the snow would come up to Fred's thighs, and he was the tallest of the group. The path had been swept clean the night before, but still it had accumulated this much.
Just then Gii, attired in a sturdy-looking outfit of boots and windbreaker, appeared, snow shovel in hand. Wielding the shovel in the painfully bright light, he was clearly more physically developed than a year before. As he gal- lantly shoveled his way up to the entrance Gii greeted Ogi and his wife in Japanese and Fred in British-accented English. In between shovelfuls he ad- vised them that it would be wise to wear overcoats when they went to the chapel since it was cold inside. He added that Ikuo-he didn't call him Yonah as in the past-didn't want to meet in the dining hall because other church members could eavesdrop on their conversation there.
"Since you're able to speak directly with Fred, he doesn't need my poor interpreting skills," Mrs. Tsugane said, turning on the charm as she spoke to Gii, who was flushed from his exertions clearing the snow.
As Mrs. Tsugane repeated in English to Fred what she'd said, Gii gave a reply in English that revealed how undaunted a fellow he was.
"If you're investigating a native religion here in the Hollow, instead of having an English-speaking informant it would be better, wouldn't it, to use an interpreter and have one native speak to another?"
Mrs. Tsugane went inside to collect her overcoat, and while she wrapped herself in a scarf that her ex-husband had designed, she showed her displeasure.
"What a charmless young man we have here. Much better to be labeled an innocent youth."
Ogi pretended not to hear.
Fred, who seemed to understand Mrs. Tsugane's Japanese quite well- in fact, Ogi suspected he had a better grasp of the spoken language than he made out-said in his characteristic grumbling way, "Pretty amazing to find such a complex intellectual environment so far out in the snowy forest! A priest who drives an expensive Nissan and quotes Dogen, and on top of that a fifteen-year-old who's got a good grasp of the imperialist aspects of cultural anthropology!"
Dancer had brought a kerosene heater with a built-in fan into the chapel.
But when Ogi and the others came inside, what caught their attention was less this than the thirty guitars lined up neatly along the wall behind the piano.
Last night they'd heard about this, that the junior high school, which had turned down Kizu's idea for an art classroom, was now using the chapel for music classes. So not only did one of the more prominent wind instrument groups in the district use the chapel for practice, it was also being used regu- larly by local students for their guitar lessons.
From the darkly shadowed triptych with its Renaissance-style scenes, one by one the three newcomers found themselves drawn to the sparkling long window set in the cylindrical inner concrete wall of the chapel. Surrounded by snow-covered forest, the lake in the Hollow reflected back the blue sky that looked like the bottom of a hole. In the midst of this diffusely lit scene, the square enclosure on the flat white stand that was the cypress island showed as undulations in the sparkling snow.
"It's too bright without sunglasses," Fred said. "I heard that because Japanese people have dark eyes they can stand bright light, but I don't really understand why. They say the older you get the less sensitive you are to light.
Is that really true?"
"I'm fairly old and wear bifocals, but they're tinted, so don't treat me like some insensitive native!" Mrs. Tsugane said.
Fred replied, "What a grump!" and shrugged his shoulders in an exag- gerated way, more put off than ever; Ogi, though, was impressed by her gal- lant response.
Ikuo came into the chapel lugging an old leather briefcase Ogi remem- bered seeing Kizu using. Dancer brought over chairs around the heater, now blazing away, and they gathered around. Out of the leather case, which seemed to radiate cold, Ikuo took out a couple of sketchbooks and copies of other documents and laid them on an empty chair.
Next to these he laid down the typed first draft that Ogi had given him, and said, "Maybe it's the snow, but I felt as impatient as a child this morning and got up early and read the whole thing. Your descriptions are great; it reads like a novel. And I'm impressed by how you've remembered the details of conversations, even though I saw you always taking notes. But if you flesh this out, covering everything from Patron's Somersault through Guide's tor- ture and up to the summer conference and the Church of the New Man, won't the whole thing be enormously long?"
"I told Ogi that if you don't carefully write all the details," Mrs. Tsugane replied, "it won't be much of a history of the age. We experience things with- out really knowing what they mean and how they'll end up, right? That being the case, all you can do is write down as much of what you saw and heard just as you experienced it. Maybe it's a case of God being in the details."
As if to forestall any quick reaction from Ikuo, Mrs. Tsugane translated her remarks for Fred, who blinked his chestnut-colored eyes as if, even in- side, it was too bright, and sighed. "It's amazing the amount of intellectual information that flits back and forth here."
As if this was the opportune moment he'd been waiting for, Gii said, in English, "I think Ikuo and Ogi have some things they need to talk over by themselves, things that don't need to be translated for Mr. Parks's article. I mentioned being an informant before, but I'd be happy to answer anything I can as honestly and accurately as I can. I won't just butter you up with things I think a foreigner might want to hear. So why don't we find a corner that's out of the sun, and you and I can talk?"
Fred Parks liked the idea. He and the Gii quickly moved over to the space between the piano and the wall where the triptych hung. Ikuo placed two chairs for them, his actions showing that he was quite used to being the one in charge now.
When it was just the four of them left, Mrs. Tsugane said, "Ogi resisted the idea of including in the record of the church such things as what he'd written down in his notebooks about the two of us doing that. Though he wrote it down at the time as if it were an important matter. I insisted that he put it into his first draft. It's a history of the church, but you also have aspira- tions to write a History of the Age, right? Unless you decide to write down all the details, including the ones that are hard to reveal to others, the ama- teur writer tends to leave out what's important. It's also good practice for describing the facts."
Ogi, of course, but also Ikuo, who'd read the typed first draft, were both unsure how to respond. At this point Dancer spoke up, her way of speaking unusually gentle now, something Ogi had picked up on the night before.
"I think I understand what Mrs. Tsugane is getting at," Dancer said.
"The same applies to the summer conference and my life up till then, even before I started living in Tokyo. When I try to remember things that hap- pened when I was a young girl in ballet tights, I can't distinguish between what was important and what's just extraneous details. During this past year since you left the office, Ogi, almost every day I've been mentally reviewing everything that happened, and it feels, like you say, that the key to everything lies in the details… "Ikuo, don't you need to tell Ogi how Professor Kizu passed away?
Just as Mrs. Tsugane said, try to conjure up the details of what happened.
Professor Kizu's parting words might seem like he was making fun of you, but aren't they important too? If you include them, and Ogi writes down all the details as he does in his notebook, who knows but that you might find yourself reaching a deeper understanding of what it all meant. I've only read a portion of the first draft, but it's clear Ogi is no longer just an inno- cent youth.
"On the other hand, I don't think there's anything I can say that would be of help. I won't be upset, though, if-to borrow Mrs. Tsugane's term- Ikuo tells everything about that which took place at the time of Professor Kizu's death. This might be hard to talk about in front of us women, so why don't I take Mrs. Tsugane over to see what the children of the Quiet Women have been doing? I think it'd be worth your while to see our fish pond, too, though with all this snow it might be like looking down a well."
In Dancer's now-mature voice and mannerisms there was something that made Ogi feel-in a complex way he'd never felt before-that she was truly an extraordinary woman. With Patron now gone, she'd been handling all the church members and the facilities for the last year and had, despite the events of the past, rebuilt relations with the town and local schools. As Dr. Koga had remarked the night before, there was a relaxed dignity about her now.
When the two women left the chapel, Gii raised his head like a weasel and looked over. But since the American journalist, puffing away despite the ban on smoking, was scribbling in the small notebook spread on his lap, Gii went eagerly back to talking with him in a low voice.
For nearly five weeks after the summer conference, both the Hollow and the Farm had been in turmoil. Below the surface confusion, though, some- thing deeper and more persistent was taking place.
The media's concern had been with the so-called FIERY SUICIDE AND LOYAL DEATHS of Patron and the Tachibana siblings; starting with intense TV coverage, specials appeared in the weekly magazines covering an overabun- dance of material in a typically unfocused way. The illustrated weeklies ran color photographs of the sprawled, naked body of Patron, like some dry- lacquered image of Buddha, with the nude, charred bodies of Ms. Tachibana and Morio reaching out to him.
When the church made its official response, which included dealing with the police, Ogi had been in the thick of things. So there was no need for him to hear once again from Ikuo about all this. Still, Dancer had prepared a file of clippings from the local press on this period for him to peruse.
As he was talking with Ikuo and leafing through these clippings, though, Ogi noticed that in the middle of September, just after he moved away from the Hollow, Kizu had finally opened his art school for junior high students.
As one of those involved, Ogi knew that the church had tried to repair its relationship with the Old Town and Maki Town. Guessing from his experi- ence at the time that Kizu himself wasn't pushing the project too hard, Ogi deduced that this must have been the doing of Asa-san, the wife of the former junior high principal. And this art school in the Hollow in turn had led to the present healthy relationship with the junior high and to their using the chapel for their music classes.
Another article discussed how Kizu's falling ill again had led to the clos- ing of the art school after a short time. Along with the article was a color photograph, about half the size of a postcard, of a landscape Kizu had painted of the fall foliage around the chapel and the monastery. Ikuo explained to the tearful Ogi that since the leaves didn't turn that well last fall, the painting must have been done in the beginning of December when Kizu took his students to the north shore for outdoor sketching instruction.
Soon after closing the art school, Kizu went into Dr. Koga's clinic. Ikuo speculated that the local reporter didn't touch on the events of the summer conference, or on the "miraculous" disappearance of cancer from his body, not just out of respect for Kizu's international standing as an art educator but because of his contributions to the town.
The previous night Dr. Koga had described in detail how Kizu had died of a cancer that, for his age, had spread quite quickly. The cancer, which Dr. Koga deemed a new occurrence of the disease, started in the liver and spread to his lungs, and the autopsy revealed some brain tumors as well. In the year that had passed, Dr. Koga had taken on the look of quite the coun- try doctor, his skin, including the bald spot now at the crown of his head, a sunburnt brown, his mannerisms deliberately exaggerating this role, refer- ring to himself, in imitation of Gii's childish way, with the rough pronoun washi instead of the normal watashi; Dancer gently ribbed him about it, and though his observations on the symptoms were quite pointed, his look was the same as always, a mix of gloom and urbane cheerfulness as he recalled what had happened.
"Some people say the cancer that was removed in the United States came back, but since a fair amount of tests concluded that he didn't have any can- cer before this, I'd say cancer snuck up on him for a third time and this time got the better of him. Kizu was in my clinic until spring. Since he was resigned to what was going to happen, he really wanted to go back to stay in his house in the Hollow, so Ms. Asuka devoted herself to nursing him. Former Brother Gii had planted a lot of cherry trees on the east slope as part of his Beautiful Village project, and Professor Kizu passed away when they were in lull bloom.
"The Red Cross doctor and myself were both convinced that when Pro- fessor Kizu came here to live with Patron his cancer had disappeared. Opin- ion is divided, though, about whether he had cancer from the beginning or not. But once Patron was gone, the cancer rallied for a full frontal attack and did him in. After he returned to the Hollow, Professor Kizu didn't fear his cancer; death didn't bother him anymore. It was as if he'd conquered cancer and wanted to die. The cancer ravaged all his organs, and it was a pointless struggle.
"I'll let Ikuo tell you how Professor Kizu spent his final moments, since I wasn't there at the very end. Ms. Asuka seemed at a loss as usual, but also quite in control, and reported that she thought Kizu might not make it through the night so Ikuo should come attend to him. She doesn't have an ounce of sentimentality, though when Professor Kizu was in the hospital she stayed in his room the whole time. She's an unforgettable person, Ms. Asuka.
Professor Kizu too, of course."
The story of Kizu's final moments that Ikuo told to Ogi-not at all what Ms. Asuka anticipated, with Dancer there as well-he said he'd add later on.
Ikuo's later letter, written on the model Ms. Tsugane set for first drafts in that it left nothing out-proved helpful in this regard.
This letter contained details that Ikuo found hard to talk about that day in the chapel especially since all this became the basis for a turnabout in Ikuo's life. Even as an outside observer Ogi could sense, in this visit to the Hollow, how much Ikuo had gone through in a year's time, and this made him real- ize how in his own past year with Mrs. Tsugane he too had changed.
After Ikuo and Ogi had talked together for nearly an hour, Gii came over to the space heater with Fred and said that he and the Fireflies had to do some snow removal so he'd await their visit in the afternoon, and left the chapel alone. Fred seemed to be dying to tell Ikuo something about what he and Gii had discussed, so Ogi left his talk with Ikuo for later.
Ikuo spoke in English with Fred. The type of English they spoke- Fred's, of course, but also Ikuo's, who had been bilingual since childhood- was not the type of English Ogi was used to hearing. But once the conversation had settled down on track and he retrospectively picked up on what they'd said and outlined their conversation in his notebook, he was able to follow the general drift.
At first Fred seemed to be sounding out Ikuo, holding some mysteri- ous trump card in reserve. Repeatedly he asked Ikuo whether there'd been any changes in Gii's way of thinking or his actions since the summer confer- ence. At last night's discussion, everyone seemed to take it for granted that Gii was going to be the successor to the Church of the New Man. But wasn't Gii just being pushed forward like some automaton? After Patron's death, among those influential in the church, the hard-line remnants of the radical faction left the Farm together with Mr. Hanawa, and the police and the media had sounded a warning about allowing the Technicians who remained to hold any power in the church. Wasn't the way the church dealt with this-having a young boy like Gii as the front man-just a smoke screen?
Ogi couldn't catch all of what Ikuo replied in English, not because he spoke too quickly but because of the content. Still, he could tell that Ikuo, very patiently and meticulously, was responding to Fred's provocative questions.
But what really remained with Ogi was the change in Ikuo since they'd last met. He'd swept away the dangerous instability of old, the rebelliousness and negativism, the violence that even he himself couldn't control. Very clearly Ikuo was Yonah no more.
Since the summer conference finale ended as it did, Ikuo said, Gii and the Fireflies, who were deeply involved, were naturally shaken. Especially Gii, who showed his own unique reaction to events. He was furious that the per- formance with which the Fireflies had planned to wrap up the summer con- ference was upstaged by Patron's and Ikuo's plans. The reconciliation began only when Ikuo explained to the Fireflies how at the very last minute Patron had turned the tables on him.
After this, nestling up close to where Gii's thoughts took him, Ikuo opened up an even deeper dialogue with the boys. The first thing Gii said was this: His principle for living was to deny defeatism. In this point he evaluated Patron's church more highly than Former Brother Gii's Base Movement or the Church of the Flaming Green Tree. But in the end wasn't Patron the most defeatist of all? He didn't seriously ever plan to set up and run a church here in the Hollow. Instead, didn't he just use this whole thing as a public spec- tacle to finally do what he couldn't at the time of the Somersault-commit suicide? "I find it hard to forgive him for using our legend of the Spirit Fes- tival the way he did," Gii said.
But Ikuo patiently went on explaining things and finally Gii and the others admitted that, yes, before Patron had the idea of committing suicide at the finale of the summer conference, they'd been able to carry out the Spirit Festival, with Guide's spirit included, and that performing this Spirit Festi- val in front of so many people from all over the country was the plan they themselves had so strenuously pushed forward. And it was true that Patron, when he felt he had no other way out and reluctantly made use of the Spirit Festival, did it in a way that showed great respect for the Spirits.
As for defeatism, since Patron actually did commit suicide I can't de- fend him, Ikuo went on, but can't you young people be a little more gener- ous? Consider this: When people who've passed a certain age think about how they can wind up their affairs as best they can-and you could see in Patron's final sermon the effort he made to do this-and then commit suicide, this suicide may be just like the heroic but miserable and comic suicide of the African Cato that Patron spoke of, a variation of an honest and real effort at life.
It was Patron's fervent hope to build his Church of the New Man here, in this land. And hasn't that been accomplished? The Quiet Women were bent on their own plan to take the cyanide, but look at them now-they've accepted Patron's final request and are doing their utmost to help run things at the Hollow. There's no hint now of something happening like with Ameri- can cultists who all want to make a beeline to heaven en masse. These women have an experienced, healthy, realistic view of things and have developed a good relationship with the local women. Right now they're so close they go off together to the Mountain Stream Where Twenty-five Refined Ladies Shat and have a good time together picking butterbur.
It's true the Technicians split in half, and one faction left. But the other faction stayed, abandoned the agreements made by the leaders of the Tech- nicians before the summer conference, and formulated a new policy of full cooperation with the church. Aren't the Technicians friendlier and nicer to us and to each other than ever before? Look at the way we're working to- gether to teach you and the other Fireflies.
After listening to these details, Fred asked a question. "With the Church of the New Man starting off as it did, the position of leader, Patron's replace- ment, is vacant. And everyone-the office staff, the Quiet Women, and, more strongly than anyone else, according to Dr. Koga, the Technicians-agrees that Gii will assume that responsibility. How did this happen?"
Ikuo fielded this one. What Patron built is the Church of the New Man, so doesn't it make the most sense for those who lead to be the ones who have, in many senses of the word, the greatest possibility of becoming New Men?
After hesitating to ask again the reason why Ikuo didn't see himself as that kind of person, Fred asked, "Do you really believe young Gii is the right person to be the leader of the church?" And for the first time, Fred revealed his trump card.
In their little tête-à-tête in the corner it was obvious that Gii had been pestering Fred about something, which turned out to be whether Fred knew of any GI group in Okinawa or on the mainland that sold contraband machine guns out of the bases. Once he got hold of these high-powered weapons, Gii said, he'd have some Americans who fought in Vietnam train the Fireflies in their use. If they reinforced the ceiling of this chapel with steel sheets and the armed Fireflies holed up inside, they should be able, for a while at least, to hold off an attack by the riot police and military helicopters.
As if he were re-creating a battle scene from a Coppola movie, Gii de- scribed the Fireflies battling it out from their chapel stronghold-all the while making sure that everything he was saying was off the record. "I just want you to understand," Gii went on, "when you talk with those groups I men- tioned earlier, the level of resolve the Fireflies have as a part of the Church of the New Man. We're ready to take on Japan and the world!"
Gii was very much drawn to the same concept of a postinsurrection millennial reign of repentance that the lzu radical faction had had before the Somersault, something that people now knew was clearly different from the Aum concept of a self-centered Armageddon. Having an insurrection lead straight to the end of the world, to nothing but death, was a defeatist attitude.
"Through an insurrection based on using the Church of the New Man as our foundation," Gii told Fred, "I want to make the millennial reign of repen- tance a reality. Even in the European idea of the millennium, a millennial reign isn't seen as such an impossibly long time. If we turn the chapel into a for- tress with the weapons that spill out of the American military bases-even if we only hold out for ten days-our call for repentance will reach the ends of the earth. We've already started our own Web page. And the memory of what we do, like that of He Who Destroys and Meisuke-san's uprising, will remain forever in the realm of myth. The next New Men who arise will carry on where we left off. In other words, through the Church of the New Man we will become one with the legends of this land."
"What do you think about these ideas of Gii's?" Fred asked Ikuo. "You still plan to hand the church over to him?"
"Since more than anything else Gii hates a defeatist attitude," Ikuo re- sponded, "he won't rashly start an insurrection. For the longest time I've been mulling over Patron's final words in his sermon-the call of Long live Karamazov! When Dancer was going through Patron's effects, she found a dog-eared copy of the novel with the following commentary circled in red pencil. I read this over so many times I can quote it verbatim: "Not just Aloysha, who thirteen years hence is supposed to be crucified for being an assassin of the Tsar, but the lustful Dimitri, who carries the burden of a crime he didn't commit, as well as the Grand Inquisitor Ivan, who cries out in his thirst for life-all of them make a complete change from their positions and reach the sublime at the chorus of shouts from the boys of Long live Karamazov!' "
Ikuo translated this very deliberately into English. After this, when he spoke next, Ogi felt he was seeing the Ikuo of old, as if a bizarre, out-of- control Yonah had removed his mask. And what he remembered later with unusual clarity was the strong feeling that Ikuo had a beauty not in keeping with his face-no, more accurately even his face was part of this now. Yet despite this he was someone who might very well be Ogi's lifelong adversary.
All the while, a faint smile rose to Ikuo's lips, inscrutable but quite the opposite of the meaningless smile that Japanese display when talking with foreigners-the adjective that Fred used when, days later, he was going over with Ogi his notes of his conversation with Ikuo-and Ikuo said that when Patron shouted out Long Live Karamazov! he had to have been thinking of those here, the Japanese version of young men full of possibilities for the future.
"No matter what frightening things the young people in the church do over the next ten or fifteen years," Ikuo continued, "as long as they're New Men I'm not going to drive them out. I imagine that from now on Gii will, in both what he says and does, be the one who fluctuates the most violently, but right now in the church he's our number-one New Man. I want to educate him to be the one who shouts Long live Karamazov! and succeeds the dead. I want to raise him up in our church-and outside it, too."
Days later, when he was reviewing his conversation with Ikuo, Fred Parks asked Ogi whether, on that day in the chapel, Gii and Ikuo hadn't planned out all their answers ahead of time-at Gii's instigation, mainly-and were pulling his leg. But Ogi was less inclined to think about that than the crystal-clear memory he had of Ikuo that day-a memory that in later years often came back to haunt him.
On his final day Kizu had clearly been growing weaker, but he had his pillows piled up high on his bed and, with the lightweight opera glasses Mr.
Soda had brought over as a gift when he came to visit, was gazing at the wild cherry blossoms on the east shore. Ikuo had been watching over him all night, and Dancer had joined them. The night before was a full moon with only a thin scattering of clouds, and Kizu had tried to view the cherries in the moon- light but couldn't see them so well, he said. Checking to see that he'd be all right for a few moments, Ikuo had walked down to below the dam where Gii and some of the Fireflies were parked and asked them to take care of something.
Gii had uncoiled a long line they'd used in the summer conference from a covered outlet at the foot of the outside wall of the chapel and shone a flood- light on the wild cherries on the jutting crags where the bilberries grew. Ikuo was happy that the attempt was a success. But Kizu had been too worn out to lift his head from his pillow.
With no way for Ikuo to signal Gii and the Fireflies by the crags, the young men could do nothing but remain standing next to the floodlight.
Concerned about how things were turning out, Kizu fell into a comalike sleep for ten minutes, then opened his eyes and asked three times whether the flood- lights were still lit. Ikuo looked out at the moonlit ink-colored forest and the cherry blossoms looming up palely in the floodlight and said yes. With the dark gray of the grove of cherry trees just outside the ring of light, the whole scene was one of great depth. But since there was no way they could even get Kizu's head raised up to look out a little, Ikuo asked if he'd like the curtains closed, to which Kizu responded in a listless, muffled voice-Dancer had skillfully helped him get up the phlegm-that it wasn't good to keep the young boys out there if they were still standing by the crags.
As the moon shifted, the surface of the lake was thrown into dark shad- ows and Kizu awoke from a lengthy sleep and asked Ikuo to pose for him.
Dancer acted shocked, thinking Kizu was hallucinating and thought he was painting, but Ikuo knew differently. An easel stood next to the bed, with one of the drawings Kizu had done for the triptych, a sketch of a nude Ikuo he particularly liked. Ikuo stripped off his clothes and struck the same pose.
Slowly tilting his head on the pillow, Kizu gazed intently at him.
"Can they see you from the crags?" Kizu asked, somewhat embar- rassedly, his voice again muffled.
"Even if they can, Gii and the others don't have binoculars," Ikuo replied.
"Can that… stand up, do you think?"
Ikuo looked down. It came to him what Kizu wanted, but he couldn't think of what to do about it. Quick-witted, Dancer got up out of the low chair, moved forward and got to her knees, held Ikuo's penis directly against her lips, and then put it inside her mouth. The penis immediately rose up mag- nificently, and with the momentum as she drew her open mouth back, glis- tening with a line of saliva, it smacked once against her small nose. Kizu, breathing lightly, watched all this.
"So that's what it was like… That's enough, you must be cold."
"No, I'm okay," Ikuo said, but, concerned about his shriveling genitals, he was relieved to put his clothes back on.
"Actually, I can't see too well. That's enough," Kizu said. After a while, he turned to the now-dressed Ikuo and kidded him with a question. "So- the two of you are pretty close now? I'm happy for you."
"Thank you," Ikuo said.
He was afraid Dancer was going to deny it, but she merely glanced up, saliva glistening around her half-opened mouth.
After dozing for an even longer time, Kizu woke again and said, in the same tone as before, "Ikuo-is it really so bad that you can't hear God's voice?
You don't need God's voice, do you? People should be free."
Ikuo couldn't just say what popped into his head. A dark yet gentle emotion permeated him, as if the darkness covering the black lake had risen up and seeped inside him.
"You say… God's voice… told you that… but I think… even with- out God, I want to say rejoice. To me, and to…"
Kizu let out a ragged breath, fell asleep, and then suddenly sat up and vomited dark blood and began to writhe. His upper body, supported by his strong waist, trembled like a caterpillar searching for a leaf. Ikuo was flus- tered, unable to react. Kizu's head fell heavily onto the window frame, and he nearly fell off the bed in the space between it and the window. "Professor Kizu!" Dancer shouted, as if scolding him. Kizu stopped moving and turned in their direction; his head plopped down on his chest, and he breathed his last.
Dancer called out again, leaning forward with her thin shoulders, but Ikuo had already made certain that Kizu was dead. He walked around the bed, pushed open the window, stuck the floor lamp outside, and waved it a couple of times. Because this was what Kizu had been most concerned about.
The light illuminating the wild cherry trees above the crags went out.
What looked like a black smudge appeared in the center of the now pale grove of cherry trees. Once again the top of the forest was under the moonlight, the smudge was soon gone, and a wind they couldn't feel down low rustled the light-reddish and milky-white heaps of flowers.
"The last thing he asked was whether it was really so bad not to be able to hear the voice of God," Ikuo said. "And just before he died he used the word rejoice. To himself, and to… something else, he said."
Ikuo scowled fiercely. Perhaps irritated at his own vague words, Ogi thought, large teardrops began to course down his face.
Ikuo shook his huge head, wiped back the tears, and said, "That was half a year ago… It's been a long year since the summer conference. I've thought about it a lot since then, and I agree with what Patron said. Gii's taken by this idea of a millennial reign, but Patron said he would lead the church as an antichrist. As a free man, I plan to stand beside Gii until he takes over the church."
"I've no doubt Gii is the sort of young man who can become a New Man, but he never told me he believed in God or stood on the side of the antichrist,"
Fred said. Then he closed his notebook and asked very calmly, "Has this become a church without God, then?"
On Ikuo's brawny features a truly beautiful expression arose as he pon- dered this. From the bottoms of the domes on the ceiling, snow melted in the sun and fell off with a thud. The large cylindrical space was surrounded by the sound of water. Between the question and the reply enough time passed that the direct relationship between the two grew fuzzy. When just enough time had passed for Ogi to feel this, Ikuo finally replied.
"For us, a church is a place where deeds of the soul are done."