Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"I find this absolutely fascinating! Isn't Patron the very image of Le Treize? At least I'd like to think so. Amazingly, just when I felt this way, here you come along saying you want to work for him. I'll do what I can to help you out."

Ogi returned to the office from Hibiya and reported excitedly to Dancer about his conversation with the Chairman. She herself had just returned from the hospital, where she'd spent time with the still-unconscious Guide, mas- saging him to improve his circulation, none too good after lying so long in a hospital bed. This weekend, after tests to determine if he was able to with- stand it, he would undergo an operation to prevent hydrocephalus. When he heard this, Patron had taken to his bed again.

As Ogi reported on his meeting with the Chairman, Dancer's attitude was noncommittal. He found it easy to talk with her-that is, until he mentioned, jokingly, the Chairman's talk about Le Treize, which he'd omitted up till then, thinking it irrelevant. Dancer got suddenly irritated, and before he knew it things escalated to the point where she threw some fairly scathing remarks his way. Too late, he listened carefully, reflected on what she said, and realized that although he'd taken the Chairman's story of Le Treize as so much boastful talk, Dancer saw it as part of a serious evaluation of Patron and Guide.

"Are you really such an ineffectual person?" she asked him. "When I was a child I couldn't stand boys like you, I couldn't believe people could be that indecisive! You're like one of those boys all grown up. Don't think the name Innocent Youth that Patron and Guide gave you is entirely positive. I don't know what to do with people like you!"

Ogi was startled and couldn't help asking why.

"Don't you get it?" Dancer went on. "What you said isn't just weak, it's irresponsible!"

She wasn't so much disappointed as angry. Ogi felt confused but also sensed that she wasn't about to release him from the cage that surrounded him but was tightening the rope that bound them together, showing the kind of displeasure you find only between family members. For even in a situa- tion like this, though her voice grew ever more emphatic, he could detect a kind of trembling in her sad, whispery voice.

"Patron is shut up inside himself, in no shape whatsoever to give direc- tions, and even if Guide regains consciousness the chances are slim that he'll return to normal. You're the only one we can rely on!

"You knew how worried I was, so you put your assignment in Sapporo on hold and flew down here. These past ten days you've devoted yourself to helping us, and I'm grateful. You know very well the situation we're in, which is why you quit the foundation to work full time as a staff member in our office. When I heard you were quitting, I finally stopped worrying about you being a police spy."

"A police spy?" Ogi parroted.

"Really! You're beyond innocent. You know what happened ten years ago, right? I got this position because my father was a classmate of Guide's in college. So it wouldn't have been so strange that they might have thought me a police spy. But Patron and Guide welcomed me, provided me with a place to live in Tokyo, and let me develop my dancing. I'll never forget that. I have no idea what plans they have for the future, so I don't think I can be of much use to them as they restructure their religious movement. But I want to work for Patron. I want to be a believer.

"This is getting kind of personal, but I wanted more than anything to continue dancing, and when I came to Tokyo without any plans it was Patron who showed me what I really want to do most. Guide, too. Neither of them have said much to me about religious matters. You've only seen the severe side of Guide. It might be hard for you to imagine, but when you're a part of the peaceful relationship between the two of them, before you realize what's happening you find them leading you in new directions. Every day with them is simply amazing. I enjoy my dancing more, now, and I want to be- come one of Patron's followers. But suddenly, in the middle of all this, Guide's seriously ill.

With Guide unconscious and Patron in shock, all I can do is try my hest to get Patron back on his feet, right? Since I have no one else to rely on, 1 phoned you in Sapporo and insisted that you come here, and you've been more of a help than I ever expected.

This is what I think: Patron and Guide know I'm not very smart and don t have even a basic knowledge of religion, and that's why they never dis- cussed it with me. But I know how special the two of them are, and I've al- Ways done my very best for them. Now you're one of my colleagues and you know things I don't; you can teach me a lot, and I'm looking forward to it.

This may well be the chance for you to become my new mentor."

Dancer had never spoken so much before, but what surprised Ogi most was her final declaration. He'd been looking down as he listened to her, but now he glanced up and saw her staring right at him, mouth slightly open as usual, a steady stream of tears flowing down her cheeks. He knew he was a young man without much experience, yet at this moment Dancer struck him as even more wet behind the ears. Observing her in a detached way he never had before, he found her silly, even a bit unattractive, yet he went ahead and did something quite unexpected. Well, what else can I do? he asked himself, a generous sense of resignation coursing through him.

Ogi wrapped his arms around Dancer's slim yet solid neck and shoul- ders and drew her to him. He eased her crying face closer and kissed her thin lips.

At first Ogi was the initiator, but then Dancer leaned forward from the edge of the armchair she was sitting in and deliberately returned his kiss; she placed her left knee on the floor, nudged Ogi back in that direction, and rested her left leg on top of his right thigh. Their long kiss continued, Dancer rest- lessly rubbing her firm belly against Ogi's thigh; her fragrant breath grazed his neck for a moment. Dancer became an unexpectedly heavy weight, strain- ing his awkwardly bent back.

After a while she roused herself and gazed down abashedly at Ogi, lying there in an unnatural pose. "Not to worry," she said. "It won't be easy, but if we work together we can protect Patron!" With this she disappeared into the bathroom and then went off to Patron's room.

After a while Ogi sat up on the sofa and went to relieve himself in the guest toilet next to the front door. He gazed down steadily at his engorged, tor- mented penis. Then he picked up the hand mirror hanging by a ribbon next to the sink and examined a large blood blister that had developed inside his cheek.

"How did that all happen? This is too much!" he said pointedly to himself.

But a light feeling, a desire to be productive, welled up in him and he returned to the living-dining room to check out the way things were arranged in the corner where, starting today, he would work. Guide had his own resi- dence in a separate annex and apparently did all his work there. Since Ogi would be a member of Patron's office staff, the only place he could possibly work was here in the living room. Ogi checked out the telephone and fax, set up on a low wide partition separating the dining room from the living room.

Below this was a generous amount of storage space and a bookshelf for stor- ing fax equipment. In the east corner of the dining room was a mammoth desk twice the size of an ordinary study desk, and opening the drawers he found some brand-new disposable fountain pens, neatly sharpened soft lead pencils, and a set of thick German-made colored pencils. He'd seen Dancer seated there, busy at work.

On the west side of the living room the bookshelf above the sofa still had plenty of space in it, and between the back of the sofa and the partition were filing cabinets and a level board that could be used as a sideboard. Next to the wall on the east side of the living room, beside the TV and VCR, slightly removed from the side facing the garden, was an oblong object with a cover over it; Ogi discovered it was a copy machine.