Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

Gazing at the peaceful line of hills and the gentle green slopes, and with the beer taking effect, Dr. Koga's expression softened, though soon a deep- seated tension returned.

"To respond to your comments in reverse order, it's very important for us to have an outsider like yourself in our midst, to give us a fresh perspective on our faith in Patron. Ten years ago, not entirely at Guide's instigation, the religious fervor of those of us at the Izu Institute reached a climax. This reached a peak with the Somersault, and of all Patron's followers we're the ones who feel the greatest gap between before and after. In terms of giving us room to maneuver, it's much more helpful to have someone from outside the faith work with us rather than just be a monolithic church. And this should be even more true of Patron, I would think."

"So I wonder," Kizu said, steeling himself to ask, "if you would tell me, an outsider to the faith, how you came to know Patron and Guide?"

Dr. Koga bent his nicely shaped head, with its receding hairline, and gazed at his hands in his lap. When he spoke, it was more slowly and with more controlled emphasis than before.

"It's always hard to tell another person about how your faith began, even to someone who shares it… I think that's especially true for me. My mother and I lived alone, just the two of us for a long time, and I let her take care of everything. After she died and we had to handle the inheritance, I didn't even know where she kept her official seal or which documents were necessary.

My aunt came to straighten everything out, but first we had to locate the seal and bankbook. My aunt scoured the house from top to bottom but came up empty-handed, so we ended up seeking the help of a psychic everyone said was quite good. This happened to be Patron, who at the time had a little church with some thirty followers.

"Patron and Guide were still running their fortune-telling venture on the side to make the money needed to run their church. I went to see them with my aunt, the first time in a long while I'd left the house. Patron's church was in Kita-ku, near Asukayama.

"We'd gone out merely to have a psychic help us locate our lost items, but once we met Patron he began to ask us all sorts of detailed questions about my mother's and my life together. I was pretty surprised but did my best to answer each question. It was not only painful for me to touch other people or to be touched, I said, but I also had trouble communicating, yet even though I'd just met Patron, surprisingly I had no problem at all talking with him.

"After I finished speaking, Patron said there was something my mother's great-grandfather had had when he was a student at Tekijuku, something packed away inside a large wooden trunk. Actually among our family heir- looms my mother did talk about a Dutch-Japanese dictionary, kept in a large wooden trunk. When I told him this, Patron told me that the seal, bankbook, and other important documents were all in there as well. The lost is found, he said, a cheerful look on his face. And indeed my aunt, who had gone home ahead of me, phoned to say that the psychic had been right on the money.

"So I accomplished all I'd set out to do in visiting Patron's church. I felt more relieved than I had in a long time, and should have left at that point. But I found the chair facing Patron's low armchair more comfortable than any other chair I'd ever sat in, and I sank down into it. And I thought I'd like to have him hear what's really important. Patron seemed willing, and at his insistence I re- moved my dark-colored swimming goggles and began speaking."

"So that's how I came to talk, with an enthusiasm I hadn't known for ages, about the predicament I'd found myself in to this plump little middle- aged man who gazed at me with this engrossed look on his face. As I talked I had an increasingly objective feeling toward what I was saying, the contents becoming so concrete I could almost reach out and touch them. By this point Patron was already healing me-in fact he was halfway there. When I was about half finished I got up to use the toilet, and when I looked in the mirror, I thought miserably that my eyes in my unshaven face had the impassioned, feverish look of some young kid in love.

"After washing my face I calmed down a bit, and now it was Patron's turn to do the talking. This was the first of many sermons.

'"We live in a fallen world,' he began. 'Everything in the world is fallen-from the earth, to the oceans, to the air itself. The same holds true for human beings, who are perhaps the most fallen of all. So isn't it natural, then, for someone who realizes this to feel it's disgusting and dirty to touch other bodies as well as his own? Even myself, for a few days after I've gone over to the spirit world through a trance, I hate touching things and people in this fallen world of ours. I even can't stand the smell of the air and can barely breathe. Since I wouldn't survive that way, I train myself to be thick-skinned.

'"Isn't the predicament you're in a lot like the one I'm in right after I return from the realm of the spirits? You're not suffering from some nervous condition, you're expressing a purifying awakening of the soul. In order to survive in a fallen world, though, you have to acclimatize yourself, which is not an impossible task. Think about it. If your own body is dirty and fallen, touching other people's bodies, still less your own, isn't going to intensify the overall level of filth, now, is it?

'"What you need to be aware of is that your soul is alive inside this fallen world, inside your fallen body. You're suffering because your soul is oppressed, because your soul is awakening. Your soul is not fallen, but as long as it's in this fallen world, because the temporary container your soul is in, your body, is dirty, and the world that surrounds that body is dirty, your soul will in- deed suffer. You must not annihilate the purity of your suffering soul. It's hard work to survive as a pure soul in this fallen world.'

"I listened to Patron with an openness I'd never had before and sud- denly felt liberated from the pride and arrogance that had always kept me tied down and hopeless. The world is fallen, and my body is polluted-this struck me as it never had before. Was that why I'd been suffering, why I drove my mother to a desperate death? That being said, how could I snuff out my fallen body from this polluted world as quickly as possible? Why was I fol- lowing an animal survival instinct that kept me from doing that? I didn't think what my mother did was wrong, and on a conscious level at least I don't fear death.

'"That's because you're listening to the voice of your soul,' Patron told me. 'Extinguishing your polluted body in this polluted world does not mean your soul will break all ties with the world and return to a world before the Fall. And if that's the case, this fallen world itself has a certain significance, doesn't it?

'"As long as you don't find a solution here, in this fallen world, no mat- ter where you run your soul will be in the same predicament. Escaping this world is not a guarantee of salvation. So you're outfitted with flesh and your soul is calling out to you. It's a tragic thing, but your mother was mistaken in refusing to listen to that voice.

'"People who hear the voice of the soul must do this: Wake up to the fact that our world is a fallen world, that humans are polluted beings, repent, and await the end of the world. Many people have heard the voice of the soul, which means the end time must not be far off. In fact, it is almost upon us.

Anyone who hears the soul's voice must, as a penitent person, prepare for that coming and take the initiative to welcome it. You're not the only one who has awakened in this way, though not many have suffered as much as you.