Somersault (28 page)

“‘You all are repenting and praying because the approaching end of the world is important, right? If that’s all it is, how is this any different from the apocalyptic teachings of traditional religions?’ Why did you choose this particular church to join?

“‘I entered this church,’ he went on, ‘after I heard about the real, concrete visions the Savior had about the end of the world in his trances. I wanted to know more. The more we know, in case the approaching end time gets stalled we can give it a push with our own hands.’

“A young woman wearing glasses as round as two tennis balls, a lively, intelligent sort who looked like she came from a good family, responded to this; she wasn’t irritated, exactly.

“‘But just because the momentum toward the end of the world comes to a halt,’ she said, ‘isn’t it going a little too far for us to help it along? I’m just a simple person who works with computers, so maybe I haven’t grasped the full extent of what you mean. What bothers me about the way you said it is the hint of cynicism. Not that I’m saying you’re enjoying the idea of the world ending. Through the Savior’s teaching I do want to repent, as the world comes
to an end, and gain a deeper acceptance of what’s going to occur. There’s no room for cynicism or curiosity.’

“Guide broke in at this point to urge me to respond. Based on Dancer’s cards, here is the gist of what I said.

“‘My vision of the end of the world is limited to a view of a small-sized provincial city, a city on the verge of death. The end has not yet arrived but is surely on its way. Yet not a single voice arises in prayer. The citizens have lost all vitality. That’s the scene I envision. What I want to do is to insert a group of repentant, prayerful people in the midst of this scene. My hope is that this will become the model for all human cities.

“‘As I said earlier, in the beginning I was just a hopeless recluse who only thought about the salvation of his own soul. As I began to share my individual visions with other people—visions I had in trances that resulted from prayer—I couldn’t stay hidden away any longer. And the spot where I ended up was so high it made me dizzy, a place where I also felt I was forced into a dead end.

“‘I believe there are many like me now. Compared to two thousand years ago, many more people are leading mankind toward the final day, which I interpret as a sign that indeed the end time is drawing near. I stand before you as one of those people. Because I am, I hope to relate a vision that responds to the question I was just asked in a clearer, more inclusive way.

“‘The next time one of my trances comes over me, that’s what I plan to do. Striving to answer this ultimate question will add new sentences to the book in which everything, from the beginning to the end, is already written.

“‘Today what we’ve done is confirm this. Everything has gone according to what’s been written in the design, from the Prophet preparing this research facility, to his choosing all of you, to finally having me come here. Let’s pray, not forgetting to thank the Prophet for what he’s done. Hallelujah!’”

Patron’s style of speaking, his pauses and his tone of voice, were just like his sermons; once he came to an end, he changed gears, a faint smile arising from something Kizu could only guess at.

“If you look at this first sermon I gave at the Izu research center, it would be irresponsible of me to insist that Guide was solely responsible for training the radical faction. As the new Guide, didn’t you think the same thing as you listened to me? Anyhow, that’s how it began, and though there were all sorts of complicated situations within the church at the time, my visions were what sparked the radical faction to develop its so-called
Threshold Crosser
device.”

Noticing Kizu’s suspicious look, Patron said with his fixed Cheshire cat smile, “It’s a device to convert a nuclear power plant into a nonportable nuclear bomb. And if this had spread, you’d better believe mankind would have crossed a threshold it was never meant to.”

10: Wake Mania Without End (I)

1

The ceiling of the prewar Western-style kitchen was strangely low, the window smeared, and the putty around the frame greasy. Outside, large wet snowflakes were falling; Kizu watched them out to the edge of the faint light illuminating the scene.

It was after dinner. Patron was listening to the CD version of Furtwängler conducting Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on the sound system set up next to the dining table. Soon a cold look came to his face, and without concerning himself with Kizu he shut off the music halfway through. Outside, beyond Patron’s drooping shoulders, sleet was changing to snow. Kizu felt uneasy, as if his sense of hearing had suddenly been stripped away from him, and he imagined Patron must be even more sensitive to the sudden silence. Patron went into the kitchen to start washing up, and Kizu followed after him.

There was a huge pile of dirty dishes. At the beginning of the week Guide had taken a turn for the worse and been put in a private room, and Dancer, who’d been with him the whole time, had returned in the late afternoon for the first time to report on his condition. After dinner with Ogi, Ikuo, and Ms. Tachibana, the young people set off for the hospital. Ms. Tachibana, living with her younger brother, had to be home by a fixed time, so it was left to Kizu and Patron to clean up.

With his long years living alone in New Jersey, and now in his Tokyo apartment, Kizu was used to cooking and cleaning up on his own, but Patron was a compete novice when it came to washing dishes. It might have been easier if Kizu had done it alone. Patron, though, seemed genuinely afraid of
withdrawing to his bedroom study. At Dancer’s insistence there were no chemical cleansers in the kitchen, so it took quite some time to wash the filthy dishes the young people had left using only a large bar of coconut oil soap rubbed into a sponge. Kizu soon took over washing the dishes, Patron the drying. As he dried one dish after another, Patron began a long monologue.

“A while ago I told you how I came to know Guide, and how I was making a living as a fortune-teller. Guide’s wife and autistic son ran out on him. His wife had left a note. She said he worried so much and was so overly solicitous toward their son she felt stifled, and they couldn’t take it anymore. ‘If you come after us and try to get us to come home,’ she said, ‘we’ll kill ourselves. Just leave us alone.’

“When Guide brought this letter to me he was beside himself. A woman whose son was going to night classes at the high school equivalency school felt she just couldn’t stand by without doing anything and brought Guide to one of our meetings. He wasn’t hoping his wife and son would come back, he just wanted to know they were all right. Instead of trying to search for them, he thought I should read the letter, go into a trance, and tell him how they were. I had two different types of trances, and this required the shallow kind, which I could go into and out of at will.

“The scene I saw in my trance was clear enough but hard to pin down. A middle-aged woman was sitting on a bus, a bulky bag beside her. From the shadows a young man leaped into the picture, and when he reached the front row of seats he rested his hand on the shoulder of a man sitting there and, in a quiet voice, asked him if he was getting off at the next stop.

“When I’d said this much, Guide began to tremble. ‘That’s definitely my wife and son,’ he said. What he said next was the very first of his interpretations of my visions, one might say. ‘My son likes buses,’ he said, ‘especially the front row. My wife or I tell him not to, but he always sidles up to the front and asks whoever’s sitting there that question. My wife’s people live in Boso and earn their living farming and fishing, so they must be carrying fish and vegetables into Tokyo to sell. Seeing as how they make a round trip every day into the city on trains and buses, my son must be happy.’

“Even after Guide had determined where his family was, he still came sometimes to our meetings; before long his wife filed for divorce. His wife was afraid of him and didn’t show up in family court, so the divorce wasn’t finalized, but Guide just left it at that. He said the reason he didn’t get divorced was like the idea you had, Professor Kizu, of you and Ikuo grasping hands and heading off to the
other side
. When his autistic son was to head off to the
other side
, Guide wanted to be there to help him. Guide had been overzealous
in educating his son so the boy had rebelled. When Guide had tried to suppress the rebellion, the mother felt sorry for the boy and the two of them ran away from home.

“Still, though, Guide’s dream was to be able to help his son on the
other side
, to mediate between his son’s soul and God. He couldn’t give up this idea. Guide was able to interpret my visions, and finally that became his full-time role. But behind his becoming a pillar of the church lay these personal emotional motives.

“And now Guide is unconscious, his body reacting only mechanically. On the one hand is the brain of the autistic son, closed to the world outside; on the other, the brain of the father, struck down by an aneurysm. I’m haunted by a scene of endless sky and far-off horizon, with two oval-shaped dishes like these lying there. And a human brain on each one.”

Patron held a large plate to the lacy apron at his chest, and while Kizu pictured what was happening in a far-off building surrounded by snow, he almost burst out laughing. With Patron’s combination of the tragic and the comic, his solemn seriousness and his occasional doubtfulness, Kizu couldn’t help but know he was in the presence of someone quite special.

“What really hurts most when I think of Guide is what he told me after he had his first attack, when he recovered and came home from the hospital. When the blood vessel in his forehead burst, he said, he didn’t get confused right away. He felt bad, got up go to the rest room to try to throw up, and was halfway there when he suddenly found himself not inside a building but standing in a wilderness at twilight. And with a great noise, this whole wilderness was rolling up from the edges at the horizon. And then he lost consciousness. Guide used this expression, which makes it seem that the vision I had that I just told you about was something
he
told
me
. That’s how strong a relationship we’d built up over such a long time.

“What comes to me now is that during his second attack there must have been a short period when his mind was still clear. Guide knew what was going on. How frightened he must have been, wondering whether the group that took him captive was hoping he’d collapse. He must have felt a terrible sadness too, knowing he’d lost forever his chance to find his son and escort him to the
other side
.

“That’s how I imagined Guide’s experience. And the conclusion I came to, Professor, is that although Guide wanted to be a mediator for his autistic son, in fact it was the son who was
his
railing,
his
lifeline.”

Patron ran out of words. His spiritless face, poised between his bent left hand, about to grasp a plate, and his right, holding out a dish towel, fairly glinted with sorrow.

As he had never done before to anyone, Kizu placed his arm around Patron’s apron-wrapped shoulder and led him out of the kitchen. The curtains were still open, and in the darkness of the garden the snow began to swirl silently. The two elderly men, in their loud aprons, faintly reflected in the windowpane, looked just like two children in a nursery school Christmas pageant who had stood rooted to one spot until, years later, they’d grown old.

2

Kizu planned to take Patron to his bedroom study and then wait in the office in case there was an emergency call from the hospital. But as they rounded the corner in the hallway Patron came to a halt and refused to go farther. Reluctantly, Kizu led him to the living room sofa, but again he protested wordlessly and sat down in the armchair facing away from the glass door leading to the garden.

“Would you like to listen to Bach again?” Kizu asked.

Looking back at him, Patron shook his head.

“Well, then,” Kizu said, “maybe I can use this opportunity to ask you something Ikuo wants me to ask.”

“Dancer already told me,” Patron said. “She came to me all excited and said Ikuo had just asked you to put this question to me:
Whether false savior or genuine, how did you start thinking you were the savior?
Isn’t this what he wanted you to ask?” Kizu nodded. “Since he used these exact words with Dancer, I think that even before Ikuo talked to you he knew exactly what he wanted to say.

“The best way to answer is, once again, to begin by talking about Guide. When I asked him to take on the job of Prophet, I didn’t have a clear sense of myself as Savior. It was only after I forced him into the role of Prophet that he began to see my trances as mystical experiences and convinced me that I could use them to lead him and other people.

“Ever since I was a certain age I knew I couldn’t avoid having these experiences. Over time they jolted me out of the everyday. Every time I had a mystical experience I suffered and was worn out, though afterward I felt totally energized. After I returned to this side, I was driven to tell people what I’d seen over there. Before Guide was with me I experimented with all sorts of ways to do this, but no one took me seriously, except for the predictions I made after I reluctantly starting earning a living as a fortune-teller.

“Soon I’d fall into depression again and begin to regret the stupid things I was doing. As I became more and more depressed, I had a premonition that
when I hit bottom I’d be thrust into another mystical experience. So I realized depression wasn’t going to make me kill myself.

“I was repeating this cycle over and over when I first met Guide. A true man of science, no doubt he was eager to uncover this fortune-teller as a fraud. But the scene I saw in the trance portrayed—quite accurately, it turned out—his wife and autistic son.

“Since he was a scientist, Guide placed a high value on the scientific method and believed the only valid theory was one that grew out of this. He studied my trances with great inquisitiveness and soon experienced one of my deep trances. He made a distinction between the two kinds and concentrated on the more intense ones, with their visions I couldn’t comprehend yet couldn’t let slip away.