Ogi felt sure that after this phone call he could cross one more name off his list, but the next day the woman called him back and told him two mem- bers of the Moosbrugger Committee wanted to hear more about Patron's new plans. As they talked, Ogi decided to go visit them to discuss it, something he hadn't done before. So on the weekend, he took the Chuo Line train from Shinjuku and, after a couple of transfers, arrived at this university town an hour away from the city.
Ogi was born and raised in Tokyo during the Japanese economic boom and had graduated from college at the height of the Bubble Economy, but he still had no idea what scale this Culture and Sports Center-built jointly by Japanese Railway and a private railroad line-would be. As he climbed the stairs running between the two railroad stations, he was taken aback at the mammoth building rising in front of him. According to a pamphlet he picked up, the center contained a large concert hall boasting a pipe organ brought over from Germany, a medium-size theater and some smaller ones, and, in a separate building, a hotel with an international conference center with facili- ties for simultaneous interpreting. The two identical postmodern buildings were linked, and the connecting office, outfitted with a kitchen, was where he found the woman he'd talked with, Mrs. Tsugane.
Ogi proffered one of his old business cards, explaining that though he was working now for Patron, he had ties to the foundation on the card. Mrs.
Tsugane stared fixedly at him, a searching look on her face. Ogi felt a wave of nostalgia looking at this woman's narrow face, which despite its finely chis- eled features had a soft profile. Even more so, her dark, damp hair, falling in a gentle wave, sent a clear memory of something, he wasn't sure what, run- ning through him.
Mrs. Tsugane, noticing him looking at her hair, casually explained that she'd been for a swim during her lunch hour. She seemed a bit embarrassed at her own vitality, the lithe way she moved her body, clearly trained in high school or college sports-all of which fit perfectly her open laughter on the phone. Overall she seemed a well-brought-up intelligent woman.
Mrs. Tsugane said that the two women Ogi wanted to meet would be a little late, so she'd go ahead and tell him what she knew about the Moos- brugger Committee. "The committee began as a reading circle set up to dis- cuss Musil's A Man Without Qualities," she began, "and took its name from the name of a character in the novel, a strange person involved in sex crimes.
The members included people with backgrounds in sociology and psychol- ogy as well as housewives who loved literature.
"When the committee was formed, they planned mainly to have talks with a retired member of the police force who had been involved in a major sex crime investigation. Soon they were able to directly hear from the crimi- nal himself, which made the name of the committee all the more fitting.
"However, relations with rather peculiar individuals brought about some difficult problems. At one point it became necessary to give an hono- rarium to one of the guests they'd invited. Because the committee itself didn't have the funds, they made do with a contribution by one individual, but this gave rise to all sorts of complications. As these mounted, the Moosbrugger Committee found itself at a standstill. The two members who are on their way to see you now-one of whom was the woman who made that contribu- tion-were the members who, after Patron and Guide incurred the censure of society with the Somersault, began to be interested in them and planned to invite them as guests. As I said earlier, the two women are members of other cultural groups besides the Moosbrugger Committee, so don't worry if you don't arrive at any definite conclusion talking with them today-it's not like they're going out of their way to come here."
Just as Mrs. Tsugane concluded her neat summary, the two women entered the office, one of them a modest yet obviously strong-willed woman in her thirties, the other, younger, a large, ashen-faced woman who, perhaps because of her makeup, Ogi found hard to characterize. Mrs. Tsugane intro- duced them, the first woman as Ms. Tachibana, the second as Ms. Asuka. Mrs.
Tsugane drew out the older of the two women to talk about what led her to send a letter to Patron. Mrs. Tsugane handled this in a considerate yet efficient manner that increased Ogi's admiration for this experienced career woman.
Ms. Tachibana looked straight at Ogi through egg-shaped glasses; she sounded as if she'd prepared her remarks in advance.
"When the Moosbrugger Committee was originally formed-I wasn't yet a member then-their first guest speaker was a member of Patron's church. He was quite a strange character, which made him perfect for the committee: so much so they dubbed him 'Our Own Moosbrugger.' After he heard Patron's sermons, this man came to the outrageous conclusion that, with the world about to end, it didn't matter what sort of terrible things you did- in fact, those acts might even be of value-and he committed a crime. He'd served his time in jail and was out at this point, and we paid him an hono- rarium to speak to us about his experiences. I became a member the third time he spoke to us. I think he got the nickname Our Own Moosbrugger because he appeared so many times.
"At our meetings, someone raised the idea that it would be interesting to hear from the leader of the church the man belonged to, to hear his opin- ion about all this. We discussed it further, and this being a time when media reports on the Somersault were still fairly fresh in people's minds, we put two and two together and realized that the church leader on TV and the leader of Our Own Moosbrugger's church were one and the same. Maybe from the beginning it was unrealistic to ask this former leader who'd renounced his own church to come speak to us, seeing as how it'd be difficult for him to compare the radical faction that caused him so much trouble and a person like Our Own Moosbrugger.
"Still, the committee began to make preparations for his visit, came to me for advice, and that's how I ended up a member. The reason they came to me was that I'd talked to Ms. Asuka here, whom I'd met at the documentary film society at the center, and told her that I'd heard Patron give a sermon to a small gathering-this was before the Somersault, of course-and had been quite moved. Ms. Asuka makes films; actually, she's making her own docu- mentary about the main speaker at the committee, Our Own Moosbrugger.
She's a very self-assured woman and has a job that ordinary people would never think of doing, in order to earn the funds needed to finance her film.
She's the person who contributed the honorarium. At any rate, I was the one who sent the letter to Patron, using the name of the man who was the repre- sentative of the committee. You might think I thought that with Patron out of the church he might consider coming to talk with our group, but that wasn't my motivation at all; I just wanted to meet him myself."
"Did Patron write back?" Ogi asked.
"They waited a long long time and only now have a reply," Mrs. Tsugane put in.
"That's right. Over a thousand days. So-would it be possible for him to visit our group?"
"Patron's restarting his religious activities for the first time in a decade,"
Ogi said, "and he's contacting those people who wrote to him during that time.
So it might be possible."
"If he were to come, we'd have to get our committee up and running again. Not to bother him with old tales of Our Own Moosbrugger but to lis- ten to one of his wonderful sermons."
"I'd like to film his sermons too, since you've told me, Ms. Tachibana, how powerful a figure he is." Though her name had come up in the conversation, Ms. Asuka had remained silent, her flat face impassive in its greasepaintlike makeup. Now her remarks went immediately to the point.