Silence (7 page)

I have already told you that Mokichi and Ichizo have expressionless faces, much like puppets. Now I understand the reason why. They cannot register on their faces any sorrow—nor even joy. The long years of secrecy have made the faces of these Christians like masks. This is indeed bitter and sad. Why has God given our Christians such a burden? This is something I fail to understand.

In my next letter I’ll tell you about our search for Ferreira and also about Inoue (do you remember? the man who, at Macao, Valignano said was the most to be feared). Please give my respects and my promise of prayers to Father Minister Lucius de Sanctis.

Rain again today. Ganpe and I are lying in the darkness on the straw that serves us for a bed. Tiny little lice are crawling over my neck and back so that sleep is out of question. Japanese lice keep quiet during the day, but at night they walk all over our bodies—brazen, unmannerly wretches!

Until now no one has gone so far as to climb up to our hut on such a rainy night, so we have a chance to rest not only our bodies but also our nerves stretched to breaking point by this daily tension. Listening to the sound of the rain dripping from the trees in the grove my thoughts have turned again to Father Ferreira.

The peasants of Tomogi know absolutely nothing about him. But it is certain that until the year 1633 the father was carrying on an underground apostolate at Nagasaki not too far from where we are. And it was precisely in that year that all communication between himself and Valignano at Macao was cut like a cord. I wonder if he is still alive. Could it be true, as the rumor goes, that he grovelled like a dog before the infidels and cast away everything to which he had hitherto devoted his life? And supposing he is alive, is he too listening to the depressing sound of this rain? and with what feelings?

Suddenly I turned to Garrpe who was fully engaged in his battle with the lice, and unburdened myself: ‘If one of us could go to Nagasaki we might find some Christians who know Father Ferreira.’

In the darkness Garrpe stopped his twisting and turning and coughing. Then he commented: ‘If we were caught it would be the end. This is not just a problem for the two of us. The danger extends to these peasants around us. Anyhow, don’t forget that we are the last stepping-stones of the Gospel in this country.’

I uttered a deep sigh. He raised his body from the straw and as he peered intently at me I could gauge his way of thinking. The faces of Mokichi, Ichizo and the youngsters of Tomogi came before my eyes one by one. But could no one go to Nagasaki in our place? No. That wouldn’t do either. These people had relatives and dependents. Their position was quite different from that of the priest without wife and children.

‘What about asking Kichijirō?’ I ventured.

Garrpe laughed a dry laugh. And I also recalled to mind the scene on the ship—the cowardly figure of Kichijirō with his face buried in the filth, clasping his hands and begging for mercy from the sailors.

‘Crazy!’ remarked my companion. ‘You can’t trust him an inch.’

Then we lapsed into a long silence. The rain pattered rhythmically on the roof of our little hut like the trickling of sand through an hour-glass. Here night and solitude are identical.

‘And we, too, will be caught like Ferreira?’, I murmured.

‘I’m more worried about these insects crawling all over my body,’ retorted Garrpe.

Since coming to Japan he has always been in good spirits. Perhaps he feels that with good-nature and humor he can give courage to both of us. To tell you the truth, my own feeling is that we will not be captured. Man is a strange being. He always has a feeling somewhere in his heart that whatever the danger he will pull through. It’s just like when on a rainy day you imagine the faint rays of the sun shining on a distant hill. I cannot picture myself at the moment of capture by the Japanese. In our little hut I have a feeling of eternal safety. I don’t know why this should be. It’s a strange feeling.

At last the rain has stopped, after three days of incessant falling. We can only judge this from the white ray of sunlight that penetrates a crack in the wooden door of our hut.

‘Let’s go out for a moment,’ I said.

Garrpe nodded approval with a smile of joy.

As I pushed open the wet door, the song of the birds broke in from the trees like the rising of a fountain. Never before had I felt so deeply the sheer joy of being alive. We sat down near the hut and took off our kimonos. In the seams of the cloth the firmly entrenched lice looked just like white dust, and as I crushed them one by one with a stone I felt an inexpressible thrill of delight. Is this what the officials feel when they capture and kill the Christians?

Some fog still lingered within the wood, but faintly through it could be seen the blue sky and the distant shimmering sea. After the long confinement in our hut, I now stood again in the open, and giving up battle with the lice I gazed greedily at the world of men.

‘Nothing to be afraid of!’ Garrpe’s white teeth flashed as he smiled with good humor and exposed his golden-haired chest to the rays of the sun. ‘I don’t know why we’ve been so jittery. In the future we must sometimes at least allow ourselves the pleasure of a sunbath.’

And so day after day the cloudless skies continued; and as our self-confidence grew we gradually became bolder. Together we would walk along the slopes in the wood filled with the smell of fresh leaves and wet mud. The good Garrpe would call our charcoal hut ‘the monastery’. When we went for a stroll he would say with a laugh, ‘Let’s go back to the monastery and have a meal of warm bread and good, thick soup. But we’d better say nothing about it to the Japanese!’ We were recalling the life we led with you in the monastery of Saint Xavier’s at Lisbon. Needless to say, we don’t have here a bottle of wine nor a piece of meat. The only food we get is the fried potatoes and the boiled vegetables that the peasants of Tomogi bring us. But the conviction grows deeper and deeper in my heart that all is well and that God will protect us.

One evening an interesting thing happened. We were sitting as usual chatting on a stone between our hut and the wood. All of a sudden in the rays of the darkening sky a huge bird flew out of the trees and, tracing a great black arc in the sky, winged off towards the distant hills.

‘Somebody is watching us!’ Garrpe spoke breathlessly, his eyes fixed on the ground, his voice sharp but hushed. ‘Don’t budge! Remain just as you are!’

From a hill bathed in the dying sunlight and slightly removed from the thicket from which the bird had sprung up just now, two men stood looking in our direction. We realized immediately that they were not the peasants of Tomogi whom we knew so well. We sat stiff like stones without moving a muscle, uttering a prayer that the western sun would not reveal our faces.

‘Is anybody there?’ The two men from the top of the hill raised their voices and shouted aloud. ‘Is anybody there?’

Were we to answer or to keep quiet? A single word might well betray us. So from fear we said nothing.

‘They’re descending the hill and coming here,’ whispered Garrpe in a low voice, remaining seated as he was. ‘No, they aren’t. They are going back the way they came.’

They went down into the valley growing smaller and smaller as they receded into the distance. But the fact was that two men had stood on the hill in the light of the western sun, and whether or not they had seen us we did not know.

That same night Ichizo came up the mountain and with him a man named Magoichi who was one of the Tossama. As we explained what had happened in the evening Ichizo’s eyes narrowed and he scrutinized every inch of the hut. At length he stood up silently and after a word to Magoichi the two men began to tear up the floor boards. A moth flew round and round the oil lamp as they worked. Taking a spade that was hanging on the wooden door, Ichizo began to dig up the soil. The silhouettes of the two men as they wielded the spades floated on the opposite wall. They dug a hole big enough to hold both of us, and in it they put some straw; then they closed it up again with boards. This, it seems, is to be our future hideout in case of emergency.

From that day we have taken the utmost precautions, trying not to show ourselves outside the hut at all, and at night we don’t make use of any light whatever.

The next event took place five days after the one I have recorded. It was late at night and we were secretly baptizing a baby that had been brought along by Omatsu and two men belonging to the Tossama. It was our first baptism since coming to Japan, and of course we had no candles nor music in our little hut—the only instrument for the ceremony was a broken little peasants’ cup which we used for holy water. But it was more touching than the liturgy of any cathedral to see that poor little hut with the baby crying and Omatsu soothing it while one of the men stood on guard outside. I thrilled with joy as I listened to the solemn voice of Garrpe as he recited the baptismal prayers. This is a happiness that only a missionary priest in a foreign land can relish. As the water flowed over its forehead the baby wrinkled its face and yelled aloud. Its head was tiny; its eyes were narrow, this was already a peasant face that would in time come to resemble that of Mokichi and Ichizo. This child also would grow up like its parents and grandparents to eke out a miserable existence face to face with the black sea in this cramped and desolate land; it, too, would live like a beast, and like a beast it would die. But Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt—this is the realization that came home to me acutely at that time.

When they departed I lay down in the straw, exhausted. The smell of the oil the three men had brought still lingered in the hut. Once again the lice crawled slowly over our backs and legs. I don’t know how long I slept; but after what seemed a short time I was wakened by the snoring of the optimistic Garrpe who was fast asleep. And then—some one was pushing at the door of the hut, trying little by little to open it. At first I thought it might only be the wind from the valley below blowing through the trees and pressing against the door. Quietly I crawled out of the straw and in the darkness put my fingers on the floor-boards underneath which was the secret hiding-place dug by Ichizo.

The pushing against the door now stopped, and a man’s voice could be heard, low and plaintive: ‘Padre, Padre.
 
…
’

This was not the signal of the peasants of Tomogi. They had agreed to give three gentle knocks on the door. Now at last Garrpe too was awake and without the slightest movement he strained his ears for the next sound.

‘Padre!’ The plaintive voice made itself heard again. ‘There’s nothing wrong. Don’t be afraid of us.’

In the pitch darkness we held our breath in silence. What sort of crazy official was laying a trap like this?

‘Won’t you believe us? We are peasants from Fukazawa. For a long time we have been longing to meet a priest. We want to confess our sins.’

Dismayed by our silence they had now given up pushing at the door, and the sound of their receding footsteps could be heard sadly in the night. Grasping the wooden door with my hands I made as if to go out. Yes, I would go. Even if this was a trap, even if these men were the guards, it didn’t matter. ‘If they are Christians, what then?’ said a voice that beat wildly in the depths of my heart. I was a priest born to devote my life to the service of man. What a disgrace it would be to betray my vocation from cowardly fear.

‘Stop!’ cried Garrpe fiercely. ‘You idiot.
 
…
’

‘I’m no idiot. This is my duty.’

As I tore open the door, the pale white rays of the moon bathed the great earth and the trees in silver light. What a night it was!

Two men dressed in rags as though they were beggars crouched there like dogs. Looking up at me they murmured: ‘Father, won’t you believe us!’

I noticed that the feet of one of them was covered with blood where he had cut himself while climbing the mountain. Both of them were faint and ready to collapse with exhaustion. Nor was this surprising. They had made their way here from the Goto Islands twenty leagues away, a two-day journey.

‘We were on the mountain a while ago. Five days ago we hid over there and looked across in this direction.’ One of them pointed at the hill beyond our hut. So it was these men that had been watching us that evening.

We brought them inside, and when we gave them the dried potatoes that Ichizo had brought us they seized them greedily with both hands and thrust them into their mouths like beasts. It was clear that they had not eaten for two days.

And then we began to speak. Who on earth had told them that we were here—that was our first question.

‘Father, we heard it from a Christian of our village. His name is Kichijirō.’

‘Kichijirō?’

‘Yes, father.’

Still they crouched like beasts in the shadow of the oil lamp with the potato clinging to their lips. One of the fellows had practically no teeth, but he would stick out the one or two he had and laugh like a child. The other seemed stiff and tense in the presence of two foreign priests.

‘But Kichijirō is not a Christian,’ I said finally.

‘Oh, he is, father. Kichijirō is a Christian.’

This was an answer we had not quite expected. Yet we had half wondered at times if the fellow were not after all a Christian.

But now the whole situation was gradually beginning to change. Now it was clear enough: Kichijirō was a Christian who had once apostatized. Eight years before, he and his whole family, all Christians, had been betrayed through envy by an informer and had been brought up for questioning. Ordered to tread on the picture of Christ, his brothers and sisters had firmly refused to do so. Only Kichijirō, after a few threats from the guards, had yelled out that he would renounce his faith. His brothers and sisters were immediately brought off to prison but Kichijirō himself, though set free, did not return to his native village.

On the day of the burning at the stake, his cowardly face was observed in the crowd that surrounded the place of execution. And then this face, covered with mud and looking like a wild dog, unable to endure the sight of the martyrdom of his brethren, immediately withdrew and disappeared from sight.