The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by Неизвестный

  He was not without hope that he would see her, and then when he glanced toward the gate and saw her standing there, watching the crowd coming out of the church, and shyly looking up at the church bulletin board, he advanced directly toward her.

  His first duty was to worship God; his second duty was to preach to the faithful; and his third duty was to be a missionary of the Lord. But should there be someone who is religious-minded, he should open his door and welcome him. Should there be someone who hesitates at the gate, he should advance and invite him to enter.

  She was surprised when she suddenly saw the tall Father Gounod standing in front of her. However, she seemed friendly by nature and she smiled uncertainly. Her smile was that of someone confused: shy but affable and charming.

  “You were here last week, too, weren’t you?” Father Gounod said in ungrammatical Japanese, as he broadly returned her smile.

  “Uh-hun,” she nodded and then corrected herself.

  “Yes.”

  Father Gounod also nodded as he repeated the word “yes” in Japanese, and they understood each other. He pointed to the schedule of catechism lessons on the church bulletin board.

  “Won’t you please try to come at this hour?”

  The woman nodded obediently, but when she noticed the lessons were given in the evening, she indicated that it was difficult for her to go out at that time.

  “Perhaps you would prefer some time in the morning?”

  “Mm . . .”

  Seeing that she was somewhat hesitant, Father Gounod did not pursue the matter. He didn’t believe in being persistent or attempting to use persuasion in such situations, so he changed the subject.

  “Do you live near here?”

  He was hoping indirectly to obtain some indication of the reason for her unexpected appearance in church the previous week.

  Without disclosing her present address, she simply stated that she did not live in the area but that her late mother used to live in that neighborhood. It had been seven days before, when she was returning home after attending thirty-fifth-day memorial services for her mother,1 that she’d heard the hymn being sung which had attracted her to the church gate. Mixed with her desire to pray for the soul of her dead mother was a slight feeling of curiosity; then looking up at Father Gounod, she said shyly, “It was a very unusual feeling.”

  “Was it really? I am pleased to hear it,” he gently reassured her. Father Gounod grasped that the Lord had been revealed to this woman.

  “Father! We are all waiting!”

  One of the young men from the Young Men’s Association was calling to him, and thus, with regret, he had to bid the woman farewell.

  “Please feel free to return at any time,” he said politely.

  The woman bowed. “Thank you so much.” Her face was wreathed in smiles.

  While he was attending the meeting of the Young Men’s Association, he thought of her and recalled the old saw about how the ideal life for a Western man consisted in having a Japanese wife and eating Chinese food. He had been in Japan only a short time, but now for the first time he felt that he truly understood the meaning of those words.

  The man of God was seen in two lights by the Japanese people. There were either the stares of the curious directed at the man dressed in a priest’s garb and clerical collar or the stern looks of the believers. Indeed, they were extremely stern. To them, the priest was sanctified by his holy calling and was not to be allowed to draw a human breath, even during a respite from his labors.

  During that day’s meeting of the Young Men’s Association, Father Gounod was asked to provide a motto for the recently organized labor union at the steel workshop where most of them were working. They didn’t go into detail but simply indicated that they felt that the satisfaction derived from a hard day’s work was God-given, and thus they wished to follow as their guiding principle a moral precept which went back to the Middle Ages, namely, that every man should obey his employer as long as he provides him with a day of worship for the Lord.

  “The leaders of the Central Labor Union are all Communists,” they interjected.

  This revelation forced Father Gounod to explain to them that communism and Catholicism were fundamentally opposed doctrines. The young men listened with some fascination, their faces all showing exactly the same reaction.

  III

  Father Gounod was reflecting on the fact that recently Sunday’s events had come to be foretold by the events of the preceding Friday. What happened was that he was visited on Friday evening by three men representing the laborers of the workshop in which some of the young men of the church were employed. One of them was a radical, and the moment he saw Father Gounod, he challenged him.

  “Does Catholicism support the capitalists? Does it wish to hasten the destruction of Labor?”

  The theorist member of the three intervened and politely explained to Father Gounod the reason for their visit. There was a depressed atmosphere in their workshop because management felt that the current recession threatened the continued survival of the small-scale company, and in an attempt to tide the company over the difficult period, it had decided to lay off a number of workers and to delay the payment of salaries. Faced with this crisis, the union leaders wanted to present a united front in opposition to the moves taken by management, but their plan was undermined by a number of workers who would not go along with the majority, and some of these dissidents secretly communicated with management.

  “They are all members of the Catholic Church,” the radical said angrily.

  Father Gounod looked puzzled. “That’s strange. How come these Catholics don’t join with the rest of you?”

  “That’s what we came here to find out,” replied the radical impatiently.

  The activist member of the delegation, who had been silent up to that time, glared at the priest. “I hear that the Church forbids its subjects to engage in union activities.”

  “What makes you think that?” Father Gounod was still puzzled.

  The radical and activist jumped to their feet, their faces red with anger, but the theorist who was sitting between them calmly began to explain in detail as he had done before. “I know it’s difficult for a foreigner like yourself to understand.”

  Starting out with a description of the living conditions of Tokyo laborers, he showed the priest statistics which illustrated how the recession would affect their standard of living. Thus, he explained, he was at a loss to understand why the Catholics would not join their fellow-workers in an effort to save this situation.

  Then the radical spoke up again. “What can Christ do when times are difficult? There is no excuse for Christ obstructing the collective action of the fraternity of men.” All the while the activist continued to glare at the priest maliciously.

  “Would you be willing to return on Sunday, the day after tomorrow?” Father Gounod wanted them to attend the nine o’clock Mass. “Perhaps the Catholic young men from your workshop will show up.”

  They listened to this man of few words with his deep-set sad blue eyes and then left, each with a different personal reaction to the priest.

  When he came back to his room and was finally alone, Father Gounod stood before his large desk, closed his eyes, and pressed his hands to his forehead. He could picture the exceptionally pale rigid faces of the members of the church’s Young Men’s Association. At that moment he thought if he were a Japanese nonbeliever, he would be tempted to press a red-hot iron to their bellies.

  A few minutes later, Father Gounod found himself kneeling in the darkness of the sanctuary. The movement of his lips indicated he was chanting the breviary. The strong vitality of his features was reflected by the red oil-lamp which burned continuously on the altar.

  All that night the electric light shone in the priest’s room. Old Matsutani, who had gotten up late at night to go to the lavatory, noticed it and, thinking that the priest had forgotten to turn it off, opened the door only to stop short when he found Father Gounod
earnestly writing something in his notebook. Quietly making his way back to his room, old Matsutani was convinced that the priest was engaged in some effort to combat the Communists who had visited the rectory earlier that evening, and as he prayed for God’s blessing on Father Gounod, he felt a keen sense of pleasure in this unspoken secret communication between the old sheep and his shepherd.

  Sunday was a clear day. During the course of the Mass Father Gounod mounted the pulpit and began to preach. “How nice a day it is today. There is a blue sky which God has given to all of us, the children, the young, and the old. And so our Lord shows us that he always wishes to treat us equally.”

  His voice was resonant as he spoke in fluent Japanese indicating that he probably had rehearsed his sermon a number of times. At first the audience was somewhat surprised and then attracted by the vigor of his delivery.

  “Recently each Sunday I have preached on the spirit of tolerance, but it must be understood that this is something that should exist among men in their relation with one another; it does not necessarily follow that our Lord exhibits this same spirit of tolerance toward man. He sometimes severely condemns man for sins committed in human affairs. And when does the Lord condemn man? It is when man has lost the spirit of love.”

  The congregation was at a loss to understand why Father Gounod’s tone was so severe. They listened somewhat blankly in amazement.

  Again it was a long sermon, lasting thirty minutes. This time, far from napping, Mr. Nozoe was blinking nervously and Mrs. Sakurai, with her eyes closed, looked as if she had fainted from a deep emotional experience.

  “Today the Young Men’s Association and the Society of St. Mary will meet jointly.” Father Gounod had already spoken when something occurred to him as the result of his having seen his three visitors of the previous Friday sitting side by side in one of the center pews.

  When he came into the courtyard after having changed into his usual black suit, the three men were confronting some of the young men of the church. It was difficult for Father Gounod to make out what they were saying, as he was unable to understand the rapid speech used between native Japanese.

  “You fool!”

  “It serves you right!”

  As he caught some of what the radical was saying, the activist suddenly punched one of the young men of the church. The young man who had been knocked down looked up palely and began to talk back. A crowd consisting of worshipers who had just come out of the church and some people who had been passing by in front of the church began to gather at a distance.

  Father Gounod left the crowd and approached the beautiful woman who had once again made her appearance that day.

  “Good morning,” he said smilingly.

  She acknowledged his greeting with a slightly embarrassed smile and pointed to the incident.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Some wild fellow flailing away.”

  “Oh, my! Is he a member of the church?”

  The priest replied sadly. “The man who was punched is a church member.” He then turned the subject back to her.

  “For your benefit, I am thinking of scheduling the catechism lesson for Sunday morning beginning about this time.”

  “Oh! That’s just what I was thinking of asking you if you would do.”

  Leading the woman back to the church, Father Gounod forced his way through the crowd into the center of the activity. He shouted to make himself heard.

  “The joint meeting of the Young Men’s Association and the Society of St. Mary will begin shortly. Let’s assemble.”

  He dispersed the crowd, then went up to his three visitors of the previous Friday, and said politely, “I am glad to see you here.”

  “Oh, I want to beg your pardon,” the theorist replied apologetically.

  Father Gounod bowed to him once again. “Won’t you consider coming and talking to the young people of the church? I, too, have something about which I want to talk with you.”

  Father Gounod then turned toward the two comrades of the theorist and, with a calm expression on his face, indicated resolutely that he wanted them to leave.

  The meeting that day was unusually high-spirited due to the presence of many young people who rarely attended meetings of the Young Men’s Association or the Society of St. Mary. Their interest might have been aroused by the punching incident in the churchyard, but Father Gounod surmised that the reason for their coming to the meeting was more basic. He thought that it was the opportunity for the young men and young women to get together. The priest was pleased to see so many new healthy young faces in addition to the usual group of pallid men who were always embracing their prayer-books.

  He introduced the theorist to them. “As some of you saw a short time ago, just because he was a Catholic, one of your young men was assaulted by a nonbeliever. I believe that this young man is going to talk to you about that incident.” It was hardly likely that there would be any applause.

  The theorist scratched his head, stood up, and began to speak. “First of all, I want to explain why it happened.”

  In contrast to Protestant denominations, wherein emphasis is placed on the sermon, it is the Mass which is of primary importance in the Catholic Church, and thus Catholics have the advantage of being able to listen even to dull sermons without getting bored. It was with this attitude that the young people listened to the speech of the theorist. There were no jeers, interruptions, or applause as the speaker finished telling his story with a sad expression on his face. Finally a young man in the audience spoke up.

  “He deserved to be punched.”

  It went without saying that he was not regular member of the Young Men’s Association.

  “It’s ridiculous for a person not to join the labor union just because he is a Catholic. As a Catholic myself, I consider that attitude too stupid to get angry about. It was not a true believer who was punched. The fool, who deserved to be punched, just happened to be a Catholic.”

  The theorist brightened up. “Yes, I see. I understand.”

  Although most of those present tended to ignore the foolish young man who had been punched, one of the congregation, who still could not understand, spoke up faintly in a squeaky voice, “But Father said . . .”

  Without taking time to get up from his chair, Father Gounod immediately interrupted. “Your priest’s responsibility is to preach to you concerning the relationship between God and man, and that is all! The problems which arise in the relationship between man and man, as a matter of course, must be solved by man himself. You must understand that your priest rejects materialism only in the relationship between God and man. The church never stands in the way of men working together in a spirit of love. Never! Because God expects man to live!”

  Having combined the meetings of the Young Men’s Association and the Society of St. Mary, Father Gounod then thought secretly that he would be able to have his breakfast during the free hour, but inevitably the Lord seemed to compel him to go hungry on Sundays. After leaving the meeting-room, he remembered that he had left that beautiful woman in the drawing room by the entrance, and he resigned himself to his fate.

  “How is it going?”

  When he called out to her, she stood up and showed him that she had been reading The Lives of the Saints. She looked like a grade school child showing her homework to her teacher.

  “I have read this far,” she indicated. Before he hurriedly left her there to go to the meeting, he had stacked on the table the Bible, The Bible Story, Catechism, and The Lives of the Saints and had said, “Please read anything you find interesting.”

  Prior to his beginning her first catechism lesson, Father Gounod had to ask her name, as a minimum of information about her.

  “I am Sakai Satoko,” she replied.

  “Well, Miss Sakai.”

  “Yes?”

  “Please read the first page.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “For what purpose was man born into this world?”

 
“The reason why man was born into this world was to know our Lord, love Him, serve Him, and eventually to obtain happiness in heaven.”

  The tall foreigner and the lovely petite Japanese woman proceeded to read repetitively in the question-and-answer format of the catechism.

  As they were reading, Father Gounod asked, “Do you understand?”

  Sakai Satoko answered timidly, “Yes,” but the priest said, “No, there is more to understanding than just these words.”

  Somewhat surprised, she raised her head.

  “It is the heart, which we also call the soul, that is most important. Words exist to convey the concept of the soul.”

  “Yes, without expecting to, I suddenly felt that way when I came to church for the first time.”

  Just before departing, she left something wrapped in paper with Father Gounod. Hurrying back to the meeting-room for the Church Committee meeting, he opened it unintentionally and out fell a neatly folded 1,000-yen note. What made her leave it? In any event she was the first nonbeliever ever to pay tuition for a catechism lesson. Father Gounod wondered who she could possibly be.

  That day Father Gounod made a rather radical proclamation in the meeting of the virtuous looking adults of his Church Committee. “Henceforth I intend that the Church Committee shall meet once a month.”

  The reaction was immediate. Everyone seemed equally displeased. Mr. Nozoe, acting as the committee representative, asked Father Gounod for his reason.

  Father Gounod kept folding and unfolding Sakai’s 1,000-yen note. “The congregation between God and man takes place at least once a week. This the Church decided. I believe that it is sufficient for the gathering of men alone to meet once a month.” Having made this pronouncement, he obstinately remained silent.

  IV

  On the desk of Bishop Ayabe, Father Gounod’s superior, there lay a pile of written complaints from worshipers in Father Gounod’s congregation. Members of the Church Committee came to see the bishop to obtain his advice. However, he perfunctorily told them that he had placed the responsibility for their church in the hands of the Foreign Missionary Association, and consequently, since it was up to the head of the Foreign Missionary Association, Bishop Rogendorf, to hear their complaints and deal with them, he only promised to convey their sentiments to Bishop Rogendorf.