Free Somersault by Kenzaburō Ōe Page A

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    “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,