If Patron can make a light shine in someone like that, not just in their hearts but inside their very bodies, Ogi thought, I want to do my utmost to help him. He was crushed by a lump of grief, but even if he wasn't aware of it at the time, at the far end of his sorrow was a ray of light, and the dark monster of his jealousy was even now in retreat.
6: GUIDE
1
Kizu had heard from Dancer about the separate annex in the compound where their office was located, but he'd never seen it. Almost immediately after he was released from the hospital, though, Guide let Kizu know that he'd heard about him from Patron and wanted him to come over to visit, so they set a date and time.
In the minivan on the way over, Kizu learned from Ikuo that while Ogi was spending all his energies in laying the groundwork for Patron's new movement, Dancer was spending all her time taking care of Guide's day- to-day needs.
"Guide says he wants to participate in the new movement, but Dancer told him that after managing to survive a burst brain aneurysm his number- one priority should be getting back on his feet.
"And Guide retorted, 'If I'm going to die anyway with my skull full of blood, I might as well work while I can for that slipshod friend of mine!"
They walked around back of the main building, a half-Japanese half- Western affair under the dense foliage of a camphor tree, and came upon a building with white walls and Spanish-style roof tiles. The walls were thick, like the ones Kizu had seen in farmhouses in Mexico; the whole thing was built like a jail, with double-pane windows. They opened the heavy front door, and Kizu waited with Ikuo for Dancer. The sound of a similar heavy door was heard upstairs, a band of yellowish light shone on the white walls, and Dancer appeared, dressed in black tights and an ice-hockey shirt.
As he and Ikuo followed her, Kizu noticed that the steep stairs seemed out of character with the sense of open space the building imparted, and once they were upstairs and he looked back, the entrance where they'd removed their shoes seemed strangely far away. The spacious room that Kizu and Ikuo were shown into, lined as it was with bookshelves, looked like an academic's study. Guide was at the other end of the room, lying back on a raised chaise longue.
Dancer had Kizu and Ikuo sit down on a shiny white wooden platform with cushions on top. Guide's chaise longue, writing desk, and chair were all made of the same material. They were all simple yet solid looking.
After the initial introductions, Kizu looked around the room, and Guide, whose color looked perfectly healthy, said, " Professor, you're in charge of the art education department, I understand. I'm curious. What grade would you give this room, B minus? C plus?"
"Nothing that low. It's clear what you had in mind, and I like that."
"Guide designed the whole thing," Dancer put in, "and supervised the construction too. My dance studio's on the first floor."
"Architects were mostly all members of their high school art clubs and good with their hands, correct? I just helped out a bit in calculating construc- tion costs."
"Shall I make the room brighter so you can see the details better?" Dancer asked as she stepped to the half-opened curtain.
"No," Guide said, stopping her. "It's fine the way it is."
"Is strong light bad for you?" Kizu asked.
"No, it's not that. I just thought you'd rather not see the scars from my operation."
Guide seemed to have a dark gray hood over half his forehead, though it may have just been a scarf wrapped around his head, the ends touching the collar of his sweater in back. He was a stylish man, belying what Kizu had heard. His features included a strong yet not too broad nose and a straight mustache that occupied a willful upper lip. A pair of equally neat eyebrows were raised upward, toward his covered forehead. He turned his large black shining eyes, the whites visible on both sides and below, toward Kizu.
"I understand from Ikuo, Professor, that you read about our apostasy in the newspapers in America. I find this interesting, since I've never heard the reactions of intellectuals to what we did."
"The New York Times reporter who wrote the articles about Patron and you is Jewish-you can tell from the name," Kizu said. "I don't want to over- simplify his level of knowledge, but he did bring up the name of Sabbatai Zevi, a seventeenth-century figure who announced he was the Jewish Messiah but who ended up being forcibly converted to Islam by the Turks. A colleague of mine, a historian of religions, told me that, despite Zevi's apostasy, his fol- lowers continued to believe in his teachings for many years afterward, in an area stretching from Turkey and Eastern Europe to Asia Minor all the way to Russia. This made me start to wonder whether, after your Somersault, there were followers who still believed in the teachings you'd renounced and, if so, whether you and Patron were able to ignore them."
"This is precisely the area I wanted to ask you about, Professor," Guide said, in a calm, strong tone. "Ten years ago Patron and I discarded not only our followers but our teachings. On national television Patron told our fol- lowers that what we preached was rubbish and he wanted them to stop their foolishness.
"Even when he's joking around, Patron is the kind of person who only speaks what he believes is the truth. We may have been driven into a corner by circumstances, but he wasn't compelled to say things he didn't believe were true.
"I was at his side as Patron frantically considered what to do, and I racked my brain as well. And I came to the conclusion that that's all we could do. We drove ourselves to the point where there was no other possible out- come. We were dead men then, you might say. Having done our Somersault, we were like the living dead.
"Everything before the Somersault vanished for us. It was as if we were amnesiacs, bereft of any traces of our former lives. Since we'd abandoned our faith, we were nothing more than living puppets. But even puppets suffer, you know. Patron felt this, and so did I. He called it falling into hell. I agree, but at no time during these ten years did we discuss what this hell consisted of. We lived together all that time but never spoke of what was really most important.
"After our Somersault we were, as I said before, like the living dead, but you might say we were hibernating. Like sick bears who may die in their cave at any moment. Patron is a complex person, and perhaps his inner ex- perience was different. But I have never in my life experienced such a lazy decade, perhaps too lazy for our own good. If mental activity gets rid of cholesterol, our lack of activity alone was enough to make the blood vessels inside our brains so clogged they'd burst."
Dancer was standing beside Guide like a well-trained waiter, holding a flower-patterned tray level with her chest, on the tray a cup of water and various medicines. As Guide spoke about laziness, she shook her head ever so slightly from side to side. And when he paused and turned to pick up the cup of water, she rotated the tray so the pills were in front of him, as if to say, No water for you unless you take your medicine.
"What you said, Professor, is quite true," Guide said. "There are still some people who remain in the church, and some who've formed their own communal groups and continue to maintain their faith. Just before I went into the hospital, some of them got in touch with me; I had planned to meet with one group that's still within the church. I didn't tell Patron about this, but when I was released from the hospital I found out that he was communicat- ing too, on a private level, with small groups who had written directly to him.
"We haven't talked about it yet, but it would seem that, now that a de- cade has gone by, Patron's thought processes and mine are leaning in the same direction. It makes me realize what happens when two people live so closely for so long.