Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"No matter how much I plead, they won't contribute the funds. Before the economic bubble burst, companies used to give money before they even heard what it was for. Nowadays, with the recession getting worse, they feel they've done their duty merely by listening."

Ogi nodded at her. He broached the topic he'd been thinking about all the way over on the Chuo Line train, his words sounding unnatural to him as he spoke.

"It seems it's impossible for Patron to come to a meeting of the Moos- brugger Committee. Not that he has no interest in Ms. Tachibana and her brother-quite the opposite. He wants to invite them to come to his own of- fice. I called her to convey the news and she seemed quite taken with the idea."

"If that's the case," Mrs. Tsugane said, staring fixedly at Ogi as if finally noticing him, "there's no reason for Ms. Tachibana to attend the Moosbrugger Committee anymore. She has a close friend in Ms. Asuka, and the other people on the committee are really not her type. This would mean too, wouldn't it, that you have no more business here? When we talked this morning, though we haven't seen each other for ten days, you didn't seem too enthusiastic about meeting me.

"Does this mean our relationship is over, now that my husband's back in the country? Did your sense of morality drive you to this decision? Surely you're not suddenly afraid of my husband?"

Ogi decided he'd best say nothing. Angry emotions welled up inside, but if he let her storm of words sweep over his head, this troublesome matter he didn't know how to begin to approach would simply resolve itself. The ten days of misery he'd experienced had made him think things out in a more adult way. It was worse than cowardly to put all the blame on her.

"I don't know if I can say anything about morality. But I do know that jealousy's made me miserable these past ten days, and there's no way out. If I said I was going to snatch you away from your husband, you'd be the first to laugh at me. But I still went ahead cooking up all kinds of silly schemes. Fi- nally, I decided that I couldn't keep on as I am, suffering from a jealousy that has me bent out of shape. In other words, the only way is to make a clean break."

"Isn't there some less drastic way?" Mrs. Tsugane asked. "Maybe we could go on as we are, for a while, and then say goodbye with only a mini- mum of pain."

"The pointless suffering I've been through made me realize that I can't stand being in this kind of pain anymore. If we keep on, my head will explode.

There's no other way. If we cut things off here I'll suffer for a time, but I can tough it out."

Mrs. Tsugane's small figure shrank farther into her chair, as she turned her pinked-rimmed eyes to Ogi. She licked her upper lip and the skin above it with her peach-colored tongue, which Ogi found, all over again, alluring.

"You're basically a very serious person, aren't you?" she asked. "Your parents are probably bemoaning the fact that, of all your brothers, you're the one who's gone bad and doesn't have a decent job, but you're still as serious as the high school boy I remember, jogging for all he was worth on the Nasu Plateau. So serious you just had to steal my panties, didn't you?

"I understand, so let's say goodbye. I'd like you to have a keepsake- and don't think a new pair of panties is what you want-so I'd like to give you a brand-new cassette player. With a cassette tape, too: music that Ms. Tachibana's younger brother composed. I listened to it a little this morn- ing, and it made me so sad I couldn't listen anymore. After your phone call, I had a premonition of what was going to happen. And now that it has, you can't expect me to listen to that music, can you? Farewell. Horseman, pass by!"

For about thirty minutes on the train to Shinjuku, Ogi sat with his head hanging down, but then he switched on the tape recorder and listened to the tape from the point where Mrs. Tsugane had stopped it. Each of the short pieces was made up of simple chord structures and melodies, but the music felt like the cries of a bared soul. So this is how a person lives with a mental handicap, Ogi thought, and how an unfortunate woman takes care of him all on her own. Heedless of the pair of high school girls who stared at him, Ogi felt tears coursing down his cheeks.

If Patron can make a light shine in someone like that, not just in their hearts but inside their very bodies, Ogi thought, I want to do my utmost to help him. He was crushed by a lump of grief, but even if he wasn't aware of it at the time, at the far end of his sorrow was a ray of light, and the dark monster of his jealousy was even now in retreat.

Kizu had heard from Dancer about the separate annex in the compound where their office was located, but he'd never seen it. Almost immediately after he was released from the hospital, though, Guide let Kizu know that he'd heard about him from Patron and wanted him to come over to visit, so they set a date and time.

In the minivan on the way over, Kizu learned from Ikuo that while Ogi was spending all his energies in laying the groundwork for Patron's new movement, Dancer was spending all her time taking care of Guide's day- to-day needs.

"Guide says he wants to participate in the new movement, but Dancer told him that after managing to survive a burst brain aneurysm his number- one priority should be getting back on his feet.

"And Guide retorted, 'If I'm going to die anyway with my skull full of blood, I might as well work while I can for that slipshod friend of mine!"

They walked around back of the main building, a half-Japanese half- Western affair under the dense foliage of a camphor tree, and came upon a building with white walls and Spanish-style roof tiles. The walls were thick, like the ones Kizu had seen in farmhouses in Mexico; the whole thing was built like a jail, with double-pane windows. They opened the heavy front door, and Kizu waited with Ikuo for Dancer. The sound of a similar heavy door was heard upstairs, a band of yellowish light shone on the white walls, and Dancer appeared, dressed in black tights and an ice-hockey shirt.

As he and Ikuo followed her, Kizu noticed that the steep stairs seemed out of character with the sense of open space the building imparted, and once they were upstairs and he looked back, the entrance where they'd removed their shoes seemed strangely far away. The spacious room that Kizu and Ikuo were shown into, lined as it was with bookshelves, looked like an academic's study. Guide was at the other end of the room, lying back on a raised chaise longue.

Dancer had Kizu and Ikuo sit down on a shiny white wooden platform with cushions on top. Guide's chaise longue, writing desk, and chair were all made of the same material. They were all simple yet solid looking.

After the initial introductions, Kizu looked around the room, and Guide, whose color looked perfectly healthy, said, " Professor, you're in charge of the art education department, I understand. I'm curious. What grade would you give this room, B minus? C plus?"

"Nothing that low. It's clear what you had in mind, and I like that."

"Guide designed the whole thing," Dancer put in, "and supervised the construction too. My dance studio's on the first floor."

"Architects were mostly all members of their high school art clubs and good with their hands, correct? I just helped out a bit in calculating construc- tion costs."

"Shall I make the room brighter so you can see the details better?" Dancer asked as she stepped to the half-opened curtain.

"No," Guide said, stopping her. "It's fine the way it is."

"Is strong light bad for you?" Kizu asked.

"No, it's not that. I just thought you'd rather not see the scars from my operation."

Guide seemed to have a dark gray hood over half his forehead, though it may have just been a scarf wrapped around his head, the ends touching the collar of his sweater in back. He was a stylish man, belying what Kizu had heard. His features included a strong yet not too broad nose and a straight mustache that occupied a willful upper lip. A pair of equally neat eyebrows were raised upward, toward his covered forehead. He turned his large black shining eyes, the whites visible on both sides and below, toward Kizu.