Kiku's Prayer Part 30

In the darkness Sen'emon slid down beneath the floor and crawled out through the hole they had excavated.

The night in Tsuwano was icy cold, and the mountains and houses were all darkened. The guards appeared to be unconcerned and noticed nothing.

When he reached the three-foot cell, Sen'emon pressed his face against its wall and whispered, "Wasabur! Wasabur! It's Sen'emon. It's me!"

He sensed a faint stirring inside the box.

"I know this is hard for you. But you've got to pray and hold on just a little longer. I'm giving you some rice b.a.l.l.s through the hole up top."

There was no response.

"What's happened to you? Wasabur!"

"Yes." His voice was feeble. It was clear that he had been worn down.

If he's left like this, he'll die!

As Sen'emon turned from the three-foot cell and started back toward the tunnel, Wasabur's voice still lingered in his ears. He muttered to himself, Lord Jezusu! If this goes on any longer, Wasabur will die!

There was still some time before dawn. The darkness was thick, Mount Aono towered blackly to the rear, and the cold wind was brutal. But Sen'emon couldn't bring himself to return to the others. He cut across the frozen garden of the temple and came to the bamboo fence that enclosed the compound. He wanted somehow to get outside....

Please help me, Lord Jezusu!

When he pushed gently at the gate, it creaked softly and moved. The careless guards had neglected to secure the latch.

With quiet steps Sen'emon climbed down the hill. There was no danger of anyone seeing him at this hour, but he feared that a dog, hearing his footsteps, might begin barking. If a dog barked, someone might wake up.

Sen'emon decided to go to the Hshin-an where the apostates were lodged. He knew that the eight apostates felt very ambivalent toward those who still clung to their principles.

But he had to enlist their aid in order to help Wasabur. Sen'emon's own feelings were conflicted right now.

Since the Hshin-an was a nunnery, it had no imposing walls. Even so, he sustained a few cuts on his arms and legs from the hedge as he pushed his way into the courtyard.

"Motosuke! Motosuke!" He placed his mouth up to a crack in the storm shutters and called out, but since he spoke softly from the fear of being overheard, there was no response.

"Motosuke ... !"

He heard a cough; apparently someone had awakened. But perhaps having heard Sen'emon's voice, there was silence for a few moments.

"Who ... who is it?"

"It's Sen'emon. Can you open this shutter?"

The shutter opened a crack, and two dark faces peered out at him.

"It really is Sen'emon! Did you escape?"

"No, I didn't. Wasabur is close to death. They've stuck him in a little box they call the three-foot cell and he's covered in his own filth...."

Lowering his voice, Sen'emon described the agony of the tiny cell and Wasabur's grim condition.

"And we ... we can't do anything to help him. I thought maybe if you could share a little of your food ... that's what I've come to ask for. Motosuke, Satoichi-you're both from Urakami, too. Can you think of some way to help?"

The other six men had awakened and listened quietly to what Sen'emon had to say. No one uttered a word in reply.

"It's going to start getting light.... I've got to go back."

"Would you ... would you take this to him?" Someone stood up in the darkness and held out several rice cakes to Sen'emon. "This is all I've got tonight. But if you can come back tomorrow, I'll save up some food to give you," the man whispered....

But Sen'emon knew full well that Wasabur's debilitation was growing more critical with each pa.s.sing day. Wasabur could evidently no longer swallow the food that the apostates at the Hshin-an were willing to provide out of pity.

When Sen'emon returned through the pa.s.sage they had dug, he reported in a lifeless voice, "He's not going to make it. He can't even answer me anymore."

On the twentieth day after Wasabur was put into the three-foot cell- A guard came to summon Sen'emon: "The man says he wants to talk to you."

Sen'emon raced to the cell, where Wasabur's emaciated appendages poked out from under a straw rug.

His body was soiled revoltingly with the feces he had to live with every day. Sen'emon swallowed hard at the extreme wretchedness of his friend.

"Sen'emon," Wasabur pleaded in a faint voice. "Don't let them burn my body, OK ...? When the rest of you are executed, please carry my body to that same spot...."

"I understand," Sen'emon nodded through his tears. "Even if we die, all of us from Urakami will be together in Paraiso. Our ancestors are waiting for us there."

Let us go, let us go,

Let us go to the Temple of Paraiso.

Though it's called the Temple of Paraiso ...

Knowing that Wasabur would soon die, the other men began to sing from their cell inside the temple. The officials and guards said nothing, even as their melancholy voices grew gradually louder.

When the officers began to carry Wasabur's corpse out of the boxlike cell, the nineteen remaining prisoners, aware of their friend's dying wish, began to shout at them. One man named Kunitar became particularly desperate and continued to argue with the officers who yelled and barked orders at him.

But all their protests were in vain. Two days later, Wasabur's body was carted off to some unknown location, and no one had any idea where it had been disposed of.

Overnight the three-foot cell was transformed into the most painful and frightening location the remaining nineteen men could imagine. Being placed in there signified death. And it was a death in which a man breathed his last in horrible pain and smothered in his own excrement.

The next to be cast into the three-foot cell was a man named Yasutar. Kanzabur, Kunitar's second son, wrote in his reminiscences: This man Yasutar was a man of faith and humility who did all the nasty jobs that other men hated to do, and he often reduced his own ration of food in order to feed it to someone weak in his fides....

Yasutar was periodically dragged from his three-foot cell to the courtyard amid the falling snow, and attempts were made to force him to apostatize. He, too, wasted away, sullied with diarrhea.

This time it was Kanzabur's turn to make use of the tunnel they had dug to give encouragement to Yasutar.

I pulled up the floorboards in our cell ... and made my way outside, reaching the three-foot cell sometime after midnight, Kanzabur recorded. I called out, "Yasutar! Yasutar!" one or two times until he responded in a faint voice. I said, "Being in this little cell must be awfully lonely for you," but he answered, "I'm not lonely between ten o'clock and twelve. Just after ten, a woman in a blue kimono with a blue scarf around her head, looking just like the pictures of Santa Maria, comes and tells me stories, so I'm not lonely at all then." But he told me not to mention this to anyone while he was still alive. Three nights later the moon was truly beautiful. I think he was a real saint.

It was not long before Yasutar, reduced to only skin and bones, breathed his last. The remaining eighteen prisoners, each absorbed in his own personal thoughts, gazed down at the wasted corpse laid out on a straw rug. Some were deeply moved; others felt only fear. A few chewed on their lips in anger and remorse, while some were gripped with apprehension.

Around this time It Seizaemon resurfaced in Tsuwano. He had not seen the Urakami Kiris.h.i.tans in quite a while, and he greeted them with uncharacteristic gentleness: "I've brought you a present." He pulled a heavy cloth bag from the pocket of his kimono. "Do you know what this is ...? It's some of the soil from Urakami. It's soil from your hometown of Urakami. Give it a whiff. You'll recognize it."

There was no doubt that the soil that spilled from the cloth bag had come from Urakami. Having cultivated this soil for so many long years, these farmers recognized it instinctively.

"Go ahead and scoop it up in your hands. No need to hesitate."

After the first man responded to It's offer and touched the soil with trembling hands, the rest of the men excitedly reached their hands out, too. They brought it up to their noses and kept their eyes shut for a long, long while.

It glanced around at the faces of the Kiris.h.i.tans with a broad smile and asked, "Is there a Seikichi here?" When Seikichi responded, he said, "I see. So you're Seikichi, are you ...? Do you happen to know a place called the Yamazaki Teahouse in Maruyama?"

"I certainly don't."

"Don't lie to me. A maid that works there, name of Kiku ... she's very worried about you.... She says she wants you back in Urakami soon. I wouldn't make something like that up. I'm sure you'd like to smell the soil of your home again, wouldn't you? Or would you prefer to die in your own s.h.i.t in that little box?"

Seikichi's face flushed. It's comments were his usual blend of part aggravation and partly his habit of preying on the men's weaknesses, but this time, for once, his words appeared to have some impact.

Several days later, six of the eighteen men quietly declared their apostasy. Ultimately they were defeated by the smell of the soil of Urakami and their fear of the three-foot cell.

1. The smallest unit of j.a.panese currency at the time, mon were coins cast in copper or iron. They were replaced by the yen in the early 1870s.

TWO KINDS OF LOVE.

MITSU SAW SOMETHING unusual at the Gotya one day. She ran across k.u.maz sobbing in a corner of the kitchen.

It happened on the same morning that all the Urakami Kiris.h.i.tans, including women and children, were driven from their homes and scattered to various locations.

The rout had been the subject of gossip at the Gotya since the previous day. It started to snow that morning, and throughout Nagasaki, people watched as Kiris.h.i.tan women, their heads covered with yellow or white scarves to shield them from the snow, headed up the hill toward the Nishi Bureau carrying belongings on their backs and leading their children by the hand.

"I wonder if your family is going to be OK," Oyone said sarcastically to Mitsu. "They live in the same town of Urakami ..."

"But why are those people so pigheaded?" the Mistress sighed. "They lose their houses and their land, and they're exiled to some unfamiliar place.... Don't they see what they're giving up here?"

Mitsu and Tome, bracing themselves against the cold, climbed up on the poles used for drying laundry and tried to watch as the steamships bobbing in the harbor took on these refugees and departed. As a native of Urakami herself, Mitsu felt unbearably sad for them. She was especially overcome with pity when one of the shop clerks reported that he overheard a young child, who had no idea what was happening, whining incessantly as her mother led her by the hand along the snowy road to the Nishi Bureau: "Mom! Let's go home! Let's go home!!"

The next morning when Mitsu went into the kitchen to perform her normal ch.o.r.es of preparing breakfast and cleaning, she discovered k.u.maz beside the hearth, his back toward her, weeping. When he realized that Mitsu was standing behind him, k.u.maz fled outside.

Mitsu went out to the well. Her burdens had been made somewhat lighter since k.u.maz came to the shop, as he would draw the water from the well and carry it in buckets to the kitchen, but today he had not brought any water in.

k.u.maz turned his face away from Mitsu as she approached. She said nothing but picked up the bucket of water that k.u.maz had drawn so she could carry it to the kitchen herself.

"Mitsu!" k.u.maz, his head still bowed, muttered abruptly. "You saw me crying just now, didn't you?"

Mitsu could only nod her head. Then k.u.maz said in a raspy voice, "Could you please not tell anybody else?"

"I won't."

They said nothing further for a time. Then k.u.maz suddenly broke the silence. "Mitsu, I'm a Kiris.h.i.tan from Nakano. But I was scared to be sent off to some distant land, so when the boats were leaving, I ran away. I went to the officials and told them I'd give up my Kiris.h.i.tan beliefs. So here I am, a 'pardoned' apostate! This morning, they told me that the people from my village of Nakano and from Motohara had all been put on those ships in the bay that headed out to sea.... And I ... and I'm left here alone!" He spat the words out, clutching to his chest the bucket he had taken from Mitsu's hands.

Mitsu told k.u.maz's secret to no one. She didn't even reveal it to her friend Tome. As a result, an unseen connection developed between Mitsu and k.u.maz.

He really shouldn't punish himself so much....

Since she wasn't a Kiris.h.i.tan herself, Mitsu couldn't really understand why k.u.maz felt so guilty about abandoning his Kiris.h.i.tan faith. When she mentioned this to k.u.maz, he said sadly, "You wouldn't understand," and turned away to swing his ax into a piece of firewood.

Mitsu stared at the back of her forlorn friend and felt tremendous sorrow for him. Seeing someone or something miserable or unfortunate was usually more than she could handle.

The New Year came around again.

"k.u.maz, I'm sorry." Mitsu felt somehow guilty toward k.u.maz; although he also was from Urakami, he had no place to go home to for the holiday.

"n.o.body's left in Nakano, so I can't go back there. But I'd like to go to ura just once," he responded.

"To ura?"

"Yes. I wish I could at least go to the church there and tell Santa Maria how sorry I am for my weak resolve. Mitsu, would you slip away with me and go to ura? And could you keep watch while I tell Santa Maria I'm sorry?"

She empathized with k.u.maz's agony, and Mitsu realized she could use this opportunity to see Kiku again.

On the afternoon of the third day of the first month, the two finally got some time off and left the Gotya. k.u.maz tied a kerchief over his head and knotted it under his chin so he wouldn't be recognized. The streets were jammed with people visiting shrines and temples, but the beach at ura was deserted. When he spotted the cross atop the church, k.u.maz kept his head down as he climbed the hill toward it.

Mitsu stood at the entrance to the church as he instructed her and stood guard while k.u.maz went inside. She could not hear even the faintest sound from the sanctuary after he disappeared into it.

When he finally emerged with tears in his eyes, Mitsu said, "OK, now will you wait at the beach for me? I'm going to go see Kiku." She set off in search of Kiku, but she soon learned from Okane that Kiku had run away.

"She's gone off to Tsuwano, probably following some man," Okane said spitefully.

Kiku toiled doggedly at the Yamazaki Teahouse. She needed to get to Tsuwano as quickly as possible to give encouragement to Seikichi. But she needed money to do that. Never before had she wanted money so badly.

The New Year holidays pa.s.sed, and following the customs of the day, on the fourteenth the Mole-Pounding Ceremony1 was held. Children gathered into groups of five or six each, and using bamboo sticks wrapped in rope, they went around to each house, pounding on the stepping-stones at the entrance as they sang:

It's mole pounding on the fourteenth!