Kiku's Prayer Part 7

Soon, however, a man appeared from an alley and eyed Pet.i.tjean suspiciously.

"Mr. Foreigner, would you like to buy one of these ika?" he inquired.

"Are you selling them?"

"Oh, yes. We make 'em so we can sell 'em. This one here is called an agoika-she'll cut a lot better than your regular kite." He proudly pointed out to Pet.i.tjean a kite with a scarlet triangle drawn on it. "What do you say, Mr. Foreigner? Why don't you try competing with one of these kites?"

Pet.i.tjean smiled. "What, me? I don't think I could."

"It's not that hard, Mr. Foreigner.... I'll teach you." He explained that Chinese from Dza4 and Dutch from Dejima partic.i.p.ated in the Clash of the Kites. People flocked to the festival this one day from as far away as s.h.i.+mabara and Isahaya.

Aha. So I could use this to make my presence known not just in Nagasaki but in some of the surrounding villages as well. There's a chance I might find "them" among those who gather here.

The dream that he had abandoned was revived.

"All right, I'll join the fray!"

That evening when he described the events of the day to Father Furet, his comrade looked uncommonly sullen.

"Bernard, you can't go on forever chasing dreams like a little child. There is much important work awaiting you at this ura Church that's about to be completed. In place of me ..." He paused. "Actually, a letter came today from our Society in Paris. I ... I have to go back to France for a time."

"Can that be true?"

"Why would I lie to you? And so you simply must abandon your dream of finding the descendants of Christians here in Nagasaki."

"But you will be returning to Nagasaki, yes?"

"Of course I will. I can't just forsake this church I've built."

Despite the scolding he received from Father Furet, Pet.i.tjean's objectives remained unchanged. In such matters he was as stubborn as a mule.

The following day, he began learning from the kite man, whose name was Sakichi, how to get a kite up into the sky, how to maneuver it in close to the enemy's kite, and how to cut their strings.

"Now, watch closely."

Open fields were numerous in Nagasaki. Sakichi took Pet.i.tjean to one of these fields, had him take hold of the kite, and then put his own grimy hand on top of the priest's and began his instruction.

"OK. First I've got to teach you how to get the kite up in the air." As Sakichi nimbly played out or pulled in the string, the kite floated like a living creature into the sky and finally began to circle slowly overhead.

The fingers that worked the string seemed like those of an artist deftly strumming a musical instrument. Pet.i.tjean for a time lost himself in his enjoyment of the duet between Sakichi and his kite.

"See, Mr. Foreigner? The kite's a living thing. If you work in harmony with her, you can move her around freely. If you wind the string on top of your finger like this, you can bring 'er right up next to your enemy's kite."

Once you're lined up with the enemy, you don't challenge them right away. You have to watch for the right opportunity and then "go in for the kill," Sakichi taught him. In the language of Nagasaki, "going in for the kill" meant to intertwine your kite with your opponent's.

This was not the time to yank on your string. Instead, you let it out. In the local parlance, you "give her string." If the enemy is a worthy opponent, he will let out his string, too. It's in that moment that the contest begins.

That afternoon, like a laborer being taught skills by his boss, Pet.i.tjean was corrected and admonished by Sakichi and coached how to take in and let out his string.

It was a while before he noticed that a group of about ten adults and children had gathered in the open field and were grinning as they watched Pet.i.tjean's clumsy handling of the kite.

"OK, that's enough," Sakichi nodded, wiping away the sweat. "Mr. Foreigner, we'll have another practice here tomorrow. At this next Kompira Festival, you've got to beat out that hairy barbarian from Dejima."

Pet.i.tjean was stumped by this strange comment, so Sakichi explained. Every year on the tenth day of the third month, in every corner of town kite-flying compet.i.tions are held in conjunction with the Kompira Festival. The locations are not limited to Mount Kompira. Any open field will do. There were even some who climbed up on the roof of their own house, sent up their kites, and did battle with their neighbors.

But three years ago, a young Dutchman challenged the j.a.panese of Nagasaki to a battle of the kites from the roof of a Dutch trading house in Dejima.

"He's just a silly Dutchman!" Men from surrounding roofs who were seeking out opponents laughed scornfully at him and took him up on his challenge, but he was unexpectedly skillful.

Every single j.a.panese contender was vanquished, and their kites with severed strings plummeted helplessly into the bay or onto the streets of the town.

The following year on the day of the Clash, the young, blue-eyed man again climbed up onto the roof of the Dutch trading house. With great show he set his kite, emblazoned with foreign writing, high into the sky. The kite danced haughtily overhead, as though mocking the people of Nagasaki. Again that year, no kite could best his. All were trounced the following year as well.

"So, Mr. Foreigner, you've got to slaughter that Dutchman!" Sakichi grinned, hoping to incite Pet.i.tjean to action. He seemed to enjoy the thought that he and the other j.a.panese could watch these foreigners battle one another.

"I doubt I have any chance," Pet.i.tjean protested, but inwardly he wondered whether this contest might not be a good thing. The j.a.panese used different labels for the Dutch and the French, though both groups were foreigners. The Dutch were called Northern Barbarians, and the French were Southern Barbarians. Pet.i.tjean was well aware that over the long years of national isolation in j.a.pan, the Protestant Dutch had incessantly filled the ears of j.a.pan's rulers with slander against the Catholic nations.

Now he would have the chance to fight a decisive battle with his kite against the Dutch. He supposed that when Father Furet heard the news he would become seriously angry, but young Pet.i.tjean, spurred on by Sakichi's encouragement, wanted to try his hand at the contest.

"So, do you think people would talk if I were to engage the Dutchman?"

"Mr. Foreigner, it would be the chief topic of conversation for everyone in Nagasaki!" Sakichi nodded, his excitement evident on his face.

"And people would come from nearby villages to watch?"

"You bet they would!"

Then perhaps some of them would come to watch as well. They would discover that the foreigner flying that kite was none other than a Kiris.h.i.+tan padre. And were that to happen ...

"I'll do it!" Pet.i.tjean grinned at Sakichi.

1. The Nambanji (formally known among the Catholic population as the "Church of the Twenty-six j.a.panese Martyrs," in everyday parlance called the "ura Church") was completed in 1864.

2. hato is a post station on the harbor, located just across the ca.n.a.l from Dejima.

3. Sotome, a tiny fis.h.i.+ng village that has recently been incorporated into Nagasaki City, is both the model for Tomogi Village in End's famed novel Silence and the location of the End Shsaku Literary Museum. It is approximately a forty-minute drive from downtown Nagasaki.

4. Until it was closed in the mid-eighteenth century, a mint where copper coins were cast was located in the Dza (copper guild) District of Nagasaki.

THE TEMPLE OF THE SOUTHERN BARBARIANS.

TSUCHIFURU- Tsuchifuru are the yellow dust storms that blow in from the Chinese continent. The storms sweep over Nagasaki shortly before the arrival of spring. The sky becomes an amber cloud, and those who venture out of doors are shrouded in specks of wind-borne dust that cover their faces and necks.

As soon as the storm ends, spring comes.

"I've been looking forward to this," Mitsu snuffled and whispered to Kiku from her chilly futon. Beside them, Oyone snored soundly and Tome slept curled up like a cat.

Both Mitsu and Kiku had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring. The third day of the third month was the Spring Festival. On that day, the girls at the Gotya, with the exception of Oyone, were to be given the special dispensation of a one-day holiday from work. But they had to be back that night to sleep at the shop.

They arranged for Ichijir to come and meet them on the morning of the third. Mitsu wanted to go back to Magome for the day, but Kiku had her own ideas.

"Even if we leave early in the morning, it'll be past noon before we reach Magome. We won't have any time to relax. I think it'd be better to go have a look around Nagasaki.... Listen, we could walk around and look at hairpins and tortoisesh.e.l.l jewelry."

The rows of shop fronts in Nagasaki shone l.u.s.trously with beautiful hairpins and tortoisesh.e.l.l jewelry designed to delight young women. Kiku wanted to hold one of them in her own hands and see how it looked in her hair.

"Ichijir's not gonna go for that." Mitsu looked a bit worried. "He won't want to go to shops for girls. The only thing he can think about right now is the kite-flying contest."

That was true. Although it was an annual event, each new spring the young men of Magome were bursting with excitement to see the Clash of the Kites that would soon be held in Nagasaki.

Abruptly Kiku stopped the was.h.i.+ng she was doing and asked, "Mitsu, why don't we go see the Temple of the Southern Barbarians?"

"The what temple?"

"The Nambanji-the Temple of the Southern Barbarians. It's a temple for foreigners that they've just about finished building in ura. I hear that instead of paper doors or lattices to let the light in, they've put in colored windows." Kiku narrowed her eyes and seemed to be imagining what Western colored gla.s.s might look like, since she had never seen it. "They say that when the sun s.h.i.+nes through, they just sparkle.... It must be so pretty!"

"Who told you all that?"

"Doesn't matter who."

"I bet it was Seikichi."

Mitsu's jab made Kiku blush. But she hadn't heard about the Nambanji from Seikichi. She had overheard customers who came to the shop gossiping about the Southern Barbarian temple with the Master or the clerks.

"Seikichi doesn't come by lately. I wonder what's happened to him?"

"He's taken a job in Isahaya. They're working on some roads over there, and he said the pay is good," Kiku answered confidently, full of pride that she knew all about Seikichi's activities.

It grew warmer. Tinges of green began to burst out on the willows planted along the river. The yellow blossoms of the weeping forsythia started to bloom through fences around the town, and the sounds of people practicing the samisen echoed from inside some of the houses. The coming of spring to Nagasaki was leisurely, even drowsy ...

Finally, the spring Peach Festival, which Mitsu and Kiku had so been looking forward to, arrived on the third day of the third month.

"He's still not here! What in the world is he doing?!" Starting at dawn, the two girls dashed out to the front of the shop every time they had a break from their ch.o.r.es, eager for Ichijir to come for them.

He finally appeared, having left Magome in the middle of the night in order to accommodate these two.

Once they had voiced their grat.i.tude to the Mistress for the holiday and said good-bye to Oyone, and with Tome joining them as they left the Gotya, they felt an indescribable, almost tangible, feeling of liberation and elation. Though they'd been working at the shop for only a month, this was the first time they'd been able to take off an entire day to have fun.

"Isn't this wonderful, Tome?"

"Yeah!"

"Do you eat futsu dumplings for the festival on Got Island, too? Back home in Magome we go around and give futsu dumplings to all our relatives."

In Nagasaki, mugwort dumplings were called futsu dumplings. Ichijir grinned as he listened to the girls' animated conversation.

Crowds of people were walking in the warm sunlight. Buddhist priests. Chinese people. The daughters of merchant houses showed up in their finery, accompanied by their mothers and their aged maids. Each was on a pilgrimage to a Buddhist temple or a s.h.i.+nto shrine.

From time to time one of the three girls would stop and stare at the kimonos or hairpins of the young women their age who were walking by. Tome and Mitsu gaped with envy, but Kiku looked openly belligerent.

If I put on makeup, I'd look just as good as they do! Inwardly she was full of self-a.s.surance.

The three continued walking, then jerked to a halt when they finally reached the shops displaying tortoisesh.e.l.l jewelry, combs, and hairpins; the blood rushed to their faces, and they swept their eyes intently across each of the items. Ichijir, left to fend for himself, sat down at the base of a willow beside the shop and absently gazed at the pa.s.sersby.

From time to time he would grumble, "That's long enough. Let's get going," but the response was always "Ichijir, please wait just a little longer." And so he would wait patiently, thinking, This was a big mistake.

Eventually the girls had had their fill, and when the four left the shopping area, they decided to head for the celebrated Nambanji.

"I understand we can't go inside," Tome commented, and Kiku, exasperated that the girl knew so little, explained, "The Nambanji is a temple for the Kiris.h.i.+tans. It's being built for the foreigners, so of course j.a.panese can't go in!"

Today ura looks nothing like it did when Kiku and Mitsu first visited there.

If you walk around the neighborhood of the ura Catholic church today, you will occasionally spot one of the old wooden structures built in the Western style back in those days, looking now very much like abandoned houses. All of them were, of course, constructed after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, but in Kiku and Mitsu's time, several temples, a few houses, and the steeple and chapel of the nearly completed Nambanji peeked out from among the terraced fields, but except for those few structures, the rest of the landscape was unspoiled hills.

That afternoon when Kiku and her companions went to see the Nambanji, some twenty or thirty curious spectators were standing in front of the church, gaping up at the almost completed building and the terraced fields rising behind it.

The church, with two small towers on each side and a steeple in front capped with a crucifix, was the very first Christian church that the j.a.panese had seen since the country had adopted its isolation policy in the 1630s. The j.a.panese carpenters, who knew essentially nothing about the Western world, had built the church by carefully following the instructions they received from Father Furet.

"Oh, wow!" As they climbed the slope, Mitsu, Tome, and Kiku all dropped their jaws and looked up at the exotic building.

"It's a weird place!" By weird the girls didn't mean "amusing." To them, anything they had not seen before puzzled them and got slapped with the label "Weird!"

"What's that thing up on top?" Mitsu asked her brother, pointing to the crucifix atop the steeple.

"Dunno," Ichijir shrugged. A young man next to them who was also examining the building said self-importantly, "It's a symbol of the Kiris.h.i.+tans."

Standing behind the throng of spectators, the four gazed up at the facade of the Nambanji. There were three doorways; above the largest door in the center there was a large window shaped something like a chrysanthemum, and its deep blue gla.s.s brilliantly reflected the sunlight.

"Wow!" Kiku blurted out. "Mitsu, it's so beautiful!" When she realized how loudly she had shouted, Kiku blushed a bright red, hunched her shoulders, and furtively looked around her.

But none of the spectators had turned to see where the shout had come from. Every man and woman was staring with wonderment at the unusual building and its stained gla.s.s. And there among those faces was ...

Kiku caught her breath. Her eyes widened as she peered from a distance at the face of one young man.

That must be Seikichi. What's he doing here? He said he was off working in Isahaya.

The profile was most certainly Seikichi's. There could be no doubt. He was gazing up at the cross atop the church, not with astonishment like the other spectators, but with intense concentration.

"Mitsu!" Kiku tugged at Mitsu's sleeve and whispered, "Don't you think that's Seikichi?"

"Huh?" Mitsu looked surprised. "I thought he told you he'd gone to Isahaya." She had a gift for asking the obvious.