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.
"It's too bright without sunglasses," Fred said. "I heard that because Japanese people have dark eyes they can stand bright light, but I don't really understand why. They say the older you get the less sensitive you are to light.
Is that really true?"
"I'm fairly old and wear bifocals, but they're tinted, so don't treat me like some insensitive native!" Mrs. Tsugane said.
Fred replied, "What a grump!" and shrugged his shoulders in an exag- gerated way, more put off than ever; Ogi, though, was impressed by her gal- lant response.
Ikuo came into the chapel lugging an old leather briefcase Ogi remem- bered seeing Kizu using. Dancer brought over chairs around the heater, now blazing away, and they gathered around. Out of the leather case, which seemed to radiate cold, Ikuo took out a couple of sketchbooks and copies of other documents and laid them on an empty chair.
Next to these he laid down the typed first draft that Ogi had given him, and said, "Maybe it's the snow, but I felt as impatient as a child this morning and got up early and read the whole thing. Your descriptions are great; it reads like a novel. And I'm impressed by how you've remembered the details of conversations, even though I saw you always taking notes. But if you flesh this out, covering everything from Patron's Somersault through Guide's tor- ture and up to the summer conference and the Church of the New Man, won't the whole thing be enormously long?"
"I told Ogi that if you don't carefully write all the details," Mrs. Tsugane replied, "it won't be much of a history of the age. We experience things with- out really knowing what they mean and how they'll end up, right? That being the case, all you can do is write down as much of what you saw and heard just as you experienced it. Maybe it's a case of God being in the details."
As if to forestall any quick reaction from Ikuo, Mrs. Tsugane translated her remarks for Fred, who blinked his chestnut-colored eyes as if, even in- side, it was too bright, and sighed. "It's amazing the amount of intellectual information that flits back and forth here."
As if this was the opportune moment he'd been waiting for, Gii said, in English, "I think Ikuo and Ogi have some things they need to talk over by themselves, things that don't need to be translated for Mr. Parks's article. I mentioned being an informant before, but I'd be happy to answer anything I can as honestly and accurately as I can. I won't just butter you up with things I think a foreigner might want to hear. So why don't we find a corner that's out of the sun, and you and I can talk?"
Fred Parks liked the idea. He and the Gii quickly moved over to the space between the piano and the wall where the triptych hung. Ikuo placed two chairs for them, his actions showing that he was quite used to being the one in charge now.
When it was just the four of them left, Mrs. Tsugane said, "Ogi resisted the idea of including in the record of the church such things as what he'd written down in his notebooks about the two of us doing that. Though he wrote it down at the time as if it were an important matter. I insisted that he put it into his first draft. It's a history of the church, but you also have aspira- tions to write a History of the Age, right? Unless you decide to write down all the details, including the ones that are hard to reveal to others, the ama- teur writer tends to leave out what's important. It's also good practice for describing the facts."
Ogi, of course, but also Ikuo, who'd read the typed first draft, were both unsure how to respond. At this point Dancer spoke up, her way of speaking unusually gentle now, something Ogi had picked up on the night before.
"I think I understand what Mrs. Tsugane is getting at," Dancer said.
"The same applies to the summer conference and my life up till then, even before I started living in Tokyo. When I try to remember things that hap- pened when I was a young girl in ballet tights, I can't distinguish between what was important and what's just extraneous details. During this past year since you left the office, Ogi, almost every day I've been mentally reviewing everything that happened, and it feels, like you say, that the key to everything lies in the details… "Ikuo, don't you need to tell Ogi how Professor Kizu passed away?
Just as Mrs. Tsugane said, try to conjure up the details of what happened.
Professor Kizu's parting words might seem like he was making fun of you, but aren't they important too? If you include them, and Ogi writes down all the details as he does in his notebook, who knows but that you might find yourself reaching a deeper understanding of what it all meant. I've only read a portion of the first draft, but it's clear Ogi is no longer just an inno- cent youth.
"On the other hand, I don't think there's anything I can say that would be of help. I won't be upset, though, if-to borrow Mrs. Tsugane's term- Ikuo tells everything about that which took place at the time of Professor Kizu's death. This might be hard to talk about in front of us women, so why don't I take Mrs. Tsugane over to see what the children of the Quiet Women have been doing? I think it'd be worth your while to see our fish pond, too, though with all this snow it might be like looking down a well."
In Dancer's now-mature voice and mannerisms there was something that made Ogi feel-in a complex way he'd never felt before-that she was truly an extraordinary woman. With Patron now gone, she'd been handling all the church members and the facilities for the last year and had, despite the events of the past, rebuilt relations with the town and local schools. As Dr. Koga had remarked the night before, there was a relaxed dignity about her now.
When the two women left the chapel, Gii raised his head like a weasel and looked over. But since the American journalist, puffing away despite the ban on smoking, was scribbling in the small notebook spread on his lap, Gii went eagerly back to talking with him in a low voice.
3
For nearly five weeks after the summer conference, both the Hollow and the Farm had been in turmoil. Below the surface confusion, though, some- thing deeper and more persistent was taking place.