Somersault Read Online Free PDF Page A

flashing parabolas across the screen.
    Even lying flat, Guide was obviously a big-boned man; the bed was a bit too short for him. His head was covered with a white hood, his eyes were closed, and the upper lid of his closed right eye was darkly congested with blood. His breathing was labored, hence the respirator tube running out of his mouth. His magnificently sturdy face was red, like an overly robust child’s.
    A nurse led Dancer and Ogi to his bedside, briefly checked the drip on the IV, and left without a word. As soon as she was gone, Dancer, standing with Ogi alongside the bed, where Guide’s rough legs stuck out beyond the blanket, swiftly occupied the spot the nurse had vacated. She began rubbing Guide, from one shoulder, the top of which was outside his robe, down to his muscular chest.
    “His nostrils are nicely formed, don’t you think? He was able to breathe on his own until yesterday. And he had enough strength to kick off his covers.... They’ve intentionally lowered his body temperature. Touch his hand and see; it’s strange how cold it is.”
    Ogi did as she asked. The hand was far colder than his own. It didn’tpossess the strength to squeeze back, but its heft and feeling still made him feel like Guide was moving it.
    Dancer stroked all of Guide’s exposed skin so intently that it seemed like she might crush the tubes strung out of him. Leaning over the bed, she cast an upward glance at Ogi, disappointed, it seemed, that he hadn’t denied her observation. Then, as if to lift her own spirits before she strode off to the nursing station, Dancer said, “I’m going to find the physician in charge and get the latest update. You stay here, and if Guide comes around, be gentle with him, okay? If he were to regain consciousness surrounded by people he doesn’t know well, he might have a fit and burst another blood vessel. And that would be the end.”
    Left alone, Ogi’s mind wandered. Whenever Ogi had looked in on the three of them—Dancer, Patron, and Guide—Dancer always seemed to be paying sole attention to Patron and was even cold to Guide. With Guide, too, you could detect an occasional sense of reverence toward Patron, but whenever Dancer tried to enter the scene he unhesitatingly ignored Patron’s wishes and shooed her away. But now that Guide had collapsed, wasn’t there a distinctly sexual undertone in the way she caressed his skin?
    These thoughts began to take him in a different direction, and in order to crush out the stirrings they provoked, he considered again the way Dancer was nursing Guide. Ogi had, half jokingly, gone along with the name Patron when referring to him, but was this man really mankind’s Patron? And Guide—this man he both respected and felt a strong aversion to—could he really be the one to guide all the world? And was it only now, with Guide’s suffering an aneurysm and losing consciousness—indeed, being on the verge of death—that Ogi came to this realization?
    By the time Dancer returned, Ogi was sunk in a state of sad self-pity. She had a sullen look on her face and her upturned nose wrinkled as she gave Ogi a cool glance and turned without a word for the ICU’s exit. Experiencing again the uncomfortable sensation of the adhesive tape sucking at his heels, Ogi came to a halt at the double doors that should have opened in toward them; he froze for a moment, unable to think, as Dancer roughly reached out and punched the automatic button.
    “What a grouch that doctor is. He’s so pessimistic. He talked about brain death,” Dancer said, unable to hide her displeasure, as she came to a halt in front of the bank of elevators. “Guide’s brain is still swelling, he told me. At this rate the dark opening you could see in the middle of his brain in the CT scan might very well burst. I asked if they were taking any steps to reduce the swelling, but he didn’t say a thing.”
    Dancer drove her Pajero out toward the intersection of Koshu Boulevard, and Ogi