"Thank you all for coming here to this service in memory of Guide. In the years after the Somersault, until Guide was cruelly murdered, he and I were always together. For Guide and myself this was a time when we fell into hell. The most painful aspect of our hell was that during those ten years I never once had a major trance, and as a consequence Guide was unable to interpret any visions for me. We existed in a silent darkness. The kind of scene dis- played here was over. Without recovering his health, Guide was lost to me."

Patron fell silent again and turned back to the photograph behind him.

It was a snapshot of the two of them sitting in armchairs in Patron's study.

Patron looked absentminded, as if recovering from an illness, while Guide, his hair dark and luxuriant, was leaning toward Patron.

Kizu looked around the hall. The group of women he'd visited on the hilly district along the Odakyu Line occupied seats in the center, a few rows back from the front, their quiet children with them.

"Why were the two of us together during those ten years of hell? " Patron went on. "Because each of us had had his own hell decided for him, I believe.

We did the Somersault together and fell into hell together. One of the after- effects-or, I should say, legacies-of the Somersault was that, as one condi- tion of our respective hells, we had to see each other day after day. Then, after ten years passed and we were considering climbing up out of the abyss-in other words, when we were starting to grope toward a new be- ginning-Guide was killed. This was also exactly the time when I began to find signs that my trances were about to return.

"Once more I felt banished to the wilderness. Even if in the near future my painful deep trances were to return, without Guide's intervention I wouldn't be able to put these visions into words. All my suffering would be in vain. Now I believe I've found a new Guide, though I am not saying that I've discovered someone to translate my visions. The Guide who was murdered was a unique individual, which indeed was one of the reasons he was killed.

"Without him, when I return from my trances, emotionally and physi- cally drained, I'm unable to extract information from the other side from my dark, muddled brain. A fear seizes me each and every day that, if I am unable to unravel it, this lump of information will disappear.

"Once I lost Guide, I started reading, desperately searching through books that might show me how to create a line of communication between this side and the other, which is what I want the new Guide to help me do.

One thing I read was the description from the Bible of Jesus on the cross. As long as Jesus could complete his work on the cross, he could leave the resur- rection entirely up to God.

"I quote from the gospel according to Mark.

"At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?'-which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'

"When some of those standing near heard this, they said, 'Listen, he's calling Elijah.'

"One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put in on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 'Leave him alone now. Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down,' he said.

"With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

"The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom."

"I just can't get the face of Jesus out of my mind, crying out in a loud voice as the earth turns dark. I realize it's a tasteless parody, but if I use the name that the old-timers among you are used to and imitate Jesus, in this dark situation I'm in right now, I imagine in my shock and anger I would raise up a loud voice and cry, My Prophet, my Prophet, why have you for- saken me?"

Resting both arms on the podium, Patron leaned backward, his face to the surprisingly large space above the underground lounge, and vehemently shouted this out. The windows facing the lawn were bright, and with the lights on at the other side of the room it felt to the participants as if an opaque mem- brane was hanging over them. The children sitting right in front of Patron all tucked in their chins as if something quite scary was about to happen.

"I would like to quote once more from the Bible. This is from the first letter of John: "Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us."

"This particular passage has caused me great pain. In the last trial, you did not leave us, and though you continued to belong to us, neither Guide nor I remained with you. And I became the antichrist-both when I fell into hell, and even now that I have resurfaced. Is there so much misery and pain for mankind that this is the only alternative-that I must be seen as the antichrist?

"Guide was the only other person who agreed that I must tread this path.

Together with me he did the Somersault and accompanied me to hell. This was his choice, I think, because he insisted to the end on the necessity of the Somersault. It was a Somersault where the antichrist appears, which signals the end of the world. That is the way I understand it now."

3

Dancer, her narrow profile tucked in tightly, was whispering in Ogi's ear. As if he'd been waiting for this, Ogi nodded. Both arms thrust out, he held out a sign that said THE FIRST HALF OF THE SERMON IS FINISHED AND THERE WILL NOW BE A COFFEE BREAK… Patron let his arms fall to the sides of the po- dium, and Dancer held her hand out and led him out of the hall for a while.

By the time the audience had risen to their feet, tables had been set up in front and on both sides, with Styrofoam cups filled with coffee and small packets of cream and sugar, all done by the security squad, which had also stood guard- ing both sides of the door through which Patron had entered. The commu- nal women's group helped pass out coffee cups to the rest of the participants.

The tall doctor's widow with the unusual walk directed this operation.

Kizu knew it was now customary in Japan for meetings and seminars to include a coffee break, but still he found it quite a sight to see things go so smoothly at a memorial service, especially one with over three hundred and fifty attendees. He looked around for the young woman with the facial scar and spotted her still sitting with the children, who were waiting patiently as she handed out little cartons of coffee from a large cardboard box.

"They're very well organized, aren't they?" said the newspaper reporter Kizu knew from the press conference as he passed Kizu a Styrofoam container of coffee; standing by the wall, Kizu had been unable to take photogtaphs of the goings-on or squeeze into line for coffee. "It turned out to be a good idea to have former radical-faction members work the security detail," the reporter added, "though I admit I was skeptical when I first heard about it."

"It's a lovely and solemn gathering, isn't it?" said a woman beside him, dressed in subdued clothes and also sipping coffee. She was the woman who had been beside the dark-skinned reporter at the press conference. Today she had pinned to her chest the white flower given to distinguish the twenty people from the media who were in attendance.

"I was quite surprised by how austere Patron was when he spoke," the reporter said,"because during the Somersault he wasn't that way at all. Guide was the gloomy one then, and Patron the clown."

"For a newspaper reporter, you talk too much," the woman said reprov- ingly. "It doesn't give us a chance to hear him speak."