Her words were somewhat feeble now. Apparently a basically kind- hearted person, she seemed to regret having scolded these people who had come from so far away, and shook her lightly snow-covered head to get her pluck back.

"Well, if that's the case, with this unexpected snow and all, why don't you just rest here for a while? This is a private road, so your car will be fine!

They're packing lilies in boxes inside the greenhouse. Maybe you'd like to take a look?"

She seemed so apologetic it would have been rude to turn down her sug- gestion. Kizu hadn't planned to stay, but he looked at the woman, her skin roughened by gooseflesh, and nodded, so she hurried ahead. By the time they arrived at the greenhouse closest to the road, the children in the sandbox who'd been gazing up at the snow had formed a line and were quietly filing toward the building.

The old woman went in a step ahead of them, past what looked like the door of a warehouse, and Kizu and Ikuo followed, brushing the already melt- ing snowflakes from their heads, chests, and shoulders. The children stood at one corner of the greenhouse in swirling snow that was coming down harder than ever. If they'd been seeking shelter from the snow, the only place to find it around the greenhouse, a structure made of thick metal piping covered with tough tentlike plastic sheeting, was under the eaves at the entrance. The chil- dren, though, didn't seem to have come over in order to get out of the snow. As he watched them standing there through the steadily falling snow, their expres- sions and even the outlines of their faces now blurred, a slight sense of the un- earthly was added to Kizu's earlier impression. Ikuo, too, had to look away.

2

They went inside the greenhouse, only slightly warmer than outside, and found that they had to walk quite some distance to where the packing operation was under way, watching their step as they moved through a maze of obstacles. All sorts of objects, large and small, were arbitrarily piled up on the path. They stumbled over what at first appeared to be small empty boxes but turned out to be as heavy as bricks. On both sides of the path the equip- ment required to grow the plants wasn't just laid out flat; they bumped their heads and shoulders on various pipes. For outsiders it was a veritable laby- rinth. Kizu found himself concerned, too, about the strange little line of chil- dren who followed their movements through the three-tiered window in the plastic covering the greenhouse.

People were working in the greenhouse in a clearing cut out of the long line of cultivated plants. Hemmed in on both sides by equipment, some twenty women were seated, busy at work, on top of a platform covered with mats.

This particular greenhouse seemed to be in an in-between stage between cul- tivation and harvesting; all that could be seen in back were several lines of dark green leaves forming a frame in the cultivating apparatus used to grow flowers. On this side were the women, seated in a large circle with mounds of lilies in front of them that they were packing into long cardboard boxes.

Kizu had been raised in the country and was used to the customs of farmers, but when he first saw farm women in the Tokyo area working in the fields with cloth head coverings, he found it a bit suspect. The women here, too, worked with their heads covered, in this case with simple knitted hats. The women were of all ages, yet they all shared the same pale faces, the same quiet look.

More noticeable than anything else, though, was the overpowering, ani- mal-like odor of the lilies. Kizu noticed how Ikuo's sturdy face recoiled from the smell. The women worked so silently that Kizu and Ikuo found them- selves tiptoeing, and this heavy scent wafting over from the silent women made for a grotesque sense of incongruity.

Kizu and Ikuo had come close to the women, but they kept on work- ing without showing the slightest bit of interest. With relaxed yet swift motions, they packed away the lilies, while Kizu and Ikuo stood there, over- whelmed. The woman who accompanied them had already gone behind the circle of working women, stuck her head in between the boxes of packed lilies and the mound of unpacked flowers, and begun speaking to the women.

Before long a man's head popped up above the piled boxes of lilies-a close-cropped white head with white whiskers-and stared at Kizu and Ikuo.

Approaching from the side, before the woman who'd accompanied them re- turned, this man, the farm's owner, dressed in a white collared shirt and wine- colored vest, walked in front of the working women, their bare arms full of lilies, distributing empty boxes. Then he lifted a box that was larger than the others and lowered it to the ground; he was making a place on the platform for Kizu and Ikuo to sit. The woman led them up onto the mats, while the man went back to his original position; whether through innate shyness or because he was the type who kept people at arm's length, he merely nodded slightly to greet them. The women went on working, oblivious to the two men, who'd now become part of their group.

Not that the women were rejecting these unexpected visitors. The farm woman who'd led them in, after glancing at the farm owner, sitting off to one side, began addressing the other women, who cheerfully stopped and paid attention.

"I'll pass around the business card I received from this gentleman, who tells me he's working for the former leader of the church you all used to belong to. I know we've talked recently about the man who was with this leader at the time of the Somersault, the one we read about in the paper who was tor- tured to death.

"It seems the former leader is concerned about what sort of life all of you have been living. This gentleman wasn't really planning to meet you and talk with you today, he said, and maybe I'm butting in where I don't belong, but I thought it would be nice for you to meet him, seeing as how he's also a professor at an American university. I'm sure you heard my husband scold me for my rash assumptions."

The woman stopped speaking and bowed her head, and the company fell silent. Kizu wondered if they were waiting for him to introduce himself but realized that the woman had essentially covered what needed to be said.

While Kizu was hesitating, the farm woman whispered to an old woman sit- ting opposite her.

For an old lady, this second woman was unusually erect, though some- thing was wrong with her legs, and she sat differently from the rest of the women, her feet splayed out to one side. For a woman of her generation she was quite large, with fine features, putting Kizu in mind of someone from a good family who happened to live near the sea.

"If you don't mind, I'll speak first," the old woman said. "Do you think the children watching us are all right? The snow looks like it's letting up, so maybe there's no need to tell them to go inside."

There was no response from those around her, and the old woman shook her head magnanimously at the children outside the window. She turned to glance at the buds on the oak tree growing toward the high windows and then, taking her own sweet time, went on.

"We heard rumors that the Savior and the Prophet had emerged from their shut-in life and were beginning a new movement. We read later in the newspaper about the Prophet's awful death, which grieves us terribly. We also talked about what this new movement will be about, didn't we? However, he's the one who cut his ties with the church, and we're just a little group here, suffering in our own way. Still, knowing he's concerned about us might pos- sibly move our own group in a different direction."

The woman stopped speaking and looked up at the branches of the dark oak through the melting snow on the top of the window, and all the women in the circle turned their eyes in that direction. Kizu sensed that the other women were quite used to her style of speaking.