"With Guide the way he is now, maybe I'm just an old man who can't do a thing, and maybe I should just forget about this new movement and spend the rest of my days taking care of Guide. Isn't that what you're think- ing? When we read R. S. Thomas that topic came up, as I recall. I'd like to talk with Guide about it, though I have no idea if he'd understand what I say. At the time of the Somersault we'd already imagined that sort of future for us.
"But Professor, with Guide in the hospital, I can't just abandon my role as Patron and spend my time pushing him around in his wheelchair as he goes through rehabilitation; Guide was injured facing up to a group that held him against his will and put him through a trumped-up trial to get him to admit that the Somersault was a mistake.
"I don't think he'll ever be able to communicate with us again. But even if he were to die without regaining full consciousness or the ability to talk, he's fulfilled his mission in life. He has suffered as a true prophet.
"But I have to live on. Having done the Somersault and now unable, without Guide, to put my visions into words, I still have the audacity to keep on living. But if I just grow decrepit and senile and die, my life will have been in vain. And then what would being Patron amount to? Nothing-just one big joke.
"Only after I've lived a life befitting Patron do I want to die. Those people held Guide prisoner, gouging out what wounded him most, a more abominable act than actually killing him. That being the case, I want to rise up again to the point where they have to choose me as their target."
Patron turned sharp birdlike eyes to Kizu.
"Professor, please. You don't need to say a thing. You can be a Guide who just paints!" Patron implored. "You can express things in a way I can- not. Your painting can clarify what my visions mean. If you turn your eyes in the direction of my beliefs, that's enough. With Guide in the shape he's in now, can you really refuse? I have only a handful of young people around me. Other than you, what mature person can I count on?"
"I don't know if I'll be able to fill the role, but I'll do my best until he recovers," Kizu replied, overcoming his nervousness. "I've been stopping by the office every once in a while, but I'll come more often. I can be your partner."
"Ikuo can drive you back and forth," Patron said, his eyes sleepy like those of a contented bird. "Now, would you mind asking Dancer to bring me my sleeping pills?"
Kizu returned to the living room and told Dancer, who was still stand- ing beside the desk with Ogi, what Patron had said to him. As the young man and woman listened, he noticed for the first time a shared expression on their faces, like brother and sister. Kizu also noticed, in Ikuo's attitude as he looked up at him, that all three of them agreed with the decision Kizu had come to.
Ms. Tachibana, too, in her unobtrusive way, looked content.
As powdery snow swirled around him, Kizu stood on the pavement waiting for Ikuo to bring the minivan around. The snow was different from the light flakes that had fallen in the United States at his East Coast university and had the soft, easy-melting quality of snow he remembered from his childhood.
He felt a tinge of nostalgia. He got in beside Ikuo and looked up at the snowy sky, his heated mind reviewing his conversation with Patron.
Patron had said that if Kizu undertook the role of Guide he would help him overcome his spiritual and physical crisis; Kizu smiled coolly at the thought. He's not just dealing with my soul, he mused, but maybe sensed the reoccurrence of my cancer as well. He felt his cheeks tense up, though, at the memory of his huffy, mean response.
"There's something different about you," Ikuo said. "You seem-I don't know-cold, I guess. I've never seen you smile like that before. Have you changed your mind?"
"I'm smiling at myself, not at other people," Kizu replied.
"If you see Patron's proposal as too painful, I can understand that," Ikuo said, "but I was really keeping my fingers crossed you'd accept. I know you weren't too enthusiastic about the idea when Dancer first brought it up, and I was afraid it was going to be a problem. I was afraid you'd feel forced to go back to America, and I didn't want to end up having to choose between you.
If you left Japan, Patron would lose his new Guide, but we'd be completely lost as well."
"But I don't have any of the qualities to make Patron want to rely on me," Kizu said. "I don't know anything about his earlier teachings, even if he has renounced them. And when I think of Guide, still such a unique spirit despite his condition, I don't think I understand him, either."
"You've only known Patron a short time, but the two of you have had some pretty deep conversations," Ikuo said. "Knowing you, Professor, I imag- ine that if you take on the role of the new Guide you'll use the opportunity to study Patron more. I've been thinking about this for a while now, but I really want you to ask Patron why he began calling himself the savior of mankind- whether fake or otherwise. I wanted to ask him myself, but our trip to Nasu Plateau was cut short."
"If it's so important to you, I'll do it. I need to ask Patron about Guide, too, why he called himself the prophet of mankind-fake or otherwise."
In the faint light of the snowy sky, an unexpected smile rose, like a cheer- ful mask, to Ikuo's angular, deeply chiseled features. Kizu had no idea how he was interpreting his response but didn't pursue it further. Staring out at the thickening snow lashing the windshield, he began to feel a decided softness coming from Ikuo. Not that Ikuo's soldierly frame or muscles soft- ened, it was rather that something inside was seeping out. When he turned to Ikuo, the young man's faint smile was gone, replaced by a relaxed, youth- ful expression.
Ever since he had first met Ikuo at the athletic club and invited him to pose for him at his apartment, and even more so after they began a sexual relationship, Kizu sensed the tension draining from the young man from time to time. But still Ikuo's attitude toward him, and probably toward everyone, contained, deep down, something hard and unrelenting; when Kizu had been about to write the letter to Patron for him, he had thought about how the incident he'd talked about, about God calling him as a child, had affected his life ever since.
Not that Kizu believed everything that Ikuo revealed to him. Kizu didn't believe that in this day and age there was a God who would let a young boy have such a mystical experience-not that, for God, such a concept as this day and age was relevant. Nevertheless, it was true that after Ikuo quit college, the conviction that he'd had this experience was the cornerstone of his life. When Kizu first saw Ikuo at the athletic club he had the look of a lone jungle fighter. In his rugged features and hard body, Ikuo's expression was far removed from the soft, gentle look Kizu had often seen in people of the same age after he returned to Japan. This didn't mean that Ikuo had anything in common with the dry and prosaic Vietnam vets that Kizu sometimes taught in the United States; this young man's heart was full of a yearning that wouldn't allow him to settle for being dull and ordinary.
At first Kizu had sensed something of the wild animal in Ikuo. A true loner, he drew no one else to him, but his exterior, which rejected everyone and everything, hid something quite extraordinary. Even though they were lovers the hard armor that was very much a part of Ikuo was still in place.
But now, with Kizu's acceptance of the role of new Guide, came that faint smile, that unexpected softness. He remembered that Dancer had looked dis- pleased at Patron's proposal, but later, after Kizu had emerged from the bed- room study, both she and Ogi accepted the idea.