Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo

Author:Naivo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-06-01T19:23:54+00:00

“But Rakoto isn’t king yet, and there have been reprisals ordered against you!”

“Like Peter, like all those who have suffered in His name, we are prepared for martyrdom. We will die praising His name!”

The convert’s words confirmed Andriantsitoha’s deepest fears—far from finding a place to lay low, his sister was going to make herself a target of both his clan’s enemies and the ones who sought to destroy Christianity. Leaving Mary’s house, Andriantsitoha was sober, lost in thought.

“Do you think that we’re cursed?” he said.

I didn’t really know how to answer.

Truth be told, that era didn’t lend itself to optimism. The kingdom was going through a particularly tumultuous period. Several provinces were close to a rebellion. The conquests undertaken by Merina sovereigns decades before had sown hatred and a thirst for revenge in all eight corners of the great island.

“I’m afraid that the water in the rice fields is about to burst its banks,” I said.

My former master sighed. “I despise uncertainty above all. But what can I do? I don’t even know where she is. Now I myself am in exile.”

We knew that the judges were performing many trials of Christians. Mary couldn’t tell us where Rasoa was. Suppression of the Kristy movement and its followers had been less brutal than that of other rebels up to that point, but it was starting move to the foreground. The accused were answering their judges’ questions in ways that fueled conversations throughout the City. People said that they were defying authorities: they claimed, “We would rather die than renounce our prayers.” They readily admitted to having renounced praying to the sovereigns of the twelve sacred hills.

Everyone knew that a wave of repressions would soon be rising. But no one knew what it would look like as it crested. Wasn’t the Crown Prince himself a Christian?

In the weeks that followed, fear caused the powerful to commit the most awful abuses. Bloody suppression campaigns were begun in the provinces. In the City itself, Rainimahery and I witnessed awful scenes. One day, several hundred captives from the coastal regions—which had surrendered to military rule—were exhibited in the public square, bound together by their hands and feet. They were hemmed in by a large death squad. A signal sounded, and the soldiers set upon the defenseless prisoners, exterminating them with their sabers and bayonets, down to the last man, under the crowd’s horrified eyes.

This was not the time to have Fara come, I thought.

One moon after that, my Menamaso friend sent me an emergency messenger to tell me not to leave my house until further notice. I’d intended to leave for Sahasoa and had to cancel my trip. The Palace had given the order to put a large number of slaves to tangena , most of them from the coast. As it turned out, they weren’t daring enough to go after the Prince’s companions. But others died by the dozens.

Yet it was inside this poisonous atmosphere that Rainimahery mounted his most ambitious project, which included me.

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