Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  Dancer, mouth characteristically ajar, turned her gaze to the space above the Fireflies. The overlapping new green leaves in the oblong window on the forest side of the concrete wall were, until a moment ago, clearly visible, but now they were darkly shaded, meaning that the treetops were gleaming brightly. A faint smile came to her lips. Kizu wondered whether she found Gii’s innocence amusing but decided that wasn’t the case. As one might expect of Patron, he neither made light of Gii’s question nor did he try to sidestep it.

  “As you all know,” Patron said, “I’m a person who’s done a Somersault. I’m not the kind of person, then, who can very well use God and belief in the same sentence. However, based on long experience I can say that even if God is completely out of the picture, one can still speak of belief. This gets a little tricky, but belief involves viewing oneself vertically, not just thinking along a horizontal axis.

  “You’ve seen satellites being launched on TV, right? Just as the rocket goes whoosh! up into the sky, your thoughts rise to be the central axis around which you live. Climbing straight down a deep root is another way of looking at it. They’re both the same thing.”

  Patron was silent and bent forward slowly, as if pondering his own remarks.

  In contrast to the ruddy faces of the young men, the skin around Patron’s eyes flushed in his otherwise round white face, a sign that he was excitedly concentrating, as well as irritated that he wasn’t able to explain things as simply as they wanted. Kizu was fascinated by Patron’s words, something he shared with the Quiet Women, at least the ones in his field of vision.

  “Before the Somersault they say you often went into deep trances,” Gii said, “and that you’d have these terrible visions. But that once you woke up and tried to tell what you saw, you couldn’t do it alone.”

  “That’s correct. As I’m sure Ikuo has told you, that’s exactly right,” Patron replied.

  “We understand that your helper was Guide.”

  “Yes. It was like two people running a three-legged race. But now he’s dead.”

  “So do you plan to train a new interpreter?”

  “If only I could, that would be wonderful,” Patron said with a frank sadness, his tone appealing, but different from before. “Problem is, since the Somersault I haven’t had any deep trances.”

  “They say that by doing the Somersault you made a fool out of God.”

  Patron knit his brows together in a rather feminine way at this and took a deep breath. Kizu could feel the tension, not only in the Quiet Women but in the Technicians as well.

  “That’s right. My Somersault made a fool of the God I’d been connected to through my trances. It’s quite okay to say that. Afterward Guide and I fell into the pit of hell, and that’s where Guide died. It’s not entirely clear to me whether I’ve managed to rise up out of there myself.”

  “So you mean this is hell?” Gii asked. The Fireflies let go with a burst of laughter to release the tension.

  Kizu listened to Gii’s typical adolescent laugh. Patron, a blank look on his face, gazed around at the laughing young men, for all the world like some plump dull pigeon.

  4

  “Patron’s been very honest in what he’s been saying,” Dancer said, taking it on herself to break the silence that followed the laughter. This was directed less at Patron than at the others, her voice loud enough for the Quiet Women and all the Technicians to hear. “But maybe this is something hard for young people to understand.”

  “Patron has been saying what the Fireflies wanted to hear,” Ikuo answered back.

  “What we don’t understand right now, we’ll review when we go home. Just like they always taught us at school,” Gii said, in a frank yet reserved way, and his friends burst out laughing again.

  “Hard to tell which are the adults here,” Dr. Koga whispered to Ikuo, in an amused tone.

  “I’d like to continue with our questions, since we didn’t come here to study how to enter Patron’s church,” Gii went on. “Our plan is to take over what He Who Destroys—in other words, the first Gii—began in these woods so long ago. The Base Movement aimed at following his ideas in improving production in the village and in improving young people’s attitudes toward their own lives, while the Church of the Flaming Green Tree concentrated on prayer.

  “In one sense this man was a kind of god, so people tried to do what they did out of a belief in him. I think both movements did only half of what they should have done. Our plan’s to carry out both aspects. What you’ve said here about prayer is very helpful. Assuming, of course, that I understood it....

  “So now you’ve come to this sort of place and are going to make your church here. Right now the Fireflies are just a group of people. Once we establish our own headquarters, we might very well have to fight you, but at present if we can join together to do something to shake up the old folks in this region, that’d make us pretty happy. Well, those are our ideas.”

  As Gii finished speaking and plunked himself down, there was applause. Kizu looked up and saw that it wasn’t just the Fireflies who were clapping but some of the Technicians, too.

  The next day Ikuo, who’d gone to ask Patron what he thought of the meeting, reported to Kizu that Patron had found these “new men” quite intriguing.

  22: Yonah

  1

  Everyone agreed that, apart from Dr. Koga’s activities in his clinic, Ikuo was the one who’d been working the hardest since the move to the Hollow.

  The meeting he’d arranged between the Fireflies and Patron and the other church members was not an isolated event but part and parcel of his overall activities. During the meeting it never came up that the leader of the Fireflies was the son of the owner of the Church of the Flaming Green Tree Farm. However, Ikuo was enthusiastic about restoring the farm operations, especially by getting meat production back to its previous level. Several of the Technicians were interested in this and, with Ikuo as their leader, were on the verge of mastering the necessary skills. The office agreed to the plan and to having most of the Technicians spend their time at the farm.

  Laying the groundwork for this business meant that Ikuo was on duty at the farm every day. He returned to the house on the north shore of the Hollow only every second or third evening. Seeing that the abandoned buildings that used to house the farm workers would be of use when the second and third waves of church members moved to the village, he expanded his team of Technicians engaged in carpentry to fix them up.

  Ikuo hadn’t forgotten about Kizu’s health, however. Once the Farm’s housing took shape, Ikuo brought his team, now looking like full-fledged carpenters, over to their house to remodel the interior. Kizu was using the living room, where he also had his dining table, as a work space, and the carpenters removed the wall separating this from the short hallway leading to the bedroom next door. This completed, the interior became one airy, spacious room.

  The Technicians rearranged the east side of the room as an art studio and set up a box with wheels containing the easels and painting sets Kizu had sent from Tokyo. Ikuo promised Kizu that once he began painting his oil tableau, he would make time to model for him no matter how busy he got with the farm.

  Ikuo brought up another point, one that had been bothering him for some time. This had to do with the conversation Kizu had had with the owner of the store beside the river that handled package deliveries. Ikuo had decided that on one of his trips to Matsuyama on business, he would pick up the stored art supplies, even though the art class wasn’t about to happen. Kizu was aware that, in line with the new relationship between the church and the farm, Ikuo was shuttling back and forth in trucks and vans between the town and Matsuyama, but he’d never pressed him to pick up the supplies.

  Ikuo described one of his recent trips. “Last week when I went to Matsuyama I took three of the Fireflies with me. I planned to pick up the art supplies on the way back. Since we were driving a van, I knew I couldn’t just load up the supplies the way they were boxed, so I brought
them along to help. Once we unpacked the boxes, and the boys were loading them into the van, they were fascinated by all the paint sets and sketchbooks, like you’d expect kids to be.

  “They started talking about how lucky people in an art class would be to use all these wonderful supplies and how the town didn’t show any interest in opening a class. Finally someone said that these supplies would just end up stored away in some shed in the monastery, and Isamu, a high school senior who’s Gii’s right-hand man, proposed that all of them who’d helped load the art supplies get a free sketchbook.

  “When he heard this, Gii smacked Isamu as hard as he could, so hard the man from the delivery company who was helping us was stunned. Gii is shorter than Isamu so he almost had to leap up when he hit Isamu right above his temple.

  “Still worked up, Gii turned on me. It was kind of comical, like some typical juvenile delinquent shakedown; he asked if there wasn’t a plan to use the art supplies would I let the Fireflies have them.

  “I asked him what he planned to do with them, and he said he’d take them to the art shop on the main street and negotiate a deal. If we showed them the form with my signature I had to sign when we picked them up, and show my driver’s license, he added, they wouldn’t think they were stolen goods.

  “‘How do you plan to use the money?’ I asked him. ‘You just smacked one of your friends who wanted to skim a little off the top, right?’ Gii said, ‘Don’t worry, I have a plan all right.’ He wanted to set aside the money for something he had in mind for the Fireflies. So I said okay. I know I should have got your permission first....”

  “So did his negotiations work out all right?”

  “They only managed to get a small amount of cash,” Ikuo replied, clearly relieved.

  2

  That weekend Kizu began officially to work on his tableau. Ikuo or Dr. Koga no doubt laying the groundwork, Patron had asked Kizu to paint a triptych for the wall of the chapel.

  Kizu had already decided to use the book of Jonah as his theme for the tableau, and when Ikuo came to convey Patron’s request, Kizu explained his plan for the painting.

  “If it’s a triptych I’d like the first panel to show Jonah inside the belly of the whale. Jonah hears the call from God and is told to proclaim the wickedness of the people of Nineveh. But he runs away. The part where he’s on board the Gentile boat and the captain and the sailors berate him and throw him into the sea would be good too. But it’s the three days and three nights Jonah spends inside the whale that show how the rest of the story will develop. All of Jonah’s thoughts are summed up in his prayer to God while he’s in the belly of the whale. There’s my copy of the Bible on the shelf above the trunk. Would you read that part for me?”

  “‘In my distress I called to the Lord,

  and he answered me.

  From the depths of the grave I called for help,

  and you listened to my cry.

  You hurled me into the deep,

  into the very heart of the seas,

  and the currents swirled about me;

  all your waves and breakers

  swept over me.

  I said, “I have been banished

  from your sight;

  yet I will look again

  toward your holy temple.”

  The engulfing waters threatened me,

  the deep surrounded me;

  seaweed was wrapped around my head.

  To the roots of the mountains I sank down;

  the earth beneath barred me in forever.

  But you brought my life up from the pit,

  O Lord my God.

  “‘When my life was ebbing away,

  I remembered you, Lord,

  and my prayer rose to you,

  to your holy temple.

  “‘Those who cling to worthless idols

  forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

  But I, with a song of thanksgiving,

  will sacrifice to you.

  What I have vowed I will make good.

  Salvation comes from the Lord.’”

  “I can tell from the way you read it that you’ve been studying the book of Jonah,” Kizu said, impressed.

  “Yes, I have read it a lot,” Ikuo replied, “but I don’t know where the Lord is or what he’s like. And the same holds true for salvation.”

  “How do you envision the second panel of the triptych?”

  “How about a picture of Jonah, furious as he confronts God?”

  “Would you read that part, too?” Kizu asked.

  “‘O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.’

  “But the Lord replied, ‘Have you any right to be angry?’

  “Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, ‘It would be better for me to die than to live.’

  “But God said to Jonah, ‘Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?’

  “‘I do,’ he said. ‘I am angry enough to die.’”

  Ikuo closed the compact Bible. “I’m interested in the book of Jonah up to this point,” he said, “but I don’t like what God says after this. It’s strangely human.”

  “The part where Jonah, angry, is sitting under the vine would make a clear theme for the second panel. What about the final panel? I’d planned for it to be the centerpiece of the triptych.”

  “I’m really interested in how you visualize that,” Ikuo said seriously. “It’s important to me too.”

  “Well, what sort of mental picture do you have?”

  Standing beside the window with the lake behind him reflecting the setting sun, the edges of Ikuo’s bull head were tinged a reddish black. Looking down, it seemed as if he were holding his breath, gathering his thoughts before he spoke.

  “What I always imagine is the huge city of Nineveh burning up, the scene of more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, children and countless cattle, all burned up. Not that Jonah’s resisting God and asserting himself would lead to God’s necessarily changing his mind and going ahead with the destruction he’d canceled.”

  “At any rate, with your help I’d like to begin painting the first panel,” Kizu said, sounding like he hadn’t really grasped the direction Ikuo’s thoughts were heading. “When I start on the second, I think the concept for the third one will develop. Who knows? Maybe our life in the church from now on will show me the way.”

  “Yeah, it might,” Ikuo said, making Kizu think that his own words had flown right over Ikuo’s head in the direction of the man-made lake. “Just reading the book of Jonah might not give you an idea for the third panel. I’ve mentioned this to you before, but ever since I was a child I’ve wondered if the book of Jonah in the Bible is really the way the story ended. You remember how Guide urged me to appeal to Patron, and you wrote that letter for me? One of the questions I wanted to ask someone like Patron, who’s suffered in reality and for his faith, was exactly that—about what happened afterward.”

  “How would the Technicians respond, do you think?” Kizu asked. “Aren’t they themselves like uncompromising Jonahs?”

  “They’ve been trained by experience to be men of few words, which means that once they do decide to speak you can bet they’ll say something worth listening to.”

  3

  So Kizu began his painting
. First he set up two easels in the studio next to the lake, a studio bright with the reflected light of the sky and water; then he laid out so many drawings and watercolors of Ikuo on the floor that there was barely space to walk to the part of the room used as a bedroom. As he worked on the painting he felt that, although the number of days left to him was clearly few, he’d never experienced the moment-to-moment reality of time as intensely as he did right now. Not once did he feel time hanging heavy on his hands, certainly not when Ikuo was modeling for him and not even when he was away at the farm.

  In spite of a deep-seated sharp pain and a sense of wasted effort and anguish that had settled inside him, Kizu discovered that once he began his tableau his attitude toward his cancer started to change. The first panel, the depiction of the walls of the whale’s stomach that surrounded Jonah, he painted to reflect an endoscopic view of the path from the esophagus to the stomach and from the anus to the colon.

  Sketching with crayon or pencil the figure of Jonah lying down, sitting, standing in front of this backdrop, he experienced the feeling that the drawings and watercolors he’d drawn up till then were less studies for a painting-to-be than indexes of a completed work. Up till then he was used to his sketches not being bound by any overall concept, only connected by the fact that they were done at one particular point in his life. But now he felt a conceptual connection binding them all, something totally new and unexpected.

  As Kizu quoted from these studies as he worked, he also came to sense the inner world of this young man Ikuo, yearning, as if writhing in pain, to be understood. An inner world that—just like Patron after a trance without Guide—he could grasp artistically but that refused to coalesce into words. While his fundamental grasp of Ikuo was still imperfect, just being able to spend the rest of his life alongside the young man made him feel deeply privileged. Just the thought made him blush.