The sun came out in the afternoon and the snow that had been clinging to one side of the wych elm's trunk and the nearly horizontal parts of the thick branches melted away. All the snow on the pond's surface had disappeared, but no ripples disturbed the pond, so it was still frozen. The snow was gone from the lawn, too, just some white spots here and there on the withered grass between the trees. During the morning the awareness he felt inside him was mixed with darkness, and he recalled, for the first time in a long while, the phrase tingle with excitement, but in the afternoon the clarity of the sky and the clouds seeped into his heart.

He couldn't help but consider the new and difficult task that confronted him, but he felt he had sufficient energy saved to face up to it, so his feelings were, to use the term his students in New Jersey used, entirely positive. The clouds spreading outside his window were not the beginnings of a storm but rather a watercolor painted across the bright sky.

In the upper third of a Wattman F6 sketch pad he held vertically, Kizu sketched glittering white clouds and a light blue sky infused with light; in the lower fourth of the paper a totally leafless woods and a range of twiglike branches. He left the middle of the page blank. He wasn't clear about this space at all, but his years of experience as an artist told him it was significant; this sketch, still five-twelfths empty, would only become a work of art when this blank area was filled in. He wasn't going to use what he saw outside his win- dow, though. The space was just the right size for his imagination to fill in with something suited to the sky above and the woods below.

After a while Kizu began filling in the remaining areas with a soft pen- cil sketch of two standing figures facing away from the viewer. He switched to watercolors for the figures and added many vertical banks of clouds to the light-blue sky.

What Kizu had drawn was himself and Ikuo standing there and, in a way somehow not unnatural for two grown men, holding each other's hand.

In the painting Kizu was dressed as he was now, in faded black cotton trou- sers, a wool shirt, and a wine-colored sweater. Ikuo wore jeans and an over- sized blue shirt with sleeves that were too long. On their feet were something you'd never need in this city, the kind of ankle-high lace-up winter boots you might find a U. S. artist in the Northeast wearing.

In a much more natural way than the fanciful images conjured up by run-of-the-mill surrealists, the figures of Ikuo and Kizu in the painting were walking off into the bright sky. Kizu realized he'd been taking Patron's trance world quite optimistically, hoping that he and Ikuo could stroll off into it in the near future. Even if you viewed this vision as his unconscious rising up to support his decision to become the new Guide, it was such a simplistic view he knew he himself, not Ogi, was the innocent one.

Construction work outside the apartment building that afternoon prevented people from parking in front, so Ikuo called him from down the road where he had parked. Kizu walked one block, to where Ikuo was waiting outside the car, and rested his hand on the young man's shoulder in lieu of a greet- ing, only to feel an inorganic coldness rising up at his touch, as if denying any affinity between them. Even if the young man's body was only transmitting the outside temperature, Ikuo was more taciturn than the day before. Inter- mittently in the course of their relationship Kizu had felt that they were going backward, to the time when they first met-and today was one of those days.

Ordinarily he would have taken the watercolor he'd painted that day out of its cardboard tube and shown it to Ikuo while they were waiting for a light to change. But today the timing was off.

"When you called a while ago, you said you'd just driven Dancer to the hospital for Guide's rehabilitation. Is he strong enough to undergo rehabili- tation? Is there a chance he'll recover his strength?"

Ikuo didn't respond right away to Kizu's question but just stared straight ahead. Finally, reluctantly, he answered.

"Dancer's doing her best, going to the hospital every day, but she doesn't believe he'll recover enough to take on his role as Guide again. The only thing she talked about in the car was what we can expect from you."

Kizu was escorted into the bedroom study by Ogi and sat down in a chair facing Patron, who was sunk deep in his armchair; Ikuo brought in a backless chair from the office for himself and sat down too. As they had gotten out of the car, Kizu had passed him the cardboard tube with the watercolor paint- ing in it; now Ikuo laid it in his lap and rested a hand on one end.

"We haven't done this before, but I'd like Ikuo to join us this time in hearing what you have to say, and Ogi tells me you've agreed," Kizu said.

"It's more proper now for me to say I'll listen to you," Patron said, his words brisk but his expression pensive. "Actually, I'd been hoping that we could both talk with Ikuo. There's also another reason for this meeting today. Often just after I wake up I'm in a kind of half-awake, half-asleep state, and when that happened again this morning I envisioned a scene before me.

I interpreted this as a sign that you would take on the role of being the new Guide with Ikuo beside you. I wanted to talk with you about this, and that's why I called you here without much warning.

"What I saw was you and Ikuo, hand in hand as I watched over you, stepping into space, each of you a sturdy support to the other in case one of you was about to fall. That was the scene I saw."

Kizu thought he was being taken in by some elaborate trick; at the same time he felt drawn in by those gentle, trusting eyes. He tried to resist.

"In this scene that you saw, was the place where you said Ikuo and I were walking-a space, you called it-was it the sky? If so, what was the weather like?"

"It was sunny," Patron replied. "I saw newly formed clouds gleaming whitely between the two of you and me, who was waiting to receive you. The clouds were shaped like a baby whale without a tail. The whale's head was three-dimensional; you could sense its weight, and the force of this weight made it move diagonally downward."

Kizu turned to look at Ikuo, who, before a word could pass between them, handed Kizu the cardboard tube on his lap. Kizu stuck two fingers inside the open end of the tube and extracted the watercolor painting, along with the cotton paper that was wrapped around it.

Patron took the painting and held it up to the light on the bedside table.

Kizu knew he often listened to classical CDs in this room, everything from ancient to modern music. The feeling rose up in Kizu that he was in the pres- ence of a considerable connoisseur of art.

After a while Patron lifted his eyes from the painting and laughed aloud, a simple, innocent burst of laughter. He nodded at Kizu, then passed the painting, its edges curling up on its own, over to Ikuo, who had been leaning over hesitantly to catch a glimpse. Patron didn't say a word about the con- gruence between the dream or vision he'd had and the scene depicted in the painting; his hearty laughter expressed it all. He evidently saw no need for any verbose explanation for himself, or for Kizu, or for Ikuo, who was por- ing over the painting.

It was Kizu, rather, taken in by Patron's laughter and unable to sup- press a smile, who felt that the painting cried out for interpretation. Kizu gazed at the painting in Ikuo's hands, as did Patron, Ikuo angling the paint- ing so it was easier for them to see, and once more he found himself unable to suppress a smile.

"This light-blue sky is what I saw from my apartment window this morning, and I painted it as it was," Kizu said. "The same with the grove of trees. The clouds, though, are something else. I'm amazed how accurate your description of them is-like a baby whale without a tail. These were clouds I saw outside the window of my university office in the States. Especially after I just took the job and was a little anxious about it, the clouds comforted me, so I added them nostalgically to the painting."