Kiku's Prayer Part 18

"Yes."

"From Nakano ...?"

"Not from Nakano. From Magome."

"It's dangerous for a woman to be heading back to Magome after dark. You're alone ...?"

"Yes."

"You don't have an escort?"

Kiku looked up at him and weakly shook her head.

Pet.i.tjean looked at her tired face and the bundle she carried in her hands and wondered whether she was running away from home. "You don't have any place to stay, do you?"

Her thoughts having been read, Kiku lowered her eyes and said nothing.

"Did you run away from home after an argument with your parents?"

Still she did not respond.

"Have you had anything to eat?"

"Don't worry about me!" Kiku said angrily. She was so prideful she could not bear anyone taking pity on her for no reason. "I hate Kiris.h.i.tans. But please help Seikichi!"

Laucaigne shrugged his shoulders and pulled on Pet.i.tjean's sleeve. Pet.i.tjean nodded and took four or five steps away. But something within would not allow him to abandon Kiku.

"Come with us. We'll give you something to eat.... You can stay the night in ura and then go back to Urakami tomorrow."

"No thanks. I'm not a Kiris.h.i.tan." She was still obstinate.

Pet.i.tjean stifled an urge to laugh and motioned to her, "Come along."

Laucaigne and Pet.i.tjean stepped behind a building and finished changing their clothes, then set off in the darkness down the path from Suwa Shrine to the ocean. From time to time, they glanced casually over their shoulders.

"Is she following us?"

"She is."

Trying not to laugh out loud, the two walked for a time and then suddenly came to a stop.

Pet.i.tjean again motioned to Kiku, "There's nothing to be so shy about. Come along.... Or are you afraid of me?"

Kiku nodded grudgingly. Her sharp mind quickly calculated whether it would be more to her advantage to go straight back to Urakami or to follow these foreigners. It was obvious that it was best not to return to Urakami right now if she wanted to get help for Seikichi.

With a fixed distance maintained between them, the two priests and Kiku made their way along the beach toward ura. With the sun already down, the ocean and sky were already spattered purple while the waves nipped at the sh.o.r.e with a languid sound.

"Bernard," Father Laucaigne said to Pet.i.tjean. "Have you contacted M. Leques at the consulate?" Leques was the French consul in Nagasaki.

"Of course. I notified Leques and also sent word to the Prussian consul asking them to demand the release of the prisoners. I suspect they've both already been to the magistrate's office to lodge protests. But ..."

But ... Father Laucaigne suddenly thought of Hond Shuntar's broad face. A man like Hond would merely brush aside such a complaint, insisting that this was an internal problem that had nothing to do with them....

"Bernard, I ... I feel somehow as though we've brought this harm on them," Laucaigne muttered sadly. They could see the fishing lights of several boats in the offing, and the waves continued their monotonous pounding.

"Why?"

"It seems to me that they raised this fracas because we pushed them too hard ... and now they've been arrested...."

Pet.i.tjean had to agree. Their hunger as missionaries to teach the Gospel to the j.a.panese and their desire to save j.a.panese souls had stirred up the peasants and set off this confrontation.

"Yet ... if we think of it as a kind of martyrdom...."

They said nothing for a time. They remained ill at ease in their hearts.

"In any case, first thing tomorrow we've got to start things rolling to obtain their freedom."

"Yes, we must."

Again they stopped walking and looked behind them. Kiku, too, came to a swift halt.

"We're almost there," Pet.i.tjean called out gently. "Tonight you should have something delicious to eat and then get some rest."

That evening, Kiku was fed the strangest food she had ever eaten. There was some sort of thick soup that seemed to have flour mixed in with it, and a thing called pan that she'd only heard about, slathered with what tasted like hair oil.

It didn't seem the least bit "delicious" to her. With her eyes darting about in astonishment, it took all her effort to force it down her throat.

"This is called potage. And this is beurre." Pet.i.tjean looked on with a smile as Father Laucaigne taught each of the words to Kiku. "Do you like it?"

"Yeah." Her voice sounded like a mosquito when she answered, unable to bring herself to say that it tasted terrible.

"Okane, apparently she doesn't like the kind of food we eat. Do you have anything else?"

Okane, who was serving up the food, looked disgusted, but she brought out some pickled vegetables and rice. She was not happy that the two priests had picked up this dowdy-looking girl.

That night, Kiku was put to bed on a platform they called a lit. But she was so nervous that she lay there with her eyes wide open, unable to sleep.

She could hear the sound of the waves. This place where the foreigners lived was a j.a.panese-style house, but it had a peculiar smell to it. It was an odor just like that of the foreign food that had been pressed on her that evening.

Those foreigners! They eat cows and pigs and drink their blood! Years ago, Granny had struck fear in her with those words. Come to think of it, those two men had been drinking something that was red like blood ...!

Why would someone like Seikichi go out of his way to believe in the religion of these foreigners? I can't help but hate these Kiris.h.i.tans!

She thought of Seikichi in his cell. What would he be doing at this hour? She had heard people say that there was a ringleader among the prisoners who swaggered about and taunted the new arrivals. Was Seikichi all right?

Unable to sleep, she got up and took from her bundle of possessions the medaille of the Blessed Mother that she kept hidden away.

"I don't like you anymore. It's because of you that Seikichi got put in that prison. Just who are you, anyway, you hateful woman?!" She glared at the medaille as she voiced her complaint.

Seikichi. You've got to give up this stupid religion. She felt that intensely. She wanted to clasp her hands together and pray to the G.o.ds and buddhas that Seikichi would get out of prison quickly, that he would do what the magistrate told him to do, and that he would be freed.

Even as she tormented her mind with these thoughts, Pet.i.tjean and Laucaigne were planning how they might secure freedom for the Urakami Kiris.h.i.tans who were locked away in the Sakuramachi Prison....

The following morning, Kiku had a request for Okane. "Can you get me a job here in these foreigners' house? I'll work really hard!"

Okane looked at Kiku disdainfully, but evidently she realized how desperate Kiku's request was, because she mentioned it to her husband.

"It might be a good idea to hire her. If, like they say, two more foreigners will be arriving here soon, we won't be able to do everything ourselves."

Mosaku's argument made sense. When Pet.i.tjean and Laucaigne found out that there were Kiris.h.i.tans hidden away in Urakami, in various locations throughout the region surrounding Nagasaki, and at Sotome as well, they requested a.s.sistance from their compatriots in Yokohama. Before long, two additional priests would be coming to ura.

"Fine, but," Pet.i.tjean interrogated Kiku closely, "we'll have to get permission from your parents. If we don't, it could lead to trouble for us."

"I ... I don't have any parents," Kiku lied. "I have a cousin in Nagasaki. I'll have her tell my relatives that I'm working here."

After consulting with Laucaigne, Pet.i.tjean hired Kiku temporarily to work at the church. But he took her on only because he recognized that with two additional priests coming, Okane couldn't possibly take care of everything for them.

"Is Seikichi ... still in jail?" Kiku asked, her eyes filled with tears.

Pet.i.tjean nodded glumly and said, "Yes, but not at the Sakuramachi Prison. They've all been moved to a jail in Kojima."

In fact, only two days after their arrest they were transferred from the Sakuramachi Prison to a hastily constructed cell in Kojima.

"Then ... will Seikichi be released?"

Kiku asked Pet.i.tjean question after question. From the desperation in her voice he could tell how much the girl loved Seikichi.

"Of course he will! I pray for that each day, all through the day. Don't you worry."

But Kiku, not being of the Kiris.h.i.tan faith, was not interested in such whimsies as prayers; she wanted these foreigners to take some sort of concrete action to free Seikichi.

Like a drowning woman grasping at straws, she asked Pet.i.tjean, "Will Seikichi really be saved if you just pray?"

"When you pray, your requests are granted," Pet.i.tjean consoled the young j.a.panese woman.

That night, in a tiny house beside the chapel, Kiku tried offering her first prayer. Holding the medaille that Seikichi had given her and fixing her eyes on the image of the Blessed Mother Mary engraved on it, she prayed, "I don't know who you are. But you're the woman that Seikichi worships. Since you're a woman, please understand how I feel. I'm asking you. Please arrange it so that nothing terrible happens to Seikichi."

Please arrange it so that nothing terrible happens to Seikichi....

Despite Kiku's agonized prayer, Seikichi and the sixty-seven other Kiris.h.i.tan men and women from Urakami remained imprisoned in Kojima with no indication that they would be freed.

Each day, one of the shackled prisoners was dragged from his cell, taken to the magistrate's Nishi Bureau that stood on the site of the present Nagasaki Prefectural Offices, and encouraged to abandon his faith. Whether threatened or gently reasoned with, each was ordered to apostatize.1 It was not only the men who were grilled. Women, too, had their hands bound behind their backs and were taken to the bureau office.

Initially the officers tried to reason with the prisoners, but often they played on their feelings, making threats that their family members would be made to suffer because of them. If they still gave no response, the interrogating officer would heave a deliberate sigh.

"Have you heard about the tortures we inflict on Kiris.h.i.tans?"

"It's called 'hanging in the pit.' You're hung upside down over a pit filled with filth. You're just left there with no food, no water. The blood pools in your head and comes streaming out of your eyes and nose. They say that even those who can handle it initially end up screaming out in agony after only three days."

"Our orders from above are to use this torture on you Kiris.h.i.tans and get you to return to the right path. We don't want to have to subject you to such painful torment. But if you continue to insist that you won't give up your Kiris.h.i.tan faith, then you don't leave us any choice-we have to hang you in the pit."

The cunning threats had their impact on the simple peasants.

One evening, when it was brutally hot inside the cell, a policeman brought a man named k.u.maz back to the prison from the Nishi Bureau.

"What did they ask you today?" the others inquired, but k.u.maz wouldn't look them in the eyes and mumbled a noncommittal answer.

At first they thought he was just exhausted and said nothing further to him. But that night he still seemed listless.

"k.u.maz, what's wrong? Did they beat you badly?"

"I ... I couldn't bear it...." His voice was like an unexpected wail. "I don't have the strength to hold up any longer. I ... I want to go back to the village."

No one said a word. They all understood too well the cry of k.u.maz's heart.

"Why aren't the padres helping us? And why isn't Deus at least helping us?"

They all rebuked k.u.maz for his weakness but then tried to encourage him. They were additionally trying to bolster their own resolve, which was beginning to wither.

The next day, k.u.maz was again hauled off to the Nishi Bureau and then returned to the prison with a dazed look on his face. He had sworn an oath to the officers that he would abandon his Kiris.h.i.tan faith.

Then a man named Hisagor denied his faith. And after Hisagor, Shigejr apostatized....

When one corner of the wall of believers caved in, another five, then ten individuals would collapse like dominoes.

Even after the brutally hot months of July and August pa.s.sed, the cell was still saturated with the smells of sweat and body odor and feces. The number of believers who abandoned their faith during those two stifling months reached twenty-one.

The magistrate gave no sign of releasing the twenty-one who had apostatized. It was Hond Shuntar's suggestion that they keep the fallen imprisoned as a means to persuade those who had yet to abjure their faith.

"Listen, I'm on my knees begging you. I've got a wife and kids to take care of, and if I don't return to my land soon, we won't be able to pay our taxes for this year. Won't you please do what the officers ask you and just think of it as helping me out?" That was the sort of plea that the apostates made to those who had yet to capitulate. Each knew to the depths of his bones how dest.i.tute and miserable it was to be a peasant. The entreaties of their friends were more painful to them than threats from the police.

The forty-seven who refused to recant were locked into a room no larger than nine-by-nine feet. They were given only a paltry amount of food. With forty-seven bodies crammed into an eighty square foot cell, there was no room to lie down. They were driven to the verge of madness inside the hot, suffocating enclosure. Seikichi was among them.

Only once during those h.e.l.lish days did a constable, without gaining authorization from the officials, allow three women from Nakano to meet with the prisoners. It was of course the bribe money that the women had collected from others in the village that persuaded the constable to give them a short time to converse in secret with the prisoners.

"This must be so difficult for you! So difficult!" The women repeated the words many times, tears streaming down their cheeks. Clinging to pillars in the cell, the prisoners begged for information about their families and their fields.

"Everyone is offering oraci for you. The padres are talking with the magistrate, and they've sent a messenger to Edo trying to rally all the foreigners in j.a.pan to help the Kiris.h.i.tans. You just need to be patient a little longer...." The women wept even more. Some of those in the cell sobbed loudly as they listened to what the women had to say.

"Both Father Pet.i.tjean and Father Laucaigne are saying prayers to Santa Maria for you."

The constable appeared and announced that it was time to conclude the meeting. The three women handed out food and clothing that had been provided by the prisoners' families, and then said to Seikichi, "Father Pet.i.tjean said to give you this," and handed him a small parcel.

Seikichi summoned the courage to open the parcel in a corner of the cell after the women had left. It contained a few rice cakes, a small crucifix, and a single sheet of paper.