Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “There is a God,” Patron said, “a God who is the whole of nature, who encompasses everything, your spirit and body included. Even these ideas that have arisen from your unusual life were already included in the principles that God created for the world.”

  From the moment that Satchan entered the chapel where Ogi and the others were waiting, and sat down in the row of chairs lined up beside the podium facing Patron, every church member was impressed. She was a beautiful woman, but something about her also gave the impression of a mild-featured man. She was also quite tall for a Japanese woman. Her curly hair, mixed with white, fell in a natural way on both sides of her prominent forehead. Her face had not the slightest trace of fat. In the way she looked straight at Patron as she spoke to him, you could sense an independent tough-minded spirit but also a clear open-mindedness brought about by her experience.

  “I came here because I wanted to meet the people who are taking over the building used by the Church of the Flaming Green Tree,” Satchan went on, “and also because I feel responsible to the local people here for your activities. People in your group were involved in some major terrorist activities, so the mayor and members of the town council asked us to find out what sort of group was moving in here. We do recognize, mind you, that your Somersault put a stop to the radical faction’s plans.

  “We had a group in our church, too, that began to make waves, and as we confronted this we began to steer the church back to the small gatherings with which it began. Right at that critical juncture we lost our leader, and our church fell apart. But your church is getting back on its feet, with this region as your stage. My main concern is that this radical faction might once again play a major role.”

  “I quite understand your concern,” Patron said. “Our church started out much like yours, and until it reached a certain size it was basically just a prayer group. There was another person who made this group with me and helped me run it—Guide, the man whose terrible death I’m sure you’ve heard about. His idea was to gather together young people who’d been specially trained in the sciences, and he created the Izu Research Center for them.

  “While living there communally, these young people continued research in their special fields, and as they began reflecting on their own faith they started debating the entire direction the church was taking. In the end they came up with their own unique course of action, which could be summarized like this: Their faith tells them the end of the world is near, which allows them to repent and prepare themselves as righteous people. As the righteous, then, they call on all mankind to repent. But how exactly do you go about preaching repentance to the masses? The church was pretty vague on this point, and the young people needed a clear-cut model, so they began concentrating on a concrete direction their ideas could take. In the end they went past the point of no return.

  “At the time I was at the Tokyo headquarters, my role that of spiritual leader for the ordinary followers in their walk of faith. Guide was in charge of keeping contact with the Izu Research Institute. Which isn’t to say he was in charge of the movement that was starting there—he wasn’t. The institute was self-governing.

  “Guide would take the funding that the Tokyo headquarters had allotted to the institute and hand it over to their accountant. But he refused to exert any direct influence on the management of the institute. He was more like their sponsor. When things were pretty much all set up the way they wanted, he took me there to deliver a sermon, but I’m sure he never spoke to them on his own about faith. The self-governing board of the institute selected board members whose job it was to oversee everything—from all the various research projects to matters of faith.

  “Guide wanted to make a research facility free of the archaic structures of universities, and by word of mouth he gathered together a group of researchers who felt stifled in their former institutions. Naturally, he also chose people who were already members of the church—people who’d graduated from college or graduate school and were already working, but suffered setbacks, either through illness or car accidents or the like. People who went through rehabilitation and then entered the church. One of those people was Dr. Koga, who’ll be in charge of the clinic in the Old Town.

  “Some of these people were hoping to use their research at the institute as a stepping-stone, a way to circumvent Japanese academia and obtain a position in an American or European university. If anything, Guide was happy with this sort of ambition. He often stayed over at the Izu Institute, and when he returned he couldn’t stop telling me, despite my complete ignorance of all these cutting-edge scientific fields, about how well these young researchers were progressing.”

  3

  “The people at the institute,” Patron continued, “were dyed-in-the-wool scientists. Also, as I’ve said, there were people who, in university, graduate school, or at work, had suffered various disappointments and frustrations. But thanks to the wonderful facilities, experimental lab apparatus, and the free system of research at the institute, these people once again came face-to-face with the crisis they thought they’d solved—a more fundamental crisis, one they began to see included spiritual questions.

  “They also began to take a good hard look at the religious aspect of the church. Some of the members sent me a list of requests, which made me appreciate how tense the situation was there. The members who wanted to see me were ones I had personal memories of, who after renouncing the world had joined the church before being selected as members of the research institute. And this is what they told me:

  “Our souls have been aroused, and we’ve drawn close to your religious ideas. Through Guide’s good offices we’ve been selected for something that’s almost too good to be true, to be able to live together with other church members and at the same time carry on our individual research.

  “For some time we’ve been meeting after work, holding discussions about the happiness and peace that come from the visions of the other side you’ve provided. As you preached, our prayers were based not on some outside source but on our inner selves as a source of energy, and we began to hold joint prayer sessions, with prayers that welled up spontaneously from within. Guide told us our prayer group was the best and most natural group in the whole church.

  “With this prayer group as a foothold, one after another of the members of the research team who weren’t church members came to faith. As we met more often, we began to have doubts that our prayers would really reach the other side, just by continuing our lives as they were—supported by the church to conduct research, and praying as we did. Through our prayers we stood ready, like a sprinter bent over at the starting line. Both body and spirit expectant, waiting with bated breath for the sound of the starting gun. But was this really enough?

  “As we prayerfully await the starting signal, our bodies and minds tense, it’s painful. That pain does not come from the feebleness of our prayers. We talked about it at our meeting, and one person said it’s the pain of our thirsting souls, and surprisingly everyone said they felt the same way. Which brings us to our requests to you.

  “Patron, you give us a vision of the end of the world, of the end time. And you call for repentance. From the bottom of our hearts we feel this as we pray. You bring back words that are given to you directly on the other side, which Guide then helps convey to this side. Those words strike us deeply and urge us on to ever more devotion to prayer.

  “So this is what we ask of you, Patron: What does God want us to do? Tell us straight out. Why are we at the starting blocks? For what purpose are we training our bodies and our spirits? Use your trances to find out for us, we beg of you. Perhaps you have already seen this. Is this vision so frightening you shrink away from it, not even revealing it to Guide, and claim that God has not yet spoken?

  “We are waiting for you, Patron, to transmit the words of God. Prayer teaches us this—that the only thing we have to accomplish in this world is to receive these words of God and use them as our basis for action. We are scientist
s, which means that more than other people we can clearly hear the approaching steps of the end of the world. And we are zealously awaiting your words. Didn’t you receive us into the church, and didn’t Guide select us as members of the research institute because of this? Because we listen to these words? Are we really so fragile that we can’t bear the burden of those terrible words? We beg of you, please accept our petition.”

  “When Guide brought this petition to me from Izu, it was still sealed. My eyesight is bad, so when I opened it I had Guide read it aloud. When he finished reading it Guide averted his eyes with a noncommittal look, a look that bored into me nonetheless. It troubled me that Guide, who had created the research institute and who’d spoken of the trust he felt for these young people and how much he was looking forward to their future, would be so noncommittal when he transmitted this ardent petition. These young people were pressing me to come to a decision, yet Guide kept a cool distance from things, waiting for me to speak. It felt worse than being isolated and alone—it was like I’d been completely abandoned.

  “Okay! I thought, coming to a decision. There wasn’t any solid basis for my decision, just a voice deep inside me saying that now was not the time to let the chance slip by, that I had to take the leap if I didn’t want to be lackadaisical for the rest of my life. And I followed this voice. I said this to Guide: ‘Isn’t the One who summons me each time to my trances waiting to hear from me about the appeals in this petition? Up till now I’ve never posed any questions on the other side about what our church should be doing, the reason being that, as the church grew, so did my sense of responsibility toward the lives of the members on this side. Also it was my personal responsibility to follow the call that I hear on the other side, no matter how far beyond our ordinary logic it goes. Listening to that call made me start this religious movement in the first place. But with so many followers now, in order to lead the church I have to give priority to the logic of our world. I have a responsibility to do that.

  “‘But one of the things I always awaken to on the other side is the fact that the logic of this world is meaningless. As the leader of the church—and as mediator between this side and the other—I have to carry out this role to the full, not letting the pipeline between the two sides clog up.

  “‘Next time I have a deep trance, though,’ I told Guide, ‘I’m going to grab this petition by the neck, drag it along with me, and ask that very question: What does God want us to do? No matter how terrible the reply is, I’m going to bring that vision back with me. And you’d better steel yourself to translate it. I won’t be controlled by the logic of our world. The next time a sign is gouged out in my soul as a fresh wound in my trance, I’m not going to equivocate. That’s got to be the only way out of the split I’ve suffered for so long.’

  “Guide took me seriously, but there was still something opaque about his reactions. Blast it all! I thought. This is the first delusion I have to overcome through my own decision. As long as this delusion remains within me, my comrade who supports me in the faith will never be free. I have to overcome this for Guide’s sake too, I told myself.

  “And so I waited for a deep trance to take hold of me. At the time, I went into a trance about once a month. Once I started to wait, though, four weeks passed, then five, and finally eight weeks. Nothing. This brought home to me once more that the trances came to me from the other side, they weren’t something I could initiate.

  “I was frantic. Irritated that so much time had passed without a reply, the members of the research institute who’d written the petition said they wanted to send a representative to headquarters. Before that, Guide said he needed to talk with them and went off to Izu. That night I pretended that a major trance had taken hold of me. I managed such an enthusiastic performance that the person taking care of me reported to Guide that my trance this time was so deep and violent that afterward he was afraid I’d be weaker than I had ever been before. The next day Guide hurried back to be by my side. And as I always did, I began to speak, so that Guide would be able to translate the visions I had on the other side.

  “At the time I didn’t think about how I was deceiving Guide. I just thought I was having the same kind of trance I’d had for years, only now I’d been able to make it happen on my own. And actually I exhausted my spiritual strength doing that. I spent the time during my false trance thinking I was standing in front of the Almighty I faced whenever I went over to the other side, asking a question and listening carefully to the response. And I was convinced I could hear the answer.

  “I’d always received messages from the other side, so I was all set to listen. What I heard was a response I’d made up myself, but as I listened to it I didn’t consider it different from my usual visions. Wasn’t this the very first response from the other side that I’d consciously extracted? If the vision I received in this way ran counter to the will of the other side, I thought, surely I would be properly punished.

  “If I’m transmitting as Your word my own vision that runs counter to Your will, I prayed, then kill me. Separate me from the pain of being torn apart and turn me into a handful of dust. I can’t continue as the leader of over a thousand people in such a lackadaisical state. It’s easy for You, isn’t it, to make my weakened heart have an attack? I am creating Your vision with my own will, but I am doing it believing in You, heart and soul. Have pity on me! No matter how it may turn out, please give me Your power.

  “As I prayed like this, I pretended to have a vision and mumbled some things, which Guide translated as this:

  “‘I am standing at a point where I can see the “oneness” overflowing from the Beginning. I’m seeing this together with the young Izu researchers. Once more the entire world is flowing back to that original ‘Oneness.’ Think of it as the opposite of the Big Bang. As the “implosion” of the whole world on this “oneness.” Help us with this infiinitely huge, infinitely swift movement. God awaits a truly spontaneous call, one in response to His own call. Your call has reached God, and God’s answer has come back- Now is the time—the time for the battle of repentance at the end of the world.

  “‘If you fear you won’t be able to hear God’s answer, concentrate on your own question. Every single perception you have within yourselves is already within God. Our calls to God are already within Him, the way we receive His message, the way each of us reacts to it—they too are already within Him. Hallelujah!’

  “Guide transmitted this to the Izu Research Institute as the answer that God gave me, and the expectant young people there abandoned their various projects and flung themselves into preparation for the end time. In this world where the unrepentant oppress the repentant, they arrayed themselves for the final battle.”

  4

  “This is how the group of young people, later dubbed the radical faction by the press, took over the leadership of the Izu Research Institute,” Patron continued. “Guide reported to me on their activities, but I never tried to alter their course or force them to slow down. If what the radical faction was doing was wrong, I imagined I would have another vision, like the ones I always had—a real vision—telling me to put a stop to them. But that never happened.

  “So what kind of preparations did these young scientists and technicians make for the battle for repentance? They were generally divided into those working on physics and those working on chemistry. My vision encouraged the ones on the physics side. The term implosion coincided with the concept of the manipulation of nuclear materials to create a chain reaction. Led by a specialist named Mr. Omuro, they turned their attention to building a device, capable of being transported by a small number of people, that would transform a nuclear power plant into a nuclear bomb. The chemistry researchers were to give logistical backup. Of course, all of this was aborted by the Somersault.

  “At this point I was busy with religious affairs in our Tokyo headquarters, 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.