Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"Right now the activities of this church center around another head- quarters, in the Kansai region, where they've kept their name and religious foundation status. Most of the followers work in Osaka or Kobe and donate their pay, minus a small amount for living expenses, so they were able to purchase this chapel. And during the last ten years they completed the dor- mitory, according to the architect's original plans. Some Japanese certainly don't give up, do they?

"The religious organization, though, hasn't moved to this chapel and dorm. Small groups of them visit, staying in the monastery, which is what they call the dorm, and praying in the chapel. They also work for a week, taking care of the building and grounds, before they leave.

"I paid a visit to the building's caretaker, a local woman, and asked if these poor little lost sheep, whose leaders had renounced the faith, still be- lieve that the beloved pair will make a comeback. Her answer took me to- tally by surprise. (The old lady, by the way, was born in the village but spoke better English than the interpreter I brought with me.) 'Outsiders to the church, myself included, don't really understand this,' she said, 'but when believers pray in the chapel and raise their eyes upward, they say they see the souls of the two former leaders, separated from their suffering bodies so far away, hovering up in the air.' It's gotta be true-'cause how else can you ex- plain their keeping the faith for ten years after their leaders denied it?"

Kizu didn't let on that he'd just met a girl who worked for these two former leaders. The reporter, for his part, didn't go into much detail about this place with the modern buildings. The caretaker, afraid that tourist buses might start showing up, was wary of outsiders coming to visit. Through an introduction from an architecture journal, the reporter was able to view the inside of the chapel, but the woman never left his side and made sure he didn't take any photos.

Kizu, of course, had himself originally learned of the savior and the prophet of the end time through an interesting article in The New York Times.

The leaders' renunciation, their Somersault, he imagined, must have left an indelible impression on the two thousand or more followers they left behind, but even now, after meeting the young woman who worked for them, he couldn't shake the notion that it was all rather comical.

After hearing this reporter's story of how the abandoned followers had worked hard to collect enough money to buy and add on to the building, however, the story of this church took on a sharpened sense of reality. These leaders must really be something extraordinary, to motivate their followers so highly after they'd abandoned them.

And the followers who came to the building to pray, with great awe and sadness, insisted that the two leaders, after their Somersault, suffered so much that the souls of the two men took leave of their bodies and floated beside them as they prayed.

"Who knows?" Kizu said to the American reporter. "Maybe the souls of those two men really do fly all the way to those woods and into that mod- ern building." And he sighed.

On the day Ikuo phoned the office in Seijo, the young woman's reac- tion was different from when he met her in the restaurant. Sounding tense, she asked him to come alone.

During the morning of the Saturday awards ceremony Kizu attended, Ikuo had moved his things into Kizu's spare bedroom. He whiled away the rest of the morning without unpacking and then drove Kizu's car over to the young woman's office.

At four in the afternoon, Ikuo had phoned Kizu and told him the girl had had a car accident the day before yesterday at the entrance to the parking area of the hospital when she went to pay Guide a visit. She wanted badly to go see Guide that evening, but the young man she worked with was busy with preparations for starting Patron's new movement. With her car still in the repair shop she'd have to rely on Ikuo driving her in Kizu's car. Kizu still had to get ready to go to the architect's reception-and get the tuxedo prepared he'd convinced himself he had to wear-so he had ended up calling a cab.

Ikuo returned home late that night and told Kizu that the young woman wanted him to work as their official driver. His first assignment would be to pick up her car when the repairs were finished the beginning of next week.

He'd already quit his job at the athletic club, and the office would pay him a salary, so Ikuo was enthusiastic about the idea. The working hours were open- ended, he said-though later on they proved not to be-he'd just go over whenever they needed a driver. It shouldn't interfere with his modeling for Kizu- One more reason Ikuo was so drawn to this job offer was that driving for Patron would give Ikuo the opportunity to talk with him-although Pa- tron had yet to say a word to him of any spiritual matters.

Ikuo began to go every day for a full day's worth of training at the of- fice. Guide had still not regained consciousness, Ikuo reported, but in other respects was recovering nicely. Patron mostly stayed in his room; Ikuo had only been able to speak directly with him a couple of times but found him fascinating. "And the girl is called Dancer at the office," Ikuo added, "so that's what I'm going to call her."

A week passed, and word came that Patron wanted to meet Kizu, so he and Ikuo left for the office together. Kizu could sense Dancer at work be- hind the scenes to make this invitation possible. Ikuo had not yet had a good long talk with Patron, but starting on this day Kizu was able to.

Patron's voice was low but resonant. "I hear you're an artist," he said right off, skipping the usual formalities. "Even if I hadn't known that, I could have guessed." Patron was sunk deep into an unusually low armchair, his chubby, round face full of childlike curiosity. "It feels like you're tracing the outlines of my face and body with a pencil."

Kizu was flustered and didn't know how to respond. He and Ikuo had first been escorted to Patron's combination study and bedroom by Dancer.

Patron was still in bed. Dancer helped him over to the armchair and brought over a chair to face Patron for Kizu to use; Ikuo glided smoothly out of the room as if by previous arrangement. Kizu was introduced by Dancer to Ogi, "whom Patron calls our Innocent Youth," she said, who was working in the office at the front of the house.

"While you're observing me using your professional skills," Patron went on, "I've been doing the same. I sense you're undergoing a major change in your life right now, on a scale you've seldom experienced before."

Kizu found it comical that Patron would adopt the strategies of a fortune- teller on a crowded street, yet confronted with this man's dark eyes-steady, surprised-looking beady eyes, the whites showing above and below almond- shaped lids-the thought occurred to him that he might very well end up kneeling before him to confess his innermost thoughts. Considering his cancer relapse and his emotional and physical relationship with Ikuo, Patron's fortune-telling was right on target.

At any rate, to distance himself and give a neutral reply, Kizu relied on the skills he'd acquired teaching in an American university and brought up a Poet he was familiar with.

. When you reach my age," he said, "the sort of change you've mentioned is inevitably linked with death, though I try not to think about it. In this re- gard I've grown fond of a certain Welsh poet. I hope I can face death with the attitude found in his poetry."

Kizu went on spontaneously to translate a verse he'd memorized in the original: '"As virtuous men pass mildly away/ and whisper to their souls to go,' the poet writes, showing dying humans calling out to their souls as they are left with just the physical body. I think this fits me to a T."