Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"These past few days, though," Ms. Asuka said, "this lucky old man has been a bit gloomy."

Something black moved at Ms. Asuka's feet. Looking carefully they saw three or four small frogs at the base of the streetlamp.

"At any rate it doesn't look like I'll be drowning myself anytime soon,"

Kizu said. "Once you understood this you turned your attention to observ- ing these frogs, didn't you? You're quite the visual artist."

"Once I came down, the thought of climbing up into that shadowy grove of trees gave me the creeps. I heard voices from the chapel so I decided to wait."

The frogs sat there silently, heads up, the pulse in their necks visible.

Bugs were descending toward them in black streaks or flashes of iridescence.

One frog closest to the bugs suddenly moved, gulping down a bug from the air. Looking up at the streetlight one could see a clump of bugs like a single dark spot. Only a few of them were swooping down toward the frogs, per- haps finding the strength to fly again once they descended to the top of the light, or maybe being wafted away on a breeze rising from the lake.

Out of the group of frogs, all neatly maintaining their positions, one frog held a small gold bug that had fallen and lay upside down on the dam and, suddenly agitated, clawed at its throat with his front legs; one of the other frogs turned to face the spit out bug, but before it could anything about it the bug spread its wings and inscribed an arc into the dark night air.

Ms. Asuka, a smile clearly showing on her long face now, started to lead the way.

"What did you talk about for so long?" she asked, shining a flashlight to light the way for Kizu.

"We talked about how the Jonah in the triptych looks like the Jonah drawn by an artist named Watts. Patron showed me the book and I think he's right. It was Morio who originally pointed it out."

"I'd like to hear more and don't plan to go to bed right away," Ms. Asuka said, "so how about joining me for a drink?" And by the time they arrived at the home on the north shore, they'd agreed to do so.

They pulled two chairs over to one end of the study desk in the bed- room, and Ms. Asuka brought out two cans of cold beer and two double shot glasses of whiskey. They each mixed the beer and the whiskey in whatever proportion suited them.

Ms. Asuka spread open the book Kizu had borrowed from Patron and, sipping her drink with her thin lips, gazed at the copy of the inserted frontis- piece. She read a little of the text, her smile replaced by a serious, almost sul- len look.

Then she raised her face. "My, did the prophet Jonah really end up doing all these things? It's different from the book of Jonah that Ikuo doesn't like, the one that ends with Jonah accepting the Lord's harmonious sermonizing."

She passed the book over to Kizu, who read aloud a part that Patron had underlined.

"The theologian Gregorius recognized one more special characteristic of Jonah, saying that 'Jonah foresaw the fall of Israel and sensed that the blessings of the prophets would pass to the heretics. He withdrew from evangelizing, questioned the state of his church, discarding the ancient high place and position of the tower of rapture, and threw himself into the sea of grief.'"

"No matter which Jonah is the real one, persons named Jonah are born to suffer," Ms. Asuka said, holding the copy of the frontispiece between her slim fingers. "This drawing really shows that kind of Jonah. Almost too clearly, in fact… The part about the heretics is pretty important too, don't you think?"

Kizu couldn't grasp the point of her question.

Even before the medical researcher at the institute in the United States had pointed out the possibility that he had cancer, Kizu had felt something not quite right inside him and wasn't able to take strong drink anymore. Now, in the feeling of relief after being liberated from the disease, he was drinking whisky cut with beer, but he knew he couldn't hold his liquor like he once could. Ms. Asuka's face, though, took on a nice rosy color, an uncharacteris- tically youthful clinging gaze in her eyes as she forcefully made her point.

"Ever since Patron quoted from the letter to the Ephesians, everyone's started studying it. While you were in the hospital, Mrs. Shigeno's study group was particularly popular. I'm not a Christian, but even I joined in. Accord- ing to what I heard there, what's important about this particular letter, one of the epistles attributed to Paul, is that it's a letter aimed at proselytizing the Gentiles-heretics, in Jewish eyes. The New Men at this time were the ones who were able to overcome the discord between Gentiles and Jews. Jonah ran counter to this trend.

"Deep down, Ikuo may very well not agree with the direction this Church of the New Man is taking. Though as the twentieth century draws to a close, the Japanese are still all heretics."

"If the prophet Jonah were alive today," Kizu said, "he'd say the whole planet's run by heretics. With groups of heretics attacking each other, skirmish- ing over who's more legitimate. And even among the heretics in this little out- of-the-way mountain area we find groups like the Technicians, the Quiet Women, and Ikuo and the Fireflies trying to establish themselves with Patron."

"The summer conference promises to be stormy, doesn't it?" Ms. Asuka said, pouring the last of her whiskey into her glass of beer. "Also while you were in the hospital, Professor, I heard a lecture by Asa-san about this person called the Former Gii and how he was stymied at every step. Which is why when I saw you go down to the lake tonight I had some troubled notions about what might happen."

"I heard the same thing: that Asa-san pulled up Brother Gii's body from the surface of the lake the day after a storm."

"I wouldn't have the strength to do something like that," Ms. Asuka said pensively, "but at least I'd have wanted to video it. In the morning, as long as there was enough light."

Kizu poured the remaining whiskey into his beer. "The corpse, you mean? It does seem like it's true what they say about the power ofthe land stimu- lating the creativity of newcomers!"

The two of them were silent, drinking their whiskey-darkened beer, draining their glasses in time with each other. The area around Ms. Asuka's eyes grew faintly pink, something Kizu found erotic.

"I apologize for going on about my own personal fantasy," she said.

"That's all right. I'd have to say I have even more intense fantasies than that," Kizu said, feeling his face flushed with drink. "Once I found that can- cer was no longer controlling my destiny, it made me feel uneasy, as if the bottom had dropped out of my life. If Patron hadn't been in the chapel and I'd made my way back here-and with the Fireflies looking after the dam the water's filled it all the way to the edge, well…"

"Sometimes the water in the Hollow turns black, which Asa-san says is an evil omen. And the water does seem darker than when I arrived." Saying this, Ms. Asuka gave her usual close-lipped smile, shook her head, gathered up the glasses on the tray, and withdrew.

A lot of lessons learned today, Kizu mused. All he had to do was re- move his trousers. Back in his pajamas, he laid his drunken body down to rest.

It was decided to hold the summer conference the first week of August, with registration beginning on Friday morning and the conference running through Sunday at the Hollow. A preliminary meeting was scheduled for July 10 at the lodge run by Maki Town to explain the plans for the confer- ence to the local authorities and some of the young leaders of the area, par- ticularly those involved in the river preservation movement. Newspaper and TV reporters from Matsuyama were also slated to attend.