Silence by Shusaku Endo Read Free Book Online Page B

the door. Quietly I crawled out of the straw and in the darkness put my fingers on the floor-boards underneath which was the secret hiding-place dug by Ichizo.
    The pushing against the door now stopped, and a man’s voice could be heard, low and plaintive: ‘Padre, Padre.   …’
    This was not the signal of the peasants of Tomogi. They had agreed to give three gentle knocks on the door. Now at last Garrpe too was awake and without the slightest movement he strained his ears for the next sound.
    ‘Padre!’ The plaintive voice made itself heard again. ‘There’s nothing wrong. Don’t be afraid of us.’
    In the pitch darkness we held our breath in silence. What sort of crazy official was laying a trap like this?
    ‘Won’t you believe us? We are peasants from Fukazawa. For a long time we have been longing to meet a priest. We want to confess our sins.’
    Dismayed by our silence they had now given up pushing at the door, and the sound of their receding footsteps could be heard sadly in the night. Grasping the wooden door with my hands I made as if to go out. Yes, I would go. Even if this was a trap, even if these men were the guards, it didn’t matter. ‘If they are Christians, what then?’ said a voice that beat wildly in the depths of my heart. I was a priest born to devote my life to the service of man. What a disgrace it would be to betray my vocation from cowardly fear.
    ‘Stop!’ cried Garrpe fiercely. ‘You idiot.   …’
    ‘I’m no idiot. This is my duty.’
    As I tore open the door, the pale white rays of the moon bathed the great earth and the trees in silver light. What a night it was!
    Two men dressed in rags as though they were beggars crouched there like dogs. Looking up at me they murmured: ‘Father, won’t you believe us!’
    I noticed that the feet of one of them was covered with blood where he had cut himself while climbing the mountain. Both of them were faint and ready to collapse with exhaustion. Nor was this surprising. They had made their way here from the Goto Islands twenty leagues away, a two-day journey.
    ‘We were on the mountain a while ago. Five days ago we hid over there and looked across in this direction.’ One of them pointed at the hill beyond our hut. So it was these men that had been watching us that evening.
    We brought them inside, and when we gave them the dried potatoes that Ichizo had brought us they seized them greedily with both hands and thrust them into their mouths like beasts. It was clear that they had not eaten for two days.
    And then we began to speak. Who on earth had told them that we were here—that was our first question.
    ‘Father, we heard it from a Christian of our village. His name is Kichijirō.’
    ‘Kichijirō?’
    ‘Yes, father.’
    Still they crouched like beasts in the shadow of the oil lamp with the potato clinging to their lips. One of the fellows had practically no teeth, but he would stick out the one or two he had and laugh like a child. The other seemed stiff and tense in the presence of two foreign priests.
    ‘But Kichijirō is not a Christian,’ I said finally.
    ‘Oh, he is, father. Kichijirō is a Christian.’
    This was an answer we had not quite expected. Yet we had half wondered at times if the fellow were not after all a Christian.
    But now the whole situation was gradually beginning to change. Now it was clear enough: Kichijirō was a Christian who had once apostatized. Eight years before, he and his whole family, all Christians, had been betrayed through envy by an informer and had been brought up for questioning. Ordered to tread on the picture of Christ, his brothers and sisters had firmly refused to do so. Only Kichijirō, after a few threats from the guards, had yelled out that he would renounce his faith. His brothers and sisters were immediately brought off to prison but Kichijirō himself, though set free, did not return to his native village.
    On the day of the burning at the stake, his cowardly face was