The thought just struck me for the first time that if he hadn't done that he would have had a lot more worries."

"You mean about what people who pray so intensely would do after they'd been abandoned?" Kizu asked.

"Right. When I was watching those women praying, I was thinking how extraordinary it is for them to live like this for ten years. And I was also think- ing that it was very possible they might not have put up with things passively but taken a different tack entirely. I know it must have been tough emotion- ally for Patron when he thought about having to abandon followers like these.

But isn't that why he had to make such a big joke about things-so these prayerful women would be shaken to the core?"

"I guess so, and yet he wasn't able to shake them," Kizu said. "Still, the worst-case scenario Patron feared didn't take place. For ten years they lived like we just saw, praying ceaselessly. I suspect if we met the radical faction who murdered Guide, who've lived their own kind of life of faith over the last decade, we'd find them pretty formidable too.

"I really don't have a mental picture of what the hell Patron and Guide fell into was like, but for Patron, who survived alone and was resurrected, I can't imagine life will be very easy from now on."

That evening, on the drive back to Tokyo, Ikuo said one more thing.

"I think the road ahead is going to be bumpy for you too, Professor, now that you've decided to be with Patron. But I really want to thank you for com- ing back from America!"

13: HALLELUJAH

1

The day of the memorial service dawned clear and sunny, a typical end- of-spring morning. Since Kizu, officially a professor until the end of the aca- demic year, was the only one among the participants privileged to use the American university-owned facilities freely, he set out diligently that morn- ing to walk around the grove of trees and sloping lawn by the pond on the southeast side of the garden and see if there were any weak points through which outsiders could crash the service.

From his room Kizu couldn't tell, but the young trees bordering the grounds were slippery elms, the same as the young trees planted on the cam- pus of his New Jersey university to replace larger trees destroyed by insects.

These days he hadn't seen much of the squirrels from last summer, the ones whose vigorous movements among the green leaves of the wych elm had aroused him. They might very well have shifted over to these younger trees in order to eat the soft seeds or the young buds, for the branches had defi- nitely been gnawed. The ground was littered with twigs that had quickly dried up.

Kizu picked up one little branch, and in a flash of inspiration, while he was checking out its withered flowers, he solved a riddle that had bothered him ever since he moved to the United States. Within layers of anthers the color ot dried sunflowers, a dark-colored stigma poked out rigidly. It looked like a hankp, the kind of personal-name seals Japanese used instead of signa- tures. The word stigma came from the Latin for mark, or brand, which came in turn from a Greek word for tattoo, similar to a seal. One semester, Kizu had even lectured on the history of European seals.

Up till now, whenever Kizu had been teaching students to sketch flow- ers and spoke about the pistil he'd always wondered why the tip of this part of the flower was called the stigma. Whenever Kizu examined the pistil of a daffodil, he would rack his brain trying to figure out why the stigmata, the plural of stigma, shared its name with the stigmata of Jesus, the crucifixion wounds on his hands and feet. But suddenly he realized that the sacred wounds were like seals impressed on Jesus' body, and the riddle was easily solved. Feeling this was a good omen for the upcoming memorial service, Kizu placed the small branch back on the soft young grass.

They had arranged for the front gate of the apartment building to be closed while the memorial service was in progress. Dancer and Ogi would be on the tiled carport just outside the main entrance, protected by the security force Ikuo was leading, as they checked their list of invitees against the invi- tation each person brought.

It was imperative that all participants come on time. After the start of the service the security guards planned to shut the side door and stand guard.

Patron would wait in Kizu's apartment, and then Kizu and Dancer, after she'd finished checking all the invitations, would escort him to the service. The other participants would enter the hall on the building's south side, through a cor- ridor below the veranda on the first floor, while Patron would take an eleva- tor to the basement and proceed to the meeting room down a corridor between the bicycle racks and the laundry room.

Ikuo's task was to bring Patron from the office in Seijo to the apartment building; when he and his three security guards had arrived in the minivan with Patron, then and only then would the front gate be opened. Kizu and the building manager had already sent out a letter to the other residents, Kizu's university colleagues, asking their cooperation in not using their cars from 10 A.M. to 3 P.M.

After Kizu had checked the grounds, he walked up to the front gate, where Ikuo was just getting out the minivan to go pick up Patron. Ikuo left the security guards inside, thirtyish men dressed in light charcoal-gray pull- overs and dark gray trousers-a kind of uniform for those organizing the memorial service-and got out of the driver's seat; he was dressed similarly.

Kizu explained to him how the grounds of this building, which had served as the Cultural Affairs Section during the Occupation, was still, as in the old days, surrounded by a high, sturdy chain-link fence.

Ikuo listened attentively. "The security guards have all had military training," he said, "so unless we're attacked by a huge force, the front gate should hold. It's hard to imagine an attacking force of that size moving about the center of Tokyo, though, don't you think?"

The three uniformed guards inside, who didn't greet Kizu, nodded to one another at Ikuo's confident words. Ikuo had from the first been openly enthusiastic as he made the security preparations, and perhaps his bluster was for their ears.

Ikuo returned to the minivan. Kizu watched as he raced off; then he helped the guard close the front gate. The guard was an old Filipino man over seventy who claimed he'd been working there since the Occupation; far from looking put out at having to do something beyond his job description, the old man seemed positively buoyant. Kizu guessed this was due to Ikuo's influ- ence. Despite his dark, forbidding looks, the young man could be sunny and charming beyond belief.

A long table was set up next to the side entrance, where Ogi sat with the list of attendees; he nodded to Kizu, who walked over to him and said, "Ikuo's security squad seems to be doing a good job."

Ogi agreed, and looked out over the porte cochere. Right next to him were three more guards, also in their thirties and dressed in uniform; on the other side of the pavement, five guards stood at set intervals. Ogi didn't seem to mind that the guards who'd gathered at one end of the table heard him as he explained things to Kizu, who had dimly sensed the situation.

"The members of the security squad are all followers from the Izu re- search center, before the Somersault," Ogi said. "The radical faction, in other words… At that time the police intervened in everything they did, so they left the church, formed their own group, and continued to keep the faith… The ones who kidnapped Guide and caused his death were one element of this group, not the ones cooperating with us, of course; they didn't approve of that. Since the people who took Guide are being held in custody, there's no chance they'll be coming here."