Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

10: Wake Mania Without End (I)

  1

  The ceiling of the prewar Western-style kitchen was strangely low, the window smeared, and the putty around the frame greasy. Outside, large wet snowflakes were falling; Kizu watched them out to the edge of the faint light illuminating the scene.

  It was after dinner. Patron was listening to the CD version of Furtwängler conducting Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on the sound system set up next to the dining table. Soon a cold look came to his face, and without concerning himself with Kizu he shut off the music halfway through. Outside, beyond Patron’s drooping shoulders, sleet was changing to snow. Kizu felt uneasy, as if his sense of hearing had suddenly been stripped away from him, and he imagined Patron must be even more sensitive to the sudden silence. Patron went into the kitchen to start washing up, and Kizu followed after him.

  There was a huge pile of dirty dishes. At the beginning of the week Guide had taken a turn for the worse and been put in a private room, and Dancer, who’d been with him the whole time, had returned in the late afternoon for the first time to report on his condition. After dinner with Ogi, Ikuo, and Ms. Tachibana, the young people set off for the hospital. Ms. Tachibana, living with her younger brother, had to be home by a fixed time, so it was left to Kizu and Patron to clean up.

  With his long years living alone in New Jersey, and now in his Tokyo apartment, Kizu was used to cooking and cleaning up on his own, but Patron was a compete novice when it came to washing dishes. It might have been easier if Kizu had done it alone. Patron, though, seemed genuinely afraid of withdrawing to his bedroom study. At Dancer’s insistence there were no chemical cleansers in the kitchen, so it took quite some time to wash the filthy dishes the young people had left using only a large bar of coconut oil soap rubbed into a sponge. Kizu soon took over washing the dishes, Patron the drying. As he dried one dish after another, Patron began a long monologue.

  “A while ago I told you how I came to know Guide, and how I was making a living as a fortune-teller. Guide’s wife and autistic son ran out on him. His wife had left a note. She said he worried so much and was so overly solicitous toward their son she felt stifled, and they couldn’t take it anymore. ‘If you come after us and try to get us to come home,’ she said, ‘we’ll kill ourselves. Just leave us alone.’

  “When Guide brought this letter to me he was beside himself. A woman whose son was going to night classes at the high school equivalency school felt she just couldn’t stand by without doing anything and brought Guide to one of our meetings. He wasn’t hoping his wife and son would come back, he just wanted to know they were all right. Instead of trying to search for them, he thought I should read the letter, go into a trance, and tell him how they were. I had two different types of trances, and this required the shallow kind, which I could go into and out of at will.

  “The scene I saw in my trance was clear enough but hard to pin down. A middle-aged woman was sitting on a bus, a bulky bag beside her. From the shadows a young man leaped into the picture, and when he reached the front row of seats he rested his hand on the shoulder of a man sitting there and, in a quiet voice, asked him if he was getting off at the next stop.

  “When I’d said this much, Guide began to tremble. ‘That’s definitely my wife and son,’ he said. What he said next was the very first of his interpretations of my visions, one might say. ‘My son likes buses,’ he said, ‘especially the front row. My wife or I tell him not to, but he always sidles up to the front and asks whoever’s sitting there that question. My wife’s people live in Boso and earn their living farming and fishing, so they must be carrying fish and vegetables into Tokyo to sell. Seeing as how they make a round trip every day into the city on trains and buses, my son must be happy.’

  “Even after Guide had determined where his family was, he still came sometimes to our meetings; before long his wife filed for divorce. His wife was afraid of him and didn’t show up in family court, so the divorce wasn’t finalized, but Guide just left it at that. He said the reason he didn’t get divorced was like the idea you had, Professor Kizu, of you and Ikuo grasping hands and heading off to the other side. When his autistic son was to head off to the other side, Guide wanted to be there to help him. Guide had been overzealous in educating his son so the boy had rebelled. When Guide had tried to suppress the rebellion, the mother felt sorry for the boy and the two of them ran away from home.

  “Still, though, Guide’s dream was to be able to help his son on the other side, to mediate between his son’s soul and God. He couldn’t give up this idea. Guide was able to interpret my visions, and finally that became his full-time role. But behind his becoming a pillar of the church lay these personal emotional motives.

  “And now Guide is unconscious, his body reacting only mechanically. On the one hand is the brain of the autistic son, closed to the world outside; on the other, the brain of the father, struck down by an aneurysm. I’m haunted by a scene of endless sky and far-off horizon, with two oval-shaped dishes like these lying there. And a human brain on each one.”

  Patron held a large plate to the lacy apron at his chest, and while Kizu pictured what was happening in a far-off building surrounded by snow, he almost burst out laughing. With Patron’s combination of the tragic and the comic, his solemn seriousness and his occasional doubtfulness, Kizu couldn’t help but know he was in the presence of someone quite special.

  “What really hurts most when I think of Guide is what he told me after he had his first attack, when he recovered and came home from the hospital. When the blood vessel in his forehead burst, he said, he didn’t get confused right away. He felt bad, got up go to the rest room to try to throw up, and was halfway there when he suddenly found himself not inside a building but standing in a wilderness at twilight. And with a great noise, this whole wilderness was rolling up from the edges at the horizon. And then he lost consciousness. Guide used this expression, which makes it seem that the vision I had that I just told you about was something he told me. That’s how strong a relationship we’d built up over such a long time.

  “What comes to me now is that during his second attack there must have been a short period when his mind was still clear. Guide knew what was going on. How frightened he must have been, wondering whether the group that took him captive was hoping he’d collapse. He must have felt a terrible sadness too, knowing he’d lost forever his chance to find his son and escort him to the other side.

  “That’s how I imagined Guide’s experience. And the conclusion I came to, Professor, is that although Guide wanted to be a mediator for his autistic son, in fact it was the son who was his railing, his lifeline.”

  Patron ran out of words. His spiritless face, poised between his bent left hand, about to grasp a plate, and his right, holding out a dish towel, fairly glinted with sorrow.

  As he had never done before to anyone, Kizu placed his arm around Patron’s apron-wrapped shoulder and led him out of the kitchen. The curtains were still open, and in the darkness of the garden the snow began to swirl silently. The two elderly men, in their loud aprons, faintly reflected in the windowpane, looked just like two children in a nursery school Christmas pageant who had stood rooted to one spot until, years later, they’d grown old.

  2

  Kizu planned to take Patron to his bedroom study and then wait in the office in case there was an emergency call from the hospital. But as they rounded the corner in the hallway Patron came to a halt and refused to go farther. Reluctantly, Kizu led him to the living room sofa, but again he protested wordlessly and sat down in the armchair facing away from the glass door leading to the garden.

  “Would you like to listen to Bach again?” Kizu asked.

  Looking back at him, Patron shook his head.

  “Well, then,” Kizu said, “maybe I can use this opportunity to ask you something Ikuo wants me to ask.”

  “Dancer already told me,” Patron said. “She came to me all excited and said Ikuo had just asked you to put this question to me: Whether false sa
vior or genuine, how did you start thinking you were the savior? Isn’t this what he wanted you to ask?” Kizu nodded. “Since he used these exact words with Dancer, I think that even before Ikuo talked to you he knew exactly what he wanted to say.

  “The best way to answer is, once again, to begin by talking about Guide. When I asked him to take on the job of Prophet, I didn’t have a clear sense of myself as Savior. It was only after I forced him into the role of Prophet that he began to see my trances as mystical experiences and convinced me that I could use them to lead him and other people.

  “Ever since I was a certain age I knew I couldn’t avoid having these experiences. Over time they jolted me out of the everyday. Every time I had a mystical experience I suffered and was worn out, though afterward I felt totally energized. After I returned to this side, I was driven to tell people what I’d seen over there. Before Guide was with me I experimented with all sorts of ways to do this, but no one took me seriously, except for the predictions I made after I reluctantly starting earning a living as a fortune-teller.

  “Soon I’d fall into depression again and begin to regret the stupid things I was doing. As I became more and more depressed, I had a premonition that when I hit bottom I’d be thrust into another mystical experience. So I realized depression wasn’t going to make me kill myself.

  “I was repeating this cycle over and over when I first met Guide. A true man of science, no doubt he was eager to uncover this fortune-teller as a fraud. But the scene I saw in the trance portrayed—quite accurately, it turned out—his wife and autistic son.

  “Since he was a scientist, Guide placed a high value on the scientific method and believed the only valid theory was one that grew out of this. He studied my trances with great inquisitiveness and soon experienced one of my deep trances. He made a distinction between the two kinds and concentrated on the more intense ones, with their visions I couldn’t comprehend yet couldn’t let slip away.

  “Guide wasn’t the kind of person to be satisfied with a halfhearted response, so I felt cornered and for the first time got serious about these visions myself. He took care of me when I had my trances, and I did my best to tell him the visions that remained like echoes in my mind. As if I had no other choice, I talked for about an hour, and gradually the roles of speaker and listener were reversed. He connected the fragments of my vision and began talking to me, convincing me that yes, indeed, what he was saying was what I saw in my trance.

  “Since he could describe what I saw in my visions, I began to rely on him more and more. I would fall into one of these painful trances and have a vision, and during its aftereffects, when my psyche was still half destroyed, I’d blurt out some nonsense. He helped me link up the person I became in moments like that with the person I was after I’d recovered. I felt I could pull together the shattered personality I’d believed to be lost for over a decade.

  “As I said a while ago, right after my trances I was always worked up. I had to tell people what I’d seen. I knew what I said was mostly nonsense, but I just had to say something. And then I’d deeply regret having spoken and become depressed. Still, through that process I couldn’t deny the mystical experiences I had. It was all so unspeakably painful.

  “The difference now was that after I awoke from a trance and recovered from the unsettled emotional state that always followed, I had a patient listener who would put my scattered words in order. He gave meaning to the disaster that had ruined half my life, and through his help I discovered a new whole sense of self. What he made whole was me, the Savior, whether false or genuine. That was how it began.”

  Patron’s monologue came to a halt. A long but not unnatural silence descended on them. With all other sounds absorbed by the falling snow, the sound of the gate outside being pushed open suddenly rang out loud and clear. Dancer came into the living room, surrounded by the cold iron smell of the snow she’d brushed off at the entrance. Silently, she looked reprovingly at Patron and, ignoring Kizu, walked over to the armchair.

  “I’ll talk with you after you’ve gone to your room,” she said, nimbly getting Patron up.

  Kizu watched her propel Patron into his bedroom study, a clump of snow clinging to her skirt. Ikuo, coming in a moment later, plopped down without a word in the chair facing away from the dining room, the one at a right angle to the sofa. The scent Kizu sniffed out from his large body was the metallic smell of snow Dancer had brought with her, overlaid with sweat. Ikuo held Kizu’s questioning gaze and nodded gravely, his expression showing small signs both of a deep exhaustion and a renewed vigor.

  “I see.… He’s gone. That is really a shame,” was all Kizu could muster. “So the two of you walked back all the way in the snow?”

  “The train was stopped at Kyodo so we walked from there. Dancer’s done so much serious training she barely broke a sweat. Ogi stayed at the hospital to deal with the police and make funeral arrangements. The newspapers seem to have caught wind of it, and reporters have been snooping around the night reception desk. I thought it would be a pain to have phone calls coming in here so I switched the office phone over to fax when we left—which is why we couldn’t call you—and came back instead. Dancer in particular wanted to report directly to Patron.”

  Dancer had led Patron into the back, as if scolding a child for staying up too late, but now no voices could be heard. Kizu fixed his gaze on the carved vine-covered clock on the wall, which hung next to the watercolor he’d presented to Patron. It was already past three.

  “When people die. . . even if it’s from illness, it’s a terrible thing,” Ikuo said. “Guide may have been brain dead, just an object, but when I saw him sweep aside his IV tube and sit up halfway in bed to vomit, trying not to soil his bed, I knew this wasn’t just some inanimate thing.”

  They suddenly noticed that Dancer had come out from Patron’s room and was standing at the corner of the dining room, looking down at Kizu and Ikuo.

  “Patron told me again that he wants you to be Guide,” she said to Kizu.

  3

  The next morning dawned clear, not a cloud in the sky. Over a foot of snow piled up in the branches and treetops, and the trees in the garden leaned over at anarchic angles. The line of potted wild plants looked like deep-dish pot pies. The layer of snow covering the ground twinkled in dead silence. The morning was still early. Kizu and Ikuo had slept in the annex, and Kizu left Ikuo there, deep in the enduring sleep of a healthy young man, and went over to the main house. Dancer was already up, planted in the chair that Ogi normally used, hard at work. When she saw Kizu she reported that last night she’d recorded Patron’s statement on the death of Guide. She was letting Patron sleep in and was getting things ready for what was likely to prove a busy afternoon.

  The small lamp on her desk just illuminated the documents on top of it, and in contrast to the bright snow coming from the north and south sides of the garden, in this darkly shadowed interior Dancer’s face looked pale and swollen. Her nostalgic little-girl-with-a-cold face at the same time showed the pain of one who’s been abandoned. Kizu wondered when Patron was planning to visit the hospital and how they planned to get there if the snow prevented them from taking the car.

  “Patron isn’t going to the hospital,” Dancer replied. “Point-blank, without any emotion, he said there was no need, now that Guide has passed away.”

  “But he will have to bid farewell to the body, won’t he? Is Ogi going to bring the body back here?”

  “We’ve made an appointment at the crematorium; Ogi will take care of everything. We’ll just wait for the ashes to be brought back here. In the afternoon we’ll be inundated with reporters, and Patron plans to hold a press conference. We’ll all be pretty busy. Ms. Tachibana will be bringing one of her colleagues but will have to wait until the trains are running again.”

  “How were Guide’s wife and son told?”

  As if wondering how much Kizu already knew about Guide’s family, Dancer assumed her typical expression, mouth slightly open, fo
r the first time this morning.

  “I think Ogi contacted them last night, before dinner,” she replied. “When we got back to the hospital, his wife and son were already there. His wife seemed to think it was very important for her to see him once before he died—even if he wasn’t able to realize she was there. When the doctors were performing heart massage and ordered everyone out of the room, she insisted on staying there and did so, along with her son. When we went back into the room, she looked devastated, as if it had been her chest they’d been massaging.

  “All things considered, she held up well; she kept repeating to her poor son that his father had died repentant. Ogi’s supposed to escort them to the crematorium. Guide’s wife wanted to go back to Boso as soon as she could and told us that though her husband had been a big man and there would be a lot of bones left after the cremation, they need only bury a small portion.”

  “So his wife said he died repentant, did she?” Kizu said, his voice full of regret for the bereaved family.

  Dancer leaped in adroitly. “I wonder how his wife and son understood the word. Ikuo and I discussed it on the way back, whether what she said about repentance is the same thing as the term Patron uses in his teaching, or whether she meant your garden variety of repentance.”

  “Do you mean Guide repenting what he did to his family?” Kizu asked her. “Maybe all repentance leads in the same direction.”

  “When Patron heard this, he cried,” Dancer said, looking at Kizu closely to gauge his reaction.

  “It must be a complex thing for Patron.”

  “Don’t be so standoffish—like it has nothing to do with you,” Dancer protested mildly. “Instead, as your first task as the new Guide, would you transcribe the tape of Patron’s announcement?”

  Dancer leaned forward to pass him the tape, still in its Walkman, her eyes as she did so overflowing with light reflected from the snow on the north side of the house like some alien on a TV movie. Dancer had a dignity that wouldn’t take no for an answer, and her obvious exhaustion—she’d only managed to grab a few hours’ sleep—did nothing to diminish the energy with which she took care of the work she had to do. Still, though, she showed her concern, saying, “If you’d like to have breakfast before you get to work, I’ll make it.”