And the followers who came to the building to pray, with great awe and sadness, insisted that the two leaders, after their Somersault, suffered so much that the souls of the two men took leave of their bodies and floated beside them as they prayed.
"Who knows?" Kizu said to the American reporter. "Maybe the souls of those two men really do fly all the way to those woods and into that mod- ern building." And he sighed.
4: READING R. S. THOMAS
1
On the day Ikuo phoned the office in Seijo, the young woman's reac- tion was different from when he met her in the restaurant. Sounding tense, she asked him to come alone.
During the morning of the Saturday awards ceremony Kizu attended, Ikuo had moved his things into Kizu's spare bedroom. He whiled away the rest of the morning without unpacking and then drove Kizu's car over to the young woman's office.
At four in the afternoon, Ikuo had phoned Kizu and told him the girl had had a car accident the day before yesterday at the entrance to the parking area of the hospital when she went to pay Guide a visit. She wanted badly to go see Guide that evening, but the young man she worked with was busy with preparations for starting Patron's new movement. With her car still in the repair shop she'd have to rely on Ikuo driving her in Kizu's car. Kizu still had to get ready to go to the architect's reception-and get the tuxedo prepared he'd convinced himself he had to wear-so he had ended up calling a cab.
Ikuo returned home late that night and told Kizu that the young woman wanted him to work as their official driver. His first assignment would be to pick up her car when the repairs were finished the beginning of next week.
He'd already quit his job at the athletic club, and the office would pay him a salary, so Ikuo was enthusiastic about the idea. The working hours were open- ended, he said-though later on they proved not to be-he'd just go over whenever they needed a driver. It shouldn't interfere with his modeling for Kizu- One more reason Ikuo was so drawn to this job offer was that driving for Patron would give Ikuo the opportunity to talk with him-although Pa- tron had yet to say a word to him of any spiritual matters.
Ikuo began to go every day for a full day's worth of training at the of- fice. Guide had still not regained consciousness, Ikuo reported, but in other respects was recovering nicely. Patron mostly stayed in his room; Ikuo had only been able to speak directly with him a couple of times but found him fascinating. "And the girl is called Dancer at the office," Ikuo added, "so that's what I'm going to call her."
A week passed, and word came that Patron wanted to meet Kizu, so he and Ikuo left for the office together. Kizu could sense Dancer at work be- hind the scenes to make this invitation possible. Ikuo had not yet had a good long talk with Patron, but starting on this day Kizu was able to.
Patron's voice was low but resonant. "I hear you're an artist," he said right off, skipping the usual formalities. "Even if I hadn't known that, I could have guessed." Patron was sunk deep into an unusually low armchair, his chubby, round face full of childlike curiosity. "It feels like you're tracing the outlines of my face and body with a pencil."
Kizu was flustered and didn't know how to respond. He and Ikuo had first been escorted to Patron's combination study and bedroom by Dancer.
Patron was still in bed. Dancer helped him over to the armchair and brought over a chair to face Patron for Kizu to use; Ikuo glided smoothly out of the room as if by previous arrangement. Kizu was introduced by Dancer to Ogi, "whom Patron calls our Innocent Youth," she said, who was working in the office at the front of the house.
"While you're observing me using your professional skills," Patron went on, "I've been doing the same. I sense you're undergoing a major change in your life right now, on a scale you've seldom experienced before."
Kizu found it comical that Patron would adopt the strategies of a fortune- teller on a crowded street, yet confronted with this man's dark eyes-steady, surprised-looking beady eyes, the whites showing above and below almond- shaped lids-the thought occurred to him that he might very well end up kneeling before him to confess his innermost thoughts. Considering his cancer relapse and his emotional and physical relationship with Ikuo, Patron's fortune-telling was right on target.
At any rate, to distance himself and give a neutral reply, Kizu relied on the skills he'd acquired teaching in an American university and brought up a Poet he was familiar with.
. When you reach my age," he said, "the sort of change you've mentioned is inevitably linked with death, though I try not to think about it. In this re- gard I've grown fond of a certain Welsh poet. I hope I can face death with the attitude found in his poetry."
Kizu went on spontaneously to translate a verse he'd memorized in the originaclass="underline" '"As virtuous men pass mildly away/ and whisper to their souls to go,' the poet writes, showing dying humans calling out to their souls as they are left with just the physical body. I think this fits me to a T."
"Usually it's the opposite, isn't it?" Patron said. "If one could make such a clean break with the soul, imagine how soundly the body would sleep. I've read John Donne myself. One of his other poems goes like this, doesn't it?
'But name not Winter-faces, whose skin's slack;/ Lank, as an unthrift's purse; but a soul's sack.' If an elderly person's body is like a withered sack, it should be easy for the soul to make its exit, I imagine."
Kizu was embarrassed at having his superficial knowledge exposed.
Instead of reproving him, though, Patron seemed to want only to show Kizu that he too was enamored of poetry.
"I haven't read any poetry for years, Japanese or foreign," Patron said.
"You've recently run across a new poet who has impressed you, have you?"
"It seems like everything about me is coming to light, bit by bit. But you're right," Kizu answered honestly. "Last summer I attended a sympo- sium on art education in a town called Swansea in Wales. The organizer of the seminar presented me with a volume of poetry by a local poet. That evening, as I leafed through it in our cliffside hotel it encouraged me so much-physically and mentally-that I couldn't stay lying down." (As he said this, Kizu realized that he'd always associated this restlessness with the re- lapse of his cancer; now he was pleased to interpret it as presaging his rela- tionship with Ikuo.)
"Despite my age, my face grew red and I paced back and forth in the small hotel room. Even if I were to meet this poet, I almost moaned, I don't have the energy or time left to respond to him, do I? You might suppose this marked some major change in my life, but I'm afraid I'm too wishy-washy a person for that."
"You said it was Wales, but the poet wasn't Dylan Thomas, I assume?
Since you said you've just recently discovered him." Patron asked this quickly, like some teasing child.
"The poet's name is R. S. Thomas."
"What kind of poems were they? Can you remember a verse, any at all?"
Patron asked, even more impatiently.
"I'm afraid I can't memorize verses like I used to… About his themes, though, maybe because his name is Thomas, he wrote several poems about Doubting Thomas. He wrote from Thomas's viewpoint, discussing the rea- sons why he had to touch Jesus' bloody wounds before he believed in the resurrection."
Patron's almond-shaped eyes were unusually intense as he listened.
"I wonder if you would read tome from his poetry collection?" he asked, making it clear this was not a passing wish. "Even if just once a week. Ikuo will be working in our office, and he's told me you have an interest in our activities too. For the past ten years I've needed to do this kind of study but haven't been able to."