Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"The Quiet Women say that they've seen now what a coward Patron is.

If that's true, why don't they just leave and go back to their children? If they feel they've seen through him, why in the world do they feel they have to take poison? What good will that possibly do?"

"What's important for them isn't Patron's character but his being,"

Dr. Koga said enigmatically. "Though I'm sure there are still some women in the Kansai headquarters who don't think that way."

As Ogi sat next to Ikuo as they drove off toward the Hollow, the sky, which had been clear all morning, suddenly grew overcast. With one part of the Spirit Festival scheduled for that afternoon, the road going down to the Hollow from the Shikoku highway bypass was already crowded. Ikuo chose the road that went up below the Mansion. The cloudy sky looked ominous, and the road below the pass, covered with its thick canopy of overgrown branches of evergreen oaks and beeches, was gloomy and dusky. Finally, heavy raindrops began to fall.

Headlights were coming down toward them, but they couldn't very well pull off to let the vehicle pass with the shoulder on the river side so obviously uncertain. The lights turned out to be those of a truck that had gone to dump some of the garbage containers hastily set up below the dam. Ikuo docilely reversed the car. After backing up for a long while, he stopped against an old horse chestnut tree to let the truck pass. The driver, a town employee Ikuo knew, had his window rolled down despite the rain, and he shouted out to Ikuo that another truck was following him, so Ogi and Ikuo waited under the shadows of the large branches.

"You're pretty deeply involved with the Quiet Women and with the Technicians now, aren't you?"

When Ogi said this, Ikuo made an unexpected face. "Even though I was told not to," he replied slowly.

"But even if you hadn't gotten involved, you can't say the Quiet Women wouldn't have gotten that idea in their heads or that the Technicians wouldn't have helped out, for whatever ulterior motives they might have. All I'm say- ing is that you got deeply involved with them."

Ikuo was quiet for a while, before responding patiently. "I was inter- ested in the Technicians from the first," he said. "I did have a very strong im- pression of the Quiet Women, though, from when Professor Kizu and I visited their commune and saw how pious they are. I developed a close relationship with them because that's what Dancer told me to do. It wasn't some office consensus but more Dancer's own idea. I realize now she was right to do this; she'd foreseen danger for Patron in opening a new church here, so she or- dered me to get a handle on the two groups. Dancer's top priority is and al- ways will be Patron's safety. That's just the way she is."

A second identical light truck came down the slope toward them, gave them a wave, and passed by. Ikuo pulled their car out from under the shelter of the horse chestnut tree and drove off uphill in the blinding rain. When they arrived at the square below the dam they found conference participants cross- ing over on flagstones since the ground had been flooded by water that ran from the lake and overflowed the watercourse. Some people had small um- brellas, but the majority just held plastic sheets or cardboard boxes over their heads. Everything was finished at the red and green tents, so these people were making their way to the chapel.

Gii, who apparently had been waiting for them all the while in the park- ing lot in front of the tents, ran over with two umbrellas. Dressed in a rain- coat and rain hat, he was oblivious to the downpour, and as he walked beside Ikuo he reported that the Spirit Festival would go on as planned. No prob- lem, he said, summer-morning rains blow over soon, and since Ikuo looked doubtful he reassured him that in this region that was indeed the way it was.

Gii managed expertly to protect Ikuo and Ogi from the crowds of people in front of the dining hall, and they soon arrived at Patron's residence, where some of the Fireflies were standing watch. Gii wanted to go inside with them, but Ikuo asked him to take a message to Ms. Oyama to the effect that Dr. Koga would do what they had asked and would deliver at twelve; showing no re- gret at not going with them, Gii retraced his steps.

The temperature had dropped quickly because of the rain, but when she opened the front door Ms. Tachibana's hair was plastered to her pale fore- head. The house had been shut up tight and was humid with a close lived-in odor.

Since the incidents two nights ago, Patron was holed up in his bedroom on the southwest side, unchanged from when Ikuo had been summoned to see him the day before. Ms. Tachibana showed them into the shadowy room, where they were met by an even more musky animal smell.

Patron was lying in bed. He sat up and opened the curtain on the south- ern window. Light spilled into the bedroom through the rain-swept foliage of the oaks outside. Morio was curled up like a dog at the foot of the bed and didn't acknowledge the newcomers. A sense of the dark confinement he'd shared with Patron still clung to him.

Ikuo sat down in the low-backed armchair brought from Patron's Tokyo home, while Ogi sat down in a straight-back wooden chair and faced Patron, whose cheeks were sunken.

"Late last night after the party, Dancer stopped by and told me about the Quiet Women's plans," Patron said in a low voice. "This morning Ikuo was to hear their final intentions and make certain of the Technicians' re- sponse. There's been no change. Am I correct?"

"Yes, that's right," Ikuo replied.

"Ever since I announced at the memorial service for Guide that I would be restarting the church, and I decided to allow the Quiet Women and the Technicians to join first, Dancer has had her doubts. If after they returned to the fold the Quiet Woman and the Technicians recognized the Somersault- and recognized the new church as developing out of the Somersault, rather than out of a denial of it-these groups would be powerful allies to have. But that's not the case, she said. We moved here to Shikoku with all that still up in the air. So I entrusted you, Ikuo, with the task of getting to know both groups better and trying to discover what's really going on with them."

Patron's speech was getting noticeably slower.

"That's right," Ikuo said. "My two responsibilities since coming here have been that and supervising the Farm. Meeting the Fireflies, admittedly, led to other activities."

"Knowing now what the Quiet Women are planning plus the fact that the Technicians will be indirectly helping out, I can see that Dancer was right to be suspicious," Patron said. "The Quiet Women and the Techni- cians immediately denied the Somersault that Guide and I did, and nothing's changed. They haven't altered their stance in ten years. Dancer tells me that at the meeting where I'll announce the launching of our Church of the New Man, they're planning to take me captive and act as if the Somer- sault had never taken place.

"After the Quiet Women have made sure that the Somersault has been canceled, they plan to pass on joyously. They'll be the martyrs who saved the church, and a great Hallelujah! will ring out. And the Technicians, bearing the atonement of these twenty-five saintly women, will take over the church and run it the way they have always wanted.

"If that happens, it doesn't really matter whether I truly canceled the Somersault or not, does it? All they have to do is take care of me until the day I die. Our summer conference would then be remembered as the time when Patron canceled the Somersault and the Quiet Women ascended to heaven and became divine. Dancer told me she could already sense this at the party at the Farm. Is that a good summary?"

"Gii told me he felt that too," Ikuo said. "As far as the order of events is concerned, it wouldn't really matter if you deny the Somersault after the Quiet Women passed on, would it? Applauding the atonement of the Quiet Women, God would-Hallelujah!-forgive you for making a fool of him.