Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"She puts more emphasis on their suffering over the past ten years," Kizu said. "I wonder if that's the basic approach the two of them will take as they start over. This new beginning means a great deal to her. That's why she got so angry when you used the word game. "

"Was I wrong to say that?" Ikuo turned his dark, affectionate eyes to Kizu, who felt a surge of desire race through him. "Like I said yesterday, I'm serious about the end time. But she changed the subject. I wish I could have heard more about Patron.

"This morning when I woke up, I regretted not asking for more details about what these leaders' ten years of suffering was all about. AU I remember from watching TV was this frivolous old guy blabbing on and on."

"Maybe this new beginning for them is a casual somersault in the oppo- site direction," Kizu remarked.

"Gymnasts sometimes move forward by doing one somersault after another," Ikuo said. "Unless we talk to them directly, though, we're merely tossing metaphors around."

In other words," Kizu said, "even if they're phonies you want to meet this self-styled savior of mankind and his prophet, right? Well, you have a standing invitation from her. And I think I'd like to go with you."

'Let me get in touch with her first."

Kizu couldn't read anything in Ikuo's expression, but as he looked at Ikuo s muscular chest and neck, exposed at the loose collar of the robe he'd thrown on over his nude body, Kizu found himself less interested in pur- suing the meaning behind Ikuo's expression than simply standing in awe at this young man's magnificent physique. What a waste, he thought, for such a fertile body to be given to someone who has so much still to attain spiritually.

No doubt Kizu was so involved in drawing Ikuo, preparing to create his tableau, because he wanted to capture this young man-for himself alone-before he leaped to the next stage, where that wonderful body would go hand in hand with spirituality. Kizu loved to imagine that Ikuo's body was already lending a sense of solemnity to the privileged thoughts that lay within him. And what convinced Kizu that something special lay in Ikuo's inner being was none other than what he had witnessed fifteen years before: beau- tiful eyes in the wildly ferocious face of someone who looked less a child than a small man.

After he met Ikuo again, Kizu had remembered a paper presented at a symposium his institute had sponsored that used as its text etchings based on old French prints depicting the stages through which a human face evolves out of wild animals' muzzles. When he first heard this presentation, show- ing how the cruelest of human faces developed from the line that began with the muzzle of a bear, Kizu had thought of the young boy carrying his plastic model. However, the bear-man's eyes were sunken and expressionless, while the young man's, equally sunken, had been full of suggestive feeling.

Kizu gazed steadily at his young friend. Ikuo sensed he was being looked at, stood up, threw his robe aside on the chair he'd been sitting on, and laid his naked suntanned body on the sofa. He spread his legs wide and beckoned to Kizu with a shy look. Though he was sunk back deep on the sofa, his long bountiful penis was clearly visible, already raising its head. Kizu went off to the bathroom first. Ikuo seemed ready to thank him for his help in bringing him together with the girl and Patron. Still, though, as he stood there, touch- ing his own penis, which was already so hard he could barely get it out of his pants, Kizu allowed himself a feeling of unalloyed pleasure.

In the afternoon, after Ikuo had gone home, Kizu was cutting his nails in the sunny spot beside the wide glass sliding doors. As he clipped the fourth toe of his right foot, he thought unexpectedly that it was like some good little beetle larva dug up from a mound of fallen leaves, very different from the other toes.

The toe of his left foot, he found, was exactly the same. He'd lived with these toes for over half a century. Why was it only now that he found them so funny?

Thinking it over, he paused in his clipping. It wasn't that his powers of observation were fading, but rather-as the last vestiges of youth disappeared from every corner of his body-that his toes had really begun Xochange. These are the toes, he thought, of someone whose cancer is back, who's going to end up an elderly corpse. If it hadn't been for his sexual relationship with Ikuo, though, he never would have noticed.

On Saturday, Kizu attended an international awards ceremony for a Japanese architect who had, during Kizu's time in the United States, garnered a worldwide reputation. He thought about inviting Ikuo, the former archi- tecture student, but the girl they'd met had asked him to take care of some- thing for her and he wouldn't be back until evening, so Kizu went alone.

Arriving at the hotel in Shimbashi, he found that only those involved in the actual ceremony were dressed formally, and he felt out of place in his tuxedo.

There were no other familiar faces at the party, either, and Kizu's relation- ship with the architect himself was superficial. When he had given a public lecture at the architecture department at Kizu's university, Kizu had served as discussant when the architect showed slides of the art museum he'd de- signed in Los Angeles.

Kizu greeted the architect and his wife and made an early retreat from the reception; next to the escalator, he ran across an American newspaper reporter he knew who wrote about the arts and architecture. The man, an old acquaintance, was also decked out in a tuxedo, and Kizu called out to him, kidding him he was going to stand out dressed like that. The reporter had been invited to a small dinner alter the ceremony, but decided to bow out, instead inviting Kizu, whom he hadn't seen in a long time, out for a chat. He led Kizu to a basement-level bar, and they settled in at the counter.

They'd just finished one glass of white wine each and were about to order another when the reporter's long-winded commentary on architecture connected up with the religious leader the girl was working for. It all started when the reporter mentioned an extraordinary place he ran across in the for- ests of Shikoku.

'The area is like a solitary island," he said, "in the hills about a two-hour drive from the airport. Makes you feel like you're being shown around the remnants of Japanese mythology. You arrive at this dead end with a sea of trees blocking the way. And in a village of fifteen hundred souls, can you believe it, there's an ultramodern chapel and dormitory!

Makes you wonder how there could be such large new buildings in a depopulated mountain village. What happened was a new religion arose in the village, and they hired one of Japan 's leading architects to build a head- quarters. But the new religion broke up and disappeared. The village didn't know what to do. They tried to find someone to take over the chapel for them.

Then they came up with a plan to convert it to a village junior high school, but that would have been too expensive, so it came to nothing. I suppose they wanted to keep the headquarters building as it was, since it was designed by such a famous architect.

"Finally a different religious organization expressed interest in the building, a group with a really unusual background. The Tokyo correspon- dent for The New York Times told me that"-at this point Kizu could guess what was coming-"ten years ago the two leaders had renounced their faith.

They denounced all their own teachings, which was apparently a major shock!

The religious organization itself, though, kept on going, with quite a few believers still involved. Followers who left the church maintained their own divisions, ranging from a group of radical revolutionaries to a co-op of gentle Quaker-like women. Sort of an interesting case-and not very Japanese, when you think about it.