Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

Kizu mentioned what came to mind first. "My sense of time has changed," he said. "Actually, I'd been feeling that change even before this latest diagnosis-which made me realize all over again how I'd been feel- ing that way for some time. This might not be the answer you're looking for, though."

"No, what I wanted to find out was exactly that, whether you'd felt this way before."

"There's one example I can give you," Kizu said. "At the beginning of last week, Okinawa was hit directly by a typhoon, and it affected the weather in Tokyo, making it unusually warm. That afternoon I was resting in bed.

And I felt then that the passage of time perfectly suited me. It wasn't just a fleeting notion but something I'd been feeling the entire morning: a calm sense of satisfaction, I suppose. As if the world's clock and my internal spiritual clock-my soul, if you will-were completely in sync.

"I'm sure I'm not unique in this regard, but when I first became con- scious of time as a child I already felt that the world moved too slowly. Say I was told to wait somewhere for an hour; it seemed so long I couldn't stand it.

And when I thought of living ten, twenty years-one hour piled on top of another-it scared the wits out of me. Then I realized I'd already lived three years, or five years, or whatever it was, and with the inevitability of death I'd already used up a measurable portion of the finite amount of time allotted me, and that frightened me too.

"When I reached my thirties and forties and was teaching in the uni- versity, however, it made me choke up when I felt how fast time raced by, particularly the spring semester. I felt this in chunks of a day or a week, and I could see the free time between teaching that I wanted to use for my own painting eroding right before my eyes.

"Time was either at a standstill or racing by, and either way it didn't fit my own internal clock. Now, though, I've come to feel that Time with a capital T and my individual sense of time are a perfect fit."

Dr. Koga was staring out the window at a line of woods streaming by that was unblemished by buildings or roads, his gaze all the more intent for the knowledge that this scene would soon disappear. And when he spoke his voice was content, not just with what he saw but with what he'd heard. "It's a good feeling, a sense of balance, I suppose," he said.

"I'm just an ordinary person," Kizu went on, "so before long my inner clock will get out of tempo with the world again, going either too fast or too slow, which makes me all the more reluctant to give up this sense of time-in- sync I've been having lately. It's the sensation that I'm less an animal and more like a plant."

Soon the scene outside the train window revealed a cluster of facto- ries, all built in the same rounded-off style, bunched together in a small oasis.

Dr. Koga turned to Kizu.

"What you've experienced is a sense of time that transcends the human," he said. "I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me similar to the feeling I got in meeting Patron again and experiencing his sense of time. It's as though he's set his internal clock to run at the same time as the late Guide."

Kizu looked out at farmhouses racing by, one after another, each home surrounded by an expanse of rice fields, each with a stand of sturdy-looking oak trees. Kizu had never seen such richly hued young leaves as filled the branches of the oaks.

"I know what you mean about Patron being unique," Kizu said. "It al- ways strikes me that all I can see of him now is the Patron part of him. It's like half-maybe just a quarter-of him is on this side, but the larger portion is on the other side, invisible. I think there's some overlap between this and what you said about Patron being with Guide, who's gone to the other side."

"I was singled out for Guide's project at the Izu workshop," Dr. Koga said, "but I belonged to Patron's church well before that. When Guide was staying in Izu and was engrossed in things he seemed pitiful, somehow, as if he and Patron, who were always together, were like twins, and Guide had been yanked away from his other half.

"Not long ago some of my colleagues took Guide captive, and you know what happened next. I think they wanted to get back to the kind of intimate relationship they had with him back in Izu, apart from Patron.

Having known the kind of relationship the two of them had in the church, that was probably a move in the wrong direction. Even though I wasn't ac- tively involved, when Guide died-like one twin forcibly separated from the other-I realized what a horrible thing I'd been a part of. And when I met Patron again it felt to me like he was now living for the two of them, for him- self and for Guide."

Though he'd been trying to keep his voice down, Dr. Koga's clear enun- ciation was enough for the people seated around them to hear. However, the man across from them in the aisle seat, dressed in a blue suit and narrow neck- tie, had on a pair of earphones and his nose stuck in a weekly magazine; next to him, in the window seat, was one of those middle-aged matrons Kizu could never see in Japan without feeling on edge, decked out in a Chanel suit and Hermès scarf, who-and Kizu found this strange as well-like most Japa- nese women as soon as they sat down in a train, was napping.

"They want me to work beside Patron to help fill in the gap left by Guide, but I'm not an extraordinary man like he was," Kizu said, not wor- ried about those around him hearing. "It's not so much that Patron has agreed to this, but more like what you said, that Guide is alive within him even now. He's defined my role as historian for the new church. The best I can do, I think, is to keep an illustrated journal of the events that take place."

Koga gazed at Kizu, his expression filled with a kind of childish curi- osity that made one think how well brought up he was.

"An illustrated journal-what a wonderful idea! One with professional drawings, no less. You know, when my shock-troop colleagues were arrested and interrogated they couldn't answer the questions well, so they handed over an illustrated journal instead, minus any text. The police leaked this to the press and it appeared in newspapers and magazines. I was taken aback by how childish and grotesque their drawings were.

"This group were the best and the brightest in the fields of chemistry, physics, and engineering, but they were part of a very visual generation, raised on comic books, that can express things more easily in drawings than in words.

Guide, myself, and the other older people there treated these youngsters as true intellectuals, but when I saw those drawings I saw for the first time how immature and dark their inner worlds were.

"The media claimed that the radical faction at the Izu Institute was at- tracted less by religion than by the magnificent research facilities, but I'm convinced it was their own suffering and fears that attracted them to Patron's teachings."

"What about yourself?" Kizu asked. "You're well known for your medical research, and you don't appear to me to be going through any inner turmoil."

Dr. Koga didn't answer right away but, with a calm expression border- ing on the gloomy, he stared down at the hands in his lap, agile sturdy-looking hands, Kizu thought. "I don't know if this will provide material for your illustrated journal, but I'm quite the opposite from what you imagine. If it hadn't been for Patron's support I never would have survived the past fifteen years. I rely on Patron totally. If I hadn't met him I never would have escaped from a horrendous situation.

"After I graduated from medical school and had just finished my in- ternship, I found myself in a frightful state that I thought I couldn't survive.

All the confusion going on with the student movement had something to do with it, but in the end it boiled down to a personal matter, which manifested itself in an inability to touch other people's skin. I was desperate. Not only couldn't I perform my duties as a doctor, I was not even sure I'd be able to go on living.