Kiku's Prayer Part 40

EPILOGUE.

TODAY, URAKAMI VILLAGE looks nothing like it did when the captives finally returned to it. The village is now a part of Nagasaki City, and hills have been leveled and trees in the groves felled to make way for residential neighborhoods.

But the Urakami they came home to was in utter disarray. In one of his letters, Father Laucaigne wrote: Sadly, during the time of their exile, their lands had pa.s.sed into the hands of others. Their homes had been torn down, or other people had moved into them. No matter which direction they turned, all was misery and deprivation. The Nagasaki Prefectural Office quickly built temporary shanties to protect them from the rain.

Almost every day, Kiris.h.i.tan peasants who had been sent off to Tsuwano or to several other locations returned home on steamships. When they arrived in Nagasaki, the bell of the Nambanji at ura rang out loudly, celebrating their return. When they made land, they lined up and, before doing anything else, went to the Nambanji and knelt in prayer. The missionaries b.u.t.tressed their prayers by playing the organ.

Once they returned to their neighborhoods, however, their lives were harsh. Without fields or homes to call their own, they suffered from hunger just as much as they had during their imprisonment. With the meager cash they received from the prefectural office, they were able to stave off starvation by buying dried potato strips in Sotome. One of them reported that the potato strips were infested with bugs and they had no pans or kettles to cook them in, so they just soaked them in water and drank the broth. "We ate them, bugs and all. Didn't have any bowls either, so I just used a chipped one I picked up somewhere."

And they labored. As soon as dawn broke they went out to the fields to work, and they did not return until sunset. Sometimes when they got back home, they would sit on the step above the dirt entryway to eat their raw potato broth and then go right to sleep. They had no changes of clothes and no futons.

Their only joy after the daily routine of toil was the opportunity to go to the church at ura on Sundays. The distance from Urakami to ura was six miles, but not one of them considered it a long walk. Ultimately, though, they began to hope that they could have their own church in Urakami. It would be many years before their dream was realized with the building of the Urakami Cathedral.1 On one of those difficult days, Seikichi heard a young woman call his name while he was at the ura Church.

"Aren't you Seikichi? I'm ... I'm Mitsu."

He remembered her face, though she now looked much like a housewife. It was the same Mitsu who had worked alongside Kiku at the Gotya.

In surprise he cried out, "Yes! But what are you doing here? And where is Kiku?" Ever since he returned home, he had wanted to find Kiku. But Father Laucaigne and the other missionaries, concerned perhaps at the shock it might cause him, said nothing about her, and whenever he asked someone from Magome, for some reason they would prevaricate and say something like "I don't know what happened to her after she went to Nagasaki to work."

"But you ... I'm sure you know where Kiku is!" He said it in a loud voice, but Mitsu turned pale and lowered her eyes. "What's happened to her?"

"She died," Mitsu mumbled. "It was a snowy day two years ago.... She coughed up blood. Here inside the ura Church." Mitsu stood in front of the statue of the Blessed Mother beside the altar and quietly pointed out the spot where Kiku had died. Taking a deep breath, Seikichi lowered his eyes to the spot Mitsu had indicated. After a period of silence, he muttered in a hoa.r.s.e voice, "And ... where is her grave?"

"She was buried in Magome, where her family is from. But my husband and I were able to get some of her hair, and we secretly made a separate little grave for her. We thought we'd put it in a place you could visit if you ever came back from Tsuwano."

"Where is it?"

"In Gentio Valley-the Valley of the Gentiles."

"Gentio Valley? But Mitsu, you've become a Kiris.h.i.tan, have you?"

"Yes. My husband is ..." She lowered her eyes. "My husband is k.u.maz from Nakano."

Mitsu explained to a startled Seikichi how she had met k.u.maz and what had been happening in her life. She told him that k.u.maz did not have the courage to return to Nakano because he couldn't bring himself to look anyone in the face but that he had confessed everything to Father Laucaigne and had declared his intention to return to the faith.

"We run a plaster shop in Teramachi," she smiled wistfully.

The following Sunday, two men and a woman-Seikichi, k.u.maz, and his wife Mitsu-walked the seven and a half miles from ura to f.u.kahori-machi and, from there, climbed up Mount Shiroyama in gomori-machi.

"There were some Kiris.h.i.tans hiding here in gomori-machi, and I think they sometimes come to Kiku's grave to pay their respects," k.u.maz explained to Seikichi.

When they reached the top of the steep mountain path, the tin-colored ocean was visible directly below them. In the offing of Nagasaki Bay, the ocean glittered like a carpet of needles.

We were sent off to Tsuwano that day across this ocean. Seikichi reflected on the agony of that day, but to avoid upsetting k.u.maz, he said nothing. k.u.maz had stopped walking and raised his right hand.

"It's over there."

The giant camphor tree cast a broad shadow on the ground, and at its base they saw a stone cross. k.u.maz had chiseled it out of a stone. Birds shrieked in the tree overhead.

"This is Kiku's grave."

"I wonder what kind of work Kiku was doing ... there in Maruyama?" Seikichi asked the couple the question that weighed most heavily on his mind.

"We ... we really don't know," Mitsu sidestepped the question. The three folded their hands, uttered a prayer, then swatted away the insects that swarmed around them, drawn by their sweat.

For a long, long while thereafter, Seikichi did not marry. The image of Kiku, with her beautiful almond eyes, lingered incessantly in his mind. But when he reached the age of thirty-five, a friend persisted in recommending a potential spouse for him, and he ended up marrying a woman from Togitsu. They had four children.

In the late summer of 1913, Seikichi received a letter without a name in the return address. The sender lived in Akita. The letter contained a money order. Seikichi's complexion changed dramatically as he read the letter.

For a long while, Seikichi stared at the strange letter. But when he heard his wife's footsteps, he hurriedly concealed it.

"I'm going to go buy some things in Saga," he told her. Since he was now selling farm equipment and seeds, his travels took him not only to Nagasaki but occasionally also to Saga. So his wife had no reason to suspect what he told her.

About ten days later Seikichi left Urakami and headed for Nagasaki. His family, of course, had no idea what he was actually doing.

After taking a train from Nagasaki to Moji, he crossed over to the Honshu mainland by boat, continued from there to Yamaguchi, and then boarded a Yamaguchi Line train.

Before long from the train window he saw ears of rice tinted gold from the first autumn chill, and soon the train ascended into the mountain range from which he could see the Niho River. At that time, the Yamaguchi Line did not extend as far as Tsuwano as it does now, terminating instead at Mitani.

With his face pressed against the window, Seikichi gazed at the mountains and the river as a flood of thoughts overcame him. The realization that Tsuwano was not far from here sent myriad thoughts whirling through his mind like a revolving lantern.

If I hadn't received that letter ... I'm sure I would never have come here again, he whispered to himself.

Not once had he ever considered revisiting Tsuwano, the scene of so many painful memories, during his lifetime. But the letter had compelled him to come. Something the man who had written the letter had said drove him here.

The letter's author had included with the letter a money order to cover his round-trip fare to Tsuwano. And he had asked that Seikichi tell no one about this. Honoring that request, Seikichi had not revealed the secret to his family or to anyone else in Nakano.

The air grew chilly once the train entered the mountains. The chill reminded him of the frigid autumn air during the years he had spent confined in Tsuwano.

The train sluggishly st.i.tched its way through the mountains, panting and coughing up black smoke, reaching Mitani near sundown.

People had gotten off the train one after another at small stations along the way before the train arrived at the terminus, so only five or six pa.s.sengers remained to step out onto the tiny platform feebly illuminated by the sun on this autumn evening. Seikichi was the last to get off, and he stood on the platform gazing all around.

At the end of the platform stood a scrawny old man with a bent back, holding an umbrella. He watched as all the other pa.s.sengers pa.s.sed through the ticket gate and then approached Seikichi.

"Are you Seikichi? I ... I thought you might come." Blinking his eyes, the old man held out both his hands.

Seikichi hesitated to take them. This was one of the pairs of hands that had beaten and slapped Seikichi and his comrades in Tsuwano. Instead he said, "How well you remember my name."

"Yes. Not a single day has pa.s.sed that I haven't thought about you," the old man replied. His name was It Seizaemon.

The two stayed that night at a small inn across from the Mitani Station. They booked separate rooms, perhaps because It could not bear to look Seikichi squarely in the face. As a result, even after they left the station that was now shrouded in twilight, the two men scarcely exchanged anything resembling a conversation at the inn.

Weary from the journey, when Seikichi sat down under a dim light to a plate of food that the maid had brought to his room, he asked her to lay out his bedding, and after saying brief prayers, he fell into a deep sleep. The light remained on in It's room for quite some time, but after that light was extinguished, they both were wrapped in a profound stillness.

Early the next morning they set out for Tsuwano in two rickshaws. Although they left the inn early in the morning, it was not until around 2:00 P.M. that they reached Tsuwano as they descended through the Nosaka Pa.s.s along the San'in Road. When they looked down at the village of Tsuwano below, even though he had antic.i.p.ated that this would happen, Seikichi felt a shock as powerful as though he had been whacked with a club.

Pure white autumnal clouds hovered over Mount Shiroyama. The blue-green ribbon of the Tsuwano River meandered through the village, which was cradled among the mountains. Nothing had changed over time. The village and its surrounding nature were positioned deep in the valley, peacefully, quietly, as though nothing had ever happened there, as though they had retained no memory of how brutally Seikichi and the other Urakami Kiris.h.i.tans had suffered over five long years.

For an instant, tears filled Seikichi's aging eyes, then trickled down his cheeks. How appalling it had all been! How deplorable!

Ahead of him, the rickshaw carrying It forged ahead, its carriage creaking. Seikichi couldn't imagine how It felt right now, sitting beneath the rickshaw's canopy and looking down at Tsuwano below. He knew from reading It's letter why he had been invited here, and though in his mind he wanted as a Christian to accept It's apology, in his heart Seikichi still was not sure he could sincerely forgive the man.

The two rickshaws, carrying pa.s.sengers whose thoughts were very different right now, finally reached Tsuwano. Weaving between houses that looked unchanged from the past, they scurried through the town, where the current of the irrigation water was audible and the leaves were at last turning yellow.

It's rickshaw halted. It stopped at the entrance leading to the Krinji Temple, where Seikichi had been incarcerated along with Sen'emon, Kanzabur, and the others.

Seikichi knew he was not the first person from Urakami to retrace his steps up this mountain road. In the summer of 1891, Father Villion, who was serving at the ura Church, had come in search of the remains of the Krinji, taking with him Miss Iwanaga from Hiroshima as his guide. She had been exiled here from Urakami along with her father. But Seikichi was the first to ascend this path alongside the mountain stream in the company of one of his former persecutors.

A swarm of red dragonflies whizzed past their faces. The autumn sun that afternoon was gentle. Lacking the vigor of their youth, the two elderly men had to stop several times to catch their breath on the way up. When one came to a halt, the other would also pause to rest, waiting for his companion's breathing to settle down.

Anyone ignorant of their situation would have thought these men were two longtime close friends. They said nothing to each other, but having come this far, they knew that shortly they would arrive at a place where they both would have to speak.

A mountain stream flowed near the road, and as the old men silently climbed the slope listening to the sound of the current, their eyes caught glimpses of ashen gravestones that poked up here and there amid the silver pampas gra.s.s.

"Ah!" A memory slashed across It's breast with a pain so sharp that he felt as though he had been jabbed with a knife. He had seen these gravestones in the past every time he climbed this path upon his return from Nagasaki. They must have belonged to Buddhist priests who worked at the Krinji Temple.

They came to a hollow lit by the autumn sun. Here, too, the pampas gra.s.s glistened whitely, the fall flowers grew in abundance, and they heard the chirping of katydids here and there. Surprised by the footsteps of the two men, a swarm of red dragonflies flitted up from the leaves and gra.s.ses.

There was not even a trace of the former prison. The office used by the guards, the policemen, and the officers and the interrogation hut had vanished, buried under the gra.s.ses. Only the bluish black surface of the pond remained. It was the pond of torment into which Sen'emon and Kanzabur had been thrown in the dead of winter in an attempt to force them to apostatize.

"It was here ..." Staring at the pond, It announced hoa.r.s.ely, "It was here that you people were confined."

"Yes." Seikichi nodded.

The two stood like stone statues for a time, saying nothing.

Suddenly It exclaimed, "You must hate me."

"Well, I do blame you. I realize that I've got to forget my hatred.... But so far, I can't."

"That's what I would expect." It dropped his eyes and nodded. "You were treated so cruelly. You couldn't help hating me for the rest of your life.... I'm aware of that."

"No matter how hard I try to forgive all of you in my head ..., my heart ... my heart won't let me." Seikichi's cry was almost a groan.

"I see," It said lifelessly. "I understand. I imagine I'll spend the rest of my life and then go to my grave carrying the spite of each one of you on my scrawny back. Seikichi, do you want to hear something funny? I ... even someone as pathetic as me ... I was baptized twenty years ago at a church in Akita. I don't suppose you can believe that."

"Baptized?!" Seikichi was, understandably enough, taken aback. "You were?"

"Yes. There was a priest living in Akita named Father Houissan.... I decided I wanted to tell him everything I had done, so I did. Seikichi. It was a time when I was so alone and in so much agony that I couldn't bear my misery. But even after I was baptized by that priest ... I kept on committing one terrible sin after another. I lied to people ... I made women weep.... And every time, Father Houissan would have to clean up the messes I had made, and he would help me through it. And then I'd commit the same sin all over again. I concluded that Lord Jezusu had given up on me, but Father Houissan said that Lord Jezusu would never, ever abandon me...."

Seikichi gazed at the man sympathetically. Being a strong man, he could not understand the sorrows of a man like It....

Then Seikichi noticed that a faint smell of alcohol drifted from It's mouth as he spoke. The smell signified the weakness of It's will. Seikichi sensed the despondency of this man who had to borrow strength from alcohol in order to beg him for forgiveness.

"There's something ... there's something I have to say to you." It spoke again, keeping his eyes averted from Seikichi's. "Do you ... do you still remember a woman named Kiku?"

"Kiku ..." Seikichi nodded solemnly. "I remember her. But she died a long time ago."

"I'm well aware of that. I was the one who performed the inquest at her death. But do you know ... do you know what caused her to die?"

"She had problems here, in her chest.... Why?"

"That's right. But the reason she had problems ... no, what caused those problems in her chest ..." It's words broke off there, and he continued to stare at the ground. His expression was exactly like that of a believer hesitating in the confessional just before he divulges to the priest the sins he has kept secret for many long years. "What caused those problems in her chest ... Seikichi, it was me!"

Seikichi had no response.

"That woman ... she was a saint. I'm a sinful man, but I learned through her that there can be such a thing as a saintly woman in this world. It was so that she could send you money while you were here ... It was for you ... for you that she sold her body. She even gave her body to me."

"For me?" The tone of Seikichi's voice took on the nature of a scream. He had come here to Tsuwano never dreaming he would be told such a thing, never imagining he would hear such a story from It's lips.

"She degraded her body so that she could make money to give to you. And it wasn't a small amount of money.... She'd give me two or three ryo at a time. She'd hand it to me and ... and ask me to plead with the officers ... that they not treat you roughly ..." At that point, It's voice cracked in anguish, and he began to speak haltingly. "And I ... and I ..." He could say no more.

For a few moments, Seikichi said nothing, either. Then, "Are you saying ... that you used the money yourself?"

"Yes ..."

"How monstrous! That was ... that was a heartless thing to do!" Torrents of anger and exasperation coursed through Seikichi's body. He clenched his fists and struggled with all his might to hold back his rage and vexation. In truth, he wanted to pound It with his fists, to pound him and knock him to the ground.

"Please forgive me!" It bowed his head and turned to face Seikichi. Seikichi glared at the bald head and the unkempt tufts of white hair around the man's temples.

Seikichi realized that the victims of this man's tortures were not just the Kiris.h.i.tan men and women such as himself. He had even betrayed and brutalized Kiku, who wasn't even a Kiris.h.i.tan.

"How could you do something so cruel?" Seikichi's voice shook with fury. "She wasn't a Kiris.h.i.tan like the rest of us! A man who would exploit a blameless woman like her isn't even human, he's a devil!"

"You're right. I wasn't human back then. This is hard for me to say, but ... but, Seikichi, I was envious of you. I was jealous...."

"Why?"

"Because ..." It hesitated. "Because ... because back then, I loved her, too."

At those words, Seikichi could no longer control the anger he had suppressed. This filthy wretch says he loved Kiku? The words themselves sounded like a defilement of Kiku. He shouted harshly, like a father whose own daughter has been violated. "You?! You thought you were qualified to love her? When there was no one to help me, that woman gave me gifts of mochi and bleached cloth. Are you telling me you abused Kiku because you were jealous of me?!"

"I wanted her. I wanted her so very badly!" It crouched down in the clump of gra.s.s and began to weep.

"Forgive me! Kiku, please forgive me! It was because I witnessed your life, that's how I came to understand the meaning of the kind of love that Father Houissan often talks about. I understood how precious a woman is to a man. After he listened to my confession, Father Houissan said that you were like a saint.... Kiku, no matter how hard I try, I will never forget ... I will never forget the tears you shed ... the tears you shed when I took your body...."

His shoulders trembling, It continued speaking, but not to Seikichi-to Kiku, who was no longer in this world. Looking at It's pathetic figure, Seikichi lost all desire to hurl insults at him.

"It's all right, It. Kiku suffered at your hands, but she was able to lead you toward a different life. That by itself proves that her life was not without meaning ... it was not without meaning."