Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"I felt closer to Guide at first, but there was something I couldn't quite grasp about him," Dancer said to Ikuo, loud enough for Ogi, two or three paces ahead, to hear. "I don't know anything about what happened more than ten years ago. I've been thinking about this since I came to live with Patron and Guide and observe them up close. Guide always seems to be urging Pa- tron to do things, but once it seems that his words and actions are actually influencing Patron's judgment and actions, he immediately pulls back. I find his hesitation hard to fathom.

"I don't have anything to base this on, but I came up with a guess. I'm not saying that Patron was led into doing the Somersault by Guide, but maybe Guide did have an influence on Patron's decision. With this talk you're plan- ning to have with Patron, didn't you say you wanted to talk without Profes- sor Kizu and Guide around? Even if Professor Kizu couldn't make the trip because of his health, I wonder if Guide didn't think it better that he not be there since you and Patron had some important things to discuss. That must be the reason he didn't come, despite that long phone call and the fact that he urged you to go ahead and talk with Patron."

"It was Guide who encouraged me to bring my main concerns directly to Patron," said Ikuo, who had been silent up to this point.

Ogi sensed something, turned around, and saw Dancer twist to turn around to face Ikuo, who was a head taller than she was. In a very sharp tone of voice she said, "You're free to voice your own concerns, but whatever Pa- tron tells you should be shared with all of us. Patron isn't going to give you a hint for you alone; he will indicate the direction all of us should be taking.

Don't forget that!"

Dancer had clearly had her say; she began to walk more quickly in order to shorten the distance between herself and Patron. Urged on, Ogi and Ikuo picked up the pace. It was a simple matter for the young men and Dancer, with her gymnastic training, to catch up with Patron. He had stopped at the side of the road where raised earth marked the boundary of the older resi- dential section of the area; across from him was a paved road and a slope run- ning downhill and, even farther down the slope, a newer residential area that he was now gazing at. Dancer may have cut her conversation with Ikuo short because she noticed where Patron was standing.

A broad deep expanse of snow-covered mountains lay before them. On this side ran the line of woods that this morning had seemed desolate; bathed in the faint sunlight, the woods now had a gentle reddish-yellow tinge. The whole scene gave the impression that both people and trees had finished their preparations for the day, fast approaching, when snow would blanket ground and woods, and the far-off mountains would become one continuous stretch of white.

As the three of them reached the bundled-up Patron, he turned grace- fully toward them in his expensive boots at the sound of Dancer's voice and she briskly helped him into the wheelchair. Standing at the tip of that old road sloping down, their backs to it, they could feel the wind whipping up the slope, carrying with it a hint of cold air from the snow-covered mountains in the distance. At this season this was an appropriate spot to end their walk, and all of them understood it was the proper time to begin pushing Patron back up the hill. With her quick, unsparing way of working, Dancer was the per- fect attendant.

By six it was already dark. Patron had slept during the day and then eaten dinner in bed, and Dancer urged him to stay in bed for the time being.

Their group discussion, then, began at little after seven. The young people lit the wood in the fireplace, set an armchair in front of it for Patron, and settled down directly on an electric blanket they placed on the rug. They didn't face Patron directly, and as he stared into the fireplace, they followed suit, listen- ing intently and gazing at the flames. Ikuo had used a saw to cut up some of the pine, light brown birches, and cherry trees that had toppled over in the typhoon into six-foot-long logs, but couldn't find a hatchet to chop them into smaller pieces.

"I understand Guide suggested that you talk directly with me, Ikuo,"

Patron began. "He phoned me from his annex to tell me this. The fact that he didn't come to see me directly is a sign that he has something in mind.

Professor Kizu, too, sent me a letter outlining the background to your ques- tions, that your motivation for getting close to Guide and me can be traced to a desire you've had ever since you were a young boy. He wrote that you're a young man with something very special inside, and that if talking with me is needed to bring that to the surface, he wants to do what he can to help out.

"So it's obvious that Professor Kizu thinks you're a pretty special per- son. Dancer tells me that my answers to you shouldn't be for you alone, but for all of you, Dancer and Ogi included. In other words, whatever I say is connected to the movement I'm about to launch. In Guide's case, however, there's a separate issue at stake. Guide sympathizes with you, Ikuo, and the difficult questions you have, which is why he's advising you. I know him very well, though, and I know that can't be all there is to it.

"Guide is making the following proposal to me through you, Ikuo: In the past, God called to this young man. And I want you, for the sake of this young man, to act as intermediary to revive God's call to him.

"Guide is throwing up a challenge to me. He's also proposing that we try once more to do an important job that he and I weren't able to complete in the past. How this will come about, he's leaving up to me. According to Professor Kizu's letter, the God that appeared to you, Ikuo, told you to do something, and though you were still a child then, you waited with all your might to see what God wanted you to do. But you waited in vain.

"This is similar to the time before our Somersault, when Guide wanted me to act as intermediary between God and the radical sect he created. Around the time our church was getting established and really beginning to grow, he gathered a group of elite young people and created a place where they could freely conduct their research-his own special vanguard, in other words.

Doesn't it seem now as if he's singling you out, hoping to raise you up as a firm believer, as a kind of replacement for the sect? What I need to know is what fundamental difference Guide sees between then and now, between you and the radical faction in Izu.

"In the past we used to have these kinds of heavy discussions as he tried to grasp the vision I saw in my trance. Right now I've come back from an unsuccessful attempt to enter into a deep trance-my first in a decade. Guide tells me this is a preliminary to the return of those trances of old.

"I don't know yet what form it will take, but I've taken the first steps toward starting a new movement. Guide is essential to this, but you young people are also crucial. This is why I responded to Ikuo's appeal and asked you three to travel with me.

"I'd like to tell you young people about what Guide and I used to do in the old days and how our Somersault came about. Until we abandoned our movement, what was it I preached to our followers? In a nutshell, it was my hope that the world be filled with people who repent what's happened to our world, because that is the only way for life to be restored to our planet. In the visions I had in my trances, I grasped how to do this. The sect that Guide created came up with tactics for accomplishing this, tactics that would forc- ibly drag people with us until everyone realized the kind of future mankind was facing.

"I can't deny that that's the direction in which I led the church. Those who can envision the end of the world, the end time, will, in the near future, cre- ate an actual crisis that will be a productive opportunity for repentance; those people are out there, I said in my sermons. This is the point at which the sect Guide created rose to prominence within the church-working to bring about a crisis that would lead everyone to immediate repentance and preparing the meth- ods and shock troops to carry it out.