"Patron was so open to me, I believed everything he said. And I was certain that someday, through this man who himself would be saved, I would reach salvation too. But I also considered at times what it would be like if I didn't reach salvation through him, and intimations of that fright- ening thought made me shudder. Patron seemed to struggle with the idea of the need for salvation in an incomparably deeper way than I ever did. One thing I was sure of, though, was this: Apart from his intercession, I could never be saved."
As these memories of what Guide had told him came back in snatches, Ogi once again had a sense of what had woken him up. Ah, he thought, this is what I felt earlier. He opened his eyes to the dark purplish gloom and turned on the hard flat bed to face the man-made lake.
Later on, when he reviewed the order of events in his mind, he was cer- tain this is how it happened, but soon after he turned in the direction of what he sensed, in a sky that was so jet black he hadn't closed the curtains before he went to bed, far off in the still-falling rain, he saw it happen. A large light lemon-yellow disc floated up, at the top of which were five shining hemi- spheres. The lower part was a giant black upright pillar in which were three shining rectangular doors. It was as if a UFO had flown though the vast dark- ness and suddenly come to a halt.
Ahí Ogi heard a voice call out, something halfway between a sigh and a shriek.
The cry came from Dancer's room… so this wasn't just some illusion he alone was seeing! Ogi looked hard into the gloom and saw the glowing saucer and the pillar with its bright doors open soon shut in the rocklike darkness.
I believe God is in this world too, Ogi thought, half asleep, but not a personified God who has the facial features of any particular race-a God instead who would appear like this structure, built of light and darkness. Ogi knew, though, that in the morning he wouldn't be able to regain this total understanding he now had, and that he wouldn't speak of it to Dancer. And certainly not to Patron.
18: ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION (I)
1
After it grew light out and Ogi had awakened again, he lay still in his wooden box of a bed, waiting for time to pass. The night before, he and Dancer had talked until late and had made do with just a light dinner of ham and let- tuce sandwiches. They'd found the sandwiches at a local market, and though the place didn't seem to have many customers Dancer declared the ham to be fantastic and showed a great deal of interest in the people who produced it lo- cally. That was all they ate, washed down by some milk, so now, in the morn- ing, Ogi didn't feel any special need to use the toilet. He also hesitated to use the bathroom before Dancer had a chance to.
Ogi gazed up from his bed at the foliage of the stand of Japanese oaks that cut off his view of the broad sky. From the window on the lake side, there were overly luxuriant pomegranates and camellias bursting with leaves as far as the eye could see. The trees were covered with young leaves, bright green against the cloudless sky; only the places where the leaves overlapped were dark green, like a multilayered watercolor. A childhood memory came to him-from a school outing, perhaps, he couldn't recall exactly-of lying down like this and gazing up at tree branches from this angle.
Soon the whole area was filled with a cloud of soft fist-sized little lumps descending from the sky and letting out high-pitched screeches: a flock of wild birds. Two or three of the birds, like puffy little white balls, hung upside down on the tips of the slender branches of the Japanese oaks. Before long, in search of bugs to eat, the flock flew off to another corner of the slope, and a profound silence returned.
After a while, the same shout he'd heard last night came from the next room. Ogi sat up in bed, ready to meet the intruder. Dancer came in. She had on green pajamas, and her mouth was open wider than usual.
"There's fresh blood! Just below the window!" Dancer said to Ogi reproachfully.
Ogi had slept in his underwear. He wrapped the light bedcover around his waist before going over to the window and shoving open the heavy single pane. And as he looked out, he too was taken aback. From the western edge of the house a pellucid stream seemed to meander over the grass and flow into the lake. From the stone apron where the stream turned, a red belt seeped upward toward them. Ogi took a breath and, after realizing what he was see- ing, said, "They're lake crabs that've floated up because of all the rain last night."
Dancer looked back at him with a look of disgust, then took her turn looking out the window.
"They're pretty small crabs, and so many of them. They're not even boiled, yet look how red they are. Anyone would think it's blood flowing."
Her slender taut calves emerged from under her pajama bottoms. Her whole body, from her thighs, butt, and waist-trained through her dancing- to her straight shoulders and thin neck, was a strange mix of firmness and fragility.
"You spent your childhood in Tokyo," Ogi said, "and earlier in down- town Asahikawa, right? I imagine you've never seen crabs float up like this before."
"So you know all about the flora and fauna in Hokkaido. But do you know the names of the birds that were just here? The Japanese great tit."
Standing beside the window, Dancer turned toward Ogi, seated on his box bed, the color quickly returning to her face.
"I agree with Asa-san that this is a special place," she said, trying to regain the upper hand. "I guess I jumped to conclusions. I find it amazing how the abandoned followers of Patron and Guide, while the two of them were in hell, laid the groundwork right here, in this land. You know something? In the middle of the night, I saw a sign that the land here accepts our church!"
Ogi recalled what he'd seen the night before. But he'd also been there when Dancer had been handed the complete set of keys to the chapel. It was hard to imagine that someone else had gotten into the chapel and turned on the lights in the middle of the night.
Leaving Ogi to his thoughts, Dancer disappeared toward the bathroom near the entrance, her pajamas swishing like a dance costume.
As they ate a repeat of last night's supper, they heard a new disturbance from the far shore. Dancer was sitting at the dining table diagonally across from Ogi, her back to the east as they ate, and they both turned to look at the glistening trees and the building, newly washed in the rain. In the forest be- hind the chapel, people hidden by the stand of trees were rushing by. In the wind blowing up from the south there was the sound of feet, a line of people tutting through the forest.
"Lumberjacks, maybe?" she asked. "Heading toward jobs in the woods?"
"If that's what it is, it'd just be a couple of them. And wouldn't they use animal trails to go up the hill?"
"People hunting wild boars?"
"It sounds too orderly, like a troop of Boy Scouts out on a hike."
"I thought this was a quiet place, but I guess not."
"But at least we're not being surrounded by people with placards op- posing the arrival of the 'fanatics,'" Ogi said.
Dancer said she wanted to go over that morning to see if the cottage Asa-san had suggested for Patron to use was suitable. Before she went down along the narrow path toward the dam she went out to look at the crabs close up, only to report back to Ogi that they must have slipped into new holes that had opened up in the soil because they'd disappeared. Her shoes were muddy, and in one hand she held a newly emerged brown cicada on a butterbur leaf.