Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “This is pretty bad. Hit by a fist, were you? You have an abrasion.”

  Ogi had thought he’d been sweating, but it was blood dripping down. Dr. Koga brushed aside Ogi’s hand as he reached out to touch his head, and after applying pressure for a time he took the bottle Ikuo had given him and disappeared into the deserted pharmacy.

  Dr. Koga came back with some antiseptic and treated Ogi’s wound; then, as if suddenly remembering something, he asked Ikuo to show him his right hand. Ikuo ignored him.

  “Do you really think this is for the best?” Ogi persisted, but he was so upset he choked up and couldn’t go on.

  “The Quiet Women have given it a lot of thought,” Dr. Koga replied, sitting down at his desk again. “The Technicians have had some bitter experiences these past ten years too, but I’m not about to make any presumptuous remarks. Don’t you think we should respect the intentions of people who deserve our sympathy? What should the Technicians do? If the Quiet Women ask them to stand guard, that’s all they can do.… When all’s said and done, I’m going to stick with whatever Ikuo’s planned. This isn’t just some spur-of-the-moment idea, mind you. Not that the Technicians would allow me to act on my own, anyway.”

  “I don’t know the legalities of it, but can’t you be charged with aiding and abetting a suicide?” Ogi asked.

  “With these women putting their lives on the line, would that really be such a big deal?” Dr. Koga asked. “Ikuo, haven’t you talked with our innocent youth here about the other path?”

  Ikuo turned to Dr. Koga and let his large head slump forward. When he spoke, he seemed to be feeling his way through what he wanted to say.

  “I don’t think I have the right to express any misgivings about what these church veterans—both the Quiet Women and the Technicians—are planning,” Ikuo said. “The same holds true for Dr. Koga. But I do still believe that what Patron decides is even more important. If there’s another option based on what Patron wants, I’d hope we can get the Quiet Women to switch over to it in time. I’ll be the one who does that—with your help, of course, doctor. As for you, Ogi, I’d like you to watch from the sidelines. There’s no need to explain every detail.”

  “That’s exactly right, Ogi,” Dr. Koga said. “I’ll bring over the package at exactly noon, Ikuo.… And whatever you do, don’t mix up the two bags.”

  Ogi noticed that the way Dr. Koga carried himself, his expression, and the tremor in his voice were all something new. Ogi also caught a whiff of distilled spirits. On Dr. Koga’s desk he saw a flask and an empty glass. Ikuo stood up. Ignoring this, Dr. Koga reached out for the flask. Standing up himself, Ogi couldn’t help but say something.

  “The Quiet Women say that they’ve seen now what a coward Patron is. If that’s true, why don’t they just leave and go back to their children? If they feel they’ve seen through him, why in the world do they feel they have to take poison? What good will that possibly do?”

  “What’s important for them isn’t Patron’s character but his being,” Dr. Koga said enigmatically. “Though I’m sure there are still some women in the Kansai headquarters who don’t think that way.”

  3

  As Ogi sat next to Ikuo as they drove off toward the Hollow, the sky, which had been clear all morning, suddenly grew overcast. With one part of the Spirit Festival scheduled for that afternoon, the road going down to the Hollow from the Shikoku highway bypass was already crowded. Ikuo chose the road that went up below the Mansion. The cloudy sky looked ominous, and the road below the pass, covered with its thick canopy of overgrown branches of evergreen oaks and beeches, was gloomy and dusky. Finally, heavy raindrops began to fall.

  Headlights were coming down toward them, but they couldn’t very well pull off to let the vehicle pass with the shoulder on the river side so obviously uncertain. The lights turned out to be those of a truck that had gone to dump some of the garbage containers hastily set up below the dam. Ikuo docilely reversed the car. After backing up for a long while, he stopped against an old horse chestnut tree to let the truck pass. The driver, a town employee Ikuo knew, had his window rolled down despite the rain, and he shouted out to Ikuo that another truck was following him, so Ogi and Ikuo waited under the shadows of the large branches.

  “You’re pretty deeply involved with the Quiet Women and with the Technicians now, aren’t you?”

  When Ogi said this, Ikuo made an unexpected face. “Even though I was told not to,” he replied slowly.

  “But even if you hadn’t gotten involved, you can’t say the Quiet Women wouldn’t have gotten that idea in their heads or that the Technicians wouldn’t have helped out, for whatever ulterior motives they might have. All I’m saying is that you got deeply involved with them.”

  Ikuo was quiet for a while, before responding patiently. “I was interested in the Technicians from the first,” he said. “I did have a very strong impression of the Quiet Women, though, from when Professor Kizu and I visited their commune and saw how pious they are. I developed a close relationship with them because that’s what Dancer told me to do. It wasn’t some office consensus but more Dancer’s own idea. I realize now she was right to do this; she’d foreseen danger for Patron in opening a new church here, so she ordered me to get a handle on the two groups. Dancer’s top priority is and always will be Patron’s safety. That’s just the way she is.”

  A second identical light truck came down the slope toward them, gave them a wave, and passed by. Ikuo pulled their car out from under the shelter of the horse chestnut tree and drove off uphill in the blinding rain. When they arrived at the square below the dam they found conference participants crossing over on flagstones since the ground had been flooded by water that ran from the lake and overflowed the watercourse. Some people had small umbrellas, but the majority just held plastic sheets or cardboard boxes over their heads. Everything was finished at the red and green tents, so these people were making their way to the chapel.

  Gii, who apparently had been waiting for them all the while in the parking lot in front of the tents, ran over with two umbrellas. Dressed in a raincoat and rain hat, he was oblivious to the downpour, and as he walked beside Ikuo he reported that the Spirit Festival would go on as planned. No problem, he said, summer-morning rains blow over soon, and since Ikuo looked doubtful he reassured him that in this region that was indeed the way it was.

  Gii managed expertly to protect Ikuo and Ogi from the crowds of people in front of the dining hall, and they soon arrived at Patron’s residence, where some of the Fireflies were standing watch. Gii wanted to go inside with them, but Ikuo asked him to take a message to Ms. Oyama to the effect that Dr. Koga would do what they had asked and would deliver at twelve; showing no regret at not going with them, Gii retraced his steps.

  The temperature had dropped quickly because of the rain, but when she opened the front door Ms. Tachibana’s hair was plastered to her pale forehead. The house had been shut up tight and was humid with a close lived-in odor.

  Since the incidents two nights ago, Patron was holed up in his bedroom on the southwest side, unchanged from when Ikuo had been summoned to see him the day before. Ms. Tachibana showed them into the shadowy room, where they were met by an even more musky animal smell.

  Patron was lying in bed. He sat up and opened the curtain on the southern window. Light spilled into the bedroom through the rain-swept foliage of the oaks outside. Morio was curled up like a dog at the foot of the bed and didn’t acknowledge the newcomers. A sense of the dark confinement he’d shared with Patron still clung to him.

  Ikuo sat down in the low-backed armchair brought from Patron’s Tokyo home, while Ogi sat down in a straight-back wooden chair and faced Patron, whose cheeks were sunken.

  “Late last night after the party, Dancer stopped by and told me about the Quiet Women’s plans,” Patron said in a low voice. “This morning Ikuo was to hear their final intentions and make certain of the Technicians’ response. There’s been no change. Am I correct?”


  “Yes, that’s right,” Ikuo replied.

  “Ever since I announced at the memorial service for Guide that I would be restarting the church, and I decided to allow the Quiet Women and the Technicians to join first, Dancer has had her doubts. If after they returned to the fold the Quiet Woman and the Technicians recognized the Somersault—and recognized the new church as developing out of the Somersault, rather than out of a denial of it—these groups would be powerful allies to have. But that’s not the case, she said. We moved here to Shikoku with all that still up in the air. So I entrusted you, Ikuo, with the task of getting to know both groups better and trying to discover what’s really going on with them.”

  Patron’s speech was getting noticeably slower.

  “That’s right,” Ikuo said. “My two responsibilities since coming here have been that and supervising the Farm. Meeting the Fireflies, admittedly, led to other activities.”

  “Knowing now what the Quiet Women are planning plus the fact that the Technicians will be indirectly helping out, I can see that Dancer was right to be suspicious,” Patron said. “The Quiet Women and the Technicians immediately denied the Somersault that Guide and I did, and nothing’s changed. They haven’t altered their stance in ten years. Dancer tells me that at the meeting where I’ll announce the launching of our Church of the New Man, they’re planning to take me captive and act as if the Somersault had never taken place.

  “After the Quiet Women have made sure that the Somersault has been canceled, they plan to pass on joyously. They’ll be the martyrs who saved the church, and a great Hallelujah! will ring out. And the Technicians, bearing the atonement of these twenty-five saintly women, will take over the church and run it the way they have always wanted.

  “If that happens, it doesn’t really matter whether I truly canceled the Somersault or not, does it? All they have to do is take care of me until the day I die. Our summer conference would then be remembered as the time when Patron canceled the Somersault and the Quiet Women ascended to heaven and became divine. Dancer told me she could already sense this at the party at the Farm. Is that a good summary?”

  “Gii told me he felt that too,” Ikuo said. “As far as the order of events is concerned, it wouldn’t really matter if you deny the Somersault after the Quiet Women passed on, would it? Applauding the atonement of the Quiet Women, God would—Hallelujah!—forgive you for making a fool of him.

  “Before they pass on tonight, the Quiet Women are praying that they can atone in your place for what you did. They’re also praying that you’re repentant after having fallen with Guide into hell and after Guide had to atone with his death. They’re cleansing your image so you can be an appropriate leader for the new church. They’ve already typed up a prayer on a word processor and prepared a thousand copies. It’s a direct prayer to God but also an appeal to their former colleagues in the church and an announcement aimed at the media. To the Quiet Women you are no longer the Patron who mediates between man and God. They’re trying to reestablish the bond between you, repentant, and God.

  “In their discussions so far, the Technicians recognize how inscrutably adroit you were in doing the Somersault. They’re optimistic that after you hear about the Quiet Women passing on you’ll deliver a sermon responding to that and cancel the Somersault once and for all.”

  The window started to get lighter. The leaves were still dripping, but the rain had let up.

  Patron closed his eyes and lay back down, while Morio, who was awake all this time, didn’t move a muscle. Ogi felt sorry for both of them. But Patron’s words after a long silence didn’t reflect any of these empathetic feelings.

  “Dancer feels very strongly that this is beyond her,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve dragged her into some foolish things. And you too, Ogi. I imagine that the church from now on won’t be the same Church of the New Man that I was hoping to make with you two. When you leave the Hollow, Ogi, I’d like you to take Dancer with you.”

  It bothered Ogi that Patron hadn’t mentioned Ikuo, but Ikuo didn’t respond to this. Instead, he spoke of other things, his tone changed.

  “Friday night convinced me that the popular interpretation of the Somersault in the media was absolutely correct,” Ikuo said. “In other words, you feared the mass suicide of your followers, so you took humane steps to prevent it. But if the Quiet Women commit mass suicide now, that will just add insult to injury. So I’m going to make sure that not only will their plan fall through but also they’ll be so sick they’ll give up any alternate ideas too. I’ve got it all set to go.

  “Dr. Koga will be helping me, but I don’t think I’m making him feel he’s a traitor to his fellow Technicians. I have two plans, Plan A and Plan B. Which of the two it’ll be is up to me, not Dr. Koga. While the Quiet Women are recovering, I’ll put one of those plans into effect. All you need to do is persuade people in a humane way. Once the Quiet Women abandon their mass suicide of atonement, I suspect the radical elements of the Technicians will be so deflated they’ll leave. Then the followers reunited at this conference will support your humane church, with the Quiet Women, who’ve given up on passing away, at the center.

  “In order for all this to happen, you’ll need to use the sermon today to set the direction you’ll be going in. Emphasize this humane approach. The name of the church, Church of the New Man, should help.”

  “This Plan A and Plan B you mentioned, let’s say what you do tonight is Plan A. Well, what is it?” Patron asked, sitting up in bed. Morio sat up too and gazed at Ikuo with the same expression on his face as Patron.

  “It’s as much of a farce as your Somersault. Dr. Koga’s going to give me twenty-five doses of a powerful laxative.”

  At this Ogi couldn’t help but let out a high-pitched giggle.

  “Dr. Koga will also prepare twenty-five doses of a second kind, as part of these two plans. There’s no toilet in the chapel, so they’ll have to break their siege. But after they’ve had such terrible diarrhea, they won’t have the strength left to climb high enough to hang themselves, will they?”

  Patron and Morio both looked as if they loathed the faint smile that played around Ikuo’s now-silent lips. But this didn’t bother Ikuo. He turned his gaze first to Patron, then Morio, and finally to Ogi—who was holding his tongue after his previous slipup—as if appraising their reactions one by one.

  “I’d like you to make sure that plan succeeds without fail,” Patron said. “On your way out, would you ask Dancer to come in here? If Ogi takes her place, I think she can leave the office for a while.”

  “I’m going to let Ogi go for the day,” Ikuo said. “Even if he were to go back to the office, we’re not expecting any important calls today, so I think it’s okay for him to sneak off for some R and R with his friend.”

  Once more Ogi was flabbergasted.

  “There’s something else I’d like Dancer to tell you,” Patron said, in undisguised disgust for Ikuo. “She’s the one—not Professor Kizu—who has the greatest influence on you now.”

  4

  Late in the afternoon—in another little innocent tale—Ogi, thinking he might as well go along with what Ikuo suggested, vanished for a while, and then, after he got back, received a proposal from Ms. Tachibana, who’d been awaiting his return. She wanted to tell him that she wouldn’t be able to take Morio to hear Patron’s sermon in the special seating set up between the grandstands and the area below the monastery.

  The music played for Part One of the Spirit Festival was captivating, with its exaggerated changes of rhythm, but there’d been some capricious disparities that Morio, with his sensitive ears, couldn’t stand. (During Part One of the Spirit Festival, innocent young Ogi, too, had heard the music loud and clear as he and Mrs. Tsugane were trysting deep in the forest.) Ever since the incident, two days ago, Morio had been upset and didn’t seem able to recover. Ms. Tachibana said that during Part Two of the Spirit Festival she was going to make him lie down in Patron’s bedroom, ear plugs in place. Right after Part T
wo was finished, Patron would begin his sermon, but by that time it would be impossible for them to push their way through the dense crowds to get to their reserved seats.

  Even after the rain cleared up it still wasn’t very hot, and the evening was pleasant. Just before Part Two of the Spirit Festival was to begin, Asa-san and her husband, the former junior high principal, had planted themselves in the special roped-off seating, where Ms. Tachibana and Morio would normally be, and the principal was explaining to Ogi about the music used in the Spirit Festival. The rhythm was the same you’d find in boat dances in fishing villages along the Shikoku coast and on the islands of the Inland Sea, he said, which lent credence to the legend that the pioneers who settled this land had rebuilt the boats that used to sail down the Maki and Kame rivers to the sea and used them to sail upstream.

  Since he’d left the office untended during his afternoon R and R, Ogi was busy until Part Two of the Spirit Festival began. With the Quiet Women using the chapel exclusively after 7 P.M. on this, the last day of the conference, he was inundated with one complaint after another.

  The conference participants were planning to enjoy watching Part Two of the Spirit Festival from the seats set up on the path that circled the lake and then listen to Patron’s sermon. After that, some of them complained, shouldn’t all the believers be given equal access to the chapel for prayer? Another complaint came from a group that had been lined up in the courtyard, talking and waiting their turn to view the triptych, when the Technicians roughly pushed ahead of them.

  Ogi also had to listen to one well-intentioned report. When Mr. Matsuo of the Fushoku temple heard that Ogi hadn’t seen Part One of the Spirit Festival, he described the whole thing to him from start to finish. Mr. Matsuo was in charge of lending out dolls, costumes, and props to the participants from his own temple and the Mishima Shrine, and he’d observed every detail.