Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “I don’t know Dr. Koga very well,” Kizu said, “but I know that through the events of ten years ago, and even now, he’s a fanatically confident follower. But as I said, I’m lukewarm about this idea. The only reason I’m moving to Shikoku is because the young man I like is going there. I can’t believe it myself sometimes that I’m doing such a bizarre thing in my condition.”

  “No, I’m sure you gave it a lot of thought before you decided.”

  The doctor smiled for the first time that day—albeit a weak smile—and saw Kizu out. Afterward, as Kizu was waiting in line one floor below to pay his bill, the doctor passed right by him on his way to the staff bathroom, his face looking unexpectedly old and worried.

  16: The Clinician

  1

  Ikuo delivered the letter and records to Dr. Koga’s clinic right away. Kizu had wanted to go over to say hello personally, but Dr. Koga was busy tying up loose ends before their move to Shikoku. Ikuo relayed a message from the doctor that he couldn’t spare the time right now and would see Kizu later; holding out hope because he’d said later, Ikuo took it upon himself to see that things proceeded in that direction.

  Dr. Koga had been raised in an area behind the Tokyo University Hospital, where his father worked, and the only traveling he’d ever done before now was plane trips to academic conferences in the Kansai region, Kyushu, and points in between. The village they were heading to in Shikoku had a clinic but no regular doctor; since he would be taking charge of the facilities, Dr. Koga had already gone there once to consult about the clinic. Since that trip was by plane, from Haneda airport to Matsuyama, when it came time to move to Shikoku he said he hoped they could make the whole trip by train.

  After many years in America, and knowing he wouldn’t have another chance to travel by train across Japan, Kizu also thought it would be nice to see scenery different from that in which he’d been raised as he journeyed to the site of his final abode. Ikuo picked up on this idea and arranged for Dr. Koga and Kizu to travel by train, accompanied by himself and a former member of the Izu Research Institute. They were to leave Tokyo a little before 11 A.M. on the Nozomi bullet train. Something over three hours later, they would arrive in Okayama, where they’d change to the Shiokaze; from there they’d cross over to Shikoku on the Seto Bridge and take the Yosan Line, arriving in Matsuyama after 5 P.M. At the JR train station in Matsuyama they’d meet up with Patron, who was traveling by plane, and the church members coming by minivan, and then everyone would head by car to the forest.

  When Ikuo reminded him that the train trip alone would take six hours, Kizu was surprised not by the length but by how short it was. Just to get from his college town in New Jersey up to Boston sometimes took just as long, if you had a bad connection. But Kizu was a bit on edge, worrying about all the time he’d be spending together with Dr. Koga, whom he barely knew. Aware of this, Ikuo bought two sets of Green Car luxury tickets for seats apart from each other. Kizu and Dr. Koga would each have window seats, with Ikuo sitting beside Kizu and the former Izu researcher beside Dr. Koga.

  Most of their luggage was being sent by rented truck, so Kizu and Dr. Koga were able to travel light, with one bag each. For their part, their seat mates had taken on the task of transporting the vacuum tube amplifier that Patron had been using for years and the video equipment of Ms. Asuka, who would be joining them in Shikoku sometime later.

  While Kizu searched for the right train car, Ikuo and a man in his mid-thirties were at the front of the platform loading two crates as large as the steamer trunks foreigners travel with. By the time Kizu boarded, the two crates were already stowed aboard. Ikuo introduced the older man as Mr. Hanawa. The latter merely bowed his head in greeting and sat down, leaving the window seat open for Dr. Koga, who had yet to appear, and began reading a book in a foreign language with all sorts of formulas in it.

  Three minutes before the train was to pull out of the station, Dr. Koga appeared at the front entrance of the car and strode toward them with the same firm steps he’d shown at the memorial service. Four or five rows ahead of Kizu, Dr. Koga came to a halt where Mr. Hanawa was reading and, hunting cap still on his head, greeted him enthusiastically and swung his bag onto the overhead rack. He removed his duffel coat, which was made of the same deerskin pattern as his cap, and, now in a blue long-sleeve shirt, settled down in the window seat. As Kizu watched him from behind, he worried that, like any city dweller concerned about the weather in the kind of backwoods area they were headed, perhaps Dr. Koga had brought an overly heavy coat.

  Kizu was impressed by the no-nonsense way Dr. Koga didn’t try to locate his other traveling companions in the flurry just before the train was to leave. Just before he put his suitcase in the overhead rack, Dr. Koga had taken out a thick book that he was now engrossed in; Mr. Hanawa didn’t speak to him, and neither did Ikuo stand up to walk over and say hello. Even so, it was clear that Ikuo and Mr. Hanawa were attentive to their duties as escorts. It had been a long time since Kizu had felt so at ease in the midst of people he didn’t know and he settled back, giving himself up to the motion of the train.

  Even after they left the cities surrounding Tokyo, the hills and valleys were filled with houses, and in the rare patches of greenery, bulldozers were busily scraping away the last vestiges of nature. In America one would never find such uniform scenery like this. Kizu was surprised to see, on the slope of one mountain, a row of twenty identical houses. The scenery was moving by at a faster clip than he remembered. He spied some tall buildings crowded together beside a river in a valley between two steep mountain slopes and suspected they were in a region of hot springs, though he wondered whether there really was a hot springs so near to Tokyo. Meanwhile, after passing through a short tunnel they went through the city of Atami. The Bullet train lived up to its name.

  Mount Fuji suddenly appeared, like a raised dark-gray plane, and three lines of leftover snow on it flowed by as streaks of dull white. After this, mountains and forests appeared only sporadically between the towns. Kizu had always had a mental image of train travel in Japan as express trains running past rice fields and mountain forests, and all the towns made him feel a bit uncomfortable. He turned to Ikuo beside him and grumbled out a complaint.

  “One of my colleagues at the institute traveled in Japan and told me the whole country’s nothing but cities and suburbs. I told him to try taking a long-distance train. ‘You’ll see some pastoral scenery, real Japanese hills and fields; once you change to a local line it’ll be even more like that,’ I insisted. But look at this—it’s all houses or roads or construction sites for new subdivisions. And we’ve been traveling for an hour at least.”

  “On Hokkaido, though,” Ikuo said, “all you’ll see from the train is mountains and fields. I’m sure that once we cross the Seto Bridge and start into Shikoku there’ll be a lot more natural scenery.”

  “You mean until then it’s all like this? I was looking forward to chatting with Dr. Koga while we enjoyed looking out at the mountains or the sea. Japan’s certainly not what I expected.”

  “Now that you’ve given up on the scenery,” Ikuo said, in a rare joking way, “maybe it’s about time to start talking with Dr. Koga? It’s a long trip, and I suppose he felt in no hurry to come over.”

  “Maybe he’s holding back on my account. We’re all going to be one big happy family from now on, so I suppose it’s high time I changed and stopped being so standoffish.”

  The relaxed feelings the trip had engendered in Kizu brought on this remark, but Ikuo’s response was blunt. “You got that right. I think you will have to change,” he said. “I’ll switch seats with Dr. Koga. The scenery won’t be rural for quite some time.”

  2

  Ikuo took Dr. Koga’s seat, while the doctor strode over to where Kizu was sitting. Under thick eyebrows a smile much younger than his years sparkled in his deep-set eyes; he sat down and without any real greeting launched into the topic of Kizu’s physical condition.

  “The doctor
you consulted in Tokyo was a year or so behind me in medical school. When things got out of hand during the student movement period he transferred to a university in California. He’s a man who knows how to get ahead, I’ll give him that. When you look at how efficiently he handles things like getting me to take over your case, you’ll see I’m no match for him.

  “The place where we’ll be living is an hour and a half from the Red Cross Hospital in Matsuyama—provided the traffic’s light. Some areas in the Tokyo area are even farther from a decent hospital, so I wouldn’t worry if I were you. I will do whatever’s necessary.”

  Kizu didn’t expect to hear anything more at this point from the doctor who’d be caring for him. He nodded, relaxed by Dr. Koga’s smile.

  “We’ll be together from now on so there’s no need to rush, but I do have some questions I’d like to ask, if that’s all right?” Dr. Koga looked ready to stand up and leave if Kizu hesitated.

  “Yes, I’d like that,” Kizu said. “The reason I haven’t come over to talk with you is that I’ve been looking out the window, waiting impatiently for us to get someplace where there aren’t any more buildings or roads. Now that I think about it, though, it’s silly to imagine they’d build a bullet train through remote mountains and valleys.”

  Dr. Koga settled back down in his seat and gazed out the window. He seemed to speak only when he wanted to discuss the business at hand, which Kizu found refeshing.

  “Did your doctor explain the symptoms of your disease to you clearly?” Dr. Koga asked. “Typically, that only happens when an immediate operation is indicated, at which point the patient gets pretty busy, with little time to consider the situation carefully. When you were given the prognosis, though, you didn’t have an operation—you didn’t have any proper treatment, either. Instead, you’ve done what most patients don’t get a chance to do—think deeply about your condition. I’d like to ask you, not out of simple curiosity but as a physician: Has this prognosis brought about any psychological change?”

  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 feeling 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 conscious 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 university, 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 factories, 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 always 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 actively 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 himself and for Guide.”

  Though he’d been trying to keep his voice down, Dr. Koga’s clear enunciation 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 necktie, 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 Japanese 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 worried 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 curiosity 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 attracted 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 bordering 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 internship, 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.

  “I went to med school because of my mother. The last four generations in my family had studied at Tekijuku, and as far as my mother was concerned if I didn’t go there I could forget about the future. If you look at my name it’s all too clear—my given name is written with the same character as the teki in Tekijuku. My mother’s father was a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and it was my mother who really wanted to marry my father, who was a doctor.