Silence (14 page)

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Brother Ishida used to say that when we go to Heaven we will find there everlasting peace and happiness. There we will not have to pay taxes every year, nor worry about hunger and illness. There will be no hard labor there. We have nothing but troubles in the world, so we have to work hard. Father, isn’t it true that there is no such anguish in Heaven?’

He felt like shouting out: ‘Heaven is not the sort of place you think it is!’ But he restrained himself. These peasants had learned their catechism like children; they dreamt of a Heaven in which there was no bitter taxation and no oppression. Who was he to put a cruel end to their happy dream?

‘Yes,’ he said blinking his eyes, ‘there nothing can be stolen from us; we can be deprived of nothing.’

But now, yet another question rose to his lips: ‘Do you know a father by the name of Ferreira?’

The woman shook her head. Was the very name of Ferreira a word that was not even to be mentioned by the Christians?, he asked himself.

Suddenly from the cliff above a loud voice rang out. Looking up the priest saw a smiling little plump samurai somewhat advanced in years, followed by two peasants. When he saw the old man’s smile he realized that this was the samurai who had conducted the investigation at Tomogi.

‘Hot, isn’t it?’ The samurai, waving his fan, came slowly down the cliff as he spoke. ‘From now on it gets really hot. The open fields become unbearable.’

Monica, Juan and the other men and women put their manacled wrists on their knees and bowed politely. Out of the side of his eye the old man saw the priest bow his head along with the others, but he ignored him and walked straight on. As he passed there was a dry swish of his cloak. His clothes gave forth a sweet perfume.

‘We’ve had no evening showers these days. The road is all dusty. It’s a nuisance for old people like us to come so far.’ He sat down in the middle of the prisoners, cooling his head and neck with his white fan. ‘Don’t keep on causing trouble to an old man like me,’ he said.

The light of the sun made his laughing face look so flat that the priest recalled the statues of the Buddha he had seen in Macao. These had never aroused within him an emotion similar to that called forth by the face of Christ. Only the flies kept buzzing around. At one time they would graze the necks of the Christians, then they would fly in the direction of the old man, and then back again.

‘It wasn’t from hatred that we arrested you. You must see our reasons. Why should we arrest you when you pay your taxes and work hard? We know better than anyone that the peasants are the backbone of the country.’

Mingled with the whirling of the flies’ wings was the swish of the old man’s fan. From afar the clucking of the chickens was carried by the fresh warm wind to the place where they were. Is this the famous cross-examination, thought the priest, his eyes cast down like the others. All those Christians and missionaries who had been tortured and punished—had they heard the gentle voice of persuasion prior to their suffering? Had they too heard the buzzing of flies in a sleepy atmosphere like this? He had thought to be overcome with fear and trembling but, strange to say, no terror rose up within his heart. He had no acute realization of the proximity of torture and death. He felt like a man who, on a rainy day, thinks of a sunlit mountain far away.

‘I’ll give you time to think it over. Afterwards, give me a reasonable answer,’ said the old man, bringing the conversation to an abrupt end as the forced smile faded from his lips. Now there appeared on his face instead that avaricious pride the priest had seen so often on the faces of the merchants at Macao. ‘Off with you!’ he said.

The guards stood up among the bushes and urged on their captives. The priest went to stand up with the others, but the old man twisting his face up like a monkey and for the first time revealing hatred and rancour in his flashing eyes shouted out. ‘You,’ he cried, drawing up his tiny figure to its full stature and putting one hand on his sword, ‘stay here.’

With a faint smile, the priest sat down again among the bushes. The little old fellow straightened up and, bent back like a rooster, he strutted along, obviously showing the prisoners his determination not to be beaten by a foreigner. A monkey, the priest reflected. He needn’t stand there with his hand on his sword. I’m not going to run away.

He watched the group as, all manacled, they climbed the height and disappeared from sight into the distant plateau. ‘Hoc passionis tempore piis adauge gratiam.’ The prayer rose up to his dry lips bitterly. ‘Lord,’ he murmured, ‘do not increase their suffering. Already it is too heavy for them. Until today they have been able to bear it. Can you give even more trials to people already crushed with the burdens of taxation, officialdom and cruelty?’

The old man put a cup to his lips and wet his throat much as a chicken would sip water. ‘I have met quite a number of fathers,’ he said. ‘I have cross-examined them sometimes.
 
…
’ He moistened his lips and spoke now with a servile voice which was in striking contrast with his previous attitude. ‘You understand Japanese?’

A few wisps of cloud hung in the sky. The hollow began to darken a little. In the shrubs round about the stifling humming of insects began to make itself heard for the first time.

‘Peasants are fools,’ he said. ‘It all depends on you whether or not they are to be set free.’

The priest did not quite understand what he was getting at; but the expression on the other’s face made it clear that the cunning old rascal was setting some trap for him.

‘Peasants cannot think for themselves. Even if they talk the thing over they will come to no conclusion. But if you say a single word.
 
…
’

‘What are you trying to say?’ asked the priest.

‘Apostatize! Apostatize!’ The old man laughed and waved his fan as he spoke.

‘And supposing I refuse?’ The priest replied quietly, laughing all the time. ‘Then you’ll kill me, I suppose.’

‘No, no,’ said the old man. ‘We won’t do that. If we did that the peasants would become even more stubborn. We made that mistake in Omura and Nagasaki. The Christians there are a stubborn crowd.’

The old man heaved a deep sigh as he spoke, but it was immediately clear to the priest that the whole thing was a comedy. He even began to feel a secret joy in teasing this old fellow who looked like a monkey.

‘Now if you are really a father at heart, you ought to feel pity for the Christians. Isn’t that so?’

Unconsciously the priest felt his mouth drop. What a simpleton this old fellow was. Did he think to win something with this childish logic? What he had forgotten, however, was that if this official was as simple as a child, he was equally simple in flaring up in anger when defeated in argument.

‘What about it?’, said the old man.

‘Punish me alone,’ said the priest, shrugging his shoulders and laughing.

An angry color rose up to the forehead of the old man. From the far distant clouds a faint dull roar of thunder rumbled.

‘It is because of you that they must suffer,’ concluded the old man.

They pushed him into the little hut. Through those brushwood walls standing on the naked soil the white rays of sunlight penetrated like pieces of thread. Outside he could hear the muffled voices of the chattering guards. Where had they brought the Christians? They had simply vanished from sight and that was all. Sitting on the ground and clasping his knees he thought about Monica and her one-eyed companion. Then he thought about the village of Tomogi, about Omatsu and Ichizo and Mokichi. And his heart grew heavy. If only, if only he had a moment for reflection he might at least have given those poor Christians a brief blessing. But he hadn’t even thought of it. This was proof that he hadn’t had a moment’s respite. At least he should have asked them what date it was, what day of the month it was. But he had forgotten that too.

Since coming to this country he seemed to have lost all sense of time—of months and days; so that now he could no longer reckon how many days had passed since Easter or what saint’s feast was celebrated today.

Since he had no rosary he began to recite the Paters and Aves on the five fingers of his hand; but just as the water dribbles back down from the mouth of the man whose lips are locked by sickness, the prayer remained empty and hollow on his lips. Rather was he drawn by the voices of the guards outside the hut. What was so funny that they should keep raising their voices and laughing heartily? His thoughts turned to the fire-lit garden and the servants; the figures of those men holding black flaming torches and utterly indifferent to the fate of one man. These guards, too, were men; they were indifferent to the fate of others. This was the feeling that their laughing and talking stirred up in his heart. Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind. And then for the first time a real prayer rose up in his heart.

Suddenly a ray of bright light broke upon his closed eyelids. Someone was opening the door of the hut, quietly and stealthily, so as to make no noise. Next, tiny and menacing eyes were peering in at him. When the priest looked up the intruder quickly tried to withdraw.

‘He’s quiet, isn’t he?’ Someone else was now speaking to the guard who had looked in; and now the door opened. A flood of light rushed into the room and there appeared the figure of a man, not the old samurai but another, without a sword.

‘Señor, gracia,’ he said.

So he was speaking Portuguese. The pronunciation was strange and halting, but it was certainly Portuguese.

‘Señor.’

‘Palazera â Dios nuestro Señor.’

The sudden inrush of blinding light had made the priest somewhat dizzy. He listened to the words—yes, there were mistakes here and there; but there was no doubt about the meaning.

‘Don’t be surprised,’ went on the other in Portuguese. ‘In Nagasaki and Hirado there are a number of interpreters like myself. But I see that you, father, have quite a grasp of our language. Could you guess where I learnt my Portuguese?’

Without waiting for an answer, the man went on talking; and as he spoke he kept moving his fan just like the old samurai had done. ‘Thanks to you Portuguese fathers seminaries were built in Arima and Amakusa and Omura. But this doesn’t mean that I’m an apostate. I was baptized all right; but from the beginning I had no wish to be a Christian nor a brother. I’m only the son of a court samurai; nothing but learning could make me great in the world.’

The fellow was earnestly stressing the fact that he was not a Christian. The priest sat in the dark with expressionless face, listening to him as he prattled on.

‘Why don’t you say something?’ exclaimed the man, getting angry now. ‘The fathers always ridiculed us. I knew Father Cabral—he had nothing but contempt for everything Japanese. He despised our houses; he despised our language; he despised our food and our customs—and yet he lived in Japan. Even those of us who graduated from the seminary he did not allow to become priests.’

As he talked, recalling incidents from the past, his voice became increasingly shrill and violent. Yet the priest, sitting there with his hands clasping his knees, knew that the fellow’s anger was not altogether unjustified. He had heard something about Cabral from Valignano in Macao; he remembered how Valignano had spoken sadly of the Christians and priests who had left the Church because of this man’s attitude towards Japan.

‘I’m not like Cabral,’ he said finally.

‘Really?’ The fellow spoke with a laugh. ‘I’m not so sure.’

‘Why?’

In the darkness the priest could not make out what kind of expression the fellow wore. But he somehow guessed that this low laughing voice issued from a face filled with hatred and resentment. Accustomed as he was to hearing the Christians’ confessions with closed eyes, he could make such conjectures confidently. But, he thought as he looked toward the other, what this fellow is fighting against is not Father Cabral but the fact that he once received baptism.

‘Won’t you come outside, father? I don’t think we need now fear that you will run away.’

‘You never know,’ said the priest with the shadow of a smile, ‘I’m not a saint. I’m scared of death.’

‘Father, sometimes courage only causes trouble for other people. We call that blind courage. And many of the priests, fanatically filled with this blind courage, forget that they are only causing trouble to the Japanese.’

‘Is that all the missionaries have done? Have they only caused trouble?’

‘If you force on people things that they don’t want, they are inclined to say: “Thanks for nothing!” And Christian doctrine is something like that here. We have our own religion; we don’t want a new, foreign one. I myself learned Christian doctrine in the seminary, but I tell you I don’t think it ought to be introduced into this country.’

‘Your and my way of thinking are different,’ said the priest quietly dropping his voice. ‘If they were the same I would not have crossed the sea from far away to come to this country.’

This was his first controversy with a Japanese. Since the time of Xavier had many fathers engaged in such an exchange with the Buddhists? Valignano had warned him not to underrate the intelligence of the Japanese. They were well-versed in the art of controversy, he had said.

‘Well, then, let me ask a question.’ Opening and closing his fan as he spoke, he came to the attack. ‘The Christians say that their Deus is the source of love and mercy, the source of goodness and virtue, whereas the buddhas are all men and cannot possess these qualities. Is this your stand also, father?’

‘A buddha cannot escape death any more than we can. He is something different from the Creator.’

‘Only a father who is ignorant of Buddhist teaching could say such a thing. In fact, you cannot say that the buddhas are no more than men. There are three kinds of buddhas—
bossin, goshin
and
oka.
The
oka
buddha shows eight aspects for delivering human beings and giving them benefits; but the
bossin
has neither beginning nor end, and he is unchangeable. It is written in the sutras that the buddha is everlasting and never changes. It is only a Christian who could regard the buddhas as mere human beings. We don’t think that way at all.’