Silence by Shusaku Endo

Author:Shusaku Endo
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Japan, Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9781250082244
Publisher: Picador Modern Classics
Published: 2016-01-04T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

THE sky grew dark; clouds moved slowly over the mountain tops and down over the fields. This was the open plain of Chizukano. Here and there clusters of shrubs seemed to be crawling over the earth; but everywhere else only the black-brown ground stretched out endlessly. The samurai were engaged in earnest discussion; and when they had finished they gave the order for the priest to be taken down from his horse. The long period of sitting on horseback with hands tightly bound had taken its toll; and when he stood up on the ground, a searing pain shot through his thighs. So he crouched down to the ground.

One of the samurai was smoking tobacco with a long pipe. This was the first time since coming to Japan that the priest had seen tobacco. The samurai took two or three pulls, belched out the smoke and then passed on the pipe to his companion. Meanwhile the officials looked on enviously.

For a long time, now standing, now sitting on a rock, they all stood looking toward the south. Some of them relieved themselves in the shadow of the rock. The northern sky was still clear in spots, but toward the south heavy, evening clouds were already gathering. Sometimes the priest would look back over the road along which they had come, but there was no sign of Kichijirō—he must have been delayed on the way. Probably he had got tired of crawling after them and had dropped away.

‘They’re here! They’re here!’ yelled the guards, pointing toward the south; and from that direction there slowly approached a band of samurai and their attendants, similar to the ones here waiting.

Immediately the samurai with the pipe jumped astride his horse and galloped with all speed toward the oncoming crowd. Still on horseback he greeted the newcomers with a bow which was solemnly answered. Now the priest knew that he was going to be handed over to a new escort.

When the exchange of greetings had come to an end and the band that had escorted him from Omura turned their horses and vanished off along the road to the north where the sun’s rays still fell gently, the priest was surrounded by the group that had come for him from Nagasaki. Once again he was put up on the barebacked horse.

The prison was on the slope of a hill, surrounded by trees. Only just built, it looked like a kind of storehouse; inside, it was slightly raised from the ground. Light entered through a little barred window and a small grating, fixed with a sliding wooden door through which a plate could barely be passed. Here food was pushed in to him once each day. After arriving, he had been brought out twice for investigation, and this gave him a chance to see what the place looked like outside—a bamboo fence faced threateningly inwards, while further outside were the thatch-roofed houses in which dwelt the guards.

When he was thrown in here there were no other prisoners except himself.

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