Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"It's only natural that I felt a pain in my heart when the Savior and the Prophet did their Somersault, but in my case physically I couldn't deal with the pain; I vomited every day. Some people were concerned I was having morning sickness, though that was impossible.

"Over and over I'd go to sleep and dream that the Somersault never took place and feel relieved, only to awaken to the awful truth. This happened day after day. At first I felt as if the Savior had betrayed me. It was like being covered with ants that were biting me, but I'd been anesthetized and couldn't feel anything. But I could sense that the anesthesia would wear off and sud- denly I'd be hit by this enormous pain, which led to my vomiting all the time.

"Never once, in all my life, have I run across a person as kind as Savior was, and that's why I felt betrayed. After I joined the church, many people were kind to me, but Patron's kindness-I'm sure all of you would agree- was on a whole other level.

"This happened after my unhappy marriage broke up, soon after I re- nounced the world. The church had a house in Yokohama in a brand-new subdivision-remember?-on a high piece of land, from which you could see the ocean. A lot of times I'd gaze out absently at the ocean from the big window on the second floor where we had a meeting room. There was a large horse chestnut tree outside, too. One day Savior, who happened to be staying there, was sitting beside that big window when he called me over and told me to come closer and look deep into his eyes. He was sitting in his usual arm- chair where he liked to read, beside the window. So I knelt down in front of him and gazed into his eyes. It was the time of year when the horse chestnut's leaves were still soft, a fine clear morning when I was left in charge of clean- ing and answering the phones while everyone else was out working.

"I was afraid he was going to make a pass at me. But he said it so casu- ally I couldn't resist, and though I was wary, I went ahead and knelt in front of him. He told me to look once inside his eyes, and what I saw was this: my own face, beautiful, completely unscarred. The face of a young woman, her eyes wide open in surprise.

"Next he told me to smile, since then I'd see my own face smiling. I tried to smile, but I was so happy I burst into tears. My eyes were so full of tears I couldn't see a thing, and the thought occurred to me that since my face was reflected in his eyes like that, unscarred, that was exactly how he saw me.

"He'd encouraged me so much that when he did his Somersault and said everything he'd done and said was a joke, I couldn't accept it. He looked totally insincere when he was talking in front of the TV cameras, which may have been the way the camera caught him, but the words were defi- nitely his.

"The way he acted ridiculed us, trampled down our desire for salva- tion and all the efforts we'd made to reach it. We were suffering and unhappy and needed salvation more than anything, yet he was laughing in our faces.

On top of that, the whole world was laughing at this silly Savior and Prophet who were ridiculing their followers, which made me feel as if we were being doubly mocked. I think we all felt that way, angry at what had happened. We kept the faith, though, and felt we had to settle the score with those apostates.

Some people even gave sermons advocating revenge."

"I was probably angrier than anyone else, but I still couldn't forget how the Savior had used his own eyes as a mirror to show me my real face. Every time I remembered that, new rage would well up within me. Was what he'd said just a bad joke?

"As time passed, though, I calmed down, and began to think that the Somersault might have been a childish prank, without any malice behind it.

I realized how I'd been moved by him and how happy that made me. And I became convinced that the beautiful face I saw reflected in the Savior's eyes was my real face, the one my soul possessed before I was born, so I was able to forgive him and think of him with fondness. That's how I was able to keep my faith during these ten years of living together with all of you."

When Ms. Takada finished speaking, her companions surrounded her with an empathetic silence. The wife of the owner of the greenhouses, her upper body stiff, pushed up her glasses with a small calloused palm to wipe away the tears. Her husband shot her a look of rebuke and turned away. After her tears were over, the woman-as if it was her wont to speak up despite the patriarchal authority over her-cleared her throat with a little cough and broke the circle of silence.

"He wasn't hypnotizing you when you saw your beautiful face with two eyes. You were seeing your real face!"

The farm owner inclined his head, which reminded Kizu of the profile of General Nogi on playing cards he used as a child, and poked his wife's shoulder. She twisted away to avoid his hand and continued unhesitatingly.

"I don't really know what kind of person the Savior was, but if as you say he's come back from hell, you should have him show you your real face once more. This time try to keep from crying and give him a big smile!"

"If he has returned, that's enough for me," the one-eyed woman said, calmly yet passionately. "But more than my own healing, everything will be healed, since he's atoned for all our sins in hell. Actually, in the past ten years, I don't hate this face so much anymore."

"That's the way to think about it!" the farm owner shouted, his voice filled with both indignation and self-reproach. "My unthinking better half said some stupid things, but you have your real face now! Why do you have to hate it?"

"I think that's quite enough of your little marital spats and solutions to the problem, Mr. Sasaki. These two men have come all this way to see us. Shouldn't we let them speak?" The speaker here was a woman around forty or so who looked like she'd been an athlete in her younger days.

Saying this, the woman turned a somewhat sullen smile toward Kizu and Ikuo. With her lightly tanned face and strong look, she stood out among all the pale faces. The woman seemed frankly surprised that the doctor's widow, the woman with the congenital defect in her face, and all the other women who had listened so intently to their stories had opened up so much to these two strangers who had suddenly appeared in their midst. Only this woman who had just spoken seemed to have some complicated psychologi- cal barrier.

"The Savior-Patron, as the newspapers now call him-well, if he truly is to return to us, I expect he'll make a direct appeal. Since the two of you just planned to take a look at how we're living, I don't expect you have any sort of message for us from him, do you?"

"No, we don't," Kizu said, feeling a bit wretched as he said it. "We didn't even tell Patron we were coming."

"You haven't been believers very long, have you?" the woman asked.

"Apart from these young people here, I know the faces of most of the believ- ers above a certain age. My job in the church kept me in contact with them."

As he turned a searching look at Kizu, the farm owner had now calmed down from his earlier pronouncement, his skin color fading back to match his white hair and whiskers.

"The Professor and I are much newer believers than all of you," Ikuo answered in Kizu's stead. "I know this might sound a little vague to you. Even though I say we're followers, we haven't done much yet to help Patron with his religious activities. We got to know Patron and Guide just before they restarted their religious activities-years after the Somersault, of course. It's clear, though, that Patron will be relying a lot on the Professor in the days to come. I only knew the late Guide for a short time, but he was someone I re- spected very much. And Patron-well, I've never met a person like him before, a leader like that."