Somersault (7 page)

Soon the young man, gripping the trough that ran around the pool, lifted his face to look at Kizu; the young man didn’t have goggles on, and his face showed nothing of the heightened vitality one might expect after such exertion. He completely ignored the young girls. His forehead was like a turtle’s, the eyes sunken, the nose wide, lips full; the flesh down to his chin was like taut leather, the chin itself quite manly. Kizu thought he had never seen a Japanese with a face like this before, though it was most definitely of Mongolian stock: a fierce face yet one that looked, overall, refined. And from this very masculine face large eyes gazed out, a gaze that made Kizu feel he was being stared at by an obstinate woman.

Walking away, Kizu felt agitated. The wisdom gained with age allowed him to avoid trying to pin down this nameless unease; Kizu realized that diverting his attention was a better course of action. After this, whenever he saw the young man leading an adult swimming class, a disquiet jolted him, and he averted his eyes.

The first time Kizu spoke to the young man was in the athletic club’s so-called drying room. Things changed quickly at this club, with a third of the training equipment, for instance, being replaced within the first six months after Kizu joined. Still, there was one place that was clearly a holdover from the past, a dim room about fifteen by eighteen feet that had just one small door and, in the middle, an elliptical wooden enclosure, in complete contrast to the ultramodern facilities on the other floors of the club. Inside the enclosure, dark stones were piled up and heated, like a sauna. In fact it was a kind of sauna room, though kept at a lower temperature than the modern saunas next door to the public baths.

Members sat on wide two-tiered wooden levels, leaning back against the unpainted wooden wall, drying their chilled bodies after swimming. Children in the swimming school, of course, used the drying room, but veteran members plopped themselves down on oversized yellow towels and sweated in the room before they went swimming, loosening up their muscles this way instead of doing warm-up exercises.

The first time the young man spoke to Kizu, the two of them, as longtime members were wont to do, were already stretched out for some time in the darkened drying room. In the dull light, Kizu didn’t realize that the person lying down in the far corner was this young man because—no doubt to increase the amount he sweated—he was completely wrapped in a towel from his head on down, with just his knees and the lower half of his legs sticking out.

Kizu had been in the drying room for quite some time when seven or eight young girls in their late teens took over the upper and lower tiers on the right side, directly opposite the entrance. The girls chattered away boisterously; Kizu was already aware that they were members of the swim team at a Catholic girls high school. They were discussing the program they were preparing for their school’s festival, based on the book of Jonah. They were already in a lively mood as they voiced their opinions and complaints in loud voices. One small girl, apparently an underclassman, spoke out in an especially conspicuous way.

“We’re the swim team,” she complained, “so we should have been allowed to do the scenes where Jonah’s thrown into the water, or where he’s spit up from the whale’s belly and swims to shore. But Sister’s script has us doing the part in the storm where Jonah’s grilled by all the sailors, and where he builds that hut on the outskirts of Nineveh and complains to God. What’s a castor oil plant, anyway? Sounds pretty weird to me! We have to construct the set without even knowing what it looks like!”

Kizu finally spoke up. It had been through the auspices of the girls’ swim coach, also an instructor of art and design, that Kizu had been introduced to the athletic club and joined for a year, and the girls had surely heard from their coach about his work in the United States.

Kizu told them how he had done the illustrations for a children’s version of Bible stories. As part of his research for the book, he traveled to the Middle East, where he saw actual castor oil plants growing. “Come here this time next week,” Kizu told them, “and I’ll bring a colored sketch for you to look at. In the book of Jonah,” he went on, “the castor oil plant is an important minor prop—no, maybe a major prop—expressing God’s love.” The students welcomed his proposal.

This decided, the occupying force of girls, their clumsy attempts at working up a good sweat over, left the drying room with hearty farewells more befitting an athletic meet. A jostle of muscular legs was visible just outside the cloudy heat-resistant glass of the door’s window.

At this point the young man, oversized towel heavy with sweat wrapped around his waist, spoke up, his voice different from the times Kizu had overheard it in the club.

“Professor, you seem to be quite well versed in the Bible.”

Kizu was seated on the lower tier, in the back left-hand corner, the young man on the upper tier directly facing him. Perhaps not wanting to look down on Kizu, the young man clambered down to the lower tier and turned his face, the same color as a boiled crab’s shell, toward Kizu, who replied, “Not at all—it’s just as I told the girls. It’s not like I attend church.”

“I was about to tell the girls, but in the bookshelf in the third-floor members’ lounge there’s a copy of your children’s book,” the young man said. “The club’s Culture Society collects and displays books written by the club’s members. When I was a child—and until much later, in fact—I was amazed at how realistically people and objects are depicted in Renaissance paintings, and I find your illustrations in the children’s book very similar. Children find this especially appealing, I imagine. When I read your book, I could get a clear picture of how big Nineveh was and what the boat that went to Tarshish looked like.”

The artist found the young man’s observations interesting—since Kizu was young at the time he did these illustrations he’d been very conscious of his painting style, insisting on its anachronistic character—but what most impressed him was the young man’s way of talking. Kizu recalled a certain Mexican stage actor with unusual looks. You would normally expect anyone aware that they had such extraordinary features to be a bit more reticent.

Kizu was silent and the young man went on. “I’m not a Christian either. But ever since I was a child, the book of Jonah has bothered me.”

“Since you’ve read my children’s book it’s obvious to you,” Kizu said, “that I made the book of Jonah the centerpiece of the project.”

“If I went to a church,” the young man went on, “I’m sure I could hear a detailed explanation, but I don’t get on well with clergy, so I’ve never found an answer to my concerns.”

“Maybe it’s not my place to ask, but what exactly are these concerns?”

Kizu didn’t ask this expecting any specific answer to issue from the youth’s somewhat cruel-looking mouth, but the young man responded eagerly, as if he’d been waiting for the chance.

“I don’t know, I just feel anxious, wondering if the book of Jonah really ends where it does. I know it’s a childish question, but I can’t help wondering if the Jonah we have now is complete, or whether it might originally have had a different ending.”

“That’s an interesting point,” Kizu remarked. “Now that you mention it, I’ve felt somewhat the same, as if it’s vague and doesn’t go anywhere.”

Cutting to the chase, the young man said, “Would it be possible, Professor, for me to come over to your home to hear more about this? The club office manager told me you have American citizenship and are living in extraterritorial, non-Japanese housing.”

“It’s not extraterritorial; I’m not a diplomat. But if you’re interested in the book of Jonah, I do have a few reference works, and I’d be happy to show them to you. I’m here at the club on Tuesdays and Fridays, but most other afternoons I’m free. Tell the office I said it’s all right for you to get my address and phone number.”

The young man was clearly elated by the news.

“I’m sorry to be so forward; you must think I’m pushy. I’ll phone you later this week.”

The sauna wasn’t especially hot, but Kizu had reached his limit and decided to leave. He made his way around the heat source in the center of the room, pushed the unpainted door open, and went outside. Through the heat-resistant glass his eyes met those of the young man, who was leaning in his direction as if bowing. A faint smile came to Kizu’s face, and he looked down and descended to the swimming pool.

2

The reader already knows why Kizu, teaching in the art department of an American East Coast university, decided to take a sabbatical in Tokyo. The same reason accounts for his not planning a terribly strenuous schedule during his sabbatical year. The university provided housing for him in an apartment building that had been acquired during the Occupation, changed management several times, was rebuilt, but continued to be owned by the university. The building was not solely for the use of faculty sent by Kizu’s university—Japanologists from other universities were housed there as well—but as a faculty member from the home institution, Kizu had been given priority and provided with an apartment on the top floor, a two-bedroom apartment with four rooms altogether. He made the spacious living room and dining-kitchen into one large room, setting up beyond his dining table a space that became his studio. Between these he placed a sofa and armchair, and this became the spot where he spent most of his time.

Three days later, in the morning, the young man phoned, but Kizu was confused for a few moments, unable to recall who he was when he gave his name. At the athletic club, though the way he spoke and the topics he talked about were intelligent enough, one couldn’t separate his voice from the forceful physicality of his brawny features. On the phone, though, his voice came across as gentle and clear.

Once the young man was in the apartment, Kizu had him sit on the sofa that formed the boundary of the studio, and he sat down on the matching armchair, next to which was a table on which he’d placed the reference materials. Ikuo—the young man’s name—was dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and a cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves over it; dressed, he looked much younger than when he’d
been nude in the drying room. From Ikuo’s unease as soon as he entered the apartment, though, Kizu had the feeling that these nondescript clothes were not his usual style and the young man felt ill at ease in this plebeian setting.

After Ikuo began coming to Kizu’s place to model for him, he explained why, on this first day, he had gazed so intently at everything around him in the apartment. The ceilings, he said, were much higher than those in his own place in Tokyo. Not just the inside of the apartment, but the elevator area and the first-floor lobby with the residents’ mailboxes were larger and had a roughhewn no-nonsense look to them. Listening to Ikuo explain his sense of incongruity with the surroundings, Kizu understood why, in contrast, he had felt so quickly at home. The apartment was an exact replica of the faculty housing in New Jersey he’d lived in as a new instructor for seven or eight years.

With Ikuo posing questions, Kizu showed him the research materials he’d promised and talked about what he’d learned about the book of Jonah while doing research for the children’s books on the Old Testament.

“These are notes I copied from a translation of a book by someone named J. M. Meyers,” Kizu said. “Meyers says that Nineveh was the capital of Assyria and a very large place, though saying that ‘It took three days to go all around the city’ has to be an exaggeration. Still, it’s estimated that the population was 174,000. The Bible says, ‘There were more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well.’ I realized that apart from the livestock the focus is on the children. Experts probably don’t make much of this, however. In short, what God feels most sad about are the children and the livestock—the innocent. After all, the ones who have sinned are the adults.

“One other point Meyers makes is that the citizens of Nineveh are Gentiles. According to the words of God that Jonah conveyed, what stopped God from destroying the people of Nineveh was that these Gentiles truly repented. Meyers says this must have been quite a shock to the Israelites, who were convinced they were the chosen people. The problem was, these chosen people were obstinate, while the people of Nineveh were obedient.

“The town of Tarshish that Jonah set sail for from Joppa was a port in Sardinia with a huge blast furnace—probably the farthest destination for any ship from Palestine. So Jonah was on a ship carrying steel or steel products. Jonah thought that God’s power extended only as far as the borders of the land of Israel. That makes sense, right? The storm hits the ship, and only Jonah is unperturbed. ‘How can you sleep?’ the captain wonders. But it’s no wonder Jonah can sleep soundly. Gentiles might not understand it, but Jonah is convinced he’s escaped God’s wrath, which makes any storm look like the proverbial tempest in a teacup.

“After this comes the part where he’s thrown into the sea, enters the stomach of the whale, and finally goes to Nineveh. Then God’s wrath is explained, and it all ends, with Meyers commenting that Jonah ‘wanted to restrict God and his saving love to himself and his people. Jonah thought he had failed and would be the object of ridicule.’”

“The part about the children is interesting, isn’t it,” Ikuo replied in a dreamy voice, a voice etched in Kizu’s memory of this first day. “This might be off the subject, but what a terrible thing it must have been to destroy the whole city of Nineveh. For us now, mightn’t it be equivalent to destroying a city the size of Tokyo?”

They didn’t take this thought any further. Kizu didn’t have any reason to empathize with the young man’s vision of the destruction of the entire population of a city like Tokyo. And from this commentary on the book of Jonah alone, he couldn’t answer the question put to him in the drying room about whether the story of Jonah in the Bible is actually the whole story.

Ikuo quickly detected Kizu’s confusion and neatly changed the subject. Ikuo walked around the studio, looking at the sketches and oil paintings Kizu had begun now that he was painting again. He was clearly pleased to see the same distinctive style as that in the children’s book; the color of the original paintings, he commented, is so much brighter, and looks like the use of color you find in modern American paintings. Kizu found these comments right on target. It was during this time that Ikuo proposed that if Kizu needed a nude male model he’d be happy if he’d hire him; while he was painting, Ikuo could learn more from Kizu—two birds with one stone and all that.