Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

Listening to all this as he sketched, Kizu noticed Morio, seated diago- nally in front of him, begin to stir. His whole body, not just his legs, was im- paired, but his movements were always natural. Kizu was a moment late in sensing that something was wrong, but Patron responded immediately.

"I'm afraid I've said something to worry you, Morio. I'm just remember- ing the suffering I've had and am telling Professor Kizu about it, that's all."

"You've posed long enough-that's plenty," Kizu said, for the sake of Morio, who still looked up worriedly at the half-naked Patron. "I'd be happy if we could discuss how this sketch might be incorporated into the triptych."

As Patron slipped down from the high chair, Ms. Asuka passed him a freshly laundered dressing gown, helped Morio up, and led them to the din- ing table, which had been set up in the bedroom. Tea and pound cake awaited them. As the guests settled into their seats, Ms. Asuka brought the hot water for tea, while Kizu took the triptych panels down from the easel and lined them up in front of the partition. As he did so, Ms. Asuka said, "Why don't you lie down on the bed and talk? Painting wears you out. You look pale."

Looking back on it later, Kizu realized it was at this point that some- thing strange was starting to take place in his body. He reluctantly did as she said, though he wasn't about to let go of the excitement he'd felt since morn- ing or this chance to talk with Patron.

"The foreground of the middle panel shows Ikuo as Jonah. Are you planning to use my image in the open part on the left?" Patron asked.

"That's right."

"In other words, I'll be depicted as the Lord?"

"Since that's who Jonah quarrels with, yes, it would be the Lord, though my conception has changed a little since I first started. It doesn't have to be the Lord, exactly, though it does have to be someone who transmits God's will to Jonah."

"And he goes to all the trouble of showing this wound in his side to convince Jonah?"

"Rather than the biblical Jonah, I'm starting to see it more as the Ikuo- as-Jonah image the Young Fireflies have, Ikuo as the young man awaiting God's intermediary to give him the word to act."

"Since I'm less a model for God than for an antichrist," Patron said, "even if I tell him to act it makes it a complicated sort of instruction, doesn't it? If you show the antichrist here with a wound in his side debating with Jonah, it's like you're depicting this young man as seeing beyond the antichrist to God. This Jonah gives you the feeling that's entirely possible, what with that inscrutable look on his face."

"You're very perceptive," Kizu said, his comment heartfelt.

"This is changing the subject," Patron said, "but when Dr. Koga came to check on me, Asa-san came with him to see how I was doing. This was when you were in the clinic, Professor. I mentioned earlier about the depth and width of the wound, but Dr. Koga said this: There are still reports of women and children in Mexico and the Philippines having these kinds of spontaneous wounds, but they're always superficial. In my case, though, less than half an inch deeper and it might have been fatal.

"And then Asa-san told me this: Brother Gii was an amateur scholar of Dante's Divine Comedy, and he told her there were all sorts of issues involved when the heretic Cato the African committed suicide and was then appointed gatekeeper of the island of Purgatory. According to Plutarch, Cato cut open his own belly and then had a doctor friend sew it back up, only to cut it again himself and commit suicide.

'"I can't explain it well,' she went on, 'but for Patron to make his own wound worse in order to die-it's doubly, triply wrong. You can't let that happen! ' Once she decides to say something, Asa-san's the kind of person who can get pretty adamant."

Patron laughed out loud. Unable to join him, Kizu turned a confused smile toward Ms. Asuka. He couldn't even give a forced laugh, for he was already feeling the rumblings of something uncontrollable happening inside him.

Finding it impossible to follow Patron's loquaciousness, and so that Patron wouldn't misinterpret his tense expression, Kizu turned to look out the window. The white camellia flowers were in full bloom, but with the yellow pistils jutting out, as if seeking something, the flowers struck him as disagreeable. He could no longer deal pleasantly with people and things outside him; his entire world was measured solely by the tension rising up in his gut… Memories of his recent bout with disease let him know what to expect next, though he knew this time the pain would be even fiercer. Kizu turned his restless eyes back to the room and saw that only Morio, silently, was watch- ing him closely. Patron was deep in conversation with Ms. Asuka, but to Kizu their voices blended into one.

Feeling desolate and isolated, already in the throes of nausea, he thrust his throat out in anticipation of the groan the first wave of pain would drag out of him. It's almost here. Yellow liquid dribbled down his lips. Kizu saw Morio reach out a hand to Patron's thigh.

It had come.

Ogi learned about the awful pain Kizu was suffering when Ms. Asuka called him on the cell phone she'd brought from Tokyo. She'd phoned Dr. Koga as well and asked Ogi to take the car to his clinic. There's apparently no dan- ger of heart blockage, Dr. Koga had told her, adding that this time he wanted to admit Kizu into the Red Cross Hospital. I'll have Ikuo arrange for the ambulance, Ms. Asuka replied.

When Dr. Koga and Ogi arrived at the home on the north bank of the Hollow, they found the patient curled up diagonally on the raised bed, half his body draped over the edge. Ms. Asuka was kneeling on the floor, clearly drained of energy, while Patron was seated at the desk in the rear of the room, patting Morio, who knelt at his feet, on the back.

"Except for Ms. Asuka, I'd like everyone to leave the room, including Patron," Dr. Koga said firmly.

Retreating dejectedly to the studio, Ogi couldn't help but notice that Patron, and even Morio, looked terribly worn out. Patron had Morio lie down on the sofa but was unable to calm himself; instead of taking a seat in the arm- chair, he looked through a few of Kizu's books and picked up and examined the sketches that lay scattered about. Soon he went up to Ogi.

"Would you mind going into the bedroom for me and bringing back the middle painting of the triptych?" he whispered. "Without disturbing Dr. Koga, of course. Bring the drawing he made of me a while ago, too. I think it might give me a hint I've been needing."

Ogi peeked into the room, fearful of disturbing Dr. Koga's examina- tion, but neither the doctor, looming over the nearly naked patient, nor Ms. Asuka turned around. Ogi lifted up the middle painting, which was lean- ing against a divider-the drawing Patron spoke of was taped to it-and when Ms. Asuka finally turned to face him, Ogi nodded to her and withdrew.

Patron took a seat in the backless chair Kizu had set before his easel and gazed at the painting. Morio, too, got up from the sofa, sat down at Patron's feet, his knees up, and examined the painting. Elbows out, he plugged up his ears with his fingers, perhaps disturbed by the voices coming from the ad- joining room.

Ogi himself concentrated on the painting, the largest of the triptych. In the right foreground was a nude, which Ikuo had posed for. On the space to the left was a large sheet of sketchbook paper, a rough sketch Kizu had drawn of Patron from the waist up, the wound on his side clearly visible.

The painting was a painstakingly done portrait of Jonah, and a rough sketch, on the same scale, of a figure facing him. Ogi surmised the two per- sons were confronting each other.