by Kenzaburo Oe
Fifteen years later, it still pained Satchan to look at the horrible sight of this burned and mangled tree still standing. “If you cut down the tree and use the land as a small park,” she said, “I’ll give the island to the church.”
Gii added his own idea, saying that if the tree was to be cut down they should incorporate this as a rousing end to the conference. How about burning it down completely? Since it was on an island in the middle of a lake full of water, the fire department shouldn’t have any objection. They were planning to burn all the spirit dolls anyway, once they’d been used in the procession; if they piled the dolls up at the base of the cypress and burned them together, two birds with one stone, it would be a spectacular finale.
Patron immediately approved of this proposal when Ikuo presented it to him. After they finished discussing it, Patron, Ikuo, and Morio went over to the window that looked over the lake to watch the Fireflies as they were just setting off in their procession. The three men soon moved over to the east window and followed the children with their lanterns as, the older boys accompanying them, they swiftly walked up the forest slope that, in the darkness, seemed all the more close. A second group was waiting for the procession, and the first group lit the second’s lanterns and then began to run toward the eastern bank of the Hollow in a large curve.
Ikuo had already sensed, along with Morio’s being on edge, that Patron had lost his composure when all of a sudden Patron turned to them anxiously and began to speak. Weren’t the Fireflies preparing to spread kerosene all over the area along the animal trail they’d been taking, he said worriedly, a lot of kerosene? Weren’t they all set to light the kerosene that was running down the forest slopes, and weren’t the boys running with the lanterns already setting fires in places you couldn’t see from here and then passing the batons one after another to the next groups crossing the forest?
At first Ikuo thought this was some kind of joke. But Patron’s insistence wasn’t normal. All of a sudden Patron leaped up and yelled for Ms. Tachibana, who was downstairs. When she showed up, a worried look on her face, he ordered her to get his clothes ready so he could go outside. “Morio’s coming down with his shoes on,” he yelled out, “so get the same clothes ready for him!”
Though there was no need to, he shouted at Ikuo in the same fearful voice. “If the Fireflies set fires and the whole forest surrounding the Hollow goes up in flames at once,” he shouted, “there’ll be a panic among the thousand spectators! We have to do something to stop this tragedy!”
Ikuo tried to calm him down, telling him this was just a ridiculous fantasy. But Morio was even more hysterical than Patron, and as Patron was being dressed by Ms. Tachibana, his vehement words pouring out unabated, Morio clung to his waist, crying. Patron upbraided him, urging him to change his own clothes as quickly as he could.
Seeing that Ikuo was still seated calmly, Patron had changed his tack, announcing that he was going down to the reviewing stand to take the microphone and urge the spectators to evacuate the area. “You and Ms. Tachibana take Morio, he can’t walk well!” he shouted, “and run past the parking lot and escape to the bypass!”
Patron had pulled on his shoes right on top of the rug and was about to head downstairs alone. Not knowing what else to do, Ikuo physically restrained him. If Patron’s call was amplified by the microphone and rang out in the darkness, imagine how much more of a panic this would throw the spectators into, Ikuo argued. “People will be thrown into a worse panic, thinking they’ll be burned alive in a forest fire,” he said, trying to calm Patron down.
Although usually mild-mannered, Patron had become like a frenzied child, foaming at the mouth, his face bright red and swollen as he resisted, trying to wrench himself free of Ikuo’s grasp. When he couldn’t, he twisted to one side and boxed Ikuo on the ears. “Satan, Satan!” he screamed.
Likewise, Morio jabbed at Ikuo’s thighs, yelling out the same thing. With Morio wrapped around his lower half, Ikuo grasped Patron tightly so he couldn’t pound him anymore and dragged him backward toward the bed in the next room, faintly visible in the gloom. The momentum sent Morio tumbling down the hallway that led to the staircase. He let out a cry, and Ms. Tachibana came running.
Ikuo had finally managed to hold Patron down in bed, but he kept on resisting, spitting out hard flecks of foam as he shouted, “You faggot Satan, you!”
As Dr. Koga was leaving the chapel annex with Kizu, Ogi, who had the key with him and was waiting for them, called out. Ms. Tachibana wanted Dr. Koga to come over to Patron’s place right away. Kizu watched him walk up the short slope to Patron’s residence, raise a hand in greeting to the Firefly security guards, and, looking down, walk inside. As Kizu turned his gaze toward the overflowing crowds of people, Ikuo showed up, his sweatshirt and corduroy trousers sweaty and smelly.
“I’ll take you over to the north shore,” he said.
Leaving Ogi behind, Kizu and Ikuo walked off, a two-man security guard from the Fireflies clearing a path for them through the milling crowds. As they got to the narrow place where the lunch menu was posted, the blacksmith and a woman who looked as if she were fighting illness were waiting in ambush. They passed so close to Kizu and Ikuo they could smell the liquor on the man’s breath, but Ikuo ignored the man when he called out to them and put his thick arm protectively around Kizu as they strode away.
The smell of Ikuo’s sweat made Kizu feel calm and protected. A fear still lingered, though, as to what the blacksmith might say to the woman—perhaps not ill herself but with a husband ill with cancer—as they stood bathed in the direct sunlight beside him.
The security guards led them from the crowded dam, along the broad road connecting to the north shore of the Hollow, to the path leading up to Kizu’s house. Ikuo was in a hurry but he was careful to go in first, and as Kizu headed straight for bed to lie down, he opened up the windows from the studio to the kitchen to disperse the heated, stuffy air.
Kizu laid his head back at an angle on the high part of the bed and watched. Ikuo sat down at a chair in front of an empty easel, picked up a drawing of himself and Patron on top of a box of paints, and gazed at it. The strong light shining in from outside emphasized the contrast even more, but Kizu had already noticed how haggard and beastlike Ikuo’s face looked, compared to the sketch.
Ikuo didn’t look back at Kizu. He hadn’t said a word on the walk over to the house, but now he spoke.
“I went over to see the triptych again, and I’ll tell you it’s a big hit,” he said. “Of course, the part showing Patron’s wound is the main thing people are interested in.”
“You knew the wound in his side has disappeared, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Dancer told me. Just as she hid its existence from everyone for so long, now she plans to keep the fact that it’s gone a secret from everyone.”
“It must be tough on Patron, too.… Do you think things just built up inside him that led to last night’s incident?” Kizu asked.
Ikuo was silent, but he came over to stand next to Kizu, the drawing still in his hand. “I knew the way I felt about the triptych was different from everybody else, and now that I see this preliminary drawing I know exactly what I was feeling. About what kind of Lord that Patron is to me—me as Jonah, as the Fireflies call me.”
Ikuo was silent, sunk in thought. Kizu thought he caught a glimpse of a dangerous imbalance between the expression on Ikuo’s face, all bones and dark skin, and the look in his unmoving eyes.
“I’ve gone any number of times to see the painting. After the press conference this morning, when you and Dr. Koga were talking, it worried me, so I went to see it again, and now I finally understand what it all means.”
Ikuo drew his eyebrows together over his penetrating, still unmoving eyes. It was his habit, after examining what he wanted to say in his mind, to push aside any hesitation or doubts about whether his listeners would understand what he was getting at and just forge full steam ahead, speaking like some fanatic.
“Even after last
night’s incident I still believe Patron is a very special person. He’s an extraordinary person, one who definitely journeys to the other side and has mystical experiences. I think that characteristic of his came out in a strange way last night. What happened last night was quite out of the ordinary.
“Even after he was no longer able to sink into a trance, he’s continued to suffer as the mediator between the world and his own special God—whether a personified God or something else, I don’t know. He’s resigned to never escaping that role. What I find more extraordinary is how he made a fool of the God he had such an intimate relationship with and abandoned his followers. And now, without thoroughly reflecting on what he did, he’s welcoming back these hundreds of people.
“But what was even more of a shock for me was how crazed with fear he got, positive that these believers and onlookers are going to be burned to death. That’s a human way of looking at things, but since I’m the one they’ve dubbed Jonah, I’m not expecting ordinary human behavior from him.”
“Since I drew both of you in my painting,” Kizu said, “you as Jonah, Patron with his wound as the Lord, I suppose I could be accused of having a hunch that your relationship with Patron would follow the lines of the book of Jonah, with Jonah being persuaded, in the end, by God. This has bothered me for a long while.
“When Morio and Patron went in the middle of the night to see the painting, Patron told me the person you’re modeled after, according to Wolynski’s book, never gives up protesting to God, ends up in despair, and leaps into the sea himself. When I heard this, I felt freed from the concerns I’ve had for so long. Your relationship with Patron might very well develop in a different direction from that of Jonah and the Lord in the book of Jonah. Not that I had any idea what path this particular Lord would lead Jonah in.… At any rate, Ikuo, you are a person who has led a consistent life. From day one you’ve been the Jonah who protests.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Ikuo said, turning his face to the surface of the lake, glittering in the noon sun, and once more squinting his eyes shut in the brightness. “I felt the same thing about Patron last night. He’s a person who’s been consistent his whole life, and always will be. Even after the Somersault, he suffered because of a very human sense of integrity. I don’t think calling what he experienced a descent into hell exaggerates the kind of suffering he endured. Still, he insisted on being consistent with what he had done in the Somersault. He never attempted a Somersault in reverse.”
“And now you’ve given up hoping for Patron to be the mediator for you and the Almighty?” Kizu asked. “Though you’re still quite young, you’ve lived your whole life seeking God—who will tell you, Go ahead and do it!—and the mediator between you and that voice. And now you’ve found that Patron isn’t the one.
“Does this mean you’ll wash your hands of him? That you’ll return this Founder, overflowing with love for humanity, to his followers at this conference, and make a clean break with him? Whatever your decision, I want you to know I’ll follow you—wherever you go. If that’s how things end up, though, with Patron curing my cancer I’d say I was overpaid for the triptych.”
“No, I’m not planning to leave right now,” Ikuo said. “After our struggle last night, Dr. Koga rushed over and gave Patron a shot to calm him down. He was probably still feeling the aftereffects of this, but this morning before the press conference he called me over and asked me to exert still more effort to help him with the final event in our program, his sermon.
“He had called me Satan and worse, but he didn’t take it back or apologize. He had a new idea for the direction of his sermon, connecting up with the pageant on the cypress island we’d talked about last night. He told me he got the idea from a strangely realistic dream he had, and he’d like me to help him make it happen.
“Patron’s going to deliver his sermon from the reviewing stand, and he wants to do this wearing a doll made to look like Guide. The other new dolls for the Spirit Festival he wants taken over to the island and burned up with the giant cypress. Guide’s doll should be burned there too, so he wants another Guide doll, a much larger one, made for him to wear. His concept is to have himself wearing the same sort of thing as these dolls that are burned up in a requiem ceremony.
“I said I’d help him. As we speak, the Fireflies are out in the hot sun now working on the island, constructing a wooden frame in front of which we’ll stand the doll of Guide and a microphone, the same way Patron will be standing in front of a microphone, and placing several kerosene tanks among the cypress leaves.
“They’re putting everything they have into the job. Since it’ll be a public demonstration, a continuation of last night’s Fireflies procession, I’ll make sure they do a great job.”
A beat or two of silence ensued. Then Ikuo turned his back to the bright window. For the first time in quite a while his expression was gentle, even bashful, as he said, “How about a shower? I’m all sweaty from last night and I’d like to take one myself. Let’s take the afternoon off, in preparation for tomorrow. Pretty soon we’re not going to have much to do with them anymore, so let’s skip the party at the Farm tonight and leave everything up to the Technicians and the Quiet Women.”
32: For Patron
1
On Sunday morning the green leaves of the trees and the summer grasses sparkled in the strong fresh sunlight, and clouds reflected whitely on the surface of the lake. Ogi was out with some young workmen sent over by a local company that had contracted to build additional temporary toilets, trying to decide where to locate them. From their experiences on Friday, the night of the Fireflies procession, it was clear that the portable toilets provided by Mr. Soda weren’t enough. So they set out to dig out holes in six spots around the grounds that would then have a wooden framework built around them—knowing they had to finish in time for tonight’s meeting.
They selected a relatively flat spot, on the mountain side of the path through the grandstands that circled the lake, and set to work. Once the conference was over they’d wait until the ground at the bottom of the holes had absorbed all the liquid before filling them in. The holes the motorized shovels scooped out were deeper than Ogi had imagined. Once they’d decided on the locations and work had begun, Ogi was left with little to do. As the shovels continued their loud clang, he walked down the path from east to north, to the point closest to the island with the giant cypress in the middle of the lake.
The branches of the giant cypress had been trimmed back to a height of about twenty feet. The lopped-off larger branches and the smaller ones with green still on them were piled up on a two-tiered wooden frame surrounding the trunk—the middle of both the upper and lower tiers left empty for the dolls to be added—and leaned up against the lower tier. Along with the stack of firewood in the island meadow, this was enough to make a spectacular firestorm.
The entire structure was like some sturdy square building. Even if kerosene was poured on and lighted, it wouldn’t collapse to one side but would end up a huge bonfire, safe for all spectators to enjoy.
Another wooden frame was set up apart from the one around the cypress but of the same height, made up of two or three logs with speakers set on top. Beside it lay a sturdy bamboo ladder, the kind used by lumberjacks, to be used later to place the dolls that were going to be burned on top of the wooden frame.
Sensing someone behind him, Ogi turned around to find Gii, his suntanned face looking much older now, leaning against the tiny light-green leaves of a maple and watching him. Gii said, unhurriedly, “Yonah’s going around this morning, talking to everyone to make sure everything’s set for the evening meeting. He’d like you to go with him; he’s already settled the matter with Dancer.”
“Right this moment?” Ogi asked.
“My truck is in the little park beyond the parking lot.”
They turned back to the east shore, greeting the young workmen they passed, and walked down the aisle, a little shoddily laid out, below the chapel and the mon
astery. Unconcerned about all the trampled-down spots on the path’s shoulders, Gii strode on.
“Where did he say we’re going to talk?” Ogi asked.
“We’ll be meeting the first group, representatives of the Quiet Women, in the hills. After the party last night, some of their friends stayed at the monastery, and we can’t very well make them leave so early in the morning. The women will drive over in Yonah’s car.”
“You drove over here, right? So I’ll drive from here. The prefectural police haven’t shown up yet, have they?”
“They don’t view the church as dangerous enough to warrant sending the riot police here this early.”
As Gii had said, there weren’t any other cars at the little park. Despite Ogi’s insistence, though, he didn’t make any move to hand over the keys. Ogi caught a glimpse of a doll wrapped in cloth bags in the loaded truck bed.
“I’d heard about these dolls, but the ones used in the Spirit Procession are really big, aren’t they?” Ogi asked.
“The one in back was made to Patron’s special order; Mayumi had to stay up all night to do it. It’s the Spirit of Guide. She said it wasn’t so hard since she’d already made one, though the larger size did cause her a little trouble.”
They drove down the Shikoku highway bypass, down to where the older district road leveled out, and crossed the bridge over the Kame River, the water sparkling below.
“We’re going to drive up to a piece of worthless meadow my mother inherited,” Gii explained, “at the intersection of two logging roads. One road goes up past the entrance to the Farm; the one we’re going to climb goes past the junior high.”
As the truck turned the corner and entered the glen, a woman teacher from the junior high, out sweeping the decorative shrubbery in front of the school, looked up in surprise at Gii, driving without a license. For his part, Gii remained totally cool and collected.
He parked the truck at the base of a red pine tree, branches trimmed back to quite high up, the greenery near the top shining in the brilliant sky. A red Ford Mustang was parked in front of a clearing leading to another logging road. As Ogi stepped down the narrow path down the short slope, clutching at branches to steady himself, Gii said to him, “Better not touch the wax trees. He Who Destroys planted wax trees from here up to the ridge to use as raw material for the Fireflies’ candles. Do you suppose he really planted them so he could pour hot oil over his enemies?”