Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “As I usually do when I’m drawing, and as I sketched Patron with his side exposed, my eyes and hands functioned to connect up the inner and outer worlds of my model, and it was as if I suddenly got plugged into Patron’s soul. This touched off a kind of uncontrollable life force that welled up in me, a force was so overwhelming that I thought, If this is a display of Patron’s mystical healing power, it might very well lead to that thud I was talking about and kill me. But I accepted that.

  “After my first operation, my cancer—assuming for the moment that what I don’t have now I did have then—having lain dormant until then, started to be active again, and who knows but maybe this too was due to the stimulus I got from encountering Patron. At least that’s the way I’d like to think of it.

  “When it was discovered I had a relapse of my cancer—and I was told there was no chance of recovery—I surprised myself by how industrious I became. I got deeply into things I’d never done before, gave up the teaching position I’d held for years in America, and moved here to the woods of Shikoku. Understand that I wasn’t thinking of my relapse of cancer as a negative thing. I knew I’d die before too long, but that didn’t frighten me or make me feel regretful. I recognized that the basis for my life had changed. Isn’t that what happens? I didn’t see it as a terrible end to my life.”

  “Now that you know you don’t have terminal cancer,” Dr. Ino ventured, “do things seem new to you in any way?”

  “The symptoms I noticed myself haven’t changed,” Kizu said, “except that the dull pain I had for a long while is gone. I don’t feel the overflowing life force that filled me while I was drawing Patron. I don’t think this is just postoperation weakness.

  “If there is something new, it’s a sense of anxiety. I came here with Ikuo, who wanted to be with Patron. To me, Patron is a special person, of course, but so is Ikuo. Wasn’t it the knowledge that I had cancer and didn’t have long to live that led me to be with them without worrying in the slightest? On an unconscious level, wasn’t I hoping I’d spend the short time left to me for their sake, without thinking about anything else? With my crisis past, how can an unexceptional person like me possibly associate with the likes of them? Frankly speaking, it frightens me.”

  Once more a faint smile came to Dr. Ino’s face, and Kizu was left feeling there was something he didn’t get, something that had nothing to do with the young physician’s usual high spirits but reflected an ulterior motive at work.

  A week after this conversation, on the day before Kizu was to be released from the hospital, a special scoop appeared in a weekly magazine—the magazine itself wasn’t to be found in Matsuyama so they were relying only on the ads in the newspapers—that was based on the exclusive account of his attending physician. The headline ran: RELIGIOUS LEADER WITH SACRED WOUND CURES TERMINAL CANCER WITH HIS HEALING POWER! CANCER THROUGHOUT THE BODY EXPELLED IN ONE LUMP!

  3

  Kizu left the hospital accompanied by Ms. Asuka, with Ikuo doing the driving. A minivan was to follow them with his belongings, with Mayumi at the wheel until they reached the mountain pass, after which Gii was to take over driving. Several members of the Fireflies were with them.

  Escorted by Ms. Asuka, Kizu walked out to the carport at the front of the hospital and waited for Ikuo to bring the car around. As they passed by the elevator hall and front desk, Kizu sensed a flurry of activity around him, but Ms. Asuka didn’t slacken her pace. As they walked by they heard a woman call out “Mr. Kizu!” in a thicker dialect that that used by the residents of the Old Town in Maki Township, but before he could respond, Ms. Asuka gently pushed him out the door and they were outside in the summery sunshine. The car pulled right up, Ikuo opened the door from the inside, and Kizu and Ms. Asuka climbed in.

  Nobody mentioned the woman calling out to them, but after they’d wended their way through heavy city traffic for forty or fifty minutes and had begun to climb the slope up to the pass that formed a major crossroads for all of Shikoku, Ikuo turned to glance at the minivan following them and said, “I’m glad we could get rid of those pests. It would have been more trouble than it’s worth if the Fireflies had come to blows with them right there in front of everybody.”

  “I was more worried that those boys would get in a quarrel after you and the TV reporter clashed,” Ms. Asuka said to Ikuo. “Seems all those marches through the woods have made them respect your physical prowess.”

  “Was all that something to do with me?” Kizu asked.

  “The TV and newspaper reporters have been trying to get near you since last night, and the Fireflies have been standing guard.”

  “Ikuo’s role in the summer conference is crucial,” Ms. Asuka said, “so we can’t have him getting detained for disturbing the peace.”

  “It’s not the weekend, and summer vacation hasn’t begun yet, so is it really okay to have the Fireflies helping out like this?” Kizu asked.

  “The boys in Gii’s van are new members, older than the others,” Ikuo said, “young men who are going to take over their families’ businesses in shops along the river in the Old Town. One of them has a job in Matsuyama and took time off from work. Once the Fireflies started getting noticed more they asked if they could join. At first Gii hesitated, but since one was the older brother of a guy who was already a Firefly he gave in.”

  “The Fireflies is an association with a plan for the future, correct?” Kizu asked. “Which should make it especially meaningful to include boys in this age group, I would think.”

  “They’ll all work together,” Ikuo said, “to help prepare for the summer conference. I imagine Gii will consider afterward whether or not to reorganize them.… First the news got out about Patron’s Sacred Wound, plus a sense that the Church of the New Man was finally organized. And now come reports that your cancer, Professor, has disappeared. People way beyond our little valley are starting to show an interest in our church.”

  Their car headed up the increasingly treacherous and windy slope, the foliage on the hillside across the deep valley now a luxuriant dark hazy green. The large greenhouses on the slope, as well as the remains of the local construction projects, all had a calm, antique look to them. Kizu felt he was returning to an imposing and stable land.

  “The news that my cancer, or what all the doctors thought was cancer, has disappeared was in a weekly magazine, apparently. Have people also been talking about it in the Hollow and in Maki Town?”

  “There’s nothing we can do about that,” Ikuo said.

  “While we were checking you out of the hospital, Ikuo went over to a large stationery store to have a copy of the magazine article faxed from a friend in Tokyo,” Ms. Asuka said, turning around in the passenger seat. She’d put a pillow and blanket on the backseat and told Kizu to lie down if he felt tired. “I ate alone in the hospital cafeteria,” she went on. “At the next table was a group from one of the afternoon talk shows who’d come to do a story on you, Professor. I couldn’t believe some of the things they were saying. They were even talking about how Ikuo had hit Gii.”

  Ikuo shifted in the driver’s seat, his body language sending out a message to cease and desist, but strong-willed Ms. Asuka, not about to be deterred by any man trying to restrain her, brushed this aside.

  “When Dr. Koga called us,” she said, “to tell us that after your gallbladder operation they had started to think you didn’t have cancer after all—they’d be running some tests, but it didn’t look like cancer—Ikuo and Gii were both in the office. Everybody was overjoyed, until Gii made some flippant remark about how he found it disappointing. ‘Why’s that?’ Ikuo shot back, the situation already getting tense because Gii is still, after all, a child. ‘When someone who’s dying from cancer shortens his life even further to work for our upcoming conference,’ Gii remarked, ‘it’s a much more interesting story.’ Ikuo walloped him but good on the back of his neck; the poor boy got quite a bruise. That’s why Mayumi didn’t even say hello to Ikuo today.

  “The TV people must h
ave heard about this from somewhere. One man suggested that if they got on the good side of this boy he might give them a tasty interview. Another man, a real hardliner with this affected made-for-TV voice, said that considering all the families in the country who have relatives with cancer they could really crank up the ratings. A guy from another group, a cameraman, said he wished he could get a shot of the toilet with that lump of cancer in it, and a woman reporter, a sort of geisha-with-a-brain type, knit her brow and laughed.”

  “We got rid of them once, but I’ll bet they’ll be back, this time at the Hollow.”

  Kizu looked concerned when Ikuo said this, so Ikuo continued.

  “We’re setting up tents we borrowed from the farm down below the dam that we’ll use to register people during the summer conference. I found out from the town office that Satchan owns that land. Someday Gii will inherit it. We’ve arranged to park our car and the minivan not in the parking lot but on land that’s already been cleared. So if those reporters follow us and try to corner you, Professor, we’ll have the right to get them to leave since it’s private property. Gii came up with this strategy.”

  “So you have a faxed copy of the magazine article?” Kizu asked.

  “Shall I read it? I’ll skip the boring first part,” Ms. Asuka said, wasting no time.

  “The doctor who performed the gallbladder operation on Professor Kizu stated that this is nothing short of a miracle, if the patient indeed had had terminal cancer as his personal physician said. He went on to say he expects to receive faxes of the CT scan and X-rays of the affected parts from the doctor who made the original diagnosis of cancer, after which he plans to make a presentation at a medical conference.

  “The church leader who performed the miracle refused to make any comment. This leader, who now goes by the name of Patron, is one of the men who did a Somersault eleven years ago in the face of violence on the part of a radical faction within their church. His confidant, known as Guide, was subjected to a kangaroo trial earlier this year and ended up dead, news still fresh in our minds.

  “The way a politicized radical faction planned indiscriminate terrorist acts foreshadowed what happened with Aum Shinrikyo. And now with the founder apparently able to cure terminal cancer, are we again seeing a harbinger of things to come?

  “The local authorities declared that there were many opinions regarding this group of believers moving in, but from the standpoint of protecting religious freedom they had no fundamental opposition to the church.… Just as many former radicals have turned to running natural foods cooperatives and leading local environmental groups, several of these radical religious groups have switched to emphasizing healing.”

  Ms. Asuka stopped reading and returned the sheaf of faxes to her lap.

  “It’s better than what I expected from the headlines,” Kizu said. “Though I know you’ve only read the choicest parts. But I can’t see that Patron has changed his doctrine to emphasize healing. As he builds his Church of the New Man, I imagine that along the way he’ll heal some incurable diseases, but that’s not central to what he’s doing.”

  Kizu suddenly felt exhausted, so he placed Ms. Asuka’s pillow in one corner, pulled the blanket up over his stomach, and lay down. His cancer might be gone, but his energy level was still low.

  Kizu closed his eyes. Instead of relief at having avoided death, a palpable unease rolled over him as to what he was supposed to do once he returned to the Hollow. All sorts of movements were afoot now that they were moving toward the launch of the Church of the New Man. Was there a role for him to play?

  Completing the triptych to be hung in the chapel: That was the main thing. After his stay in the hospital, he was again assailed by doubts that he really understood the relationship between the two figures facing each other in the middle panel. In the midst of doing preliminary drawings, something about Patron’s body—his wound exposed to view—struck him, though he hadn’t had the leisure to reflect on what it all meant.

  A new personal issue had also been raised. The excitingly charged sexual relationship between Ikuo and himself—a man who didn’t have long to live—was now reduced to nothing more than a senile old man, who might hang around forever, infatuated by a young man’s charms.…

  The car bounced over a rough spot of road, which roused Kizu from his gloomy thoughts. He had a bitter taste in his mouth. After rattling around for a while, he was fully awake and he gazed out the window of the car, as it rolled to a stop at the clearing below the dam, at a huge wing jutting up above the manmade lake, blotting out the summer sky. This was the reviewing stand for the summer conference, a symmetrical structure projecting out to the edge of the lake. Something in the scene brought back memories of long ago.

  4

  That evening, at twilight, Kizu had an early dinner, a habit acquired in the hospital, sat down in an armchair by the window to enjoy the cool breeze, and gazed out at the Hollow, with its expectant air of activity as the summer conference approached.

  One level below the stone wall surrounding the chapel and monastery on the south shore, the path leading to the edge of the lake had been trimmed clear of bushes and summer grasses and now lay exposed. Identical wooden stands had been constructed there and on the east and north shores of the lake—the bleachers for the summer conference. Even the path that led to Kizu’s residence, running straight east from the point where it narrowed and went uphill, was under construction.

  Now, though, as Kizu gazed out at the scene there was no heavy construction going on, just a placid view of men putting the final touches to the work. The sun was already down, but a line of cirrocumulus clouds had begun to spread quickly over the clear sky, their thin folds aglow in the gentle evening light and reflected in the perfectly still surface of the lake.

  Hearing that Kizu was to be on the six o’clock Matsuyama evening news, Ms. Asuka had brought over a TV set for them to watch. Earlier, while Kizu had been watching the grandstands with their fragrant scent of freshly cut timber as they made their way up to the dam from the open space set up for the tents, Gii and his minivan had done their best to keep back the taxi that had been tailing them. So the TV crews hadn’t been able to interview Kizu directly and had to content themselves with scenes of Kizu at the dam, apparently taken out of the taxi window.

  From the way the announcer spoke, it appeared that this coverage of the “miracle man” whose cancer had completely disappeared had already been broadcast a few times. Kizu was shocked at how unsteady he appeared, standing there. He was also surprised by the film of him making his way through the crowds at the hospital, how very sad his slack, lined face and neck looked.

  He remembered how, as a child, he’d thought it one of the mysteries of life how the faces of old people normally had a sad, depressed expression. Now that face was his, and he couldn’t bear to look.

  Ms. Asuka’s dinner schedule was reversed now; she took her own meal at the dining hall after returning Kizu’s dishes. This evening as she ate she was told that Patron would be paying Kizu a visit that evening between seven and eight. Though a deep exhaustion still had Kizu in its grip, he had slept soundly all afternoon, thanks to the dry air of the woods, and now stayed in bed to await Patron’s visit.

  When Kizu had arrived back at his house on the north shore he sensed the same woody fragrance he’d smelled at the dam. He thought at first this was because the window facing the Hollow was open, but actually the wood smell came from a newly constructed additional room just off the kitchen. The canvas partition that had separated the sickroom from the studio was gone. Ms. Asuka didn’t stride into the kitchen as briskly as she had before, but after she changed her clothes she reported the news about the visit.

  “The doctor who performed the gallbladder operation didn’t hesitate to say that there wasn’t any cancer,” Kizu said, “and did these thorough tests. It’s only been a week since the construction started? It’s amazing they could add on this extra room by the time I came home.”

 
“The day after you went into the hospital, the Technicians’ carpentry team came over. Patron had them start work because he was expecting great things of you, Professor, in the Church of the New Man. Some people say Patron foresaw all of this. Still, though, when we heard the news that you didn’t have cancer, Patron was the only one with a strangely pained look on his face.”

  Kizu was listening to the voices of the cicadas and, interspersed, the calls of birds as they echoed, a split second later, off the surface of the lake—all part of something vast that converged on the forest and spilled down from it. Soon he heard the sound of music, amplified through a speaker though still subdued: two or three short piano pieces; he wasn’t familiar with the melody, though the chords and accompaniment were pleasant enough.

  While the foothills surrounding the Hollow still echoed with the music, Ms. Asuka gracefully appeared from the kitchen to explain.

  “Every time Patron leaves his residence, they use piano music to let people in the church know. It’s one of Morio’s compositions. When they hear that music, people who have things they want to ask Patron leave their work or meditation and come out looking for him. He’s left his residence now and I imagine, since someone has stopped to talk with him in the courtyard of the monastery, it’ll be another thirty minutes before he arrives. Shall I turn on the light?”

  “He can see this window as he comes here, so if we turn on the light it might appear we’re rushing him,” Kizu said. “Let’s leave it off until he arrives. Patron seems to be really enthused about the activities of his Church of the New Man, doesn’t he?”

  “He’s leading a more formal lifestyle now, as befits the leader of a church,” Ms. Asuka replied. “You’ll see soon enough when they get to the top of the dam. Morio waits on Patron like a page—or a court jester, if you will—and Gii has organized a squad to guard him.”