Silence (19 page)

Next the guards placed on the ground between the peasants and the stools on which the officials were now sitting a
fumie
wrapped in a cloth. Then they returned to their places.

Going down the list, one of the officials called out the names: ‘Ikitsukijima, Kubo-no-ura, Tobei.’ The four Christians sat there vacantly. Getting excited, a guard struck with his stick the fellow on the extreme left, but he did not stir. Two or three times he was pushed in the back; he fell forward and crouched to the ground, but he made no effort to move from the place where he had fallen.

‘Kubo-no-ura, Chokichi.’

The one-eyed fellow shook his head two or three times. What a child he looked!

‘Kubo-no-ura, Haru.’

The woman who had given the priest the cucumber bent her back and hung her head. In this position she was pushed on by the guard, but she did not so much as raise her eyes.

Finally the old man, Mataichi, was called. But he, too, clung to the earth where he stood.

But now the officials raised no angry voices and uttered no reproach. One would think that they had been expecting this from the beginning, the way they remained seated on their stools whispering to one another in low voices. Then suddenly they arose and withdrew to the guards’ hut.

The sun stood directly over the prison; and its rays beat down upon the four Christians left behind. Their squatting figures threw black shadows on the ground, while the cicada again began to sing as though disrupting the glistening air. The guards and the Christians even began to talk and joke with one another as though the previous relationship of cross-examining and cross-examined had vanished. But then from the hut one of the officials called out that all could return to the prison except the one-eyed man, Chokichi.

Relaxing his hands from the bars they had been clutching, the priest sat down on the floor. What would happen next he did not know. But, at any rate, today had passed peacefully, and this thought filled him with a deep sense of relief. If today passed by well, that was enough: tomorrow would look after itself. If tomorrow he were alive.
 
…

‘Isn’t it a pity to throw it away?’, one voice was saying. And the other answered: ‘Yes, it’s an awful pity.’ What precisely the conversation was all about he could not make out; but at any rate the wind blew toward him an easy-going conversation between the guard and the one-eyed fellow. A fly jumped down from the bars and began to buzz around the priest’s head—the sound of its wings was almost soporific.

Suddenly someone ran across the courtyard. Then the swish of a sharp sound. Then a thud. Already, as the priest clutched the bars, the official was sheathing his sharp, glittering sword: the execution was over. The dead body of the one-eyed man lay prostrate on the ground. Grabbing it by the feet, one of the guards began to drag it slowly toward the hole the Christians had dug. The black blood flowing from it lay all around like the sash of a garment.

Suddenly, from out the prison came the high-pitched scream of a woman, her voice going on and on as though she was singing a hymn. Then it faded out, and the air around became deadly calm. Only the hands of the priest as they clutched the bars trembled as though cramped and paralyzed.

‘Look to it,’ shouted another official, facing the prison and with his back to the priest. ‘This is what happens when you make light of life. It’s a tiring business; but the sooner you go through with it, the sooner you get out of here. I’m not telling you to trample out of conviction. If you just go through with the formality, it won’t hurt your beliefs.’

Shouting in a loud voice, a guard next brought out Kichijirō. Wearing only a loincloth and trembling from head to foot, he came before the officials, bowing again and again. Then raising his thin, wasted foot he placed it on the
fumie.

‘Quickly! Get out!’ shouted one of the officials, pointing to the gate; and Kichijirō, tumbling over himself in haste, disappeared from sight. Not once did he look back toward the hut where the priest was. But for the priest, what the fellow did was no longer of any importance.

The white rays of the sun beat down dazzlingly on the open courtyard. Beneath its merciless rays there lay on the ground the black dye which was the blood from the body of the one-eyed man.

Just as before, the cicada kept on singing their song, dry and hoarse. There was not a breath of wind. Just as before, a fly kept buzzing around the priest’s face. In the world outside there was no change. A man had died; but there was no change.

‘So it has come to this.
 
…
’ He shivered as he clutched the bars. ‘So it has come to this.
 
…
’

Yet his perplexity did not come from the event that had happened so suddenly. What he could not understand was the stillness of the courtyard, the voice of the cicada, the whirling wings of the flies. A man had died. Yet the outside world went on as if nothing had happened. Could anything be more crazy? Was this martyrdom? Why are you silent? Here this one-eyed man has died—and for you. You ought to know. Why does this stillness continue? This noonday stillness. The sound of the flies—this crazy thing, this cruel business. And you avert your face as though indifferent. This
 
…
this I cannot bear.

Kyrie Eleison! Lord, have mercy! His trembling lips moved a while in prayer, but the words faded from his lips. Lord, do not abandon me any more! Do not abandon me in this mysterious way. Is this prayer? For a long time I have believed that prayer is uttered to praise and glorify you; but when I speak to you it seems as though I only blaspheme. On the day of my death, too, will the world go relentlessly on its way, indifferent just as now? After I am murdered, will the cicada sing and the flies whirl their wings inducing sleep? Do I want to be as heroic as that? And yet, am I looking for the true, hidden martyrdom or just for a glorious death? Is it that I want to be honored, to be prayed to, to be called a saint?

Clasping his knees, he sat on the floor looking straight in front of him. ‘It was almost noon. Until the third hour darkness covered the whole earth.’ When that man had died on the cross, from within the temple had issued three bugle calls, one long, one short, and then one long again. Preparations for the ceremony of the Pasch had begun. In blue, flowing robes the high priest had ascended the stairway of the temple and, standing before the altar on which lay the sacrificial victim, had blown the trumpet. At that time, the sky had darkened and behind the clouds the sun had faded. ‘Darkness fell. The veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top even to the bottom.’ This was the image of martyrdom he had long entertained; but the martyrdom of these peasants, enacted before his very eyes—how wretched it was, miserable like the huts they lived in, like the rags in which they were clothed.

Chapter 7

F
IVE
days later, in the evening, he had his second meeting with Inoue, the Lord of Chikugo. The day had been deadly still; but now the leaves of the trees began to stir gently sending forth a fresh whisper in the evening breeze. And so he found himself face to face with Inoue. Apart from the interpreter, the magistrate had no companion. When the priest entered with his guard, the other, fondling a large bowl in his hands, was slowly sipping hot water.

‘I’m afraid I have neglected you,’ said Inoue, still holding the bowl in both hands while his great eyes stared curiously at the priest. ‘I had business in Hirado.’

The magistrate ordered the interpreter to bring hot water to the priest; and all the time a smile played around his lips. Then he slowly began to speak about his journey to Hirado. ‘You should go to Hirado if you get a chance, father’. He seemed to talk as if the priest were a free man. ‘There is a castle of the Matsuura’s on a mountain facing a tranquil inlet.’

‘Yes, I have heard from the missionaries in Hirado that it is a beautiful town.’

‘I would not say beautiful; I’d rather say interesting.’ Inoue shook his head as he spoke. ‘When I see that town I think of a story I heard long ago. It is about Takenobu Matsuura of Hirado who had four concubines who constantly quarrelled out of jealousy. Takenobu, unable to bear it any longer, ended up by expelling all four from his castle. But perhaps this is not a suitable story for the ears of a celibate priest.’

‘This Matsuura must have been a very wise man.’ Since Inoue had become so frank, the priest also felt relaxed as he spoke.

‘Do you really mean that? If you do, I feel happy. Hirado, and indeed our whole Japan, is just like Matsuura.’ Twisting the bowl around in his hand, the Lord of Chikugo went on: ‘Spain, Portugal, Holland, England and such-like women keep whispering jealous tales of slander into the ear of the man called Japan.’

As he listened to the interpreter’s translation, the priest began to realize what Inoue was getting at. How often he had heard at Goa and Macao how the Protestant countries like England and Holland, and the Catholic countries like Spain and Portugal had come to Japan and, jealous of one another’s progress, had spoken calumnies about one another to the Japanese. And the missionaries, too, out of rivalry had at one time strictly forbidden their Japanese converts to consort with the English and the Dutch.

‘Father, if you think that Matsuura was wise, you surely realize that Japan’s outlawing of Christianity is not unreasonable and foolish.’

As he spoke, the laugh never faded from those fat, full-blooded cheeks and the magistrate stared intently at the priest’s face. For a Japanese, the eyes seemed strangely brown while the side-locks (were they perhaps dyed?) showed no trace of white.

‘Our Church teaches monogamy.
 
…
’ The priest deliberately chose a bantering turn of phrase. ‘If a man has a lawful wife, I wonder if it is a wise thing to let himself be burdened with concubines. What if Japan were to choose one lawful wife from among these four?’

‘And by this lawful wife you mean Portugal?’

‘No, no! I mean our Church.’

As the interpreter unemotionally passed on this reply, Inoue’s face fell; and raising his voice he laughed. Considering his age, it was a high-pitched laugh; but there was no emotion in the eyes he now turned on the priest. His eyes were not laughing.

‘Father, don’t you think it is better for this man called Japan to stop thinking about women from foreign countries and to be united with a woman born in the same country, a woman who has sympathy for his way of thinking.’

The priest knew well what Inoue meant by the foreign woman; but since the other was carrying on the argument in this apparently frivolous way, he felt that he too must continue along the same lines. ‘In the Church,’ he said, ‘the nationality of the woman is not important. What matters is her fidelity to her husband.’

‘I see. And yet if love of husband and wife were based only on emotion no one would have to suffer from what we call the persistent love of an ugly woman.’ The magistrate nodded his head as though satisfied with his own way of speaking. ‘There are some men in the world who get upset by the persistent affection of an ugly woman.’

‘You look upon missionary work as the forcing of love upon someone?’

‘Yes, that’s what it is—from our standpoint. And if you don’t like the expression, let’s put it this way. We call a woman who cannot bear children barren; and we think that such a woman has not the capacity to be a wife.’

‘If our doctrine makes no progress here in Japan, this is not the fault of the Church. It is the fault of those who tear the Japanese Christians from the Church like a husband from his wife.’

The interpreter, searching for words, was momentarily silent. This was the time when the evening prayer ought to come floating from the Christians’ prison; but today there was no sound. Suddenly the priest thought of the death sentence of five days before: a stillness that seemed to resemble this moment, but in reality so different. It was the time when the body of the one-eyed man lay prostrate on the ground in the flashing sun and the guard unemotionally seizing one leg had dragged it off to the hole in the ground, leaving a trail of blood just like a great line that had been traced over the earth with a brush. Was it possible, reflected the priest, that the order for this execution had been given by the benevolent old man who sat before him?

‘Father,’ said the Lord of Chikugo, ‘you and the other missionaries do not seem to know Japan.’

‘And you, honorable magistrate,’ answered the priest, ‘you do not seem to know Christianity.’

At this they both laughed. ‘And yet,’ said Inoue, ‘thirty years ago, when I was a retainer of Gamo, I asked for the guidance of the fathers.’

‘And then?’

‘My reasons for opposing Christianity are different from those of the people at large. I have never thought of Christianity as an evil religion.’

The interpreter listened to these words with astonishment on his face; and while he stammered and searched for words, the old man kept looking at the bowl in his hands with its little remaining hot water, all the time laughing.

‘Father, I want you to think over two things this old man has told you. One is that the persistent affection of an ugly woman is an intolerable burden for a man; the other, that a barren woman should not become a wife.’

As the magistrate stood up to go, the interpreter bowed his head down to the ground, his hands joined in front of him. The guard, all flustered, set out the sandals into which the Lord of Chikugo slowly put his feet; and without so much as a backward glance he vanished into the darkness of the courtyard. At the door of the hut was a swarm of mosquitoes; outside could be heard the neighing of a horse.

Now it was night. Softly the rain began to fall making a sound like the pattering of pebbles in the trees at the back of the hut. Resting his head on the hard floor and listening to the sound of the rain, the priest thought of a man who had been put on trial like himself. It was on the morning of April 7th that this emaciated man had been driven down the slope at Jerusalem. The rays of the dawn stretched out beyond the Dead Sea bathing the mountain range in golden white, the brook Cedron babbled on, ever giving forth its fresh sound. No one gave him any chance to rest. After the scribes and the elders had pronounced sentence of death, it was necessary to get the approval of Pilate, the Roman Governor. In his camp outside the town, not too far from the temple, Pilate had heard the news and now he should be waiting.