They could hear the sound of the cicadas that came out at twilight, and a twilight bird call Kizu was familiar with: a gray thrush, perhaps. The naked beams of the building loomed darkly above them; beyond the packed dirt floor of the proportionally large kitchen was a long window from which one could doubtless see the waterway they'd crossed on their way here. The wind blew in through the shutters. The air was moving enough to raise a sound from the gold-copper alloy fuigo.
The man who'd been working in the kitchen preparing dinner brought over a series of small plates on a shallow wooden box, something Kizu knew was called in the local dialect a morobuta. The man, past middle age, wearing a white collared shirt and cotton khaki trousers, turned out to be the former principal of the junior high school who'd done the trimming around Kizu's house. Asa-san hurriedly brought over the lacquer trays stacked up in back and lined up on them the dishes that her husband passed her.
Mr. Soda stood up and went over to the kitchen to a bucket of water and lifted up one of two bottles of sake inside it, provided by the activist sake producer whom Kizu and the others knew. The four-go bottle appeared to have been frozen and then thawed out, and the label had come off, the only bit of decoration the wire cap that held down the pressure built up by the fermentation.
"Tonight we have steamed chicken with a sesame sauce, chilled tofu with grilled eggplant, which we eat here with soy sauce, and then chopped bonito," the former junior high principal said, sounding as if he was some- one who liked to talk a lot but was purposely keeping his words to a mini- mum. "I'll be preparing some salt-grilled fresh-water trout as well, and for the final dish a specialty of this region, grilled sea bass in chilled miso paste.
You eat this over rice, so I brought over mortars along with the rice."
"He's been studying cooking shows on TV to prepare for tonight," Asa- san explained as she laid several small dishes of condiments beside each of the trays.
"Please have as many helpings of rice as you'd like," her husband said.
"The sake tastes really good when it's like sherbet so we kept it in the freezer, but the mouth of the bottle sometimes gets stopped up--that's why I've laid three chopsticks at each place setting, so you can use one to unstop the bottle if need be."
They watched his broad back as the former junior high principal went back to retrieve the trout.
"My husband has some curious ideas," Asa-san said. "Believe me, we don't ordinarily put three chopsticks down for each person."
4
What Kizu found interesting was that Mr. Soda and Dr. Koga, seated respectively on the north and east side of the sunken hearth, said a silent prayer before eating. Since he'd come here and had meals with church members, Kizu had never noticed this custom before. Perhaps the Kansai headquarters was actively preserving the way things were done in the church before the Somersault.
Next Mr. Soda poured a good amount of sake, now melted into some- thing less viscous than sherbet, into each of their matching cups, cups used for dipping sauce for soba noodles, a set he'd purchased as part of what came with the Mansion. After they'd downed this he filled each cup again, and everyone understood that was all they were going to get.
Asa-san took away the two sake bottles and went over to her husband, seated in the western corner of the room eating the same meal as the others, and refilled the cup he was just draining. She didn't, however, come back with any new bottles.
"This is a lot different from the usual way people drink in the country- side in Japan, isn't it-drinking themselves into a stupor," Kizu said, impressed.
"At the time he started the Base Movement in the Mansion, Former Brother Gii transformed the way drinking bouts are held among the young people," Asa-san explained. "Tribes in Africa do the same, he told them, drinking till they pass out, but things aren't so tough here that you need to do that." Her eyes, with their dense layer of sunburned wrinkles, turned red as she said this.
"The young local fellows I used to help in the construction of the chapel and monastery followed Brother Gii's custom," Soda put in, "and I'm trying to emulate that."
The former junior high principal brought over the rice, still in the rice cooker, and Kizu was amazed by the main dish in a large mortar. Asa-san scooped rice into each bowl, added some thick pieces of grilled sea bass and crumbled tofu, finally pouring over it the chilled miso paste the former prin- cipal had made, then passed a bowl to each of them, noting that they should add as much of the thinly sliced condiments-scallions, green shiso leaves, ginger buds-as they wanted. The former principal took his own large bowl back to his spot, and when Dr. Koga said in admiration, "This is fantastic!" he smiled happily and motioned to him to help himself to another serving.
Mr. Soda was the first to finish, and, as if planned ahead of time, he launched into a long-winded but organized monologue about Guide. Kizu was surprised by his frankness.
"I became a member of the church a little while after Dr. Koga, by which time the church was pretty well established. For me, though, the church was more Guide's than Patron's. Patron went into his trances, was able to open a corridor to the other side, and then related the visions he had there. This was the religious foundation we all relied on. As we stood on this foundation, though, it was Guide who urged us actually to go out and do something.
Without Guide the church's activities never would have gotten off the ground.
I'm not saying there could have been a coup d'état with Guide as the chief instigator, because Guide really needed Patron. Without the two of them in partnership, neither Patron nor Guide alone would have been able to do a thing.
"So both of them were our leaders, though in actual fact we looked to Guide. One time, when Patron wasn't there, we all gathered around Guide and peppered him with questions. We were very earnest about this. 'Why do you put Patron ahead of you when it comes to running the church?' we asked.
'What he says may be profound, but it's equally vague, isn't it? We need some- one like you who has clear-headed ideas leading us if we're actually going to do something. To borrow terminology from the Japanese Constitution about the Emperor, isn't Patron better as a symbol of the church, a symbol of unity for the believers?'
"Guide spoke quite openly to us then, and I thought it must be true. 'I had strong feelings toward my father who disappeared,' Guide said, 'so ever since I was a child I wanted to participate in a religious organization. I was kicked out of a lot of churches, though, and with no clue as to how to proceed I reached adulthood, and when I was teaching in night school I happened to run across Patron. His habit of falling into these trances convinced me he was a unique fellow. I knew he was the one, and that's how it all started.
'"Patron had nothing to do with ordinary people and eked out a living as a clairvoyant, but when I started living with him,' Guide said, 'his trances were on a different level from what I'd been led to believe. He'd come back from the other side more dead than alive and would mumble something in- comprehensible. As soon as I started being his listener-not just a listener but his adviser-I started getting actively involved. I'd gather together all his rambling statements, contextualize them, and give them back to him, and this formed the basis for some of the mystical things he then said. Gradually a clear narrative developed out of this. I had no doubt that on the other side Patron had otherworldly visions, and I became a loyal follower. In short order I began to tell all the followers what Patron had communicated to me. That's how I became Guide.' But did Patron have the ability to lead these followers in the kind of organized activities you expect of a church? 'Sometimes I had my doubts,' Guide told us.
"Once we heard this, those of us sitting around debating with him got all excited. Patron's visions had led all of us into a deeper spiritual understand- ing, but there were bigger trends to consider. As repentant souls we wanted to actually do something. Unless we prepared for the end of the world that Patron envisioned, there would be no reason for us penitents to live. 'These thoughts are making us suffer,' we complained to Guide.