"That might be true of people who accept that huge hollow and think it's enough," Ikuo said, "but for people who don't, it's the same as saying there is no God."
"For you, in other words."
"That's right. For me there is no God."
"I detect here something other than an abstract debate over the exis- tence of God. What really concerns you is whether God is actively working in your life or not."
"That's right, you got it," Ikuo admitted candidly, still stubborn.
Guide didn't say anything. Kizu couldn't intervene in their argument.
For a while Ikuo drove on, the three of them silent. Kizu caught another whiff of alcohol and noticed that Guide was hiding a small flask of whiskey in his coat pocket. Guide cleared his throat lightly and spoke.
"One sure thing, though, is that the white blur of light Patron confronts in his trances has decided the course of his life."
"If I confronted a God who's some huge hollow," Ikuo said, "well, I can tell you I wouldn't accept his deciding my life."
"Isn't this God that Patron senses in a holistic way, then, also the God you believe can speak to you directly?" Kizu asked. "Soon after I met you, Ikuo, I felt you were thinking about God as the power to grasp yourself. And I hoped that your notion of God would be like a passage enabling you to find an entrance to Patron's vast deep vision: namely, the God he confronts in his trances. Is the God that Ikuo's thinking of just one part of the all-embracing God that Patron sees?"
"It wouldn't fit Patron's definition of God to say one part of God," Guide said. "I spoke of a passage, but I think of it as a bundle of fiber-optic lines, with Ikuo on this side, at the terminus of one line, wondering if he can send a signal to the other side, the terminus of all the lines-in other words, to the enormous structure that is God."
"If there's a terminus on the other side, and an infinite number of them on this side, is it really possible that God would send a message directly to me?" Ikuo asked.
Guide was silent as he thought about it. The swaying of the speeding minivan made his head rock back and forth. Kizu could see he was fairly drunk by now, though he didn't let his drunkenness take over when he spoke.
"This might be a self-centered way of approaching it," Ikuo said, "but I think the only way to experience God is when the signal comes from his side to ours. Once his voice came to me and I did what it said, but afterward, when there was no response, there was no other way to meet God but to wait for his signal."
Ikuo stared straight ahead as he drove, his voice no longer angry, as it was a moment before, but filled with a sorrow that pierced Kizu to the quick.
Guide might have felt the same way, for he spoke now in a more formal way.
'Ikuo, have you spoken to Patron about this?"
"No. I've only just started working as his driver, and I haven't had a chance. Also, I think if I don't prepare myself before I talk with him, he'll end up having nothing more to do with me."
"But you came to work for Patron because you expected someday he might fulfill this longing you have toward God, right?"
"That's right. I met Dancer through a connection we had from before, but I felt Patron has the power to help us transcend our limits-something not unrelated to God."
Ikuo's words were not entirely unexpected, yet as he listened to this earnest confession Kizu was surprised and sympathetic.
"If that's the case, you should tell Patron exactly how you feel," Guide said to Ikuo, speaking the exact words of encouragement Kizu had been about to use. "Right now it would appear that Patron is laying the groundwork for a major vision, the kind that has eluded him for so long. At the next opportu- nity he may be able to interpret God's message to you in that blurred net of light. I'll call it your God for the time being, but there's no contradiction between that and Patron's all-inclusive God."
Kizu didn't quite follow Guide's final words. Ikuo went back to the first remarks, to make sure of what was most critical to him.
"Why would that be significant for me? Is it okay for me to think that he's interpreting a message from the God who once called out to me and was silent afterward?"
"What's wrong with that? With Patron trying to undergo a deep trance for the first time in so long, this may be an encouragement to him. Your ques- tions to Patron may spur him on."
"But if that happened, would it be a good thing?"
"If what happened?"
"If I happened to give him a push that affected the way he's living his life."
"You're afraid as an outsider you may have an influence on Patron?
Rather than an old person like me influencing him, it may very well need to be a young person who's struggling, working beside him, searching for the way. The poor in spirit. That would be you, all right. Though I've always seen you as the opposite type."
Guide was clearly drunk by now, but Ikuo pressed on.
"I don't want to hear Patron telling me some story just to make me happy."
"Patron isn't that clever," Guide said. "It's more likely the opposite. It you help him find his direction and give him a shove, that'll be his way of putting his life back together. Right now Patron's beginning a new movement.
It's actually been my hope that with his newfound desire to be active again, a young person like yourself who takes these things to heart would give him a shove in the right direction. Speaking from experience, though, once you get deeply involved with Patron, you won't come out unscathed. There's no way to avoid being influenced."
"So what should I do?" Ikuo asked. "If I were to sit down face-to-face with him, I wouldn't be able to say a thing. Committing a terrorist act would be a whole lot easier."
"Summon up the courage to appeal to him," Guide said. "Right now, Patron is awakening from his preparations for a vision, and the physical and emotional aftereffects will last for some time. But once he's over that, let's tell him your thoughts. Professor Kizu will help us too, won't you?"
Even though he was speeding along in the dark at eighty miles an hour, Ikuo turned around to Kizu and spoke in an urgent, almost pushy, tone.
"Please write a letter for me, explaining why I need to talk with Patron.
I haven't revealed everything to you, Professor, but still I'd like you to write the letter."
7: A SACRED WOUND
1
Patron had taken to his bed to recuperate and now, five days later, he was allowed to return to normal activities. In the evening, while Dancer was helping him take a bath, Ogi took a phone call from Guide in his annex.
Patron's bathroom was like a greenhouse, a brightly lit wing built onto the north side of his bedroom study. Patron liked to take long soaks in his roomy Western-style tub. Cordless phone in hand, Ogi called to him from just outside the changing room. There wasn't any sound of running water, but no one seemed to have heard him, so he stepped inside the changing room and stood facing the open door to the bathroom, going too lar to turn back.
The first thing Ogi saw was Patron stretched out in the bottom of the nearly empty tub that lay at right angles to his line of sight. Dancer abruptly cut off his view as she slipped in from the side and leaned her nude body over the edge of the tub; she had a detachable shower hose in her right hand. Her head seemed bulky with her hair piled high, and she cast a piercing glare at Ogi from upside down. She didn't try to hide anything; her legs were spread wide on the tiles. With her magnificent body, then, she was trying to hide Patron's naked form. Ogi placed the phone down on the threshold and re- treated. Guess even the changing room's off limits to me! he thought, find- ing it comical and yet disturbing.