Cryptonomicon

"You aren't trying to convert me with words," Goto Dengo admits, "but just by having me here." His English does not quite suffice.

Black-robe's name is Father Ferdinand. He is a Jesuit or something, with enough English to run rings around Goto Dengo. "In what way does merely having you in this place constitute proselytization?" Then, just to break Goto Dengo's legs out from under him, he says the same thing in half-decent Nipponese.

"I don't know. The art."

"If you don't like our art, close your eyes and think of the emperor."

"I can't keep my eyes closed all the time."

Father Ferdinand laughs snidely. "Really? Most of your countrymen seem to have no difficulty with keeping their eyes tightly shut from cradle to grave."

"Why don't you have happy art? Is this a hospital or a morgue?"

"La Pasyon is important here," says Father Ferdinand.

"La Pasyon?"

"Christ's suffering. It speaks deeply to the people of the Philippines. Especially now."

Goto Dengo has another complaint that he is not able to voice until he borrows Father Ferdinand's Japanese-English dictionary and spends some time working with it.

"Let me see if I understand you," Father Ferdinand says. "You believe that when we treat you with mercy and dignity, we are implicitly trying to convert you to Roman Catholicism."

"You bent my words again," says Goto Dengo.

"You spoke crooked words and I straightened them," snaps Father Ferdinand.

"You are trying to make me into--one of you."

"One of us? What do you mean by that?"

"A low person."

"Why would we want to do that?"

"Because you have a low-person religion. A loser religion. If you make me into a low person, it will make me want to follow that religion."

"And by treating you decently we are trying to make you into a low person?"

"In Nippon, a sick person would not be treated as well."

"You needn't explain that to us," Father Ferdinand says. "You are in the middle of a country full of women who have been raped by Nipponese soldiers."

Time to change the subject. "Ignoti et quasi occulti--Societas Eruditorum," says Goto Dengo, reading the inscription on a medallion that hangs from Father Ferdinand's neck. "More Latin? What does it mean?"

"It is an organization I belong to. It is ecumenical."

"What does that mean?"

"Anyone can join it. Even you, after you get better."

"I will get better," Goto Dengo says. "No one will know that I was sick."

"Except for us. Oh, I understand! You mean, no Nipponese people will know. That's true."

"But the others here will not get better."

"It is true. You have the best prognosis of any patient here."

"You are receiving those sick Nipponese men into your bosoms."

"Yes. This is more or less dictated by our religion."

"They are low people now. You want them to join your low-person religion."

"Only insofar as it is good for them," says Father Ferdinand. "It's not like those guys are going to run out and build us a new cathedral or something."

The next day, Goto Dengo is deemed to be cured. He does not feel cured at all, but he will do anything to get out of this rut: losing one staredown after another with the King of the Jews.

He expects that they will saddle him with a duffel bag and send him down to the bus terminal to fend for himself, but instead a car comes to get him. As if that's not good enough, the car takes him to an airfield, where a light plane picks him up. It is the first time he has ever flown in a plane, and the excitement revives him more than six weeks in the hospital. The plane takes off between two green mountains and heads south (judging from the sun's position) and for the first time he understands where he's been: in the center of Luzon Island, north of Manila.

Half an hour later, he's above the capital, banking over the Pasig River and then the bay, chockablock with military transports. The corniche is guarded by a picket line of coconut palms. Seen from overhead, their branches writhe in the sea breeze like colossal tarantulas impaled on spikes. Looking over the pilot's shoulder, he sees a pair of paved airstrips in the flat paddy-land just south of the city, crossing at an acute angle to form a narrow X. The light plane porpoises through gusts. It bounces down the airstrip like an overinflated soccer ball, taxiing past most of the hangars and finally fishtailing to a stop near an isolated guard hut where a man waits on a motorcycle with an empty sidecar. Goto Dengo is directed out of the plane and into the sidecar by means of gestures; no one will speak to him. He is dressed in an Army uniform devoid of rank and insignia.

A pair of goggles rests on the seat, and he puts them on to keep the bugs out of his eyes. He is a little nervous because he does not have papers and he does not have orders. But they are waved out of the airbase and onto the road without any checks.