Free The Golden Country by Shusaku Endo Page B

we can call on you. Please tell me your name.
    HIRATA: My name is Hirata.
    KASUKE: Lord Hirata, is it? That's a nice name. Besides, you've a very handsome and noble face.... What's that sound?
    HIRATA: That sound? That sound is the cry of your lord, Tomonaga.
    KASUKE: What? Lord Tomonaga's cry? Hurry. Let him go. Hurry!
    HIRATA: Are you sober now, fool? Where's Ferreira?
Kasuke, trembling, tries to speak.
    HIRATA: Speak out.
Gennosuke enters.
    GENNOSUKE: Sir, Father Ferreira has come.
    HIRATA: What? Ferreira here?
    GENNOSUKE: Father Ferreira has come with Lord Tomonaga's daughter and some of the farmers. He's at the gate.
    HIRATA: So he's finally come. Intending to be a martyr, no doubt.
    INOUE: He's come! Ferreira has finally come! As you say, with the decision to give up his life. I want to speak with him.
    HIRATA: You too, after all, are filled with the same desire as I—to defile the beautiful and befoul the noble.
    INOUE: The low can see others only through their own foul spirit—and you are low. Gennosuke, bring Ferreira in. Have the others wait for a time.
    KASUKE: Excuse me, please. I don't want to meet the Father. I don't want to meet the farmers. I'm quite sober now. I did a terrible thing... the same as Judas that Father told me about. Excuse me, let me go.
    INOUE: Hirata, show this man to the door.
Ferreira and Gennosuke enter. Ferreira's eyes meet those of Kasuke, who is being led from the room.
    KASUKE: Father Ferreira, Father Ferreira.
Inoue looks at Ferreira for a time without speaking.
    INOUE: Please sit down, Father Ferreira.
    FERREIRA: Thank you.
    INOUE: Gennosuke, bring some cakes for Father Ferreira. Well, well, Father, you are most welcome.
    FERREIRA: I've been hearing about you for a long time.
    INOUE: And I've been hearing about you for a long time. I've been after you for a long time.
    FERREIRA: I know that.
    INOUE: You've come prepared to die?
    FERREIRA: I don't know. If the Lord gives me the courage to die.
    INOUE: But you haven't the slightest intention of renouncing your faith?
    FERREIRA: Do you think you can make me?
    INOUE (laughing): That's my job!
    FERREIRA: I didn't come to Japan to apostatize. If your job is to make me give up Christ's teaching, my job is to propagate it.
    INOUE: That's funny. All the Christians I ever got to apostatize said the same thing, and still they apostatized.
    FERREIRA: Do you have the confidence that you can make me apostatize too?
    INOUE (laughing): I can't say that I haven't.
    FERREIRA: Will you put me to torture?
    INOUE: In good time, but torture is the lowest of means. I don't want to make use of it lightly. There are those who are able to make their bodies do what they tell them, and others who are not. And so the efficacy of torture depends on the individual.
    FERREIRA: Then to which group do I belong?
    INOUE: (laughing): I don't know. That's what I'll have to find out.
    FERREIRA: Do you remember the fifty priests and Christians who were martyred in Edo? They were burned to death.
    INOUE: I certainly do. At the time I was in service at the Edo Castle. I remember particularly well since one of my fellow samurai, Haramondo, was a Christian and thrown in among the fifty. He was deaf to all our counsel and persuasion, and he was put into prison.
    FERREIRA: Yes. Haramondo was one of the fifty. On that day the priests and the Christians were led from the prison in Kodemma, through Shimbashi and Mita, and in the evening taken to Fudanotsuji. At the place of execution stood fifty stakes, and under each stake a pile of brush. A large number of spectators were gathered. After the victims had been bound to their stakes, the executioner set fire to the brush. There was a wind that day. So the smoke and flames immediately enveloped the martyrs tied to their stakes. The first to die was a Spanish priest. Then Haramondo, lifting his arms as if he carried something in them, was next. His head fell down on his shoulders.
    INOUE: You describe the scene vividly. You have a