Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"I think reading that Welsh poet with you is having a good psychologi- cal effect on Patron," Ikuo said. "For the first time in a while he came out to the front of the house, to the office, and chatted with the three of us, and he used an English phrase he said was from Thomas that he'd heard from you- quietly emerge. He read the poem to us. It was in the translation that you did, and I think it's wonderful."

Kizu reached into the briefcase on his lap, pulled out the copy he was using as a text, sandwiched in between his notes, angled it up in the pale, cloudy light, and read.

"As I had always known he would come, unannounced, remarkable merely for the absence of clamour. So truth must appear to the thinker; so at a stage of the experiment, the answer must quietly emerge. I looked at him, not with the eye only, but with the whole of my being, overflowing with him as a chalice would with the sea."

Ikuo nodded. "Patron said, 'If once again God is going to quietly emerge to me, I want to welcome him calmly, without flinching. I take this poem as a sort of sermon, and when I can accomplish this and I am able to 'quietly emerge' before you as mankind's Patron in the end time, I hope you too can welcome me as just calmly, without hesitating.' That's the last thing Patron said." And Ikuo clenched his mouth, in a way that reminded Kizu of a shal- low-water fish he'd seen on TV ripping apart a turban shell, and stared fix- edly at the lights of the oncoming cars.

Kizu wasn't sure what Ikuo was thinking, but he went ahead and spoke.

I want to believe that Patron is a man of great charisma."

Ikuo drove on in silence for a while, his mouth still set in that strange way. And then he spoke, quietly, of something he'd apparently been consid- ering ever since he was getting the minivan ready to take Kizu home.

"Yes, Patron certainly does have charisma. But is he planning to lead people using that charisma? That's the question. I used to think he used the media to appeal to the dispersed radical faction when he did his Somersault, but now I have the feeling that the Somersault was necessary for him. Once again, he said, God would quietly emerge.

"That's why," Ikuo continued, "though I feel his charisma, I have no real sense of what kind of person he is. I'm not sure whether I should get more deeply involved. Since you're well grounded and have a relationship with him that maintains a certain distance, I think it might be best for me to rely on that."

During the week Kizu was able to talk with Dancer, who came to his apartment just as Ikuo was setting out for the office. Ikuo hadn't told him in advance, but he'd urged Dancer to pay Kizu a visit.

The only person who had sat on Kizu's sofa since he'd been in Tokyo was Ikuo, so now, as Dancer sat on it-teacup and saucer resting on her shapely thighs, watching Kizu as he spoke, her eyes barely blinking, the pink inside her mouth showing as she sipped her tea-she looked incredibly delicate.

Appearance aside, Kizu already knew she never hesitated to speak her mind. Today, too, she broached a topic that took him completely by surprise.

"There still is a lot of criticism of Patron," she said. "So much it makes me realize how much more vicious the attacks must have been ten years ago.

Every time some article lambasting him was sent to us I always asked Guide for his opinion, but now with things the way they are… "One famous retired journalist writes the most abusive, scathing things, but I don't pay him any mind. I'd say the problem's more with the person who's writing than with anything to do with Patron. Recently we received a copy of a university bulletin that contained an interview between a Protes- tant theologian and an associate professor who'd just joined the same church.

Overall it was typical overbearing criticism of Patron, the main point being their agreement that since Patron had abandoned his own church, the only way he'd be saved was to join a proper church.

"I told Patron about this, and he said he wants to keep apart from all established churches, Protestant, Catholic, or whatever. Every person has that right, he said. If he were to share the same certainty in an objective external God with the other members of a church, his critics included, he said, he might very well lose his faith entirely. Instead of climbing into the same bed of faith with these people, he said he much preferred a gnashing of teeth and the uncertainty of belief, lying over seventy thousand fathoms, where he could taste the reason he was living in this world… "What I wanted to ask you, Professor, was what did he mean by over seventy thousand fathoms? I asked him, but he just said you mentioned it in one of your talks. Is the phrase from one of Thomas's poems?"

Dancer stopped speaking, her lips slightly parted as usual, and gazed at the artist.

"It's originally from Kierkegaard," Kizu replied, "though Thomas used it several times. I do remember linking the phrase with the poetry and dis- cussing Kierkegaard with Patron. This wasn't directly from Thomas's po- etry collections, but something from a volume published to commemorate the poet's eightieth birthday… this book, in fact. The author of the text I chose discusses the metaphorical uses Thomas has in his poems for the desolate farmland and sea in Wales… The author quotes two poems; the latter, en- titled "Balance," directly mentions Kierkegaard. Let's take a look at it."

No piracy, but there is a plank to walk over seventy thousand fathoms, as Kierkegaard would say, and far out from the land. I have abandoned my theories, the easier certainties of belief. There are no handrails to grasp. I stand and on either side there is the haggard gallery of the dead, those who in their day walked here and fell. Above and beyond there is the galaxies' violence, the meaningless wastage of force, the chaos the blond hero's leap over my head brings him nearer to.

Is there a place here for the spirit? Is there time on this brief platform for anything other than the mind's failure to explain itself?

"After this poem of Thomas's, the author quotes at length from Kierkegaard's writings. Shall I translate it for you?"

Without risk there is no faith. Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual's inwardness and the objective un- certainty. If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objec- tive uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thou- sand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.

"So that's what it means. Patron was quoting Kierkegaard," Dancer said, sounding for all the world like the intelligent heroine in some drama. "Patron jokes around at the most unexpected times, so often I don't know what he's really getting at. But even when he's joking, I think he's suffering over ques- tions of faith. I get the same feeling from those words of Kierkegaard. Thank you for helping me understand. I'm so happy I had a chance to talk with you."

Despite his years, Kizu felt buoyant-the same sort of happiness he felt when students had come to his office back at the university to ask pointed questions and then listen in rapt awe as he gave a detailed response.

Kizu had Dancer stay a little longer and showed her Thomas's collec- tion of poems to accompany a series of paintings, from Impressionist paint- ings to the work of the Surrealists. This book, a birthday present sent by the head assistant back at his home office, differed from both the paperback and collected works edition, for it contained vivid full-color plates of the paint- ings. Kizu found it odd as he watched her, the contrast between the way she gazed, open-mouthed, at the plates, and the nimbleness and efficiency with which she had earlier bustled about wiping away Patron's saliva. She still had a touch of the child about her, he realized.