by Kenzaburo Oe
The bare lightbulbs hanging down from the grandstands illuminated Ikuo’s thick features as he stood up beside Dancer. The rest of his massive head, like a darkly shaded bull’s, swayed violently, catching Ogi’s attention.
Dancer was pushing something onto the back of Ikuo’s left hand, which hung down straight. A gust of wind shook a hanging light that briefly lit up what it was: a box of matches. Ogi could tell that the matchbox, soon sunk again in darkness, was being forced on Ikuo. Holding one end of the matchbox, Dancer was twisting the other end onto the back of Ikuo’s hand. At the same time she stretched up on tiptoes toward that massive black head, whispering something.…
As the bare lightbulb lit them up again, the back of Ikuo’s left hand still didn’t budge, but finally he reached out with his right hand and snatched the matchbox away. He then set off for a boat lying in the shadow of the Japanese-style boats floating beside the stairs filled with dark water. The boat rolled as Ikuo got on board, and one of the Fireflies quickly shoved off and set the oars.
Dancer slowly moved backward to where Ogi stood. With a fierce look, she watched the boat set off. The darkened island was lit up by a floodlight from the stands. The floodlight lit up the Spirit dolls piled up on the wooden framework surrounding the giant cypress, particularly the conspicuously larger papier-mâché figure of Guide.
The doll that Patron was wearing above the grandstands, where he had now finished speaking, was closer, but strangely enough seemed smaller than the one on the island.
Ogi realized he’d forgotten the order of the program. Was Patron supposed to remain standing with the costume on by the grandstands, or was Ogi supposed to take him behind the curtain and have him rest on a chair there? Dancer leaned over to whisper, so close to him that her skull banged his temple.
“Go ahead and do it! I told him,” she said in a strong voice, like some angry young girl. “You’re always bragging about how you’ll do it if you hear the voice telling you to. Can’t you hear the voice now saying Do it? That’s what I told him! Even if you don’t hear the voice, afterward you can always claim you did! That’s exactly what I told him!”
Led by the floodlight, the thousand people surrounding the lake fixed their eyes on the island, their attention turning from the slapstick confusion still going on around the chapel to the papier-mâché Spirits that were about to go up in flames. No one wanted to miss this, the finale of the summer conference. Everyone anticipated that Patron, still above the grandstands, would once more call out in response to the conflagration.
The Firefly manning the oars in Ikuo’s bow rowed strongly, the prow of the boat running up onto the shoreline of the island, a meadow inundated with water. The rower stepped into the water up to his knees and held the boat steady. Ikuo plunged decisively out of the boat and with the momentum of the landing ran toward the giant cypress, his head bent forward. He came face-to-face with the giant doll of Guide, standing behind the bamboo ladder and the wood frame it was leaning against.
“Isn’t he telling you to Do it? Up on the frame of the cypress. Do it!” Dancer’s hot breath brushed Ogi’s cheek.
“That’s not what’s supposed to happen, is it?” Ogi responded, holding his rising anger in check.
“Do it! Do it!” Dancer said vehemently, ignoring Ogi’s protest.
Morio’s piano music had changed to “Ascending, Part Two” and then went back to Part One. It wasn’t a simple tape loop but the recording of a performance that played the music in that order. The massive body of the skillful performer of this music now clumsily approached the wooden frame. Before long this dark figure, his large head hanging down, slowly began to move. Finally he took something out of his pants pocket—Ogi knew it was the matchbox—and laid it on a low wooden bar on the wood frame.
Then, as if he’d forgotten something, he quickly retraced his steps. Even before the Firefly standing in the dark water could pull the boat closer, the dark figure stepped into the water and almost collapsed into the boat, the Firefly shoving off the edge with both hands. As the boat rowed back, the dark figure on board sat there unmoving, like some bulky cargo.
A moment later two more dark figures stood up at the water’s edge on the chapel side on the island. Water dripped from both of them. One of them supported the other as the figure struggled to walk in the soft sand. The two figures stood side by side in front of the wooden frame around the cypress. The upright slim figure looked around a bit—Ogi realized it was Ms. Tachibana—and reached out a thin arm to the wooden bar on the frame. A match flared, and the wavering flame reached out toward the papier-mâché Guide that draped down from the lower level of the frame.
As soon as the flames lapped up the lower edge of the frame, a wide swath of red flames raced up to the wild hair of the doll’s head. All at once a round of applause rose up from the broad circle of onlookers surrounding the Hollow, drowning out the piano music. The larger of the two shadows turned to face the grandstands and gave a respectful bow as if it were a performer on a stage acknowledging the audience. The applause roared up cheerily, and the flames made small exploding sounds as they covered the entire wooden frame.
At the grandstands, the boat passed around the Japanese boats to arrive at the inundated steps, and Ikuo walked up them alone. Dancer ran up to him with such force she almost sent him falling back into the water.
“Murderer! Did you hear the voice telling you, Do it?” Dancer cursed him, slamming her body into his.
Probably no one else heard that besides Ogi, who’d come running after her. Now a different kind of stir swept through the crowd, mixed in with screams here and there, and the stir rose even louder. Seeing that Dancer was being restrained, Ogi turned to look back at the island, where the surprisingly high flames illuminated, at the base of the wooden frame, which itself was ablaze, the two shadowy figures from before crouched down, hugging each other, their free hands held up to shield their faces from the flames.
The papier-mâché Guide on top of the burning frame seemed to leap and, together with the other dolls around it, went up in flames. The fire now reached to the cypress branches piled there, to the luxuriant leaves of the smaller branches; then even the thick trunk of the tree, like a pillar rising up through all that was piled around it, began to burn.
In the midst of new screams, the mass piled up on the upper level that covered the wooden frame collapsed in a shower of sparks onto the two prostrate figures. In the reddish glow of the flames things collapsed one after another. Shouts and crying voices rose up. The roar of the flames was rivaled by the sound of the wind rising up from them; the entire area around the lake was like a strangely clamorous festival.
Like the agitated crowd around him, Ogi’s eyes were riveted on the flaming giant cypress, but he sensed some disturbance, spun around, and saw the Technicians’ security detail grab the person wearing the papier-mâché figure of Guide and roughly rip off the disguise. Gii emerged from it, dressed in T-shirt and jeans. The young man was limp and dripping sweat as if a bucket of water had been poured over him.
An even greater scream went up as the papier-mâché Guide on the island fell to the ground from the blazing frame and bounced up, and out of the wreckage appeared a human body.
Epilogue: The Everlasting Year
1
Young Ogi, accompanied by the American newspaper reporter Fred Parks and Mrs. Tsugane, visited Maki Town for the first time in more than a year. In the intervening time Ogi had married Mrs. Tsugane, so it was strange to keep calling him by his old appellation, though that’s what he planned to go by with everyone in the Hollow. The three of them landed at the Matsuyama airport, transferred to the express train, and by the time they got off at Maki Station a December snow was steadily falling, something Ogi had never experienced in Tokyo. The man-made forests that made up most of the mountain ranges surrounding the Maki basin looked as if a brush had been used to sweep polishing powder over the blue-black earth. Despite the heavy snow the air was filled with the appro
ach of a gentle twilight. Snow had piled up in the square in front of the station, and the roads leading out from that spot were already covered in white, with not much traffic at that time of day. No taxis were waiting outside the station.
They’d called ahead from the Matsuyama airport to say they’d be taking the last express train of the day, and since no one was there to greet them Ogi considered phoning again. He wasn’t at all sure, though, whether at this time of day Dancer would still be working in the office next to the chapel. She’d gotten married too, to Ikuo, and was now in overall charge of running the Church of the New Man. It was windy as well as snowing, and Fred, who wore only an old trench coat, was grumbling about the cold.
Before long a brand-new Nissan President luxury sedan went past the prefectural road and then turned back toward them. The car scattered newly fallen snow in the intersection in front of the square as it made a wide detour back, coming to a halt in front of the windswept station exit where Ogi and the others were waiting with their luggage.
Mr. Matsuo of the Fushokuji temple opened the driver’s door and leaned out to greet them. Then he said, emphatically, “This looks like it’ll be the first major snowfall we’ve had in some time. Even if it weren’t snowing so much, taxis don’t like to drive to the Old Town. With the recession they’ve cut back the number of cabs, plus the drivers are still a little bit shy about picking up foreigners. I’m not saying they’re prejudiced or anything, it’s just that they can’t speak English.”
Mr. Matsuo got out of the car, dressed in a dark navy-blue jacket, and darted about, helping first Mrs. Tsugane and then Fred into the backseat; he stowed their luggage in the trunk and motioned to Ogi to sit in front. The passenger seat, like all the other seats, was quite plush.
“Weren’t you on your way downriver?” Ogi asked hesitantly.
“I was supposed to attend a meeting of the River Conservancy group at the sake manufacturer’s place. With the Fireflies busy running the Farm, the Village Association group and I have taken over these duties. But with all this snow, it might be smarter to skip the meeting, don’t you think?”
They passed by the newly built overpass at the confluence of the Kame and Maki rivers and then drove upriver along the prefectural road, already covered in four inches of snow. As they drove, Ogi reintroduced Mr. Matsuo, whom he remembered meeting at the summer conference, to Mrs. Tsugane. Mr. Matsuo went back to talking about the snow.
“Driving through the snow like this makes me think of Morio’s music. He was a very special and pure person, his sister too. Even now the church plays his music all day long to mark events in the daily schedule. Every time I go over to the Hollow to see Ikuo about something, it always amazes me—”
“He composed pieces about the snow?” the always level-headed Mrs. Tsugane interrupted.
“I think he must have, since he composed lots of short pieces,” Mr. Matsuo said kindly to her, following the deferential way Ogi treated his older wife. “But there’s something throughout all of Morio’s music that conveys a kind of snowy feeling. There’s a saying by the famous Buddhist priest Dogen that one should always be in harmony with the melody of the snow. I think it means that snow is silent, and one should play in concert with that.
“Morio was mentally challenged, but he made up for it with a keen sense of sound,” Mr. Matsuo continued. “When he composed his music, I imagine he put things in the real world and things he felt and thought on an equal footing. That’s how I feel whenever I hear his music and look at the falling snow. Even if we know we’re supposed to be in harmony with the melody of the snow, clever musicians never take it that far, though for Morio that was the most natural thing in the world.”
“Fred wants to know which text that quote is from,” Mrs. Tsugane said, after she had explained in English to Fred that they’d been talking about the monk Dogen.
“I don’t know if there’s a translation of it, but it’s from the Dogen Osho Koroku.”
“He wants to know if this is different from the Eihei Koroku.”
“It’s the same.”
“He says that maybe snow is often mentioned in Dogen’s sermons because of how cold it was in Kyoto and Fukui, where he lived.”
“Fred, I underestimated you,” Mr. Matsuo said. “I trained at the Eihei Zen temple, but I’ve never really read the entire text. Learned it instead by ear—in Dogen’s teachings there’s the term a sixth ear. Do you say that in English? Six ears?”
Fred Parks laughed and didn’t pursue the subject any further. In a fine mood, Mr. Matsuo went on about the snow.
“When’s it’s snowing this hard, the local people know just how much it’s going to accumulate. They used to be quite nervous about it, knowing how many days the delivery trucks wouldn’t be able to get through. The produce grocer along the river used to put chains on his truck and dash off to buy supplies and be buried in snow on the way back. Sometimes the fire department would have to be called out.
“Now, though, it’s different—see that car coming from the opposite direction? Since the church is doing such a great job of running the Farm, there’s no need to get concerned about where the vegetables or eggs are coming from. They’re even raising char in the spring behind the chapel. So people feel much more secure. Now people along the river and those in the Outskirts as well don’t mind if the road’s closed.
“That gives you an idea of how much the church has influenced life around here in the past year. Simply put, we don’t have to worry about getting a steady supply of inexpensive quality items. I’m sure this is obvious to you, coming from the city, but regional cultural differences show up in the distribution of goods; in backwoods places things are shoddy and expensive and you have to wait forever to get them. That’s been reversed here. In the bazaar held here every other week you’ll find not just folks from the Old Town but even people from Matsuyama coming here to shop instead of the other way around.”
Fred was quite interested in all this when Mrs. Tsugane translated the details for him.
“Fred wants to know, after such a tragedy, with children present to witness it, whether the church didn’t become alienated from the local people.” Ogi conveyed the question, letting Mrs. Tsugane translate Mr. Matsuo’s reply.
“That shows how wise the people in this region can be,” Mr. Matsuo said. “Having the Farm is advantageous to them. There was going to be a mass suicide in the chapel, but in the end nothing happened, so the local people aren’t going to harp on that forever. The east slope of the Hollow is a center for butterbur, and when it’s in season hordes of people come from the river basin and the Outskirts. The people in these parts like to give names to places based on some event that occurred there, and they’ve given a new name to the mountain stream where they pick these butterbur. They call it Mountain Stream Where Twenty-five Refined Ladies Shat, and they say it’s a particularly tasty crop of butterbur this year. Ha ha ha!”
Nobody laughed along with him, so the head priest changed to a more prudent topic. “As time passes, just as the achievements of He Who Destroys and Oshikome are now distant events for us, the summer conference will fade into the past and—who knows?—perhaps the only thing to remain will be that place name.”
“Much like the Buddhist concept of the evanescence of life,” Mrs. Tsugane suggested.
“The power of the land counts for a lot, they say,” Mr. Matsuo went on. “The cypress island’s been cleaned up, and that’s where Patron and Ms. Tachibana and her brother are buried. The memorial was done in relief by the architect who built the chapel and has one of Morio’s scores carved on it. The tombstone is surrounded by the lake and faces the chapel, but now it’s all covered in snow. In harmony with the melody of the snow, you might say.”
By then they’d left the district road, passed over the main bridge, and started down the cross-Shikoku-highway bypass, looking down on houses along the river that, in the snow, had already turned off their lights.
“Are Professor Kizu’s r
emains buried on the island as well?” Mrs. Tsugane asked. This time Ogi fielded the question.
“He wasn’t a member of the church. And Ikuo in particular insisted on wanting Professor Kizu’s soul to be free from the realm of God.”
“But isn’t Ikuo the one who took over as leader of the church after Patron?”
“He’s leading the church, having separated the managerial aspect of running it from the spiritual,” Mr. Matsuo said in a serious tone. “Ikuo himself seems to be free from the voice of God. Gii’s been selected to take over the spiritual side of the church eventually, and the Quiet Women and the Technicians are teaching him. Gii will be inheriting the Farm from Satchan, so it’ll be convenient for the Farm to merge with the church, but I don’t think that the managerial side—Ikuo and Dancer, in other words—did this purely out of self-interest.
“Gii has some religious element in him that connects him to Patron, don’t you think? And half his genes are from the founder of the Church of the Flaming Green Tree, let’s not forget. It’s a little tricky to guess how Satchan feels about all this, though Gii’s own choice is pretty clear. This spring he didn’t go on to high school. The Technicians designed a curriculum they say can take him through high school and college in six years. And Ikuo is apparently drilling him pretty hard in English.”
“Fred wants to know what you mean by saying that Ikuo is free of God’s voice,” Mrs. Tsugane said.
“That much English I can understand,” Mr. Matsuo said, summoning up his dignity as head priest. “There’s no easy answer, though, even in Japanese.… If tomorrow it looks like the snow won’t be letting up, you’ll most likely be staying four or five days. Why don’t you ask Ikuo himself? One other thing you should know is that, now that Gii and the other Fireflies are part of the church, they no longer call Ikuo Yonah.”
Mr. Matsuo drove the car through the entrance to the parking lot, completely white in the darkness, and all the way around to the exit. Ogi helped him get their luggage out of the trunk. After quickly thanking Mr. Matsuo, Mrs. Tsugane and Fred hurried into the courtyard of the monastery, trying to avoid the thick flat snowflakes. Anticipating their arrival, the church members had swept the walk clear of snow. Just then music played, signaling the end of all official activities for the day.