Kiku's Prayer Part 14

Once they were certain they were being tailed, Pet.i.tjean couldn't help but play pranks on them in the French manner. He and Father Laucaigne would stroll into the Chinese residential area and quickly hide behind a house, and when they caught a glimpse of the spies frantically searching for them, they would unexpectedly step out directly in front of them-it was hilarious to see the expressions on the men's faces at such times.

Even as he was pulling these pranks, Pet.i.tjean's eyes were ceaselessly fixed on Mount Kompira, which separated Nagasaki from Urakami.

By checking the color and shape of the kite sent up at a set hour, he was able to determine what the Kiris.h.i.tans of Nakano wanted of him.

An ago kite with a black design.

That meant "Warning! Don't come."

Apparently Seikichi and his comrades had decided it was best to be discreet for a while, since they flew a black ago kite day after day.

To anyone else's eyes, it was nothing more than a tiny, unexceptional kite. But that little kite floating in the sky had profound meaning for Pet.i.tjean and the j.a.panese Kiris.h.i.tans. The only other person who knew of this arrangement was Father Laucaigne.

When about seven days had pa.s.sed, finally it was not a black kite but a paper shji kite shaped like the frame of a paper sliding door that drifted lazily above Mount Kompira.

Please come, Padre. No spies today was the shji kite's message to Pet.i.tjean as he looked up at it from the street.

"ca y est!" A cry of victory sprang to Pet.i.tjean's lips. The magistrate's spies were not keeping watch today.

That night, after making certain that Okane and her husband had left, Pet.i.tjean put on the farming clothes he had stashed away, tied a kerchief under his chin as many j.a.panese did, and set out. It was already pitch dark when he reached the shortcut that descends from Mount Kompira to Urakami, but a young man from Nakano was waiting there for him, taking care that the flame in his lantern did not go out.

In the shed that they used in place of a church, Pet.i.tjean said the Ma.s.s. Old and young, male and female, from not only from Nakano but also Ieno and Motohara, had crowded into the shed, and the s.p.a.ce reeked from the smells of sweat, body odors, and their expelled breath.

The citizens of Nagasaki thought of Urakami as a foul-smelling village caused by the stench from the animals that were raised there. The smell had gotten worse especially of late, when the villagers began to raise goats and pigs for the foreigners who lived in Nagasaki. As he recited the Ma.s.s, Pet.i.tjean thought of the horse stable where Jesus had been born. This shed that functioned as a church was similarly filled with the smells of cow dung and urine.

And yet Lord, is there another church this beautiful anywhere in the world? As he intoned the Latin words of the Ma.s.s, Pet.i.tjean thought of the catacombs where the primitive Christians had secretly a.s.sembled during the years of Roman persecution. This shed, with its oppressive air of human and animal smells, seemed as beautiful to him as those catacombs. It was magnificent.

O Lord, these j.a.panese have endured beyond endurance and employed all manner of stealth to maintain their faith in Thee. Please look upon the faces of these j.a.panese. Pet.i.tjean whispered the words in his heart, and he was unable to suppress the swell of his emotions.

The eyes of every man, woman, elderly lady, and aged male jammed into the shed were fixed on him as he spread his arms wide, made the sign of the cross, and blessed them. They were eyes like those of the parched who plead for water.

When the Ma.s.s was finished, he listened to many confessions. On some visits he would also baptize an infant. He was taken to the homes of the sick. Usually by the time he made it back to Mount Kompira, light had already begun to dispel the darkness while the city of Nagasaki continued to sleep.

Unless he returned at that hour, Okane and her husband would grow suspicious, no matter how well Father Laucaigne might try to cover for him....

"Je suis j.a.ponais. Vous etes francais. Il est j.a.ponais."

Hond Shuntar leaned against the window of the Yamazaki Teahouse in Maruyama as he memorized the French verb conjugations that were written on a piece of paper spread across his lap. He was particularly determined to practice over and over again the L sound, trying to mimic the way in which Pet.i.tjean p.r.o.nounced it, repeatedly s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his face and pointing to his tongue.

"That's so funny ...! You look like one of those men who wears a village idiot mask at the festival!" A young geisha named Oy, who sat beside him watching his struggles, couldn't help but put a hand up to her mouth and laugh.

Oy, who would later become Shuntar's wife and one of the most sought-after women at the Rok.u.meikan,1 was at this time the most popular of the young geisha working in Maruyama. She was a fair-skinned beauty, buoyant and quick-witted, and she could hold the attention at parties hosted by even the most boorish of customers. It was the custom of the dandies who frequented Maruyama, whenever they wanted to bad-mouth a geisha, to open with "that wildcat ...!" but not one man was ever heard to snipe about Oy as "that wildcat"; instead, she was given the pet name of "Snow Queen of Maruyama" because of the exceedingly beautiful whiteness of her skin.

"Like the village idiot, eh?" Shuntar chuckled. He was a jolly drinker, and when he laughed he twittered like a turtledove, not the sort of laugh one would have antic.i.p.ated based on his ma.s.sive bulk.

"So you won't be able to converse with the foreigners unless you make sounds like that?" Oy taunted him with her eyes. "I hear that the foreigner at the Nambanji who's teaching you these baby noises takes long strolls every day, gives candy to children, flies kites, and seems like an all-around nice man."

"Yeah." Shuntar nodded and looked through the window at the street below. On this spring evening, the lights of Maruyama flickered seductively. Swaggering by were men with scarves over their heads and their hands thrust into their pockets, as well as the bosses of merchant houses eager to deflower a novice geisha.

Watching them from the second floor, Shuntar's smile suddenly changed to a gloomy expression and he muttered, "He's a good man.... But he's definitely a conniver."

"A conniver?"

"Uh-huh. He seems to be planning to spread the prohibited Kiris.h.i.tan teachings among the j.a.panese, and he's making serious problems for the magistrate. It's as though he's rousing the normally docile peasants in Urakami from their slumber.... Those things you call his little strolls around Nagasaki ... they aren't the innocent little outings you think they are."

"If they aren't just walks, what is he up to?"

"I'm ... I'm not sure yet. But he's up to something. Definitely something ..."

Oy's eyes beamed with curiosity. "You mean not even the great Lord Hond knows what it is yet?"

Shuntar knew from It Seizaemon's reports that Pet.i.tjean and Laucaigne went out walking every afternoon. Seizaemon had likely concluded that Pet.i.tjean was guiding Laucaigne around Nagasaki, but there was just one thing that didn't make sense to Shuntar: the fact that they set out on their walks at precisely the same hour every day.

According to Oy's memoirs from late in her life- Two or three days after she had this conversation with Shuntar, she had an errand to run and headed for Kaji-ch on the other side of Shianbashi. As she walked the long road from Kaji-ch toward Teramachi, she noticed two foreigners strolling along, their backs to her.

Curiously enough, the two foreigners were the pair that Shuntar had labeled "connivers." They walked along in a leisurely manner, glancing up at the temple roofs in Teramachi or calling out to children who were playing beside a fence. Thinking of what the man she loved had said about these foreigners, Oy was driven by a desire to somehow be of a.s.sistance to Shuntar, so she followed the two men.

At one point the foreigners turned to look behind them, but they smiled in relief when they saw that the person walking a little ways behind them was merely a young woman.

The sky was cloudless. A few kites hovered in the sky. And just a few moments earlier, a sash-shaped kite had climbed into the sky above Mount Kompira.

Suddenly the two foreigners stopped in their tracks and said something to each other, then quickly turned on their heels and raced back along the road that had brought them to this point.

As their paths crossed that of Oy, she hastily bowed to them, and they lowered their heads in polite response....

This all comes from Oy's memoirs, but however clever she may have been, she had no idea at the time that the kite over Mount Kompira served as the mode of communication between Pet.i.tjean and the Kiris.h.i.tans in Urakami.

The sash-shaped kite that had swept through the skies that day was, by prior agreement between Pet.i.tjean and Seikichi, a signal of urgency. It meant that there was a gravely ill person close to death in Nakano, and they were waiting frantically for the priest to come and administer the last rites and prayers.

But when he scurried back to the Nambanji in ura, Pet.i.tjean found Hond Shuntar waiting at the entrance for his French lesson.

Mon Dieu! If he didn't reach Nakano quickly, the sick person might die. He had to find some way to slip away from Shuntar.

"You've been out?" The magistrate's interpreter smiled, feigning ignorance.

"Yes. Father Laucaigne and I have been on one of our long walks."

"You've been particularly diligent about taking those walks lately," Shuntar said trenchantly. "And they're always at the same hour...."

Pet.i.tjean tried to appear unperturbed by this comment, but he sensed that his own complexion had changed. He had been thrust on the defensive, and when Shuntar said, "Well, shall we get on with the French lesson?" Pet.i.tjean could not refuse him. He fidgeted anxiously throughout the lesson, and when Shuntar made ready to leave, he asked the priest, "What's happened to you? You look as though your mind just isn't here today."

After Shuntar left, Pet.i.tjean rushed to Nakano, but the sick man had already died.

1. A Western-style building completed in Tokyo in 1883, the Rok.u.meikan (Deer-Cry Hall) was the scene of many parties and dances for j.a.pan's social elite and became a symbol, for better or for worse, of the rapid Westernization of Meiji j.a.pan.

THE CONTEST.

THE BLOSSOMS HAVE fallen....

Almost immediately Nagasaki was greeted by a flood of new sprouts. The young leaves sparkled in the early summer sun as though they had been soaked in oil, and homes were filled with the smell of new straw mats.

Kiku was on high alert every morning. She was standing watch in hopes that she would hear Seikichi calling out his wares far in the distance.

"Takkekuwai!"-That was what he shouted on days when he was selling bamboo shoots.

Each time she heard that strong voice, Kiku ran to the front of the store, carrying her broom. Sweeping the street in front of the store was one of her a.s.signments, but it was no longer as cold as it had been on wintry mornings, so she would have at least a little time to talk with the man she loved.

But there was more to her antic.i.p.ation. Each morning when she heard Seikichi's voice, she breathed a sigh of relief. "The magistrate still hasn't arrested him. Whew!"

Seikichi merely laughed at her. "The magistrate can't get his hands on me. Ever since you gave me the warning, me and everybody in the village is being careful so we don't get caught!"

At first she worried, but with each morning that she saw Seikichi striding energetically toward her, Kiku began to feel more and more at ease. Maybe Ichijir had just been taunting her.

"Kiku, I got this from the padre at the Nambanji." One morning, Seikichi set down his load of goods, wiped the sweat from his brow, and suddenly looked very solemn. He reached into his basket and carefully took out something that looked like a silver coin from some foreign land.

"What is it?"

"It's called a medaille, and it's engraved with the image of Santa Maria. It's a very, very important treasure to us Kiris.h.i.tans. I want you to have it for what you did for me."

"Me?" This was so unexpected that Kiku clutched her broom handle, her eyes sparkling.

"Yeah. But you can't show it to anybody else. If you show somebody, they might accuse you of being a Kiris.h.i.tan."

The medaille he placed in the palm of her hand was engraved with an image of the woman she had seen in the Nambanji. Just like that statue, the woman here wore a crown and cradled an infant.

"I won't show it to anybody. I'll take really really good care of it, since it's from you."

"Ah." Seikichi lowered his eyes in embarra.s.sment. "You know who that woman is, don't you? It's the mother of Lord Jezusu. She's called Maria.... If you pray with all your heart to her, she'll listen to you, no matter what it's about. That's what we believe."

A voice called for Kiku from the kitchen, so Seikichi scrambled to hoist his basket full of bamboo shoots onto his shoulder and headed off, calling "Takkekuwai-!"

The silver medaille shimmered in Kiku's palm. It was the first present she'd ever received from a man, and her only possession that smelled of a foreign land.

She heard footsteps. She swiftly hid her medaille.

The fifth month. The month of early planting.

In Nagasaki and the surrounding villages, the most important celebration in the fifth month was the day of the Pe-ron compet.i.tion.

On the fifth and sixth days of the fifth month, during the Boys' Day festival, the young men from villages along the coast-including Magome, Takenokubo, Inasa, Mizunoura, Akunoura, Nishiura, Hiradokoya, and Senowaki-tied cylindrical towels around their heads, fastened their waistbands tightly, and partic.i.p.ated in a rowing compet.i.tion. The residents of each village and township a.s.sembled at the beach on those days and cheered on their team until their voices were hoa.r.s.e. Their support for their teams was so impa.s.sioned that b.l.o.o.d.y fights would often break out.

The j.a.panese were apparently imitating a compet.i.tion run by the Chinese residents of Nagasaki, who set up compet.i.tions between their barges. There is also speculation that the word Pe-ron was the Nagasaki way of p.r.o.nouncing the name of the Bailong-White Dragon Boats-from Guangdong Province. In any case, it appears that the compet.i.tion got its start in China.

Every year Magome sent a team of young men to compete in the White Dragon Boat Festival, so when the fifth day of the fifth month approached, virtually no young men could be spotted in the village. They all had gone to the seash.o.r.e to practice their rowing.

Ichijir was one of the rowers, and he got so busy with practices that he scarcely did any work in the fields.

And it wasn't just the residents of Magome. Everyone in Nagasaki-male and female, elderly and young-grew buoyant in the bright spring weather and looked forward with excitement to the fifth and sixth. Spectators pressed toward the sh.o.r.es in such great numbers that the streets of Nagasaki were basically uninhabited while the boat festival was going on.

"Padre." Seikichi and his comrades described the White Dragon Boat Festival to Pet.i.tjean and said, "So, you see, there won't be any spies from the magistrate out that day. Nagasaki will be deserted. You can come openly to Nakano and perform the Ma.s.s and hear confisso. Please!" Their plan was to take advantage of the boat racing day and a.s.semble all the Kiris.h.i.tans together.

"Still," Tokusabur, one of Seikichi's friends, c.o.c.ked his head curiously, "I don't understand why the magistrate hasn't come to arrest us. Do you think they're just afraid to?"

Thanks to Seikichi's report, they all knew they were being watched, but it seemed strange to them that the officials hadn't raided their gatherings.

"It's probably because they haven't caught us worshipping," a young man named Kisuke responded. "Padre, what do you think?"

Pet.i.tjean was puzzled as well. Piecing together some of what Hond Shuntar had said, he had concluded that the magistrate, suspicious of the entire region encompa.s.sing Nakano, Ieno, and Motohara, had been keeping an eye on them, but it baffled Pet.i.tjean that they did nothing more than observe.

Pet.i.tjean concluded that perhaps the magistrate's office was holding back out of fear that if they rounded up the Kiris.h.i.tans, it would provoke the foreign nations who were even then pressing j.a.pan to open its doors unconditionally.

When he expressed this view to Seikichi, Tokusabur, and Kisuke, they gleefully responded, "So that's why they're so spineless!" To these impoverished farmers, the thought that they had been able to render the magistrate impotent merely served to magnify the delight they felt, since they had never thought such a thing possible.

The fifth day of the fifth month.

The roads from Nagasaki to the Magome inlet were packed with spectators. The White Dragon boats were lined up in the ocean, the stern of each brandishing a flag or banner decorated with the emblem of its village or seaside hamlet. The boats were extremely narrow relative to their length, which ranged from 88 to 118 feet. In the center of each boat was a wooden post festooned with streamers made of white or colored paper braids, as an offering to the Shinto G.o.ds. A gong was affixed to the base of the post. Drums had also been provided, and young men who beat the gongs and drums rode in the boats along with the rowers.

Before the boat race began, the beach and the road along the sh.o.r.e filled with people, who raised a tremendous clamor. The tumult swirled into the sky like a waterspout and could be heard all the way to Nakano and Motohara, which were quite a long way from the inlet.

Pet.i.tjean and Laucaigne stood in a squalid hut at Motohara. Before them stretched a tight row of faces, each of them exposed over many long years to sweat and mud, poverty and labor, sickness and pain.

Beginning the previous evening, these faces came pressing in one after another to plead with Pet.i.tjean. "Padre, please come quickly. I don't think my mother's going to last much longer. She keeps saying that before she dies she'd like the padre to offer oraco for her." They begged fervently on behalf of infants who needed baptism, sins that needed confessing, and prayers and the Extreme Unction that needed to be performed before death.

Pet.i.tjean and Laucaigne hardly slept. Like doctors in a field hospital, they listened to pet.i.tions from one location after another, and in response to those requests they spent the entire night making the rounds of Nakano, Motohara, and Ieno.

"Is your mother's illness critical? If not, could you ask her to wait just a little while? The two of us can't get to everybody at once."

"Padre." A man they had never seen before pushed his way to the front of the throng and pleaded with trepidation, "I'm from s.h.i.tsu. There are Kiris.h.i.tans in s.h.i.tsu, and there are many hiding out in Sotome as well. Padre, we wait day after day for a padre to come to us."

The shouts from the beach grew more vehement. The boat race had begun. The sounds of the drums and gongs echoed amid the shouting. People were intoxicated by the festivities.

But this room was filled with something other than festivity; it brimmed with human suffering and sorrow. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Pet.i.tjean recalled pa.s.sages from the Bible.

Blessed are they that mourn