Somersault (6 page)

“Patron would like to talk with you,” she said, her voice hard; Ogi understood she wanted him to act as if nothing had happened. Ever resigned, he played along. He realized that for the last two hours he’d been enjoying the afterglow of those lips and tongue, the movement of that belly.

Dancer waited for him to stand up, switched on the light in the corridor, and deftly explained things to him.

“We’ll tell him about your conversation with the Chairman. If there’s something you’d like to add, be sure to make it short. Patron may have some questions for you.... By the way, you’ve done a good job of arranging your workstation.”

The drapery with its design of groves of trees was half drawn, and a faint lustrous golden light shone through the lace curtains against the glass; in the western side of the room, at a what looked like a small ornamental desk, Patron’s heavy form sat at an angle. On top of the desk were some envelopes—too small for mailing letters—and Patron, half turned in their direction, held a fountain pen in his pudgy fingers. The light wasn’t conducive to writing letters, though.

Dancer and Ogi couldn’t find any chairs to sit on, so they stood together facing Patron. Patron’s face still looked swollen, but he seemed to have recovered from his earlier emotional turmoil as Ogi reported on how he’d changed jobs, unable to resist touching on what the Chairman had told him about Balzac. Just as it had with Dancer, this brought on an irritable reaction.

“I can’t believe Le Treize was such a simplistic idea. I think the Chairman has his own preconception about it,” Patron said, inclining his overly large head and casting a gloomy look at Ogi. “For someone like him who’s lived such a focused life, no matter how imaginative the notion he’s always got to bring it back down to earth. I’m flattered that he thought of Guide and me when he came up with these ideas, though I can’t imagine how what we’ve done or are about to do might correspond to some modern-day Thirteen. What do you think, Ogi?”

Ogi understood that Patron’s question to him was nothing more than a rhetorical device he used when delivering a sermon, but he went ahead and replied. Although he was not a particularly voluble person, it was Ogi’s nature that once he had something to say, he didn’t hold back.

“The foundation holds regular conferences, one of which you attended, as you recall,” Ogi said. “I used to be in charge of making the arrangements. The members included such people as the French ambassador,
chairmen of large corporations, advisers to banks and brokerage firms, even a novelist who’d won the Order of Cultural Merit—to put it bluntly, all people whose careers in their respective fields are basically drawing to a close.

“There was some discussion about making you a member, and they decided to invite you once as a guest. Ever since the time I escorted you to the Kansai research facility, the Chairman has recommended you to the conference. Being a clever group of men, they did not oppose having you participate one time. To tell the truth, though, some of them acted as if they were receiving a jester into their midst. Several of the members’ secretaries reported happily to me later that their bosses enjoyed your talk enormously. These secretaries also asked me, in their employers’ stead, whether it was true that you and Guide had actually severed all ties with your church, or whether that was merely a diversionary tactic aimed at the upcoming trials.

“In other words, from the very beginning it’s been just a pipe dream for those movers and shakers to join forces with an eccentric such as yourself. They’re cautious people; they were just amusing themselves at your expense. Even if you had become a member, as soon as they knew you were about to begin leading a new religious movement you can be sure they’d have voted you out.”

Patron listened carefully. Instead of adding a comment, though, he wound up their conversation by directing Ogi and Dancer to undertake a new job. The two young people withdrew and began preparing a late dinner. In the kitchen next to the dining room, they took out what was available in the refrigerator and set to work.

“Patron looks well, don’t you think?” Dancer said to Ogi, as they divided up the work. “It’s hard to believe, after how hopeless he said he felt once Guide looked like he wouldn’t recover. Now, ten days later, with you working as a secretary, here he is already set on starting a new movement. He’s an amazing personality, don’t you think? Though that’s nothing new to me.”

Sautéing a thinly sliced onion in butter, Ogi wanted to say, If that’s nothing new to you, why don’t you keep quiet? But Dancer, ever sensitive, ended her thoughts with a meaningful remark. “I think it was good for both of you that Patron opened up so honestly.” She was slicing a chunk of beef into thin strips in preparation for making a quick gourmet curry, her mouth half open as usual, revealing a tongue glistening with saliva that brought a painful twinge of nostalgia to Ogi.

Patron had told them as he outlined the task he wanted them to begin, “I only rely on a very few of my followers, which isn’t surprising, seeing as how I couldn’t even rely on myself!”

This struck Ogi as a bit of a non sequitur, but Dancer gave a cute, nonchalant laugh.

“Ogi’s working for us now as kind of an extension of his earlier job,” Patron added, “but I don’t think he’s made the leap over to our side yet. Well, just so that we all agree on that, starting tomorrow I’d like you do this for me. It’s the reason I called you both in here. I have a number of handwritten cards making up a name list. First I’d like Dancer to make two complete copies and return the originals to me.”

Patron gathered up the papers on his desk that were too small for stationery and handed them over to Dancer, who promptly disappeared into the living room and was back in the blink of an eye.

“What I’d like the two of you to do,” Patron continued, “is to get in touch with my supporters on this list, mainly those in Tokyo and surrounding areas, but also some in outlying regions.”

Patron was at the age when he should be wearing reading glasses, but he took the originals of the cards Dancer had returned to him, holding them at arm’s length from his large face as he studied them. Dancer had been standing next to Ogi, but now she moved closer to Patron; knitting her brow in a line of fine wrinkles, she attentively examined the copies, for all the world like a schoolgirl reading a handout of her lines for the school play. For Ogi, the handwriting of this man who’d been schooled in the precomputer age was surprisingly unimpressive, even childish. He felt compelled to question Patron about this rather audacious list.

“About Guide and your Somersault—I’m using the term the media used at the time—weren’t you criticized by some of the followers in your church? I heard that the radical faction was arrested and prosecuted, though not every member was caught, and while they didn’t have a chance to make any public declaration against you, some terrible things were said during the trial. Even more moderate members who made up the core of your church denounced you, didn’t they?

“What’s the connection between the new supporters on this list and those earlier members of the church? Are these supporters sympathizers who still remained within the church? If so, then you didn’t completely renounce the church but only cut off connections at a superficial level, maintaining a relationship with certain key members. Putting aside your statements on television directed at society at large, doesn’t this mean that you lied to the Chairman of the foundation? I told him your Somersault meant you completely cut all ties with the church, and in fact had become its enemy.”

For the first time that day Patron turned to face Ogi. He straightened up, his head held high, no longer a vulnerable old man but now like a large, combative animal asserting its dignity.

“I did not lie,” Patron said, in a strong voice. “All the names on the list are people who’ve sent us letters in the ten years since we apostatized. I’ve omitted anyone who had a connection with our earlier activities.

“Through our Somersault, Guide and I renounced the church and our doctrine. Now we’re about to step into a new stage. Some people view our renunciation as our fall into hell. According to Guide, after we left the church this was how a group of women followers who also left the church and now live an independent communal life interpreted it. Before a savior can accomplish the things he has prophesied—before he can free this fallen world and lead the people into a transcendent realm—he first has to experience hell. That sort of notion. Before the Somersault, those same people called us Savior and Prophet, you’ll recall.

“Be that as it may, through our Somersault, Guide and I seceded from the church. Since then the church has continued its activities, with Kansai headquarters leading the way, but the two of us have nothing to do with them. Now that Guide has collapsed we’re faced with the worst crisis—the biggest trial we’ve gone through since our secession.

“So I thought of contacting those who have nothing to do with the church who’ve sent us letters of support. As far as I remember, I’ve never met any of these people on the list. They became interested in us after Guide and I left the church and were spurned by society and became public laughing-stocks. I’ve started considering these new supporters just recently, and I’d like you to work at getting in touch with them, Ogi, together with Dancer, of course. This will be your first job here.”

“I think we need to start off by checking your list against the letters people sent,” Dancer said. “Some of them might be trying to deceive us. We’ll have you check our letters before we send them out, of course. Ogi, we can discuss this in the other room. Patron needs to rest.”

Dancer helped Patron, clad in his dressing gown, get up from the small chair. Heavy head sunk between his soft shoulders, he shuffled back to his bed on weak, sickly legs.

That evening Ogi waited while, in the already darkened garden, Dancer went out to feed the Saint Bernard, who made sounds that were at once generous and bighearted, unmistakably those of a large beast. Patron had gone to bed without eating. Ogi and Dancer finally had a late supper, and as they ate they reviewed their instructions.

“As I was listening to Patron,” she said, “I couldn’t help but wonder why—when you aren’t a devotee of Patron’s teachings—you’re supporting him and working to help him. I know I asked you to, but I feel a little bad about it.”

“I don’t know... he has a sort of strange appeal,” Ogi replied. “I’ve never met another man of his age quite like him.”

2: Reunion

1

The story now shifts to the reunion of the artist Kizu and the dog-faced boy with the beautiful eyes fifteen years after their first meeting. In the interim one can safely assume that innocent young Ogi spared no pains as he worked with Dancer to carry out the task Patron assigned them. The account that unfolds now will shortly wind up at Ogi’s place of work, and the two stories will merge into one.

By coincidence, Kizu was able to meet the young man whose growth he had been so obsessed by, though it took some time after the two of them grew close before he realized that the young man and the boy he’d seen so many years before were one and the same.

Back in his homeland on sabbatical, Kizu was living in an apartment in Akasaka; a former student introduced him to an athletic club in Nakano, where he became a member and began going twice a week to swim. One might not expect a person who’s had a relapse of cancer to be so active, yet it was this very relapse that spurred him on. Soon after joining, Kizu began to take notice of a young man at the club, someone he caught sight of every once in a while but had never spoken to, let alone heard anyone else talk about. Kizu was drawn to this twenty-four or -five-year-old young man’s beautiful body and his unique sense of style, all of which connected up, in Kizu’s mind, with his plan to take up oil painting once again during his year in Tokyo. In the United States he’d been so involved in running the research institute, giving lectures and seminars, and taking care of a thousand and one other related tasks that he’d drifted away from creative art. Deciding to return to painting was one thing, settling on the subject matter was another, and Kizu was still
without a clue, though he did find the idea of painting a young man more attractive than that of a female nude.

Kizu watched the young man leading grade-school children in warmup exercises by the poolside and correcting their form once they were in the water. Another scene stayed with him too, one that took place when the young man was doing his own personal training. One weekday, early in the afternoon, the pool on the first floor of the athletic club was relatively uncrowded, with just two children’s classes and one adult group, the last made up mostly of women with a couple of elderly men thrown into the mix. In the lanes set aside for full members to swim laps there were only two or three swimmers, Kizu among them, as he paddled back and forth in the unusually cool transparent water.

Soon it was time for classes to change, and in the wide space between the main pool and the one used for synchronized swimming practice, a large class of children were going through their warm-up routine. Kizu had finished his exercise for the day and was just leaving when he ran across a strange sight. At the bottom of the stairs, in a corner where there were showers and sinks for rinsing your eyes, there was a six-foot-square pool. Kizu had always thought it was just some special water tank, but now he understood it was for training people to hold their breath underwater. Three young girls stood there, leaning against the brass railing and looking down at the little pool; their high-cut swimsuits exposed the smooth skin of their muscular thighs.

A head wearing a white rubber swim cap bobbed straight up, breaking the surface, the shoulders following next in a quiet yet grandiloquent movement. In a moment the person turned to face the opposite direction, rested one hand on a depression in the wall just above the surface of the water, and took a deep breath. The body rising high above the water was that of a young man without an ounce of fat, his body stretched taut, but what caught Kizu’s interest was how the body looked naturally strong, not the result of training. The rubber swim cap he had on was one worn by swimming instructors, and just after the young man broke the surface from deep underwater Kizu had recognized him, for not many of the instructors had such a muscular build. The tall girls gazing down into the pool were quite muscular, too, the base of their necks swelling up in an arc, interrupting the line of their shoulders. Once more the young man sank straight down beneath the water. Effortlessly, he let go of the inner wall of the pool, looked down, put his arms by his sides, and sank, leaving behind barely a ripple. And after a while, longer than one might expect, he forcefully yet quietly resurfaced, bobbing up past his shoulders, and took a huge gulping breath.