by Shusaku Endo
“Kiku!” A girl cried out almost in tears. “Don’t do it! You could get hurt! Let’s go back home!” But Kiku had already wrapped her pale legs around the branch.
“Wow!” Crybaby exclaimed in admiration, dazzled by the sight of Kiku’s bare legs.
Kiku was not the sort of girl who could scamper up a tree like a monkey. Clinging frantically to one branch, she clutched desperately at the next, stretching her leg up onto that branch and making her way inch by inch up the tree, her face flushing a bright red. With each upward move she made, some object or another—a clump of dried leaves, or the debris from an abandoned bird’s nest—dropped down onto the heads of the children who were watching her. Meanwhile, the kitten responsible for this display staggered over to a puddle of water, thrust in its head, and began noisily lapping away.
One girl began to weep. She was terrified, certain that Kiku was going to injure herself.
“Kiku’s gonna fall!” The girls pointed their fingers at Snotnose. “If she falls, it’s all your fault!”
Startled by the accusation, Snotnose stammered, “It’s not my fault! She’s the one who decided to climb it!”
“You told her to!”
Snotnose glanced around him. Then with no warning, he spun around and sprinted away, shouting “Not my fault!!” Seeing that, Crybaby also took his heels.
“Kiku—hurry and come down!” The girls cried out in one voice as they gazed upward.
Just then, the branch Kiku was standing on broke with a dull snap. Kiku dangled in midair like a tangled kite.
Suspended from the branch that she clutched with both hands, as though she were doing a chin-up, Kiku frantically struggled to find a foothold. With each twist of her body, her white thighs and abdomen were on full display, but she had no time to worry about such things.
“Kiku!”
“Kiku!!”
Every one of the girls, Mitsu included, had burst into tears. The adults were too far away to summon, and there was no doubt that if they tried to go for help, Kiku would run out of strength and plummet to the ground like a stone.
“Somebody—help!!” Mitsu yelled with her hands up to her mouth. The other girls joined in; “Help!!” they shouted.
A young man, perhaps having heard their cries, came racing along the footpath through the fields. He wasn’t from Magome. They had never seen him before.
“Help me!” Dangling in the air, it was Kiku’s turn to cry out.
“Hang on! I’ll help you!” The young man ran, breathless, to the tree. “Don’t let go! I’ll climb up to you!”
He threw his arms around the trunk and nimbly raised a foot onto a limb. He straddled the next branch up, placing his body directly below Kiku’s legs. He patted his neck with one hand and called, “Step down onto my shoulders.”
She was young, but she was still a girl, and for an instant Kiku blushed with embarrassment.
“Hurry! There’s nothing to be shy about!” He seemed more mature than his years. His face wore the promise of good judgment. Hugging the trunk of the tree with one arm, he wrapped the other arm around Kiku’s waist and lifted himself up to catch her on his shoulders.
Riding on his shoulders and now with both arms encircling the gigantic tree trunk, Kiku realized that she had been saved, and she began to sob loudly.
“You’re OK now. You don’t need to cry.” The young man looked up in surprise at Kiku’s face. Supporting the sobbing girl’s body and helping her along, he descended the tree slowly. Kiku’s wails grew even louder once her feet touched the ground.
Just then there was a shout from behind them. Mitsu’s older brother, Ichijirō, had appeared out of nowhere. Misunderstanding what had happened, he grabbed the young man by the collar and snarled, “Why’d you make her cry? Just who the hell are you?!”
“I—” Taking two, then three blows from Ichijirō’s flat palm, the young man fell to the ground and protested, “I—didn’t make her cry.”
“If you weren’t doing anything to her, then why is she crying?” Raising his fists, Ichijirō glanced back at Kiku. “What did this bastard do to you?”
“He didn’t do anything bad,” Kiku explained to her cousin through her sobs. “I climbed up the tree and couldn’t get back down…. He came to help me.”
“What’s that?!” With a sheepish look, Ichijirō lowered his fists. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Why didn’t you say so sooner? You there—where are you from? Nagasaki?”
Timidly the young man replied, “Nakano.”
“What? Nakano?” A look of displeasure clouded Ichijirō’s face. “What’s somebody from Nakano doing loitering around here in Magome?”
“I’ve been to the farmers’ market in Nagasaki,” he said, blinking his eyes.
“Farmers’ market? Don’t lie to me. You’re not even carrying anything!”
“My dad went ahead and took all the stuff.”
Ichijirō continued to eye the young man suspiciously from head to toe. “We don’t want any of you Nakano types hanging around with no reason to be here. I hate you Kuros!” He ordered the young man to leave with a jerk of his chin.
The young man slipped his feet into his sandals and hurried away, looking back over his shoulder regretfully. His figure grew smaller and then disappeared into the copse of trees that marked the end of the path through the rice fields.
“Are you hurt?” Ichijirō asked as he pulled a leaf from Kiku’s shoulder. “What’s a girl doing climbing trees anyway? That’s why you get called a tomboy.”
“What are ‘Kuros’?” Back on her feet, Kiku remembered that Ichijirō had said “I hate you Kuros!” to the young man.
“Kuros?” With a rather grim look, Ichijirō replied, “Never mind about that. Don’t you remember that we’re always telling you not to go near kids from Motohara and Nakano and Ieno?”
“I know, I know.”
“So, if you run into that guy again, you’re not to speak to him.”
“What’s wrong with speaking to him?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“That’s nothing a child needs to know.” Ichijirō responded with a disgusted look. He would tell her nothing further or even say another word on the subject. But he strictly enjoined his young sister and niece against having any association with youth from Nakano or Motohara.
“Why can’t we play with them?”
“Because … Nakano and Motohara are different from us here in Magome. It’s because they’re Kuros.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing for a child to know.” The look on Ichijirō’s face was withering, so even Kiku asked nothing further. But a serious doubt was planted in her heart.
Just what is a Kuro? Even in her youthful mind, the word Kuro conjured up images of a somehow ominous, dark place. But Kiku couldn’t imagine—it seemed flat-out contradictory that such a kind young man could live in such a scary, dark place.
The youth’s face was still vividly etched into her eyes. He wasn’t anything like Snotnose or Crybaby—he was a trustworthy, gentle young man. She still clearly remembered his voice, as calming as that of an older brother, when he circled her legs with his arms, lowering her onto his shoulders and climbing down from the tree, and then he had said, “You’re OK. Don’t cry.”
She couldn’t imagine why the simple fact that such a remarkable young man lived in Nakano would upset Ichijirō so much.
“Granny?” The next day, she went to talk to her grandmother, who was relaxing in the sun. “Nakano and Motohara are Kuros, huh?”
“Kuros, you say?”
“What does Kuros mean?”
Her grandmother stared fixedly at Kiku, “Where’d you hear that word?”
“From Ichijirō. He said to stay away from Nakano and Motohara.”
“Ah, yes. You mustn’t go over there to play.” Just like Ichijirō, she gave her granddaughter a stern gaze. “You’ll be cursed if you go there.”
“Cursed?!”
; “That’s right. Something bad’ll happen to you for sure. That’s why you mustn’t go there.”
Her grandmother’s words filled Kiku with an inexpressible anxiety and fear. Something terrible would happen to her if she set foot in Nakano or Motohara. But why …?
A slender stream formed the border separating their community from Nakano and Motohara. One of the branches of the Urakami River flowed through the area. To Kiku, the stream seemed like the boundary between a place of safety and a place of terror. On this side of the stream was an area where the adults said it was OK to play; on the opposing side was a frightening space she must never set foot into. But that kind young man who had saved her lived on the other side of the stream….
Not long thereafter, Kiku had a dream.
In her dream, Kiku was playing with Mitsu and some of the other girls. It was a spring afternoon, and just as before, lotuses and violets and white dandelions bloomed all around them.
As the girls romped along, picking the flowers, someone called out from behind them. When they stood up and looked in the direction of the voice, that same young man stood in the sunlight, looking their way and smiling.
“If you want to pick flowers, I can show you a place over here where there’s a lot more of them. Come this way!” He innocently motioned for them to follow him.
Guileless Mitsu cried out “Let’s go” and was about to dart off when Kiku stopped her.
“We can’t!” She had remembered the stern injunction from Ichijirō and her grandmother. A stream they must not cross flowed between them and the spot where the young man stood.
“We can’t go!” Kiku was almost to the point of spreading her arms wide to stop the other girls from advancing. “We can’t come over there!” she called out to the young man.
“Why not?”
“We’ve been told we mustn’t go to Nakano or Motohara. Something bad will happen to us if we do.”
At Kiku’s words, a look of inexpressible sorrow flashed across the young man’s face. He nodded, his look filled with resignation, and he pivoted and walked away, just as he had on that earlier occasion. From behind, he looked incredibly forlorn.
At that point, Kiku awoke from her dream.
But the memory of the dream remained powerfully in her head even after she woke up. For some reason, as she recalled the lonely retreating figure of the young man, she felt that it was all her fault. It was as though he had looked so sad because she had treated him maliciously.
It wouldn’t be wrong to see him again, she muttered from her bed. He saved me, after all.
A certain resolution settled into her mind. She leaped from her bed, nearly kicking it away from her. That afternoon, she furtively confessed her resolution to Mitsu and the other girls.
“We’re going to go over to Nakano.”
“What?!” The girls’ eyes widened. Mitsu warned, “Kiku, don’t you remember that Ichijirō said we couldn’t ever go there?”
“I know that. But I hear that all kinds of flowers are in bloom over there.”
“You’re gonna have to go by yourself. We’ll stay here.” That was the consensus of all the girls except for Mitsu, who did not respond.
Kiku set out by herself along the brightly sunlit path. Purposely disobeying her elders filled Kiku with fear and guilt, but a part of her wanted to stand up to the adults.
“Kiku! Don’t do it!!” Her friends cried out in chorus from behind her. But the unyielding girl didn’t even look back at them.
She had only gone about three-quarters of a mile when Mitsu came running after her, shouting her name.
Kiku bristled. “What are you doing here? You need to stay with the others,” she growled. But Mitsu said nothing and continued walking behind her until Kiku brightened and said, “You mustn’t tell Granny or Ichijirō about this.”
Weaving through the terraced fields that had been cultivated halfway up the hillside, the two girls reached the edge of Magome District. The sun was brilliant, and black-eared kites twittered faintly overhead. A flying insect, drawn by the smell of sweat on the faces of the two girls, began to flit tenaciously around them.
A small stream trickled past. This was the branch of the Urakami River and the end of Magome District.
Dipping her bare feet into the stream, Kiku called out with deliberate cheer, “Mitsu, come try this. It feels wonderful!” Inwardly, though, she knew that once she crossed this stream, she would be entering a place where Granny had told her something bad would happen to her, and she felt a slight stab of pain in her chest.
Ever compliant, Mitsu immersed her feet in the stream and giggled unaffectedly, “Wow, it tickles!”
“Let’s go!” In an attempt to dispel her gloomy thoughts, Kiku quickly leaped to the opposite bank, with Mitsu hurrying along behind her.
A copse of trees rose up before them. It was only a grove of trees, but Kiku’s chest was pounding, as though the moment she stepped into its precincts, she would be sampling a forbidden fruit, and she licked her lips in trepidation.
Once they made their way through the trees, cultivated fields stretched in all directions. The sun glittered on the fields, and a waterwheel spun with a recurring slap. A cow was munching on grass just to their side. It stared at the girls with misty eyes, gave a languid “Moo!” and resumed its chewing.
Two thatched-roof houses stood in the distance. The sky was blue, and one cirrus cloud hovered in the sky.
How could anything bad happen in a place like this? It wasn’t the slightest bit different from their own community in Magome. So why did the villagers have only dreadful things to say about Nakano and Motohara? It made even less sense to Kiku now.
“Mitsu, let’s pick some flowers!” The two girls crouched down and began gathering the flowers at their feet. Though doubts persisted in their minds….
1. Land reclamation projects from the 1850s onward have significantly changed the proximity to the ocean of many Nagasaki neighborhoods.
THE SEARCHER
AROUND 3:00 IN the afternoon—
The French warship Carcassonne finally sailed into the rain-swept bay. As the wind sliced the milky clouds into tatters, the hills on either side of the bay bit by bit came into view. The hills were so intensely green that the man standing on the deck didn’t feel so much that the boat was steaming into a bay as advancing slowly through a sea of trees.
From the surrounding hills, he could hear the unbelievably irritating screeches of cicadas. It seemed as though the hills were infested with vast swarms of the insects.
“Mon Père, this is Nagasaki.” A passing sailor carrying a bucket called out to the man leaning against the deck railing.
“Ah! We’ve finally arrived.” He smiled and nodded.
“So, Father,” the sailor inquired, “will you be searching for those folks …?”
“Of course. That’s one of my reasons for coming to Nagasaki.”
“It would be wonderful if you found them.”
“Oh, I’ll find them, all right.”
Once the sailor and his bucket had departed, the priest turned his eyes once again to the hills blanketed with drifting rainclouds.
There was a chance that dwelling somewhere within this intense greenness, somewhere amid the annoying screeches of the cicadas, were the people he was searching for. But how oppressively muggy the heat in Japan was! It had been so much better last year when he lived in Naha in the Ryūkyū Islands: even though the temperature was the same as that in Nagasaki, the humidity had been much lower.
Through the rain he noticed a Japanese ship with a white sail hoisted. Somehow, each time he saw a Japanese ship with its sails spread, he was reminded of white-feathered birds.
Eventually he caught a glimpse of the distant shoreline. The huts of the fishermen, topped with gray tiles or shingles, clustered together in claustrophobic heaps. Three or four wooden houses built in Western style were conspicuous among them.
As the ship reduced speed midway out into the harbor, severa
l small boats set out together from the shore and rowed toward the ship. They looked like a colony of ants swarming toward their prey.
Each of the tiny boats carried a Japanese peddler. The peddlers reached into the baskets or boxes tied to their backs and pulled from them lanterns, vases, teacups, and saucers. Grinning and bobbing their heads toward the French sailors who peered down at them from the deck, they began hawking their wares, loudly crying, “How’d you like some of these?” “Take a look here! Really cheap!!”
The warship cast its anchor. As he listened to the grating of the anchor, the priest wondered whether some of those he was seeking were among these peddlers.
“All men going ashore assemble on deck!” After the officer had given these orders, he said to the priest, “Father, please board the junk with me.”
4:30 in the afternoon—
Joining a group of sailors including Ensign Guirand, who had invited him onto the junk, the priest transferred to a skiff that a Japanese man was rowing.
“How about some of these?” Even then, the boats crowded around the skiff and peddlers called out from both sides. They grinned affably and repeatedly bobbed their heads in deference.
“You there!” The priest abruptly passed a coin to one of the peddlers and whispered, “Do you know where I can find any Christians?”
The pleasant grin that had seemed plastered on the peddler’s face vanished, replaced by a look of fear. He shifted his eyes and turned his back to the priest, as though he had gotten too close to something taboo.
“Father, what did you ask that man?” Ensign Guirand, who spoke no Japanese, inquired.
“I asked him whether any of his fellows were Christians.”
“So that’s why he looked so edgy.” The ensign nodded his head. “If you’re a Christian in this country, you get the death sentence, you know.”
“I know that. But that wasn’t the case until 260 years ago. Back in those days there were more than 400,000 believers on these islands of the Far East. Here in Nagasaki, several beautiful churches had been built, and even little children sang hymns as they played together.”