Silence

by Shusaku Endo

  Whispering a word or two to the samurai beside him Inoue, the Governor of Chikugo, stood up from his chair with some difficulty. The other officials followed after him, one by one, and going out through the door by which they had entered disappeared from sight. The cicada cried; the afternoon light flashed; the deserted chairs cast an even blacker shadow on the ground.

  Then without reason a violent emotion arose within the priest’s breast and tears welled up in his eyes. It was like the emotion one feels after accomplishing something great. The prison had been silent; but now quite suddenly someone began to sing:

  We’re on our way, we’re on our way,

  We’re on our way to the temple of Paradise,

  To the temple of Paradise. …

  To the great Temple. …

  The song continued long after the guard had let him back to the bare floor of his room. At least he had not confused the Christians; he had done nothing to disturb their faith; his conduct had not been base and cowardly. Such were his thoughts.

  The rays of the moon fell through the prison bars, forming on the wall a shadow that reminded the priest of the man of Galilee. The eyes were lowered, but they looked toward him. On this shadow face the priest put contours: he drew in the eyes and the mouth. Today he had done well, he reflected; and he glowed with pride like a child.

  From the courtyard came the sound of clappers. The guards were making their round of the prison. Every night they did this.

  The third day. The guards chose three men from among the Christians and had them dig three holes in the middle of the courtyard. From his prison window the priest could see in the brilliant rays of the sun the figure of the one-eyed man (wasn’t Juan his name?) wielding his spade with the others, shovelling mud into a basket and carrying it away. Because of the intense heat, he wore only a loincloth, and the perspiration on his back glistened like steel.

  Why were they digging holes, he asked one of the guards; and he was told that they were making a privy. The Christians were then deep down in the hole they had dug unsuspectingly throwing up mud.

  In the process of digging, one man fell sick from sun-stroke. The guards yelled at him and struck him; but he crouched down, unable to move. Juan and the other Christians took him up in their arms and brought him into the prison.

  After some time one of the guards came to call the priest. The condition of the sick man had undergone a sudden change, and the Christians kept asking for the priest. Running to the prison in haste, he found Juan and Monica and the others standing around the sick man who lay in the dark, ashen like a stone.

  ‘Won’t you take something to drink? asked Monica, holding to his lips some water in a broken cup. But the water only dribbled down from his mouth on to his throat.

  ‘Your suffering is terrible. Can you keep going?’, she asked.

  When night came, the sick man began to struggle for breath. It had been impossible to perform such labor with a weakened body, sustained only by a little millet. The priest knelt by his side and prepared to administer the sacrament of the sick; but when he made the sign of the cross the sick man heaved his breast. This was the end. The guards gave orders to the Christians to burn the body; but they all protested that such a course of action was contrary to Christian teaching—with Christians burial in the earth was the customary tradition. And so the next day the man was buried in the copse at the rear of the prison.

  ‘Hisagoro is now happy,’ murmured one of the Christians enviously. ‘His suffering is over. He has entered eternal rest.’

  The other men and women listened vacantly to these words.

  Now it is afternoon. The heavy hot air begins to stir. And then the rain begins to fall. It makes a monotonous and melancholy sound as it patters on the wooden roof of the prison and on the grove where they have buried the dead man. Clasping his knees, the priest continues to ask himself how long the authorities intend to let him lead a life like this. Not that everything is going perfectly in this prison life, but provided no stir is created the guards tacitly agree to the prayers of the Christians; they allow the priest to visit them and to write his letters. He wonders why they permit all this. It seems so strange.

  Through the bars of his window he caught sight of a man wearing a cape who was being angrily upbraided by the guards. The cape prevented him from seeing who it was; but obviously it was not one of the crowd in the prison. The person seemed to be pleading for something; but the guards shook their heads and drove him away without listening to what he was saying.

  ‘If you carry on like this, you’ll be beaten,’ shouted one of the guards brandishing a big stick; and the fellow scuttled away in the direction of the gate like a wild dog.

  But the next moment he was back again in the courtyard, standing there in the rain, staring intently in front of him.

  When night came, the priest looked out through the bars of his cell, and there he was still, the man in the cape, standing obstinately without moving, drenched by the rain. No guard came out of the hut. They seemed to have given up the attempt to chase him away.

  When the man looked toward the priest, their eyes met. It was Kichijirō. For a moment a spasm of fear crossed that face and Kichijirō retreated backwards a few steps.

  ‘Father!’ His voice was like the whining of a dog. ‘Father! Listen to me!’

  The priest withdrew his face from the window and tried to block his ears against the sound of that voice. How could he ever forget the dried fish, the burning thirst in his throat. Even if he tried to forgive the fellow, he could not drive from his memory the hatred and anger that lurked there.

  ‘Father! father!’ The entreating voice continued like that of a child pleading with its mother.

  ‘Won’t you listen to me, father! I’ve kept deceiving you. Since you rebuked me I began to hate you and all the Christians. Yes, it is true that I trod on the holy image. Mokichi and Ichizo were strong. I can’t be strong like them.’

  The guards, unable to bear it any longer, came out with sticks; and Kichijirō fled away, screaming as he ran.

  ‘But I have my cause to plead! One who has trod on the sacred image has his say too. Do you think I trampled on it willingly? My feet ached with the pain. God asks me to imitate the strong, even though he made me weak. Isn’t this unreasonable?’

  Sometimes there would be a lull; then angry voices and the pleading cry and tears.

  ‘Father, what can I do, a weak person like me? I didn’t betray you for money. I was threatened by the officials.’

  ‘Get out of here quickly,’ shouted the guards, putting their heads out of the lodge. ‘Don’t presume on our kindness.’

  ‘Father, listen to me. I have done something for which I can never make amends. And you officials! I am a Christian. Put me in prison.’

  The priest closed his eyes and began to recite the Credo. He felt a sense of joy in being able to abandon this whimpering fellow in the rain. Even though Christ prayed, Judas had hanged himself in the field of blood—and had Christ prayed for Judas? There was nothing about that in the Scriptures; and even if there was, he could not put himself into such a frame of mind as to be able to do likewise. In any case, to what extent could the fellow be trusted? He was looking for pardon; but this perhaps was no more than a passing moment of excitement.

  Bit by bit, the voice of Kichijirō quietened and then died out. Looking through the bars, he saw the guards pushing the fellow roughly in the back, dragging him to the prison.

  With night the rain ceased. A ball of rice and some salted fish were pushed in to him. The fish was already rotten and inedible. As always he could hear the voices of the Christians raised in prayer. Receiving permission from the guards, he went to visit them in prison; and there was Kichijirō pushed into a corner all by himself, separated from the others. The Christians refused to be associated with him.

  ‘Be careful of this fellow,’ they whispered to the priest in a low voice. ‘The officials often make use of apostates; perhaps they want to trap us.
’

  It was true that the magistrate sometimes put fallen Christians in with the others in order to foment trouble and urge them to renounce their faith. It could be that Kichijirō had again received money to do precisely this. But anyhow it was impossible for the priest to trust Kichijirō any more.

  ‘Father, father!’ Seeing that the priest had come to the prison, Kichijirō was again pleading in the darkness. ‘Let me confess my sins and repent!’

  The priest had no right to refuse the sacrament of penance to anyone. If a person asked for the sacrament, it was not for him to concede or refuse according to his own feelings. He raised his hand in blessing, uttered dutifully the prescribed prayer and put his ear close to the other. As the foul breath was wafted into his face, there in the darkness the vision of the yellow teeth and the crafty look floated before his eyes.

  ‘Listen to me, father,’ Kichijirō whimpered in a voice that the other Christians could hear. ‘I am an apostate; but if I had died ten years ago I might have gone to paradise as a good Christian, not despised as an apostate. Merely because I live in a time of persecution. … I am sorry.’

  ‘But do you still believe?’, asked the priest, doing his best to put up with the foul stench of the other’s breath. ‘I will give you absolution, but I cannot trust you. I cannot understand why you have come here.’

  Heaving a deep sigh and searching for words of explanation, Kichijirō shifted and shuffled. The stench of his filth and sweat was wafted toward the priest. Could it be possible that Christ loved and searched after this dirtiest of men? In evil there remained that strength and beauty of evil; but this Kichijirō was not even worthy to be called evil. He was thin and dirty like the tattered rags he wore. Suppressing his disgust, the priest recited the final words of absolution, and then, following the established custom, he whispered, ‘Go in peace.’ With all possible speed getting away from the stench of that mouth and that body, he returned to where the Christians were.

  No, no. Our Lord had searched out the ragged and the dirty. Thus he reflected as he lay in bed. Among the people who appeared in the pages of the Scripture, those whom Christ had searched after in love were the woman of Capharnaum with the issue of blood, the woman taken in adultery whom men had wanted to stone—people with no attraction, no beauty. Anyone could be attracted by the beautiful and the charming. But could such attraction be called love? True love was to accept humanity when wasted like rags and tatters. Theoretically the priest knew all this; but still he could not forgive Kichijirō. Once again near his face came the face of Christ, wet with tears. When the gentle eyes looked straight into his, the priest was filled with shame.

  The fumie had begun. The Christians stood herded together in a line like asses cast out from the city. This time they were confronted not by the same officials as the other day, but by a younger group of subordinates who sat on stools, arms folded. The guards, holding poles, kept watch. Today, too, the cicada sang with bracing voice; the sky was clear and blue; the air was bright and refreshing. It would not be long, however, until the oppressive heat would come again. The only one not dragged out into the courtyard was the priest himself; and he, pressing to the bars a face on which the flesh hung limply, stared at the fumie spectacle which was now to begin.

  ‘The sooner you get through with it, the sooner you’ll get out of here,’ roared one of the officials. ‘I’m not telling you to trample with sincerity and conviction. This is only a formality. Just putting your foot on the thing won’t hurt your convictions.’

  The officials kept insisting to the Christians that to trample on the fumie was no more than a formality. All you had to do was to put your foot on it. If you did that, nobody cared what you believed. In accordance with orders from the magistrate, you were asked to put your foot lightly on the fumie; and then you would immediately be released.

  The four men and women listed to the harangue with expressionless faces. As for the priest, his face pressed to the bars, he could not make out what the fellows were getting at. And the four bloated Christian faces, with protruding cheek-bones ghastly and pallid from deprivation of sunshine—they were like puppets with no will of their own.

  What was to come had come. This he well understood; but he could not feel convinced that his own fate and that of the Christians would soon be sealed. The officials were talking to the Christians as though asking a favor. The peasants were shaking their heads; and then the officials with worried faces all drew back some distance.

  Next the guards placed on the ground between the peasants and the stools on which the officials were now sitting a fumie wrapped in a cloth. Then they returned to their places.

  Going down the list, one of the officials called out the names: ‘Ikitsukijima, Kubo-no-ura, Tobei.’ The four Christians sat there vacantly. Getting excited, a guard struck with his stick the fellow on the extreme left, but he did not stir. Two or three times he was pushed in the back; he fell forward and crouched to the ground, but he made no effort to move from the place where he had fallen.

  ‘Kubo-no-ura, Chokichi.’

  The one-eyed fellow shook his head two or three times. What a child he looked!

  ‘Kubo-no-ura, Haru.’

  The woman who had given the priest the cucumber bent her back and hung her head. In this position she was pushed on by the guard, but she did not so much as raise her eyes.

  Finally the old man, Mataichi, was called. But he, too, clung to the earth where he stood.

  But now the officials raised no angry voices and uttered no reproach. One would think that they had been expecting this from the beginning, the way they remained seated on their stools whispering to one another in low voices. Then suddenly they arose and withdrew to the guards’ hut.

  The sun stood directly over the prison; and its rays beat down upon the four Christians left behind. Their squatting figures threw black shadows on the ground, while the cicada again began to sing as though disrupting the glistening air. The guards and the Christians even began to talk and joke with one another as though the previous relationship of cross-examining and cross-examined had vanished. But then from the hut one of the officials called out that all could return to the prison except the one-eyed man, Chokichi.

  Relaxing his hands from the bars they had been clutching, the priest sat down on the floor. What would happen next he did not know. But, at any rate, today had passed peacefully, and this thought filled him with a deep sense of relief. If today passed by well, that was enough: tomorrow would look after itself. If tomorrow he were alive. …

  ‘Isn’t it a pity to throw it away?’, one voice was saying. And the other answered: ‘Yes, it’s an awful pity.’ What precisely the conversation was all about he could not make out; but at any rate the wind blew toward him an easy-going conversation between the guard and the one-eyed fellow. A fly jumped down from the bars and began to buzz around the priest’s head—the sound of its wings was almost soporific.

  Suddenly someone ran across the courtyard. Then the swish of a sharp sound. Then a thud. Already, as the priest clutched the bars, the official was sheathing his sharp, glittering sword: the execution was over. The dead body of the one-eyed man lay prostrate on the ground. Grabbing it by the feet, one of the guards began to drag it slowly toward the hole the Christians had dug. The black blood flowing from it lay all around like the sash of a garment.

  Suddenly, from out the prison came the high-pitched scream of a woman, her voice going on and on as though she was singing a hymn. Then it faded out, and the air around became deadly calm. Only the hands of the priest as they clutched the bars trembled as though cramped and paralyzed.

  ‘Look to it,’ shouted another official, facing the prison and with his back to the priest. ‘This is what happens when you make light of life. It’s a tiring business; but the sooner you go through with it, the sooner you get out of here. I’m not telling you to trample out of conviction. If you just go through with the formality, it won’t hurt your beliefs.’

  Shouting
in a loud voice, a guard next brought out Kichijirō. Wearing only a loincloth and trembling from head to foot, he came before the officials, bowing again and again. Then raising his thin, wasted foot he placed it on the fumie.

  ‘Quickly! Get out!’ shouted one of the officials, pointing to the gate; and Kichijirō, tumbling over himself in haste, disappeared from sight. Not once did he look back toward the hut where the priest was. But for the priest, what the fellow did was no longer of any importance.

  The white rays of the sun beat down dazzlingly on the open courtyard. Beneath its merciless rays there lay on the ground the black dye which was the blood from the body of the one-eyed man.

  Just as before, the cicada kept on singing their song, dry and hoarse. There was not a breath of wind. Just as before, a fly kept buzzing around the priest’s face. In the world outside there was no change. A man had died; but there was no change.

  ‘So it has come to this. … ’ He shivered as he clutched the bars. ‘So it has come to this. … ’

  Yet his perplexity did not come from the event that had happened so suddenly. What he could not understand was the stillness of the courtyard, the voice of the cicada, the whirling wings of the flies. A man had died. Yet the outside world went on as if nothing had happened. Could anything be more crazy? Was this martyrdom? Why are you silent? Here this one-eyed man has died—and for you. You ought to know. Why does this stillness continue? This noonday stillness. The sound of the flies—this crazy thing, this cruel business. And you avert your face as though indifferent. This … this I cannot bear.

  Kyrie Eleison! Lord, have mercy! His trembling lips moved a while in prayer, but the words faded from his lips. Lord, do not abandon me any more! Do not abandon me in this mysterious way. Is this prayer? For a long time I have believed that prayer is uttered to praise and glorify you; but when I speak to you it seems as though I only blaspheme. On the day of my death, too, will the world go relentlessly on its way, indifferent just as now? After I am murdered, will the cicada sing and the flies whirl their wings inducing sleep? Do I want to be as heroic as that? And yet, am I looking for the true, hidden martyrdom or just for a glorious death? Is it that I want to be honored, to be prayed to, to be called a saint?