Somersault (69 page)

“Professor Kizu spoke with Dr. Koga,” Ogi said, “who told him how surprised he was to see the intensity with which the Technicians are dealing with the wound. He also said he’s concerned that they might ignore Patron’s will and use this as a pretext for reviving their radical activities.”

“But what about Ikuo himself?” Dancer asked. “Didn’t he join this church in order to hear Patron relay the order God wants him to carry out? Ikuo’s close to the Technicians in a different way from Dr. Koga. I wonder sometimes if he might join them and rush headlong into something rash. If Ikuo and the Technicians joined forces, Patron might not be able to resist them.”

“Professor Kizu kids him about how training the Young Fireflies is his main thing now,” Ogi said.

The wet interior of her mouth had a much healthier hue to it than it had earlier in the day, as Dancer sat there contemplatively. “Since Ikuo’s childhood was so unusual,” she said, “he can’t restrain himself when it comes to dealing with children. Don’t you think he would have made a good school-teacher, instead of making a half-baked effort to carve out a life for himself in normal society? Not that I have any right to say that.”

Ogi felt it was he, more than Dancer, who had no right to criticize Ikuo in that way.

5

Late that night another unexpected event took place, which made this the busiest week since the church had moved to the Hollow. Kizu suffered a massive bloody discharge and sharper pain than ever before and was carried to Dr. Koga’s clinic.

There were portents that this might be coming, especially when Kizu told Ikuo, as he left the studio, that he was too exhausted to go out to dinner and asked Mrs. Shigeno to prepare a light meal to be sent over to his residence. Ms. Tachibana, along with Morio, had yet to see the sketch of Patron’s Sacred Wound, so she brought over Kizu’s meal, which consisted of the same menu as everyone else’s, minus the meat.

Ms. Tachibana’s face was almost frighteningly pale, but Kizu was happy to see that there was an understanding between her and Ikuo and the office staff. Kizu was also impressed at how intensely Morio studied the sketch, the same intensity he usually applied only to listening to music. It was also nice to see that his eyes and ears were perfectly fine. Ms. Tachibana was worried, though, because Kizu didn’t touch his meal while they were there, and on the way home she found herself also concerned when Morio, with his perfect pitch, told her that Kizu’s voice had been one note flatter than usual.

Also, in the middle of the night, as she got Morio up to use the toilet—he’d been wetting his bed since he was a teenager—she noticed a light on in the house on the north shore, reflected on the surface of the lake. She woke Dancer up, and they talked things over with Ogi. Kizu’s place didn’t have a phone, so they decided to go over to check for themselves. As soon as Ogi entered the unlocked house, he found Kizu collapsed on the floor in front of the toilet.

Ogi raced back to their house on the south shore, phoned Dr. Koga, and went back to help Dancer take care of Kizu. Kizu was conscious as they carried him to his bed, though he couldn’t respond and just groaned. All they could do while waiting for Dr. Koga was to stand watch at Kizu’s bedside. At the same time they noticed that their palms were dappled dark red, like the painting of the wound in Patron’s side.

Ikuo drove Dr. Koga over. The doctor seemed more energetic than ever as he bustled around. Ikuo, in contrast, was tearful and helpless, yet somehow he blurted out that he’d like them to take Kizu by ambulance to the Red Cross Hospital in Matsuyama. Dr. Koga scolded him, however, saying that a patient in such pain might very well have a heart attack and that transporting him such a long way would be signing his death warrant. He would treat Kizu at the clinic.

The next day the Quiet Women held another prayer vigil, this time for Kizu’s swift recovery. The Young Fireflies, profoundly grateful for the donations Kizu had made to them and wanting to cheer up Ikuo, put back the partition they had taken out in Kizu’s house to make the studio, to partition off a living room, again, on the east side, and a bedroom on the west for Kizu to convalesce in.

Kizu came home from the clinic one week later and was carried up to his house from the car they parked below the dam. As he was carried inside on a stretcher, Kizu noticed Morio among those lined up to welcome him back and said a word of greeting to him. Morio, solemn and serious, paused a beat before replying.

“Your voice is small, but it’s the right pitch now!”

The people gathered there had heard how Morio had related Kizu’s physical condition to the pitch of his voice, and an animated stir rippled through the group. Ogi realized how indispensable a person Kizu had already become to those who’d moved here.

Asa-san was among the local residents who were happy that Kizu was back home. Ogi learned that, even though she was among those who smiled peacefully at Morio’s words, she was also a realist unmoved by the upbeat mood of those around her.

Watching as Kizu was carried up the slope, gazing steadily at the greenery, which had deepened in color in the week of his absence, Asa-san spoke to Ogi, who stood beside her.

“I’m not saying that Professor Kizu needs to return to America, but wouldn’t it be best if he chose a real hospital in Matsuyama or Tokyo and settled in there? I think coming back to the Hollow means he’s resigned himself to the inevitable.”

Ogi went over to the home on the east side of the monastery occupied by Patron to report to him that Kizu was back from the clinic. Patron asked about Kizu’s condition and about any new symptoms and was dissatisfied that Ogi wasn’t able to give more details. Before long Patron announced he’d be paying Kizu a visit. Ogi returned to the office to consult with Dancer, and in the evening, with Dr. Koga joining them, they discussed how to carry out this request.

The sky was dark and threatening rain as Ogi and Dancer walked single file through the dark silent woods to Kizu’s house, shining their flashlights at Patron’s feet. Contrary to the usual feeling one got that the darkness was pushing down to the lowest reaches of the woods, the chapel and the monastery across the lake seemed to recede and somehow it felt entirely natural that—despite the large number of people living there—there wasn’t a sound.

Kizu was sitting in his angled bed, propped up by cushions, and in front of him were three dining room chairs. Dr. Koga was already ensconced on one of them. Patron and Dancer sat down on the other two, while Ikuo and Ogi stood at the foot of the bed, their backs to the dark window.

“I’m sorry to have caused all this trouble with such dramatic events,” Kizu said, in a voice that, as Morio had pointed out, was small but lively.

“If anyone’s been acting melodramatically, it’s
me,”
Patron said. “Once my fever came down I was back to normal, but I’ve stayed in my room because I was embarrassed to see all of you. Are you in pain?”

“No, not right now.”

“It must have been quite painful when you collapsed.”

“I didn’t even have time to think about it, the pain was so bad—more than I had thought a person could endure.… Physical pain can make your whole world collapse. It made me think how extraordinary your Somersault must have been, as a shock to your whole person. I realized I’d taken advantage of our closeness in age and said some pretty stupid things. It’s made me think about a lot of things.…”

Patron didn’t respond directly, and everyone else was silent. Just saying that much had left Kizu gasping for breath.

“You’ve just been allowed to come home,” Dancer said, “and I’m sure the trip has worn you out, so it’s best not to talk too much.”

“Don’t worry,” Dr. Koga countered. “Professor Kizu isn’t your run-of-the-mill invalid. He’s the kind of person who can take physical pain, shift it over to
spiritual
pain, and use it to bolster his creativity. I’ve never had a patient like him before.”

“I’ve only been away a week,” Kizu said, “but I feel uplifted to be back with all my friends again. This really has become my
home
. I got a little carried away just now and said that after all the pain I experienced I reflected deeply on things, but I can’t get Patron’s wound out of my mind. I had just sketched it, too.… For ten years, you said, you were in hell, and I was thinking about what you endured.… To borrow Dr. Koga’s words, along with the spiritual pain, imagine such a persistent physical pain on top of it.… It’s the kind of pain that hits you all at once, but no matter how overwhelming it is you know it will pass. If the body is killed, the pain will disappear. But that’s not true of spiritual pain, is it?”

Patron was silent. Dancer said to him, “When you were in the midst of your fever you didn’t get a chance to see Professor Kizu’s sketch. Could we all look together at it now?”

She went to the room next door, closed off by a wide sliding door, and brought over the framed sketch. Kizu asked Ikuo to fetch the preliminary sketchbook he’d used for the final panel of the triptych. As the latter was opened onto the floor, Kizu stretched out his neck toward it like a turtle.

“The one in the frame is the sketch I did of your wound, which I colored with watercolors. The next one, and the page in the sketchbook, are
sketches I did the night: I was hit by that sharp pain, while I was thinking about the tableau. Both of them center on the Sacred Wound, and I did them to try to clarify my feelings about Patron’s injury.

“My pain was entirely physical, but while I was racked by it, and after a week when its aftershocks continued, when I look at these earlier sketches I feel my way of thinking about the tableau has changed. Seeing as how I’ve come up with a new concept, I thought I’d ask Patron to come here to pose for me.”

“Well, there’s no need to hide my wound anymore, so why not?” Patron replied. “Somehow your painting captures a side of me that now, even at my age, I’d never noticed before.”

25: The Play at the Hollow

1

In his house on the north shore of the Hollow, Kizu still felt a quiet sense of excitement after Patron’s visit and lay awake far into the night. Even without the medicine Dr. Koga had prescribed, he was able to control the pain deep in his abdomen; he was beginning, in fact, to feel a kind of symbiotic relationship with it.

Kizu realized again how hard it is to call up a memory of pain once it’s passed. Still, after such overwhelming agony, he was able to put the lesser pain he felt at present, and any anxiety about the future, into perspective.

The pain that had assaulted him in the middle of that night he could certainly feel for what it was, yet it went way beyond what anything within him could actively resist. He’d felt driven, spiritually and physically, into a gigantic dark tunnel of pain, violated, with no hope of escape. During the intermittent periods when the pain receded, he was surprised that an insignificant being like himself was able to put up with so much. And then the pain would flare up again and he’d be driven back, deep into that dark tunnel. What frightened him most was the fact that there was no downtime, no letup from this abnormal power. Every time he was once again spit out, alive, from the depths, only to be handed over to a different form of pain—one that was within the realm of comprehension.

The pain that Kizu felt deep in his gut was somehow now accompanied by a sense of nostalgia. Not a nostalgia based on some past event, but more like a sense of déjà vu.

Ever so slowly the pain reached its peak, and Kizu suppressed a groan. The dregs of pain floated up on his expelled breath; his feverish body began to smell.

The second or third day, when all his organs felt stiff and hard, he couldn’t understand where the pain was coming from, what the dynamics of the pain and his body movements were, and how they were related. Kizu was both afraid of this unknown opponent and roused himself to resist it, shifting positions in bed to test it. He tried this even more efficiently now and was finally able to pinpoint the pain’s exact locus. This time, in place of a groan, he exhaled deeply. The sound came back to him as a sigh, a composed expression of his inner being.

“Can’t you sleep?” Ikuo called out to him. He had apparently been awake all the time. “Is the pain really bad?” As this familiar voice rose up like dampness from the foot of his bed, Kizu felt a childish exhilaration.

“It does hurt, but it’s not the kind of pain I usually feel inside . . . more like an imaginary pain. Like soldiers who get their legs blown off in war and still complain that their knees hurt.”

“Would you like me to prepare a suppository?” Ikuo asked.

“I’d rather not.”

“How about a sleeping pill?”

“It’s not the pain that’s keeping me up. I’m just absorbing the fact that I’m actually back here.”

“Shall I open the curtain?”

“That’d be nice. But let’s keep the lights off so the people across the lake won’t start worrying.”

A large dark object roused itself and slowly drew the curtain back. In the moonlight that filtered in, Kizu was happy to see a brusque smile on Ikuo’s deeply shadowed profile. Drawn by Ikuo’s gaze outside, Kizu slid himself up so he, too, could see out.

The moon was in the west, hidden behind the huge cypress that filled the whole right side of the window. The shadow of the tree cut across the surface of the lake, where fog was swirling low and beginning to thicken, all the way to the forest on the east bank. The moon shone on the fog on the surface of the lake, illuminating the concrete walls of the chapel on the south shore.

Even the needles of the cedars and the tips of the leaves of the bushes in the forest behind were shining, yet the whole was pitch black. The night sky was clear, with a purity Kizu hadn’t seen in some time, with thin clouds sweeping briskly and steadily across the sky like sheets of ice.

Kizu had been quiet, concentrating on the moonlit scene for a while, when he noticed that Ikuo wanted to say something but had been hesitating.

“One of my colleagues in America has traced the American sublime in Romantic landscapes of the United States,” Kizu said, in a hoarse voice. “I see there’s a sublime in the Japanese landscape too.”