Somersault (8 page)

This decided, Kizu saw Ikuo out. This young man, he mused, might very well have already had the idea of posing in mind before he came to visit. Still, Kizu found the same sort of faint smile he had outside the drying room once again rising to his lips.

That weekend Kizu woke up while it was still dark out. He noticed something about the way he held his body in bed. Probably because he felt the cancer had spread to his liver, these days he always slept with his left elbow as a pillow. It was a position based on a distant memory, a memory of himself at seventeen or eighteen, in the valley in the forest where he was born and raised, lying on the slope of a low hill. Sometimes this vision of himself appeared in dreams as a richly colored reality, Kizu seeing this as his own figure in the
eternal present
. And in the predawn darkness, in a dream just before waking, he returned to his
eternal present
body.

Kizu was at the point where his hair, to use the American expression, was salt and pepper, yet his mental image of himself was always that of this seventeen- or eighteen-year-old. Emotionally, he knew he hadn’t changed much from his teen years. He was aware, quite graphically, of a grotesque disjuncture within him, a man with an over-fifty-year-old body attached to the emotions of a teenager. Kizu recalled the thirteenth canto of Dante’s
Inferno
, the scene in which a soul on the threshold of old age picks up its own body as a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old and hangs it from some brambles.

Beginning a week later, Ikuo began posing to help Kizu with a series of tableaus he’d only vaguely conceived. As he drew, Kizu, influenced by what Ikuo had said that first day, lectured as he used to do in classrooms—though of course in American universities if a professor did all the talking he’d receive a terrible evaluation from the students at the end of the semester. Sometimes Kizu would respond promptly to the questions Ikuo asked as he posed; other times he gave himself until the following week to answer. Kizu recalled in particular one question from early in their sessions.

“Last time,” Kizu said, “you asked me what it means for a person to be free. I think I struggled with the same question when I was young. So I gave it some thought. An anecdote I once read about a painter came to mind.

“In order to give you an idea of how I understand it, I need to give you another example, not from some book I read but a quote I heard from a colleague of mine who teaches philosophy, which is: A circle in nature and the concept of a circle within God are the same, they just manifest themselves differently.

“The anecdote took place during the Renaissance, when an official in charge of choosing an artist to paint a mammoth fresco requested one particular artist (an artist I was quite taken with when I was young) to submit a work that best displayed his talents. The response of the artist—which became famous—was to submit a single circle he had drawn.

“An artist draws a circle with a pencil. And that circle fits perfectly with the concept of a circle that resides within God. The person who can accomplish this is a
free man
. In order to arrive at that state of freedom, he has had to polish his artistry through countless paintings. It was as if my own life work I had dreamed about was contained in this. When I was young, I mean.”

Ikuo continued to hold his pose, gazing at the space in front of him, listening attentively, his expression unchanged, his rugged features reminding Kizu of Blake’s portrait of a youthful Los, likened to the sun—Kizu feeling
he was brushing away with his crayon the shadows of Blake’s colored block prints that shaded Ikuo’s nude body.

Ikuo was silent until their next break. “I’ve been thinking about something very similar to what you said, Professor. People say young children are free. Okay, but if you get even a little self-conscious you can’t act freely, even though you might have been able to a few years before. When I was no longer a child, I fantasized about a freedom I could attain. And not just talking about it like this, either....

“I’ve been thinking about Jonah, too. He tried to run away from God but couldn’t. He learned this the hard way, almost dying in the process. Made me think how much the inside of a whale’s stomach must stink!” Kizu couldn’t keep from smiling faintly.

“Finally he gave up and decided to follow God’s orders. Once he made that decision he stuck to his guns. Jonah complained to God that he’d changed his original plan. Aren’t you supposed to finish what you first decided to do? he implored. Isn’t the way Jonah acted exactly the way a free person is supposed to act? Of course it’s God who makes this freedom possible—and correct me if I’m wrong—but if God doesn’t take into account the freedom to object to what He wants, how can He know what true unlimited freedom is? That’s why I’d like to read what happens next in the book of Jonah.”

Instead of a reply, a faint smile on Kizu’s face showed he understood what the young man meant.

3

It was the beginning of autumn in Tokyo. Near the faculty housing where Kizu had lived in New Jersey, there was a so-called lake, actually a long muddy creek used for rowing practice, and every year as autumn arrived he used to hear from the far shore of the lake a cicadalike call; his African roommate, an art history major, insisted it was a bird. Now in his Tokyo apartment he could see a mammoth
nire
tree that stood about five yards from his south-facing terrace. The soft broad rounded leaves reminded him of the stand of trees that lined the campus grounds back in New Jersey; he guessed it was a type of elm. He didn’t stop to think that elms in Japan are, indeed, classified as
nire
. The first time Ikuo had removed all his clothes to pose nude, he looked off at the far-off buildings through the leafy branches of the tree and remarked,
“That akadamo
screens us well here, though it won’t after the leaves fall.”

“Akadamo?”

“That’s the name I heard it called when I was wandering around Hokkaido,” Ikuo replied. “Most people call it a
harunire
—a wych elm—but it’s different. I imagine it’ll be blossoming soon. You can tell it from a wych elm by when it blooms, according to what my father told me.…”

Ikuo’s face, reminding Kizu of a carnivore’s snout, was soon lost in reverie; Kizu too was lost in thought. Ikuo hadn’t had any contact with his family in a long time and had never said anything about the home he grew up in. His face was so unusual that Kizu felt sure Ikuo must have had a comical appeal when he was a boy and been a favorite in his family. After he grew up and began wandering in Hokkaido and elsewhere around the country, his family surely must have felt a profound sense of loss.

The wych elm near his terrace began to take on erotic connotations for Kizu. One morning, his gaze was drawn to the lush foliage of the tree, for it was swaying and shaking with unusual force. Soon he saw a pair of squirrels leaping about on a bare branch, disappearing in the shadows, their power concentrated in the base of their thick tails. Kizu could sense that the squirrels were preoccupied with mating, and as their movements made the leaves shake exaggeratedly he felt familiar stirrings deep in his loins. Kizu could imagine, in the deep green shadows of the tree, Ikuo’s slim waist, the muscles of his butt underneath the tough outer layer of skin softly expanding and contracting. For the first time in quite a while, Kizu’s penis grew almost painfully erect.

As Kizu watched, the swelling peacefully subsided. He was lying naked, sunbathing opposite the wych elm, whose foliage covered a broad expanse. It was 9
A.M
., and Kizu had spent an hour in the light of the sun, now behind the wych elm’s branches. He’d spread a bed cover on the terrace floor and was lying down, his legs spread wide toward the window. This was his new habit, a sentimental yet possibly effective way to warm the insides of his cancer-ravaged body.

Today, though, with his abdomen bare in the sunlight, his pose called to mind a baby having his diapers changed. And an even more laughable image occurred to him: a racial memory, if you can call it that, of long ago, when he existed as genetic material in a monkey, and that monkey—himself—was presenting his anus to the sun. Even within this gentle sunbathing, then, sexual yearnings brewed and bubbled....

Before long, in the shadows of the wych elm, this time much closer to the terrace, a much more explicitly erotic movement began. On this canvas made up of the shadings of green and gentle waves, Kizu stretched out an imaginary pencil and traced the line of Ikuo’s body, thighs slightly spread, from his waist to his rump viewed diagonally from behind. Once again he
felt a rush of heated blood spread from his abdomen to his waist, his penis became rigid, and he began fondling his genitals with his left hand while sketching in the air. When he ejaculated, Kizu heard a powerful sigh—his own—calling out, “Ikuo, Ikuo! Ah—Ikuo!”

Kizu now knew what it was he’d been seeking from Ikuo ever since that day in the club’s drying room. A man in his fifties only now awakening to the fact that he was gay, he realized that what he wanted was simply to have sex with this young man with the strong beautiful body.

After this Kizu eagerly anticipated the days when Ikuo posed for him. Many a session passed, though, with nothing out of the ordinary happening. When he was alone, Kizu had no idea how to make his daydreams a reality, and Ikuo, oblivious to Kizu’s desires, said things that were painful for him to hear.

“Sometimes this studio smells like a bachelor my own age is living here!” Ikuo said one day. “I blushed when I was modeling ‘cause I thought it was because I hadn’t bathed in a couple of days! I haven’t been to the pool either, for a while.”

Kizu wasn’t embarrassed, but he did feel confused about his masturbation, a habit now revived after a long dormancy.

Ikuo also said to Kizu, and not as mere flattery, “They say when artists create they get younger—and in your case it’s true!”

4

It was a dark day, as dark as if the sun had already set, the wind gusting out of the north. The
hygiene cure
, a dated term that made him wince—his sunbathing, in other words—which Kizu had continued entirely on his own since the middle of July, was out of the question on a day like this. The glass door was cold against his forehead as he gazed at the shadowy leaves of the wych elm rustling in the wind. The leaves were dry and dull, their undersides, exposed when the wind curled them up, even more dry and whitish. Until now, the only yellowish leaves he’d seen were those on branches broken by the wind or by squirrels, but now there were clumps of lemon-colored leaves on several more recessed branches. Kizu spent the morning, till past noon, in a state of agitation. Ikuo was supposed to come in the morning, but he didn’t show up. Two weeks before, on a Monday, he’d called and said he couldn’t model that day. Thursday came, and again he didn’t show up, this time not even phoning. The same thing happened both days the following week. On this particular day Kizu phoned the athletic club and was told that
Ikuo wasn’t out sick, in fact was at that very moment teaching an adult class. Kizu said to tell Ikuo he’d called.

Finally, on a sunny Thursday morning, Ikuo appeared at his door, without giving any explanation for having taken two and a half weeks off. His reticence wasn’t the result of some self-centered insecurity, but a willful decision to keep what he wanted to say within him, a stance that made Kizu all the more concerned. To top this off, something about Ikuo’s nude body seemed unfamiliar. As artists are wont to do, Kizu looked at him intently as if he were listening to some strange sound. In contrast to his attitude when he came into the apartment, Ikuo was now quick to react. With the luxuriant foliage of the wych elm behind his right shoulder as he posed, the strong sunlight, which they hadn’t seen in a while, above him, Ikuo kneaded the tight skin around his washboard abdomen.

“These past two weeks I’ve been training like crazy,” he said. “Coaching recreational swimmers doesn’t keep me in shape. My stomach’s gotten pretty buff, but I’m worried the lines won’t be the same as the last time I modeled.”

“That’s not a problem,” Kizu replied. “Right now I’m concentrating on the swell of the shoulders. Your whole body does look quite toned.”

Still seeming concerned, Ikuo kneaded the flesh of his abdomen, pulling it toward his navel. The movement pulled his soft but heavy penis away from his thick pubic hair and over toward his thigh.

Feeling Kizu’s gaze, Ikuo fidgeted the muscles of his buttocks and tried, without success, to hide his genitals in the shadow of his thick thigh. Soon his penis started curving to the right, pointing toward the wych elm outside the glass door as it swelled to life. This was different from Kizu’s recent erections, reminding him of the uncontrollable, autonomous erections of his younger days.

Finally, Ikuo relaxed his pose and covered his penis with both hands, decisively turning a stern but blushing face to Kizu and looking straight at him for the first time that day.

“Actually, there’s something I need to talk with you about,” Ikuo said, “and thinking about it got all these personal emotions welling up. And now look what’s happened. You’ll have to pardon my confusion. Calling
it personal emotions
might sound a little strange, but you’ve taught me so many things. Sometimes I can’t believe how kind you’ve been to me. These past few months I’ve felt less lonely than I have for years. I know it’ll seem ungrateful, but I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’ve decided to quit my job in Tokyo.

“When we first met in the pool drying room I was already thinking of doing this. I’ve worked there a full two years already. Fortunately, that
allowed me to meet you, to get this modeling job, and to be able to study with you. I’m thankful, but if I just continue as a swimming coach, I’m never going to be able to solve any of the problems I’m facing—problems connected with what we were talking about last time, about being a free person.