by Kenzaburo Oe
“Well, it’s only natural,” he said, “that people who’ve lived here for a long time want to keep an eye on people from the city bringing in their own religion.”
The old woman suppressed a faint smile, but went with the tack Kizu was taking.
“If you go upriver from here and over the pass, just before the Hollow, where you all are, there’s a house above a tall stone wall, right? We call it the Mansion to distinguish it from the other houses. A lot of unusual people have come out of that line, including one man who went on to college and became a diplomat, and then his son came back here to start a church! The ham and butter you just bought were made by people related to that diplomat’s son. Their church isn’t around anymore, so if you build this new church you can expect people to say things for a while.”
“I suppose it’s only to be expected that we wouldn’t be very welcome,” Kizu said, trying to put an end to the conversation. He was finding her a bit too much, but the old woman wasn’t about to let him get away so easily.
“No, no. We’re not that kind of people! People in Maki Town came here with handbills. I put them up for a day but then took them down. I buy goods from them, so I had to post them, but I’m not opposed to a new church being started here! All the food you bought—and you bought a lot, didn’t you?—was made by former church people; this woman named Satchan who runs the Farm, they say her son got his power from his father, the one who built the old church here!”
Just then something happened that truly startled Kizu. When he’d entered the store, walked past the register, and looked around, there hadn’t been any other customers visible in the three aisles. But just then, in the aisle next to the one he’d been in, from out of the shadows of the shelves of detergent and toilet paper a thin-as-a-rail middle-aged woman suddenly popped up, pointed at Kizu, and began prattling.
“They call that son of hers New Brother Gii, but where he came from is anyone’s guess! The woman who gave birth to him fourteen years ago? When I used to teach at the new junior high she was a boy student. A womanish man!
“Is it really possible she became a mannish woman and had a child? You’re from Tokyo—an educated man, I gather—but don’t let her coax you into anything. She made my husband donate his whole estate to their church. That’s one scary woman, I tell you!”
“My, my, Mrs. Kamei,” the woman at the register said. “And here I was thinking you’d recovered from your hysteria. I don’t believe someone from out of town would understand what you’re talking about, even when you go into such detail.”
The woman customer’s hair was pulled back, affording a clear view of her face. Her skin had the strange look of a shriveled apple someone had forgotten in a refrigerator. She shrank back at the words of the old woman at the register but still looked up at Kizu as she continued her warning.
“You’ve got to watch out for that woman. She’s going to be running that Farm she inherited, together with your church, isn’t she? That woman is what I’m saying! I went to the Hollow to warn you people not to be deceived by her, but with those men guarding the buildings I couldn’t get close. So I lay in wait beside the river until you came out of the clinic. I don’t have any ill feelings toward you and the others. All I want is to warn you how frightening that mannish woman is!”
The old woman came out from behind the register and struck Mrs. Kamei—who was leaning against the shelf of detergent, saliva wetting her chin—on her back. When Kizu left the market he was afraid the woman might follow him, so he hurried up the slope that led to the Hollow.
4
The arrival of the first wave of new residents was finally over, the room assignments all taken care of, and it was decided to hold an evening meeting, with Patron in attendance, so everyone could hear the reports from those in charge of the various aspects of the move.
Kizu, though, hadn’t heard about the meeting, since Ikuo had gone off after breakfast to take care of some matter at the Church of the Flaming Green Tree Farm without mentioning it. The first time he heard about the gathering was when he joined Ogi and Dancer, who as they were wont to do came an hour after the peak time for lunch in the monastery cafeteria. Dancer asked Kizu to report at the meeting on how his plan for a children’s art school was coming along.
“If Ikuo had only told me there was a meeting, I could have finalized things with the teachers this morning,” Kizu said. “For some reason they seem a little slow in responding.”
Dancer found it strange that Ikuo hadn’t said anything about the meeting, even though the two of them were living together.
“Ikuo’s been talking about the Farm with Satchan, and they’ve just about reached an agreement,” she said. “I expect he’ll report on it tonight.... Professor, you bought some of the Farm’s ham, butter, and vegetables, didn’t you? Isn’t it great? They’ve hired some of the local young people and have been able to continue farming the fields and running the meat plant on a small scale. The original investment to set it all up came from their church.
“Satchan told us that wages have gone up this year and they might not be able to turn a profit. They weren’t thinking of scaling back to the point where the work would be done in individual homes, but she was worried whether she’d be able to pass on the factory to the children going to the junior high now and to her adopted daughters.
“When he heard this, Ikuo proposed that the Technicians be allowed to use the facilities for their own work and help run the factory with them, so it could get back to the size it was when the church was operating it. It was a perfect match. So they drew up a plan to have several people from the Technicians spend their time at the Farm.”
“He hasn’t told me any of these details,” Kizu said, clearly full of misgivings, “but even if it’s for the church could Ikuo really be so interested in the production of meats and other food? I find that hard to believe.”
“He’s very enthusiastic about it,” Ogi said, in Dancer’s stead. “He’s also quite interested in the communal life the church’s young people used to live at the Farm. Not long ago, Asa-san held a workshop on how they’ve been running the Farm, and Ikuo showed a lot of interest in something that came up; namely, that a sect in that church, people who were involved in the manufacturing process, had engaged in weapons practice in order to defend the church.”
Ogi went on to explain that Ikuo’s plan was to have the Technicians take over work at the Farm on an experimental basis and make it into an economic base for a second and third wave of believers. Ogi also mentioned that Ikuo had been holding talks with a group of students from the junior high in the valley and the high school in Old Town.
“After we spent our first night in the house on the north shore of the Hollow,” Dancer added, “we went back to the chapel the next morning. There were human bones laid out on the floor, and though Ogi was pretty calm about it, I can tell you I was shocked. After I talked with Asa-san, I understood that those bones were a written challenge to us from this group of boys and their little detective-novel secret society. Ogi, remember how they spelled out the name of their group in the bones?”
“YOUNG FIREFLIES. According to Asa-san it’s the name given to a local custom—”
“That group, then, was threatening us because we’re encroaching on their territory,” Dancer said. “We knew the people in Maki Town were divided into two factions, those who accept us and those who want us out. What worried me was whether those children sneaking into the chapel to play a prank were a vanguard of the group opposed to us and whether this meant a serious clash with the church was imminent.
“When he heard this, however, Ikuo went to meet with this secret society and arranged things with them by himself. I think the former junior high principal was also involved. We found out that the leader of this group is Satchan’s son.”
“Ikuo never said a thing to me about it,” Kizu admitted.
“I’m sure the two of you have more important things to talk about,” Dancer said encouragingly.
“Ikuo should be giving a report at the meeting today,” Ogi said. “I think he’s the person in the church who’s been working the hardest, what with forging a relationship with the Farm and trying to get to know the young men in the area.”
The podium had been put away to clear a space in the middle of the chapel for the meeting, with several rows of chairs set up around this space. Light filtering in from the high windows on the cylindrical walls and down from the skylight made a play of light and shadow in the empty space that Kizu found beautiful.
Whenever they had meetings in the conference room of his university and there were more people than chairs, the students and staff would spontaneously squeeze more chairs into each row, with an efficiency that always impressed Kizu, and the way the chairs were lined up here revealed an intimate knowledge of the interior of this building. Obviously it wasn’t the first time they’d used the chapel for these purposes.
When Kizu mentioned this to Dancer, she told him that setting up the chapel had become part of the Technicians’ day-to-day duties, just as the Quiet Women had taken on meal preparation and the daily cleaning of the inside of the chapel and its grounds.
Kizu recognized the sort of dynamic manpower that those trained in intellectual endeavors could demonstrate. It was different, though, from what he’d known at his own institute, something he realized for the first time since joining this organization of believers.
Now that he thought of it, the way the Quiet Women prepared the daily meals also ran so smoothly it was as if they’d been doing it all their lives. Every day at noon, when he went from the north shore of the Hollow along the weir to the dining hall, he found the chapel, the monastery, and the courtyard, as well, all clean and neat as a pin.
After eating lunch in the dining hall he usually went back home to the north shore. When he stopped by the office or went through the courtyard, almost every church member he ran across were people he’d seen before. Kizu got the impression that in the rooms in the monastery they were leading an equally well-ordered communal life. It also occurred to him that the lifestyles of each of these two groups, the Quiet Women and the Technicians, couldn’t help but affect others who were to move here.
On this day, too, both groups took efficient charge of the meeting. Everyone found seats without any congestion, in so orderly a way you would have thought individual names were carved on the backs of the chairs. Patron, accompanied by Morio—Ms. Tachibana taking an inconspicuous spot diagonally behind them—sat down in the first row of seats on the lake side of the building. Dancer and Ogi, who sat on either side of Patron, urged Kizu to sit in the same row with them. Beside him sat Dr. Koga and, next to him, Ikuo.
Directly across from Kizu sat Mrs. Shigeno of the Quiet Women—together with their leader, Ms. Oyama—who gave Kizu a friendly nod of greeting. Among the group of Quiet Women clustered around these two were women Kizu remembered seeing in the greenhouse along the Odakyu Line. He caught a glimpse of Ms. Takada, the one with the scar on her face, her body angled off to one side, seated in the second row.
This was the first time Kizu had seen all the former radical faction, the Technicians, who were among the first to move here. Clustered in their own little group like the Quiet Women, these men in the prime of life gave the impression of being an intelligent elite group. Kizu was frankly pained by the thought that these well-educated researchers had left their fields of specialization and were now doing manual labor as members of a religious organization.
What a terrible loss to Japanese academia and industry! Kizu thought, the idea itself the product of his long years in America and an American university. He wondered if the church office had prepared a program to make good use of these men who—both as people and as highly skilled specialists—were so far above average.
Patron opened the meeting with remarks that were unexpectedly carefree.
“Well, everybody, I’m hoping, with the land and the buildings that are still being readied and through the facilities at the farm, that you’ve been getting an upbeat feeling about our future here. How do you feel about it? I don’t think the character of our life here will be changing all that much, so if any one of you feels uncomfortable with our communal life, I’m not recommending that you just grin and bear it. There’s a great number of people who’ve already announced their intention to move here. Please feel free to discuss this in informal groups or come individually to the office if you’d like to talk about it, but feel free to move in and out as you please. Normally you’d be hearing this sort of thing from representatives of our office, but since I don’t have anything else to say today, I decided to announce this in their place.”
Morio seemed so taken by Patron’s casual way of speaking that he could barely restrain himself from applauding. Instead, he merely nodded, and Patron gave him a serious nod in return. Kizu was favorably impressed by their completely natural rapport. Those who lived with Patron in his detached house on the mountain side of the eastern edge of the monastery didn’t take their meals in the dining hall, so it was the first time in quite a while that Kizu had seen Morio.
Soon after they’d moved to the Hollow, Patron had invited Kizu and Ikuo for dinner at his residence, but Kizu was busy with his large-scale painting—he’d finished the sketches he’d begun in Tokyo and though the main theme wasn’t settled, the hint Dr. Koga had dropped was swirling around in his mind—and couldn’t spare the time. The explanation the office staff had given convinced Kizu that Ikuo was busy, but day after day he’d return late at night, well after dinner was over, and Kizu, finding it too troublesome to walk alone over the weir to the dining hall, would more often than not make do with groceries he picked up at the market.
In this casual intimacy between Patron and Morio, Kizu could sense a positive mood surrounding Patron’s daily life in this new location, where he now seemed to be getting back on track.
Mrs. Shigeno spoke next.
“The Quiet Women would like to get everyone’s opinion about the cafeteria. Have the meals we’ve prepared up till now been all right? Starting this week we’ll be using ham, bacon, and fresh chicken from the Flaming Green Tree Farm. We’re also negotiating with a company we’ve done business with for a long time to buy some very fresh pork as well. As for fish, a church truck will be going to the sea to lay in a stock. The only remaining question is finding a reliable provider of beef.
“We’re not doing this for all of you in the church so much as in the hope that it will help improve people’s diets here in this region. Soon after we arrived, I was quite shocked at how poor the selection of goods is in the markets here, and when I went to the Old Town I found it much the same. The Era of Rapid Growth and the Bubble Economy have passed this place by with barely a ripple.
“Still, it’s interesting to look at the schoolchildren here, because they’re as big and strong as any kids you’d find in the city. I hope we can get the Farm completely up and running soon so we can provide these children with delicious, healthful food. According to Ikuo, the Farm has a variety of equipment so as long as we can reestablish connections to some reliable suppliers, we can leave the rest up to the Technicians.”
Seated beside Ms. Tachibana and behind Patron, Asa-san hesitantly replied to Mrs. Shigeno. “In its heyday, the Flaming Green Tree Farm had a good connection with a major meat wholesaler for ham and bacon, as well as with retailers to sell the finished products. Satchan had her reasons for scaling back the Farm’s operations, but maybe you could revive this connection with the supplier again. Anyhow, besides the negotiations to turn over the management of the Farm to the church, she has been putting out feelers in a few other directions.”
“Thank you very much for your explanation,” Mrs. Shigeno said politely. “That being the case, there’s not much cause for concern. The only thing I’m trying to do is find out whether you’ve liked the food so far. I don’t imagine you want to come right out and say you don’t like it. Should we talk about whether to go along wi
th a supplier who wants us to put in a vending machine with beer and alcoholic drinks? The Technicians, though, since they’re in a field that involves calculations with equations, don’t seem to drink alcohol much.”
Dr. Koga spoke up briskly. “Some of them do drink, so when they want something they buy it from the vending machine in front of the general store down by the river. Can’t they just continue to do that? That’s the least we can do to help out the local economy! Speaking as a doctor, it’s healthiest if the vending machines selling alcoholic drinks are as far away as possible. Good exercise, after all. Also, and the Technicians are all in agreement on this, we have no complaints about how the Quiet Women are running the dining hall. Compared to the research institute’s dining hall ten years ago, Japanese food has become quite gourmet.”
The calm former radical members followed Dr. Koga’s pronouncement with a serious, almost solemn attitude.
Dancer spoke next.
“We’ve already come up with a proposal for Patron to give sermons in the chapel. We’ve posted the first announcement on the bulletin board in the dining hall, but this doesn’t mean we’ll follow the same schedule every week. Some people have gotten in touch with us at the office requesting that a regular program of sermons be set up as soon as possible. The main question is Patron’s health. Patron has been mentally preparing so that the church can have a clean start. We’ve come this far. I ask that you be patient until he’s physically and mentally ready to begin. At the beginning Patron told you some things that Ogi or I should have reported, and now I guess I’ve said some things that are more properly in Patron’s purview.”
Kizu was sure that calls—if not protests—for Patron to address them directly would arise from the assembled group, but instead a warm reaction welled up from the circle of participants. The feeling that we’ve come this far was clearly not confined to Dancer.