Silence by Shusaku Endo Read Free Book Online

one. But could no one go to Nagasaki in our place? No. That wouldn’t do either. These people had relatives and dependents. Their position was quite different from that of the priest without wife and children.
    ‘What about asking Kichijirō?’ I ventured.
    Garrpe laughed a dry laugh. And I also recalled to mind the scene on the ship—the cowardly figure of Kichijirō with his face buried in the filth, clasping his hands and begging for mercy from the sailors.
    ‘Crazy!’ remarked my companion. ‘You can’t trust him an inch.’
    Then we lapsed into a long silence. The rain pattered rhythmically on the roof of our little hut like the trickling of sand through an hour-glass. Here night and solitude are identical.
    ‘And we, too, will be caught like Ferreira?’, I murmured.
    ‘I’m more worried about these insects crawling all over my body,’ retorted Garrpe.
    Since coming to Japan he has always been in good spirits. Perhaps he feels that with good-nature and humor he can give courage to both of us. To tell you the truth, my own feeling is that we will not be captured. Man is a strange being. He always has a feeling somewhere in his heart that whatever the danger he will pull through. It’s just like when on a rainy day you imagine the faint rays of the sun shining on a distant hill. I cannot picture myself at the moment of capture by the Japanese. In our little hut I have a feeling of eternal safety. I don’t know why this should be. It’s a strange feeling.
    At last the rain has stopped, after three days of incessant falling. We can only judge this from the white ray of sunlight that penetrates a crack in the wooden door of our hut.
    ‘Let’s go out for a moment,’ I said.
    Garrpe nodded approval with a smile of joy.
    As I pushed open the wet door, the song of the birds broke in from the trees like the rising of a fountain. Never before had I felt so deeply the sheer joy of being alive. We sat down near the hut and took off our kimonos. In the seams of the cloth the firmly entrenched lice looked just like white dust, and as I crushed them one by one with a stone I felt an inexpressible thrill of delight. Is this what the officials feel when they capture and kill the Christians?
    Some fog still lingered within the wood, but faintly through it could be seen the blue sky and the distant shimmering sea. After the long confinement in our hut, I now stood again in the open, and giving up battle with the lice I gazed greedily at the world of men.
    ‘Nothing to be afraid of!’ Garrpe’s white teeth flashed as he smiled with good humor and exposed his golden-haired chest to the rays of the sun. ‘I don’t know why we’ve been so jittery. In the future we must sometimes at least allow ourselves the pleasure of a sunbath.’
    And so day after day the cloudless skies continued; and as our self-confidence grew we gradually became bolder. Together we would walk along the slopes in the wood filled with the smell of fresh leaves and wet mud. The good Garrpe would call our charcoal hut ‘the monastery’. When we went for a stroll he would say with a laugh, ‘Let’s go back to the monastery and have a meal of warm bread and good, thick soup. But we’d better say nothing about it to the Japanese!’ We were recalling the life we led with you in the monastery of Saint Xavier’s at Lisbon. Needless to say, we don’t have here a bottle of wine nor a piece of meat. The only food we get is the fried potatoes and the boiled vegetables that the peasants of Tomogi bring us. But the conviction grows deeper and deeper in my heart that all is well and that God will protect us.
    One evening an interesting thing happened. We were sitting as usual chatting on a stone between our hut and the wood. All of a sudden in the rays of the darkening sky a huge bird flew out of the trees and, tracing a great black arc in the sky, winged off towards the distant hills.
    ‘Somebody is watching us!’ Garrpe spoke breathlessly, his eyes