"He can't explain in words what kind of music he's trying to compose, and I doubt he's even thinking in words when he does compose. As the com- poser put it, he's unable to verify things in language.
"I started thinking about the limits of my brother's music, and I became quite sad and depressed as I realized what a dead end it was. I was feeling so down the woman I knew at the Welfare Center took me to hear Patron's sermon.
"It took place long ago, but I still remember it well; it was as if his ser- mon reached out and grabbed me right where I live.
"I took notes on his sermon in my notebook here; it was based on the words of a seventeenth-century philosopher: God revealed himself in Christ and in Christ's spirit, not following the words and images the prophets had given.
When the true spirit of things is grasped, apart from words and im- ages, then and only then are they truly understood… Christ actually, and completely, grasped this revelation.
"As I listened to him read each sentence aloud and then comment on it, I couldn't contain myself. I had to ask a question. The meeting was held in a small shop converted into a residence, which because of rising land prices was about to be sold; fifteen or sixteen believers filled this dim room near the en- trance, and we were seated just behind them. I raised my hand, leaned for- ward, and nearly shouted out my question. 'Sir,' I asked, 'I don't know anything about this special person named Christ, but could this be applied instead to someone else-say, an unfortunate person? A person who doesn't even know he's unfortunate and has a pure heart? Is it possible that God could reveal himself directly, not through words, but through music?'
"After I said this, Patron wove his way on unsteady legs through the narrow space between the people sitting in front and came and held my hand and whispered to me, 'That's exactly right!' I was still a young girl, and those words stayed in my heart. I felt as if my body and heart were filled with light."
As if to calm the tide of excitement, Ms. Tachibana was silent for a time, staring at the black trunks of the cherry trees in front of her. Ogi turned his gaze not on the shadows of the cherry leaves but toward the deep-hued autumn foliage of the mistletoe, even now turning darker as night approached.
So even a woman like this, he thought, a serious, modest person who calmly goes about doing her own job and living her own life, was encouraged by Patron. And now, even ten years after the Somersault, that emotion still re- mains alive inside her.
"I've been thinking about this for a long time," she went on, "but if Patron can come to the Moosbrugger Committee, I want to bring my brother along as a kind of test-to see whether Patron would reveal God in him, directly, without words or images. In the past, when my brother listened to music, you could see light filling his body and heart. That was when my par- ents were still alive. But now he's more like an old man; his head droops. I want him to meet Patron and be filled again with light, the way he used to be. Wouldn't that be a sign of God's revelation? I know my idea is a little wild, but after all the trouble you've gone through I just had to tell you. I'm sorry to have kept you so long-I appreciate your listening to me."
"No, I'm the one who should thank you," Ogi said. "I'm glad to hear that Patron has such power, even after the Somersault. Once his plans crys- tallize, you can expect a letter from him."
Ms. Tachibana nodded and stood up, made a slight bow, and walked off alone down the stone pathway in the direction of the Yotsuya Station. Ogi could imagine her taking walks here during her lunch break, with an invari- ably gloomy, serious look on her face. With her stolid way of walking, which took one's attention away from her features or manners, she disappeared down the path, her heels clicking against the stone paving.
So that he wouldn't seem to be following her, Ogi had set off in the opposite direction, down the path through the cherry trees. The farther he went the darker it became, and the only way he could reach the paved road lined with streetlights was to stray off the path and head toward the grassy slope. The moment he stepped off the path that sloped down through the trees, a thick branch of a cherry tree raked across his eyes and nose.
Holding his face, he plopped down on the withered lawn and grumbled a complaint directed less at his own pain than at something beyond.
"Why do there have to be so many unhappy people in the world? No wonder someone like this self-styled Patron of Humanity appears. What in the world is happening to life on this planet?"
3
When Dancer asked Ogi to report on his progress in contacting people, he submitted a revised name list to her, but he decided to approach Patron directly about Ms. Tachibana.
"Do you happen to recall," he asked Patron, "a small gathering about ten years ago when a young girl, whose younger brother was mentally chal- lenged, asked you a question? She wasn't one of the followers of the church.
This girl, still in her teens at the time, listened to your sermon and said her whole body was fdled with light."
Patron's pensive face, which looked like it was covered with a thin sheen of oil, came alive, the color rising.
"I do remember that," he said, his voice so suddenly transformed that Ogi nearly regretted his words, thinking they'd been too much of a shock.
"The girl told me her body and heart were fdled with light, and I could see that her skin, even the part covered by her clothes, was glowing."
Ogi recalled Ms. Tachibana's forehead, perfect for the kind of crown that adorned a Girls' Day doll, her tiny lips and chin. An image of her face as a youngster--not a particularly attractive girl-flashed through Ogi's mind.
And of light flooding through her thin, pale skin from within.
"That woman belongs to a group called the Moosbrugger Committee, which is on our list. In fact, she's the one who wrote to you. She wants to invite you to visit them. Before things become too busy with your new activities, would it be possible to fit a short meeting with the members of the committee into your schedule? She said she wanted to bring her mentally challenged brother along, too."
Ogi made up his mind to report to Ms. Tachibana that, although Patron couldn't make a firm commitment at this time, he did get the feeling he was leaning in that direction. The university library was closed, though, for a Founder's Day holiday. He phoned Mrs. Tsugane, and she told him her hus- band had received an award given in northern Europe for his designs for improved furniture for elderly patients. He was in Europe now to attend the awards ceremony, and she was bored and asked Ogi to come over to see her.
She had something she wanted to talk with him about, she added. Her voice had a force in it that couldn't be denied, so Ogi agreed to meet her Saturday afternoon at the entrance to the Culture and Sports Center.
On the appointed day, though, when she alighted from the elevator, Mrs. Tsugane wore a cold, serious expression completely in contrast with her voice on the phone. Silently, she led Ogi along a stone path heading to- ward the top of a hill right before them crowded with various cultural facili- ties and stores. Sculptures lined the narrow path, Ogi taking particular note of a combination of slabs of metal with complex reflections of the light and one mounted on a concrete base like an egg sliced in half. Elderly couples and small groups of young girls especially seemed to enjoy shaking the movable metal parts of some of the statues and stroking an almost comically old- fashioned realistic statue of an infant.
With no rhyme or reason to the way the level areas and steps were ad- joined, it was a tiring walk up the slope, and Mrs. Tsugane, lost in thought, eventually led the way to an outdoor amphitheater surrounded by a horseshoe- shaped ring of sunken stone seats; she went halfway around and began descending the south side of the hill. Without a word to Ogi, she strode off quickly toward a colony made up of a small group of residences and an apart- ment building rising up from slightly below.