Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"Patron seems to confront some kind of white glowing object. When you look at him when he's like this, it's as if his body is reacting to each bit of information he's receiving, moving constantly, never static. It's too much to bear. When I try to help him interpret all this, I realize the amount and qual- ity of information he receives is amazing. That's one of his real trances. His fate is to have this very rare ability. This might sound exaggerated, but Patron can freely view the entire course of human history and experience every last detail. He traces it all with his own body. He conveys to us what he's learned about the history of mankind and even its future, speaking to us-in the present-of the end time."

"What is this blur of light you mentioned?"

"As someone who's listened to what Patron says after he returns from his trances, transmitting what that's all about is my job." Saying this, Guide, who'd been listening to some inner voice, now lifted his head as if to turn his ear to sounds from the world outside.

Kizu heard a car pull up and stop in the road beyond the garden, and several people came quietly into the residence.

"Dancer will take over now," Guide said. "I'll see you home, Professor.

Ikuo will have to come back later, so I can ride with you and we can talk some more."

Guide turned once again to the thing, sitting there like a strangely twisted statue, and then faced Kizu. His eyes now adjusted to the dark, Kizu could read the strong emotions rising to the surface in Guide's face. His ex- pression held, at one and the same time, a fierce penetrating look and a look that could have been either pity or love.

Kizu was about to stand up after Guide when a small, sunburned ener- getic old doctor came in-a minitank of a man, to use a phrase that Kizu and his friends had used when they were boys-together with Dancer. Ignoring their bows, the doctor strode right up to Patron, peered at him, and faced Dancer.

"It's exactly the same as in the past," the doctor said, in a nostalgic tone.

"If he's been this way until now, he'll be okay. But he might have one of his deep trances, so I'll sleep here tonight in his bed. I'll keep an eye on him, but I'm sure he'll be fine."

"About these deep trances again, you said that Patron sees a net that shows the entire history of the human race?" Kizu had had them park his Mustang in the garage and was now in the minivan, with Ikuo at the wheel and Guide alongside him. "No matter how big this white blur of light is, wouldn't individual people, and the groups they form, be no bigger than a cell? Or is this just some kind of metaphor, a model for a certain historical perspective?"

"It's neither a metaphor nor a model," Guide replied. (At that instant, Kizu caught an unexpected whiff of alcohol. Later, when asked, Ikuo said Guide only drank occasionally.) "No matter how minute something might be, Patron actually sees it. A cell can't be seen by the naked eye, but can you use physical parameters to measure what the visionary eye detects? Patron sees the entire world, from the beginning of time to the very end, as one whole vision.

"Inside that would be included, as one particle, you, on the verge of making an important decision about your life, and me, talking here with you.

Both present as eternal moments."

"If I were counting on death to help me escape myself," Kizu said, "that net would indeed be a kind of hell."

"I don't believe Patron is viewing hell in his visions," Guide replied seriously. "It's not as if he chooses what to see, as if he's purposefully inter- preting a satellite photograph, but rather that he's grasping the entire struc- ture oí this huge net of blurred white light. That's the stance he takes, I think, when he's in a trance.

"After one of his major trances, Patron talked with me about that. It's not like the blur of light is projected out in space but more like a bottomless hollow. The entire hollow is a kind of spinning and weaving net, and the net with its countless layers is a screen that reveals human existence in one fell swoop, from its beginning to its end, and each point on that net is moving forward. It covers everything from the origins of time-nothing other than the first signs of the Big Bang to come-to the time when everything flows back to the one ultimate being. That whole huge spinning hollow, Patron told me, you could call God. In other words, as he sits there with his head between his knees like a weighed-down fetus, he's about to embark on a trance in which he'll come face-to-face with that God."

"If that's what God is, it's just another way of saying there is no God."

Ikuo's eyes looked straight forward as he drove, his taut shoulders, twice the size of Patron's, filled with the tension of his remark.

"What do you mean, there is no God?" Guide asked him back.

"Saying that God is this hollow of the whole world is the same thing as saying there isn't any God, right?"

"But by saying that God is this hollow you're admitting there is a God."

"That might be true of people who accept that huge hollow and think it's enough," Ikuo said, "but for people who don't, it's the same as saying there is no God."

"For you, in other words."

"That's right. For me there is no God."

"I detect here something other than an abstract debate over the exis- tence of God. What really concerns you is whether God is actively working in your life or not."

"That's right, you got it," Ikuo admitted candidly, still stubborn.

Guide didn't say anything. Kizu couldn't intervene in their argument.

For a while Ikuo drove on, the three of them silent. Kizu caught another whiff of alcohol and noticed that Guide was hiding a small flask of whiskey in his coat pocket. Guide cleared his throat lightly and spoke.

"One sure thing, though, is that the white blur of light Patron confronts in his trances has decided the course of his life."

"If I confronted a God who's some huge hollow," Ikuo said, "well, I can tell you I wouldn't accept his deciding my life."

"Isn't this God that Patron senses in a holistic way, then, also the God you believe can speak to you directly?" Kizu asked. "Soon after I met you, Ikuo, I felt you were thinking about God as the power to grasp yourself. And I hoped that your notion of God would be like a passage enabling you to find an entrance to Patron's vast deep vision: namely, the God he confronts in his trances. Is the God that Ikuo's thinking of just one part of the all-embracing God that Patron sees?"

"It wouldn't fit Patron's definition of God to say one part of God," Guide said. "I spoke of a passage, but I think of it as a bundle of fiber-optic lines, with Ikuo on this side, at the terminus of one line, wondering if he can send a signal to the other side, the terminus of all the lines-in other words, to the enormous structure that is God."

"If there's a terminus on the other side, and an infinite number of them on this side, is it really possible that God would send a message directly to me?" Ikuo asked.

Guide was silent as he thought about it. The swaying of the speeding minivan made his head rock back and forth. Kizu could see he was fairly drunk by now, though he didn't let his drunkenness take over when he spoke.

"This might be a self-centered way of approaching it," Ikuo said, "but I think the only way to experience God is when the signal comes from his side to ours. Once his voice came to me and I did what it said, but afterward, when there was no response, there was no other way to meet God but to wait for his signal."

Ikuo stared straight ahead as he drove, his voice no longer angry, as it was a moment before, but filled with a sorrow that pierced Kizu to the quick.

Guide might have felt the same way, for he spoke now in a more formal way.