Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"I also appeal to you through the second passage Morio marked in the scriptures: Put off your old self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; be made new in the attitudes of your minds; put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. I appeal to you as an antichrist, as one who will forever remain an Old Man. Even though I'm such an Old Man, one thing I can do is challenge each of you to become New Men! As the paint- ing shows us, the time is ripe for our new church. Morio handled the Bible in the dark and fulfilled the role of Guide, and Professor Kizu, through his own pain, has done the same.

"To commemorate the start of our Church of the New Man, let us pray for Professor Kizu's speedy recovery!"

Ogi found it too difficult to ask Patron directly about the two quotes, so he searched the Bible himself. He pored over scripture, searching in vain, until Mrs. Shigeno pointed out the passages. Some of her fellow Quiet Women, and some of the Technicians, had come to her with the same question, so she went over to the main office to make copies of the selections and distribute them. There, Ogi along with Dancer, learned about the passages.

Mrs. Shigeno gave Ogi and the others their own copies of the passages, which turned out to be from Paul's letter to the Ephesians. She couldn't under- stand, though, she told them, why Patron chose the term New Man from this letter of the apostle Paul. When she used to attend meetings of the Non- Church Movement and there were talks on Ephesians, they always dealt with such topics as predestination and the role of the church, never anything to do with the expression New Man.

The lecturer in her former church, a famous economist, began his talk with the question of why Paul, who was imprisoned at the time, would write a letter to the Ephesians in the first place. He explained that the reason lay in the fact that among the Christian believers in this Gentile land there were those known as Judaizers, who wanted to maintain the Jewish nature of Christianity. There was even some influence from the East, from Persia.

Gnostic heretical beliefs arose about the nature of the soul and the body, as well as heretical opinions about angels.

"Now that I think of it," Mrs. Shigeno said, "it does make sense for people like Patron and Guide, who basically have a syncretic view of religion, to be interested in the letter to the Ephesians. Patron can insist that Morio marked these spots in the dark, but that Bible was the one Guide was con- stantly reading, so I suspect these pages, ones he came back to over and over, naturally fell open. I have a feeling Patron senses that too, which is why he places such emphasis on them."

Ogi merely listened in silence, but Dancer voiced her opinion in no uncertain terms.

"Unless I have some time to read these passages carefully and digest them," she said, "Ogi and Ikuo are going to be miles ahead of me. Still, I feel energized somehow, knowing that Patron is taking positive steps to rebuild the church. No matter what, I've decided to follow him, but I am a little worried about how we're going to build the church in this new setting. I'm really happy, though, that the day is approaching when he'll reveal our fu- ture plan of action."

"If that turns out to be the day you find true faith, it'll be a happy day indeed," Mrs. Shigeno said. "The first happy event of Patron's Church of the New Man."

After Mrs. Shigeno left the office, Dancer turned to Ogi.

"Mrs. Shigeno is shrewd enough to see that my working in the office here and following Patron like some groupie doesn't add up to real faith. She might look like some sweet old lady, but don't let looks deceive you-with all the struggles she's weathered before she became a member of Patron's church, and after his Somersault-there's a lot more to her than meets the eye."

Mrs. Shigeno had rather casually used the term Church of the New Man, and Dancer and Ogi soon realized that she'd wanted to test their reaction to the name, already the Quiet Women's expression of choice.

With this pronouncement of Patron's, the meetings of the Quiet Women began to take on a different character. They'd always allowed the Techni- cians and the Young Fireflies to participate freely and join in their prayers, but now they limited attendance to their own members. Still, Ikuo and Morio and Ms. Tachibana, who was close to the Quiet Women, were also permitted to attend.

The rainy season had once again set in when Ms. Tachibana showed up in the chilly dim office to report on one of the meetings. At the morning prayer meeting, she said, Mrs. Shigeno had repeatedly used the term Church of the New Man in her sermon. Ms. Tachibana was unclear whether this was a new idea Patron was pushing or was something limited to the Quiet Women; at any rate, she took copious notes.

First, she reported, Mrs. Shigeno read aloud one of the passages from Ephesians that Patron had discovered with Morio's help: "Is this way Christ's purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

"As a member of the Church of the New Man," Mrs. Shigeno had said, "I've begun to see this passage in a new light. It's so simple I don't need to interpret it, but it's saying that on the cross Christ created a new man out of the two. In building his Church of the New Man, Patron must be consider- ing the cross as the place where he is heading too. Now that the end of the age is approaching, he has decided to take up his own cross. That's the idea he's building on, the cornerstone of his new church. He will mount the cross as an antichrist and in so doing will show us how to confront the end of the world. After his Somersault-a trying time for all of us-Patron de- scended into hell and returned to move forward. Now it's up to us to define the roles we should play in the new church and move forward ourselves.

Hallelujah!"

Ms. Tachibana's thin-skinned oval face had lost its luster, as if she were suddenly preoccupied by some gloomy thought. She didn't put her thoughts directly into words but circled around what really bothered her.

"Mrs. Shigeno also told Morio she'd like Ikuo to perform his composi- tion, and he did. Morio and I were quite moved. But afterward, during prayer time, Mai was sitting right beside me and I couldn't concentrate. I was con- cerned about all the talk about the children we'd left behind when we moved here joining us during the summer conference… I worked for many years at a girls' school affiliated with a university, which might account for how I feel when I think of the children like Mai I saw at Guide's memorial service.

I can't help but fear that something terrible is going to happen. Will the chil- dren get caught up in some disaster? I have no idea what kind of disaster, but all the same I worry about it."

Ms. Tachibana looked at Dancer and Ogi, her normally pale cheeks turning a livid rose red with her violent emotions; she said nothing more and abruptly left the office.

Dancer tried to go back to her work, but she was too upset to continue.

Before long she turned to Ogi, himself unable to concentrate, and said angrily, "Ogi, don't you think Ms. Tachibana contradicted herself? She said she was moved by Morio's music after Mrs. Shigeno's sermon, the theme of which is the ascension to heaven at the end of the world. Yet she saw the children's participation in this heavenly ascent as unhappy, as being caught up in a disaster."

"How is that unnatural?" Ogi replied. "Even if what she says seems contradictory, if somebody sees children getting caught up in mass suicide as a disaster, to me that's a healthy attitude. Though she never put it in such bald terms. People like Ms. Tachibana have their feet on the ground. If things ever get out of hand, you can count on her to put a halt to it."