burnt offering

In the orchards at the college at Macao — the dust of the streets still clings to them but here everything is fresh and wet and warm. At the close of day it’s almost pleasant, to go out walking and hear the noises of the city, the calls of workmen, anything but the deafening blankness of nature. They walked together liked this as novices — the two of them and their teacher. Now, they walk alone.

Side by side — Garrupe is still frail, his recovery is slow and no one will let him rest. He may have escaped near-certain death only to die here, alienated from the Church in the middle of his fellow Jesuits. Worse than dead — they are suspended in limbo, and the means of getting out of it is beyond Rodrigues’ reach alone.

Rodrigues tugs at his sleeve, halting him in the middle of a limping stride. “I’ve been asked to write a full report.”

Francisco laughs bitterly. “What’s left to be said?”

“There’s no complete history of our mission. There may not be another account of Christian practice there for a decade or more.”

There is always Japan. Japan may remain closed to them forever. The two of them were the last. A fire still burns there, but they’re too far off to see it, let alone tend it. Speaking in terms of decades is charitable.

“You’re asking my permission?”

“I need your cooperation. If you won’t disclose what happened for the sake of your own soul, then I’ll ask you to do it for mine.”

“They want us to justify ourselves so they can cut that justification to pieces. Is that it?”

“Valignano has documented our mission in Japan since before either of us were born. He needs a history. The one I wrote is lost to us now. We’re replacing what was destroyed.”

Destroyed may be a poor choice of words.

“When Valignano went to Japan he was welcomed there. He won’t understand what it was like for us. We were like fugitives.”

“He can’t understand how it happened if we don’t tell him. I won’t speak of it unless I have your assurance of a complete account.”

“There was more we could have done.”

Churches, schools, catechisms, rosaries, all the things they could never have built in their brief time and will never again help to institute anywhere. They’ll be lucky to teach geometry to schoolboys. Every year hundreds of men write letters to their superiors and beg to be allowed to do what the two of them have have failed to do, to be allowed to martyr themselves.

“Of course we could have done more. There’s always more to be done. We always fall short. With God’s help…”

He cannot speak of God with Francisco now and not have his throat go dry. Rodrigues wants very badly to touch him. Any other time he’d shy away from it, any other time they’re sequestered from each other, but here in the shade of strange trees —

There are penances. There are ways of restoring the reputation of a man — or if not that, then making the Society stronger, anything to keep their ordeal from having been an absolute loss on all sides. This silence won’t sustain itself indefinitely — sooner or later God must speak.

Rodrigues tries again, conciliatory. “You won’t be locked out forever. Say what’s necessary to be said, and things will go easier for you.”

How can he stoop to be so caressing? It’s shameful to think this way — let alone to talk this way, but the situation is desperate. Garrupe stiffens.

“I won’t profess something I don’t believe.”

That cannot be true, not here. Sebastião undoes his buttons for him one by one, until his cassock opens like a gash to reveal the shirt underneath in a knife’s edge of white. There’s a warmth beneath his clothes, sharper than even the heat of the day warrants, and Garrupe hisses a sharp breath through his teeth when Sebastião probes that heat.

Sebastião presses his face to Garrupe’s shoulder, feeling him stiffen and his hands go to clasp the backs of Rodrigues’ arms. He smells like bitter herbs from the infirmary; he hasn’t cut his hair and it makes soft waves as readily as it makes knots.

“Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean,” Rodrigues says. He says it to himself or to Francisco or to no one in particular.

There’s a scuffling sound of footsteps in the grass, not far off — Garrupe stiffens and pulls away for a moment, eyes suddenly wild, until Sebastião takes him by the arm for an assurance. Those reflexes saved his life once, undoubtedly many times; he can see it again in the way he holds his body, like a man half-wild in the wilderness, crouching in hiding from their pursuers. Probing nature for a legible sign: a curl of smoke, a circling bird.

They are being watched. A man’s heavy footsteps hurrying away down the packed-dirt path, the swirl of a black cassock. These are not subtle signs, but they are signs.

“So good to be here in the company of our peers,” Garrupe says sardonically. “What do you think he thought he would see? A couple of lepers?”

They were prisoners in Japan, and they are prisoners here — their fellow priests scrutinize them on all sides, other men who might have found the prospect of martyrdom seductive. They can’t walk unattended without being the object of other people’s frank curiosity — if they can serve their Order in no other way they’ll make splendid examples of the cost of failure. Their existence is a caution.

Have they failed worse than other men? Sebastião shifts forward again on his toes, his body still bracing Garrupe as though he might bolt.

“We’ve risked more than they ever have. They envy us.”

“Yes, of course, our intentions were good. Failure isn’t praiseworthy just for being common. You’re like a child, you don’t seem to understand—”

“You’re alive. We did what we could to ensure the believers’ safety.”

“We did nothing. They have nothing left.”

“They’ll appoint a new jiisama and do as they did before. God will strengthen them. And maybe in time He’ll have pity on us.”

“I don’t want His pity. I want to go back. I wish we’d never left. I wish — Sebastião, please.” He grips his wrist tightly, showing teeth. It nearly staggers them both.

“Don’t you understand? It’s vanity.”

“Vanity is all I have left.” He’s always been stubborn, proud, ironic, bitter, biting — no, not bitter, not before the pair of them went abroad. Their superiors will see only the stubbornness, and that only as noncompliance. Dreadful disobedience. Better to have been shipwrecked or burned alive than that.

They’re united in this complicity. They’re the only ones who know anything close to the truth, apart from God. Rodrigues presses his face to Francisco’s shoulder again. The white of his shirt stands out paralyzingly clear, what once would have been a motif of scandalous disarray — but they’ve seen each other in worse states now, and much more naked than this.

“Sit with me here,” Rodrigues says. Away from the thoroughfare, in what little privacy there is for the dying of the day. Here in the grass, in the heat, in the shade. Garrupe sinks down stiffly like an old man, and Rodrigues settles beside him.

Sebastião kisses his hands. Garrupe’s voice is raw, with a tremor in it. “How can there possibly be forgiveness for us? For you, maybe, but not for me.”

“Don’t say these things.”

“No, not for you either. I’m ashamed of what I did. I’m ashamed of what I failed to do. I can’t see God in any of this, I’m too — distracted.” Garrupe presses his gawky hands to his face, blinking sharply. “There’s no God in this.”

What can be said? They’re lost completely, even here. Lost to their fellow Jesuits, lost to God, lost to everyone they ever knew.

“If they expel you from the Jesuits, where will you go?”

“I have no living family. I’m in no hurry to take a wife.” He is either smiling behind his hands now, or grimacing. “So the world is open to me if I leave.”

If they both leave — they will be broken men, but there will at least be somewhere for them to go. The world is wide open and entirely empty. Rodrigues lies back against the stones and scans the empty sky for stars.