"I was convinced, as a child, that I had heard the voice of God, though I never told Professor Kizu the details surrounding this event. At any rate, I believed God spoke to me, and I've been waiting expectantly ever since for that voice to speak to me again. I quit college, never had a steady job, didn't make any friends, and never lived long in any one place, always waiting and waiting. But God was silent.
"This year, however, after I met Professor Kizu-or had a reunion with him, I should say-I felt that things were changing. And then I was able to meet you, Patron. And I knew that you of all people would understand what it means to a person to hear the voice of God. I know I'm just dreaming, but I hope that you can help me hear the rest of what God wants to tell me. I've also started to get interested in the radical faction that Guide created, since they're the very people who, through you, heard the voice of God telling them to get on with it! And just when that voice was about to be heard, you and Guide snuffed it out."
Ikuo finished speaking, as if this was what he'd been thinking of ear- lier when he asked about the Somersault, and Patron was silent for a time.
To Ogi the silence seemed too long, but finally Patron did speak. His speech was slower than before, and more disjointed. Ogi tried to put it in some kind of order so he could remember it. Since there was sufficient power in what Patron said to frighten an innocent youth like Ogi, he listened very carefully, trying to pick out what Patron mumbled, so his memory of it was reliable.
"Though Guide and I had begun a movement to show people a model of what the end of the world would be like and bring them to repentance, with the Somersault we abandoned it all. You asked me why Guide and I, particularly, denied our teachings then. You also said I served as an interme- diary and made them wait in a place where they could hear God's voice to get on with it! Well, not only did I make them wait in vain, I announced to the world how stupid they were to be waiting at all.
"For ten years afterward we were the laughingstock of Japan, but in our inner being we felt even more driven into a corner-like the living dead, as I've put it. And now I've been raised up out of the pit of hell to where I must proclaim the words of God: Do it! I've resigned myself to living out this fate.
If I'm the intermediary again for God's voice, this time I won't take back what he tells us to do. I promise you that, Ikuo.
"The reason we denied our teachings at the time of the Somersault is precisely because that's what a Somersault's all about. Whatever I do in this new direction I'm embarking on, I'll do as a person who has Somersaulted.
Someone who Somersaults also has to participate, in a personal way, in the call for repentance. If you think about it, it's all too clear how the end of the world will come about in a hundred years. Is a hundred years so far off?
"Ikuo, you said you want me to act as intermediary so you can hear God's voice. But the relevant question is, Is it possible for someone who's done a Somersault to confront God again? I've only just returned to the point of preparing for a deep trance, but I think the answer is yes, it is possible. Would God abandon a person who's gone so far as to do a Somersault? God wouldn't allow himself to be left a fool, would he? You have the conviction that you'll hear again the voice of God, and that's what's brought you to me. I'm sure for someone as young as you it must have been hard to maintain that convic- tion. You-or I should say you too-have received a wound that never heals.
But Ikuo, that is a sign…"
Patron's voice grew lower and ever more slow. Finally he fell silent, his quiet breathing no longer a voice, and then he began to snore peacefully. The two young men stood there, straining their ears. Soon, from behind them, they sensed something only slightly louder than Patron's snores. Backlit by the light from the dining room, Dancer stood in the doorway motioning to them. They went out into the hallway. As she shut the heavy door behind them Dancer leaned her small slim body against Ikuo and whispered, "Patron told you something very important, didn't he?"
Before Ikuo could respond, she relayed a message from Ms. Tachibana, who had finally telephoned again. Guide was missing. When she called the police, they came to the residence and found Patron's beloved Saint Bernard poisoned. First thing tomorrow morning, Ms. Tachibana told her, they had to return to Tokyo with Patron to deal with this emergency.
They had dug up the glowing coals from underneath the ashes and re- kindled the blackened firewood when Ms. Tachibana called a third time. He had had another stroke, she reported. Guide had been held prisoner in a se- cret hiding place, subjected to a rough interrogation, and then abandoned; the perpetrators had phoned in his whereabouts, and the ambulance crew had discovered Guide lying there alone.
8: A NEW GUIDE
1
After Ikuo returned to Tokyo from their trip to the Nasu Plateau, he slept over in the office, phoning Kizu to tell him how freezing cold it had been in the mountains. Tokyo was in the midst of Indian summer, but by the next day it suddenly began to feel more like winter. The cold continued for a week.
One day, when it felt like it might snow, Ms. Tachibana called Kizu. She had quit her job at the library earlier than she'd planned and was now working in Patron's office. She told Kizu that Patron was going to be visiting Guide in the hospital and wondered if Kizu would accompany him.
Kizu had already heard that Guide was expected to survive but that the chances he would regain consciousness were slim. Nor had Kizu seen Pa- tron in quite some time. Ikuo, who was now diligently handling most phone calls, had told him that Patron was in a blue funk and had holed up in his bedroom study. Since it was members of the former radical faction who had interrogated Guide to the point where he had a stroke, the incident obviously stemmed from the Somersault, so it was natural enough that Patron felt re- sponsible. Once more the media's attention was focused on Patron, Guide, and the events of a decade before.
Kizu headed off for the hospital in Ogikubo that Ms. Tachibana di- rected him to, and when he arrived at the nurses' station of the cerebral surgery department he found Patron waiting there in his high collar, look- mg for all the world like a servant in some Chekhov play. Patron set off without even giving Kizu a chance to say hello. Kizu watched him from behind, his fleshy shoulders and chubby body walking briskly as he led Kizu to the ICU. Patron told him he was a bit concerned at how much simpler all the preliminaries were here at this hospital, compared to the hospital in Shinjuku; security here was, as Kizu could see, minimal. Patron and Kizu went into the five-person intensive care unit. Kizu had vaguely imagined what his own hospital room would look like later on, when he himself was on the verge of death, but this room was very different--much noisier than he'd expected.
Guide was lying in the bed on the far right, his head swathed in ban- dages, two nurses bustling about him. Apparently they were having trouble getting the phlegm to drain correctly from the hole that had been opened in his throat. The head nurse spoke to the unresponsive Guide while she fixed the connection between the plastic tube and the machine it was attached to.
The inhalation sounds were now louder, the patient's breathing more pro- nounced, and Patron leaned his head back to look out the window. Kizu, too, gazed at the heavy clouds in the sky. The nurses finally unclogged the phlegm and, speaking words of encouragement to Guide, who of course couldn't re- spond, began putting away the machine.
Patron and Kizu were left alone with Guide, but before Kizu could walk over to stand at Guide's left side, Patron went over, leaned close to Guide's right cheek, and spoke to him.