Silence (24 page)

‘It’s not because of any prohibition nor because of persecution that Christianity has perished. There’s something in this country that completely stifles the growth of Christianity.’ The words of Ferreira, uttered slowly syllable by syllable, pierced the priest’s ears. ‘The Christianity they believe in is like the skeleton of a butterfly caught in a spider’s web: it contains only the external form; the blood and the flesh are gone.’ So Ferreira had gone on with blazing eyes. And somehow in his words there was a certain sincerity unlike the self-deception of a defeated man.

Now the footsteps of the guards could be heard in the distance. When they faded out, the only sound was the hoarse rasping of insects in the blackness of the night.

‘It cannot be true. No, no. It is impossible.’ Rodrigues did not have enough missionary experience to refute Ferreira; but to accept the other’s word was to lose everything for which he had come to this country. Banging his head against the wall he kept murmuring monotonously: ‘It cannot be so. It is impossible.’

Yes, it is impossible, impossible. How could anyone sacrifice himself for a false faith? With his own eyes he had seen those peasants, poverty-stricken martyrs. If they had not had a true belief in salvation, how could they sink like stones in the mist-covered sea? On any account they were strong Christians. Even if their belief was simple and crude, it breathed a conviction that had been implanted in Japan not by these officials nor by Buddhism, but by the Christian Church.

The priest recalled Ferreira’s sadness. In the course of their conversation Ferreira had said not one word about the poor Japanese martyrs. Of course he had deliberately avoided this issue; he had tried to avoid any thought of people who were stronger than himself, people who had heroically endured torture and the pit. Ferreira was trying to increase, even by one, the number of weaklings like himself—to share with others his cowardice and loneliness.

In the darkness he asked himself if now Ferreira was sleeping. No, he could not be asleep. The old man, in some part of the same city, was sitting in the darkness like himself, his eyes open, staring in front of him, biting at the depths of his solitude. And this loneliness was much colder, much more terrible than that which he endured in this prison cell. In order to pile weakness upon weakness he was trying to drag others along the path that he himself had walked. Lord, will you not save him? Turning to Judas you said, ‘What thou dost, do quickly.’ Will you number this man, too, among the abandoned sheep?

And so, comparing his own loneliness and sadness with that of Ferreira, he felt for the first time some self-respect and satisfaction—and he was able quietly to laugh. Then, lying down on the hard, bare floor, he waited for the onrush of sleep.

Chapter 8

T
HE
next day the interpreter visited him again. ‘Well, have you thought it over?’ he said. This time he did not talk like a cat that plays with its prey; his expression was somehow stern. ‘Sawano has told you. Give up this stubbornness! We’re not telling you to trample in all sincerity. Won’t you just go through with the formality of trampling? Just the formality! Then everything will be alright.’

The priest remained silent, his eyes fixed on a point on the wall. It was not that the other’s eloquence irritated him; it simply passed through his ears without conveying any meaning.

‘Come now! Don’t cause more trouble. I’m asking you in all sincerity. It’s not pleasant for me either.’

‘Why don’t you hang me in the pit?’

‘The magistrate keeps saying that it’s better to make you see reason and accept our teaching.’

Clasping his knees with his hands, the priest shook his head like a child. The interpreter heaved a deep sigh and for some time remained silent. A fly buzzed around with whirling wings.

‘I see
 
…
well, it can’t be helped then.’

The dull sound of the bolt shot into place fell on the priest’s ears; and with that dull sound he knew that all reasonable discussion had come to an end.

To what extent he would be able to endure the torture he could not tell. Yet somehow it no longer held for his exhausted body the terror it had aroused when he wandered through the mountains. He was numbed with pain now. He felt that it would be better for death to come as soon as possible if it was the only way to escape from this painful day-after-day suspense. Even life with anguish about God and about faith was a melancholy prospect. Secretly he prayed in his heart that the fatigue of mind and body would quickly bring him death. Behind his eyelids like a hallucination floated the head of Garrpe sinking down into the sea. How he envied his companion! Yes, how he envied Garrpe freed from anguish such as this!

The next day, as he had expected, no breakfast was brought to him. Toward noon the door was opened; and a big fellow he had never yet seen, naked to the waste, showed his hollow face inside. He bound both of the priest’s hands behind his back so tightly that when he moved his body even a little, the rope would bite into his wrists and an involuntary cry of pain would escape from his clenched teeth. While binding his hands, the fellow kept muttering insults which the priest could not well understand. ‘At last the time has come,’ he thought within himself; but strange to say, this emotion was accompanied by a freshness and a sense of elation such as he had never before experienced.

He was dragged outside. In the courtyard bathed in sunlight were three officials, four guards, and the interpreter—all standing in line and staring at him. The priest looked at them, especially at the interpreter; and a smile of triumph passed over his face. No matter what the circumstances, no man can completely escape from vanity, he reflected; and then he joyfully recalled that until this moment he had not even noticed this fact.

The big fellow grabbed the priest lightly in his arms and set him astride the bare back of a horse. Rather than a horse, it looked like a thin and starved donkey. It tottered forward and behind it marched the officials, the guards and the interpreter.

Already the road was jammed with Japanese waiting for the line to pass by; and from his position astride the horse the priest smiled down at them. Old people, mouths agape with astonishment; children nibbling at cucumbers; women who would first laugh, stare at him like idiots and then suddenly retreat in terror when their eyes met his. On each of these faces the light threw a different shadow. Then behind his ear came flying something like a brown clump—it was a piece of horse manure that someone had pitched at him.

He made up his mind that he would not let the smile leave his lips. Here he was riding through the streets of Nagasaki on a donkey. Another man had entered Jerusalem—likewise riding a donkey. And it was that man who had taught him that the most noble expression on the face of man is the glad acceptance of injury and insult. He would preserve such an expression until the end. This was the face of a Christian among the infidel.

A group of Buddhist monks, openly displaying feelings of hostility toward him, gathered under the shade of a huge tree and then, coming up and thronging around the donkey on which he was seated, brandished sticks as if to threaten and intimidate him. The priest looked at the faces that surrounded him, wondering if he might find some secret believer; but it was in vain. There was no face that was not stamped with hostility or hatred or curiosity. And there in the midst of them he caught sight of one who looked just like a dog that begs for pity. Unconsciously the priest stiffened. It was Kichijirō.

Clad in tatters, Kichijirō stood in the front rank waiting. When his eyes met those of the priest, he cowered and quickly tried to conceal himself in the crowd. But the priest from his position on the tottering donkey knew just how far the fellow had followed after him. Amongst all these infidels this was the only man he knew.

(‘Alright! Alright! I am not angry now. Our Lord is not angry.’) The priest nodded toward Kichijirō as if to give him the consolation given to the penitent after confession.

According to the records, it is said that on this day the crowd escorted the priest from Hakata to Katsuyama and then passed on through Goto. When missionaries were captured, on the day before their punishment it was customary for the magistrate to have them dragged around Nagasaki in this way as show-pieces. The place through which the procession went was always the old marketplace of Nagasaki where houses are close together and people throng in crowds. On the day after their being dragged around, it was customary for them to be brought to the place of execution.

In the time of Omura Sumitada when the port of Nagasaki was first opened, Goto-machi was the territory where the immigrants from the Goto Islands lived, and from here the bay of Nagasaki could be seen glittering in the afternoon sun. The crowds that came jostling after the procession pushed one another aside just as they did at a festival, trying to get a view of the queer foreign barbarian bound astride a bare-backed horse. When the priest would try to straighten his tortured body, the cry of derision was raised with even greater glee.

At first he had tried to force a smile; but now his face had hardened and it was no longer possible. The only thing he could do was to close his eyes and try not to see the faces that jibed at him, the faces with those protruding teeth. He wondered if that man had smiled gently when the multitude surrounded Pilate’s mansion with shrieks and howls of anger. Even that man was incapable of such a thing, he reflected. ‘Hoc passionis tempore
 
…
’ The words of the prayer fell from his lips like pebbles and as he continued they came only with great difficulty. He was distracted by the tormenting pain of the rope which bit into his wrists whenever he moved his body, but what grieved him most was his inability to love these people as Christ had loved them.

‘Well, father. How is it? Does no one come to help you?’ It was the interpreter who, coming up beside him, quite suddenly shouted up. ‘To your right and left are there nothing but voices of derision? And to think that you came to this country for them; and yet not a single one feels that he needs you. You’re a useless fellow—useless.’

‘And yet
 
…
’ For the first time the priest shouted in a loud voice, as from the horse’s back he glared at the interpreter with blood-shot eyes. ‘And yet in that crowd there may be some who are praying in the silence of their hearts.’

‘Now I’m going to tell you something. Alright? Long ago, here in Nagasaki there were eleven churches and two hundred thousand Christians. And where is it all now? Where are they hiding now? There are people in this crowd who were once Christians; but now they ridicule you with all their might and main to prove to those around that they are not Christians.’

‘Insult me as much as you like. You only give me more courage.’

‘Tonight
 
…
’ The interpreter laughed as he slapped the belly of the horse with the palm of his hand. ‘Alright? Tonight, you will apostatize. Inoue said so very clearly. Until now, when Inoue has said that one of the fathers will apostatize he has never been wrong. He was right in the case of Sawano
 
…
he will be right in your case, too.’

The interpreter rubbed his hands in a gesture of supreme confidence and then withdrew from his position beside the priest.

‘In the case of Sawano
 
…
’ It was these last words that remained in the priest’s ears. From the bare back of the horse he trembled and strove to drive the words from his mind.

Beyond the bay an enormous column of clouds, glistened gold-edged in the afternoon light. For some reason he could not understand, these clouds looked like some gigantic castle in the sky in their great billowing whiteness. Many times before he had seen columns of white cloud; but never before had they stirred such emotion in his breast. He began to understand the beauty of the hymn of the Christians which he had heard when first he came to Japan: ‘We’re on our way. We’re on our way. We’re on our way to the temple of Paradise
 
…
Far away is the temple of Paradise.’ His only solace and support was in the thought of that other man who had also tasted fear and trembling. And then there was joy in the though that he was not alone. In this very sea those two Japanese peasants, bound to stakes, had endured the same suffering for a whole day before passing on to the far temple of Paradise. Suddenly his breast was filled with a wild joy in the thought that he was united with these two Japanese, united with Garrpe, united with that man nailed to the cross. And that man’s face pursued him like a living, vivid image. The suffering Christ! The patient Christ! From the depths of his heart he prayed that his own face might draw near to that face.

Raising their whips, the officials drove the crowd aside and the people scattered like flies—meekly, without resistance, terror in their eyes; and making way for the procession they watched it depart.

At last the afternoon was over. The evening sun fell glistening on the red roof of a temple at the left of the road. Just beyond the town a mountain seemed to be floating in the sky. Now again stones and pieces of manure came flying through the air striking the priest on the cheek.

Walking beside the horse, the interpreter kept up the same line of argument. ‘Come now! I’m not urging you to something bad. Apostatize! Just say one word. Please! If you do this, your horse will never bring you back to prison.’

‘Where are you bringing me now?’

‘To the magistrate’s office. I don’t want to make you suffer. Please! I’m not saying anything wrong. Just say the word: “I apostatize.”
 
’

Biting his lip, the priest sat silently on the horse. The blood from his cheek flowed down on to his chin. The interpreter looked at him, and with one hand on the belly of the horse kept on walking, a sad expression on his face.

Bending down, the priest made his way into the room in the thick darkness. Suddenly he was halted by a foul stench. It was the smell of urine. The floor was completely covered with it; and for a moment he stood still, trying to keep himself from vomiting. After some time, through the darkness he was at last able to distinguish the walls from the floor; and with his fingers against the wall groping his way around the room, he suddenly hit against another wall. Stretching out his arms he realized that the tips of his fingers could touch both walls at the same time. This gave him some idea of the size of the room he was in.