Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

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. Look- ing 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 lile 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."

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 draw- ings 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 privi- leged. Just the thought made him blush.

But would painting this picture of Ikuo be enough to let him inside the young man's inner being? For over ten years he'd abandoned the achievements he had diligently attained. Kizu felt a helplessness come over him, and once again this brought on a deep sadness, an emotion not unconnected to his can- cer. Even though he might slump dejectedly in his chair before his painting, when Ikuo returned to model for him Kizu got so energetic it made him a little self-conscious.

In addition to Ikuo there was one other person who didn't hesitate to come into his studio to talk with him while he was working-Mayumi, the dyer, who was living with Gii. Kizu saw her as an artistic colleague, not a competi- tor, and welcomed her visits.

Mayumi came about once every three days and told him, among other things, how she came to be a friend of Gii's mother. When she was still living with her husband, a photographer and instructor in dyeing, Mayumi got to know Satchan, who at the time had some problems with the activities of the Church of the Flaming Green Tree and had temporarily left. Mayumi soon had troubles of her own and went abroad to escape from her husband. Dye- ing, though, was something she couldn't abandon.

Before long Mayumi heard that the Church of the Flaming Green Tree was dissolved, Satchan had a child and was taking care of other children too, as she took over the management of the Farm, and Mayumi decided to help.

She turned out to be more of a burden than a help, though, and settled into a house on the outskirts of the Farm that she converted into her dyeing studio.

She got to know Gii as he helped her collect materials to use in her dyeing, and before very long they formed a relationship.

Mayumi had Ikuo pick up some coffee beans and a drip filter coffeemaker, which pleased Kizu no end. Sensing he was in a good mood for the first time, Mayumi broached the real purpose for her coming to visit the studio, her concerns about Gii. While he was painting, Kizu couldn't face her as she spoke, but when he took a break he sat down at the dining table across from her; she did all the talking, a worried look and a tiredness befitting her age etched on her dark face.

"Gii often talks about what he heard from his mother, a line from the sermon given by one of the followers of the Church of the Flaming Green Tree at the time it broke up. Something said by the head priest of the Fushoku temple, a happy-go-lucky sort of fellow. Wherever each of you ends up, aim to be like a drop of water soaked up by the ground is what he said. Another line is something the Former Gii said: Become a flash flood of concentrated hate.

"The Former Gii started the Base Movement here and worked to improve production and living standards in this region. He's the one who built this dam and gathered all the water to make the lake. But he didn't get along with the local people, and the people from the Old Town at the lower reaches of the river were directly opposed to him.

"What happened was, in the rainy season when the lake was full of water, he claimed the water was blackish and smelled bad and announced that he was going to blow up the dam and ride the ensuing flash flood him- self. The Former Gii was an amateur expert on Dante, believer in a love that would change the world, yet in the end he became the exact opposite, a flash flood of concentrated hate.

"The local people thought this was getting too dangerous, so on a night when it was raining hard and the dam looked about to split open and flood the Old Town, they murdered him and dumped his body in the Hollow.

"If Gii formed his band of Fireflies here based on that first line, I find it a little too mysterious. These days, though, when the Fireflies gather in my house it's the second line that he brings up. This worries me. Since Ikuo is a Fireflies sympathizer and particularly favors Gii, I wonder if he's been tell- ing you the truth about those kids. That's why I wanted to talk with you. I hope you'll make it clear to Ikuo in no uncertain terms that he has to avoid getting the Fireflies too worked up."