Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"This may sound like sour grapes, but why do you have to leave? Are you sure you'll never come back here again? Can't you seek your goal of being free together with me?"

Kizu fairly groaned this out. Not knowing how to continue, he collapsed in his chair, burying his face in his hands. He was crying. Through the spaces between his fingers, he could see Ikuo get down from the dais he'd been posing on, pressing down with one hand the bounding movements of his penis as he walked over to stand uncertainly in front of him, his waist slightly jutted for- ward. Kizu took himself by surprise, releasing his tear-stained hands to grasp Ikuo's buttocks, aiming for the anarchically moving penis and grasping it in his mouth. He opened his mouth wide, taking care not to hurt it with his false teeth, unsure how much pressure he could apply, getting the energetic penis to come to rest against his upper palate, wrapping his tongue around it as Ikuo held his head tightly with both hands.

Kizu acted like some old veteran, and when Ikuo ejaculated for what seemed like forever, Kizu couldn't have been happier. He let go his fingers from where they'd dug into the muscle and dimples on Ikuo's rump, and Ikuo's penis, still too large to be held in one hand, hung down next to Kizu's lips. Ikuo asked, vaguely, if there was some way he could repay him for all his kindness. Kizu gently shook his head, hoping to show that this was enough, and wiped away the excess semen dripping from the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand.

Kizu and Ikuo lay down side by side on wicker lounge chairs, the Vene- tian blinds half drawn to shut out the intense sunlight as they gazed up at the brilliant outline of the leaves of the wych elm against the cloudless autumn sky. They discussed how they would live now in Tokyo, after Ikuo quit his athletic club job and continued as Kizu's model. They decided not to make any quick decisions about the details. Occasionally they fell silent, simply enjoying the feeling of closeness. Ikuo was stretched out fully beside Kizu, who reached out to trace with his fingernails the circuit-board design of the skin-skin like the finest paper-on Ikuo's concave belly. Ikuo gazed down at this as if he were watching a drawing develop. Kizu saw how the move- ment of his fingernails made Ikuo's penis rub against his thigh. The head of the penis was dry, with fine reddish wrinkles, but looked wet. Embarrassed because it was starting to glisten again, Ikuo covered it with his dark shiny palm, and Kizu laid his own wrinkled palm on top.

Kizu dozed for a while and then awoke, as if his consciousness had been speared by a gaff, to see Ikuo still stretched out beside him. Ikuo's muscular shoulders-their layers like seams of armor-and his waist and buttocks were covered with droplets of sweat. Kizu raised himself up, choking with excite- ment, picked up the tissue paper box from the side table, and, lying so close to Ikuo he could teel the warmth of his body, began to masturbate. As he ejacu- lated a small amount of semen into the tissue, a light brownish color mixed, r›, Ikuo, whom he thought was asleep, reached over without moving to lay a sweaty hand on the artist's wizened thigh. Eyes closed, Ikuo shifted around, trapped Kizu's weak-looking body in his strong arms, and lovingly kissed Kizu's shoulders. Kizu guessed it was a gesture to assuage his guilty conscience at not wanting to fellate him. But Ikuo's face, close up as he gently kissed Kizu, showed a rapturous satisfaction.

Kizu spread out on the floor the drawings he'd done for his as-yet still inchoate tableau with Ikuo modeling for him; Ikuo, Kizu's worn-out dress- ing gown draped over his naked body, came over close to him to stare intently at one drawing in particular, a design Kizu had done on a separate sheet of paper and then attached to the bottom of one of the sketches of Ikuo. After a moment, uneasy, Kizu looked up and saw that, as often happened when he was concentrating on something, Ikuo had the clever, severe expression of a hawk or a falcon. He spoke in dreamy voice, his eyes glazed.

"A strange thought occurred to me that I've experienced this before. I can't really remember, but something in my childhood…"

At first Kizu was startled. Around the time he determined he had had a relapse of cancer, he decided to take his sabbatical in Japan in order to search for that young man from long ago. When this desire had been at its height, he'd even drawn up a sort of wanted-poster sketch of the boy's plastic model under the girl's skirt. Now, without any particular idea in mind, he'd attached this sketch to the drawing he'd done of Ikuo. Kizu looked at this, then turned his gaze to the real Ikuo beside him. Memories of fifteen years before sud- denly zoomed in, and in an instant he saw in Ikuo the fierce canine face and beautiful eyes of that young boy. Once he realized this, Kizu also understood how, ever since they'd first met in the drying room at the club, a voice had been nagging at him, berating him for not seeing the obvious.

In the midst of their now exultant conversation, Kizu laughed out loud a lew times, while Ikuo fell into deep thought. Ikuo had arrived in the morn- ing and didn't leave until sunset; in the afternoon, a powerful cloud bank blew in from the southeast, forming into cirrus clouds with a reddish lower layer.

Reflecting back on how full these hours had been, Kizu felt that everything that had happened to him over the past two or three weeks was a godsend.

"You've really captured that scene well in your sketch," Ikuo had said repeatedly, unable to contain himself. "I don't have any memory of how I actually appeared as a child myself, but this scene of the bulky model I busted my butt to make getting caught in that girl's skirt, and her comically trying to keep her balance, is exactly as I remember it. And her little angry face glar- ing back at me-her whole pose seemed to be making fun of me."

"I can't forget it either, even a mediocre painter like myself, " Kizu said, remembering how it was seeing that scene that convinced him he didn't have any talent.

"I've been self-consciously drawing since I was fourteen or fifteen, and even allowing for the time when I didn't paint, living as an artist has become- to use the expression you've used several times-an ingrained habit. You sketch on paper, synchronizing the speed of your hand movements, so that even if you aren't holding a pencil you retain the scenery, objects, and people in a purely visual memory."

Ikuo listened carefully to Kizu's excited words, at the same time star- ing entranced at the drawing of the young girl balancing strangely on one leg.

Kizu came back to reality.

"I know where this young girl is now," he said. "The newspaper com- pany told me. I even phoned once, trying to check it out on my own."

"What did she sound like?"

"As you might expect, she's a unique young woman. There's a certainty in her voice, the way she talks, that you don't find in young Japanese girls these days. And when I remember how she clutched your model, trying her hard- est not to lose her balance and let it fall, she's definitely not an average sort of girl. I don't have many memories as clear as that one. It's not just because of her, but she holds a treasured spot in my mind-along with the memory of the light I saw in a very special young boy who destroyed his own creation."

"Up to that age I was just an ordinary child," Ikuo said slowly, still lost in his own memories. "I was crazy about making all kinds of models, from preformed plastic pieces or from pieces of wood I carved with a knife; some- times I'd go for days with hardly any sleep. Constantly making something made me feel like I was telling a story in words.

"What I remember is that the girl was a strange one. When she got caught up by the model it was like she was challenging me. I remember hat- ing her because I lost the chance to win the top prize and get a free trip to Disneyland in California."