Kiku's Prayer Part 17

Concealed in the crowd, Kiku looked toward the Nishizaka hill. It was the hill that she and her cousin had climbed, in company with the chief priest of the Shtokuji, the first time they came to Nagasaki. There was an execution ground on the hill that had not been used in many long years, but in the past many criminals had been put to death there.

"I hear that the people of Urakami have been Kuros for a long time."

"That's right. They say there's already been three raids on the village."

Kiku overheard the disparaging comments made about Urakami. With each remark, she glared through beautiful, ruthless eyes at those who made such irresponsible statements. Kiku could not countenance those who spoke ill of the village where she had been born and raised.

"Here they come ... !" someone called out. The heads of every spectator turned as one toward Nishizaka. The procession made its way down the slope, officers of the magistrate at the lead, followed by the prisoners, who were flanked by a company of club-carrying men.

Shouts of surprise arose from the crowd as the column approached. The officers and their prey were covered in mud. Their grimy appearance summoned forth images of the terrifying scene from the previous night.

Most pitiful to see were the men in the group who were nearly naked and the women in torn nightgowns that scarcely covered their bodies. Wrenched from a deep sleep, none had had time to change their clothing.

"Criminals ... !"

"Fools!"

Relentless insults were hurled like pebbles by the spectators. Under the hail of vulgarities the Kiris.h.i.tans dragged their muddy feet forward with weary expressions on their faces. Kiku searched those faces frantically to see whether Seikichi was among them.

Seikichi ... was there.

He walked, somewhat unsteadily, near the middle of the procession, his wrists bound together. Like many of the other men, his clothing was torn, but Kiku nearly cried aloud when she saw that his face was cruelly swollen.

Evidently he had tried to resist his arrestors and was viciously beaten. That was obvious from the dark trails of blood on his cheek.

Licking his swollen upper lip with his tongue he continued walking, staggering occasionally into the man behind him. His eyes seemed unable to focus, as though he were in a trance.

"How dare they mock the temple priests and the buddhas!" An old woman standing next to Kiku commented to a young man beside her. The young man picked up on her scorn and shouted, "d.a.m.n you all!!"

That startled Seikichi from his stupor and he looked in the direction the voice had come from. And there he saw Kiku....

Astonishment and humiliation flashed simultaneously on his face. Seikichi hurriedly lifted his bound hands and tried to pull his clothing over his exposed chest.

"To h.e.l.l with you people from Urakami! You and your beliefs in that Kiris.h.i.tan claptrap!" When the young man heaped further abuse on the prisoners, Seikichi, aware of Kiku's presence, responded loudly, "What's wrong with being from Urakami? We won't change our beliefs no matter how much we suffer!"

"Ha! You're so bullheaded, you probably think you've got nothing to worry about, but you'll find out differently in jail! Just don't be screaming your head off!"

The procession pa.s.sed through the gate of the Sakuramachi Prison. A guard holding a long wooden pole waited until the last prisoner had disappeared and then closed the heavy gate.

"That fellow may talk big," the young man who had just exchanged words with Seikichi was still provoked and spat. "Just wait 'til he's made to do the straw coat dance!"

"What's the straw coat dance?" Kiku asked.

"It's one of the ways they punish the Kiris.h.i.tans. They wrap 'em in a straw raincoat and then set fire to it. They call it the straw coat dance because it gets so hot in there they hop around all over the place." The young man described the tortures in the prison as though he had witnessed them himself.

Fear caused the blood in Kiku's face to drain away. Moments before she had been impressed at how strong Seikichi was when he talked back to this young fellow. But now she could not bear the thought that Seikichi would be facing brutal torture.

Seikichi, why can't you give up this Kiris.h.i.tan thing?! She wanted to shout the words through the tightly closed gate.

Kiku could not see what was happening beyond the thick prison gate that separated her from Seikichi.

First, the prisoners were divided up by gender and taken to separate cells.

"Strip!"

The officers who had escorted the procession had dispersed, but now the policemen carrying the long poles ordered the prisoners to remove all their clothing.

Once they ascertained that everyone had stripped naked, they unlocked the side gate leading to the cells. When the tiny gate creaked open, they could hear the sounds of other prisoners moving around in the darkness. The area reeked of their sweat and body odors.

"Now, listen carefully. You stick your head in through here, and then you go in slowly." The policeman called out to the young man at the head of the rank. The young man, stripped even of his loincloth, bent, then crouched down and crawled forward like a dog on all fours and poked his head through the tiny cell gate.

At that moment, a large hand reached out from inside the cell and grabbed his hair, and a voice called, "Got him!" The young man was flung faceup into the cell.

"Next!" The second man was also pulled by his hair, dragged through the opening, and tossed into the cell.

This was the initial ritual at the prison. It wasn't limited just to the prison at Sakuramachi in Nagasaki; it was a rite performed in those days among prisoners at many different jails.

Once every new prisoner had been thus incarcerated, the clothing they had removed was examined and then flung in after them. The prisoners who had been lined up in single file were finally able to cover their nakedness, after which they were instructed to sit in front of the chief of the prisoners. The formalities were not yet completed.

"Listen up! Now that you're in here, who's brought me a gift?"

Those who responded that they had no gifts were given a tongue-lashing and ordered to write a letter home asking for money at once. The common practice was for the chief to demand an exorbitant amount, but then a mediator would step in and negotiate a discount to which the newcomers were forced to agree.

But the indigent farmers of Urakami had no means to procure the amount of money he was requiring. Four or five of them hung their heads and pleaded that they could not possibly offer the amount demanded, at which the prisoner chief unexpectedly excused them from their obligation. Perhaps he had been moved by pity when he saw their pathetic, mud-splattered figures. But in exchange, they were ordered to clean the toilet and give him ma.s.sages.

It was hot inside the prison. The smells of sweat and feces compounded the stuffiness.

Overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the newcomers, the chief inquired, "What are all of you in here for?"

"For generations, our families have believed in Deus and Jezusu," a young man from Nakano named Moichi replied.

"What's this Deus?"

"We're Kiris.h.i.tans."

The chief looked puzzled. Someone to his side explained that they were Kuros.

"Kuros, are you?" The chief said gleefully. "So that's what you were arrested for?"

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER.

KIKU TIPTOED THROUGH the service door of the Gotya and went into the kitchen. She was prepared for a tongue-lashing. She had fled without telling anyone and now was coming back many hours later. She had to be ready for any invectives that were heaped upon her.

Breakfast was long since over and the kitchen was silent. It was deserted, and all the kettles and pots were put back in their normal places, from which they watched Kiku coldly.

She wiped her feet with a rag and stepped up onto the wooden floor. She started toward the room where Tome and Mitsu would be mending clothing, but just then Oyone appeared at the far end of the corridor.

She stopped for a moment when she saw Kiku, but then walked past her without any expression on her face, as though she had seen a stone. From Oyone's taciturn behavior, Kiku could gauge just how angry she and the Mistress were with her.

When she went into the room where Tome and Mitsu were sewing, the two girls looked up at her with trepidation. Without a word, Kiku sat down beside them and picked up her own needle.

"No need to do that." A voice announced behind her. The Mistress and Oyone had materialized there. "Listen, the Gotya doesn't have any use for girls who fly out of here like a shot and come back whenever they feel like it." The Mistress glared at Kiku. "Get your things together and go back to Urakami at once. You people from Urakami are nothing but a bunch of self-willed troublemakers. I don't suppose you and Mitsu are Kuros, are you?"

"Ma'am," Mitsu interjected, half in tears, "please forgive Kiku! Kiku, hurry and apologize."

"She has nothing to apologize for. Even if she did apologize, it wouldn't change how I feel. This isn't the first time Kiku has stepped out of the shop without permission. She's doesn't know the meaning of the word 'obedient.'" She glanced toward Oyone, "Get her things together and give them to her. The priest at Shtokuji will understand once I explain everything to him." With that the Mistress stomped out of the room.

"You're such an idiot," Oyone gave an exasperated sigh. "If you needed to leave, I might have been able to do something for you if you'd just told me.... But when you say nothing and then disappear and don't come back, this is what you get."

"Oyone," Mitsu interjected. "Isn't there some way you can apologize to the Mistress and ..."

"No. If I did that, I'd be the one who got yelled at." Oyone coldly shook her head. "She's just going to have to pack herself up and go back to Urakami. Plenty of girls go to the Sotome or mura Districts for work."

Tome went with Mitsu to attempt an apology, but the Mistress's wrath wasn't even slightly abated; she merely turned her head to the side and gave no reply.

"The result'll be the same no matter how many times you apologize," Oyone scoffed at Mitsu, who came back to the kitchen deflated. "You can't change the Mistress's mind once she's made it up. All you can do is be silent and accept it."

Kiku seemed to be resigned to the decision, and she began packing in her tiny, second-floor room that had a low ceiling.

"Kiku ..." As Mitsu stood behind her with tear-filled eyes, Kiku sighed and muttered, "This all happened because I'm always thinking only of myself. I'm sorry that I've made things difficult for you, too, Mitsu."

"Kiku, if you leave here, where will you go?"

"I'll have to go home to Magome." Then Kiku flashed a deliberately cheerful smile. "Actually, I'm relieved. I've never been suited to this kind of work. I'm more the type who's made to farm."

She went downstairs carrying her tiny baggage, smiled at Mitsu who was still sniffling, and said, "Don't cry.... Mistress, Oyone, Tome, thank you for everything. I'm sorry I have to leave without thanking the Master."

She bowed properly and stepped into the bright outdoors. The Mistress looked away, and Oyone lowered her eyes, pretending to see nothing.

Outside the shop, Kiku paused. If she took the road to the right, she'd end up in Teramachi; if she turned to the left, she'd come to Shianbashi.

Somehow or other, her feet headed toward Sakuramachi, just as they had this morning, where Seikichi and the others had been thrown into prison.

I wonder if Seikichi is suffering terribly right now? That single thought filled her head. All sorts of people-Chinese, even Caucasian sailors-walked past her, but she no longer dawdled and gawked as she had in former days when she had permission to venture out of the shop. Now she marched straight ahead, looking nowhere but directly in front of her. She didn't even glance at the goods in the stores that lined both sides of the street or at the girl who came out of the dry-goods shop with a woman who seemed to be her nursemaid. Kiku climbed the hill toward the prison.

The spectators who had congregated outside the prison were all gone now. Two guards holding poles stood in front of the gate, and two dogs frisked together.

She continued to stare at the prison until one of the guards noticed and gave her a puzzled look. He grew wary when she didn't move on, so he called out accusingly, "What are you doing there?"

Kiku scurried away from the prison. Now her only option was to return to Urakami.

But she had no desire to return to an Urakami bereft of Seikichi. Leaving Nagasaki while Seikichi languished in a Nagasaki jail felt to her like a betrayal. She wished she could be with him and somehow help him....

In the evening, a hungry and exhausted Kiku sat down on the stone steps of the Suwa Shrine, gazing blankly at the darkening sky. Numberless hosts of Nagasaki's famed cicadas screeched in the grove of trees on the shrine compound.

Kiku wandered the streets of Nagasaki like a stray dog until nightfall. She could not bring herself to go back to Magome.

Children who had been playing nearby returned to their homes. The setting sun that had illuminated her surroundings began to wane.

I guess I'm going to have to ... go back home.

She was famished, having eaten nothing all day. She tried to stave off hunger by drinking some of the water from the shrine basin that was used for purifying the hands of pilgrims.

Unless something changes, there'll be no way I can help Seikichi.

There would be no succor for Seikichi so long as he refused to abandon his pointless beliefs. And yet this morning he had cried out in a loud voice, "We won't change our beliefs no matter how much we suffer!" What could she do?

She heard footsteps in the compound. She could also hear a conversation being conducted in some unintelligible foreign tongue. Just as she leaped up from the stone steps and turned to look, two foreigners came to a halt, surprised to see her.

Kiku was startled-not because they were not j.a.panese, but because one of them was definitely the foreigner she had seen at the Nambanji. She was further amazed that the other foreigner was wearing the same mud-covered work clothes that the peasants in Urakami wore.

When he saw Kiku, the foreigner who was dressed in work clothes hurriedly covered his face with the sedge-woven hat he carried in his hand. And the two men, pretending that nothing unusual had happened, continued down the stone steps.

Seikichi's face floated up before Kiku's eyes. Seikichi revered these foreigners from the Nambanji, calling them "Padre."

Maybe these foreigners can help Seikichi. The thought popped into her head. She couldn't say why. But like a drowning person grasping at straws, Kiku threw herself in front of the two foreigners.

"Excuse me ...!"

The foreigners-Pet.i.tjean and Laucaigne-halted as though frightened. Only that afternoon Laucaigne, who had escaped from Mount Ippongi, had finally been able to send a messenger to Pet.i.tjean at ura.

As soon as he received the news, Pet.i.tjean had hurried to the base of Mount Kompira to meet Laucaigne. Now they were crossing through the precincts of the Suwa Shrine on their way to get Laucaigne changed out of the muddy work clothes that betokened the predawn uproar and get him into priestly garb....

"Sirs," Kiku cried, all but kneeling before the two foreigners. "Please help Seikichi. He's in the Sakuramachi Prison because he's a Kiris.h.i.tan."

"Do you ..." Finally Pet.i.tjean opened his mouth and quietly asked, "Do you know Seikichi?"

"Yes."

"Then you're a Kiris.h.i.tan?"

"I'm not ..." When Kiku shook her head forcefully, a look of caution spread across the two priests' faces.

"Why is someone who isn't a Kiris.h.i.tan ... asking us to help Seikichi?" Pet.i.tjean studied Kiku from head to toe.

Kiku's face flushed crimson. There was no way she could bring herself to confess to these foreigners that she was in love with Seikichi.

But Father Laucaigne was quicker than Pet.i.tjean at realizing the truth behind her blushing face and uncomfortable body language, and he whispered to his comrade, "Elle l'aime."

A rea.s.sured smile slowly spread across Pet.i.tjean's face, and he muttered, "Ah!" Then he asked Kiku, "Are you from Urakami?"