Kiku's Prayer: A Novel
Page 18
Laucaigne shrugged his shoulders and pulled on Petitjean’s sleeve. Petitjean nodded and took four or five steps away. But something within would not allow him to abandon Kiku.
“Come with us. We’ll give you something to eat…. You can stay the night in Ōura and then go back to Urakami tomorrow.”
“No thanks. I’m not a Kirishitan.” She was still obstinate.
Petitjean stifled an urge to laugh and motioned to her, “Come along.”
Laucaigne and Petitjean stepped behind a building and finished changing their clothes, then set off in the darkness down the path from Suwa Shrine to the ocean. From time to time, they glanced casually over their shoulders.
“Is she following us?”
“She is.”
Trying not to laugh out loud, the two walked for a time and then suddenly came to a stop.
Petitjean again motioned to Kiku, “There’s nothing to be so shy about. Come along…. Or are you afraid of me?”
Kiku nodded grudgingly. Her sharp mind quickly calculated whether it would be more to her advantage to go straight back to Urakami or to follow these foreigners. It was obvious that it was best not to return to Urakami right now if she wanted to get help for Seikichi.
With a fixed distance maintained between them, the two priests and Kiku made their way along the beach toward Ōura. With the sun already down, the ocean and sky were already spattered purple while the waves nipped at the shore with a languid sound.
“Bernard,” Father Laucaigne said to Petitjean. “Have you contacted M. Leques at the consulate?” Leques was the French consul in Nagasaki.
“Of course. I notified Leques and also sent word to the Prussian consul asking them to demand the release of the prisoners. I suspect they’ve both already been to the magistrate’s office to lodge protests. But …”
But … Father Laucaigne suddenly thought of Hondō Shuntarō’s broad face. A man like Hondō would merely brush aside such a complaint, insisting that this was an internal problem that had nothing to do with them….
“Bernard, I … I feel somehow as though we’ve brought this harm on them,” Laucaigne muttered sadly. They could see the fishing lights of several boats in the offing, and the waves continued their monotonous pounding.
“Why?”
“It seems to me that they raised this fracas because we pushed them too hard … and now they’ve been arrested….”
Petitjean had to agree. Their hunger as missionaries to teach the Gospel to the Japanese and their desire to save Japanese souls had stirred up the peasants and set off this confrontation.
“Yet … if we think of it as a kind of martyrdom….”
They said nothing for a time. They remained ill at ease in their hearts.
“In any case, first thing tomorrow we’ve got to start things rolling to obtain their freedom.”
“Yes, we must.”
Again they stopped walking and looked behind them. Kiku, too, came to a swift halt.
“We’re almost there,” Petitjean called out gently. “Tonight you should have something delicious to eat and then get some rest.”
That evening, Kiku was fed the strangest food she had ever eaten. There was some sort of thick soup that seemed to have flour mixed in with it, and a thing called pan that she’d only heard about, slathered with what tasted like hair oil.
It didn’t seem the least bit “delicious” to her. With her eyes darting about in astonishment, it took all her effort to force it down her throat.
“This is called potage. And this is beurre.” Petitjean looked on with a smile as Father Laucaigne taught each of the words to Kiku. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah.” Her voice sounded like a mosquito when she answered, unable to bring herself to say that it tasted terrible.
“Okane, apparently she doesn’t like the kind of food we eat. Do you have anything else?”
Okane, who was serving up the food, looked disgusted, but she brought out some pickled vegetables and rice. She was not happy that the two priests had picked up this dowdy-looking girl.
That night, Kiku was put to bed on a platform they called a lit. But she was so nervous that she lay there with her eyes wide open, unable to sleep.
She could hear the sound of the waves. This place where the foreigners lived was a Japanese-style house, but it had a peculiar smell to it. It was an odor just like that of the foreign food that had been pressed on her that evening.
Those foreigners! They eat cows and pigs and drink their blood! Years ago, Granny had struck fear in her with those words. Come to think of it, those two men had been drinking something that was red like blood …!
Why would someone like Seikichi go out of his way to believe in the religion of these foreigners? I can’t help but hate these Kirishitans!
She thought of Seikichi in his cell. What would he be doing at this hour? She had heard people say that there was a ringleader among the prisoners who swaggered about and taunted the new arrivals. Was Seikichi all right?
Unable to sleep, she got up and took from her bundle of possessions the medaille of the Blessed Mother that she kept hidden away.
“I don’t like you anymore. It’s because of you that Seikichi got put in that prison. Just who are you, anyway, you hateful woman?!” She glared at the medaille as she voiced her complaint.
Seikichi. You’ve got to give up this stupid religion. She felt that intensely. She wanted to clasp her hands together and pray to the gods and buddhas that Seikichi would get out of prison quickly, that he would do what the magistrate told him to do, and that he would be freed.
Even as she tormented her mind with these thoughts, Petitjean and Laucaigne were planning how they might secure freedom for the Urakami Kirishitans who were locked away in the Sakuramachi Prison….
The following morning, Kiku had a request for Okane. “Can you get me a job here in these foreigners’ house? I’ll work really hard!”
Okane looked at Kiku disdainfully, but evidently she realized how desperate Kiku’s request was, because she mentioned it to her husband.
“It might be a good idea to hire her. If, like they say, two more foreigners will be arriving here soon, we won’t be able to do everything ourselves.”
Mosaku’s argument made sense. When Petitjean and Laucaigne found out that there were Kirishitans hidden away in Urakami, in various locations throughout the region surrounding Nagasaki, and at Sotome as well, they requested assistance from their compatriots in Yokohama. Before long, two additional priests would be coming to Ōura.
“Fine, but,” Petitjean interrogated Kiku closely, “we’ll have to get permission from your parents. If we don’t, it could lead to trouble for us.”
“I … I don’t have any parents,” Kiku lied. “I have a cousin in Nagasaki. I’ll have her tell my relatives that I’m working here.”
After consulting with Laucaigne, Petitjean hired Kiku temporarily to work at the church. But he took her on only because he recognized that with two additional priests coming, Okane couldn’t possibly take care of everything for them.
“Is Seikichi … still in jail?” Kiku asked, her eyes filled with tears.
Petitjean nodded glumly and said, “Yes, but not at the Sakuramachi Prison. They’ve all been moved to a jail in Kojima.”
In fact, only two days after their arrest they were transferred from the Sakuramachi Prison to a hastily constructed cell in Kojima.
“Then … will Seikichi be released?”
Kiku asked Petitjean question after question. From the desperation in her voice he could tell how much the girl loved Seikichi.
“Of course he will! I pray for that each day, all through the day. Don’t you worry.”
But Kiku, not being of the Kirishitan faith, was not interested in such whimsies as prayers; she wanted these foreigners to take some sort of concrete action to free Seikichi.
Like a drowning woman grasping at straws, she asked Petitjean, “Will Seikichi really be saved if you just pray?”
That night, in a tiny house beside the chapel, Kiku tried offering her first prayer. Holding the medaille that Seikichi had given her and fixing her eyes on the image of the Blessed Mother Mary engraved on it, she prayed, “I don’t know who you are. But you’re the woman that Seikichi worships. Since you’re a woman, please understand how I feel. I’m asking you. Please arrange it so that nothing terrible happens to Seikichi.”
Please arrange it so that nothing terrible happens to Seikichi….
Despite Kiku’s agonized prayer, Seikichi and the sixty-seven other Kirishitan men and women from Urakami remained imprisoned in Kojima with no indication that they would be freed.
Each day, one of the shackled prisoners was dragged from his cell, taken to the magistrate’s Nishi Bureau that stood on the site of the present Nagasaki Prefectural Offices, and encouraged to abandon his faith. Whether threatened or gently reasoned with, each was ordered to apostatize.1
It was not only the men who were grilled. Women, too, had their hands bound behind their backs and were taken to the bureau office.
Initially the officers tried to reason with the prisoners, but often they played on their feelings, making threats that their family members would be made to suffer because of them. If they still gave no response, the interrogating officer would heave a deliberate sigh.
“Have you heard about the tortures we inflict on Kirishitans?”
“…”
“It’s called ‘hanging in the pit.’ You’re hung upside down over a pit filled with filth. You’re just left there with no food, no water. The blood pools in your head and comes streaming out of your eyes and nose. They say that even those who can handle it initially end up screaming out in agony after only three days.”
“…”
“Our orders from above are to use this torture on you Kirishitans and get you to return to the right path. We don’t want to have to subject you to such painful torment. But if you continue to insist that you won’t give up your Kirishitan faith, then you don’t leave us any choice—we have to hang you in the pit.”
The cunning threats had their impact on the simple peasants.
One evening, when it was brutally hot inside the cell, a policeman brought a man named Kumazō back to the prison from the Nishi Bureau.
“What did they ask you today?” the others inquired, but Kumazō wouldn’t look them in the eyes and mumbled a noncommittal answer.
At first they thought he was just exhausted and said nothing further to him. But that night he still seemed listless.
“Kumazō, what’s wrong? Did they beat you badly?”
“I … I couldn’t bear it….” His voice was like an unexpected wail. “I don’t have the strength to hold up any longer. I … I want to go back to the village.”
No one said a word. They all understood too well the cry of Kumazō’s heart.
“Why aren’t the padres helping us? And why isn’t Deus at least helping us?”
They all rebuked Kumazō for his weakness but then tried to encourage him. They were additionally trying to bolster their own resolve, which was beginning to wither.
The next day, Kumazō was again hauled off to the Nishi Bureau and then returned to the prison with a dazed look on his face. He had sworn an oath to the officers that he would abandon his Kirishitan faith.
Then a man named Hisagorō denied his faith. And after Hisagorō, Shigejūrō apostatized….
When one corner of the wall of believers caved in, another five, then ten individuals would collapse like dominoes.
Even after the brutally hot months of July and August passed, the cell was still saturated with the smells of sweat and body odor and feces. The number of believers who abandoned their faith during those two stifling months reached twenty-one.
The magistrate gave no sign of releasing the twenty-one who had apostatized. It was Hondō Shuntarō’s suggestion that they keep the fallen imprisoned as a means to persuade those who had yet to abjure their faith.
“Listen, I’m on my knees begging you. I’ve got a wife and kids to take care of, and if I don’t return to my land soon, we won’t be able to pay our taxes for this year. Won’t you please do what the officers ask you and just think of it as helping me out?” That was the sort of plea that the apostates made to those who had yet to capitulate. Each knew to the depths of his bones how destitute and miserable it was to be a peasant. The entreaties of their friends were more painful to them than threats from the police.
The forty-seven who refused to recant were locked into a room no larger than nine-by-nine feet. They were given only a paltry amount of food. With forty-seven bodies crammed into an eighty square foot cell, there was no room to lie down. They were driven to the verge of madness inside the hot, suffocating enclosure. Seikichi was among them.
Only once during those hellish days did a constable, without gaining authorization from the officials, allow three women from Nakano to meet with the prisoners. It was of course the bribe money that the women had collected from others in the village that persuaded the constable to give them a short time to converse in secret with the prisoners.
“This must be so difficult for you! So difficult!” The women repeated the words many times, tears streaming down their cheeks. Clinging to pillars in the cell, the prisoners begged for information about their families and their fields.
“Everyone is offering oraçiõ for you. The padres are talking with the magistrate, and they’ve sent a messenger to Edo trying to rally all the foreigners in Japan to help the Kirishitans. You just need to be patient a little longer….” The women wept even more. Some of those in the cell sobbed loudly as they listened to what the women had to say.
“Both Father Petitjean and Father Laucaigne are saying prayers to Santa Maria for you.”
The constable appeared and announced that it was time to conclude the meeting. The three women handed out food and clothing that had been provided by the prisoners’ families, and then said to Seikichi, “Father Petitjean said to give you this,” and handed him a small parcel.
Seikichi summoned the courage to open the parcel in a corner of the cell after the women had left. It contained a few rice cakes, a small crucifix, and a single sheet of paper.
The paper was a letter that Kiku had apparently had someone write for her.
“I know this is very hard for you. I came by the jail hoping to see your face, but they wouldn’t let me come near. Right now I’m staying at the Nambanji in Ōura. I’m saying prayers for you.”
As he read the letter, the warmth of the young woman’s zeal ran through him from head to toe like a flaming arrow.
He had regarded her as a young girl until now. But here in his hands was proof of how much she worried about him and how much she thought of him. Feelings of euphoria and joy beyond words swept through him. He recalled with clarity Kiku’s almond eyes as she swept the street in front of the shop that he walked by every morning.
She loves me this much. His face flushed. He tucked the letter into his pocket, cautiously avoiding the gaze of the others whose bodies pressed against his.
He repeated to himself something Kiku had added to her letter: “I’m not a Kirishitan, so I don’t know how to pray the way you do. But every night I ask your Santa Maria to help you.”
Yes, Blessed Mother. Please do as she asks, please help me, he muttered.
The following morning—
“Next ones out!” The constable poked his face through the cell door and shouted. The summons was for Seishirō and Taira no Mataichi of Motohara, and for Seikichi.
In the same manner as those who had preceded them, the three men squeezed from the cell with their hands tied behind them. They were to be interrogated at the Nishi Bureau.
This temporary release from the jail for questioning was the sole opportunity the prisoners had to breathe the air of the outside world.
It was an
autumn morning, but the heat lingered and cicadas shrieked from every direction. Yet, when the three men emerged from a cell that reeked of sweat and urine and body odors, they were delighted to be free to breathe in as much of the fresh air as they wanted.
Mataichi puffed out his chest and said merrily, “Oh, that’s so sweet!” The autumn air truly was … truly was delicious.
They were taken to the courthouse at the Nishi Bureau and bombarded with the familiar dogged warnings to apostatize.
“You only have to do it outwardly. After that we’ll leave you alone. Just say publicly that you’ve given up being a Kirishitan!” The two officers were so frustrated they were willing to accept a compromise. But Seikichi, Mataichi, and Seishirō stared at the floor and said nothing.
“You’re still going to remain obstinate?!”
No response.
The officers looked at one other and muttered, “You leave us no choice….”
“You leave us no choice” did not mean they had given up. It meant they were left with no choice but to inflict torture.
“Stand up!” The constable barked at the three men. The prisoners still had no idea at that point what would be done with them. It had not actually occurred to them that they could be tortured.
A light as piercing as molten tin streamed through a transom to illuminate a darkened corridor. The light made even the grains of wood in the floorboards visible.
“In there!” The constable pushed the three men into a large room on the left side of the corridor. The room had a wooden floor and only one window.
The constable had them kneel in formal posture and made one final attempt to reason with them. His voice sounded like that of an exhausted man heaving a sigh. “You’d better brace yourselves, we’ll be causing you a great deal of pain. When you can’t take the pain anymore, all you have to do is say, ‘I now apostatize.’”
The three men kept their eyes down and said nothing.
“Then you won’t recant?”
The silence continued.
The constable left the room without another word. He returned with five of his comrades.