Somersault (37 page)

Ikuo’s task was to bring Patron from the office in Seijo to the apartment building; when he and his three security guards had arrived in the minivan with Patron, then and only then would the front gate be opened. Kizu and the building manager had already sent out a letter to the other residents, Kizu’s university colleagues, asking their cooperation in not using their cars from 10
A.M
. to 3
P.M
.

After Kizu had checked the grounds, he walked up to the front gate, where Ikuo was just getting out the minivan to go pick up Patron. Ikuo left the security guards inside, thirtyish men dressed in light charcoal-gray pullovers and dark gray trousers—a kind of uniform for those organizing the memorial service—and got out of the driver’s seat; he was dressed similarly. Kizu explained to him how the grounds of this building, which had served as the Cultural Affairs Section during the Occupation, was still, as in the old days, surrounded by a high, sturdy chain-link fence.

Ikuo listened attentively. “The security guards have all had military training,” he said, “so unless we’re attacked by a huge force, the front gate should hold. It’s hard to imagine an attacking force of that size moving about the center of Tokyo, though, don’t you think?”

The three uniformed guards inside, who didn’t greet Kizu, nodded to one another at Ikuo’s confident words. Ikuo had from the first been openly enthusiastic as he made the security preparations, and perhaps his bluster was for their ears.

Ikuo returned to the minivan. Kizu watched as he raced off; then he helped the guard close the front gate. The guard was an old Filipino man over seventy who claimed he’d been working there since the Occupation; far from looking put out at having to do something beyond his job description, the old man seemed positively buoyant. Kizu guessed this was due to Ikuo’s influence. Despite his dark, forbidding looks, the young man could be sunny and charming beyond belief.

A long table was set up next to the side entrance, where Ogi sat with the list of attendees; he nodded to Kizu, who walked over to him and said, “Ikuo’s security squad seems to be doing a good job.”

Ogi agreed, and looked out over the porte cochere. Right next to him were three more guards, also in their thirties and dressed in uniform; on the other side of the pavement, five guards stood at set intervals. Ogi didn’t seem to mind that the guards who’d gathered at one end of the table heard him as he explained things to Kizu, who had dimly sensed the situation.

“The members of the security squad are all followers from the Izu research center, before the Somersault,” Ogi said. “The radical faction, in other words. … At that time the police intervened in everything they did, so they left the church, formed their own group, and continued to keep the faith.… The ones who kidnapped Guide and caused his death were one element of this group, not the ones cooperating with us, of course; they didn’t approve of that. Since the people who took Guide are being held in custody, there’s no chance they’ll be coming here.”

“Aren’t some of the members of the former radical faction who joined the security squad the ones who attended Patron’s press conference?” Kizu asked.

“I believe so. It was afterward that Ikuo started getting in touch with members of the faction. He didn’t act alone; he had Dancer’s help in finding out how to locate them. I’m a naive person—hence my nickname—but if they’d asked me I would have advised them to discuss things with Patron first. I was left out of the loop, but now that I see the security squad he put together I think Ikuo made the right decision.”

The men, who were within earshot of Kizu and Ogi’s conversation, casually moved away to stand beside the concrete wall of the entrance and, bunched together, began smoking. They had a sophisticated air about them.

“Still,” Kizu said, “even if they criticized how their colleagues let Guide die, they used to be part of the radical faction, so aren’t they still upset because
of the Somersault? If Patron doesn’t apologize for the Somersault at the memorial service, and doesn’t criticize his own actions, then what…?”

“When I heard the guards for the service were former members of the radical faction the thought occurred to me too,” Ogi said, “that if Patron plays dumb regarding the Somersault there might very well be trouble. When I mentioned that to Ikuo, he went over to discuss things with them, and apparently they came to some kind of understanding.”

“I know bringing this up won’t get us anywhere, but what if their understanding with Ikuo is just a ruse and they’re planning to take over the memorial service and lynch Patron?” Kizu said, as he glanced around inside the side gate. “We’d be playing right into their hands. I mean, they’re the only potentially violent group at the service.”

“Dancer asked Ikuo the same thing. He said if it came to that, he’d stand up to them and defend Patron himself, and she was satisfied. What I’m hoping is that Patron’s sermon will go over well, not just with the former radical faction but with the women’s group you and Ikuo visited. We have limits on the number of participants, so we weren’t able to invite anyone from the Kansai headquarters, the group that continued to run the religious corporation. The rest of the people coming are individual participants. Professor, did you help prepare Patron’s sermon for today?”

“I did,” Kizu replied, “but I imagine he’ll end up mostly improvising, even though his meetings with me have been like miniature model sermons. The only thing I’ve done consciously to help him is to check some of the quotes from the Bible and elsewhere.”

One of the men smoking by the wall took a walkie-talkie out of his pocket, spoke into it, and came back. In the broad street outside, a single large tourist bus was slowly pulling up to the curb with one of the security staff guiding it, also with a walkie-talkie in hand. He walked over to where Ogi and Kizu were and asked if they’d allow these participants, who had overestimated the amount of time they’d be stuck in traffic, to come in early. As Ogi refused their request, Kizu saw a side of him he’d never seen before. “Have them find a place near the moat to park and let them eat their lunches a bit early,” Ogi instructed the guard.

The tourist bus started off again, the clump of children in front looking out the window at them. It was the women’s group Kizu had visited with Ikuo. The older girl who had led the line of children off after their prayers was among them, waving something that looked like a lily as it caught the faint white light. It was a hand bell. Her fingers rested on the inside to keep it from ringing.

2

In the meeting hall for the memorial service, a room combining the lounge and the dining room of the apartment building, there were already over three hundred and fifty participants, including the organizers. The women’s group were the only ones who had brought their children with them. Only they and the former members of the radical faction in the security detail were followers from before the Somersault; the rest were new converts from the past ten years, people Ogi had contacted after they had sent individual letters to Patron. One example of the latter was Ms. Tachibana, who’d brought along her mentally challenged younger brother. Ms. Asuka was there as well, recording the proceedings with her video camera.

After escorting Patron to his apartment and going down to check on the meeting hall, Kizu was asked by Ogi to take still photos of the event. Ogi clearly wanted to give him a role that would allow him to walk freely about the hall, not under the restrictions imposed by the security detail. Ogi added that, if things got out of hand, he and the others would whisk Patron to safety, while Kizu was to take refuge as quickly as he could in his apartment.

During their short exchange, the participants had lined up in the corridor beside the lawn on the south side of the building and were filing inside. Ms. Tachibana was there, along with her brother, his handsome, even solemn features set off by fixed eyes behind thin-framed glasses; a rather flamboyant woman in her mid-thirties was walking with them. When Ogi spotted her he flushed red in apparent consternation.

Kizu and the others were in the unused laundry room, watching the line of people through the frosted glass window. Dancer quickly noticed Ogi’s reaction. It was clear she was interested.

The time was soon approaching for the service, so Kizu and Dancer escorted Patron down to the elevator lobby. Kizu noticed that Patron was dragging his right leg ever so slightly, and as they descended to the basement, Dancer supported Patron’s back. They walked past the bicycle racks and the laundry room. When they came to the heavy door leading to the meeting room, they could sense the mass of people waiting there, even though there were no voices coming from the other side. All the participants had taken their seats, but they knew that Ogi, who was in charge of the itinerary, would want to stay on track, and it was five minutes before the scheduled start.

Kizu turned to Patron and asked about an attack of gout that had begun a week before.

“No, it doesn’t hurt anymore,” Patron replied, pulling himself away
from some other thought that preoccupied him. “The inflammation’s gone, just the embers left…. A long time ago, when I had my first attack of gout, Guide explained—very coldly, I thought—how it starts with the base of your big toe, moves to your shin, goes to your waist, and then reaches your heart. It’s already gotten to my shin. At first it doesn’t hurt so much, but at the end it spreads quite fast. I don’t have much time.”

Patron straightened up from the concrete wall he’d been leaning against to take the weight off his leg. Dancer, her paper-thin skin pale from excitement, took out a brush and tidied the collar of his midnight-blue jacket. Ogi opened the door to greet them, and Patron walked into the meeting hall, not dragging his leg at all.

Looking at Patron from behind, Kizu saw a relaxed man used to public speaking but with a touch of nerves. Perhaps out of concern for Patron’s bad leg, Dancer had set up the podium on the same level as the seats. Head down, Patron proceeded past the front row of chairs that pressed up close. Dancer and Kizu went over to stand in front by Ogi and Ikuo. Patron rested both hands on the podium, apparently taking a moment in prayer. Then he raised his head. A deep sigh wafted over the packed assembly.

Patron thrust his chest out and stood silently facing the audience. With a brusque but dignified movement he turned to gaze at the photograph of Guide and the high vase with its branches of dogwood flowers in full bloom that were behind him. Then he turned back to face the audience and spoke for the first time.

“Thank you all for coming here to this service in memory of Guide. In the years after the Somersault, until Guide was cruelly murdered, he and I were always together. For Guide and myself this was a time when we fell into hell. The most painful aspect of our hell was that during those ten years I never once had a major trance, and as a consequence Guide was unable to interpret any visions for me. We existed in a silent darkness. The kind of scene displayed here was over. Without recovering his health, Guide was lost to me.”

Patron fell silent again and turned back to the photograph behind him. It was a snapshot of the two of them sitting in armchairs in Patron’s study. Patron looked absentminded, as if recovering from an illness, while Guide, his hair dark and luxuriant, was leaning toward Patron.

Kizu looked around the hall. The group of women he’d visited on the hilly district along the Odakyu Line occupied seats in the center, a few rows back from the front, their quiet children with them.

“Why were the two of us together during those ten years of hell?” Patron went on. “Because each of us had had his own hell decided for him, I believe. We did the Somersault together and fell into hell together. One of the after-effects—or,
I should say, legacies—of the Somersault was that, as one condition of our respective hells, we had to see each other day after day. Then, after ten years passed and we were considering climbing up out of the abyss—in other words, when we were starting to grope toward a new beginning—Guide was killed. This was also exactly the time when I began to find signs that my trances were about to return.

“Once more I felt banished to the wilderness. Even if in the near future my painful deep trances were to return, without Guide’s intervention I wouldn’t be able to put these visions into words. All my suffering would be in vain. Now I believe I’ve found a new Guide, though I am not saying that I’ve discovered someone to translate my visions. The Guide who was murdered was a unique individual, which indeed was one of the reasons he was killed.

“Without him, when I return from my trances, emotionally and physically drained, I’m unable to extract information from the other side from my dark, muddled brain. A fear seizes me each and every day that, if I am unable to unravel it, this lump of information will disappear.

“Once I lost Guide, I started reading, desperately searching through books that might show me how to create a line of communication between this side and the other, which is what I want the new Guide to help me do. One thing I read was the description from the Bible of Jesus on the cross. As long as Jesus could complete his work on the cross, he could leave the resurrection entirely up to God.

“I quote from the gospel according to Mark.

“At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’—which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

“When some of those standing near heard this, they said, ‘Listen, he’s calling Elijah.’

“One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put in on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. ‘Leave him alone now. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,’ he said.

“With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

“The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”

“I just can’t get the face of Jesus out of my mind, crying out in a loud voice as the earth turns dark. I realize it’s a tasteless parody, but if I use the name that the old-timers among you are used to and imitate Jesus, in this dark situation I’m in right now, I imagine in my shock and anger I would
raise up a loud voice and cry,
My Prophet, my Prophet, why have you forsaken me?
”