After some tiresome haggling with the owner, they agreed that he would go pick them up, provided Kizu paid for it, the owner finally coming out from the entrance of the old wooden building to accept their documents. A woman who had been in the back of the dirt-floored entrance preparing a long box for shipping ran after him.
"Hello, Professor! It is Professor Kizu, isn't it? I'm Mayumi, the one you helped arrange an exhibit of Japanese dyed cloth in New Jersey. I'd heard from Gii that you were here."
Kizu searched his memory as he gazed at the woman, clad in a white – and indigo-dyed dress, her face with its taut tanned leathery skin smiling at him.
"I must look very different to you, I'm sure. I used to have quite luxu- riant hair, but this spring I developed a rash from the dyes, and look what's happened. I'm sorry if I startled you."
Kizu's memory was still a little hazy, but Mayumi was sure he remem- bered her and continued, bashful at her own recollections.
"Would you mind talking for a while? There's no coffee shop along the river, but there is a nice little place just right for having a talk."
Kizu and Ikuo agreed, and Mayumi led them on, a basket woven from arrowroot swinging at her side.
"Just up the river from the main bridge there's an old bridge at the next curve in the road. No one drives on it anymore, and it's perfect to sit there and have a chat or to cool off. In fact that's how the local people have been using it."
The bridge had a weathered railing made of coarse granite, with a line of logs set up to keep cars out and thick knobby stumps and short logs ar- ranged for people to sit on, making the bridge into a small park. Mayumi led them to the center.
On the opposite shore a grove of zelkovas formed a screen with their still, soft, light-green leaves. Seeing Kizu observing the trees so closely, Mayumi explained about the zelkovas and the broad-leafed woods on both sides of them.
When she moved into the small house next to the farm, construction on the cross-Shikoku highway bypass was in full swing, and the cypress and cedar woods had all been mercilessly leveled. Cracks and holes appeared all through the broad-leafed woods that ran down to the riverside. But in the years since, the forest had recovered, and looking from below, at least, greenery covered the remaining wall of the bypass that ran though it-so much so that if a major economic downturn came and the bypass were to close, trees and vines would soon cover the slope completely, returning it to the state it was in before human beings inhabited the valley.
"It's past the season for it, but when the new leaves are sprouting and the flowers are in bloom it's a remarkable sight. Over there are beeches and oaks. And just up the river a little way when the kpjii flowers are in full bloom, a shiny golden light-green, they're absolutely magnificent. Behind the chapel it's all one line of dark green, right? Those are Chinese hawthorns, and the place where they come together with the kpjii is beautiful. The temperature's cooler than by the river, and it's in the shade for a long time, so the flowers were in full bloom until a short while ago."
As Kizu obediently listened to her, he looked around the expanse of broad-leafed trees, and up at the cypress and cedars beginning to be shaded with an indigo that, to him, was as pleasant as the throng of young leaves.
From the bright cloudy sky a layer descended-snow or fog, it was hard to tell-the tips of the pillars of fog at the top of the forest rising to touch the darker layer, the tops of this lower layer visibly blending with the cloudy sky and forming a contrast with the forest below.
"Gii formed the Fireflies in order to work out his concept of creating a community independent of the outside world, didn't he?" Ikuo ventured.
"Yes, but these long-distance trucks run day and night down that high- way, with no connection whatsoever to production and consumption in this valley. And as long as that continues, the bypass to the highway won't be closed to traffic like this old bridge was. Gii's not the sort to amuse himself with the impossible. 'My daydreams aren't real,' he told me once."
Feeling snubbed, Ikuo turned his dark face toward the river's surface, from which fog was also rising. For her part, sensing distrust of what she'd just said in his attitude, Mayumi continued seriously.
"Still, Gii has a concept of what the future holds and insists that there is a sense of reality to it. When he says that, the only thing I can say is No way! to put a damper on it.
"The kind of future Gii envisions is one in which the outside world has died out and the world constructed by the Fireflies is all that survives. This goes way beyond the notion of closing down the highway, but I can tell you he's dead serious about it!
"Gii's mother, Satchan, and I go way back. When she and Gii's father were running the Church of the Flaming Green Tree, one of their support- ers was a woman pianist who also worked in international exchanges of vari- ous sorts. In a storage shed at the Farm, Gii ran across a Bach CD of a Russian pianist whom the woman had invited to Japan at one time.
"Gii was moved by the performance, but he got a hint for his concept from a poem the pianist wrote. Particularly the line Perhaps the world has already passed away. Listen to the Italian concerto, Gii said, the second move- ment, the andante, and that's how he began conceiving his unique vision of the future.
"Since the world has died, the people living in it are, of course, dead themselves. They're just pretending to be alive, Gii says. But sometimes, very rarely, you'll run across someone who is truly alive, like this Russian pianist, who stands opposed to the already dead world. Gii decided that in the future he wants to act the same way-as someone alive in an already dead world."
"I've felt the same thing," Kizu said, "that there are two coexisting worlds, one already dead, the other living. The two worlds overlap, and the world we know is a mix of the living and the dead."
"I don't really understand it myself," Mayumi said, "but when you con- sider the way the future might turn out, it's not good for the dead to have too much influence on those who should be living in the future. I heard from Gii that tomorrow the Fireflies will be meeting with the leader of your church. That's had me a bit concerned, which is why I wanted to talk with you.
Mayumi stopped speaking, rested her arms against the white mica- flecked railing of the bridge, and then spoke in a changed tone of voice.
"When the fog rises from the forest and merges with the descending clouds like that, it means rain's on the way. You may not be able to walk back to the Hollow in time. I apologize for having kept you."
3
The rain continued until the next morning. Ikuo got up early with Kizu, seemingly concerned about the Fireflies' dawn march through the forest.
During breakfast, undeterred by the chilly damp air coming in from outside, he opened the window facing the lake, trying to catch the moment when the shift in wind direction would carry the sound of the Fireflies' movements their way.
After they cleared away the breakfast dishes, Ikuo came over to Kizu, who was back in bed reading, and told him he wanted to meet up with the Fireflies when they emerged out of the forest at the crossroads and give them a ride to the monastery.
"Patron's going to hold a meeting with the Fireflies today while they all eat lunch. I'm sure they'll be soaked after being in the woods and if they go back home to change they'll keep Patron waiting. I'd like to have them clean up in the monastery's communal bath and dry their clothes in the dryer there. Then they can start right at noon."