Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"At this point I was busy with religious affairs in our Tokyo headquar- ters, while Guide spent all his time at the Izu Research Institute. He returned to our headquarters three times in two months. He made one trip on his own to get approval for a new research budget. They were gradually needing more and more funding for their activities. In other words, he came to withdraw some money from headquarters.

"The other times he came were to take care of me when I'd gone into a major trance and to work with me to put the vision I had into words. Through these trances the sense of mutual trust, the basic need we had for each other, was renewed. However, the days we spent together gradually produced an awkward atmosphere between us.

"Whenever he heard that I'd fallen into a trance, Guide would race back from the Izu Research Institute. Each time he'd bring the hopes and fears of his scientists with him: their burning desire to know when the order would come to take action, the hope that I would provide the vision that would make this clear. Each working at their own tasks, the physicists and the chemists were uneasy about the struggle that lay ahead.

"Once a certain amount of preparation is laid, it's hard to have to wait forever. They'd taken the first step and were fearful that the long arm of the law might reach out to seize them. Until their plan was put into action, they were anxious, too, about whether their faith would hold out. Guide reported to me that some of the female researchers had appealed to him about this.

"But when I was on the other side, I received no instructions. Guide pressed me, and when I was about to enter a trance I would pray to be given an order to give them, so they could take action. I wanted this so much, and I prayed as I went into a trance, and it was all quite painful and trying. In the end when I returned, completely spent, the message that Guide heard from me and reworked into ordinary language told them neither to take action nor to desist.

"After one of these deep trances, when I was exhausted and recovering in bed, Guide became terribly irritated and spoke to me more gruffly than he ever had before.

"Stop fabricating things, he told me, just because you say you can't get any orders from the other side. I'm your Prophet, you know-and also for those serious, outstanding young people who want repentance more than anything, I'm their Prophet as well!

"As I looked back at Guide, who was glaring at me as he sat in a low chair beside me, folding his long legs, I realized he'd seen through my phony vision, and I felt ashamed.

"Knowing full well that I was lying, Guide had still gone ahead and interpreted it as I wanted him to, transmitting it to the young people who'd sent me the petition. Not only that, he'd done everything in his power to aid the researchers who, encouraged by my words, had begun making concrete plans to put them into practice. He'd been so earnest about restructuring the research institute, doing all he could to accomplish this and passing along the questions the researchers had for me. And yet he knew I was lying! How did he know that?

"After all these years with me, had Guide lost confidence in the one who pointed toward the end of the world? And in desperation had he made a gamble? While fabricating a vision, I was trying to convince myself that as long as there was not a second vision that denied the first one, that meant it was con- firmed. Most likely Guide, my longtime spiritual companion, felt the same way.

"After having invited the young people to take action, and having done his utmost to aid their preparations, wasn't he afraid-just at the stage when they would be putting their plans into action-to admit that whatever they did from now on had nothing to do with the will of the other side? Weren't his misgivings the same exact things I was afraid of? The thought made me shudder.

"Events quickly moved toward the Somersault. I assume you saw the farce on television. Here I'll just touch on the how it came about and the plan we put together with the authorities.

"The idea for the Somersault was quite sudden. Already the relation- ship between Guide and me was strained. One evening he arrived unan- nounced. He stormed into my bedroom and yelled at me that the young people had decided to implement their own insurrection. They were going to occupy several nuclear power plants. This would mean not only their own deaths but the annihilation of the church. 'They have to be stoppedV Guide shouted. I don't have the power to do it, and neither do you, but we have to do something drastic!'

"I hesitated to hear the plan Guide had already formulated. I blamed him and asked him why the young people in the research institute decided to take action unilaterally. Guide said that since yesterday they'd been insisting they also could hear-all on their own-a voice from the other side.

"I was frantic. I'd fabricated a message to the young people to the effect that God was ordering them to start in a new direction. But hadn't this been God tricking me into an unconscious self-defensive maneuver because I didn't want to hear His actual frightening voice?

"And now, carrying things one step further, when both my conscious and unconscious were doing their utmost to reject this, wasn't I being tricked again by a different strategy-the young radical faction's own collective illu- sion-that made all resistance futile?

"Guide could see how shaken I was. He glared at me; he said, 'I won't let either you or the young people in Izu destroy our church. If I have to drag you around with a rope around your neck, I'm going to make sure you take responsibility for this! Those folks in Izu will learn their lesson!'

"As all of you saw on television, I had to do some things that were far more shameful than being dragged around with a rope around my neck. The ones who suffered even more directly because of the Somersault, though, were those members of the shock corps of the radical faction, especially those re- sponsible for the Threshold Crosser device. A hurried meeting was held between us and the police, the federal authorities, and executives of the power company. We decided that my Somersault announcement would avoid any mention of this device. Mr. Omuro, though taken into custody, not only avoided going to trial but vanished altogether. There are rumors he escaped to an American military base on Okinawa. Some say he was given a series of electroshock treatments and completely lost his memory. Others say they've seen him wandering among the homeless on the streets. Another rumor has it he was stabbed to death by the yakuza. This worried Guide most of all. This was the most base and cruel outcome that Guide feared would happen because of the Somersault.

"During that period I felt a great joy and at the same time a deep fear.

Because I was convinced that God existed, in a realm beyond my arbitrari- ness. Even if it was a useless bit of resistance, I wanted to betray and deny that God. I was resolved to do that."

Patron's talk was serving as an inaugural sermon for their new chapel.

Sitting nearby, Ogi could tell how deeply moved Ikuo was by what he heard, though he himself had a hard time following it all. At this point Dancer raised up her pale face and spoke.

"I'd like to hear from Ikuo too," she said. "You're a new member who had nothing to do with the church before the Somersault. But you'd been interested in Patron for a long time and got close to him very quickly."

"You'll have to take my background into consideration," Ikuo answered briefly, still under the spell of Patron's magnetism.

"Why don't you start there," Dancer said. "I don't fully understand the reasons why you were so attracted by Patron that you became an ardent mem- ber of the church almost immediately. I know you said you came to the office originally to see me, someone you'd come into contact with a long time ago who was now working for the founder of the church, but that's not the whole story. You knew quite a lot about the Somersault already, didn't you?"