Somersault (75 page)

“This is not just a spiritual question; it has surfaced in a physical way as well. The wound in my side—the one you call the Sacred Wound—has remained unchanged for the past ten years, but recently it took a turn for the worse. I came down with a terrible fever and felt the kind of pain I haven’t experienced in a long time.

“I’d never thought of comparing the two, but the notion occurred to me not long ago that the physical pain I suffered was similar to the agony I felt when I used to fall into a trance. The question is, This time did I bring back a vision from the
other side
, as in the old days? And if I did, with Guide dead, who was going to interpret it?

“My thoughts hit the usual dead end, but suddenly an idea struck me: No, things are different this time. I not only brought back a vision but was able to translate it into the language of
our side
. The one who played the role of Guide this time was Morio. I’d like to thank him for all his efforts while I was suffering.

“I’ll get to the details of how this came about in a moment, but what I brought back to this side, and was able to put into words with Morio’s aid, is something I didn’t comprehend until quite recently. I wasn’t able to see it for what it is: a message directed at the founding of our new church.

“As recently as this afternoon, while Professor Kizu was sketching me, I told him the problems I’ve had restarting the church after declaring that I’m an antichrist. Professor Kizu captured that aspect perfectly in the triptych. It’s still a rough sketch, but he’s done a wonderful job of depicting me as the Old Man confronting Jonah, the New Man, and the world they are about
to create. The painting helped me envision how my revelation would take shape, a revelation, as I said, that Morio helped me interpret.

“The painting portrays the confrontation between the antichrist sponsoring the church, the Old Man, and Jonah, representing the New Man, and the two of them facing the body of believers. The painting boldly depicts the basic misconception I had up till now about the difficulties I’ve been facing. My mistake lay in thinking that
I
should be the one to build the new church. But now I know that’s wrong.

“Right after Guide’s death, I asked Professor Kizu to assume the role of Guide for me. And as an artist, he has fulfilled those duties admirably. Just as Morio, in his own way, has done the same.

“Getting back to where I started: The night before my wound started to ooze, I came down with a fever; the pain hadn’t yet made itself fully known but was beginning. I woke up in the darkness and felt an excitement in my chest—whether from pain or joy I wasn’t sure. I don’t drink, but I wondered if that was what being drunk felt like. Very soon, I became obsessed with this thought—that for the first time in ten years I was about to fall into a deep trance. But Guide wasn’t here. I would suffer, and after all that pain there would’t be anyone to interpret the vision I brought back from the other side. It would be lost forever.

“I was desperate. I remembered the story Guide told me of the drowning child grasping at a straw. I reached out my hand in the darkness and my fingers brushed the Bible by my bedside, Guide’s old Bible. Morio noticed something amiss in the dark, and I passed the Bible to him. I don’t care where, I told him, just open the Bible and mark a passage with your fingernail. Morio took the Bible and did as I said, but it was dark; he fumbled with it and dropped it under the bed. This bothered him, so he picked it up again and marked a second passage. I was already coming down with a fever, and could only sense Morio moving about in the dark. The next morning the fever was worse and I couldn’t get up; later that day there was all that fuss about my Sacred Wound, so I couldn’t very well check out what I’d asked Morio to do the night before.

“Time passed. I noticed that Morio seemed concerned about the Bible, and finally I remembered the exchange we had had the night my fever began. I immediately looked through Guide’s Bible. There were two passages Morio had marked, and as I carefully read through them, I discovered that they both contained the expression
new man
. I had Mrs. Shigeno check into it for me, and can you imagine—in the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, those are the only places where that expression appears!

“Ever since my Somersault, what I’ve been thinking about is something along the following lines, not exactly verbatim from the Bible, but something
like this: As this world approaches its end,
a savior must appear who will make one the two that stand opposed, destroying in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, abolishing the law with its commandments and regulations
. And I believe that such a savior will surely come.

“He will create in himself one new man out of the two, making peace, and in this one body reconcile both of them to God through the cross, putting to death their hostility
. This too, I believe, will come to pass.

“That being the case, what role will an antichrist play? Precisely this: He is the Old Man who acts as herald for the savior. All sorts of antichrists will appear—strange, comical types of heralds who clown around and make fun of God. All antichrists, though, are united in the role they play as Old Man and all that term implies. They are the ones who pave the way for the savior. I am firmly convinced of this, which is precisely why I want to construct my new church as an antichrist.

“I also appeal to you through the second passage Morio marked in the scriptures:
Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; be made new in the attitudes of your minds; put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness
. I appeal to you as an antichrist, as one who will forever remain an Old Man. Even though I’m such an Old Man, one thing I
can
do is challenge each of you to become New Men! As the painting shows us, the time is ripe for our new church. Morio handled the Bible in the dark and fulfilled the role of Guide, and Professor Kizu, through his own pain, has done the same.

“To commemorate the start of our Church of the New Man, let us pray for Professor Kizu’s speedy recovery!”

2

Ogi found it too difficult to ask Patron directly about the two quotes, so he searched the Bible himself. He pored over scripture, searching in vain, until Mrs. Shigeno pointed out the passages. Some of her fellow Quiet Women, and some of the Technicians, had come to her with the same question, so she went over to the main office to make copies of the selections and distribute them. There, Ogi along with Dancer, learned about the passages.

Mrs. Shigeno gave Ogi and the others their own copies of the passages, which turned out to be from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. She couldn’t understand, though, she told them, why Patron chose the term New Man from this letter of the apostle Paul. When she used to attend meetings of the Non-Church Movement and there were talks on Ephesians, they always dealt with
such topics as predestination and the role of the church, never anything to do with the expression New Man.

The lecturer in her former church, a famous economist, began his talk with the question of why Paul, who was imprisoned at the time, would write a letter to the Ephesians in the first place. He explained that the reason lay in the fact that among the Christian believers in this Gentile land there were those known as Judaizers, who wanted to maintain the Jewish nature of Christianity. There was even some influence from the East, from Persia. Gnostic heretical beliefs arose about the nature of the soul and the body, as well as heretical opinions about angels.

“Now that I think of it,” Mrs. Shigeno said, “it does make sense for people like Patron and Guide, who basically have a syncretic view of religion, to be interested in the letter to the Ephesians. Patron can insist that Morio marked these spots in the dark, but that Bible was the one Guide was constantly reading, so I suspect these pages, ones he came back to over and over, naturally fell open. I have a feeling Patron senses that too, which is why he places such emphasis on them.”

Ogi merely listened in silence, but Dancer voiced her opinion in no uncertain terms.

“Unless I have some time to read these passages carefully and digest them,” she said, “Ogi and Ikuo are going to be miles ahead of me. Still, I feel energized somehow, knowing that Patron is taking positive steps to rebuild the church. No matter what, I’ve decided to follow him, but I am a little worried about how we’re going to build the church in this new setting. I’m really happy, though, that the day is approaching when he’ll reveal our future plan of action.”

“If that turns out to be the day you find true faith, it’ll be a happy day indeed,” Mrs. Shigeno said. “The first happy event of Patron’s Church of the New Man.”

After Mrs. Shigeno left the office, Dancer turned to Ogi.

“Mrs. Shigeno is shrewd enough to see that my working in the office here and following Patron like some groupie doesn’t add up to real faith. She might look like some sweet old lady, but don’t let looks deceive you—with all the struggles she’s weathered before she became a member of Patron’s church, and after his Somersault—there’s a lot more to her than meets the eye.”

Mrs. Shigeno had rather casually used the term Church of the New Man, and Dancer and Ogi soon realized that she’d wanted to test their reaction to the name, already the Quiet Women’s expression of choice.

With this pronouncement of Patron’s, the meetings of the Quiet Women began to take on a different character. They’d always allowed the Technicians
and the Young Fireflies to participate freely and join in their prayers, but now they limited attendance to their own members. Still, Ikuo and Morio and Ms. Tachibana, who was close to the Quiet Women, were also permitted to attend.

The rainy season had once again set in when Ms. Tachibana showed up in the chilly dim office to report on one of the meetings. At the morning prayer meeting, she said, Mrs. Shigeno had repeatedly used the term Church of the New Man in her sermon. Ms. Tachibana was unclear whether this was a new idea Patron was pushing or was something limited to the Quiet Women; at any rate, she took copious notes.

First, she reported, Mrs. Shigeno read aloud one of the passages from Ephesians that Patron had discovered with Morio’s help:
“In this way Christ’s purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility
.

“As a member of the Church of the New Man,” Mrs. Shigeno had said, “I’ve begun to see this passage in a new light. It’s so simple I don’t need to interpret it, but it’s saying that on the cross Christ created a new man out of the two. In building his Church of the New Man, Patron must be considering the cross as the place where he is heading too. Now that the end of the age is approaching, he has decided to take up his own cross. That’s the idea he’s building on, the cornerstone of his new church. He will mount the cross as an antichrist and in so doing will show us how to confront the end of the world. After his Somersault—a trying time for all of us—Patron descended into hell and returned to move forward. Now it’s up to us to define the roles we should play in the new church and move forward ourselves. Hallelujah!”

Ms. Tachibana’s thin-skinned oval face had lost its luster, as if she were suddenly preoccupied by some gloomy thought. She didn’t put her thoughts directly into words but circled around what really bothered her.

“Mrs. Shigeno also told Morio she’d like Ikuo to perform his composition, and he did. Morio and I were quite moved. But afterward, during prayer time, Mai was sitting right beside me and I couldn’t concentrate. I was concerned about all the talk about the children we’d left behind when we moved here joining us during the summer conference.… I worked for many years at a girls’ school affiliated with a university, which might account for how I feel when I think of the children like Mai I saw at Guide’s memorial service. I can’t help but fear that something terrible is going to happen. Will the children
get caught up in some disaster? I have no idea what kind of disaster, but all the same I worry about it.”

Ms. Tachibana looked at Dancer and Ogi, her normally pale cheeks turning a livid rose red with her violent emotions; she said nothing more and abruptly left the office.

Dancer tried to go back to her work, but she was too upset to continue. Before long she turned to Ogi, himself unable to concentrate, and said angrily, “Ogi, don’t you think Ms. Tachibana contradicted herself? She said she was moved by Morio’s music after Mrs. Shigeno’s sermon, the theme of which is the ascension to heaven at the end of the world. Yet she saw the children’s participation in this heavenly ascent as
unhappy
, as being caught up in a disaster.”

“How is that unnatural?” Ogi replied. “Even if what she says seems contradictory, if somebody sees children getting caught up in mass suicide as a disaster, to me that’s a healthy attitude. Though she never put it in such bald terms. People like Ms. Tachibana have their feet on the ground. If things ever get out of hand, you can count on her to put a halt to it.”

“You really think Ms. Tachibana would stand up like that?” Dancer asked. “Morio might be mentally handicapped, a child, really, but he’s already quite grown up. He wouldn’t get involved in anything dangerous connected with the children. Mrs. Shigeno is certainly a sophisticated woman, but don’t underestimate Ms. Tachibana and Morio—they’re more complex than meets the eye. Personally, on an emotional level I can’t relate to either Mrs. Shigeno or Ms. Tachibana. So until Patron defines the role of the Church of the New Man, at least while you’re in this office I’ll thank you not to use such careless terms as
mass suicide
.”

3

The next day that the rain let up, the temperature, rising since morning, had such energy to it that the soft leaves of the oaks and camellias—pruned under the direction of the former junior high school principal—wilted in the sunlight.