Her Portrait in Black
Page 3
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Less than an hour later, he was seated inside the comfortable office belonging to the museum’s Director. The man himself was a distinguished older gentleman with a salt and pepper mustache wispy over a drooping mouth. He wore a charcoal suit and had taken off his spectacles to peer closer at the student.
“The Kohiyoye clan?”
“Yes, if you please, I have a few more questions concerning the structure of the family.”
“Ah, well, there were few indeed left by the time of the family’s demise. The father’s father had been a trusted vassal of the Arima clan who were the ruling family of the area until removal by the Shogunate in 1614.”
The student nodded politely for he knew this from textbooks.
“They became vassals of the Matsukura family who had replaced the Arima. Those Matsukura were the same who caused the massacre at Hara castle some years later.”
The Shimabara rebellion...,
“There was a woman’s name excised from most official records,” the old man’s eye twinkled, “however in my searching I came across a singular mention of a Kohiyoye Marta martyred in the volcanic springs of Unzen with her spiritual leader Aozaraza Alonso. She was among the few women who suffered a torturous death in the springs.”
“Unusual,” he agreed, gazing distantly at the highly stylized art depicting Amakusa Shiro, the youthful leader of the Shimabara rebellion, on the wall behind the old man. “The Kohiyoye estate, smaller...where was it?”
“Ah, I believe you reference the summer residence? Traditionally, Daimyo maintained a residence within the capitol while his family lived there half the year as virtual prisoners. Kohiyoye was below the feudal lord ranking but because of his former master’s generosity, possessed a sizable estate of your guessing within a mountain’s shadow.”
There were many mountains on the island of Kyushu, he refused to be daunted over the lack of information. Barely able to contain the trembling in his voice for the grotto had been volcanic in nature of composition, he asked with the slightest quaver. “And the girl? Is it possible her name was Marina?”
The old man’s brow furrowed into a near grotesque caricature of a scowling goblin of Japanese myth. “Marina...was as common as Marta. Variations on other biblical names also abound. Hers, I’ve never been able to validate from any source.”
Marina...the student thought throughout the day. The name conjured up the flesh and blood of the painted woman into a tangible entity that lived and suffered so long ago. Being a romanticist by nature, he had begun to fantasize himself as a kind of mouthpiece to the voice of the departed - can such things exist? Can a memory live on long after its experience has been recorded through the eyes of an observer? For all he knew it was a fluke of the worst kind, one that had fed his hopeless dreams but would leave him bereft without answers.
The student wandered restlessly through the cool recessed lighted halls of the museum, past happier folk content with the scraps of history fed through simple inscriptions. He wasn’t content. He wanted - no, needed to learn more. But, where to start? Director Omura had seemed reticent on furthering his knowledge of the possible locations of the Kohiyoye compound...nothing probably existed of the grassy garden with its drooping pure white lilies...but, the grotto...that couldn’t easily have disappeared under the ravages of time.
The student made a few inquiries at the front desk, gaining the number of the owner of the portrait. He added that he was writing a paper on Kirishitan families in the area. Dropping a few names with the owner’s personal secretary, he was given a set time for an appointment after the proper credentials were checked out. A trip into the larger neighboring city was well-worth the expense aboard the Metro if it brought him steps closer to the woman who consumed his thoughts.
He left the museum early that day, showering lightly in the evening, preparing for an early start in the morning. The student did not dream as vividly as he had the night before on the worn sofa in the darkened den. In the western style bedroom beneath the cool blasts of gentle fan-blown air, he descended into dreamland where visions became nightmares, flashes of sodden ground, monastic chanting from battered men and women - the horror! Children as well, clad in filthy garments bound to stakes, roasting alive on damp faggots in dry riverbeds.
Among those thousand watching the slaughter, a face stood out from the crowd, silent, wrathful in the calm implacability of her steely gaze. She stared not at the suffering of the Kirishitan but rather glared with loathing hatred at the presiding judges, regal in their stiffened court appointed robes.
The young woman was older now with the roundness of chubby child cheeks whittled away by a greater knowledge of human suffering. She wore a fine kimono and an elegant head-covering shielding her delicate face from commoners eyes. Her lips moved and though he couldn’t hear her words, he felt the import of the meaning deep into his bones.
“Te Deum Laudamus.”
And before over a thousand people, the meandering flame roared to the sky obliterating the agony of the persecuted in an instant.
Thee, O God, we praise.
And the student watched Kohiyoye Marina’s eyes roll back into her skull and fall faint into the arms of Marta, clad in the dark weeds of mourning, without another sound. Tears wet the pillow of the student as he awoke in the dull grey light of a hazy lakeside morning. “Why am I...crying?” He touched his dry cheek with an unsteady hand, reliving in a searing flash the withering flesh of the tortured. Then, he uttered swift prayer for the repose of their souls. Sweet Marina’s, he did not add, never wishing for her eternal rest if it had not come with the bliss of death.
“Te deum laudamus,” the student found himself whispering to himself throughout the long bus ride into the city where he was deposited on the steps of a large hotel, the address of which had been given as the location for his impromptu appointment. Shrugging off the curious stares he received from his casual dress, the student left his name at the front desk of Mahogany casting an almost sneering eye over the singular plaque of a heathen God behind the man in a crisply pressed suit and snapping black brows.
“Your name, sir?”
Sir sounded like the dirtiest word in the politest manner possible.
“I’ve given it to you already,” he replied with the slightest hint of irritation, reflecting once again the gulf of the motherland and his home across the sea. He hadn’t said good morning to Marina’s portrait, he hadn’t traversed that familiar path to the doors of the museum. The student missed the comfort of routine and checked the time on his cell phone for the sixteenth time. By the time, he was conducted inside the palatial elevator and taken to the higher floors, anxiety had frayed his nerves.
Rokuzayemon Jordan had precious little to offer other than the interest of an art collector. He was discerning in his tastes, fond of the taboo with little regard for delicacy of manner that set him far apart from any of his countrymen. When the student implied with an urgency of securing the general location of the decimated compound of the Kohiyoye; Rokuzayemon waxed over the fascination the doomed young woman had held for men.
“One in particular was most like you - I recall his eyes most, and his words. He searched for her as well, you see. A fruitless venture, I called it after the erasure of the records was discovered. Without a proper Buddhist death record, there’s precious little to go on. The Kohiyoye princess simply disappears from history.”
“Who could’ve erased the record? Perhaps an official eager to hide the fact of martyrdom?”
Rokuzayemon snorted into the cigar he had raised to his lips in a fat beringed hand. “They were very meticulous, those Shogunate officials. Many were lost in the bombing of Nagasaki during the war...eh, what the hell? Confidentially, I’ll tell you what I think, kid.”
The student leaned forward in his seat, his gaze intent on the older man. “Please.”
“Her name was erased for a reason beyond the fear of emboldening the Kirishitan cause,” and with a final
knowing look, passed a facsimile of a map down the length of the desk. “I wish you protection from whatever you find.”
The student placed the map in his pocket with a firm bow at the waist, “thank you, Rokuzayemon-san.” It wasn’t until the long ride back to the lakeside town that he felt the hard object concealed within the creased paper. It was a string of wooden juzu beads carved with tiny crosses. I don’t need protection, he told himself, tossing the string into the bedside drawer. There were missed messages from his professors to answer, a test to study for and an overnight stay in his college town to catch up on late lectures.
On a drizzly Thursday in late September, he took out the weathered parchment from the drawer again, smoothing out the creases against the dining room table and struggled to make sense of the arcane notations concerning hectares of land. Through cross referencing a map of the area he suspected it to be, he had narrowed down the possibilities of the old compound within the bounds of Mount Inasayama some miles outside of Nagasaki city. In the lushness of the forests surrounding the massive caldera of the smaller volcano in the chain, he hoped to find some trace of the grotto as validation for his dream.
With a head filled with expectation, the student drifted off with the ticket to Nagasaki tucked within Endo Shusaku’s groundbreaking