Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “The more connections we have with the local people the better, I think,” Ogi said. “I haven’t told Professor Kizu this yet, but Asa-san phoned a while ago about the art school and said the local schools can’t help. According to her, the Old Town faction opposing the church staged a comeback.”

  “Is that right? I suppose it’s to be expected,” Kizu said disappointedly. “If Aum Shinrikyo had had an artist among them who wanted to open a painting class in the village at the foot of Mount Fuji where they had their headquarters, I don’t suppose the locals would have welcomed the idea.”

  “I thought it was going to work out, having the former junior high principal’s wife pulling for you,” Dancer said, a note of dissatisfaction in her voice, though Kizu was already resigned to it.

  After dinner, Ogi and Dancer still had work left to do, so Ikuo and Kizu left them at the office, leaving behind a few cans of beer. When they’d left their house on the north shore of the Hollow the wind had made them shiver, and now while they’d eaten dinner the wind whipping down the north slope had gotten even colder and was accompanied by a thick fog, unseasonable even for these woods. The only light was set up where the path through the courtyard ran downhill, so the rest of the time they walked in darkness.

  Kizu called out to Ikuo, who was shining his flashlight on the fog-shrouded dam as they walked along.

  “They say the dam was made to collect water from the river and from natural springs, but it’s really an amazing amount of water—even in the dark you can sense that. One older person who used to act as electrician at the former Izu Institute proposes to redo the lighting around the chapel and the monastery. He says he’ll also put a light that will burn all night at the corner where we turn to go up to our house. Can’t have anyone falling in the lake, now, can we.”

  “The Technicians who’ve moved here have really been working hard. I imagine they think that if they do, this place can become a good foothold for them. Things have gotten pretty lively at the farm since they started working there, that’s for sure.”

  Very considerately Ikuo moved behind Kizu so as to light up the path ahead for him. With this young man so immersed in his work, though, Kizu felt more and more left behind.

  2

  The next Sunday, Ikuo left near dawn to join the Young Fireflies in their training as they made one complete circuit of the forest. Despite his physical condition, Kizu didn’t find it hard to get up early, so he joined Ikuo for breakfast before he set off. Afterward, afraid of the dull pain that sometimes hit him right after he awoke, Kizu wrapped himself in his blanket, opened the window on the lake, and sat looking at the swirl of thin fog outside. The birds weren’t yet chirping, and bees buzzed halfheartedly around the leaves of the oak trees, dripping with the fog.

  Before long—from the woods that ran behind the monastery on the heights of the opposite shore, where the fog was lifting—he could sense a line of people cutting through across the woods. He could hear the sound of trees being struck and lush branches snapping—all to the accompaniment of the sound of soft-soled sneakers, so this wasn’t some herd of animals. Was it really natural for people used to walking through the woods to make so much noise? Perhaps, Kizu considered, Gii was deliberately having his boys cause a commotion to advertise their presence.

  Two hours later Ikuo was back, redolent of fresh foliage and grasses, and he asked Kizu if he’d noticed them passing by in the woods. Racing through the forest with a group of young men seemed much better able to revive him than spending time shut up indoors with an older man. Kizu just listened as Ikuo enthusiastically talked about what he’d found out about Gii.

  “He seems to be about fourteen, though his mother has never disclosed his birth date, so even on his family record it’s not clear how old he is. This is why Gii says there are people here who insist he’s adopted or even stolen. Did you know that until she graduated from high school, Satchan lived as a man?

  “Anyhow, Gii’s only about fourteen, but he lives with a woman, if you can believe it, an old friend of Satchan’s who came back here awhile back; she does dyeing. Gii helped her collect the tree branches she needed for her plant dyes and that’s how they became friends. Gii says he finds it amusing how, no matter what he says, the older woman always replies, ‘No way!’”

  That afternoon, Kizu and Ikuo happened to run across that same woman at the crossroads at the main bridge. At first Kizu thought she was bald. The head on top of her well-balanced muscular body had sparse reddish hair wrapped around it.

  Just as it had upgraded to having vending machines, the general store at the crossroads had begun to accept parcel post deliveries, and Kizu wanted to check on the art materials donated to him by the store in Tokyo. According to the owner of this local shop, a thin, gloomy man who never looked you straight in the eye, several boxes had indeed been delivered, but this was before anyone from the church had moved into the Hollow, so he’d returned them to the main office in Matsuyama, where they were in storage.

  After some tiresome haggling with the owner, they agreed that he would go pick them up, provided Kizu paid for it, the owner finally coming out from the entrance of the old wooden building to accept their documents. A woman who had been in the back of the dirt-floored entrance preparing a long box for shipping ran after him.

  “Hello, Professor! It is Professor Kizu, isn’t it? I’m Mayumi, the one you helped arrange an exhibit of Japanese dyed cloth in New Jersey. I’d heard from Gii that you were here.”

  Kizu searched his memory as he gazed at the woman, clad in a white-and indigo-dyed dress, her face with its taut tanned leathery skin smiling at him.

  “I must look very different to you, I’m sure. I used to have quite luxuriant hair, but this spring I developed a rash from the dyes, and look what’s happened. I’m sorry if I startled you.”

  Kizu’s memory was still a little hazy, but Mayumi was sure he remembered her and continued, bashful at her own recollections.

  “Would you mind talking for a while? There’s no coffee shop along the river, but there is a nice little place just right for having a talk.”

  Kizu and Ikuo agreed, and Mayumi led them on, a basket woven from arrowroot swinging at her side.

  “Just up the river from the main bridge there’s an old bridge at the next curve in the road. No one drives on it anymore, and it’s perfect to sit there and have a chat or to cool off. In fact that’s how the local people have been using it.”

  The bridge had a weathered railing made of coarse granite, with a line of logs set up to keep cars out and thick knobby stumps and short logs arranged for people to sit on, making the bridge into a small park. Mayumi led them to the center.

  On the opposite shore a grove of zelkovas formed a screen with their still, soft, light-green leaves. Seeing Kizu observing the trees so closely, Mayumi explained about the zelkovas and the broad-leafed woods on both sides of them. When she moved into the small house next to the farm, construction on the cross-Shikoku highway bypass was in full swing, and the cypress and cedar woods had all been mercilessly leveled. Cracks and holes appeared all through the broad-leafed woods that ran down to the riverside. But in the years since, the forest had recovered, and looking from below, at least, greenery covered the remaining wall of the bypass that ran though it—so much so that if a major economic downturn came and the bypass were to close, trees and vines would soon cover the slope completely, returning it to the state it was in before human beings inhabited the valley.

  “It’s past the season for it, but when the new leaves are sprouting and the flowers are in bloom it’s a remarkable sight. Over there are beeches and oaks. And just up the river a little way when the kojii flowers are in full bloom, a shiny golden light-green, they’re absolutely magnificent. Behind the chapel it’s all one line of dark green, right? Those are Chinese hawthorns, and the place where they come together with the kojii is beautiful. The temperature’s cooler than by the river, and it’s in the shade for a long time, so the flowers
were in full bloom until a short while ago.”

  As Kizu obediently listened to her, he looked around the expanse of broad-leafed trees, and up at the cypress and cedars beginning to be shaded with an indigo that, to him, was as pleasant as the throng of young leaves. From the bright cloudy sky a layer descended—snow or fog, it was hard to tell—the tips of the pillars of fog at the top of the forest rising to touch the darker layer, the tops of this lower layer visibly blending with the cloudy sky and forming a contrast with the forest below.

  “Gii formed the Fireflies in order to work out his concept of creating a community independent of the outside world, didn’t he?” Ikuo ventured.

  “Yes, but these long-distance trucks run day and night down that highway, with no connection whatsoever to production and consumption in this valley. And as long as that continues, the bypass to the highway won’t be closed to traffic like this old bridge was. Gii’s not the sort to amuse himself with the impossible. ‘My daydreams aren’t real,’ he told me once.”

  Feeling snubbed, Ikuo turned his dark face toward the river’s surface, from which fog was also rising. For her part, sensing distrust of what she’d just said in his attitude, Mayumi continued seriously.

  “Still, Gii has a concept of what the future holds and insists that there is a sense of reality to it. When he says that, the only thing I can say is No way! to put a damper on it.

  “The kind of future Gii envisions is one in which the outside world has died out and the world constructed by the Fireflies is all that survives. This goes way beyond the notion of closing down the highway, but I can tell you he’s dead serious about it!

  “Gii’s mother, Satchan, and I go way back. When she and Gii’s father were running the Church of the Flaming Green Tree, one of their supporters was a woman pianist who also worked in international exchanges of various sorts. In a storage shed at the Farm, Gii ran across a Bach CD of a Russian pianist whom the woman had invited to Japan at one time.

  “Gii was moved by the performance, but he got a hint for his concept from a poem the pianist wrote. Particularly the line Perhaps the world has already passed away. Listen to the Italian concerto, Gii said, the second movement, the andante, and that’s how he began conceiving his unique vision of the future.

  “Since the world has died, the people living in it are, of course, dead themselves. They’re just pretending to be alive, Gii says. But sometimes, very rarely, you’ll run across someone who is truly alive, like this Russian pianist, who stands opposed to the already dead world. Gii decided that in the future he wants to act the same way—as someone alive in an already dead world.”

  “I’ve felt the same thing,” Kizu said, “that there are two coexisting worlds, one already dead, the other living. The two worlds overlap, and the world we know is a mix of the living and the dead.”

  “I don’t really understand it myself,” Mayumi said, “but when you consider the way the future might turn out, it’s not good for the dead to have too much influence on those who should be living in the future. I heard from Gii that tomorrow the Fireflies will be meeting with the leader of your church. That’s had me a bit concerned, which is why I wanted to talk with you.”

  Mayumi stopped speaking, rested her arms against the white mica-flecked railing of the bridge, and then spoke in a changed tone of voice.

  “When the fog rises from the forest and merges with the descending clouds like that, it means rain’s on the way. You may not be able to walk back to the Hollow in time. I apologize for having kept you.”

  3

  The rain continued until the next morning. Ikuo got up early with Kizu, seemingly concerned about the Fireflies’ dawn march through the forest. During breakfast, undeterred by the chilly damp air coming in from outside, he opened the window facing the lake, trying to catch the moment when the shift in wind direction would carry the sound of the Fireflies’ movements their way.

  After they cleared away the breakfast dishes, Ikuo came over to Kizu, who was back in bed reading, and told him he wanted to meet up with the Fireflies when they emerged out of the forest at the crossroads and give them a ride to the monastery.

  “Patron’s going to hold a meeting with the Fireflies today while they all eat lunch. I’m sure they’ll be soaked after being in the woods and if they go back home to change they’ll keep Patron waiting. I’d like to have them clean up in the monastery’s communal bath and dry their clothes in the dryer there. Then they can start right at noon.”

  “There aren’t many opportunities to hear Patron directly,” Kizu said, “so I suppose there’ll be a lot of people, won’t there? I think I’m going to go a little early.”

  “Everyone’s planning to take their lunch trays over to the chapel. Thanks in advance for helping out.”

  When Kizu followed Ikuo’s directions and took his tray over to the chapel it was still a while before the meeting was to start, but everyone had already taken their seats. The chairs were set in two facing rows. Seated in the row on the lake side of the chapel were Patron, Dancer, and Ogi, Ms. Tachibana and her brother, and Dr. Koga, who was able to get away from the clinic only during the noon hour. The seat beside Ikuo was left vacant for Kizu. Twenty of the Fireflies were in the other row, already eating lunch, their carefree upbringing reflected in their physiques. Surrounding them all were the Technicians, as well as all the Quiet Women who weren’t on kitchen duty. The whole scene was quite lively.

  Ikuo, seated beside Kizu, had already devoured his lunch and didn’t introduce Kizu to the Fireflies, but Kizu could tell they already knew who he was. The Fireflies looked very different from young boys Kizu had seen in Tokyo. These boys were all dressed alike, in jeans or soft cotton trousers and T-shirts, and they all looked well scrubbed after their communal bath.

  The Fireflies kept their movements and conversation to a minimum as they wolfed down their meals. They weren’t the only ones making short work of their food; the people in Kizu’s row of seats were nearly done with theirs, and as the Quiet Women in charge of the meal went around handing out tea in disposable cups, Kizu had just about figured out which of the young men was Gii. He was seated in the middle of their group, and in the way he moved his shoulders and hands and in the timing of his little inclinations of the head, Kizu could understand the charm Ikuo had described.

  Soon the church members, too, had finished their meals, and everyone waited for Morio and Kizu to finish. Meanwhile, several of the Quiet Women gathered all the dishes of the church office staff and the Technicians onto trays and carried them out to the dining hall. Ikuo motioned to the young men not to take their trays out but to stack them instead in a corner of the church. Time was of the essence, and he wanted to get the meeting under way as soon as possible.

  “We planned on having a private meeting today between Patron and the Young Fireflies,” Ikuo said, “but since there were so many in the church who wanted to attend, and there’s no need to keep any of this a secret, the meeting has grown to include all these other folks too. I discussed with Patron how we should proceed, and he said he’d like the Fireflies to ask him whatever they want. I think it would be best to have Gii represent the Fireflies in asking questions. First Patron has a few words he’d like to say, and if he asks any questions I’d like Gii to be the one to answer them. Just follow the same procedures we’ve used in our own meetings.”

  As Ikuo sat down, Gii stood up, the eyes of all the boys suddenly riveted on him. Gii had a high forehead but not the type of hairline you’d expect to recede when he got older, dark eyebrows, and a sharply etched nose. Apart from a slightly pronounced jaw, his tanned face overall had a classic look. With hardly an ounce of extra flesh on him, he had the sharp yet lovable look of a dog just out of puppyhood. But as he stood there, tensely waiting Patron’s words, the whites of his eyes glistening like porcelain, there was a childish, fragile feel to him.

  “Ikuo wants me to answer questions from the Fireflies, but first I hope you’ll indulge me by letting me ask some
questions of my own,” Patron said, still seated, returning Gii’s gaze. “How did you come to make the Fireflies? You might very well want to ask us why we came here to make a church, but first I’d like you to answer me.”

  Gii’s face showed a boyish bashfulness and a bit of pluck, for what both he and his companions wanted was straight talk, not beating around the bush.

  “It might be a little unexpected to start off answering this way, but the basic reason we made the Fireflies and the reason you have this building are the same—the declining birthrate in Maki Town.

  “The Church of the Flaming Green Tree built this chapel, and right afterward the church was dissolved and the building was supposed to be donated to the junior high. The town council decided that the land where the monastery is now was to be made into new classrooms. But foreseeing that the number of children going on to junior high would decrease, the council abandoned the plan. Your church expressed an interest, and it was a convenient out.

  “Since long ago in this region, second and third sons went off to the cities to find work. Because the birthrate is now low, most of us are only children and have ended up living at home. That being the case, we decided to find a positive reason for staying here. Every one of us agrees with that. And that’s how the Fireflies began. Could we ask some questions now?”

  Patron nodded silently.

  “While we were out training this morning, we discussed what we should ask you. Most of the requests were along the lines of having you tell us in simple terms what it means to believe in God. We hope you won’t yell at us and just say that’s a childish question—something you can’t explain in simple terms—but we’d still like to hear what you have to say.”