Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  Soon, making sure that his penis wasn’t pushed out, Ikuo, gingerly pushing his weight forward and asking Kizu again if it hurt him, slowly penetrated deeper into Kizu’s now relaxed body. After a short spell of smooth in-and-out, with a youthful sigh Ikuo came. Kizu felt a damp heat spread through him, and experienced again the same sensation, but on a gentler scale. Ikuo’s now half-limp penis slowly, then at the end more quickly, exited his body, and Kizu knew exactly what Naomi meant when, after that first sexual encounter, she’d pronounced it lovely.

  Kizu experienced a deep sense of fulfillment now that their sexual love had been consummated. Lying face down, he was unable to see Ikuo as, back turned to him, he carefully wiped himself and Kizu down with a towel—his only regret in an otherwise satisfying encounter.

  4

  With their sexual relationship now cemented, the circle complete, Kizu no longer felt as compelled as he had before to have sexual relations with Ikuo. And the same was nearly true of Ikuo. They were sexually calm, like an experienced middle-aged couple.

  Kizu had finished the technical preparations for the oil tableau he’d begun in Tokyo, and though he hadn’t yet settled on a major theme, he worked in tandem on several works that were vaguely leading him in that direction, all of which kept him occupied. Ikuo spent most of his time on preparations for the move to Shikoku, and even when he could return to the apartment to model for Kizu, more often than not he had to rush off without any sexual interludes. Free of any sexual frustration or psychological turmoil, though, Kizu saw his young lover off and found himself rather enjoying the free time and quiet to continue his painting. Along with the years of exhaustion he’d felt ever since his cancer had resurfaced, a lingering sense of weariness after such intense sexual intercourse also had something to do with this.

  For their part, after creating a model of the new church in Shikoku, Patron and Dancer were hoping that Kizu would come to the office. Ogi and Ikuo were both busy with their respective groups—the communal women’s group that lived along the Odakyu Line for Ogi, the remnants of the Izu research group for Ikuo—trying to get some concrete plans nailed down for the groups to move to Shikoku, and Patron, Dancer, and Ikuo spent much time in the office discussing these matters.

  Two weeks after revealing his disease to Patron, Kizu caught a ride to the office after Ikuo had spent the night. Ikuo had an appointment to finalize some plans with Dr. Koga, so Kizu got out in Shibuya and hailed a cab from there. Hearing this, Dancer said, “Ikuo’s pretty cold, isn’t he,” knowing all the while that Ikuo needed to concentrate on his work and that preparations with the former radical faction were on track.

  Dancer had heard from Patron about Kizu’s illness and already had made known to Patron her concerns about his health, yet now that she was face-to-face with him she didn’t express her sympathy. Trusting in Patron’s healing power, though, she made sure that when he was in the office Kizu sat nearest to Patron. When they went into Patron’s room to talk, they established a pattern of lining Kizu’s chair up beside Patron’s armchair, with Dancer facing them as she took notes. Sitting like this, Kizu felt a definite heat radiating from Patron that spread from his side, to his waist, and then even deeper.

  Dancer rearranged the entire office as they prepared for the move to Shikoku. Previously there’d been a low bookshelf for LPs and documents in front of the large glass door leading out to the garden, but this had been moved to the annex and the space it once occupied was wide open. The rainy season had yet to begin, and one sunny luxuriant day followed another, the longuntended garden a cheerful scene now, bursting with young leaves and shoots of grass growing where the doghouse of the poisoned Saint Bernard had once been.

  Along with the new arrangement of the chairs, there was now a couch set out behind them, next to the bathroom. It was newly purchased, something they planned to take with them to Shikoku, and on the day Kizu took the cab to the office and was escorted into Patron’s room, he found Morio Tachibana lying on the couch, reading a small yellow book of musical scores. When Patron, calling Ms. Tachibana’s brother by his first name, asked him to put on a CD, the brevity of the response made Kizu realize that this wasn’t the first time Morio had spent time here.

  Patron discussed his basic plans for moving the new church to Shikoku, an explanation that was connected with Morio’s being here. “The model that we’ll base our new church on will be the women’s commune near Odawara and the safe house of the former Izu Research Institute group. First of all we’ll have these two groups move to Shikoku—groups that Dancer now calls the Quiet Women and the Technicians. After that we’ll gradually move the other individuals with whom Ogi’s been in touch.

  “It’s also necessary to have a reliable core of office staff. Dancer is increasingly busy, so I’ve had Ms. Tachibana come to take care of my day-to-day needs. She’s the only one who wasn’t a follower from before the Somersault that we’ll be taking into our inner circle. Morio can’t live apart from Ms. Tachibana. I considered this in light of the fact that the men in the Shikoku church are all renunciates who’ve cut their ties with their families, and I reached the conclusion that I’ll have Morio come with us to Shikoku to assist me in my work. Just looking at him so absorbed in music does my heart good. He’s also good at finding the CDs I want to hear right away.”

  As soon as he heard his name, Morio—who had a keen ear—raised his head and looked in Patron’s direction. Patron nodded gently to him, and he went back to reading the score.

  “Having quit my teaching position in America, I need to move out of my apartment in Tokyo anyway,” Kizu said. “As I’ve said several times, I’m planning to go with Ikuo to Shikoku. I’m hoping to be able to live with him there with a modicum of privacy. If possible, I’d like to use the money I saved in the States to purchase a house next to the church. I’ll use the house for myself, but the house itself and any remaining money I’ll donate to the church.”

  “I’m very grateful to you,” Patron said. He gave instructions to Dancer. “Please contact the people taking care of the buildings there and see that it’s done. I’m hoping nothing will interfere with your private life there, Professor. Please consult with Ogi and Ikuo about what sort of tasks you’ll be doing.”

  “Ikuo says he wants to use Morio’s music to accompany the sermons and other church ceremonies in Shikoku. Maybe we could propose this to Dancer and Ogi.”

  “That would be fine,” Patron said emphatically. “This will be Morio’s work in the church, apart from what he does to help me. I heard Ikuo play Morio’s depiction of his sister and himself ascending to heaven holding my hand, and I’d like to begin using that piece in a variety of ways, just as Ikuo has proposed. The composer himself likes Ikuo’s work, so we’ll record Ikuo’s playing of the piece.”

  “I like it,” Morio said in clear, refined child’s voice.

  Dancer added, “Ikuo heard that the chapel has good acoustics, and he’s planning to hold a recital of Morio’s works. Ms. Tachibana’s quite encouraged by this. So Morio won’t just be accompanying Ms. Tachibana; each of them will have their own role to play in the church—and I expect that’ll serve as a good example for the others.”

  Morio, a look of concentration on his face, nodded at Dancer’s words.

  5

  As Patron had said, Ikuo had one concrete proposal regarding a job for Kizu as they prepared to move the church to Shikoku. While rushing here and there, laying the groundwork for the move, Ikuo discovered that the art supply firm that had sponsored the contest he’d entered when he was a child, the contest for which he’d made his complex plastic model, still had an office and store in the heart of Tokyo. With Kizu a specialist in art education, and this company having pioneered a market in Tokyo, Ikuo came up with a plan for having the company provide art supplies to Kizu, who would then open a model art school for children in Shikoku.

  Legally, the buildings the church was to occupy belonged to the Kansai headquarters. The village where these buildi
ngs were located had merged with other communities to become a town, and the people from the Kansai headquarters in charge of the buildings met with officials from the town to discuss the transfer. With the outstanding way the Kansai church had maintained the buildings, plus the fact that the elderly woman supervising their upkeep was from an old established family in the area, the two sides soon reached an official agreement allowing Patron’s church to use the buildings as its base of operations.

  Memories of the troubles with Aum Shinrikyo around its satyan at the base of Mount Fuji were still fresh in people’s minds, however. The local people also couldn’t forget that the buildings had originally belonged to another religious organization, which had started there and then disbanded, causing a huge uproar. Even with the agreement, then, Patron’s people had to prepare themselves, once they actually began moving in, for possible resistance from the townspeople. As one way of smoothing the path, Ikuo proposed holding concerts of Morio’s music and having Kizu teach art classes.

  Kizu found out the address of the art supply company and set off for the Ginza. The first and second floors of the building were a spacious gallery; the atmosphere of the place was unlike any stationery shop or art supply store you’d normally find in Japan, and to Kizu it felt like the kind of supermarket you’d find in a college town in the United States. He stood there for a while, nostalgically taking in the scene. He noticed some American women among the customers, residents of Tokyo. In one corner near the watercolor paper and painting supplies he saw a rheumatic-looking woman sitting on the floor, legs to one side, checking out various types of sketchbooks; for a moment Kizu was struck by the illusion that she was someone he knew in New Jersey.

  Among the Japanese customers were everyone from stylish-looking private junior high students, with their mothers, to younger children, all leisurely enjoying the paintings on exhibition. Kizu found them totally different from the students he’d taught in Japan some thirty years before. They were so obviously affluent and, even if you brushed close to them, they showed no interest in others around them.

  The American general manager was still quite young; he said he’d first come to Japan as a Mormon missionary. Not to imply, he went on, that he was solely a Japanophile; he was interested in developing markets in China, too, and was studying Mandarin. He was a pleasant, serious young man, and since Kizu was well-known in art education circles, he said that as long as the head office gave the okay he could supply, free of charge, the twenty watercolor sets Kizu wanted, each with over a hundred colors, as well as a hundred inexpensive sketchbooks for children. He promised to ship these to Kizu’s new address in Shikoku.

  When they’d reached this stage, Kizu felt a bit anxious. He’d already explained that he belonged to a new religious organization, soon to be established in the countryside, and was planning to hold art classes for the local children. But as he listened to Kizu, the manager seemed blasé.

  “Believe me,” Kizu said, “I’m not trying to use these painting sets and sketchbooks as inducements to convert new followers.”

  The manager wasn’t perturbed.

  “I take the subway to work that was gassed with sarin gas,” he said, “and I’m pretty interested in these new Japanese religions. As long as the church you belong to isn’t like some fundamentalist sect in the States where everyone commits mass suicide with their leader, I don’t see how it could be negative publicity for my company. But even with things like this sarin gas attack, don’t you think that in general Japanese aren’t very religious? When I was doing Mormon missionary work I already had that impression. Our company aims its goods at the children of well-heeled urban families. But I want to branch out beyond that. That’s why I like your idea of opening an art school for children in the countryside.”

  They exchanged a firm handshake, something Kizu experienced rarely in Japan, and said goodbye, and Kizu strolled off toward the Ginza subway station—also something he hadn’t done in a while—pleasantly anticipating his new art school. The children he’d teach probably had never seen such paints, and when he went through the names of the colors with them this simple process would be a real education about the world around them. The countryside they’d be moving to was near the central mountain range in Shikoku, and as the children looked at the changing seasons in the forest, giving the name of a particular color to what they saw and then reproducing the scene on paper, their awareness of the forest that surrounded them would be transformed. They’d come to know and grasp the world in a way they’d never experienced before.

  Kizu realized that his life as an art instructor, which had begun in a high school in the countryside near a forest, was now about to end in a similar way, opening an art class in a place surrounded by a deep forest, albeit a place he’d yet to lay eyes on. He was deeply moved that his life was coming full circle.

  Together with a strangely calm sense of fulfillment, he found himself in high spirits as he accepted the fact that he was about to be thrust into a life that promised some startling twists and turns. As long as cancer didn’t floor him, he knew he could make it.

  Kizu’s subway car passed one of the stations that had been attacked with sarin gas.

  6

  With the scheduled move to the buildings in the forests of Shikoku fast approaching, the one urgent personal matter that Kizu had to solve was the question of finding a replacement in Shikoku for the doctor who had taken on the responsibility of overseeing his own self-centered way of dealing with his cancer. This was Kizu’s one concern about leaving Tokyo for good. Completely at a loss as to what he should do, he went again to the clinic in Akasaka.

  Kizu hadn’t mentioned it before, but now he told his doctor how he had no intention of returning to his university in the United States, and would be moving to the forests of Shikoku as a member of a church; the doctor seemed surprised to hear this but didn’t ask any questions. He seemed to be weighing the connection between the new signs of cancer and Kizu’s dramatic lifestyle changes. Done with that, he questioned Kizu in detail about practical matters such as the distance between this village in the woods and the nearest city hospital, the conditions of the nearest clinic, and so on. But Kizu hadn’t gathered any such information. Hard put to reply, he told him there would be one doctor, a Dr. Koga, among the followers, who’d all be living a communal life. “I’m not sure if he’s still practicing,” Kizu added, “but he’s fairly well known.”

  “Kanau Koga?” said his doctor. “He is indeed a well-known clinician. Of course he’s still practicing medicine. If he’s going to quit his practice and move, it’ll be a blow to whatever hospital he’s been working for. You’re very lucky to have him with you.”

  Surprised, Kizu listened as the doctor ardently talked on, his face with his rimless glasses looking down as Kizu watched him.

  “I once read in the papers that Dr. Koga was involved with a religious group,” the doctor said; though not looking in Kizu’s direction, his reactions were precise. “But wasn’t that a long time ago? We don’t belong to the same academic society, but he was just a year ahead of me in university and I’ve known him ever since. Even now I hear news about him, but nothing about any religious group.”

  The doctor’s next words showed he’d given this some thought and was trying to express his interest.

  “That must be a very interesting religious group to make Dr. Koga quit his post in a Tokyo hospital and go live in a commune in the woods. And here you are too, participating despite your cancer.”

  “My case is different from Dr. Koga’s,” Kizu said hurriedly. “At any rate, this will be the last job of my life. Besides, I’m sort of a lukewarm participant—I don’t even know much about the doctrines of the church.”

  “I’m not about to ask anything personal about the church,” the doctor said, and looked down again as before, “but being with Dr. Koga is a definite plus for you. I haven’t received the medical records yet from the hospital in New Jersey—we’ll take care of that later—but
for now I’ll collect all the records I do have and hand them over to Dr. Koga. I’ll write a letter to him, too, outlining the plan we discussed for administering morphine.”

  The thought suddenly came to Kizu that if he were to choose an adviser for Ikuo after his death this doctor would make a fine choice, and he realized he’d never considered who he could trust to be Ikuo’s counselor after he was gone, a sure sign that he was trying to avoid thinking about his approaching inevitable demise.

  The doctor half turned away from Kizu, who was sitting on a stool, and began writing a letter at his plain desk. After gathering together the documents he’d mentioned—Kizu’s health record he’d brought from America, plus copies of the charts of his last examination—the doctor was no doubt writing a letter to Dr. Koga. This straightforward way of taking care of business forced Kizu to reflect on his own vague attitude toward life despite the short time left to him.

  The doctor put the letter inside a plain business envelope printed with the name of the clinic and passed this, along with a larger envelope of medical records, over to Kizu.

  “You tend to downplay the value of things you do, but I’m very interested to see people like you and Dr. Koga working on a joint project. It’s quite refreshing, since intellectuals of your caliber in Japan very rarely do joint work outside their own fields.”