Kim Lai Village,
1774
-
1775
F
rançois built his first church out of bamboo stalks, palm branches, sugarcane leaves, and planks of wild pine. It was located at the far end of the village, surrounded by rice paddies on three sides and the BCch LIEn River on the other. First he and Henri cut down trees, planing them, twisting vines to hold the beams in place. Slowly, a crowd of curious villagers formed to watch them. François kept his plans a secret, answering their questions only with a smile. His reticence increased their interest, just as he planned, and each day more people came.
One morning, the chief’s youngest son approached them, carrying a large basket full of animal excrement. His name was LGc, and he was a buffalo tender. Gesturing broadly, he showed them how to soak their timber in it, to preserve the wood’s texture and to ward off termites. Soon other villagers joined in, plastering every wall of the structure with a mixture of mud and cow dung. François and Henri communicated with them mainly through gestures and pantomime.
The village chieftain, Mr. SL, helped the priest create a traditional roofing pattern, which would maintain a balance between function and aesthetic expression. They first built an outdoor kiln to bake black terra-cotta tiles. The roof was then formed using an ancient yin-yang pattern—a convex tile interlocking with a concave tile. With difficulty, the old man explained to François the purpose for its design, to denote the three happinesses: good fortune, wealth, and longevity. As with all their dialogues, this one was slow and cumbersome. But when the concept was at last conveyed, both men shared a hearty laugh.
Next, a deeply curved eave was created, pointing up at the four corners. It was believed that if the devil were on the roof, he would slip and fall and be speared by this motif. François was delighted to learn that the primitive locals also feared a hell. That belief would help him to introduce the concepts of God and a Christian heaven.
With his limited vocabulary, François needed another means to teach his message of faith, so he turned to his skill as an artist. In the village and its rural area, Western-style art supplies were nonexistent. After he used up the items he had brought from France, he had to invent new ones. Through trial and error he learned to use a China ink block; to grind and purify rocks, earth, wood, and animal bones for pigments; to gather hog’s hair for brushes; and, on a glorious afternoon, to combine fabric with rice flour to create a kind of paper superbly suited for painting. Like a research chemist, he experimented with every available substance to achieve his goals.
After numerous frustrating failures, François discovered a way to mass-reproduce his images. First he engraved religious figures on blocks of wood: Christ on the cross, with his head drooping on his naked chest and blood trickling from his wounds; the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve; Noah and his ark; angels standing by heaven’s gate.
He chose Palm Sunday, four months after his arrival in Kim Lai, for the first Mass in his church. The reason for it was simple. Palm Sunday closely followed a day when the natives honored their dead by hanging palm branches outside the doors of their huts. The greenery served as a spiritual key to allow their ancestors to reenter their home.
Early that morning, François dressed in a silk ceremonial robe that he borrowed from Mr. SL. He even donned a new pair of wooden clogs, which thumped merrily on the terra-cotta brick path they had built in front of the church. Henri and the nuns gathered a pile of palm leaves as a growing crowd looked on, anticipating that something new was about to happen.
“Just like your deceased ancestors, all those who receive these palm leaves may enter my temple,” he said, while Henri distributed the fronds.
With a flourish, he parted the thatched door of the church and entered, beckoning them to follow. The children were the first to come in, then Mr. SL with his family. Henri held the hand of a village elder, guiding her. Before long, most of the peasants had ventured in.
Inside, the church’s simplicity was almost monastic. At its front, a wooden table draped with a crimson cloth served as the altar. Above it hung a tapestry depicting Christ’s crucifixion. Mass was celebrated with a chalice brought from France, but the communion wafers were made of rice. Instead of sitting in pews, the congregants rested cross-legged on the dirt floor.
As a house of worship, it was crude and malodorous. But its unpleasant smell and humble appearance seemed to reassure the citizens of Kim Lai, making them feel at home. To François, the chapel was beautiful beyond his wildest imagination.
He began his ceremony by distributing sheets of paper on which he had printed religious scenes using his woodcuts. Without a word, he stepped back and watched as dismay spread through the audience. Everyone recognized the image of hell. Still silent, he handed out a new set of woodcut prints, this time showing Christ’s martyrdom.
“This is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and He has died for your sins,” he enunciated carefully.
Before the shock could leave the audience, he placed his hands on a few foreheads for emphasis. Those who were touched gasped.
In the following weeks, François saw familiar faces among the Annamese who came to listen to him and to watch him depict the Bible in ingenious sketches. He chose the five men who seemed most interested to become his disciples, for he perceived a need to recruit and train native priests to help him with the daily routine. The first among his acolytes was the young buffalo keeper, LGc. The slender, wide-eyed youth could sing the Ave Maria and the Paternoster with reasonable skill, yet without understanding what they meant. However, the simple melody conveyed a genuine feeling that moved those who listened.
Within the year, the mission compound expanded to include a dwelling for François and Henri, another for the three nuns, and a kitchen area consisting of an outdoor stove, a table, and chairs. In the long evenings, as François sat sketching, he felt at home. More important, he reveled in the certainty that God had led him to this strange place to carry out a divine plan. He no longer missed France.
Everywhere François looked, he saw green fields and thatched huts that stretched in endless repetition toward a shimmering horizon. Under every roof, well within his reach, were ignorant souls that had yet to awaken to the power of prayer. They were waiting to be rescued, and he was God’s messenger. He preached with increased confidence, knowing that Bishop de Béhaine would return someday to inspect his mission. When that happened, he hoped to reveal to his mentor neither his talents nor his accomplishments, but the miracles of God’s endless wisdom expressed through him.
The Portuguese nuns, too, grew accustomed to the harsh climate, the strange culture, and the savage nature. Diseases attacked them, heat weakened them, yet they remained devout. Prayers were their strength. Still, François sometimes noticed a sense of emptiness among the women. Sister Lucía, the youngest, let her hair grow long. Before dawn each day, she sat on the levee overlooking the watery fields. The dawning sun danced on her blond curls and brightened them to a richer shade of gold. Sadness glistened in her eyes, and she would burst out in tears if anyone mentioned Brother João or Brother Tiago. There was no correspondence among the missionaries.
Unlike the mournful Sister Lucía, Sister Natalia was a robust yet quiet nun just a few years older. Her physical being was as unremarkable as her personality. Working outdoors gave her plain face a healthy glow. The two young nuns recited their prayers together, often in a whisper. They were gentle and secretive, like doves.
The eldest of the nuns was the lanky Sister Regina. In the morning, when the first round of roosters crowed, she roused herself from her hammock and left for the fields, wearing a straw hat that she had woven with the help of the village women. Her face, long and bony, was nearly as pasty as the stack of rice cakes she brought along for breakfast and lunch. No amount of hours under the sun could make her skin darken. Even the strongest noontime rays only added more freckles and wrinkles. The children put together a few French words they had learned from Henri and teased her with a new nickname:
ma S?207-156?ur Pâle
—“my Pale Nun.” She ignored them the same way she ignored François’s orders, clutching a simple cherrywood crucifix around her neck and mumbling under her breath.
Ma S?207-156?ur Pâle dedicated her time to cultivating rice in a field that the village chief had designated for the use of the
cha sú’,
as the locals called the missionaries. Sisters Lucía and Natalia spent most of their day teaching the women and children basic lessons in language, history, and hygiene, as well as nursing the sick. When they washed their laundry along the riverbank, they were often joined by giggling women and children, who chattered to them in Annamese and sang songs that sounded like an out-of-tune violin.
As an artist, François found it difficult to appreciate the native music and culture. Their paintings were limited to crude, repetitive, and unimaginative themes such as birds, trees, and flowers. They had no concept of sculpture or works of art in three dimensions, except for a few rudimentary forms of pots and vases. Their literature was mostly borrowed from the Chinese.
Sometimes, as he rocked in his coarse hammock, François was troubled by the void in his heart where he knew a Jesuit missionary should feel compassion for his flock. This, he deduced, would come with time.
He entered his second monsoon season, a period from May through October in which the weather could bring pounding rains or brilliant sunshine seemingly without warning. The field grasses grew so tall that elephants and rhinoceroses could hide in them. As the monsoons faded and the peasants began the heavy work of harvesting their crops, he realized it had been more than two years since he had left France. His life back in Villaume had taken on the hazy contours of a distant dream. It seemed to him that he had been in this exotic land forever.
He grew thinner. His gaunt cheekbones protruded noticeably. His new diet included mostly rice and vegetables, and when meat was served, it had little to none of the fat he had been used to; but he never made his complaints known. Other obstacles demanded his attention. One morning, Sister Lucía discovered, much to her repugnance, that tiny black insects had infested François’s hair and beard. She had to shave his head. From then on, with his brown peasant outfit, dark eyes, and bare, shiny skull, the villagers could easily mistake him for a Buddhist monk.
Word spread of the tall, round-eyed foreigner who practiced strange rituals, and peasants from nearby villages came to him out of sheer curiosity. Some said he was a holy man; others claimed that he was a white wizard sent by a Western god. These rumors were reinforced after they saw him and witnessed the beauty of his art. To them, he was a man of mysteries, distinguished from the other foreigners by a wall of superiority.
François prayed with the villagers outdoors, performed the daily Mass, and baptized newcomers into the fold. His faith and commitment to his church, spurred by his success, soared like a kite. But unlike other missionaries, who had eagerly become a part of the new environment and adopted the parishioners as newfound friends, he kept most of his private time to himself.
In solitude he rocked in his woven hammock, observing the world beyond the rectangular frame of his window. There, he would either add new entries to his French-Annamite dictionary or record his daily journal in a series of sketches.
He knew it would be the achievement of a lifetime to establish Christianity here among these needy souls, and although his progress was slow, he believed his goal was attainable. But his efforts crumpled one gray, gusty day in October.
Fast and cruel and furious were the stallions that galloped across the bamboo hedges. From where he stood, knee-deep in the river and halfway through a baptism, François could see about two dozen riders—bearded men with silk headdresses and fine embroidered attire. They were armed with swords, scimitars, and lances—the typical weapons of the East. Nearing the river, they slowed their advance. Harsh-voiced equestrians herded a crowd of villagers together like cattle.
François was confused. The howls of men in pain, mixing with the terrified cries of children and women and the blasts of a horn, terrified him. Panic spread through the congregation that had gathered at the riverbank. Fighting his urge to run, François stepped out of the water and looked for Henri.
To his relief, he spotted his novice, his five Annamese disciples, and the nuns standing in front of the mission. All appeared to be in shock. The Westerners had been convinced that the Annamites were a peaceful race who were only capable of singing love songs, making babies, fishing in the river, and planting rice shoots in the paddies. The sight of the armed riders and their warhorses, plunging and rearing behind the frightened crowd, was hard to comprehend.
Grabbing one another’s hands, the nuns ran behind a large willow tree and watched the marauders pull to a halt a hundred feet from the mission. The peasants fell to the muddy ground in front of them. The soldiers’ banners, high on bamboo poles, snapped in the wind, and their brass horns blasted terrifying sounds.
Following them came a horse-drawn wagon piled high with sugarcane, bamboo shoots, dried tobacco leaves, and two large cylindrical earthen jars. From behind the cart, Mandarin Chi TuyBn, on a spirited gray stallion, pressed forward and regarded his captured peasants. The cord and tassel of his cummerbund flicked around his slim frame like a silver python. As he faced the villagers, his men stretched out on each side to form a half-circle wall and box them in. There was no escape, except for the river, its golden haze behind them.
Some villagers had already plunged into the water and swum away. Others turned around and rolled up their sleeves, prepared to fight; but their will and courage were quickly dimmed by the fierceness of the army. A sunbeam pierced the day’s dull glare, and for a moment, François could see nothing but the brilliant flashes that reflected from the soldiers’ weapons. The aroma of fish sauce and fresh mud permeated the air—the distinct odor of the peasants. Henri held out his arms and enfolded Sister Lucía’s delicate white shoulders. She pulled the other nuns along with her.