Asa-san took away the two sake bottles and went over to her husband, seated in the western corner of the room eating the same meal as the others, and refilled the cup he was just draining. She didn't, however, come back with any new bottles.
"This is a lot different from the usual way people drink in the country- side in Japan, isn't it-drinking themselves into a stupor," Kizu said, impressed.
"At the time he started the Base Movement in the Mansion, Former Brother Gii transformed the way drinking bouts are held among the young people," Asa-san explained. "Tribes in Africa do the same, he told them, drinking till they pass out, but things aren't so tough here that you need to do that." Her eyes, with their dense layer of sunburned wrinkles, turned red as she said this.
"The young local fellows I used to help in the construction of the chapel and monastery followed Brother Gii's custom," Soda put in, "and I'm trying to emulate that."
The former junior high principal brought over the rice, still in the rice cooker, and Kizu was amazed by the main dish in a large mortar. Asa-san scooped rice into each bowl, added some thick pieces of grilled sea bass and crumbled tofu, finally pouring over it the chilled miso paste the former prin- cipal had made, then passed a bowl to each of them, noting that they should add as much of the thinly sliced condiments-scallions, green shiso leaves, ginger buds-as they wanted. The former principal took his own large bowl back to his spot, and when Dr. Koga said in admiration, "This is fantastic!" he smiled happily and motioned to him to help himself to another serving.
Mr. Soda was the first to finish, and, as if planned ahead of time, he launched into a long-winded but organized monologue about Guide. Kizu was surprised by his frankness.
"I became a member of the church a little while after Dr. Koga, by which time the church was pretty well established. For me, though, the church was more Guide's than Patron's. Patron went into his trances, was able to open a corridor to the other side, and then related the visions he had there. This was the religious foundation we all relied on. As we stood on this foundation, though, it was Guide who urged us actually to go out and do something.
Without Guide the church's activities never would have gotten off the ground.
I'm not saying there could have been a coup d'état with Guide as the chief instigator, because Guide really needed Patron. Without the two of them in partnership, neither Patron nor Guide alone would have been able to do a thing.
"So both of them were our leaders, though in actual fact we looked to Guide. One time, when Patron wasn't there, we all gathered around Guide and peppered him with questions. We were very earnest about this. 'Why do you put Patron ahead of you when it comes to running the church?' we asked.
'What he says may be profound, but it's equally vague, isn't it? We need some- one like you who has clear-headed ideas leading us if we're actually going to do something. To borrow terminology from the Japanese Constitution about the Emperor, isn't Patron better as a symbol of the church, a symbol of unity for the believers?'
"Guide spoke quite openly to us then, and I thought it must be true. 'I had strong feelings toward my father who disappeared,' Guide said, 'so ever since I was a child I wanted to participate in a religious organization. I was kicked out of a lot of churches, though, and with no clue as to how to proceed I reached adulthood, and when I was teaching in night school I happened to run across Patron. His habit of falling into these trances convinced me he was a unique fellow. I knew he was the one, and that's how it all started.
'"Patron had nothing to do with ordinary people and eked out a living as a clairvoyant, but when I started living with him,' Guide said, 'his trances were on a different level from what I'd been led to believe. He'd come back from the other side more dead than alive and would mumble something in- comprehensible. As soon as I started being his listener-not just a listener but his adviser-I started getting actively involved. I'd gather together all his rambling statements, contextualize them, and give them back to him, and this formed the basis for some of the mystical things he then said. Gradually a clear narrative developed out of this. I had no doubt that on the other side Patron had otherworldly visions, and I became a loyal follower. In short order I began to tell all the followers what Patron had communicated to me. That's how I became Guide.' But did Patron have the ability to lead these followers in the kind of organized activities you expect of a church? 'Sometimes I had my doubts,' Guide told us.
"Once we heard this, those of us sitting around debating with him got all excited. Patron's visions had led all of us into a deeper spiritual understand- ing, but there were bigger trends to consider. As repentant souls we wanted to actually do something. Unless we prepared for the end of the world that Patron envisioned, there would be no reason for us penitents to live. 'These thoughts are making us suffer,' we complained to Guide.
"Our suffering boiled down to the same sort of frustrations that Guide had. 'Just as you take Patron's incomprehensible mutterings and convert them into intelligible language,' we told him, 'why don't you set up a springboard and make him take a huge leap off it? Once he jumps, we'll all leap off behind him!' That's as far as we took it that particular time, but this led to the cre- ation of the Izu Research Institute. You were part of this, too, weren't you, Dr. Koga-you who ran and ran but could never score!
"As for me, I had a pretty responsible position in the company I was working in. Putting aside the question of whether I could score a touchdown, from the get-go I wasn't the type to run full speed and break through the other team's defense. Also, once the Izu Research Institute was launched and grew by leaps and bounds as an elite group, I became more involved with keeping the whole church organization up and running. Once I even went to speak to Guide to complain about how high the institute's budget was. That was when we started to think about letting Kansai headquarters make independent financial decisions. I'm a conservative person, and quite persistent.
"In the end the radical faction was completely betrayed by Patron and Guide's Somersault. It wasn't just the radical faction that suffered because of this, of course. The Quiet Women would be a typical example. As I indicated in my talk with Guide, we had a plan to keep going and decided to let the church survive centered on the Kansai headquarters."
"I can see you're a person of vision, but at that stage did you think your plan would be the basis for building a new church someday?" Dr. Koga said.
"At the very least, we always thought Patron would return."
"And what we did was kill Guide for nothing," Dr. Koga said.
"But you're not just some ordinary member of the radical faction, Mr. Soda said soothingly, but Dr. Koga remained with head bowed.
Kizu intervened bravely. "There's something I don't quite understand, he said. "Something Ikuo doesn't understand either. I know he's talked with Patron about it a few times… There's always something missing from every- thing you've just been saying: namely, the actual strategies and tactics of the radical faction that were called off on account of the Somersault. There've got to be things that haven't been publicly discussed yet. If these tactics really existed, what were they? That's what I'd like to hear."
Mr. Soda hesitated. Once he began, though, he didn't hold anything back.
"What they had in mind was the same sort of terrorist assassinations the right wing carried out before the war, plus a postwar phenomenon: de- liberately causing an accident at a nuclear power plant. And if they were to survive that, they planned to create a millennial reign of repentance.