Somersault

by Kenzaburo Oe

  Feeling desolate and isolated, already in the throes of nausea, he thrust his throat out in anticipation of the groan the first wave of pain would drag out of him. It’s almost here. Yellow liquid dribbled down his lips. Kizu saw Morio reach out a hand to Patron’s thigh.

  It had come.

  27: Church of the New Man

  1

  Ogi learned about the awful pain Kizu was suffering when Ms. Asuka called him on the cell phone she’d brought from Tokyo. She’d phoned Dr. Koga as well and asked Ogi to take the car to his clinic. There’s apparently no danger of heart blockage, Dr. Koga had told her, adding that this time he wanted to admit Kizu into the Red Cross Hospital. I’ll have Ikuo arrange for the ambulance, Ms. Asuka replied.

  When Dr. Koga and Ogi arrived at the home on the north bank of the Hollow, they found the patient curled up diagonally on the raised bed, half his body draped over the edge. Ms. Asuka was kneeling on the floor, clearly drained of energy, while Patron was seated at the desk in the rear of the room, patting Morio, who knelt at his feet, on the back.

  “Except for Ms. Asuka, I’d like everyone to leave the room, including Patron,” Dr. Koga said firmly.

  Retreating dejectedly to the studio, Ogi couldn’t help but notice that Patron, and even Morio, looked terribly worn out. Patron had Morio lie down on the sofa but was unable to calm himself; instead of taking a seat in the armchair, he looked through a few of Kizu’s books and picked up and examined the sketches that lay scattered about. Soon he went up to Ogi.

  “Would you mind going into the bedroom for me and bringing back the middle painting of the triptych?” he whispered. “Without disturbing Dr. Koga, of course. Bring the drawing he made of me a while ago, too. I think it might give me a hint I’ve been needing.”

  Ogi peeked into the room, fearful of disturbing Dr. Koga’s examination, but neither the doctor, looming over the nearly naked patient, nor Ms. Asuka turned around. Ogi lifted up the middle painting, which was leaning against a divider—the drawing Patron spoke of was taped to it—and when Ms. Asuka finally turned to face him, Ogi nodded to her and withdrew.

  Patron took a seat in the backless chair Kizu had set before his easel and gazed at the painting. Morio, too, got up from the sofa, sat down at Patron’s feet, his knees up, and examined the painting. Elbows out, he plugged up his ears with his fingers, perhaps disturbed by the voices coming from the adjoining room.

  Ogi himself concentrated on the painting, the largest of the triptych. In the right foreground was a nude, which Ikuo had posed for. On the space to the left was a large sheet of sketchbook paper, a rough sketch Kizu had drawn of Patron from the waist up, the wound on his side clearly visible.

  The painting was a painstakingly done portrait of Jonah, and a rough sketch, on the same scale, of a figure facing him. Ogi surmised the two persons were confronting each other.

  Ikuo and Ms. Tachibana arrived, and when Ogi went out to the foyer to greet them he experienced a mild disorientation gazing at the real Ikuo so soon after seeing the painting. Tell Dr. Koga the ambulance is here, Ikuo told Ogi. He continued, in a voice audible to Patron, who was looking in their direction from a corner of the studio, “The last time, Kizu put up with the pain alone for so long it affected his heart, but with Dr. Koga coming over so soon they can take him to the Red Cross Hospital this time, don’t you think?”

  Dr. Koga stuck his tense face out of the bedroom. “Yes, we should get him to a specialist,” he said. “I’d like Ikuo to come along. Everyone else just wait here until we get in touch.”

  Patron’s response seemed a bit of a non sequitur. “We’ll leave it up to you. Professor Kizu is going through a major transformation now, which may very well be a transformation for the good.”

  This made Dr. Koga so upset he thrust his gloomy face toward Patron, but he swallowed whatever he was about to say, turned to Ikuo, and asked him to have the stretcher brought in. After Ikuo left, since Dr. Koga didn’t give Patron, Ogi, or Morio permission to come in the bedroom, they could only return to the studio. Ms. Tachibana, though, went along with Dr. Koga and made preparations for moving the patient.

  Ikuo led the emergency personnel inside, the work proceeded apace, and the group soon set off for Matsuyama. All the while, Patron and Morio stayed glued to the painting. Ogi saw off the stretcher as far as the ambulance, parked below the weir, his mind filled with what Patron had said. A major transformation . . . possibly a transformation for the good. What did he mean? That Kizu was undergoing the inevitable as he faced death, his body racked by the agony of cancer? When Ogi got back to the house, Patron was just as he’d left him.

  Patron stayed that way for a while and then turned, as if awakening, and opened his mouth. He said nothing about the departed Kizu; instead, he asked everyone to assemble in the studio.

  “What I’m going to say is something I should tell all the members of the church, but first I’ll say it to you. I’d like you to pretend this is the chapel and I’m delivering a sermon.”

  Each of the four people picked out spots in the studio, redolent of oil paint, sitting on the boxlike bed or pulling chairs from the bedroom, settling down to listen to Patron’s words.

  “Since moving to the Hollow,” Patron began, “everyone here, including the Technicians and the Quiet Women, has been steadily making preparations for the future. As I watched all this, I felt it was urgent for me to settle on a schedule for officially rebuilding the church. As I said to Professor Kizu just before he fell ill, quite honestly I’ve felt, at times, driven into a corner.

  “This is not just a spiritual question; it has surfaced in a physical way as well. The wound in my side—the one you call the Sacred Wound—has remained unchanged for the past ten years, but recently it took a turn for the worse. I came down with a terrible fever and felt the kind of pain I haven’t experienced in a long time.

  “I’d never thought of comparing the two, but the notion occurred to me not long ago that the physical pain I suffered was similar to the agony I felt when I used to fall into a trance. The question is, This time did I bring back a vision from the other side, as in the old days? And if I did, with Guide dead, who was going to interpret it?

  “My thoughts hit the usual dead end, but suddenly an idea struck me: No, things are different this time. I not only brought back a vision but was able to translate it into the language of our side. The one who played the role of Guide this time was Morio. I’d like to thank him for all his efforts while I was suffering.

  “I’ll get to the details of how this came about in a moment, but what I brought back to this side, and was able to put into words with Morio’s aid, is something I didn’t comprehend until quite recently. I wasn’t able to see it for what it is: a message directed at the founding of our new church.

  “As recently as this afternoon, while Professor Kizu was sketching me, I told him the problems I’ve had restarting the church after declaring that I’m an antichrist. Professor Kizu captured that aspect perfectly in the triptych. It’s still a rough sketch, but he’s done a wonderful job of depicting me as the Old Man confronting Jonah, the New Man, and the world they are about to create. The painting helped me envision how my revelation would take shape, a revelation, as I said, that Morio helped me interpret.

  “The painting portrays the confrontation between the antichrist sponsoring the church, the Old Man, and Jonah, representing the New Man, and the two of them facing the body of believers. The painting boldly depicts the basic misconception I had up till now about the difficulties I’ve been facing. My mistake lay in thinking that I should be the one to build the new church. But now I know that’s wrong.

  “Right after Guide’s death, I asked Professor Kizu to assume the role of Guide for me. And as an artist, he has fulfilled those duties admirably. Just as Morio, in his own way, has done the same.

  “Getting back to where I started: The night before my wound started to ooze, I came down with a fever; the pain hadn’t yet made itself fully known but wa
s beginning. I woke up in the darkness and felt an excitement in my chest—whether from pain or joy I wasn’t sure. I don’t drink, but I wondered if that was what being drunk felt like. Very soon, I became obsessed with this thought—that for the first time in ten years I was about to fall into a deep trance. But Guide wasn’t here. I would suffer, and after all that pain there would’t be anyone to interpret the vision I brought back from the other side. It would be lost forever.

  “I was desperate. I remembered the story Guide told me of the drowning child grasping at a straw. I reached out my hand in the darkness and my fingers brushed the Bible by my bedside, Guide’s old Bible. Morio noticed something amiss in the dark, and I passed the Bible to him. I don’t care where, I told him, just open the Bible and mark a passage with your fingernail. Morio took the Bible and did as I said, but it was dark; he fumbled with it and dropped it under the bed. This bothered him, so he picked it up again and marked a second passage. I was already coming down with a fever, and could only sense Morio moving about in the dark. The next morning the fever was worse and I couldn’t get up; later that day there was all that fuss about my Sacred Wound, so I couldn’t very well check out what I’d asked Morio to do the night before.

  “Time passed. I noticed that Morio seemed concerned about the Bible, and finally I remembered the exchange we had had the night my fever began. I immediately looked through Guide’s Bible. There were two passages Morio had marked, and as I carefully read through them, I discovered that they both contained the expression new man. I had Mrs. Shigeno check into it for me, and can you imagine—in the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, those are the only places where that expression appears!

  “Ever since my Somersault, what I’ve been thinking about is something along the following lines, not exactly verbatim from the Bible, but something like this: As this world approaches its end, a savior must appear who will make one the two that stand opposed, destroying in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, abolishing the law with its commandments and regulations. And I believe that such a savior will surely come.

  “He will create in himself one new man out of the two, making peace, and in this one body reconcile both of them to God through the cross, putting to death their hostility. This too, I believe, will come to pass.

  “That being the case, what role will an antichrist play? Precisely this: He is the Old Man who acts as herald for the savior. All sorts of antichrists will appear—strange, comical types of heralds who clown around and make fun of God. All antichrists, though, are united in the role they play as Old Man and all that term implies. They are the ones who pave the way for the savior. I am firmly convinced of this, which is precisely why I want to construct my new church as an antichrist.

  “I also appeal to you through the second passage Morio marked in the scriptures: Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; be made new in the attitudes of your minds; put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. I appeal to you as an antichrist, as one who will forever remain an Old Man. Even though I’m such an Old Man, one thing I can do is challenge each of you to become New Men! As the painting shows us, the time is ripe for our new church. Morio handled the Bible in the dark and fulfilled the role of Guide, and Professor Kizu, through his own pain, has done the same.

  “To commemorate the start of our Church of the New Man, let us pray for Professor Kizu’s speedy recovery!”

  2

  Ogi found it too difficult to ask Patron directly about the two quotes, so he searched the Bible himself. He pored over scripture, searching in vain, until Mrs. Shigeno pointed out the passages. Some of her fellow Quiet Women, and some of the Technicians, had come to her with the same question, so she went over to the main office to make copies of the selections and distribute them. There, Ogi along with Dancer, learned about the passages.

  Mrs. Shigeno gave Ogi and the others their own copies of the passages, which turned out to be from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. She couldn’t understand, though, she told them, why Patron chose the term New Man from this letter of the apostle Paul. When she used to attend meetings of the Non-Church Movement and there were talks on Ephesians, they always dealt with such topics as predestination and the role of the church, never anything to do with the expression New Man.

  The lecturer in her former church, a famous economist, began his talk with the question of why Paul, who was imprisoned at the time, would write a letter to the Ephesians in the first place. He explained that the reason lay in the fact that among the Christian believers in this Gentile land there were those known as Judaizers, who wanted to maintain the Jewish nature of Christianity. There was even some influence from the East, from Persia. Gnostic heretical beliefs arose about the nature of the soul and the body, as well as heretical opinions about angels.

  “Now that I think of it,” Mrs. Shigeno said, “it does make sense for people like Patron and Guide, who basically have a syncretic view of religion, to be interested in the letter to the Ephesians. Patron can insist that Morio marked these spots in the dark, but that Bible was the one Guide was constantly reading, so I suspect these pages, ones he came back to over and over, naturally fell open. I have a feeling Patron senses that too, which is why he places such emphasis on them.”

  Ogi merely listened in silence, but Dancer voiced her opinion in no uncertain terms.

  “Unless I have some time to read these passages carefully and digest them,” she said, “Ogi and Ikuo are going to be miles ahead of me. Still, I feel energized somehow, knowing that Patron is taking positive steps to rebuild the church. No matter what, I’ve decided to follow him, but I am a little worried about how we’re going to build the church in this new setting. I’m really happy, though, that the day is approaching when he’ll reveal our future plan of action.”

  “If that turns out to be the day you find true faith, it’ll be a happy day indeed,” Mrs. Shigeno said. “The first happy event of Patron’s Church of the New Man.”

  After Mrs. Shigeno left the office, Dancer turned to Ogi.

  “Mrs. Shigeno is shrewd enough to see that my working in the office here and following Patron like some groupie doesn’t add up to real faith. She might look like some sweet old lady, but don’t let looks deceive you—with all the struggles she’s weathered before she became a member of Patron’s church, and after his Somersault—there’s a lot more to her than meets the eye.”

  Mrs. Shigeno had rather casually used the term Church of the New Man, and Dancer and Ogi soon realized that she’d wanted to test their reaction to the name, already the Quiet Women’s expression of choice.

  With this pronouncement of Patron’s, the meetings of the Quiet Women began to take on a different character. They’d always allowed the Technicians and the Young Fireflies to participate freely and join in their prayers, but now they limited attendance to their own members. Still, Ikuo and Morio and Ms. Tachibana, who was close to the Quiet Women, were also permitted to attend.

  The rainy season had once again set in when Ms. Tachibana showed up in the chilly dim office to report on one of the meetings. At the morning prayer meeting, she said, Mrs. Shigeno had repeatedly used the term Church of the New Man in her sermon. Ms. Tachibana was unclear whether this was a new idea Patron was pushing or was something limited to the Quiet Women; at any rate, she took copious notes.

  First, she reported, Mrs. Shigeno read aloud one of the passages from Ephesians that Patron had discovered with Morio’s help: “In this way Christ’s purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

  “As a member of the Church of the New Man,” Mrs. Shigeno had said, “I’ve begun to see this passage in a new light. It’s so simple I don’t need to interpret it, but it’s saying that on the cross Christ created a new man out of the two. In building his Church of the New Man, Patron must be considering
the cross as the place where he is heading too. Now that the end of the age is approaching, he has decided to take up his own cross. That’s the idea he’s building on, the cornerstone of his new church. He will mount the cross as an antichrist and in so doing will show us how to confront the end of the world. After his Somersault—a trying time for all of us—Patron descended into hell and returned to move forward. Now it’s up to us to define the roles we should play in the new church and move forward ourselves. Hallelujah!”

  Ms. Tachibana’s thin-skinned oval face had lost its luster, as if she were suddenly preoccupied by some gloomy thought. She didn’t put her thoughts directly into words but circled around what really bothered her.

  “Mrs. Shigeno also told Morio she’d like Ikuo to perform his composition, and he did. Morio and I were quite moved. But afterward, during prayer time, Mai was sitting right beside me and I couldn’t concentrate. I was concerned about all the talk about the children we’d left behind when we moved here joining us during the summer conference.… I worked for many years at a girls’ school affiliated with a university, which might account for how I feel when I think of the children like Mai I saw at Guide’s memorial service. I can’t help but fear that something terrible is going to happen. Will the children get caught up in some disaster? I have no idea what kind of disaster, but all the same I worry about it.”

  Ms. Tachibana looked at Dancer and Ogi, her normally pale cheeks turning a livid rose red with her violent emotions; she said nothing more and abruptly left the office.

  Dancer tried to go back to her work, but she was too upset to continue. Before long she turned to Ogi, himself unable to concentrate, and said angrily, “Ogi, don’t you think Ms. Tachibana contradicted herself? She said she was moved by Morio’s music after Mrs. Shigeno’s sermon, the theme of which is the ascension to heaven at the end of the world. Yet she saw the children’s participation in this heavenly ascent as unhappy, as being caught up in a disaster.”