Chapter 30

The two of them scrambled over the low hedge into the woods. Colonel Sanders took a small flashlight out of his pocket and illuminated the narrow path. The woods weren't very deep, but the trees were hugely ancient, the tangle of their branches looming darkly above. A strong grassy odor came from the ground below.

Colonel Sanders took the lead, for once maintaining a leisurely pace. Shining the flashlight to make sure of his footing, he cautiously took one step at a time.

Hoshino followed right behind. "Hey, Unc, is this some kind of dare or something?" he said to the Colonel's white back. "Whoa-a ghost!"

"Why don't you zip it for a change," Colonel Sanders said without turning around.

"Okay, okay." Hoshino suddenly wondered how Nakata was doing. Probably still sound asleep. It's like the term sound asleep was invented just to describe him-once he falls asleep, that's all she wrote. What kind of dreams does he have, though, during those record-breaking sleeps? Hoshino couldn't imagine. "Are we there yet?"

"Almost," Colonel Sanders replied.

"Tell me something," Hoshino began.

"What?"

"Are you really Colonel Sanders?"

Colonel Sanders cleared his throat. "Not really. I'm just taking on his appearance for a time."

"That's what I figured," Hoshino said. "So what are you really?"

"I don't have a name."

"How do you get along without one?"

"No problem. Originally I don't have a name or a shape."

"So you're kind of like a fart."

"You could say that. Since I don't have a shape I can become anything I want."

"Huh…"

"This time I decided to take on a familiar shape, that of a famous capitalist icon. I was toying with the idea of Mickey Mouse, but Disney's particular about the rights to their characters."

"I don't think I'd want Mickey Mouse pimping for me anyway."

"I see your point."

"Dressing up like Colonel Sanders fits your character, too."

"But I don't have a character. Or any feelings. Shape I may take, converse I may, but neither god nor Buddha am I, rather an insensate being whose heart thus differs from that of man."

"What the-?"

"A line from Ueda Akinari's Tales of Moonlight and Rain. I doubt you've read it."

"You got me there."

"I'm appearing here in human form, but I'm neither god nor Buddha. My heart works differently from humans' hearts because I don't have any feelings. That's what it means."

"Hmm," Hoshino said. "I'm not sure I follow, but what you're saying is you're not a person and not a god or Buddha either, right?"

"Neither god nor Buddha, just the insensate. As such, of the good and bad of man I neither inquire nor follow."

"Meaning?"

"Since I'm neither god nor Buddha, I don't need to judge whether people are good or evil. Likewise I don't have to act according to standards of good and evil."

"In other words you exist beyond good and evil."

"You're too kind. I'm not beyond good and evil, exactly-they just don't matter to me. I have no idea what's good or what's evil. I'm a very pragmatic being. A neutral object, as it were, and all I care about is consummating the function I've been given to perform."

"Consummate your function? What's that?"

"Didn't you go to school?"

"Yeah, I went to high school, but it was a trade school. I spent all my time screwing around on motorcyles."

"I'm kind of an overseer, supervising something to make sure it fulfills its original role. Checking the correlation between different worlds, making sure things are in the right order. So results follow causes and meanings don't get all mixed up. So the past comes before the present, the future after it. Things can get a little out of order, that's okay. Nothing's perfect. If the account book's basically in balance, though, that's fine by me. To tell you the truth, I'm not much of a detail person. The technical term for it is 'Abbreviating Sensory Processing of Continuous Information,' but I don't want to get into all that. It'd take too long to explain, and I know it's beyond you. So let's cut to the chase. What I'm getting at is I'm not going to complain about each and every little thing. Of course if the accounts don't eventually balance, that is a problem. I do have my responsibility to consider."

"I got a question for you. If you're such an important person, how come you're a pimp in a back alley in Takamatsu?"

"I am not a person, okay? How many times do I have to tell you?"

"Whatever…"

"Pimping's just a means of getting you here. There's something I need you to lend me a hand with, so as a reward I thought I'd let you have a good time first. A kind of formality we have to go through."

"Lend you a hand?"

"As I've explained, I don't have any form. I'm a metaphysical, conceptual object. I can take on any form, but I lack substance. And to perform a real act, I need someone with substance to help out."

"And at this particular point that substance happens to be me."

"Exactly," Colonel Sanders replied.

They cautiously continued down the path, and came to a smaller shrine beneath a thick oak tree. The shrine was old and dilapidated, with no offerings or decorations of any kind.

Colonel Sanders shined his flashlight on it. "The stone's inside there. Open the door."

"No way!" Hoshino replied. "You're not supposed to open up shrines whenever you feel like it. You'll be cursed. Your nose will fall off. Or your ears or something."

"Not to worry. I said it's all right, so go ahead and open it. You won't be cursed. Your nose and ears won't fall off. God, you can be really old-fashioned."

"Then why don't you open it? I don't want to get mixed up in that."

"How many times do I have to explain this?! I told you already I don't have substance. I'm an abstract concept. I can't do anything on my own. That's why I went to the trouble of dragging you out here. And letting you do it three times at a discount rate."

"Yeah, man, she was fantastic… but robbing a shrine? No way! My grandfather always told me not to mess with shrines. He was really strict about it."

"Forget about your grandfather. Don't lay all your Gifu Prefecture, country-bumpkin morality on me, okay? We don't have time for that."

Grumbling all the while, Hoshino hesitantly opened the door of the shrine, and Colonel Sanders shined his flashlight inside. Sure enough, there was an old round stone inside. Just like Nakata said, it was about the size of a big rice cake, a smooth white stone.

"This is it?" Hoshino asked.

"That's right," Colonel Sanders said. "Take it out."

"Hold on a minute. That's stealing."

"No matter. Nobody's going to notice if a stone like this is missing. And nobody'll care."

"Yeah, but the stone is owned by God, right? He's gonna be pissed if we take it out."

Colonel Sanders folded his arms and stared straight at Hoshino. "What is God?"

The question threw Hoshino for a moment.

Colonel Sanders pressed him further. "What does God look like, and what does He do?"

"Don't ask me. God's God. He's everywhere, watching what we do, judging whether it's good or bad."

"Sounds like a soccer referee."

"Sort of, I guess."

"So God wears shorts, has a whistle sticking out of His mouth, and keeps an eye on the clock?"

"You know that's not what I mean," Hoshino said.

"Are the Japanese God and the foreign God relatives, or maybe enemies?"

"How should I know?"

"Listen-God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like-they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American chomping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o-God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't. And if that's what God's like, I wouldn't worry about it."