by Kenzaburo Oe
In the minivan on the way over, Kizu learned from Ikuo that while Ogi was spending all his energies in laying the groundwork for Patron’s new movement, Dancer was spending all her time taking care of Guide’s day-to-day needs.
“Guide says he wants to participate in the new movement, but Dancer told him that after managing to survive a burst brain aneurysm his number-one priority should be getting back on his feet.
“And Guide retorted, ‘If I’m going to die anyway with my skull full of blood, I might as well work while I can for that slipshod friend of mine!”
They walked around back of the main building, a half-Japanese half-Western affair under the dense foliage of a camphor tree, and came upon a building with white walls and Spanish-style roof tiles. The walls were thick, like the ones Kizu had seen in farmhouses in Mexico; the whole thing was built like a jail, with double-pane windows. They opened the heavy front door, and Kizu waited with Ikuo for Dancer. The sound of a similar heavy door was heard upstairs, a band of yellowish light shone on the white walls, and Dancer appeared, dressed in black tights and an ice-hockey shirt.
As he and Ikuo followed her, Kizu noticed that the steep stairs seemed out of character with the sense of open space the building imparted, and once they were upstairs and he looked back, the entrance where they’d removed their shoes seemed strangely far away. The spacious room that Kizu and Ikuo were shown into, lined as it was with bookshelves, looked like an academic’s study. Guide was at the other end of the room, lying back on a raised chaise longue.
Dancer had Kizu and Ikuo sit down on a shiny white wooden platform with cushions on top. Guide’s chaise longue, writing desk, and chair were all made of the same material. They were all simple yet solid looking.
After the initial introductions, Kizu looked around the room, and Guide, whose color looked perfectly healthy, said, “ Professor, you’re in charge of the art education department, I understand. I’m curious. What grade would you give this room, B minus? C plus?”
“Nothing that low. It’s clear what you had in mind, and I like that.”
“Guide designed the whole thing,” Dancer put in, “and supervised the construction too. My dance studio’s on the first floor.”
“Architects were mostly all members of their high school art clubs and good with their hands, correct? I just helped out a bit in calculating construction costs.”
“Shall I make the room brighter so you can see the details better?” Dancer asked as she stepped to the half-opened curtain.
“No,” Guide said, stopping her. “It’s fine the way it is.”
“Is strong light bad for you?” Kizu asked.
“No, it’s not that. I just thought you’d rather not see the scars from my operation.”
Guide seemed to have a dark gray hood over half his forehead, though it may have just been a scarf wrapped around his head, the ends touching the collar of his sweater in back. He was a stylish man, belying what Kizu had heard. His features included a strong yet not too broad nose and a straight mustache that occupied a willful upper lip. A pair of equally neat eyebrows were raised upward, toward his covered forehead. He turned his large black shining eyes, the whites visible on both sides and below, toward Kizu.
“I understand from Ikuo, Professor, that you read about our apostasy in the newspapers in America. I find this interesting, since I’ve never heard the reactions of intellectuals to what we did.”
“The New York Times reporter who wrote the articles about Patron and you is Jewish—you can tell from the name,” Kizu said. “I don’t want to oversimplify his level of knowledge, but he did bring up the name of Sabbatai Zevi, a seventeenth-century figure who announced he was the Jewish Messiah but who ended up being forcibly converted to Islam by the Turks. A colleague of mine, a historian of religions, told me that, despite Zevi’s apostasy, his followers continued to believe in his teachings for many years afterward, in an area stretching from Turkey and Eastern Europe to Asia Minor all the way to Russia. This made me start to wonder whether, after your Somersault, there were followers who still believed in the teachings you’d renounced and, if so, whether you and Patron were able to ignore them.”
“This is precisely the area I wanted to ask you about, Professor,” Guide said, in a calm, strong tone. “Ten years ago Patron and I discarded not only our followers but our teachings. On national television Patron told our followers that what we preached was rubbish and he wanted them to stop their foolishness.
“Even when he’s joking around, Patron is the kind of person who only speaks what he believes is the truth. We may have been driven into a corner by circumstances, but he wasn’t compelled to say things he didn’t believe were true.
“I was at his side as Patron frantically considered what to do, and I racked my brain as well. And I came to the conclusion that that’s all we could do. We drove ourselves to the point where there was no other possible outcome. We were dead men then, you might say. Having done our Somersault, we were like the living dead.
“Everything before the Somersault vanished for us. It was as if we were amnesiacs, bereft of any traces of our former lives. Since we’d abandoned our faith, we were nothing more than living puppets. But even puppets suffer, you know. Patron felt this, and so did I. He called it falling into hell. I agree, but at no time during these ten years did we discuss what this hell consisted of. We lived together all that time but never spoke of what was really most important.
“After our Somersault we were, as I said before, like the living dead, but you might say we were hibernating. Like sick bears who may die in their cave at any moment. Patron is a complex person, and perhaps his inner experience was different. But I have never in my life experienced such a lazy decade, perhaps too lazy for our own good. If mental activity gets rid of cholesterol, our lack of activity alone was enough to make the blood vessels inside our brains so clogged they’d burst.”
Dancer was standing beside Guide like a well-trained waiter, holding a flower-patterned tray level with her chest, on the tray a cup of water and various medicines. As Guide spoke about laziness, she shook her head ever so slightly from side to side. And when he paused and turned to pick up the cup of water, she rotated the tray so the pills were in front of him, as if to say, No water for you unless you take your medicine.
“What you said, Professor, is quite true,” Guide said. “There are still some people who remain in the church, and some who’ve formed their own communal groups and continue to maintain their faith. Just before I went into the hospital, some of them got in touch with me; I had planned to meet with one group that’s still within the church. I didn’t tell Patron about this, but when I was released from the hospital I found out that he was communicating too, on a private level, with small groups who had written directly to him.
“We haven’t talked about it yet, but it would seem that, now that a decade has gone by, Patron’s thought processes and mine are leaning in the same direction. It makes me realize what happens when two people live so closely for so long.
“At the time of our Somersault, both Patron and I hoped that the church would disappear. But soon the Kansai branch became a nonprofit foundation and took over. They didn’t pour their energy into attacking us for our apostasy. Instead, they concentrated on defending the organization by refuting all the criticisms and ridicule put out by the media. But one other group that became independent after the Somersault did denounce us. And some followers were left on their own and joined groups like Aum Shinrikyo and fundamentalist Christian groups. We received communications from those men and women, too, trying to win us over to their views.
“Understandably, those people’s interest in us has dissipated over the past decade, and they’ve stopped writing. I have no idea what’s become of them. The ones we know the most about are those who formed groups outside the church. One group, made up of women, continues to believe in Patron’s teachings and, rather than criticize us, these women are trying to share our sin, if you view it
as that, and the suffering that accompanies it. In fact, they see us as apostates falling into hell in order to atone for the sins of all mankind and thus summon forth salvation. They’re praying for the day when we can escape our hell and return. Their prayers, I believe, consist of an attempt to visualize and truly comprehend this hell we’re in. I don’t know whether Patron was influenced by them to speak of us as falling into hell, or whether it was his original concept and they happened to hear of it and that’s how they started speaking of it in those terms.
“Anyway, after ten years I was slowly but surely opening lines of communication with former believers, but I collapsed just as this opening became significant. Now that I’ve managed to survive and come home, I find Patron is beginning some new activities. The people he’s plugged into, though, aren’t former members, but people who got in touch with him only after the Somersault. What I find interesting is that both Patron and I see this ten-year period as a kind of turning point.
“I’m also fascinated by the idea of people continuing to believe in a false Messiah who’s renounced his faith. There’s the Kansai branch that’s been going strong for a decade, and another group that wants to go back to the time of the Somersault and erase everything that happened. And then there are people eagerly awaiting Patron’s return from the hell of apostasy. After all this time we can’t just deny a connection with these men and women or with those who developed an interest in us more recently.
“I’d like to hear much more from you about this seventeenth-century Messiah and his apostasy. Would you talk to me as you did with Patron about English poetry? I know you’ll need time to prepare; I’m in no hurry. It takes longer than ten years for our time in hell to end.”
2
In the car on the way home, Kizu asked Ikuo, who’d been silent the whole time, what his impressions were.
“Even after I started working at the office I never had much chance to talk with Patron,” Ikuo replied. “I’d heard him talk with Dancer and with Ogi, of course. When Guide was released from the hospital, though, and Dancer stayed behind to take care of the paperwork, I was alone with Guide, and later on I was asked to rearrange his room, and both times I was able to talk with him. He doesn’t treat me merely as a driver hired to work there. Since he came home from the hospital he and Patron don’t seem to be doing much together, but listening to him today it’s clear how important Patron is to him.
“I’d rather ask you, Professor, what you think about them, since you’ve had good long talks with both of them. You said Patron has a lot of charisma, but what do you make of the way he doesn’t resist being called Patron? Guide, I can understand—he’s Patron’s guide, and the guide for those who approach him.”
Kizu admitted he did feel Patron was very charismatic, yet even though they were still continuing their discussions of R. S. Thomas, he didn’t have enough to go on to give a proper response. As if he anticipated this, Ikuo continued, not waiting for the stammering Kizu to finish his reply.
“I believe you approached Patron, and later Guide, because you think it’s risky for me to be working in their office. Which means it’s nonsense for me to ask you this kind of question, I know. Still, I feel that by working alongside them I’m getting deeper into Patron, which is why I wanted to get your opinion. It’s a spoiled streak in me, I know: getting more deeply involved with them because I want to and then making you get involved and relying on you.
“This is what I’ve been thinking: Ten years ago, Patron and Guide lost their faith. They said that all they’d taught up till then was one big joke. If we assume this wasn’t some strategy or tactic directed against the authorities or the media, but was something they had to admit from the heart, will this new unexpected movement they’re starting create a new kind of doctrine? Or will they say they were wrong to deny their old teachings, and then repent and go back to square one? It seems to me that the people waiting for Patron’s next move aren’t unanimous in their attitudes.”
“I wonder,” Kizu said. “At this moment I really can’t say. It may seem a little standoffish of me, but to be perfectly frank my ulterior motive in coming to their office was so I could be with you. They’re not men who will let me get away with that for long. But I am going to try to find out an answer to your questions, especially about Patron.”
The day after this conversation with Ikuo, Kizu, egged on by his own words, went over to the office for the first time without being invited. He didn’t accompany Ikuo in the minivan—Ikuo had left early in the morning—but drove over in his Mustang after finishing his daily quota of painting.
It was past the dinner hour when Kizu arrived at the office, but when he parked his car in the hollow of shrubbery next to the gate, the front door was already open and someone was looking out at him. When Kizu went in, he found Ogi standing there, the front door wide open.
“You’re expecting someone?” Kizu said in greeting. Ogi nodded and, though they hadn’t spoken very loudly, motioned for Kizu to keep his voice down.
Ogi’s voice was subdued. “Ikuo drove Dancer to get the doctor.”
That’s all he said. He slipped past Kizu to shut the front door noiselessly. Having lived in America so long, Kizu didn’t pay much attention to the sound of doors opening and closing, but he realized Ogi was taking care not to slam it.
Guide had come over to the front office from his attached building. He wore an expensive cardigan with a frayed collar over his shirt and sat on the sofa on the garden side of the room, lost in thought. Ogi went back to the office to take care of some e-mail, and Kizu settled down on the edge of the sofa at a right angle to Guide.
As if Kizu were someone who belonged in this room and he himself did not, Guide nodded a tentative greeting. Then, noticing that Kizu was at loose ends, Guide turned his hood-covered bird-of-prey head to him.
“Patron is in a kind of state right now. It’s not one of his deep trances, but something close to it. In the past we would have considered this a preliminary. Perhaps it’s a prelude to his first deep trance in ten years, I don’t know. It started early this morning, so it’s been going on for over ten hours now. He hasn’t been this way for so long, we thought it best to send for the doctor. Dancer has gone to fetch him.”
Kizu had heard about these trances, and just learning that Patron might be close to being in one was enough to put him on edge. He said nothing, just looked at Guide as he continued.
“Would you agree to see him in this condition? Dancer has some plan for you to draw his portrait, so it could also be of help. Anyhow, it’s something you’ll never see anywhere else.”
“I barely know him. Do you think it’s all right?” Kizu asked.
“As long as you don’t make any noise, it’ll be okay. Loud sounds seem to hurt him. In his condition now he’s not completely gone over to the other side, but even so. . . Dancer had never seen him in this condition before and was beside herself; she couldn’t drag herself away so I thought it best to send her for the doctor.” Ogi looked up in their direction, and Guide said to him, “I’m going to take Professor Kizu in.”
Guide led the way down the dim hallway and instructed Kizu to sit down next to the empty bed in his usual spot on the wooden chair, lit in the faint glow of a bedside lamp; Guide himself sat down on the middle of the bed. His actions were matter-of-fact, yet Kizu thought that even if this wasn’t a deep trance Patron must be absorbed in something heavy and mystical that he’d never been privy to before. Still, when his eyes adjusted to the darkness he was shocked at what he saw.
Kizu knew there was a low chair Patron used for reading, and a straight-backed chair across from him that he himself used whenever they read poetry together. What he saw now on the low chair was Patron, legs resting on a stool the height of two shoe boxes, head stuck deep between his widespread knees, arms hanging straight down on each side, unmoving.
Patron’s face was hidden, the delicate nape of his neck covered tightly with a white collar, a jacket half slipping dow
n his rounded back. Kizu remembered seeing that gray jacket during their midnight poetry sessions, but the clothes he had on now were brand new. Perhaps he had several sets. Wearing fine clothes must be a habit he picked up in his former days as an eager missionary. Another thought struck Kizu; namely, that Patron wore these brand-new clothes because he knew a deep trance was coming on.
Could this state really be only a preliminary? Patron seemed totally absorbed. He held his body in a way you would never expect from a living human being. He sat there, utterly still, every semblance of humanity gone, as if he were carved out of wood or wrought out of metal.
“He’s held this position for over ten hours?” Kizu whispered. “Isn’t it painful?”
“He doesn’t seem to feel any pain. But physically there may be some damage. You know, like when kids bite their lips before the anesthetic wears off at the dentist.”
“Why isn’t this considered a deep trance?”
“He’s too calm. In a deep trance his body moves. Before he goes into a deep trance he acts like this for a short while, and then it’s as though he’s tossing and turning in his sleep. That’s the usual pattern. Only when something prevents him from going into a deep trance is he like this, as if he’s in a chrysalis, for such a long time.”
The two of them kept their voices down. Even after they stopped talking, they stayed leaning close to each other, gazing at this unnatural shape in front of them, an object it would be difficult to call a living thing. Guide cleared his throat as if sighing and spoke in a low yet distinct voice. Once, he said, they had had a doctor, a specialist, measure Patron before and after a trance using some specialized equipment. This was twelve or thirteen years ago, done at the request of a TV network. Patron’s brain waves and EKG were incredibly calm, his breathing and pulse barely detectable. For a person to have readings at this level and still be alive, the specialist explained, was truly remarkable.
