Dancer soon appeared, neatly dressed, in front of Ogi's desk.
"I guess there's nothing we can do now that you saw it," she said, in a sort of affected calm, "but I would appreciate your not saying anything to Ikuo, Ms. Tachibana, or, of course, Professor Kizu."
She turned her back on him, her rump tightly sheathed in her skirt, and walked to the kitchen; after a time, she came back, her tongue visible between her slightly parted lips.
"You saw the wound in Patron's side, right? When I said you saw it a moment ago, what did you think I was talking about?"
Dancer said this very quickly and then gazed at Ogi silently, her face flushed with anger.
"When you wash a man's body, you have to undress yourself, right? If you think I was reproaching you for looking between my legs, I don't know what to say! When animals aren't in heat, their genitals aren't even genitals really, are they? Which goes double for humans! You're no longer the inno- cent you once were. I thought you'd grown up a little!"
Dancer twirled her high waist in an about-face to the right and set off again to the kitchen to prepare a late dinner for Patron, Guide, Ogi, and herself.
Ogi felt numbed with a vague coldness as he rested his face in his hands.
He lowered his eyes to some documents on his desk, but he couldn't concen- trate on the words. I saw it, he thought, and I did turn away as fast as I could, didn't I? Didn't I try to erase what I saw as much as I could? Despite what went on with Mrs. Tsugane, I set my gaze on Dancer's fleshy genitals! But I did see it, and can see it still-that reddish dark thing on the upper part of Patron's chubby white left side.
Back when Patron was made the leader of the church, did he already have that red gouged-out pomegranate-shaped wound in his side? That wasn't a scar but an open wound, with fresh blood oozing out. Ten years ago when he did his Somersault, was the wound like that? Or did it appear in the decade that followed? Or maybe it opened up only now that he's starting a rel igious movement again? At any rate, Ogi thought, now I've seen something I never imagined I would-the strangest of wounds.
2
The following week was a busy one for Ogi. The reason lay in that phone call he'd answered from Guide to Patron, the urgent call that led to all those complications. Guide had told him over the phone that he wanted to have a chance to talk with Patron.
The doctor had recommended, as part of his recovery, that Patron take a short trip for a change of scenery, so Patron decided to take the three young People, Ikuo, Dancer, and Ogi, on a trip outside Tokyo. Preparations fell to Ogi. He got in touch with his mother for the first time in a long while and had her send him the keys to their cottage in Nasu Plateau-the place where he first saw Mrs. Tsugane. Ms. Tachibana dropped by the office on a day off from work at the library-she was planning to quit the job someday-and Ogi decided their trip should take place on Saturday and Sunday, when Ms.
Tachibana could take care of the office for them the whole day.
They set off from Tokyo in the minivan, Ikuo at the wheel, late on Fri- day night. They'd chosen this late departure to avoid any traffic jams, but soon found themselves side by side with eighteen-wheelers that monopolized the highway. The minivan was comically puny compared to these mammoth trucks, but with Ikuo's bold driving, not once did any trucker behind them blare his horn to hound them to let him by. Even when they left behind the satellite cities that ringed Tokyo, the highway was still lit by streetlights, the inside of the minivan darker than the outside. Patron was sitting directly behind Ikuo, Dancer beside him, with Ogi in the rear seat, which allowed him to view everyone else from the back.
Ogi wanted to take a good long look at these three people, the core group of Patron's new movement-minus Guide, of course-and as he looked at their shoulders and the backs of their heads, he was struck by emotions he'd never felt before, a combined sense of how strange it all was and how thrilling.
Ogi was indeed drawn to this elderly man, fast asleep like a worn-out teddy bear, his large head fallen back; even though Ogi was working for him, he still didn't understand the part of Patron that was on a quest for spiritual matters. Ten years ago, Patron had denied all the teachings he was working so hard to disseminate and had renounced his church. And now, even though he was starting a new movement, he still hadn't shown them any new teach- ings to take the place of the old. And here was this unknown factor--Ikuo -seeking to talk about spiritual matters with Patron. What sort of fate could possibly have brought Ogi together with these people as fellow voyagers? That he was with them was a fact, but each day it was one unexpected thing after another. Add eccentric Dancer to the mix, and Ogi had a premonition that this group was about to take him on the ride of his life.
The country house to which Ogi was taking Patron and the others was part of a large parcel of land his grandfather had originally obtained when the Nasu Plateau area was first developed, which had remained in their family ever since. When they arrived at dawn it was still dark, with low-lying clouds, and through a line of barren trees they could see two or three other villas. The Ogi family's place, though, a large Western-style home, stood alone in a desolate spot. It seemed different from his memories of childhood summer vacations… They decided that Ogi would go up to the villa alone to open it, while Patron and the others stayed in the minivan they'd parked on the road below; the ground rose up on either side of the road, which lay below a dried-up grassy slope. After checking the lights and the water and switching on the propane gas heater next to the stove, Ogi looked down through the cloudy window. The barren forest surrounding the building was an old one, with huge gnarled trees; some trunks that had been cruelly felled by a typhoon were scattered about. Ogi began to regret bringing Patron to such a cold, forbidding place.
Before long Dancer ran up to the house to get it ready and told him she'd give a signal when the house was warm, so Ogi walked back down to the minivan. For the first time ever, he found Patron and Ikuo engaged in a friendly conversation. Ogi boarded the warm minivan in time to hear Patron say, "It's not exactly a desolate wilderness, but with the woods like this, after the leaves have fallen and before the snows, it does have that feeling. The place I went to in my visions was like this."
Ikuo seemed surprised. "Guide told me it was more like a dreamy atmosphere."
"Guide was almost always the first person I talked to when my visions were finished and I returned to this side, so his impression of what it was like may very well be just as accurate. The sense I had of it, though, was like being in a desolate place like this, confronting that blurred white light. Since it was painful to go from the other side back to this side, as painful as dying, I imag- ine, I suppose it's a bit of a contradiction to say that the other side is a more bitter, desolate place than this side."
"I had the impression that Guide always spoke of your visionary world in bright, cheery terms."
"Whenever I come back from the other side I talk about what I saw there in a kind of delirious way, and Guide listens and explains it all in a logical way. What he says stuns me."
"How could that be possible? You're stunned by hearing your own ex- periences told back to you?"