Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

Ogi hesitated to report what Ms. Tachibana had told him where Patron could overhear it. Patron-pressed to respond to Ikuo-was still excited in a cold, melancholy way. He didn't ask Ogi about the call but was obviously preoccupied with some unfortunate things that could happen, or might have already happened, to Guide. Patron watched silently as Ikuo rearranged the remaining logs in the fireplace.

It was impossible now to continue their discussion, so Ogi just waited for another phone call as Dancer gave Patron some sleeping pills and tranquilizers and went with him to his bedroom. Ikuo was dissatisfied, of course, at having to cut their conversation short, but since Patron had not fully recovered from his physical and emotional exhaustion, there was nothing they could do.

Dancer had her hands full taking care of Patron, so it was left to Ogi to get Ikuo's bedding ready in the second-floor bedroom. The heat of the fire- place didn't reach this room, and it was as cold as Tokyo in the middle of the winter. "You'll be fine if you use an electric blanket," Ogi told him, but Ikuo still seemed preoccupied after his discussion with Patron had fallen apart, and a bit suspicious of Ogi's practical advice.

Ogi went downstairs, banked the fire with ashes, and was getting his own futon ready on the floor when Dancer appeared and asked him to wake up Ikuo. Patron insisted on continuing his earlier talk with Ikuo in his bed- room, and wouldn't hear otherwise.

Dancer obviously wasn't too happy about it but did as Patron asked.

While they waited for Ikuo to dress and join them downstairs in front of the fireplace, she whispered to Ogi, "Patron was trying to get to sleep, but he seems upset, not just about Guide but about painful memories that our earlier talk brought to mind. He said tonight he wanted to finish talking about all the things he was going to say to Ikuo.

"I told him the medicine was going to take effect and tried to persuade him to wait until tomorrow morning. If Ikuo looks like he's going to start debating him, please caution him not to, okay? I'll be right beside you."

'Are you planning to censor his questions and give answers in Patron's place?" Ikuo asked, entering the room in time to hear Dancer's last words.

The fire had burned down to embers and the only light was that filter- ing in from the dining room; Ikuo's face was darkly flushed and his rough reaction was enough to make Dancer wince.

"Well, then, would you go with him instead of me, Ogi?" Dancer asked, in an edgy, teary voice. "If he doesn't find Patron's answers to his liking and starts to get violent, there's nothing I'd be able to do. I'll wait by the phone."

Ogi led Ikuo into the master bedroom. The room was large, Western style, with a high bed that Ogi's mother had said was just like one she'd seen in a photo of an American farmhouse in an interior design magazine. Both the overhead lights and the nightstand lamp were turned off. In the glow of an electric space heater set up at the foot of the bed, the two young men could make out an old chest of drawers but no chairs for them to sit on. They had to stand looking down at Patron, whose head was resting on the high pillows, and couldn't even tell if his eyes were open. Ogi thought optimistically that he was asleep, but he wasn't. Soon, eyes closed, he began to speak, his words to Ikuo quite thoughtful.

"Professor Kizu told me in his letter that he was surprised when he heard you say that you heard the voice of God when you were a teenager, that ever since then you've been waiting to hear God's voice again, and that right now you want me to act as intermediary so the voice of God will speak to you again."

Patron's voice was different from his earlier eloquent sermonizing tone; his tone was unclear, his tongue slurred, the words seemingly pushed up from deep inside his throat. Ogi was favorably impressed, though, that despite his poor physical and emotional state and his worries over Guide, Patron was bent on fulfilling his promise to Ikuo. On the same wavelength, Ikuo responded in an entirely natural tone of voice.

"I was convinced, as a child, that I had heard the voice of God, though I never told Professor Kizu the details surrounding this event. At any rate, I believed God spoke to me, and I've been waiting expectantly ever since for that voice to speak to me again. I quit college, never had a steady job, didn't make any friends, and never lived long in any one place, always waiting and waiting. But God was silent.

"This year, however, after I met Professor Kizu-or had a reunion with him, I should say-I felt that things were changing. And then I was able to meet you, Patron. And I knew that you of all people would understand what it means to a person to hear the voice of God. I know I'm just dreaming, but I hope that you can help me hear the rest of what God wants to tell me. I've also started to get interested in the radical faction that Guide created, since they're the very people who, through you, heard the voice of God telling them to get on with it! And just when that voice was about to be heard, you and Guide snuffed it out."

Ikuo finished speaking, as if this was what he'd been thinking of ear- lier when he asked about the Somersault, and Patron was silent for a time.

To Ogi the silence seemed too long, but finally Patron did speak. His speech was slower than before, and more disjointed. Ogi tried to put it in some kind of order so he could remember it. Since there was sufficient power in what Patron said to frighten an innocent youth like Ogi, he listened very carefully, trying to pick out what Patron mumbled, so his memory of it was reliable.

"Though Guide and I had begun a movement to show people a model of what the end of the world would be like and bring them to repentance, with the Somersault we abandoned it all. You asked me why Guide and I, particularly, denied our teachings then. You also said I served as an interme- diary and made them wait in a place where they could hear God's voice to get on with it! Well, not only did I make them wait in vain, I announced to the world how stupid they were to be waiting at all.

"For ten years afterward we were the laughingstock of Japan, but in our inner being we felt even more driven into a corner-like the living dead, as I've put it. And now I've been raised up out of the pit of hell to where I must proclaim the words of God: Do it! I've resigned myself to living out this fate.

If I'm the intermediary again for God's voice, this time I won't take back what he tells us to do. I promise you that, Ikuo.

"The reason we denied our teachings at the time of the Somersault is precisely because that's what a Somersault's all about. Whatever I do in this new direction I'm embarking on, I'll do as a person who has Somersaulted.

Someone who Somersaults also has to participate, in a personal way, in the call for repentance. If you think about it, it's all too clear how the end of the world will come about in a hundred years. Is a hundred years so far off?

"Ikuo, you said you want me to act as intermediary so you can hear God's voice. But the relevant question is, Is it possible for someone who's done a Somersault to confront God again? I've only just returned to the point of preparing for a deep trance, but I think the answer is yes, it is possible. Would God abandon a person who's gone so far as to do a Somersault? God wouldn't allow himself to be left a fool, would he? You have the conviction that you'll hear again the voice of God, and that's what's brought you to me. I'm sure for someone as young as you it must have been hard to maintain that convic- tion. You-or I should say you too-have received a wound that never heals.

But Ikuo, that is a sign…"

Patron's voice grew lower and ever more slow. Finally he fell silent, his quiet breathing no longer a voice, and then he began to snore peacefully. The two young men stood there, straining their ears. Soon, from behind them, they sensed something only slightly louder than Patron's snores. Backlit by the light from the dining room, Dancer stood in the doorway motioning to them. They went out into the hallway. As she shut the heavy door behind them Dancer leaned her small slim body against Ikuo and whispered, "Patron told you something very important, didn't he?"