This question-though not entirely unexpected-left Kizu at a loss for words. Patron didn't pursue the point further. The topic was deep, but his manner was serene.
"At the summer conference where we launch our new church, Ikuo isn't the only one who'll press me for an answer," Patron said. "The Tech- nicians, who wanted to reverse the Somersault so much they ended up tor- turing Guide to death, are now helping me, the one who played dumb about the whole Somersault. I have to steel myself to the fact that they're now going to turn the questions they had for Guide on me. And of course, there are the even more potentially troublesome Quiet Women ready and waiting in the wings."
Patron said all this in a burst of speech; then he stopped and, pondering something, ran his fingers through Morio's hair.
"Ah, Professor-could you pass me that book? I marked some lines in it. Jonah's finally come to Nineveh to act as a frightening prophet. Jonah curses them in the name of God, saying they will all be destroyed, so it wouldn't be surprising if they tore him limb from limb. But what about Jonah, who dared do something like that?
"However, here a great disillusionment lay waiting for him. When he saw the people of Nineveh repent, and God forgive them, he couldn't grasp the complex elusive nature of the heavenly dialectic, the workings of divine wisdom, so filled with a mysterious dissension, and the infinite, all-encompassing divine nature-so Jonah was spurred on to resistance and anger.
"And thus he spoke to God this way.
" 'Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.'"
"Aren't Ikuo and the Technicians and Quiet Women pressing me hard with that very same cry?
"There's another thing I'd like to say, taking off from Wolynski's theme, about Dostoyevsky. I find it fascinating that Ikuo is driven by these Jonah- like thoughts and takes so much time looking after the Fireflies. What I re- call is a passage written by Wolynski's translator, Haniya, about Aloysha's love for the boys, and the boys'
'Hurrah!' in response to this. I copied this down in the margins of this book.
"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!'
"Into what terrible state will our country's people have to descend in order to spark a worldwide repentance?" Patron said. "How far will Jonah have to step forward?… Oh no-this won't do at all. I've gotten so excited, Morio's having one of his attacks! Professor, let's call it a night. You can bor- row the book if you'd like."
Patron offered the book, then put his hand on the footrest of the barber chair and turned it around. He knelt down on the floor in front of Morio, who with a sweaty, stern look on his face lay slumped over, limp in the chair.
Sweat trickled down from Patron's pale neck to his back, and though he faced away from Kizu, unmoving, Kizu knew he was being urged to leave.
4
As Kizu cut across the courtyard's flagstone path, he saw a slim woman standing erect under the lamplight beyond the reviewing stands. A strange sight to see, considering the hour. Taking care not to startle her or take her unawares, Kizu deliberately rattled the loose iron railing on the stairs as he descended, and as he did so he realized that the woman was Ms. Asuka, who must have awoken at the sound he made going out and come to look for him.
Actually, when Ms. Asuka came out from behind the reviewing stands to where the lamplight reached and turned toward him, though she didn't show a bewildered smile, her body language showed she was, indeed, flus- tered, and she reluctantly raised a hand in greeting.
"Well, imagine a young woman standing all alone like this in the middle of the night, beside a mountain lake," Kizu said, answering her gesture. "No- body just saunters up here-aren't you afraid of wild animals?"
"Wolves are extinct here, and otters don't attack people," Ms. Asuka replied quietly, her voice mixed in with the hearty sound of cicadas. "I was worried about you."
"I saw a light in the chapel and went to investigate. Patron was there and we talked for a while. Ah… I see. You were imagining a depressed old man jumping in the lake? But I'm a lucky old man, whose terminal cancer has disappeared!"
"These past few days, though," Ms. Asuka said, "this lucky old man has been a bit gloomy."
Something black moved at Ms. Asuka's feet. Looking carefully they saw three or four small frogs at the base of the streetlamp.
"At any rate it doesn't look like I'll be drowning myself anytime soon,"
Kizu said. "Once you understood this you turned your attention to observ- ing these frogs, didn't you? You're quite the visual artist."
"Once I came down, the thought of climbing up into that shadowy grove of trees gave me the creeps. I heard voices from the chapel so I decided to wait."
The frogs sat there silently, heads up, the pulse in their necks visible.
Bugs were descending toward them in black streaks or flashes of iridescence.
One frog closest to the bugs suddenly moved, gulping down a bug from the air. Looking up at the streetlight one could see a clump of bugs like a single dark spot. Only a few of them were swooping down toward the frogs, per- haps finding the strength to fly again once they descended to the top of the light, or maybe being wafted away on a breeze rising from the lake.
Out of the group of frogs, all neatly maintaining their positions, one frog held a small gold bug that had fallen and lay upside down on the dam and, suddenly agitated, clawed at its throat with his front legs; one of the other frogs turned to face the spit out bug, but before it could anything about it the bug spread its wings and inscribed an arc into the dark night air.
Ms. Asuka, a smile clearly showing on her long face now, started to lead the way.
"What did you talk about for so long?" she asked, shining a flashlight to light the way for Kizu.
"We talked about how the Jonah in the triptych looks like the Jonah drawn by an artist named Watts. Patron showed me the book and I think he's right. It was Morio who originally pointed it out."
"I'd like to hear more and don't plan to go to bed right away," Ms. Asuka said, "so how about joining me for a drink?" And by the time they arrived at the home on the north shore, they'd agreed to do so.
They pulled two chairs over to one end of the study desk in the bed- room, and Ms. Asuka brought out two cans of cold beer and two double shot glasses of whiskey. They each mixed the beer and the whiskey in whatever proportion suited them.
Ms. Asuka spread open the book Kizu had borrowed from Patron and, sipping her drink with her thin lips, gazed at the copy of the inserted frontis- piece. She read a little of the text, her smile replaced by a serious, almost sul- len look.
Then she raised her face. "My, did the prophet Jonah really end up doing all these things? It's different from the book of Jonah that Ikuo doesn't like, the one that ends with Jonah accepting the Lord's harmonious sermonizing."
She passed the book over to Kizu, who read aloud a part that Patron had underlined.
"The theologian Gregorius recognized one more special characteristic of Jonah, saying that 'Jonah foresaw the fall of Israel and sensed that the blessings of the prophets would pass to the heretics. He withdrew from evangelizing, questioned the state of his church, discarding the ancient high place and position of the tower of rapture, and threw himself into the sea of grief.'"
"No matter which Jonah is the real one, persons named Jonah are born to suffer," Ms. Asuka said, holding the copy of the frontispiece between her slim fingers. "This drawing really shows that kind of Jonah. Almost too clearly, in fact… The part about the heretics is pretty important too, don't you think?"