Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"One other point. During the conference, the triptych that Professor Kizu painted of Patron's Sacred Wound will be on public view in the chapel, and we encourage you to visit it."

Kizu preceded the participants, who had begun to get up, down to the basement. The pumped-up feeling he got he took as another sign of his re- covery. As he was changing into his swimming suit, Ms. Tachibana came in, dressed like a woman swim-team member of a generation ago. She was guid- ing Morio. Unusually for her, she was telling him to get a move on. As Kizu scrutinized the scars from his two operations in the mirror, Ms. Tachibana said encouragingly, "If you keep a towel wrapped around your shoulders until you get in the pool, you'll have nothing to worry about. You're not planning on doing the backstroke, are you?"

As he came out of the changing room and walked across the concrete floor where the shower nozzles were lined up on one side, Kizu recalled how the first thing he did when he came to stay in Japan was join an ath- letic club, and how it was at the drying room of the club that he had run across Ikuo again. So much had begun right there-and brought him here, to this point.

The pool was in the basement, but since the lodge was on a slope the five lanes of the pool looked out a window to a stand of trees, and the cloudy sky still let in a lot of sunshine. Dr. Koga was already at poolside, having passed through the shower and the small pool one rinsed off in first; he carried a portable blood pressure monitor with him. Kizu wiped his dripping chest with his bath towel and Dr. Koga measured his blood pressure and heart rate. A long narrow row of seats along the mezzanine was filled with reporters and curious onlookers.

After Dr. Koga reported that all the readouts were within normal range, Kizu did a few warm-up exercises and got in the pool. The water was warmer than he was used to, either in the on-campus pool in America he'd used for many years, or the pool in the Nakano athletic club. He adjusted his goggles and started doing the crawl, and though at the first turn he stopped momen- tarily, resting his hand on the edge before turning, his body took it all in stride and at the end of the next lap he changed to a quick flip turn.

Kizu swam up and down in his lane. With a twinge of nostalgia he re- called how the term flip turn was actually an Americanism, something in keeping with the American character, he mused, while in French the same move was called saut périlleux-in other words, a somersault. Kizu was tak- ing Patron's place, performing one somersault after another to entertain the crowd, but he didn't mind.

On his way back, as he turned to breathe he caught sight of the crowd of onlookers and Dr. Koga talking with the leader of the TV crew, who was leaning forward from the railing. He looked around for a moment at Kizu, then looked up again and shook his head decisively. The TV crew reacted casually to that and started to pack up to leave, though the rest of the crowd, including the young editor of the local bulletin, remained behind.

Beside the pool Ms. Tachibana was still running Morio, palely chubby like a sweet rice cake, through some warm-up exercises. Kizu could tell that Ms. Tachibana had been on the swim team in both junior and senior high school, but actually what she ended up doing, after leisurely getting Morio in the water up to his shoulders and instructing him to walk up and down the lane, was begin swimming the breaststroke herself in the nearer lane, her form and powerful strokes impressive.

Kizu stood up at the end of his lane and watched her swim. Dr. Koga was struck by her swimming too. After four or five laps, without missing a beat, Ms. Tachibana changed over to Morio's lane. She skillfully had Morio float up, securing his body with a thin but muscular arm held around his chest up to his shoulders. Paddling with one hand and doing a scissors kick, Ms.

Tachibana carried Morio over to the side. As if they were watching the mas- terly practice rescue of a drowning man, a stir of admiration rose from the mezzanine.

When August rolled around, the number of people coming to visit the Hollow suddenly shot way up and Kizu hesitated to leave his house. Mostly men and women in their late thirties, these newcomers would appear at the dam like a sudden summer rain, clamber up the flagstone pathway, and dis- appear into the monastery courtyard. Then they would walk back down to the east shore down the tunnel formed by the overhanging young leaves of the cherry trees at the eastern edge of the chapel, and along the corridor that had been made there. Some of them would look up at the summer sun re- flected off the plastic globular canopy that had been attached to one side of the chapel's dome, some would gaze off toward the giant cypress in the is- land on the lake, and others would slowly make their way closer to the studio window where Kizu stood observing them.

Some of the visitors ate a light lunch looking down on the nearby tents set up in the square below the dam. Even from a distance you could make out their Fruit of the Rain Tree lunch boxes and plastic bottles of Rain Tree Water, bottled from the spring behind the chapel-evidence that the visitors had gone to the Farm first and bought lunches and water bottles at the little store run by Satchan's two adopted daughters.

According to what Ms. Asuka had heard, the majority of these visitors were believers from the Kansai headquarters. They all had their own jobs but were taking a week's vacation in order to visit this holy place and enjoy breath- ing the same air as Patron. Some of them had volunteered to work at the Farm in exchange for room and board. Others had booked rooms well in advance at the lodge where Kizu had put on his swimming demonstration, while others, unbeknownst to Kizu, who had any number of times walked along the path below it, were using the Mansion that now belonged to Mr. Soda of the Kansai headquarters. Through his long-term relationship with those in the Hollow as the builder of the chapel, Mr. Soda had purchased the Mansion, which had been slated for demolition, and rebuilt it so that it was once more livable.

Kizu had been in charge of any number of symposiums at his research institute and knew firsthand the troubles involved, so he had a vague anxiety about the summer conference. But Ms. Asuka, who started to help out at the office after the middle of July, reported to him that the participants were ex- tremely cooperative and the outlook for the conference was bright.

The believers who came early to the Hollow didn't make many demands on the church; indeed, they volunteered to help out, and at the dining hall they were allowed to use, they renewed old friendships-admittedly not very deep ones-with people they knew in the Quiet Women and were happy when they spotted faces they recognized among the Technicians.

According to Ms. Asuka, the office's efforts in organizing the confer- ence were paying off. The grounds of the elementary and junior high schools in the Old Town were being used as parking lots from Friday to Monday.

The Fireflies, organized as a security squad, were busy too, with preparations for their Spirit Festival, and didn't have the energy left over to take charge of the parking lot, so the task fell to some older youths who were continuing the local Village Association group; they too were unpaid volunteers.

The Kansai headquarters leader, Mr. Soda, arrived in the Hollow at the end of July. He invited Dr. Koga, Ms. Asuka, and Kizu for dinner at the Mansion, where he was staying during the conference. On the day of the din- ner there were none of the city folk around the dam or on the flagstone path, and in the midst of the loud buzz of cicadas and the cries of wild birds, Dr.

Koga and Asa-san appeared in the parking lot from the road leading to the prefectural highway. Rather than turn to wave to Kizu in his studio window, they looked out at the giant cypress tree, its leaves stirring with the faint breeze blowing in from the woods around the lake.