Getting up was all the harder since they'd stayed up late in the heated dining hall talking. The late-night Hollow, lost in snow, had been as sound- less as the bottom of the ocean; the guests were startled each time they heard a piercing crack ring out in the woods. They'd been told what it was- branches of the bamboos in the large grove on the right-hand slope on the way to the Mansion cracking under the weight of the snow-but still it made them jump.
The little banquet held by the church members to welcome Ogi and the others, held two hours after their usual dinnertime, was hosted by Ikuo, Dancer, Dr. Koga, and Gii, and, from the Quiet Women, Ms. Oyama and Ms.
Takada. Mrs. Shigeno was away in Chiba visiting her daughter, who had married a physician.
All the Quiet Women had remained in the Hollow, and now most of the children they'd left behind when they moved to Shikoku had joined them.
Half of the Technicians had left, but in addition to the Fireflies, who'd been moved by Patron's sermon and were now enthusiastic supporters of the church, there were a number of other young people who'd joined, and pro- duction at the Farm was right on schedule. After attending Kizu night and day in his final illness, Ms. Asuka was now back in Tokyo editing the video of the summer conference.
As for Ogi, he had gone back to work at the International Culture Foun- dation and was planning in his spare time to write a book on the establish- ment of the Church of the New Man. He was preparing a first draft based on notes he'd taken from the time he first started working for Patron and Guide at the office in Seijo up to the hectic summer conference at the Hollow. Mrs.
Tsugane had used a word processor to make a fair copy of everything he had written so far.
As everyone involved pondered things anew after the events of the summer, Kizu had felt a renewed sense of the mission Patron entrusted him with- namely, to be historian for the Church of the New Man-and had begun fill- ing sketchbooks with memos of events. After his death Dancer put it all in order. Hearing of Ogi's plan to write a history of the church, Ikuo contacted him by phone to offer the materials for his use.
This is why Ogi and the others had come to the Hollow. Ikuo read over the fair copy of the first draft Ogi brought with him, while Ogi read through Kizu's memos. Afterward they discussed things, and after outlining a gen- eral plan, Ogi went ahead with reworking his first draft, laying great emphasis on Kizu's records and incorporating Ikuo's explanations as well. This was Ogi's own personal project, but once complete it would serve as a good intro- duction to an official church history.
Actually, the groundwork for this agreement had been laid by Mrs.
Tsugane. At the time of their marriage, in place of a wedding ceremony they held a reunion dinner with Mrs. Tsugane and Ogi's family. Ogi's elder brother and his wife, who had introduced her to Ogi in the first place, ordered a cake decorated with a ribbon saying FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PANTIES OF PURE LOVE, in order to tease Ogi. If their trysts deep in the Shikoku woods had come to light, there's no telling how carried away Ogi's brother and sis- ter-in-law would have gotten.
After dinner at a modest Italian restaurant in the Imperial Hotel, Mrs. Tsugane made a firm resolution. She would help her young husband- the one member of the Ogi family, renowned in the medical field, for whom no one had any expectations of success-to achieve his long-held plan, at the same time sweeping away the chagrin she'd felt at being treated so lightly by his family. She'd convinced herself that it was entirely due to the promotion campaign she'd run that her former husband had achieved international rec- ognition, but when it came to Ogi the more relevant question was not when he'd complete the project but whether he'd ever get started. So at this point Mrs. Tsugane suggested that he begin his "History of the Age" by writing a first volume tracing developments from the Somersault to the founding of the Church of the New Man.
At the same time she urged Fred to write an article about the now year- old church, including the horrifying events of the summer conference. Fred was assigned to do this by an American news agency and then asked Mrs.
Tsugane to travel with him as his interpreter to gather material, and that's how the plan to visit the Hollow near the end of the year came about.
After ten that morning Dancer called Ogi's residence with an invita- tion for Ogi, Fred, and Mrs. Tsugane to gather at the chapel with Ikuo and Gii to continue last night's conversation. The slope leading from Patron and Morio's former residence down to the chapel was less than sixteen feet, but as soon as they pushed open the front door they hesitated, looking out at the mound of white glittering in the flood of light. Even if they were to plow their way through it, the snow would come up to Fred's thighs, and he was the tallest of the group. The path had been swept clean the night before, but still it had accumulated this much.
Just then Gii, attired in a sturdy-looking outfit of boots and windbreaker, appeared, snow shovel in hand. Wielding the shovel in the painfully bright light, he was clearly more physically developed than a year before. As he gal- lantly shoveled his way up to the entrance Gii greeted Ogi and his wife in Japanese and Fred in British-accented English. In between shovelfuls he ad- vised them that it would be wise to wear overcoats when they went to the chapel since it was cold inside. He added that Ikuo-he didn't call him Yonah as in the past-didn't want to meet in the dining hall because other church members could eavesdrop on their conversation there.
"Since you're able to speak directly with Fred, he doesn't need my poor interpreting skills," Mrs. Tsugane said, turning on the charm as she spoke to Gii, who was flushed from his exertions clearing the snow.
As Mrs. Tsugane repeated in English to Fred what she'd said, Gii gave a reply in English that revealed how undaunted a fellow he was.
"If you're investigating a native religion here in the Hollow, instead of having an English-speaking informant it would be better, wouldn't it, to use an interpreter and have one native speak to another?"
Mrs. Tsugane went inside to collect her overcoat, and while she wrapped herself in a scarf that her ex-husband had designed, she showed her displeasure.
"What a charmless young man we have here. Much better to be labeled an innocent youth."
Ogi pretended not to hear.
Fred, who seemed to understand Mrs. Tsugane's Japanese quite well- in fact, Ogi suspected he had a better grasp of the spoken language than he made out-said in his characteristic grumbling way, "Pretty amazing to find such a complex intellectual environment so far out in the snowy forest! A priest who drives an expensive Nissan and quotes Dogen, and on top of that a fifteen-year-old who's got a good grasp of the imperialist aspects of cultural anthropology!"
Dancer had brought a kerosene heater with a built-in fan into the chapel.
But when Ogi and the others came inside, what caught their attention was less this than the thirty guitars lined up neatly along the wall behind the piano.
Last night they'd heard about this, that the junior high school, which had turned down Kizu's idea for an art classroom, was now using the chapel for music classes. So not only did one of the more prominent wind instrument groups in the district use the chapel for practice, it was also being used regu- larly by local students for their guitar lessons.
From the darkly shadowed triptych with its Renaissance-style scenes, one by one the three newcomers found themselves drawn to the sparkling long window set in the cylindrical inner concrete wall of the chapel. Surrounded by snow-covered forest, the lake in the Hollow reflected back the blue sky that looked like the bottom of a hole. In the midst of this diffusely lit scene, the square enclosure on the flat white stand that was the cypress island showed as undulations in the sparkling snow.