Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

The doctor was evasive, saying that it was possible, as far as today's checkup showed. But he wasn't at all indifferent to Kizu's hopes.

"You are an American citizen, so after the pain starts I can be more free in prescribing medicine for you than I would be with a Japanese," the doctor said. "I'll be getting in touch with the surgeon who first operated on you in New Jersey. That's where I met your friend the professor who introduced you to me." After saying this, the doctor, who was much younger than Kizu, be- gan addressing him as Professor too. "You may not have a lot of time left, Professor, but you should be able to enjoy it to the fullest. Keep your spirits up! I feel like you've taught me that."

Kizu wondered about the childish enthusiasm of this statement. If my cancer can be fought through an operation or radiation therapy or medicine, he thought, even if it just means letting the doctor get his way, shouldn't he have challenged me to put up a good fight against my disease? Isn't he giving in too easily to my requests, implying-after just a simple examination--that my case is hopeless and the cancer will never go into remission?

"When you palpated my rectum your finger didn't seem to reach to the place where the cancer is," Kizu said, in a mischievous, sour-grapes sort of way. "Does this mean that when I have anal sex the penis won't hit the part that hurts?"

"Well, you can see how long my finger is," the doctor said, his earlier openness to Kizu now vanished.

In the taxi on the way home, though, Kizu couldn't forget what he'd said to tease the doctor. Well, he told himself, at least the hospital didn't grab me in its claws! But then he felt peeved: Was it really all right to announce so casually that he had terminal cancer? Not that he wanted to pin his hopes on some doctor newly returned from America and his latest high-tech machin- ery who might tell him that no, he didn't have cancer. Before long his own words came back to haunt him. There was no reason for him to suppress them.

Soon after he started teaching at the university in New Jersey, he had had an affair with a Jewish woman whom he later married. Her name was Naomi, and she'd lived with her former husband in Kobe; when he met her she had moved to New York and was writing her dissertation on the his- tory of comparative art, and Kizu helped her decipher some of the brush writing in an illustrated Muromachi-period book. To celebrate finishing that work they had dinner together, with some wine, and when he was waiting at the bus stop under an enormous hickory tree to see her off on her bus back to New York, they kissed. Kizu took the first step, but she responded enthusiastically. Naomi was a large woman, taller than Kizu, and she held his head to steady it as they kissed intimately-not the other way around.

Kizu was still young and his penis soon rose up and pressed against her belly.

As they waited for the bus on the boulevard in front of the university Naomi told him, after giving it a lot of thought, that she wouldn't mind going back to his apartment again.

He put clean sheets on the bed-not the right size ones, it turned out- and she began to, painfully, kiss his penis; he twisted to one side and began licking her strongly fragrant genitals; then, as he tried kissing her slightly reddish, cute little anus, Naomi called out in a small voice. After intercourse she told him about how her alcoholic ex-husband, when he did want sex, which wasn't too often, usually wanted anal sex. Taking this as a cue, Kizu tried it himself for the first time. She pulled apart her generous reddish but- tocks to help him, and Kizu, although his penis wasn't quite hard enough, was able to penetrate her. Afterward she told him, happily, that it was all so intense she wasn't even sure if she came or not. After they got married, though, their sex turned more solemn, and never again did they stray like this into forbidden fields.

In the taxi, Kizu remembered the way Naomi's fingers moved and be- came possessed by the idea of doing the same thing for Ikuo. He fantasized about being penetrated by Ikuo's penis in a similarly intense way, positive that if the two of them weren't able to reach that level of feeling, until the day death came to take him he never would.

If such thoughts were motivated by the fact that he had a clear case of cancer, couldn't this be seen as a positive response to his illness? But Kizu couldn't help feeling he was being silly about the whole thing and laughed at himself for acting like some doddering old geezer. Still, he couldn't shake the notion from his mind.

Ikuo was kept busy after the memorial service, and it was a week before he was able to return to Kizu's apartment. He came with Dancer to express their thanks to the building superintendent for allowing them to use the facilities, and the two of them went together with Kizu to the man's office.

The super was in a good mood, since the meeting place had been left so spic- and-span he didn't have to pay an extra fee to their regular janitorial com- pany to clean up.

Dancer left, so Kizu and Ikuo were able to lounge on the sofa in Kizu's atelier and talk. Perhaps concerned because they hadn't seen each other in a week, Ikuo tried to humor Kizu.

"Patron told me what you said to him: that you don't know what direc- tion his movement will take but as long I stay with it you'll stick with him."

"That's right," Kizu responded. "I really am interested in his new move- ment. You've helped me enter a new world I never would have found alone."

"That seems especially true since you came back from America."

"After all the trouble I'd taken to make a life over there, it wasn't easy giving up my home. I'd gotten far, I thought, but it didn't feel as if my life had taken a completely unexpected path. After coming back to Japan I felt really excited; for the first time in my life I didn't know what to anticipate.

At my age, though, such positive emotions are always counterbalanced by a sense of unease. At any rate, I'm not going to back down."

"I can sense that."

"Those feelings, though, don't guarantee I'll do a good job of succeed- ing in Guide's position. He was one of a kind."

"It's like there are two people inside Patron," Ikuo said, "one who has visions, the other who interprets them. Guide's role was to make that second person inside Patron speak. As I was listening to Patron at the memorial ser- vice, it came to me how much he had suffered after Guide's death. And I wondered whether, as he suffered, the person inside him who interprets the visions may have taken on a diflerent form. Taking that a step further, I began to wonder whether Patron might not be able to put his visions into or- dinary language now, without any outside help. If he can, maybe Guide's death was necessary for Patron to begin his new movement."

Kizu felt something was wrong with this and brought up a point he'd noticed a while back. "It's logical, what you said. Not that I mean you've been illogical up till now, it's just that the logic you're using here is different. I'm wondering whether some of the radical faction's way of thinking has rubbed off on you as you worked with them."

Ikuo gazed back with a watchful, penetrating gaze, as if staking out some prey he was about to pounce on.

"I've learned a lot by talking with them," he said. "Working with them at the memorial service taught me how capable they are and how strongly they feel their convictions. Patron's movement has been able to take shape through proposals that the Kansai headquarters has made, and there's been discussion about including them in the new movement in order to firm up the support base-along with the group of women we visited. It would be hard to make a go of this new church relying solely on the participation of individuals. This will mean, though, that the list Ogi compiled of contributors after the Som- ersault won't be of much use-"