Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

Patron was at the age when he should be wearing reading glasses, but he took the originals of the cards Dancer had returned to him, holding them at arm's length from his large face as he studied them. Dancer had been stand- ing next to Ogi, but now she moved closer to Patron; knitting her brow in a line of fine wrinkles, she attentively examined the copies, for all the world like a schoolgirl reading a handout of her lines for the school play. For Ogi, the handwriting of this man who'd been schooled in the precomputer age was surprisingly unimpressive, even childish. He felt compelled to question Patron about this rather audacious list.

"About Guide and your Somersault-I'm using the term the media used at the time-weren't you criticized by some of the followers in your church?

I heard that the radical faction was arrested and prosecuted, though not every member was caught, and while they didn't have a chance to make any public declaration against you, some terrible things were said during the trial. Even more moderate members who made up the core of your church denounced you, didn't they?

"What's the connection between the new supporters on this list and those earlier members of the church? Are these supporters sympathizers who still remained within the church? If so, then you didn't completely renounce the church but only cut off connections at a superficial level, maintaining a relationship with certain key members. Putting aside your statements on television directed at society at large, doesn't this mean that you lied to the Chairman of the foundation? I told him your Somersault meant you completely cut all ties with the church, and in fact had become its enemy."

For the first time that day Patron turned to face Ogi. He straightened up, his head held high, no longer a vulnerable old man but now like a large, combative animal asserting its dignity.

"I did not lie," Patron said, in a strong voice. "All the names on the list are people who've sent us letters in the ten years since we apostatized. I've omitted anyone who had a connection with our earlier activities.

"Through our Somersault, Guide and I renounced the church and our doctrine. Now we're about to step into a new stage. Some people view our renunciation as our fall into hell. According to Guide, after we left the church this was how a group of women followers who also left the church and now live an independent communal life interpreted it. Before a savior can accom- plish the things he has prophesied-before he can free this fallen world and lead the people into a transcendent realm-he first has to experience hell. That sort of notion. Before the Somersault, those same people called us Savior and Prophet, you'll recall.

"Be that as it may, through our Somersault, Guide and I seceded from the church. Since then the church has continued its activities, with Kansai headquarters leading the way, but the two of us have nothing to do with them.

Now that Guide has collapsed we're faced with the worst crisis-the biggest trial we've gone through since our secession.

"So I thought of contacting those who have nothing to do with the church who've sent us letters of support. As far as I remember, I've never met any of these people on the list. They became interested in us after Guide and I left the church and were spurned by society and became public laughing- stocks. I've started considering these new supporters just recently, and I'd like you to work at getting in touch with them, Ogi, together with Dancer, of course. This will be your first job here."

"I think we need to start off by checking your list against the letters people sent," Dancer said. "Some of them might be trying to deceive us. We'll have you check our letters before we send them out, of course. Ogi, we can discuss this in the other room. Patron needs to rest."

Dancer helped Patron, clad in his dressing gown, get up from the small chair. Heavy head sunk between his soft shoulders, he shuffled back to his bed on weak, sickly legs.

That evening Ogi waited while, in the already darkened garden, Dancer went out to feed the Saint Bernard, who made sounds that were at once gen- erous and bighearted, unmistakably those of a large beast. Patron had gone to bed without eating. Ogi and Dancer finally had a late supper, and as they ate they reviewed their instructions.

"As I was listening to Patron," she said, "I couldn't help but wonder why-when you aren't a devotee of Patron's teachings-you're supporting him and working to help him. I know I asked you to, but I feel a little bad about it."

"I don't know… he has a sort of strange appeal," Ogi replied. "I've never met another man of his age quite like him."

The story now shifts to the reunion of the artist Kizu and the dog-faced boy with the beautiful eyes fifteen years after their first meeting. In the in- terim one can safely assume that innocent young Ogi spared no pains as he worked with Dancer to carry out the task Patron assigned them. The account that unfolds now will shortly wind up at Ogi's place of work, and the two stories will merge into one.

By coincidence, Kizu was able to meet the young man whose growth he had been so obsessed by, though it took some time after the two of them grew close before he realized that the young man and the boy he'd seen so many years before were one and the same.

Back in his homeland on sabbatical, Kizu was living in an apartment in Akasaka; a former student introduced him to an athletic club in Nakano, where he became a member and began going twice a week to swim. One might not expect a person who's had a relapse of cancer to be so active, yet it was this very relapse that spurred him on. Soon after joining, Kizu began to take notice of a young man at the club, someone he caught sight of every once in a while but had never spoken to, let alone heard anyone else talk about. Kizu was drawn to this twenty-four or -five-year-old young man's beautiful body and his unique sense of style, all of which connected up, in Kizu's mind, with his plan to take up oil painting once again during his year in Tokyo. In the United States he'd been so involved in running the research institute, giving lectures and seminars, and taking care of a thousand and one other related tasks that he'd drifted away from creative art. Deciding to return to painting Was one thing, settling on the subject matter was another, and Kizu was still without a clue, though he did find the idea of painting a young man more attractive than that of a female nude.

Kizu watched the young man leading grade-school children in warm- up exercises by the poolside and correcting their form once they were in the water. Another scene stayed with him too, one that took place when the young man was doing his own personal training. One weekday, early in the after- noon, the pool on the first floor of the athletic club was relatively uncrowded, with just two children's classes and one adult group, the last made up mostly of women with a couple of elderly men thrown into the mix. In the lanes set aside for full members to swim laps there were only two or three swimmers, Kizu among them, as he paddled back and forth in the unusually cool trans- parent water.

Soon it was time for classes to change, and in the wide space between the main pool and the one used for synchronized swimming practice, a large class of children were going through their warm-up routine. Kizu had fin- ished his exercise for the day and was just leaving when he ran across a strange sight. At the bottom of the stairs, in a corner where there were show- ers and sinks for rinsing your eyes, there was a six-foot-square pool. Kizu had always thought it was just some special water tank, but now he under- stood it was for training people to hold their breath underwater. Three young girls stood there, leaning against the brass railing and looking down at the little pool; their high-cut swimsuits exposed the smooth skin of their muscular thighs.