"A weekly news magazine once ran a special edition titled BIOGRAPHIES OF DUBIOUS POSTWAR JAPANESE MESSIAHS. I was secretly reading the magazine in the office when all of a sudden Guide grabbed it away from me. 'In my night school classes,' he told me, 'I was quite adept at confiscating comic books the students were stealthily reading.'" Dancer grew teary at this, but soon recovered. "And after he looked at it he made me laugh when he said how surprised he was at the number of saviors there've been in Japan. And he asked me this: 'If Patron isn't the true savior, would that bother you?
'"Real saviors are few and far between,' Guide told me. 'For people who feel the need for a savior deeply, on a personal and societal level, isn't even a phony savior better than none? And who's to say if a savior is real or fake?
Though of course it's best for people who feel the need for a savior and fol- low him, repenting as we head toward the end of the world, if he turns out to be real.'
"I agreed with him," Dancer went on. "I think Guide educated me not to be some amateurish mystical type but someone who could serve as a con- duit to society at large. This was the exact opposite of the challenge he threw up for Ikuo."
"Guide was a true teacher, for Ikuo and for you," Patron responded. "I too was taught by him."
Dancer waited for Patron to continue, but since he didn't, she let out everything she'd been holding inside.
"I don't know if I really understand Guide's way of thinking," she said, "but you might recall, in one of the myths Socrates discusses, how there are people who are like spheres, before people are differentiated into male and female? Guide told me once that he and Patron used to be connected like that, their bodies and spirits with one big artery-like pipe running through them.
'Our hearts are one,' he said, 'pumping blood into that pipe.
'"For Patron,' Guide went on, 'the conversion of his visions into words is like synthesis or hormone production within a living organism. At that stage the materials or hormones aren't yet complete. Those flow into the pipe in my direction. And I return this to Patron,' Guide said, 'as something solid, as hormones without anything extraneous.' The relationship between Patron and Guide, then, was as seamless as a dream.
"When I heard this, I thought that though Patron and Guide had suf- fered a lot, if they continued to live quietly like this until they died these would be their happy golden years. Like an acolyte in a monastery, I was happy to serve them and I completely forgot about dancing."
Ikuo was irritated at Dancer's romantic way of speaking. "But even before the Somersault," he asked, "wasn't there an attempt to sever the pipe- line between Patron and Guide? I can understand the radical faction want- ing to be directly connected with Patron, without Guide as a go-between. They must have dreamed of becoming mystics themselves, having the same kind of trance visions that Patron did, and then realizing them in the real world."
Kizu spoke up. "Just as with Ikuo, I had nothing to do with the church at that time. I'm basing this on church documents I've read. But didn't the church teach that believers following Patron would also have trances?"
"You have to understand there are two aspects to trances," Dancer answered. "One aspect is as part of the daily prayers of the followers who've accepted Patron as their savior; the other came about when the radical fac- tion went off on their own and committed the mistakes they did. In a normal situation, where the church was healthy, Guide should have been able to keep the radical faction under control."
"So the radical faction short-circuited the process, lumping themselves and Patron together," Kizu said. "Guide felt he had to restore this circuit between himself and Patron, that he had to strengthen his control over their followers, right? So it was unavoidable that he cut off the radical faction-in other words, do the Somersault."
"It's a little strange to be speculating about these things with Dr. Koga and Mr. Hanawa here with us," Dancer said, "but I'd have to say I agree en- tirely. And in making sure that happened, wasn't Guide doing the right thing?
"The radical members who killed Guide were people who held a par- ticular grudge toward the Somersault. They're different from the members who've moved here with us. I hope the local people will appreciate the dis- tinction. The first group held Guide prisoner and roughed him up to the point where he died, so the whole thing had to be referred to the Tokyo DA's of- fice. It's unbelievable how cruel they were, pushing him to the point where the aneurysm in his brain burst.
"One thing's for sure," Dacner went on. "When he was being mistreated by them, Guide maintained his dignity to the very last. Toward the end of the tape recording you can sense he has resigned himself to being killed. He stood up to them. 'Why,' he asked, 'are you using professional equipment to record all this? Are you planning to provide the courts with proof of your crime? ' The radicals said, 'We're doing it so we can send it to Patron and make him suffer and die.' They loathed Patron too. They had a great deal of anger toward both men."
"But didn't Guide, who created the institute in the first place, have a pretty intimate relationship with them?" Kizu wondered. "They shelved that relationship and tried to connect directly with Patron. After the Somersault, though, the press claimed that Patron and Guide got some devilish thrill out of letting the radical faction climb to the top of the roof and then yanking away the ladder."
"That's completely wrong," Dancer insisted. "Guide translated Patron's visions back to him in understandable language, and then he transmitted them to the followers. That was Guide's role. Guide wanted to insert the reactions of this group of sensitive, intelligent young people into the pipeline between himself and Patron."
Kizu pressed on. "If anyone got a devilish thrill out of this, wasn't it those who tortured and killed Guide while recording the whole thing? But what was their goal? What possible significance was there in making Guide suffer, physically and emotionally, to the point where he died?"
"I don't think they acted without a purpose," Dancer said. "I think they were trying to be proactive, trying to figure out why the Somersault had to take place. Guide told me about some of those young radicals. What I got out of it was that these were young people who were trying to fill in what was missing in their own lives. They were searching for spiritual peace. They wanted the wisdom that would allow them to live in the trying times to come.
"They were bright and serious, which makes them all the more sad.
These lonely, suffering young people had, for the first time in their lives, cre- ated their very own community at the Izu Research Institute. But Patron and Guide just couldn't handle them. If the control of the church was turned over to the radical faction, the ship of the church, so to speak, would have rammed into an iceberg. So Patron and Guide scurried away to safer ground. You can't deny that, right?"
"You're pretty outspoken for a young woman, aren't you?" Kizu said regretfully.
Patron, who'd let it all slide by, spoke up. "But she's exactly right, " he said, standing up for Dancer. "We not only abandoned ship, we denied that the ship ever had any use to begin with-either back in the beginning or in the future. That's what the Somersault was all about."
3
When Dancer saw that his little pronouncement was over, she spoke again, before Kizu had a chance to comment.