Somersault (56 page)

“I beg of you, Patron. Please give the people who killed Guide—who felt driven into a corner, full of despair, and who never intended to kill him—a chance to repent. Only one person can do that:
you.”

Ikuo stood up, walked over to Patron, and knelt before him. He spoke in a sorrowful, youthful voice.

“Patron, please. Tell me and those people what God says. No matter what it is, tell us what God really
wants
. I’ve talked with them, and I know they’re hoping for the same thing I am.”

Ogi watched as Patron reached out a hand, as if to lay it on Ikuo’s head or shoulder, but halted in midair. In this noncommittal stance, Patron spoke to Ikuo.

“In order to do that, I first have to regain the power to hear God’s voice. And without Guide’s help! Only if I’m able to do that will I be able to transmit anything of any consequence. At present all I can do is seek to have all the members of the former radical faction, the ones you were in touch with at the time of the memorial service, join our church here in its new home. And to have this communicated to them. I think Dr. Koga would agree with this.”

Ikuo looked moved by Patron’s words, but Dancer was indignant. Before either of them could say anything, though, Kizu spoke up.

“Patron, among this group you’re thinking of having join the movement are the people who held Guide prisoner and tortured him, the ones who made him collapse and die. The main two perpetrators are in custody, but the ones who surrounded them and Guide didn’t lift a finger to stop it, did they? I find what Dancer says very convincing.”

“I want even the two who are in jail to return to the church as soon as they’re released,” Patron said. “That’s what I hope for. Isn’t it precisely
because
they’re the ones who killed Guide that they must return to us?” Patron opened his dark eyes wide, looking even more like a bird as he fixed them on Kizu.

“Guide didn’t deserve what they did to him. The power of the state is judging their guilt on one level, and revealed in the light of the new church we are creating, they are covered in the vile and abominable sin of their actions. But we couldn’t be happier, could we, if, as these souls lift their faces from the dark abyss, the light reflected in their eyes is the light of our church?”

Patron stood up and bid the kneeling Ikuo to stand up as well. Ogi watched with a softened heart as Patron grew calm and gentle as he turned to Dancer. As everyone else rose, the woman named Satchan, widow of the founder of the church that had arisen here only to disappear, addressed Patron.

“I feel I understand what you mean when you keep saying you’ve been in hell for the last decade,” she said. “I think about how wonderful it would be if my husband, who created the Church of the Flaming Green Tree, could have returned once more—as you have done. Ever since our church broke up, a handful of friends and I have kept running the Farm, and since most of the land and equipment has been dormant it would make me very happy if you could find a use for it.”

Patron didn’t respond aloud, but he bowed his head respectfully to her. Morio, though, who had been sitting beside Ms. Tachibana and paying close attention to the conversation, walked over to stand between Patron and Satchan and began applauding, as enthusiastically as if applauding a violin soloist and her piano accompanist on an outstanding performance. That sound, with its gentle feeling of oneness, washed over everyone and reverberated throughout the chapel.

20: The Quiet Women

1

After the meeting, Kizu was still worried about how the people of Maki Town would receive the church members. When he went to the teachers’ office of the junior high school to consult with them about the art school he wanted to open, he couldn’t help but raise these concerns after the preliminary pleasantries were over.

“It’s strange for me to try to speak objectively about this, since I’m one of those who moved here with the new church, but I’m quite surprised at how readily the townspeople have accepted the idea of our followers—including the former so-called radical faction—coming here. I would have anticipated a stubborn conservative opposition, but everyone seems quite flexible.”

The junior high art teacher was cautiously silent, but Asa-san, who’d accompanied Kizu, spoke up confidently.

“The people here don’t have the generosity to debate with those who oppose them in order to arrive at a compromise. But don’t you find the same thing happening in cities? The reason the town authorities and the group opposing you have basically consented is because Ogi was so efficient in passing around a list of names and explaining about the people who’ll be coming here. If I’m correct, there’ll be one men’s group and one women’s group. The men’s group is the one you speak of. There are twenty-five people altogether, and though it’s true they’re members of the former radical faction, its core will be a level-headed group led by Dr. Koga. Dancer said that after Guide’s death the more proactive group washed its hands of the church and wouldn’t respond even if Patron invited them to join. The other group coming is a woman’s group called the Quiet Women, as I recall. Why would anybody oppose them?

“Even so, after our meeting in the chapel the head of the town council told me that once this initial move is complete he wants to hold on-the-spot inspections. I told him in no uncertain terms that inspections would violate human rights. Just yesterday in the Old Town, the antichurch faction pasted up new handbills and announced excitedly how they’d won a victory by excluding the more extreme elements in the church from moving in, but that they mustn’t let down their guard.”

Kizu questioned Ikuo once more about this and was told that with Patron’s lenient policy they expected a variety of people to join them. But when they sent out inquiries, many people turned them down.

“Maybe this is a good-sized group to start out with,” Kizu said, encouraging the depressed Ikuo. “Even if it stays small, it’s important to have the more moderate people involved.”

“The local authorities say they want to keep a watch over any radical elements in the church,” Ikuo said, “but I’m more worried about the opposite—that now we’ve finally started to get things rolling the church will turn into an old ladies’ club.”

Ikuo’s sarcastic remarks may have been a bit exaggerated, but they weren’t unfounded. Though they might be hiding some militant attitudes, the first former radical members that were coming were, it was fair to say, a group that was completely into repentance at the end of the world. Rather than theoretical researchers, they were made up of the older experimental scientists who, even at the Izu Research Institute, had dubbed themselves the Technicians.

As for the old ladies’ club, as Ikuo called them, actually he wasn’t too far off the mark. It was made up of about half of the women Kizu had visited in their commune along the Odakyu Line, and though they had lived together with their children there, only the women would be moving to this new location. When he heard that the women would be occupying the monastery that surrounded the inner garden, Kizu had naively assumed that this was a temporary arrangement until the children joined them. But that wasn’t the case.

Kizu had a chance to talk directly with the women in the church’s new office, set up in the annex to the chapel, built outside the cylindrical building itself but separate from the monastery. That afternoon, after he’d finished having an early lunch in the cafeteria—which they’d constructed by tearing down the walls between three smaller rooms—Kizu popped his head into the office, expecting to find Ikuo but finding Ogi and Dancer instead, welcoming some women Kizu remembered seeing before.

Among them was Mrs. Shigeno, the widow of the hospital director and donor of the property, who greeted Kizu very pleasantly. “How was your lunch in the cafeteria? I’m sure it wasn’t anything like the faculty dining room in your U.S. university, though I daresay it compared favorably to student cafeterias over there.”

“It was very nice,” Kizu said. “There isn’t much difference between the faculty dining room and the student cafeteria in America.”

“I’m happy to hear you liked it. We’ll be the ones in charge of the church’s cafeteria from now on.”

As he talked with her, memories came back to Kizu of the greenhouse where they had been packing lilies into boxes and of the memorial service in his apartment’s basement. A vivid memory came to him of Mrs. Shigeno speaking at the service, and he clearly remembered the other two women with her from the greenhouse. One of them was Ms. Takada, the young woman with the skin covering one of her eyes; the other was one of the leaders during the prayer time at the greenhouse, a Ms. Oyama.

Vaguely aware that Kizu might already know them, Dancer still went ahead and introduced each woman in turn. She explained that Kizu had been a longtime art educator in the United States, despite the fact that when he had visited their commune he’d given them his business card, and Mrs. Shigeno, in the way she had addressed him now, was obviously aware of his background.

“I’m really happy to hear that you’ll be in charge of the cafeteria,” Kizu said. “I’ve been fixing my own meals for far too long.”

Mrs. Shigeno, explaining what they’d been discussing with Dancer, said, “It seems, however, that some people have raised objections about our faith. Though they’re happy we’ll be running the cafeteria, they wonder why we emphasize our own sort of exclusive group prayer.”

“To the point that they’ve even dubbed us the Quiet Women,” Ms. Oyama added in a bemused way; a small woman, her build and expression suggested she was stalwart and dependable. “In political and religious movements alike, these factional nicknames usually start as a kind of insult, which then get fixed permanently. Like the names Anarchists and Quakers. The name Quiet Women, too, is somewhat negative, suggesting women who maintain a weird silence and aren’t entirely to be trusted.”

“When Ikuo—who’s come with me here—and I visited you on that snowy day,” Kizu said, “we were very impressed by your lifestyle. Your children were so quiet, it was like some nostalgic scene from the past.... When they join you, I imagine things will get much more lively around here.”

Kizu had addressed this to Mrs. Shigeno, who looked at her two colleagues and then urged Ms. Oyama to reply.

“For the time being we’re not planning to have the children join us. Maybe we will just accept the name that’s been given to us and carry on as the Quiet Women.”

Kizu couldn’t quite follow this, but he hesitated to ask further questions.

“We’ve been living communally for the last ten years, deepening our faith along with the children. And after these ten years, Patron has, on Guide’s martrydom, started up a new religious movement and called us to join him. This is extremely important. Being allowed to live together once again with Patron means accepting his teachings. Which means we have a lot of learning to do to connect his denial of our doctrine and faith with the activities of his new church. We have come here with great hopes and resolve.

“We’ve lived together for ten years, but when this change in direction came about, differences of opinion started to surface in our group. Some women were opposed to an unconditional return. They felt that since we’d been abandoned by Patron and Guide we should continue down our own spiritual path and that remaining in the church Patron created was not the honorable thing to do. They wanted Patron first of all to give a thorough self-critique of his actions at the time of the Somersault. I can understand their reaction. This sort of opposition arose even in regard to whether or not we should participate in the memorial service, and we came to Tokyo at that time without coming to any sort of agreement. At the service the adults from our commune sat in two separate groups. Ogi kept the former Izu research group from saying anything, and we kept our opposing faction from speaking up, letting Mrs. Shigeno speak for us from the floor. This allowed the service to take place without incident.

“When we returned to our commune, nearly half the women said Patron hadn’t criticized himself enough and they were against returning to the church. So we ended up leaving them behind. But we’ll be sending faxes to them every day regarding the teachings of Patron’s new church. We’re hoping this will convince some of them, who could then form a second group and move here.... That brings you up to date on what’s been happening with us.”

“You’ve given it a lot of thought, obviously, and I think your response is unique—and very logical, too,” Kizu said, reevaluating this Quiet Women’s group, who were unlike any Japanese women he’d ever known. “But why aren’t any of the children participating? Are you afraid the church will try to take over their education?”

“We listened to the children’s opinion,” Mrs. Shigeno answered. “Through our communal life together the children have grown very close. Most of them said they didn’t want to be separated, so we decided to let the children in the two groups be entrusted to whichever side the majority of them
voted for, which would then take responsibility for their education. I’m an optimistic person and I was sure the children would want to come with us. But when the votes were counted they’d decided to stay.”

“But you were quite decisive about it, weren’t you,” Kizu said, his defenses down in the face of the elegant Mrs. Shigeno’s smile.

Ms. Takada didn’t let this go by. Her right eye wide open, she turned it and her blank left side toward Kizu and said, quite resolutely, “We may have been decisive, but that meant we gave our lives over to faith only to be abandoned by our leaders. From our perspective, that’s what the Somersault was. Pondering this over the past ten years, our initial hatred and resentment disappeared, but to be truthful, right now we’re not sure how the faith we’ve kept for the past decade can merge with this new movement.

“Knowing this meant risking everything, we split into two groups. If we had had more confidence in Patron’s new movement, we should have been able to convince the others and bring the children along with us. We are most definitely aware of the feelings of those who had to leave their children behind to come here. We didn’t do this because we wanted to. Moving here and being with Patron again represents the last chance for our faith. If Patron had been murdered instead of Guide, I don’t know how things would have turned out. Is it so strange to have such desperate thoughts?”