‘DESINE FATA DEUM FLECTI SPERARE PRECANDO.’
There was a tearful look upon the face of Akutagawa now as he whispered, ‘Do not expect your prayer will change what God has already ordained.’
*
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? For ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shalt mine enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;
Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved.
But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.
I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.
*
At his desk in his study, upstairs in the wood-framed ‘Latin Seminary’, in the grounds of the Ōura Catholic Church, Father Léon Gracy opened his eyes and stared out of the window at the sky above, then the bay below, and he sighed. He did not like this place like he used to like this place, did not love this place like he used to love this place. He knew it was still God’s place, on God’s earth still; he knew he had been sent here to do God’s work, had come here to spread God’s word. To bring education, to give instruction; to train Japanese priests to spread God’s word. His words of love, His words of peace, His words of mercy, His words of forgiveness. He had joined the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris to spread those words, His words; he had prayed to be sent here to do this work, His work. And God had heard his prayers, and God had answered his prayers. More than twenty years ago now, he first arrived in Japan. He had studied Japanese in Kagoshima, he had ministered in Ōita, then he had come here to Nagasaki, to this church and its seminary, and later become the headmaster of this seminary. Doing God’s work, spreading God’s word – His words of love and words of peace, His words of mercy and of forgiveness – in God’s places, on God’s earth.
But all God’s places across God’s earth had changed, they had fallen; fallen so very, very far. It was said – but by whom and to whom, who knew – that there were more believers at the end of the war than at its beginning, both in and out of uniform. Thanks to Dieu et patrie, thanks to la foi patriotique: if not a Holy War, if not a Holy Crusade, then a Just War, a Just Crusade, they said, fighting to halt the age-old Teutonic barbarism, fighting to end all wars, so they said. But for three years, those three years he had been conscripted, those three years he had served, he had seen only Catastrophe, only the suicide of civilised Europe; Catholic killing Catholic, Christian killing Christian, believer killing believer, man killing man, over and over, again and again, killing and killing; all the horror he had seen, all the horror he had witnessed, he could not forget, he could not forgive.
At his desk in his study, Father Léon Gracy turned again to stare again, as he always turned to stare again, at the framed portrait of Father Bernard-Thadée Petitjean, a man he had never met, but a man he felt he had once known, the man who had been his inspiration as a child, the man who had been his motivation in joining the Société des Missions Étrangères. In different times, in a different world. Now Father Léon Gracy turned to stare at the other portrait on his desk: a man in a different uniform, a man he had met, a man he had known, a man he had loved; a young man who had been cut down in that uniform, slaughtered and killed in the blood and the mud of Verdun, a brother priest Philippe, but just one brother of so many, many brothers, so many, many dead; cut down, slaughtered and killed, forever lost, while he lived and breathed here, here in this place, God’s place on God’s earth; God’s earth that had eaten, had swallowed and taken so many –
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? For ever?
With tears in his eyes, with sorrow in his heart, Father Léon Gracy looked up at the wall, at the cross on the wall –
How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?
Our Lord, Father Philippe and Father Petitjean: every day, every hour, this trinity watched over him, smiled down at him, but every day, every hour, he knew he failed them, every day, every hour, he failed and betrayed them; unable to forget, unable to forgive, his eyes dark, he slept –
The sleep of death; in the sleep of death …
Unable to forgive, unable to love.
With his eyes red, his shoulders low, Father Léon Gracy rose from his desk and left his study, and with a melancholy gait, his robes trailing in the dust, he walked from the seminary out to the church and up its steps.
Inside, the building was as dark and as empty as ever, the glass and the cross dull and hidden. Only for Masses on Sundays or on holy days was the building ever lit and full, but most of the parishioners and attendees were Europeans or Americans, prominent businessmen or government officials; the only Japanese who ever came were the wives of these men.
Father Léon Gracy walked down the aisle towards the altar and the cross, and there, sat in a pew on
