Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  A clump of people moved out of the monastery courtyard, went up to the dam, and passed through the reviewing stands, their faces unclear in the gathering gloom as they approached. Morio fluttered around next to Patron, who looked a bit unsteady on his feet, and they were both surrounded by young men walking with measured, determined steps.

  Keeping up with these trained strides must have been difficult, but the bodyguards looked fairly relaxed, and Kizu imagined that if, for instance, Morio were to fall into the lake, they’d be able to effect a well-organized rescue.

  Watching the little band until it turned into the newly reconditioned path leading to the north shore, Kizu retreated from the window. How should he best greet Patron? Should he thank him for using his spiritual powers to rid him of cancer?

  Honestly, though, Kizu didn’t feel he could attribute the disappearance of his cancer to anything Patron did. Once it was gone, even the pain that had held his entire being in its crushing grip was hard to remember as something real. Similarly, though the doctor who declared he didn’t have cancer didn’t say it had disappeared, right now that seemed like a reasonable way to think about it.

  As they heard Patron and his group approaching up the slope, Ms. Asuka opened the window to catch the cool breeze, switched on the light, and went to the front door, taking care that mosquitoes and other flying insects didn’t invade the house through cracks in the shutters.

  Patron and Morio came in and Ms. Asuka called to the young bodyguards to do likewise, but they were determined to remain outside. As Kizu greeted them from where he sat in an armchair from the bedroom in the large room, now one big studio, Morio called out “Ah!” in a loud voice.

  “What’s the matter, Morio? Don’t be rude, now,” Patron said reprovingly.

  From behind Patron, Morio put his right arm on Patron’s shoulder and half hid behind him, held his left hand in front of his face, and said in a pitiful voice, “Ah! Ah! He’s supposed to be dead!”

  With Morio leaning on him, Patron swayed a bit and turned his now somewhat thinner and less conspicuous double chin toward Kizu. His eyes, with their heavy folds at the outer corners, might look weak at first, but Kizu could detect a thorough egocentrism at work in them that was calm and yet concealed deeper currents of emotion.

  “In the sermon I gave telling how you recovered and returned to the Hollow,” Patron said, “I said you’d died once and been reborn. I also said that because of this, in your body with its new life dwelling in it, it was only natural for the cancer of your old life to disappear without a trace. Morio was quite moved by this. He likes to paint mental pictures of what life is like in heaven, and he came up with the vision of the soul first taking the form of a simple grouping of sounds. I think that led to the notion of a more concrete vision of something—not a person exactly—that’s walking the earth.”

  Patron removed Morio’s arm from his shoulder. Then, holding his quaking companion, he turned to Ms. Asuka.

  “Bring a chair and place it beside the desk next to the wall on the north side. Do that and he’ll calm down. Morio, you need to pull yourself together, okay? So be brave.” He watched Morio carefully.

  After Ms. Asuka made the space for Morio, Patron asked Kizu to stand up and adjust his chair too, so it faced the studio part of the room. Ms. Asuka brought over a chair for Patron from the studio and set it down on the lake side. Kizu and Patron settled down, sitting diagonally across from each other, about three yards apart. After regaining his cool, Morio was able to lift his face from his arms to discover Patron straight across from him.

  “I’m happy to see you looking so well,” Patron said, in a renewed greeting.

  “You look well too,” Kizu said fervently. “You seem to have gotten slimmer. The line of your chin is different from when I drew you.”

  Patron fixed his gaze on the drawing Kizu had attached to the middle panel of the triptych. “I feel like my face has gotten thinner, though I haven’t been moving about any more than usual, even with starting the Church of the New Man. I’m expecting great things from you now in our church, but at the same time I feel a bit sheepish saying this. After all, you’ll be going through rehabilitation for some time.”

  “Morio’s reaction was quite honest,” Kizu said, “saying he thought I was dead. That really struck me. I’m sure your sermon convinced all the members of the church. I do feel like I died and was reborn, though I didn’t notice my rebirth when it was happening.”

  “That’s a pretty common reaction, I think—the way most people deal with death,” Patron said. “We don’t have the strength to go through the dramatic kinds of death and rebirth you find in the Gospels . . . but it certainly is excellent news that all your symptoms of cancer are gone.”

  “I’m very thankful.”

  As if to let Kizu’s words, unexpected, and entirely natural, pass by, Patron turned to gaze at his portrait. He remained silent, as if waiting for Kizu to continue in another direction. But Kizu had nothing left to say. When the young doctor at the Red Cross Hospital told him it was strange he didn’t make absolutely sure about the existence of his cancer, he’d replied that he never doubted that he did have cancer, though he had to admit that his actions had been ambiguous. Even now, he couldn’t wipe that ambiguity away.

  “With the rehabilitation you need to go through, I know this will seem like I’m rushing you,” Patron said, “but when will you be able to start work again on this large oil painting? I know it must be physically tiring to paint a large tableau.”

  “Admittedly, the operation has taken something out of me, but I should be back on my feet soon,” Kizu replied, although he knew this was pushing things. “I should be able to start again before long.”

  “Can you finish it before the summer conference?”

  Kizu nodded.

  “One of the reasons I came over tonight was to ask you that, even though I know you’re very tired,” Patron said. “Ikuo very much wants to show the triptych to people who will be new members of the Church of the New Man who come to the conference from all over the country. He’s also thinking of opening the chapel to local people and tourists who want to see it. There are a lot of people interested in the miracle that took place in your body, which they connect up with my wound. Nothing could satisfy them more than seeing the painting you did of my bare torso.

  “Ikuo sees the summer conference as the national debut of our Church of the New Man. He’s been working with the Fireflies on a plan to help make it a success and says he’d like to make viewing the triptych part of the orientation for the participants. I have one more related request: Before you begin work on your painting again, would you take a look at my body one more time? Right now. I know it’s sudden—”

  “No, not at all,” Kizu said, trying to compensate for his surprised expression. “If anything was sudden, it was me collapsing when you were modeling.”

  Still seated, Patron very carefully began to unbutton his brand-new shirt from the top. The fact that he wore no undershirt struck Kizu as odd, since men of their age usually did. Patron sat up in his chair, and when he finished removing his shirt completely this feeling of oddness grew even greater. Kizu gazed at Patron’s side and got the same impression one gets looking at the face of someone with thick glasses who’s just removed them.

  “Ah” Kizu sighed. The Sacred Wound was gone! He stared hard at Patron’s flank. Patron twisted his shoulder in response, slightly rotating his chest. There was a round rose-colored spot on his side. It was a smooth mark, as if left by a heated cup pressed against the skin and not released until the air inside had cooled.

  “I’d like you to complete the triptych as you’ve done in the drawings,” Patron said, “with the hole still open. I know you’re still trying to get used to the idea that your cancer has disappeared, and likewise I’m still unsure what my wound’s closing up means. Though in the part of the triptych where I’m confronting Ikuo, I think it makes more sense for the wound to be open.” He rubbed the no
w-healed smooth skin where the wound had been, as if he were massaging his tired eyes.

  “I should be able to complete the painting based on the sketches I made when the wound was oozing and you were feverish,” Kizu said. “The ones I did before I collapsed. But there’ll be a lot of people coming to the chapel who’ve been moved by the legend of the Sacred Wound. If by chance they find out the wound has healed, won’t there be trouble?”

  Because he was thin and drawn, Patron’s profile as he gazed at the painting had a sober coldness to it. “The only trouble I can think of is when those veteran journalists trumpet their scoop. I learned a lot about reporters during the Somersault. But I’m too old to worry about what they think. Within the church itself, the Quiet Women see the wound in my side as a sign of the sin of having done the Somersault. Having the wound disappear right now, at the point where I’ve decided to build the Church of the New Man, would fit right in with their doctrine. However, I’m not building up the Church of the New Man in order to directly praise the power of the transcendent. I’m doing it as one of many antichrists. So I’m certainly not planning to reverse the Somersault.

  “Having said that, the transcendent has, as I inaugurate my church, chosen this time to heal the wound that has troubled me over the past decade. Considered in that light, the significance of your cancer suddenly disappearing becomes clear. You’re painting what will be the central icon of our new movement. As you neared completion of it you were overwhelmed by pain. And once you recovered, your cancer was gone. The transcendent smiles down on your work, Professor, and in order to lift you up so you could complete the painting, it took away your cancer. That makes eminent sense. In the building of the Church of the New Man we’ll be engaged in from now on, the transcendent is indifferent about whether I’m a faithful follower or whether, as an antichrist, I’m trying to regain the will I had in the Somersault. The transcendent is absolutely self-centered. It doesn’t stand on the side of those who are trying to do good.

  “Just like the journalists I mentioned, the Almighty is bereft of imagination. Spinoza’s completely right on this point. If you call the transcendent God, then you’re saying God has no imagination. Every time I read the section of the Gospels where Jesus is crucified, I find myself thinking that God’s son has no imagination. For Christ, there is only this world God made—that is, God itself and His designs. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Jesus cries out, but he accepts everything that happens to him.

  “The antichrist, in contrast, does have imagination. Imagination, in fact, is all he has. And my Church of the New Man will be built in this way—as the church of the antichrist. Once you’ve grown used to the cancer’s having left your body, Professor, I ask that you do your utmost for our new church.”

  Morio stood up from his chair over by the wall and with small steps slowly made his way past Kizu to stand in front of Patron. Then he sat down at Patron’s feet and laid one hand reverently on Patron’s left knee. Patron gently brought his fingers together and tousled Morio’s hair. Patron turned his gaze from the portrait of himself to the still incomplete full tableau.

  “But there’s no need for me to preach to you about the transcendent,” Patron went on. “You’ve gotten close to us through Ikuo. And I suspect you’ll continue working for his sake. That being the case, I don’t need to be too concerned about this. To tell the truth, Ikuo’s still something of a mystery to me. But I do know he’s putting everything he has into our church, doing all he can to pave the way for the summer conference that will decide our future.

  “And in your triptych, won’t you be showing the relationship between Ikuo and myself, the antichrist of the Church of the New Man?”

  29: Lessons Learned

  1

  The Technicians’ carpentry team was up on stepladders, pounding thick red concrete nails into the wall of the chapel. It was something any amateur could do, and Kizu found it amusing that they approached the task as some specialized, highly complicated assignment. No matter what was going on these days, you could count on a Technician to be there.

  The completed triptych was being mounted on the narrow wall near the piano. There were two chairs beside the piano, one the performer’s seat occupied by Ikuo, the other by Morio, as they sat there expectantly. At some distance away from them, in the front row of the chairs used for meetings, sat Gii and Isamu, as well as a third Firefly, who’d helped Ikuo transport the painting from the studio, all of them watching the Technicians go about their job.

  For the time being bereft of work, Kizu sat there looking at the antique silver spirit level, decorated with line drawings of lilies, that Gii had brought over. Gii had casually mentioned that it had been handed down to him by his mother and was part of the legacy left behind by the diplomat who had lived in the house on the north shore, the one who’d designed the beds in the style of rustic Eastern European furniture.

  The Fireflies were called over to carry the triptych to just below where the nails had been set. Gii leaped nimbly on a stepladder, set the level on the top of the painting to be sure it was hanging straight, and signaled to the Technicians. The way Gii maneuvered the little tool had all the winsomeness that Kizu had sensed the first time he met the young man, and he could feel the pride Ikuo had as he looked on.

  When they’d set the painting right where they wanted it, Ikuo returned to the piano. A sheaf of copies of Morio’s compositions lay there. Ikuo chose one piece and began playing, freely changing the speed, emphasizing the lower register as he played it through twice. Instead of sitting beside Ikuo as one might expect, Morio was up and moving about, silent and agile despite his impaired legs. Absorbed in the music, he moved in diagonal lines, tracing a pentagon in the circle of the chapel walls, as if stepping on the shadows cast by the aerial dome of the ceiling.

  Since the chapel was built as a perfect circle with a radius of fifty feet, ordinary sounds would focus on one point and a flattering echo would be produced, which originally made it impossible to hold concerts. All sorts of changes had been made to modify this since the building was first built—porous boards placed to absorb sound on the ceiling and up to about twelve feet above the floor; the walls all redone to diffuse sound evenly. Even the windows and the entrance door were set slightly out of alignment with one another to improve the acoustics. But now in the midst of this carefully designed space they were about to hang a six-by-sixteen-foot painting, plus two side panels each half again as large. So the first thing they wanted to do after hanging the painting was to have Ikuo play the piano while Morio, with his sensitive ears, checked for a flattering echo.

  Soon Morio, his whole body showing a sense of relief, went back and sat beside Ikuo. He tucked his legs up under him like a monkey settling in and listened to the rest of his composition. He couldn’t have been happier. The rest of the people standing about here and there in the chapel also turned their attention to the music, all the while gazing up at the triptych.

  Gii came over next to Kizu and said, “Morio doesn’t hear any echoes.”

  One of three Technicians sitting nearby said to his companions, “If they put it in a heavy frame with glass it might have a different effect altogether.”

  “We won’t be using a frame,” Gii said, speaking as an equal to the older Technicians, “so go ahead and attach it permanently.”

  The three of them watched as the painting was being moved, and everyone could hear Gii express his unease to Isamu and his other companion.

  “Why do they have to say such pointless things?”

  “It’s not pointless, is it?” Isamu was concerned that Gii’s voice might carry to those in front.

  “It is too pointless,” Gii insisted. “We know that sound isn’t reverberating. What’s the point of suggesting we put it in a frame and glass and see if we can make it echo? Let’s go,” he said decisively.

  As Gii, Isamu, and the other Firefly got up to leave, Ikuo, who was straightening up the copies of Morio’s music, called out
to them. “Would you please go over and tell Dancer to come and take a look at where they’ve hung the painting?”

  “Will do,” Gii replied. He’d been twirling the silver spirit level in front of him, between his thumb and middle finger, but stopped as he answered.

  The Technicians’ body language, too, showed how close they felt to Ikuo, and they politely acknowledged Kizu as they departed. Thanking them, Kizu could tell—compared to before he’d gone into the hospital—that Ikuo had come to play a much more vital role in running the church.

  Dancer appeared, accompanied by Ogi and Ms. Tachibana. The people already there, and these newcomers, all gathered in front of the turpentineredolent triptych. Kizu was worried about how people would react to the first work he’d done after being discharged from the hospital, the two portraits in the foreground of the central panel. The screech of cicadas, which he’d forgotten about while Ikuo played the piano, now came back in full force.

  Dancer gazed up at the painting. “If you look carefully you’ll see that Jonah and Patron are not really facing each other directly. I was expecting them to be questioning each other, trying to persuade each other.”

  “Maybe they’ve been debating but haven’t arrived at a resolution, so they’re looking off to one side and thinking things over,” Ms. Tachibana commented.

  Kizu had been waiting for Dancer or Ms. Tachibana, who knew about Patron’s side being healed, to say something about his portrayal of the wound. But neither one of them seemed about to touch on it. Before long Ms. Tachibana spoke up.

  “The piano a while ago was simply lovely,” she said to Morio.

  “There weren’t any echoes at all,” Morio replied.

  “At the summer conference we’ll use a microphone and play it over speakers, but when we play it like this without any amplification, can people really hear it all over the Hollow?” Ikuo asked.

  “We were in the office,” Dancer said, “with the windows on the lake side open, and we could hear it echo off the north shore.”