"Even after Guide had determined where his family was, he still came sometimes to our meetings; before long his wife filed for divorce. His wife was afraid of him and didn't show up in family court, so the divorce wasn't finalized, but Guide just left it at that. He said the reason he didn't get di- vorced was like the idea you had, Professor Kizu, of you and Ikuo grasping hands and heading off to the other side. When his autistic son was to head off to the other side, Guide wanted to be there to help him. Guide had been over- zealous in educating his son so the boy had rebelled. When Guide had tried to suppress the rebellion, the mother felt sorry for the boy and the two of them ran away from home.
"Still, though, Guide's dream was to be able to help his son on the other side, to mediate between his son's soul and God. He couldn't give up this idea.
Guide was able to interpret my visions, and finally that became his full-time role. But behind his becoming a pillar of the church lay these personal emo- tional motives.
"And now Guide is unconscious, his body reacting only mechanically.
On the one hand is the brain of the autistic son, closed to the world outside; on the other, the brain of the father, struck down by an aneurysm. I'm haunted by a scene of endless sky and far-off horizon, with two oval-shaped dishes like these lying there. And a human brain on each one."
Patron held a large plate to the lacy apron at his chest, and while Kizu pictured what was happening in a far-off building surrounded by snow, he almost burst out laughing. With Patron's combination of the tragic and the comic, his solemn seriousness and his occasional doubtfulness, Kizu couldn't help but know he was in the presence of someone quite special.
"What really hurts most when I think of Guide is what he told me after he had his first attack, when he recovered and came home from the hospital.
When the blood vessel in his forehead burst, he said, he didn't get confused right away. He felt bad, got up go to the rest room to try to throw up, and was halfway there when he suddenly found himself not inside a building but standing in a wilderness at twilight. And with a great noise, this whole wil- derness was rolling up from the edges at the horizon. And then he lost con- sciousness. Guide used this expression, which makes it seem that the vision I had that I just told you about was something he told me. That's how strong a relationship we'd built up over such a long time.
"What comes to me now is that during his second attack there must have been a short period when his mind was still clear. Guide knew what was going on. How frightened he must have been, wondering whether the group that took him captive was hoping he'd collapse. He must have felt a terrible sad- ness too, knowing he'd lost forever his chance to find his son and escort him to the other side.
"That's how I imagined Guide's experience. And the conclusion I came to, Professor, is that although Guide wanted to be a mediator for his autistic son, in fact it was the son who was his railing, his lifeline."
Patron ran out of words. His spiritless face, poised between his bent left hand, about to grasp a plate, and his right, holding out a dish towel, fairly glinted with sorrow.
As he had never done before to anyone, Kizu placed his arm around Patron's apron-wrapped shoulder and led him out of the kitchen. The cur- tains were still open, and in the darkness of the garden the snow began to swirl silently. The two elderly men, in their loud aprons, faintly reflected in the windowpane, looked just like two children in a nursery school Christmas pageant who had stood rooted to one spot until, years later, they'd grown old.
2
Kizu planned to take Patron to his bedroom study and then wait in the office in case there was an emergency call from the hospital. But as they rounded the corner in the hallway Patron came to a halt and refused to go farther. Reluctantly, Kizu led him to the living room sofa, but again he pro- tested wordlessly and sat down in the armchair facing away from the glass door leading to the garden.
"Would you like to listen to Bach again?" Kizu asked.
Looking back at him, Patron shook his head.
"Well, then," Kizu said, "maybe I can use this opportunity to ask you something Ikuo wants me to ask."
"Dancer already told me," Patron said. "She came to me all excited and said Ikuo had just asked you to put this question to me: Whether false savior or genuine, how did you start thinking you were the savior? Isn't this what he wanted you to ask?" Kizu nodded. "Since he used these exact words with Dancer, I think that even before Ikuo talked to you he knew exactly what he wanted to say.
"The best way to answer is, once again, to begin by talking about Guide.
When I asked him to take on the job of Prophet, I didn't have a clear sense of myself as Savior. It was only after I forced him into the role of Prophet that he began to see my trances as mystical experiences and convinced me that I could use them to lead him and other people.
"Ever since I was a certain age I knew I couldn't avoid having these experiences. Over time they jolted me out of the everyday. Every time I had a mystical experience I suffered and was worn out, though afterward I felt totally energized. After I returned to this side, I was driven to tell people what I'd seen over there. Before Guide was with me I experimented with all sorts of ways to do this, but no one took me seriously, except for the predictions I made after I reluctantly starting earning a living as a fortune-teller.
"Soon I'd fall into depression again and begin to regret the stupid things I was doing. As I became more and more depressed, I had a premonition that when I hit bottom I'd be thrust into another mystical experience. So I real- ized depression wasn't going to make me kill myself.
"I was repeating this cycle over and over when I first met Guide. A true man of science, no doubt he was eager to uncover this fortune-teller as a fraud.
But the scene I saw in the trance portrayed-quite accurately, it turned out- his wife and autistic son.
"Since he was a scientist, Guide placed a high value on the scientific method and believed the only valid theory was one that grew out of this. He studied my trances with great inquisitiveness and soon experienced one of my deep trances. He made a distinction between the two kinds and concentrated on the more intense ones, with their visions I couldn't comprehend yet couldn't let slip away.
"Guide wasn't the kind of person to be satisfied with a halfhearted re- sponse, so I felt cornered and for the first time got serious about these visions myself. He took care of me when I had my trances, and I did my best to tell him the visions that remained like echoes in my mind. As if I had no other choice, I talked for about an hour, and gradually the roles of speaker and lis- tener were reversed. He connected the fragments of my vision and began talk- ing to me, convincing me that yes, indeed, what he was saying was what I saw in my trance.
"Since he could describe what I saw in my visions, I began to rely on him more and more. I would fall into one of these painful trances and have a vision, and during its aftereffects, when my psyche was still half destroyed, I'd blurt out some nonsense. He helped me link up the person I became in moments like that with the person I was after I'd recovered. I felt I could pull together the shattered personality I'd believed to be lost for over a decade.
"As I said a while ago, right after my trances I was always worked up.