Before long a man's head popped up above the piled boxes of lilies-a close-cropped white head with white whiskers-and stared at Kizu and Ikuo.
Approaching from the side, before the woman who'd accompanied them re- turned, this man, the farm's owner, dressed in a white collared shirt and wine- colored vest, walked in front of the working women, their bare arms full of lilies, distributing empty boxes. Then he lifted a box that was larger than the others and lowered it to the ground; he was making a place on the platform for Kizu and Ikuo to sit. The woman led them up onto the mats, while the man went back to his original position; whether through innate shyness or because he was the type who kept people at arm's length, he merely nodded slightly to greet them. The women went on working, oblivious to the two men, who'd now become part of their group.
Not that the women were rejecting these unexpected visitors. The farm woman who'd led them in, after glancing at the farm owner, sitting off to one side, began addressing the other women, who cheerfully stopped and paid attention.
"I'll pass around the business card I received from this gentleman, who tells me he's working for the former leader of the church you all used to belong to. I know we've talked recently about the man who was with this leader at the time of the Somersault, the one we read about in the paper who was tor- tured to death.
"It seems the former leader is concerned about what sort of life all of you have been living. This gentleman wasn't really planning to meet you and talk with you today, he said, and maybe I'm butting in where I don't belong, but I thought it would be nice for you to meet him, seeing as how he's also a professor at an American university. I'm sure you heard my husband scold me for my rash assumptions."
The woman stopped speaking and bowed her head, and the company fell silent. Kizu wondered if they were waiting for him to introduce himself but realized that the woman had essentially covered what needed to be said.
While Kizu was hesitating, the farm woman whispered to an old woman sit- ting opposite her.
For an old lady, this second woman was unusually erect, though some- thing was wrong with her legs, and she sat differently from the rest of the women, her feet splayed out to one side. For a woman of her generation she was quite large, with fine features, putting Kizu in mind of someone from a good family who happened to live near the sea.
"If you don't mind, I'll speak first," the old woman said. "Do you think the children watching us are all right? The snow looks like it's letting up, so maybe there's no need to tell them to go inside."
There was no response from those around her, and the old woman shook her head magnanimously at the children outside the window. She turned to glance at the buds on the oak tree growing toward the high windows and then, taking her own sweet time, went on.
"We heard rumors that the Savior and the Prophet had emerged from their shut-in life and were beginning a new movement. We read later in the newspaper about the Prophet's awful death, which grieves us terribly. We also talked about what this new movement will be about, didn't we? However, he's the one who cut his ties with the church, and we're just a little group here, suffering in our own way. Still, knowing he's concerned about us might pos- sibly move our own group in a different direction."
The woman stopped speaking and looked up at the branches of the dark oak through the melting snow on the top of the window, and all the women in the circle turned their eyes in that direction. Kizu sensed that the other women were quite used to her style of speaking.
"Actually I've been thinking for a while about the scope of our group- I should add that not everyone's here today-and I thought it might be com- pared to that clump of leaves out there. Today we have this unseasonable snow, but the buds have already started to come out, haven't they, on the oaks and zelkovas? Not long ago they were just dark trunks-even the tips of the thin- nest branches looked old and withered-and it made me feel sorry, thinking that when trees get big every part of them ages.
"Once a tree starts budding, though, it takes off with such energy that the whole tree is revitalized, not just the branches but even down to the trunk.
It makes me think about whether our little group has the vigor of those buds sprouting out on the oak tree. Just to make sure, I counted them, and discov- ered there are about forty buds on every three feet of branch, which really brings home to me how small our group is. Even when the Savior's church was at its peak, if you compare it to the buds, it was made up of fewer mem- bers than the number of buds on that single oak tree. And our group is just one very small branch.
"I'm afraid I've strayed off the topic, as I often do, but as we've talked in our small group, this is how we think about what happened after the Som- ersault: Though the Savior and Prophet survived, they descended into hell.
The Prophet either stayed in hell or was killed just as he was crawling out- either way, it's a great tragedy. My husband was a classmate in medical school of the man who adopted him as an infant, so I've heard things about him from that source too. What a cruel, painiul thing to have happened… "The Savior and the Prophet fell into hell, and that was where they atoned. I can only imagine how incredibly painful it was for both of them to suffer such disgrace for ten years. When you look back on something once it's over, one's life seems to have passed by in an instant, though of course it all depends on the quality of that particular time. Having spent the last ten years living together with all of you, I feel that quite strongly.
"What do you say? How about talking to these gentlemen about our past ten years? The weekly magazines have treated us like eccentrics aban- doned by Savior and Prophet. But we have our own thoughts about life here.
Why don't we share something of them. Anybody? Ms. Takada, how about you?"
Kizu glanced around at the women listening to the old lady and came across one whose unusual features riveted his attention. Her face had a ter- rible scar, as if maybe when she was a baby she'd been slashed with a hatchet from one ear down to her cheek. More than the scar, though, one of her eyes was completely covered over by a smooth layer of skin. She looked around thirty, and as she'd been listening to the old lady speak she didn't make any attempt to hide the side of her face with the skin-covered eye. This was the Ms. Takada the old lady had named. The woman responded right away, turn- ing unflinchingly to face Kizu and the others.
"It's only natural that I felt a pain in my heart when the Savior and the Prophet did their Somersault, but in my case physically I couldn't deal with the pain; I vomited every day. Some people were concerned I was having morning sickness, though that was impossible.
"Over and over I'd go to sleep and dream that the Somersault never took place and feel relieved, only to awaken to the awful truth. This happened day after day. At first I felt as if the Savior had betrayed me. It was like being covered with ants that were biting me, but I'd been anesthetized and couldn't feel anything. But I could sense that the anesthesia would wear off and sud- denly I'd be hit by this enormous pain, which led to my vomiting all the time.
"Never once, in all my life, have I run across a person as kind as Savior was, and that's why I felt betrayed. After I joined the church, many people were kind to me, but Patron's kindness-I'm sure all of you would agree- was on a whole other level.
"This happened after my unhappy marriage broke up, soon after I re- nounced the world. The church had a house in Yokohama in a brand-new subdivision-remember?-on a high piece of land, from which you could see the ocean. A lot of times I'd gaze out absently at the ocean from the big window on the second floor where we had a meeting room. There was a large horse chestnut tree outside, too. One day Savior, who happened to be staying there, was sitting beside that big window when he called me over and told me to come closer and look deep into his eyes. He was sitting in his usual arm- chair where he liked to read, beside the window. So I knelt down in front of him and gazed into his eyes. It was the time of year when the horse chestnut's leaves were still soft, a fine clear morning when I was left in charge of clean- ing and answering the phones while everyone else was out working.