Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “I haven’t given the term defeatist a lot of thought, so there may be contradictions in what I said. But I find it interesting that Patron would start his own church and religious movement and then, at a certain point, do a Somersault and announce that everything he’s preached till then was nonsense. The defeatists I’m talking about never had the guts to do that.

  “No, I’m not some optimist sitting just around waiting for Patron’s church to self-destruct. We Young Fireflies are planning to make this region independent, and now a formidable opponent has entered the picture—your church. I don’t think either Patron or Ikuo are defeatists. The Hollow’s legally occupied, as are these large buildings; that’s a given. What we have to do is build up our forces so we can compete with you. Anyway, that’s the second thing I wanted to tell you.”

  Later that day, Kizu recalled their conversation and felt quite keenly that Gii was, as Ikuo had told him, an outstanding young man, the main reason being the skillful way he’d wrapped up their conversation.

  “Patron told me you have cancer, Professor,” Gii had said suddenly, throwing Kizu a challenging look. “The church hasn’t begun any new activities, he said, but he’d like to concentrate his spiritual strength in trying to control your disease.”

  Looking over Kizu from top to bottom, Ikuo asked, “So has Patron’s spiritual concentration had any effect?”

  “The exhaustion I felt when I lived in Tokyo doesn’t seem to be as bad as it was before,” Kizu replied. “And I’m not as depressed.”

  “Yeah, but having a person’s spirit soar when the founder of his religion concentrates his spiritual power for his sake does seem a bit predictable, doesn’t it?” Ikuo said, as Gii let out a happy laugh.

  23: The Technicians

  1

  “I heard from Gii,” Dr. Koga said, “that Patron’s trying to use his spiritual powers to control your cancer. Who knows but what it might be slowing down the spread of the disease.”

  He said this as he handed over two weeks’ worth of the various medicines Kizu was taking.

  Putting the question of how he was feeling on hold, Kizu looked at the painting he’d done that was hanging in a frame on the wall of the clinic, the one showing Ikuo from behind, naked down to below his waist. Ikuo’s broad back was so muscular it looked like he was carrying a soft shell on his back. His overall build, with its bulging muscles, looked entirely natural, not like the localized protuberances one expects from weight trainers. Dr. Koga, putting all the medications in a paper bag, followed Kizu’s gaze.

  “Ikuo seems to fit right in with the kids here,” he said. “The parents who use my clinic used to consider the Young Fireflies as some reserve youth corps of the yakuza, but with Ikuo in the picture they changed their tune.”

  “The art class project was turned down, though, thanks to my affiliation with the church,” Kizu said. “Well, with Ikuo and the Fireflies doing so well, Dancer and Ogi wanted me to ask you something, an internal matter of the church actually.”

  “About the Technicians?”

  “That’s right. Ikuo seems to have a good relationship with them too, but there doesn’t seem to be much communication between them and Patron.”

  Dr. Koga fixed his dark deep-set eyes on Kizu and then gave a practical suggestion, hoping to lighten the mood.

  “The clinic’s closed today, and it’s raining a little, so what do you say we take a drive and talk? Patron’s spiritual concentration aside, a drive shouldn’t be bad for you. In the afternoon I’ll drive over down below the dam and honk my horn.”

  Every two weeks, on days when the clinic was closed in the morning, Kizu went to get a thorough examination from Dr. Koga and refill his prescriptions. He’d heard that Dr. Koga had been taking drives here and there in the area, using copies of maps from the town hall, since with all the new logging roads that had been built the standard maps were of little use.

  Dr. Koga showed up after lunch, early, and Kizu climbed into his car. The rain had ended but, instead of a uniformly overcast sky, clumps of dark-gray clouds scuttled across overhead. They drove up the slope toward the forest, which was chockful of lustrous leaves after the morning’s rain. The slope was steep, but as long as one paid attention to the shoulder it wasn’t dangerous. When they passed the T-shaped intersection below the farm that Ikuo and the Technicians had taken over, they saw a small truck that was going to pick up some materials that had come down and was waiting for them to pass when the rain had let up; some of the Technicians were aboard. Mr. Hanawa, seated at the wheel, bowed politely to them as they went by.

  “As Dancer says, it’s true the Technicians haven’t made an opportunity to talk with Patron,” Dr. Koga said, “but you have to remember their work has kept them busy. That kind of hard physical labor is good for their outlook on things, I’m sure.

  “After Patron and Guide’s Somersault—and this is actually something they brought on themselves, since as members of the Izu Research Institute they made it all inevitable—the Technicians suffered a lot, though not as much as their colleagues who were dragged off by the police and not taken to court.

  “I was able to resume my medical practice, but the other Technicians had to hide their research and use their technical skills somehow to earn a living. With automation taking over factories, these skills were less in demand, but once they took a job at some small subcontracting factory they quickly rose to the top and could show what they were capable of.

  “Some of them worked in university and business research labs, doing experiments under the supervision of people who used to be their colleagues, making one-micron incisions in the brain and so on. Universities and industries on the cutting edge needed high-caliber technicians like them.

  “I think my colleagues are valuable in that they’re hard workers who don’t have any academic ambition. Working for ten years at the bottom of the heap has made them tougher. After I met them again, I thought that the self-ridiculing name Technicians they’d given themselves was actually a good choice.”

  Dr. Koga wound his blue Saab, a car that suited him perfectly, through the sprinkle of hamlets in the area that went by the overall name of the outskirts—an area along the river that stood in contrast to the highway on the opposite shore. As they drove up the rough ancient-looking road, he explained that the name outskirts wasn’t a proper noun.

  Kizu was impressed by Dr. Koga’s explanation about the Technicians. Somewhat inadvertently, he said, “Doctor, I guess after all you’re the Technicians’ highest adviser, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not even a low-level adviser,” Dr. Koga said. “Rather, I feel they’ve cut me off. They don’t even let me into the rooms they share in the dormitory.”

  Kizu was surprised to hear this, though it did fit with what he’d heard from Dancer.

  “Ogi and Dancer told me,” he said, “that the Technicians won’t let them into the five rooms they’ve taken over either. Of course Ogi doesn’t go into the Quiet Women’s rooms, but Dancer, too, has refrained from doing so. Ms. Tachibana and her brother are the only ones from outside whom the Quiet Women allow in, and sometimes they participate in their prayer sessions.

  “So the problem the office staff has at present is this: After the first wave of people have settled in here, they have to help out the second and third waves. It wasn’t the original plan to have these two sects be the first groups here; Patron was hoping that people who’d gotten in touch with him individually would make up the first group, which is why he had Ogi contact all of them. The two sects that made up the first group keep to themselves and have no interest in other followers who’ve moved here. The Technicians especially are like that. What can be done? Dancer asked me about this.”

  Eyes on the seething water rushing down the edge of the ditch beside the road, Dr. Koga managed a warm smile.

  “I imagine the office staff wants the Quiet Women to open up their quarters to others—women only, of course—and want to assign beds in the housing at the F
arm on an individual basis. In the beginning, though, there’s nothing we can do but accept these two subgroups as the first residents.

  “After this base is settled, and the second and third waves of individual believers move in, hopefully these subgroups will eventually disappear of their own accord. But this can’t be done overnight, Professor. Patron has finally publicly begun his new church movement, and we can expect his influence will be felt on each and every individual here. As this starts to happen—or as it happens once more, I should say—won’t it be possible to keep the Technicians from becoming a fixed sect within the church? The Technicians have returned to Patron’s church and found a new raison d’être, so to speak, so it’s not a good idea to fall over oneself trying to control them.

  “This might not be the answer you’re looking for, and you might be upset that you’re being treated like some kid running an errand, but that’s all I can say right now. I’d appreciate it if you’d convey my thoughts to Dancer.”

  They drove up over the ridge of the mountain chain, coming out on a gentle slope of neat harvested fields. Dr. Koga parked the car at a spot where there was a pull-off that protruded from the low point of the slope. A farmhouse sat above the stone wall high on the opposite slope, and an old man who had come out to the edge of the garden bowed politely to them. Dr. Koga gave a friendly bow back.

  “Let’s walk along the path through the fields to a place where you can see the entire valley. That’s Isamu’s grandfather by the way, the boy in the Fireflies.”

  Below where the path petered out was a neat little chestnut-tree orchard, and looking down through the soft green leaves they could see the modest line of buildings in the jug-shaped hollow along the river. The road leading up from the eastern edge that ran along the river valley was cut off from view by a small pass rising up like a bump, cutting off the view of the Hollow beyond. The cross-Shikoku highway bypass, too, was hidden in the shadow of a mixed cedar and cypress forest jutting out from the edge of the chestnut grove.

  “It was called Jug Village for a long time, apparently,” Kizu said, “and looking down at it from here it’s easy to understand the legend that grew up that for hundreds of years the village was shut away inside a jug.”

  “I’m sure the topography does account for many legends,” Dr. Koga responded. “But if you drive twenty minutes over to the Old Town district they’re opening up a Denny’s Restaurant, so it’s not hard to understand why the Young Fireflies march through forests at dawn, trying to shore up their collective illusion.”

  Dr. Koga laid a plastic sheet over each of two black natural boundary-marker stones. As they sat down side by side, facing the valley, Kizu had the feeling that he was about to hear something more detailed than any of their earlier brief conversations. And indeed that’s how it turned out.

  “While we traveled here by train I confessed a lot of personal things to you, Professor,” Dr. Koga began, “and I’d like to take up where I left off. I can understand why Guide had such drawing power over the researchers at the Izu workshop, but why did Patron? For one simple reason: We quite naturally believed that when he went over to the other side he communicated directly with God. Listening to Patron’s sermons after his trances, one couldn’t help but believe—the kind of belief that brings on a deep feeling of contentment. In his trances Patron and God had a genuine rapport. After returning from the other side, Guide’s painful efforts would allow the vision Patron experienced to be transmitted in words we could understand. And this whole vision was powerfully real.

  “The radical faction’s action program was created as an extension of that reality. Especially as events sped up, as we began to swing into action, as we listened to secret reports coming in from the sites on our strategy list, we felt that we were a part of Patron’s trance. And then—out of the blue—the Somersault came crashing down on us.

  “Now we wondered what the Somersault was all about. Along with Guide, Patron led us, his advance guard, urging us to hurry and make his message from God come true. Is that what the Somersault was—the two of them standing at the head of the troops but losing their nerve at the last minute? We wondered what God would say to the apostate Patron the next time he had one of his trances: a frightful thing, if it actually took place. But an even more frightening thing happened: For ten years Patron was out of touch with God. I find the term somewhat vague myself, though the Quiet Women evaluate it quite highly, but I think this is what they mean when they say that Patron fell into hell. From the beginning, Guide’s torture and death came about because of reports that Patron was starting a new religious movement. They drove us into a terrible predicament and left us there, with just the two of them starting something new.

  “On the other hand, we thought that if only there was a convincing explanation—in other words, if Patron was able once more to have a vision and reveal what he’d seen—we could have taken the lead in the new movement. So the ones doing the interrogating asked Guide: what Patron’s latest vision was. But Guide didn’t answer. We thought he was hiding something, but now that I look back on it I realize there was nothing he could say. Why did Guide remain silent? I believe it’s because of this: He couldn’t bring himself to tell these former radical followers that Patron had been abandoned by God. Guide had an admirable reticence in him, when you come right down to it.”

  2

  Kizu felt led to take their talk a step further.

  “I’ve been talking about it in vague terms, and you might have guessed already—and people might think me crazy at my age—but my desire to spend my remaining days with a certain young man is why I’m here. Honestly speaking, I don’t think I’m qualified to hear anything very substantial.

  “My remaining days—a pretty accurate way of putting it, as you know, Dr. Koga, since I could be struck down by the cancer at any time. Cancer’s calling the shots, in other words. You don’t seem to think all that highly of Patron’s using his spiritual power to effect a cure, but I’m not entirely dismissing it. Not that I’m clinging to it, either, as my last hope.

  “Living together with Ikuo, seeing my neither-here-nor-there life as a painter to its conclusion with him, I’m doing what you suggested and starting to paint again. Painting as the Fireflies would have it, Yonah—Ikuo, this real young man, as the biblical Jonah, as the final creative work of my life. I don’t have any particular dissatisfactions about life in the Hollow and my painting, but what about Ikuo? I do know he’s got some plan he wants to carry out through Patron’s new church, but what it is I haven’t the foggiest. He’s not the type of person to live a quiet life of faith, though, that’s for sure. Be that as it may, I’m prepared to help him with whatever plans he has, but I don’t have the courage to grill him about them. Or, more accurately, I don’t feel like doing it. So, awaiting new developments from his end, I spend my days painting my final work.

  “Seeing how much energy Ikuo is putting into his work every day, I realize that he’s waiting, too, for Patron’s activities to take shape. That’s quite clear. On the surface, he’s creating an economic base for the first wave of followers who moved here and for later waves to follow. Ikuo consults closely with Dancer and Ogi as he plans out his work, he’s got the Technicians using their technical skills in starting up production again at the farm, and he’s guiding Gii’s Fireflies in a way that maintains the boys’ independence. All well and good. Ikuo’s an unexpectedly able person, and so far he’s had good results. But is that enough for him? I don’t think so. Since he was a young boy, he hasn’t been able to live a normal life. He’s become exactly what the Fireflies, with their children’s intuition, call him: Yonah. And he’s leaving the basic issues up to Patron, hoping through him to arrive at a clear-cut solution.

  “In that respect I think he’s a lot like you, Dr. Koga, and the Technicians. Why was Ikuo like that as a child, and what sort of hope does he entrust now to his relationship with Patron? I haven’t questioned him past a certain point, but especially seeing him after
we moved here I can understand that. I feel like I was listening to what you said in Ikuo’s stead.”

  Dr. Koga paid rapt attention to Kizu’s words. It had been a long time since Kizu had been able to talk so forthrightly with an intelligent person his own age, Japanese or foreign.

  Kizu wasn’t the only one who felt this way, for even after he stopped speaking Dr. Koga didn’t respond; instead, he gazed at the far-off scenery. Kizu looked in the same direction.

  The high sky was still white, tinged with gray, but the quick-moving low clouds had disappeared. In the unimpeded view that stretched out before them, beyond the mountain range that surrounded this land, lustrous light-purple trees continued off to the horizon.

  Kizu considered the people long ago who’d followed one forest glen after another to arrive, and then live in, this dead-end valley. And their descendants. And those who trooped off in the opposite direction to find work in the Kansai area, in Tokyo, or in Yokohama, and how they might still be in the grip of vague ideas about their connection with the founding fathers of this forest village. The Fireflies made a pact that even if they went off to the cities they would still view this valley as their base and would someday return to it—a childish pledge, perhaps, but weren’t they supplementing, albeit many years later, the notions that brought settlers pushing their way into this land in the first place?

  “When I see the faces of the Technicians, I think the same thing you think about Ikuo, Professor,” Dr. Koga said finally. “When they were given the chance in Izu to do their own research they basically followed a proper path, but once they started to get soaked in Patron’s aura, they all began to view their research in a different perspective. Eventually things turned completely around, and they threw themselves into situating the church as a force to be reckoned with, one that could actually change society.