The Ninth Night of the Fifth Month
‘Miss Kawasemi?’ Orito kneels on a stale and sticky futon. ‘Can you hear me?’
In the rice paddy beyond the garden, a cacophony of frogs detonates.
Orito dabs the concubine’s sweat-drenched face with a damp cloth.
‘She’s barely spoken,’ the maid holds the lamp, ‘for hours and hours…’
‘Miss Kawasemi, my name’s Aibagawa. I’m a midwife. I want to help.’
Kawasemi’s eyes flicker open. She manages a frail sigh. Her eyes shut.
She is too exhausted, Orito thinks, even to fear dying tonight.
Dr Maeno whispers through the muslin curtain. ‘I wanted to examine the child’s presentation myself, but…’ the elderly scholar chooses his words with care ‘… but this is prohibited, it seems.’
‘My orders are clear,’ states the chamberlain. ‘No man may touch her.’
Orito lifts the bloodied sheet and finds, as warned, the foetus’s limp arm protruding from Kawasemi’s vagina up to the shoulder.
‘Have you ever seen such a presentation?’ asks Dr Maeno.
‘Yes: in an engraving, from the Dutch text Father was translating.’
‘This is what I prayed to hear! The Observations of William Smellie?’
‘Yes: Dr Smellie terms it,’ Orito uses the Dutch, ‘ “Prolapse of the Arm”.’
Orito clasps the foetus’s mucus-smeared wrist to search for a pulse.
Maeno now asks her in Dutch, ‘What are your opinions?’
There is no pulse. ‘The baby is dead,’ Orito answers, in the same language, ‘and the mother will die soon, if the child is not delivered.’ She places her fingertips on Kawasemi’s distended belly and probes the bulge around the inverted navel. ‘It was a boy.’ She kneels between Kawasemi’s parted legs, noting the narrow pelvis, and sniffs the bulging labia: she detects the malty mixture of grumous blood and excrement, but not the stench of a rotted foetus. ‘He died one or two hours ago.’
Orito asks the maid, ‘When did the waters break?’
The maid is still mute with astonishment at hearing a foreign language.
‘Yesterday morning, during the Hour of the Dragon,’ says the stony-voiced housekeeper. ‘Our lady entered labour soon after.’
‘And when was the last time that the baby kicked?’
‘The last kick would have been around noon today.’
‘Dr Maeno, would you agree the infant is in’ – she uses the Dutch term – ‘the “transverse breech position”?’
‘Maybe,’ the doctor answers in their code-tongue, ‘but without an examination…’
‘The baby is twenty days late, or more. It should have been turned.’
‘Baby’s resting,’ the maid assures her mistress. ‘Isn’t that so, Dr Maeno?’
‘What you say…’ the honest doctor wavers ‘… may well be true.’
‘My father told me,’ Orito says, ‘Dr Uragami was overseeing the birth.’
‘So he was,’ grunts Maeno, ‘from the comfort of his consulting rooms. After the baby stopped kicking Uragami ascertained that, for geomantic reasons discernible to men of his genius, the child’s spirit is reluctant to be born. The birth henceforth depends on the mother’s will-power.’ The rogue, Maeno needs not add, dares not bruise his reputation by presiding over the still-birth of such an estimable man’s child. ‘Chamberlain Tomine then persuaded the Magistrate to summon me. When I saw the arm, I recalled your doctor of Scotland, and requested your help.’
‘My father and I are both deeply honoured by your trust,’ says Orito…
… and I curse Uragami, she thinks, for his lethal unwillingness to lose face.
Abruptly, the frogs stop croaking and, as though a curtain of noise falls away, the sound of Nagasaki can be heard, celebrating the safe arrival of the Dutch ship.
‘If the child is dead,’ says Maeno in Dutch, ‘we must remove it now.’
‘I agree.’ Orito asks the housekeeper for warm water and strips of linen, and uncorks a bottle of Leiden salts under the concubine’s nose to win her a few moments’ lucidity. ‘Miss Kawasemi, we are going to deliver your child in the next few minutes. First, may I feel inside you?’
The concubine is seized by the next contraction, and loses her ability to answer.
Warm water is delivered in two copper pans as the agony subsides. ‘We should confess,’ Dr Maeno proposes to Orito in Dutch, ‘the baby is dead. Then amputate the arm to deliver the body.’
‘First, I wish to insert my hand to learn whether the body is in a convex lie or concave lie.’
‘If you can discover this without cutting the arm’ – Maeno means ‘amputate’ – ‘do so.’
Orito lubricates her right hand with rape-seed oil and addresses the maid: ‘Fold one linen strip into a thick pad… yes, like so. Be ready to wedge it between your mistress’s teeth, otherwise she might bite off her tongue. Leave spaces at the sides, so she can breathe. Dr Maeno, my inspection is beginning.’
‘You are my eyes and ears, Miss Aibagawa,’ says the doctor.
Orito works her fingers between the foetus’s biceps and its mother’s ruptured labia until half her wrist is inside Kawasemi’s vagina. The concubine shivers and groans. ‘Sorry,’ says Orito, ‘sorry…’ Her fingers slide between warm membranes and skin and muscle still wet with amniotic fluid and the midwife pictures an engraving from that enlightened and barbaric realm, Europe…
If the transverse lie is convex, recalls Orito, where the foetus’s spine is arched backwards so acutely that its head appears between its shins like a Chinese acrobat, she must amputate the foetus’s arm, dismember its corpse with toothed forceps, and extract it, piece by grisly piece. Dr Smellie warns that any remnant left in the womb will fester and may kill the mother. If the transverse lie is concave, however, Orito has read, where the foetus’s knees are pressed against its chest, she may saw off the arm, rotate the foetus, insert crotchets into the eye-sockets, and extract the whole body, head first. The midwife’s index finger locates the child’s knobbly spine, traces its midriff between its lowest rib and its pelvic bone, and encounters a minute ear; a nostril; a mouth; the umbilical cord; and a prawn-sized penis. ‘Breech is concave,’ Orito reports to Dr Maeno, ‘but cord is around neck.’
‘Do you think the cord can be released?’ Maeno forgets to speak Dutch.
‘Well, I must try. Insert the cloth,’ Orito tells the maid, ‘now, please.’
When the linen wad is secured between Kawasemi’s teeth, Orito pushes her hand in deeper, hooks her thumb around the embryo’s cord, sinks four fingers into the underside of the foetus’s jaw, pushes back his head, and slides the cord over his face, forehead and crown. Kawasemi screams, hot urine trickles down Orito’s forearm, but the procedure worked first time: the noose is released. She withdraws her hand and reports, ‘The cord is freed. Might the doctor have his -’ there is no Japanese word ‘- forceps?’
‘I brought them along,’ Maeno taps his medical box, ‘in case.’
‘We might try to deliver the child’ – she switches to Dutch – ‘without amputating the arm. Less blood is always better. But I need your help.’
Dr Maeno addresses the chamberlain: ‘To help save Miss Kawasemi’s life, I must disregard the Magistrate’s orders and join the midwife inside the curtain.’
Chamberlain Tomine is caught in a dangerous quandary.
‘You may blame me,’ Maeno suggests, ‘for disobeying the Magistrate.’
‘The choice is mine,’ decides the chamberlain. ‘Do what you must, Doctor.’
The spry old man crawls under the muslin, holding his curved tongs.
When the maid sees the foreign contraption, she exclaims in alarm.
‘ “Forceps”,’ the doctor replies, with no further explanation.
The housekeeper lifts the muslin to see. ‘No, I don’t like the look of that! Foreigners may chop, slice and call it “medicine”, but it is quite unthinkable that-’
‘Do I advise the housekeeper,’ growls Maeno, ‘on where to buy fish?’
‘Forceps,’ explains Orito, ‘don’t cut – they turn and pull, just like a midwife’s fingers but with a stronger grip…’ She uses her Leiden salts again. ‘Miss Kawasemi, I’m going to use this instrument,’ she holds up the forceps, ‘to deliver your baby. Don’t be afraid, and don’t resist. Europeans use them routinely – even for princesses and queens. We’ll pull your baby out, gently and firmly.’
‘Do so…’ Kawasemi’s voice is a smothered rattle. ‘Do so…’
‘Thank you, and when I ask Miss Kawasemi to push…’
‘Push…’ She is fatigued almost beyond caring. ‘Push…’
‘How many times,’ Tomine peers in, ‘have you used that implement?’
Orito notices the chamberlain’s crushed nose for the first time: it is as severe a disfigurement as her own burn. ‘Often, and no patient ever suffered.’ Only Maeno and his pupil know that these ‘patients’ were hollowed-out melons whose babies were oiled gourds. For the final time, if all goes well, she works her hand inside Kawasemi’s womb. Her fingers find the foetus’s throat; rotate his head towards the cervix, slip, gain a surer purchase and swivel the awkward corpse through a third turn. ‘Now, please, Doctor.’
Maeno slides in the forceps around the protruding arm up to the fulcrum.
The onlookers gasp; a parched shriek is wrenched from Kawasemi.
Orito feels the forceps’ curved blades in her palm: she manoeuvres them around the foetus’s soft skull. ‘Close them.’
Gently but firmly the doctor squeezes the forceps shut.
Orito takes the forceps’ handles in her left hand: the resistance is spongy but firm, like konnyaku jelly. Her right hand, still inside the uterus, cups the foetus’s skull.
Dr Maeno’s bony fingers encase Orito’s wrist.
‘What is it you’re waiting for?’ asks the housekeeper.
‘The next contraction,’ says the doctor, ‘which is due any-’
Kawasemi’s breathing starts to swell with fresh pain.
‘One and two,’ counts Orito, ‘and – push, Kawasemi-san!’
‘Push, Mistress!’ exhort the maid and the housekeeper.
Dr Maeno pulls at the forceps; with her right hand, Orito pushes the foetus’s head towards the birth canal. She tells the maid to grasp the baby’s arm and pull. Orito feels the resistance grow as the head reaches the birth canal. ‘One and two… now!’ Squeezing the glans of the clitoris flat comes a tiny corpse’s matted crown.
‘Here he is!’ gasps the maid, through Kawasemi’s animal shrieks.
Here comes the baby’s scalp; here his face, marbled with mucus…
… Here comes the rest of his slithery, clammy, lifeless body.
‘Oh, but – oh,’ says the maid. ‘Oh. Oh. Oh…’
Kawasemi’s high-pitched sobs subside to moans, and deaden.
She knows. Orito discards the forceps, lifts the lifeless baby by his ankles and slaps him. She has no hope of coaxing out a miracle: she acts from discipline and training. After ten hard slaps she stops. He has no pulse. She feels no breath on her cheek from the lips and nostrils. There is no need to announce the obvious. Splicing the cord near the navel, she cuts the gristly string with her knife, bathes the lifeless boy in a copper of water and places him in the crib. A crib for a coffin, she thinks, and a swaddling sheet for a shroud.
Chamberlain Tomine gives instructions to a servant outside. ‘Inform His Honour that a son was still-born. Dr Maeno and his midwife did their best, but were powerless to alter what Fate had decreed.’
Orito’s concern is now puerperal fever. The placenta must be extracted; yakumosô applied to the perineum; and blood staunched from an anal fissure.
Dr Maeno withdraws from the curtained tent to give the midwife space.
A moth the size of a bird enters, and blunders into Orito’s face.
Batting it away, she knocks the forceps off one of the copper pans.
The forceps clatter on to a pan lid; the loud clang frightens a small creature that has somehow found its way into the room; it mewls and whimpers.
A puppy? wonders Orito, baffled. Or a kitten?
The mysterious animal cries again, very near: under the futon?
‘Shoo that thing away!’ the housekeeper tells the maid. ‘Shoo it!’
The creature mewls again; and Orito realises it is coming from the crib.
Surely not, thinks the midwife, refusing to hope. Surely not…
She snatches away the linen sheet just as the baby’s mouth opens.
He inhales once; twice; three times; his crinkled face crumples…
… and the shuddering newborn boiled-pink despot howls at Life.
Evening of the 20th July, 1799
‘How else,’ demands Daniel Snitker, ‘is a man to earn just reward for the daily humiliations we suffer from those slit-eyed leeches? “The unpaid servant,” say the Spanish, “has the right to pay himself”, and for once, Damn Me, the Spanish are right. Why so certain there’ll still be a Company to pay us in five years’ time? Amsterdam is on its knees; our shipyards are idle; our manufactories silent; our granaries plundered; The Hague is a stage of prancing marionettes tweaked by Paris; Prussian jackals and Austrian wolves laugh at our borders: and Jesus in Heaven, since the bird-shoot at Kamperduin we are left a maritime nation with no navy. The British seized the Cape, Coromandel and Ceylon without so much as a Kiss-my-Arse: and that Java itself is their next fattened Christmas goose is plain as day! Without neutral bottoms like this’ – he curls his lip at Captain Lacy – ‘Yankee, Batavia would starve. In such times, Vorstenbosch, a man’s sole insurance is saleable goods in the warehouse. Why else, for God’s sake, are you here?’
The old whale-oil lantern sways and hisses.
‘That,’ Vorstenbosch asks, ‘was your closing statement?’
Snitker folds his arms. ‘I spit on your drum-head trial.’
Captain Lacy issues a gargantuan belch. ‘ ’Twas the garlic, gentlemen.’
Vorstenbosch addresses his clerk: ‘We may record our verdict…’
Jacob de Zoet nods and dips his quill: ‘… drum-head trial.’
‘On this day, the twentieth of July, seventeen hundred and ninety-nine, I, Unico Vorstenbosch, Chief-Elect of the trading factory of Dejima in Nagasaki, acting by the powers vested in me by His Excellency P.G. van Overstraten, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, witnessed by Captain Anselm Lacy of the Shenandoah, find Daniel Snitker, Acting-Chief of the above-mentioned factory guilty of the following: Gross Dereliction of Duty-’
‘I fulfilled,’ insists Snitker, ‘every duty of my post!’
‘ “Duty”?’ Vorstenbosch signals to Jacob to pause. ‘Our warehouses were burning to cinders whilst you, sir, romped with strumpets in a brothel! – a fact omitted from that farrago of lies you are pleased to call your Day Register, and had it not been for the chance remark of a Japanese interpreter-’
‘Shit-house rats who blacken my name ’cause I’m wise to their tricks!’
‘Is it a “blackening of your name” that the fire-engine was missing from Dejima on the night of the fire?’
‘Perhaps the defendant took the engine to the House of Wistaria,’ remarks Captain Lacy, ‘to impress the ladies with the thickness of his hose.’
‘The engine,’ objects Snitker, ‘was van Cleef’s responsibility.’
‘I’ll tell your deputy how faithfully you defended him: to the next item, Mr de Zoet: “Failure to have the factory’s three senior officers sign the Octavia’s Bills of Lading”.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. A mere administrative oversight!’
‘An “oversight” that permits crooked chiefs to cheat the Company in a hundred ways, which is why Batavia insists on triple authorisation. Next item: “Theft of Company funds to pay for Private Cargoes”.’
‘Now that,’ Snitker spits with anger, ‘that, is a flat lie!’
From a carpet bag at his feet, Vorstenbosch produces two porcelain figurines in the Oriental mode. One is an executioner, axe poised to behead the second, a kneeling prisoner, hands bound and eyes on the next world.
‘Why show me those’ – Snitker is shameless – ‘gew-gaws?’
‘Two gross were found in your private cargo – “twenty-four dozen Arita figurines”, let the record state. My late wife nurtured a fondness for Japanese curiosities, so I have a little knowledge. Indulge me, Captain Lacy: estimate their value in, let us say, a Viennese auction house.’
Captain Lacy considers: ‘Twenty guilders a head?’
‘For these slighter ones alone, thirty-five guilders; for the gold-leafed courtesans, archers and lords, fifty. What price the two gross? Let us aim low – Europe is at war, and markets unsettled – and call it thirty-five per head… multiplied by two gross. De Zoet?’
Jacob’s abacus is to hand. ‘Ten thousand and eighty guilders, sir.’
Lacy issues an impressed ‘Hee-haw!’
‘Tidy profit,’ states Vorstenbosch, ‘for merchandise purchased at the Company’s expense yet recorded in the Bills of Lading – unwitnessed, of course – as “Acting-Chief’s Private Porcelain” in your hand, Snitker.’
‘The former Chief, God rest his soul,’ Snitker changes his story, ‘willed them to me, before the Court Embassy.’
‘So Mr Hemmij foresaw his demise on his way back from Edo?’
‘Gijsbert Hemmij was an uncommon cautious man.’
‘Then you will show us his uncommon cautious will.’
‘The document,’ Snitker wipes his mouth, ‘perished in the fire.’
‘Who were the witnesses? Mr van Cleef? Fischer? The monkey?’
Snitker heaves a disgusted sigh. ‘This is a childish waste of time. Carve off your tithe, then – but not a sixteenth more, else by God I’ll dump the blasted things in the harbour.’
The sound of carousing washes over from Nagasaki.
Captain Lacy empties his bullish nose into a cabbage leaf.
Jacob’s nearly worn-out quill catches up; his hand aches.
‘What, I wonder…’ Vorstenbosch looks confused ‘… is this talk of a “tithe”? Mr de Zoet, might you shed a little light?’
‘Mr Snitker is attempting to bribe you, sir.’
The lamp has begun to sway; it smokes, splutters and recovers.
A seaman in the lower deck tunes his fiddle.
‘You suppose,’ Vorstenbosch blinks at Snitker, ‘that my integrity is for sale? Like some pox-maggoty harbourmaster on the Scheldt extorting illegal fees from the butter barges?’
‘One ninth, then,’ growls Snitker. ‘But I swear that’s my last offer.’
‘Conclude the Charge List’ – Vorstenbosch snaps his fingers at his secretary – ‘with “Attempted Bribery of a Fiscal-Comptroller” and proceed to sentencing. Roll your eyeballs this way, Snitker: this affects you. “Item the First: Daniel Snitker is stripped of office herewith and all” – yes, all – “pay backdated to 1797. Second: upon arrival in Batavia, Daniel Snitker is to be imprisoned at the Old Fort to account for his actions. Third: his private cargo is to be auctioned. Proceeds shall recompense the Company.” I see I have your attention.’
‘You’re making’ – Snitker’s defiance is crushed – ‘a pauper of me.’
‘This trial makes an example of you to every parasitic chief fattening himself on the Company’s dugs: “Justice found Daniel Snitker,” this verdict warns them, “and justice shall find you.” Captain Lacy, thank you for your participation in this squalid affair: Mr Wiskerke, pray find Mr Snitker a hammock in the fo’c’sle. He shall work his passage back to Java as a landsman and be subject to common discipline. Moreover-’
Snitker up-ends the table and lunges at Vorstenbosch. Jacob glimpses Snitker’s fist over his patron’s head and attempts to intercept; flaming peacocks whirl across his vision; the cabin walls rotate through ninety degrees; the floor slams his ribs; and the taste of gunmetal in his mouth is surely blood. Grunts and gasps and groans are exchanged at a higher level. Jacob peers up in time to see the First Mate land a pulverising blow on Snitker’s solar plexus, causing the floored clerk to wince with involuntary sympathy. Two more marines burst in, just as Snitker totters and hits the floor.
Below-decks, the fiddler plays, ‘My Dark-eyed Damsel of Twente’.
Captain Lacy pours himself a glass of blackcurrant whisky.
Vorstenbosch whacks Snitker’s face with his silver-knobbed cane until he is too tired to continue. ‘Put this cock-chafer in irons in your berth-deck’s foulest corner.’ The First Mate and the two marines drag the groaning body away. Vorstenbosch kneels by Jacob and claps his shoulder. ‘Thank you for taking that blow for me, my boy. Your noggin, I fear, is une belle marmelade…’
The pain in Jacob’s nose suggests a breakage, but the stickiness on his hands and knees is not blood. Ink, the clerk realises, hauling himself upright.
Ink, from his cracked ink-pot, indigo rivulets and dribbling deltas…
Ink, drunk by thirsty wood, dripping between cracks…
Ink, thinks Jacob, you most fecund of liquids…
Morning of the 26th July, 1799
Hatless and broiling in his blue dress-coat, Jacob de Zoet’s thoughts are ten months in the past when a vengeful North Sea charged the dikes at Domburg, and spindrift tumbled along Church Street, past the parsonage where his uncle presented him with an oiled canvas bag. It contained a scarred Psalter bound in deerskin, and Jacob can, more or less, reconstruct his uncle’s speech from memory. ‘Heaven knows, nephew, you have heard this book’s history often enough. Your great-great-grandfather was in Venice when the plague arrived. His body erupted in buboes the size of frogs, but he prayed from this Psalter and God cured him. Fifty years ago, your grandfather Tys was soldiering in the Palatine when ambushers surprised his regiment. This Psalter stopped this musket ball’ – he fingers the leaden bullet, still in its crater – ‘from shredding his heart. It is a literal truth that I, your father, and you and Geertje owe this book our very existences. We are not Papists: we do not ascribe magical powers to bent nails or old rags; but you understand how this Sacred Book is, by our faith, bound to our bloodline. It is a gift from your ancestors and a loan from your descendants. Whatever befalls you in the years ahead, never forget: this Psalter’ – he touched the canvas bag – ‘this is your passport home. David’s Psalms are a Bible within the Bible. Pray from it, heed its teachings and you shall not stray. Protect it with your life that it may nourish your soul. Go now, Jacob, and God go with you.’
‘ “Protect it with your life”,’ Jacob mutters under his breath…
… which is, he thinks, the crux of my dilemma.
Ten days ago, the Shenandoah anchored off Papenburg Rock – named for martyrs of the True Faith thrown from its heights – and Captain Lacy ordered all Christian artefacts placed in a barrel to be nailed shut, surrendered to the Japanese and returned only when the brig departed from Japan. Not even Chief-Elect Vorstenbosch and his protégé clerk were exempt. The Shenandoah’s sailors grumbled that they’d sooner surrender their testicles than their crucifixes, but their crosses and St Christophers did vanish into hidden nooks when the Japanese inspectors and well-armed guards carried out their search of the decks. The barrel was filled with an assortment of rosary beads and prayer books brought by Captain Lacy for this purpose: the de Zoet Psalter was not amongst them.
How could I betray my uncle, he frets, my Church and my God?
It is buried amidst his other books in the sea-chest on which he sits.
The risks, he assures himself, cannot be so very great… There is no marking or illustration by which the Psalter could be identified as a Christian text, and the interpreters’ Dutch is too poor, surely, to recognise antique Biblical language. I am an officer of the Dutch East Indies Company, Jacob reasons. What is the worst punishment the Japanese could inflict on me?
Jacob doesn’t know, and the truth is that Jacob is afraid.
A quarter-hour passes; of Chief Vorstenbosch or his two Malays there is no sign.
Jacob’s pale and freckled skin is frying like bacon.
A flying fish scissors and skims itself over the water.
‘Tobiuo!’ one oarsman says to the other, pointing. ‘Tobiuo!’
Jacob repeats the word and both oarsmen laugh until the boat rocks.
Their passenger doesn’t mind. He watches the guard-boats, circling the Shenandoah; the fishing skips; a coast-hugging Japanese cargo ship, stocky as a Portuguese carrack but fatter-bellied; an aristocratic pleasure-craft, accompanied by several attendant vessels, draped with the ducal black-on-sky-blue colours; and a beak-prowed junk, similar to those of the Chinese merchants of Batavia…
Nagasaki itself, wood-grey and mud-brown, looks oozed from between the verdant mountains’ splayed toes. The smells of seaweed, effluence and smoke from countless flues are carried over the water. The mountains are terraced by rice paddies nearly up to their serrated summits.
A madman, Jacob supposes, might imagine himself in a half-cracked jade bowl.
Dominating the shorefront is his home for the next year: Dejima, a high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island, some two hundred paces along its outer curve, Jacob estimates, by eighty paces deep, and erected, like much of Amsterdam, on sunken piles. Sketching the trading factory from the Shenandoah’s foremast during the week gone, he counted some twenty-five roofs: the numbered warehouses of Japanese merchants; the Chief’s and the Captain’s Residences; the Deputy’s House, on whose roof perches the Watchtower; the Guild of Interpreters; a small hospital. Of the four Dutch warehouses, the Roos, the Lelie, the Doorn and the Eik, only the last two survived what Vorstenbosch is calling ‘Snitker’s Fire’. Warehouse Lelie is being rebuilt, but the incinerated Roos must wait until the factory’s debts are in better order. The Land-Gate connects Dejima to the shore by a single-span stone bridge over a moat of tidal mud; the Sea-Gate, at the top of a short ramp where the Company sampans are loaded and unloaded, is opened only during the trading season. Attached is a Customs House, where all Dutchmen except the Chief Resident and the Captain are searched for prohibited items.
A list at whose head, Jacob thinks, is ‘Christian Artefacts’…
He turns to his sketch and sets about shading the sea with charcoal.
Curious, the oarsmen lean over; Jacob shows them the page:
The older oarsman makes a face to say, Not bad.
A shout from a guard-boat startles the pair: they return to their posts.
The sampan rocks under Vorstenbosch’s weight: he is a lean man, but today his silk surtout bulges with sections of ‘unicorn’ or narwhal horn, valued in Japan as a powdered cure-all. ‘It is this buffoonery’ – the incoming Chief raps his knuckles on his garment’s sewn-in bumps – ‘that I intend to eradicate. “Why,” I demanded of that serpent Kobayashi, “not simply have the cargo placed in a box, legitimately; rowed across, legitimately; and sold at private auction, legitimately?” His reply? “There is no precedent.” I put it to him, “Then why not create a precedent?” He stared at me as if I’d claimed paternity of his children.’
‘Sir?’ the First Mate calls. ‘Shall your slaves accompany you ashore?’
‘Send them with the cow. Snitker’s Black shall serve me meanwhile.’
‘Very good, sir; and Interpreter Sekita begs a ride ashore.’
‘Let the mooncalf down, then, Mr Wiskerke…’
Sekita’s ample rear juts over the bulwark. His scabbard catches in the ladder: his attendant earns a sharp slap for this mishap. Once the master and servant are safely seated, Vorstenbosch doffs his smart tricorn hat. ‘A divine morning, Mr Sekita, is it not?’
‘Ah.’ Sekita nods without understanding. ‘We Japanese, an island race…’
‘Indeed, sir. Sea in all directions; deep blue expanses of it.’
Sekita recites another rote-learnt sentence: ‘Tall pines are deep roots.’
‘For why must we waste our scant monies on your obese salary?’
Sekita purses his lips as if in thought. ‘How do you do, sir?’
If he inspects my books, thinks Jacob, all my worries are for nothing.
Vorstenbosch orders the oarsmen ‘Go!’ and points to Dejima.
Unnecessarily and unasked, Sekita translates the order.
The oarsmen propel the sampan by ‘sweeping’ their oars in the manner of a water-snake, in time to a breathy shanty.
‘Might they be singing,’ wonders Vorstenbosch, ‘ “Give Us Your Gold, O Stinking Dutchman”?’
‘One trusts not, sir, in the presence of an interpreter.’
‘That’s a charitable description of the man. Yet better him than Kobayashi: this may be our last chance to have a private discussion for a little while. Once ashore, my priority must be to ensure as profitable a trading season as our shoddy cargo can afford. Yours, de Zoet, is quite different: piece together the factory accounts, both for Company trade and private trade since the year ’ninety-four. Without knowing what the officers have bought, sold and exported and for how much, we cannot know the full extent of the corruption we must deal with.’
‘I’ll do my very best, sir.’
‘Snitker’s incarceration is my statement of intent, but should we mete out the same treatment to every smuggler on Dejima, there would be nobody left but the two of us. Rather, we must show how honest labour is rewarded with advancement, and theft punished with disgrace and gaol. Thus, only thus, may we clean out this Augean stable. Ah, and here is van Cleef, come to greet us.’
The acting deputy walks down the ramp from the Sea-Gate.
‘ “Every Arrival,” ’ quotes Vorstenbosch, ‘ “is a Particular Death.” ’
Deputy Melchior van Cleef, born in Utrecht forty years ago, doffs his hat. His swarthy face is bearded and piratical; a friend might describe his narrow eyes as ‘observant’, an enemy as ‘Mephistophelian’. ‘Good morning, Mr Vorstenbosch; and welcome to Dejima, Mr de Zoet.’ His handshake could crush stones. ‘To wish you a “pleasant” stay is overly hopeful…’ He notices the fresh kink in Jacob’s nose.
‘I am obliged, Deputy van Cleef.’ Solid ground sways under Jacob’s sea-legs. Coolies are already unloading his sea-chest and carrying it to the Sea-Gate. ‘Sir, I should prefer to keep my luggage in sight…’
‘So you should. Until recently we corrected the stevedores with blows, but the Magistrate ruled that a beaten coolie is an affront to all Japan and forbade us. Now their knavery knows no bounds.’
Interpreter Sekita mistimes his jump from the sampan’s prow on to the ramp, and dunks his leg up to the knee. Once on dry land, he smacks his servant’s nose with his fan and hurries ahead of the three Dutchmen, telling them, ‘Go! Go! Go!’
Deputy van Cleef explains, ‘He means “Come”.’
Once through the Sea-Gate, they are ushered into the Customs Room. Here, Sekita asks the foreigners’ names, and shouts them at an elderly registrar, who repeats them to a younger assistant, who writes them in his ledger. ‘Vorstenbosch’ is transliterated Bôrusu Tenbôshu, ‘van Cleef’ becomes Bankureifu and ‘de Zoet’ is rechristened Dazûto. Rounds of cheese and barrels of butter unloaded from the Shenandoah are being poked with skewers by a team of inspectors. ‘Those damned blackguards,’ van Cleef complains, ‘are known to break open preserved eggs lest the chicken sneaked in a ducat or two.’ A burly guard approaches. ‘Meet the frisker,’ says the Deputy. ‘The Chief is exempt, but not clerks, alas.’
A number of young men gather: they have the same shaven foreheads and top-knots as the inspectors and interpreters who visited the Shenandoah this week, but their robes are less impressive. ‘Unranked interpreters,’ explains van Cleef. ‘They hope to earn Sekita’s favour by doing his job for him.’
The frisker speaks to Jacob and they chorus, ‘Arms rise! Open pockets!’
Sekita silences them and orders Jacob, ‘Arms rise. Open pockets.’
Jacob obeys; the frisker pats his armpits and explores his pockets.
He finds Jacob’s sketchbook, examines it briefly and issues another order.
‘Show shoes to guard, sir!’ say the quickest house interpreters.
Sekita sniffs. ‘Show shoes now.’
Jacob notices that even the stevedores stop their work to watch.
Some are pointing at the clerk, unabashed and declaring, ‘Kômô, kômô.’
‘They’re talking about your hair,’ explains van Cleef. ‘ “Kômô” is how Europeans are often dubbed: kô signifying “red”; and “mô”, hair. Few of us, in truth, do boast hair of your tint; a genuine “red-haired barbarian” is worth a good gawp.’
‘You study the Japanese tongue, Mr van Cleef?’
‘There are rules against it, but I pick up a little from my wives.’
‘Should you teach me what you know, sir, I would be greatly obliged.’
‘I’d not be much of a teacher,’ van Cleef confesses. ‘Dr Marinus chats with the Malays as if he was born black, but the Japanese language is hard won, he says. Any interpreter caught teaching us could, feasibly, be charged with treason.’
The frisker returns Jacob’s shoes and issues a fresh command.
‘Off clotheses, sir!’ say the interpreters. ‘Clotheses off!’
‘Clotheses stay on!’ retorts van Cleef. ‘Clerks don’t strip, Mr de Zoet; the nasty-turdy wants us robbed of another dignity. Obey him today, and every clerk entering Japan until Doomsday would perforce follow suit.’
The frisker remonstrates; the chorus rises, ‘Clotheses off!’
Interpreter Sekita recognises trouble and creeps away.
Vorstenbosch hits the floor with his cane until quietness reigns. ‘No!’
The displeased frisker decides to concede the point.
A Customs guard taps Jacob’s sea-chest with his spear and speaks.
‘Open please,’ says an unranked interpreter. ‘Open big box!’
The box, taunts Jacob’s inner whisperer, containing your Psalter.
‘Before we all grow old, de Zoet,’ says Vorstenbosch.
Sick to his core, Jacob unlocks the chest as ordered.
One of the guards speaks; the chorus translates, ‘Go back, sir! Step behind!’
More than twenty curious necks crane as the frisker lifts the lid and unfolds Jacob’s five linen shirts; his woollen blanket; stockings; a drawstring bag of buttons and buckles; a tatty wig; a set of quills; yellowing undergarments; his boyhood compass; half a bar of Windsor soap; the two dozen letters from Anna tied with her hair ribbon; a razor blade; a Delft pipe; a cracked glass; a folio of sheet music; a moth-eaten bottle-green velvet waistcoat; a pewter plate, knife and spoon; and, stacked at the bottom, some fifty assorted books. A frisker speaks to an underling, who runs out of the Customs Room.
‘Fetch duty interpreter, sir,’ says an interpreter. ‘Bring to see books.’
‘Is not,’ Jacob’s ribs squeeze him, ‘Mr Sekita to conduct the dissection?’
A brown-toothed grin appears in van Cleef’s beard. ‘Dissection?’
‘Inspection, I meant, sir: the inspection of my books.’
‘Sekita’s father purchased his son’s place in the Guild, but the prohibition against’ – van Cleef mouths ‘Christianity’ – ‘is too important for blockheads. Books are checked by an abler man: Iwase Banri, perhaps, or one of the Ogawas.’
‘Who are the -’ Jacob chokes on his own saliva ‘- Ogawas?’
‘Ogawa Mimasaku is one of the four Interpreters of the First Rank. His son, Ogawa Uzaemon, is of the Third Rank, and -’ a young man enters ‘- ah! Speak of the Devil and listen for his feet! A warm morning, Mr Ogawa.’
Ogawa Uzaemon, in his mid-twenties, has an open, intelligent face. The unranked interpreters all bow low. He bows to Vorstenbosch, van Cleef and lastly the new arrival. ‘Welcome ashore, Mr de Zoet.’ His pronunciation is excellent. He extends his hand for a European handshake just as Jacob delivers an Asian bow: Ogawa Uzaemon reciprocates with an Asian bow as Jacob offers his hand. The vignette amuses the room. ‘I am told,’ says the interpreter, ‘Mr de Zoet brings many book… and here they are…’ he points to the chest ‘… many many book. A “plethora” of book, you say?’
‘A few books,’ says Jacob, nervous enough to vomit. ‘Or quite a few: yes.’
‘May I remove books to see?’ Ogawa does so, eagerly, without waiting for an answer. For Jacob, the world is narrowed to a thin tunnel between him and his Psalter, visible between his two-volume copy of Sara Burgerhart. Ogawa frowns. ‘Many, many books here. A little time, please. When finish, I send message. It is agreeable?’ He misreads Jacob’s hesitancy. ‘Books all safe. I too’ – Ogawa places his palm over his heart – ‘am bibliophile. This is correct word? Bibliophile?’
Out in the Weighing Yard the sun feels as hot as a branding-iron.
Any minute now, thinks the reluctant smuggler, my Psalter will be found.
A small party of Japanese officials is waiting for Vorstenbosch.
A Malay slave bows, waiting for the Chief with a bamboo parasol.
‘Captain Lacy and I,’ says the Chief, ‘have a gamut of engagements in the State Room until luncheon. You look sickly, de Zoet: have Dr Marinus drain half a pint after Mr van Cleef has shown you around.’ He nods a parting at his deputy and walks to his residence.
The Weighing Yard is dominated by one of the Company’s tripod-scales, as high as two men. ‘We’re weighing the sugar today,’ says van Cleef, ‘for what that junk is worth. Batavia sent the very dregs of their warehouses.’
The small square bustles with more than a hundred merchants, interpreters, inspectors, servants, spies, lackeys, palanquin bearers, porters. So these, thinks Jacob, are the Japanese. Their hair colour – black to grey – and skin tones are more uniform than those of a Dutch crowd, and their modes of dress, footwear and hairstyles appear rigidly prescribed according to rank. Fifteen or twenty near-naked carpenters are perched on the frame of a new warehouse. ‘Idler than a gang of gin-soused Finns…’ mumbles van Cleef. Watching from the roof of a Customs House is a pink-faced, soot-on-snow-coloured monkey, dressed in a sailcloth jerkin. ‘I see you’ve spotted William Pitt.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘King George’s First Minister, yes. He answers to no other name. A sailor bought him some six or seven seasons ago, but on the day his owner sailed, the ape vanished, only to reappear the next day, a freedman of Dejima. Speaking of brute apes, over there…’ van Cleef indicates a lantern-jawed and pig-tailed labourer engaged in opening boxes of sugar ‘… is Wybo Gerritszoon, one of our hands.’ Gerritszoon places the precious nails in his jerkin pocket. The bags of sugar are carried past a Japanese inspector and a striking foreign youth of seventeen or eighteen: his hair is gold and cherubic, his lips have a Javanese thickness and eyes an Oriental slant. ‘Ivo Oost: somebody’s natural son, with a generous glug of mestizo blood.’
The bags of sugar arrive at a trestle-table by the Company tripod.
The weighing is viewed by another trio of Japanese officials: an interpreter; and two Europeans in their twenties. ‘On the left,’ van Cleef points, ‘is Peter Fischer, a Prussian out of Brunswick…’ Fischer is nut-coloured, brown-haired but balding ‘… and an articled clerk – although Mr Vorstenbosch tells me you are also qualified, giving us an embarrassment of riches. Fischer’s companion is Con Twomey, an Irishman of Cork.’ Twomey has a half-moon face and a sharkish smile; his hair is cropped close and he is roughly tailored in sailcloth. ‘Don’t fret you forget these names: once the Shenandoah departs, we’ll have a tedious eternity in which to learn all about each other.’
‘Don’t the Japanese suspect some of our men aren’t Dutch?’
‘We account for Twomey’s bastard accent by saying he hails from Groningen. When were there ever enough pure-blooded Dutch to man the Company? Especially now’ – the stressed word alludes to the sensitive matter of Daniel Snitker’s incarceration – ‘we must catch-as-catch-can. Twomey’s our carpenter, but doubles as inspector on Weighing Days, for the infernal coolies’ll spirit away a bag of sugar in a blink without they’re watched like hawks. As will the guards – and the merchants are the slyest bastards of all: yesterday one of the whoresons slipped a stone into a bag which he then “discovered” and tried to use as “evidence” to lower the average tare.’
‘Shall I begin my duties now, Mr van Cleef?’
‘ Have Dr Marinus breathe a vein first, and join the fray once you’re settled. Marinus you shall find in his surgery at the end of Long Street – this street – by the bay tree. You shan’t get lost. No man ever lost his way on Dejima, without he had a bladder-full of grog in him.’
‘Fine thing I happened along,’ says a wheezing voice, ten paces later. ‘A cove’ll lose his way on Dejima faster’n shit through a goose. Arie Grote’s my name an’ you’ll be’ – he thumps Jacob’s shoulder – ‘Jacob de Zoet of Zeeland the Brave an’, my oh my, Snitker did put your nose out of joint, didn’t he?’
Arie Grote has a grin full of holes and a hat made of shark-hide.
‘Like my hat, do you? Boa Constrictor, this was, in the jungles of Ternate, what slunk one night into my hut what I shared with my three native maids. My first thought was, well, one of my bed-mates was wakin’ me gentle to toast my beans, eh? But no no no, there’s this tightenin’ an’ my lungs’re squeezed tight an’ three of my ribs go pop! snap! crack! an’ by the light o’ the Southern Cross, eh, I see him gazin’ into my bulgin’ eyes – an’ that, Mr de Z., was the squeezy bugger’s downfall. My arms was locked behind me but my jaws was free an’ oh I bit the beggar’s head that ’ard… A screamin’ snake ain’t a sound you’ll forget in an hurry! Squeezy Bugger squeezed me tighter – he weren’t done yet – so I went for the worm’s jugular an’ bit it clean through. The grateful villagers made me a robe of its skin and coronated me, eh, Lord of Ternate – that snake’d been the terror of their jungle – but…’ Grote sighs ‘… a sailor’s heart’s the sea’s plaything, eh? Back in Batavia a milliner turned my robe to hats what fetched ten rix-dollars a throw… but nothing’d splice me from this last one ’cept, mayhap, a favour to welcome a young cove whose need be sharper’n mine, eh? This beauty’s yours not for ten rix-dollars, no no no, not eight but five stuivers. As good a price as none.’
‘The milliner switched your Boa skin for poorly cured shark-hide, alas.’
‘I’ll wager you rise from the card table,’ Arie Grote looks pleased, ‘with a well-fed purse. Most of us hands gather of an evenin’ in my humble billet, eh, for a little hazard ’n’ companionship, an’ as you plainly ain’t no Stuffed-Shirt Hoity-Toity, why not join us?’
‘A pastor’s son like me would bore you, I fear: I drink little and gamble less.’
‘Who ain’t a gambler in the Glorious Orient, with his very life? Of every ten coves who sail out, six’ll survive to make what hay they may, eh, but four’ll sink into some swampy grave an’ forty-sixty is damn poor odds. By-the-by, for every jewel or ducatoon sewn into coat lining, eleven get seized at the Sea-Gate, and only a one slips through. They’re best poked up yer fig-hole an’ by-the-by should your cavity, eh, be so primed, Mr de Z., I can get you the best price of all…’
At the Crossroads, Jacob stops: ahead, Long Street continues its curve.
‘That’s Bony Alley,’ Grote points to their right, ‘goin’ to Sea Wall Lane: an’ thataways,’ Grote points left, ‘is Short Street; and the Land-Gate…’
… and beyond the Land-Gate, thinks Jacob, is the Cloistered Empire.
‘Them gates’ll not budge for us, Mr de Z., no no no. The Chief, Deputy an’ Dr M. pass through from time to time, aye, but not us. “The Shogun’s hostages” is what the natives dub us an’ that’s the size of it, eh? But listen,’ Grote propels Jacob forwards, ‘it ain’t just gems and coins I deal in, let me tell yer. Just yesterday,’ he whispers, ‘I earned a select client aboard the Shenandoah a box of purest camphor crystals for some ratty bagpipes what you’d not fish from a canal back home.’
He’s dangling bait, Jacob thinks, and replies, ‘I do not smuggle, Mr Grote.’
‘Strike me dead afore I’d accuse yer’f malpractice, Mr de Z.! Just informin’ you, eh, as how my commission is one quarter o’ the selling price, regular-like: but a smart young cove like you’ll keep seven slices per pie o’ ten for I’m partial to feisty Zeelanders, eh? ’Twill be a pleasure to handle your pox-powder, too’ – Grote has the casual tone of a man masking something crucial – ‘what with certain merchants who call me “Brother” beatin’ up the price faster an’ fatter’n a stallion’s stiffy as we speak, Mr de Z., aye, as we speak, an’ why?’
Jacob stops. ‘How can you possibly know about my mercury?’
‘Hearken to my Joyous Tidin’s, eh? One o’ the Shogun’s numerous sons,’ Grote lowers his voice, ‘undertook the mercury cure, this spring. The treatment’s been known here twenty years but weren’t never trusted but this princeling’s gherkin was so rotted it glowed green; one course o’ Dutch pox-powder an’ Praise the Lord, he’s cured! The story spreads like wildfire; ev’ry apothecary in the land’s howlin’ f’the miraculous elixir, eh; an’ here comes you with eight crates! Let me negotiate an’ yer’ll make enough to buy a thousand hats; do it yerself an’ they’ll skin yer an’ make you into the hat, my friend.’
‘How,’ Jacob finds himself walking again, ‘do you know about my mercury?’
‘Rats,’ Arie Grote whispers. ‘Aye, rats. I feed the rats tidbits now an’ then; an’ the rats tell me what’s what an’ that’s that. Voilà, eh? Here’s the Hospital; a journey shared’s a journey halved, eh? So, we’re agreed: I’ll act as yer agent forthwith, eh? No need for contracts or such stuff: a gentleman’ll not break his word. Until later…’
Arie Grote is walking back down Long Street to the Crossroads.
Jacob calls after him, ‘But I never gave you my word!’
The Hospital door opens into a narrow hall. Ahead, a ladder ascends to a trapdoor, propped open; to the right, a doorway gives into the Surgery, a large room ruled over by an age-mottled skeleton crucified on a T-frame. Jacob tries not to think of Ogawa finding his Psalter. An operating table is equipped with cords and apertures, and plastered with blood-stains. There are racks for the surgeon’s saws, knives, scissors and chisels; mortars and pestles; a giant cabinet to house, Jacob assumes, materia medica; bleeding bowls; and several benches and tables. The smell of fresh sawdust mingles with wax, herbs and a clayey whiff of liver. Through a doorway is the Sick Room, with three vacant beds. Jacob is tempted by an earthenware jar of water: he drinks with the ladle – it is cool and sweet.
Why is nobody here, he wonders, to protect the place from thieves?
A young servant or slave appears, swishing a broom: he is barefoot, handsome, and attired in a fine surplice and loose Indian trousers.
Jacob feels a need to justify his presence. ‘Dr Marinus’s slave?’
‘The doctor employs me,’ the youth’s Dutch is good, ‘as an assistant, sir.’
‘Is that so? I’m the new clerk, de Zoet: and your name is?’
The man’s bow is courteous, not servile. ‘My name is Eelattu, sir.’
‘What part of the world do you hail from, Eelattu?’
‘I was born in Colombo on the island of Ceylon, sir.’
Jacob is unsettled by his suavity. ‘Where is your master now?’
‘At study, upstairs: do you desire that I fetch him?’
‘There’s no need – I shall go up and introduce myself.’
‘Yes, sir: but the doctor prefers not to receive visitors-’
‘Oh, he’ll not object when he learns what I bring him…’
Through the trapdoor, Jacob peers into a long, well-furnished attic. Halfway down is Marinus’s harpsichord, referred to weeks ago in Batavia by Jacob’s friend Mr Zwaardecroone; it is allegedly the only harpsichord ever to travel to Japan. At the far end is a ruddy and ursine European of about fifty years, with tied-back, stony hair. He is sitting on the floor at a low table in a well of light, drawing a flame-orange orchid. Jacob knocks on the trapdoor. ‘Good afternoon, Dr Marinus.’
The doctor, his shirt unbuttoned, does not respond.
‘Dr Marinus? I am delighted to make your acquaintance, at last…’
Still, the doctor gives no indication of having heard.
The clerk raises his voice: ‘Dr Marinus? I apologise for disturb-’
‘From what mouse-hole,’ Marinus glares, ‘did you spring?’
‘I just arrived a quarter hour ago, from the Shenandoah? My name’s-’
‘Did I ask for your name? No: I asked for your fons et origo.’
‘Domburg, sir: a coastal town on Walcheren Island, in Zeeland.’
‘ Walcheren, is it? I visited Middelburg once.’
‘In point of fact, Doctor, I was educated in Middelburg.’
Marinus barks a laugh. ‘Nobody is “educated” in that nest of slavers.’
‘Perhaps I may raise your estimate of Zeelanders in the months ahead. I am to live in Tall House, so we are nearly neighbours.’
‘So propinquity propagates neighbourliness, does it?’
‘I-’ Jacob wonders at Marinus’s deliberate aggression. ‘I – well-’
‘This Cymbidium koran was found in the goats’ fodder: as you dither, it wilts.’
‘Mr Vorstenbosch suggested you might drain some blood…’
‘Medieval quackery! Phlebotomy – and the Humoral Theory on which it rests – was exploded by Hunter twenty years ago.’
But draining blood, thinks Jacob, is every surgeon’s bread. ‘But…’
‘But but but? But but? But? But but but but but?’
‘The world is composed of people who are convinced of it.’
‘Proving the world is composed of dunderheads. Your nose looks swollen.’
Jacob strokes the kink. ‘Former Chief Snitker threw a punch and-’
‘You don’t have the build for brawling.’ Marinus rises, and limps towards the trapdoor with the aid of a stout stick. ‘Bathe your nose in cool water, twice daily; and pick a fight with Gerritszoon presenting the convex side, so he may hammer it flat. Good day to you, Domburger.’ With a well-aimed whack of his stick, Dr Marinus knocks away the prop holding up the trapdoor.
Back in the sun-blinding street, the indignant clerk finds himself surrounded by Interpreter Ogawa, his servant, a pair of inspectors: all four look sweaty and grim. ‘Mr de Zoet,’ says Ogawa, ‘I wish to speak about a book you bring. It is important matter…’
Jacob loses the next clause to a rush of nausea and dread.
Vorstenbosch shan’t be able to save me, he thinks: and why would he?
‘… and so to find such a book astonishes me greatly… Mr de Zoet?’
My career is destroyed, thinks Jacob, my liberty is gone and Anna is lost…
‘Where,’ the prisoner manages to croak, ‘am I to be incarcerated?’
Long Street is tilting up and down. The clerk shuts his eyes.
‘ “In cancer-ated”?’ Ogawa mocks him. ‘My poor Dutch is failing me.’
The clerk’s heart pounds like a broken pump. ‘Is it human to toy with me?’
‘Toy?’ Ogawa’s perplexity grows. ‘This is proverb, Mr de Zoet? In Mr de Zoet’s chest I found book of Mr… Adamu Sumissu.’
Jacob opens his eyes: Long Street is no longer tilting. ‘Adam Smith?’
‘ “Adam Smith” – please excuse. The Wealth of Nations… You know?’
I know it, yes, thinks Jacob, but I don’t yet dare hope. ‘The original English is a little difficult, so I bought the Dutch edition in Batavia.’
Ogawa looks surprised. ‘So Adam Smith is not Dutchman but Englishman?’
‘He’d not thank you, Mr Ogawa! Smith’s a Scot, living in Edinburgh. But can it be The Wealth of Nations about which you speak?’
‘What other? I am rangakusha – scholar of Dutch Science. Four years ago, I borrow Wealth of Nations from Chief Hemmij. I began translation to bring,’ Ogawa’s lips ready themselves, ‘ “Theory of Political Economy” to Japan. But Lord of Satsuma offered Chief Hemmij much money so I returned it. Book was sold before I finish.’
The incandescent sun is caged by a glowing bay tree.
God called unto him, thinks Jacob, out of the midst of the bush…
Hooked gulls and scraggy kites criss-cross the blue-glazed sky.
… and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.
‘I try to obtain another, but’ – Ogawa flinches – ‘but difficulties is much.’
Jacob resists an impulse to laugh like a child. ‘I understand.’
‘Then, this morning, in your book-chest, Adam Smith I find. Very much surprise, and to speak with sincerity, Mr de Zoet, I wish to buy or rent…’
Across the street in the garden, cicadas shriek in ratcheted rounds.
‘Adam Smith is neither for sale nor rent,’ says the Dutchman, ‘but you are welcome, Mr Ogawa – very welcome indeed – to borrow him for as long as ever you wish.’
Before breakfast on the 29th July, 1799
Jacob de Zoet emerges from buzzing darkness to see Hanzaburo, his house interpreter, being interrogated by two inspectors. ‘They’ll be ordering your boy,’ Junior Clerk Ponke Ouwehand appears from thin air, ‘to open up your turds to see what you shat. I tormented my first snoop into an early grave three days ago, so the Interpreters’ Guild sent this hat-stand.’ Ouwehand jerks his head at the gangly youth behind him. ‘His name’s Kichibei but I call him “Herpes” after how closely he sticks to me. But I’ll defeat him in the end. Grote bet me ten guilders I can’t wear out five by November. Broken our fast yet, have we?’
The inspectors now notice Kichibei and summon him over.
‘I was on my way,’ says Jacob, wiping his hands.
‘We should go before all the hands piss in your coffee.’
The two clerks set off up Long Street, passing two pregnant deer.
‘Nice shank of venison,’ comments Ouwehand, ‘for Christmas dinner.’
Dr Marinus and the slave Ignatius are watering the melon patch. ‘Another furnace of a day ahead, Doctor,’ says Ouwehand, over the fence.
Marinus must have heard but does not deign to look up.
‘He’s courteous enough to his students,’ Ouwehand remarks to Jacob, ‘and to his handsome Indian, and he was gentleness made man, so van Cleef says, when Hemmij was dying, and when his scholar friends bring him a weed or a dead starfish, he wags his tail off. So why is he Old Master Misery with us? In Batavia, even the French Consul – the French Consul, mark you – called him “un buffalo insufferable”.’ Ouwehand squeaks in the back of his throat.
A gang of porters is gathering at the Crossroads to bring ashore the pig-iron. When they notice Jacob, the usual nudges, stares and grins begin. He turns down Bony Alley rather than run the gauntlet any further.
‘Don’t deny you enjoy the attention,’ says Ouwehand, ‘Mr Red-Hair.’
‘But I do deny it,’ objects Jacob. ‘I deny it utterly.’
The two clerks turn into Sea Wall Lane and reach the Kitchen.
Arie Grote is plucking a bird under a canopy of pans and skillets. Oil is frying, a pile of improvised pancakes is piling up and a well-travelled round of Edam and sour apples are divided between two mess tables. Piet Baert, Ivo Oost and Gerritszoon sit at the hands’ table; Peter Fischer, the senior clerk, and Con Twomey, the carpenter, eat at the officers’: today being Wednesday, Vorstenbosch, van Cleef and Dr Marinus take their breakfast upstairs in the Bay Room.
‘We was just wond’rin’,’ says Grote, ‘where you coves’d got to, eh?’
‘Pottage of nightingales’ tongues to begin with, Maestro,’ says Ouwehand, poking at the gritty bread and rancid butter, ‘followed by a quail-and-blackberry pie with artichokes in cream, and last, the quince and white rose trifle.’
‘How Mr O.’s evergreen jests,’ says Grote, ‘spice up the day.’
‘That is,’ Ouwehand peers over, ‘a pheasant’s arsehole your hand is up?’
‘Envy,’ the cook tuts, ‘is one o’ the Seven Deadlies, eh, Mr de Z.?’
‘They say so.’ Jacob wipes a smear of blood from an apple. ‘Yes.’
‘We readied yer coffee.’ Baert carries over a bowl. ‘Nice an’ fresh.’
Jacob looks at Ouwehand who makes a ‘told you so’ face.
‘Thank you, Mr Baert, but I may abstain today.’
‘But we made it special,’ protests the Antwerper. ‘Just for you.’
Oost yawns, cavernously; Jacob risks a pleasantry. ‘Bad night?’
‘Out smuggling and robbing the Company till dawn, weren’t I?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Mr Oost.’ Jacob breaks his bread. ‘Were you?’
‘Thought you had all the answers afore y’even set foot ashore.’
‘A civil tongue,’ cautions Twomey, in his Irish-flavoured Dutch, ‘is-’
‘He’s the one sittin’ in judgement on us all, Con, an’ you think it too.’
Oost is the only hand rash enough to speak so bluntly to the new clerk’s face without the excuse of grog, but Jacob knows that even van Cleef views him as Vorstenbosch’s spy. The Kitchen is waiting for his answer. ‘To man its ships, maintain its garrisons and pay its tens of thousands of salaries, Mr Oost, including yours, the Company must make a profit. Its trading factories must keep books. Dejima’s books for the last five years are a pig’s dinner. It is Mr Vorstenbosch’s duty to order me to piece those books together. It is my duty to obey. Why must this make my name “Iscariot”?’
No one cares to reply. Peter Fischer eats with his mouth open.
Ouwehand scoops up some sauerkraut with his gritty bread.
‘Strikes me,’ Grote says, plucking out the fowl’s innards, ‘that it all rests on what the Chief does about any… irregularities, eh, spotted durin’ this piecin’ together. Whether it’s a “Naughty-Boy-Now-Sin-No-More”, or a firm but fair canin’ of one’s derrière, eh? Or ruination an’ a six-by-five-by-four in Batavia gaol…’
‘If-’ Jacob stops himself saying, ‘if you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear’: everyone present violates the Company rules on private trade. ‘I’m not the-’ Jacob stops himself saying ‘Chief’s Private Confessor’. ‘Have you tried asking Mr Vorstenbosch directly?’
‘Not f’the likes o’ me,’ replies Grote, ‘to be interrogatin’, eh, my superiors?’
‘Then you’ll have to wait and see what Chief Vorstenbosch decides.’
A bad answer, realises Jacob, implying I know more than I’m saying.
‘Yap yap,’ mumbles Oost. ‘Yap.’ Baert’s laughter could be hiccups.
An apple skin slides off Fischer’s knife in one perfect coil. ‘Can we expect you to visit our office later? Or will you be doing more piecing together in Warehouse Doorn with your friend Ogawa?’
‘I shall do,’ Jacob hears his voice rise, ‘whatever the Chief bids.’
‘Oh? Did I touch a rotten tooth? Ouwehand and I merely wish to know -’
‘Did I’ – Ouwehand consults the ceiling – ‘utter a single word?’
‘- to know whether our alleged third clerk shall help us today.’
‘ “Articled”,’ Jacob states, ‘not “alleged” or “third”, just as you are not “head”.’
‘Oh? So you and Mr Vorstenbosch have discussed matters of succession?’
‘Is this squabblin’ edifyin’, eh,’ queries Grote, ‘afore the lower orders?’
The warped kitchen door shudders as the Chief’s servant Cupido enters.
‘What d’you want, yer dusky dog?’ asks Grote. ‘You was fed earlier.’
‘I bring a message for Clerk de Zoet: “Chief bids you come to State Room”, sir.’
Baert’s laugh is born, lives and dies in his ever-congested nose.
‘I’ll keep yer breakfast,’ Grote chops off the pheasant’s feet, ‘good an’ safe.’
‘Here, boy!’ whispers Oost to an invisible dog. ‘Sit, boy! Up, boy!’
‘Just a sip o’ coffee,’ Baert proffers the bowl, ‘to fortify yer, like?’
‘I don’t think I’d care,’ Jacob stands to go, ‘for its adulterants.’
‘Not a soul’s ’cusin yer ’f adult’ry,’ gurns Baert, incomprehending, ‘just-’
The pastor’s nephew kicks the coffee bowl out of Baert’s hands.
It smashes against the ceiling: fragments smash on the floor.
The onlookers are astonished; Oost’s yaps cease; Baert is drenched.
Even Jacob is surprised. He pockets his bread and leaves.
In the Antechamber of Bottles outside the State Room, a wall of fifty or sixty glass demijohns, wired tight against earthquakes, exhibit creatures from the Company’s once-vast empire. Preserved from decay by alcohol, pig-bladder and lead, they warn not so much that all flesh perishes – what sane adult forgets this truth for long? – but that immortality comes at a steep price.
A pickled dragon of Kandy bears an uncanny resemblance to Anna’s father, and Jacob recalls a fateful conversation with that gentleman in his Rotterdam drawing-room. Carriages passed by below, and the lamplighter was doing his rounds. ‘Anna has told me,’ her father began, ‘the surprising facts of the situation, de Zoet…
The Kandy dragon’s neighbour is a slack-jawed viper of the Celebes.
‘… and I have, accordingly, enumerated your merits and demerits.
A baby alligator from Halmahera has a demon’s delighted grin.
‘In the credit column: you are a fastidious clerk of good character…
The alligator’s umbilical cord is attached to its shell for all eternity.
‘… who has not abused his advantage over Anna’s affections.
It was a posting to Halmahera from which Vorstenbosch rescued Jacob.
‘In the debit column, you are a clerk: not a merchant, not a shipper…
A tortoise from the Island of Diego Garcia appears to be weeping,
‘… or even a warehouse-master, but a clerk. I don’t doubt your affection.
Jacob touches the jar of a Barbados lamprey with his broken nose.
‘But affection is merely the plum in the pudding: the pudding itself is wealth.
The lamprey’s O-shaped mouth is a grinding mill of razor-sharp Vs and Ws.
‘I am, however, willing to give you a chance to earn your pudding, de Zoet – out of respect for Anna’s judge of character. A director at East India House comes to my club. If you wish to become my son-in-law as strongly as you say, he can arrange a five-year clerical post for you in Java. The official salary is meagre but a young man of enterprise may make something of himself. You must give your answer today, however: the Fadrelandet is sailing from Copenhagen in a fortnight…’
‘New friends?’ Deputy van Cleef watches him from the State Room door.
Jacob pulls his gaze from the lamprey’s. ‘I don’t have the luxury to pick and choose, Deputy.’
Van Cleef hums at his candour. ‘Mr Vorstenbosch shall see you now.’
‘Won’t you be joining our meeting, sir?’
‘Pig-iron won’t carry and weigh itself, de Zoet, more’s the pity.’
Unico Vorstenbosch squints at the thermometer hung by the painting of William the Silent. He is pink with heat and shiny with sweat. ‘I shall have Twomey fashion me one of those ingenious cloth fans the English brought from India… oh, the word evades me…’
‘Might you be thinking of a punkah, sir?’
‘Just so. A punkah, with a punkah-wallah to tug its cord…’
Cupido enters, carrying a familiar jade-and-silver teapot on a tray.
‘Interpreter Kobayashi is due at ten,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘with a gaggle of officials to brief me on court etiquette during our long-delayed audience with the Magistrate. Antique China-ware shall signal that this chief resident is a man of refinement: the Orient is all about signals, de Zoet. Remind me what blue-blood the tea-service was crafted for, according to that Jew in Macao?’
‘He claimed it was from the trousseau of the last Ming Emperor’s wife, sir.’
‘The last Ming Emperor: just so. Oh, and I am desirous that you join us later.’
‘For the meeting with Interpreter Kobayashi and the officials, sir?’
‘For our interview with the Magistrate Shirai… Shilo… Aid me.’
‘Magistrate Shiroyama, sir – sir, I am to visit Nagasaki?’
‘Unless you’d prefer to stay here and record catties of pig-iron?’
‘To set foot on Japan proper would…’ cause Peter Fischer, thinks Jacob, to expire with envy ‘… would be a great adventure. Thank you.’
‘A chief needs a private secretary. Now, let us continue the morning’s business in the privacy of my bureau…’
Sunlight falls across the escritoire in the small adjacent room. ‘So,’ Vorstenbosch settles himself, ‘after three days ashore, how are you finding life on the Company’s furthest-flung outpost?’
‘More salubrious’ – Jacob’s chair creaks – ‘than a posting on Halmahera, sir.’
‘Damnation by dim praise indeed! What irks you most of all: the spies, confinement, lack of liberties… or the ignorance of our countrymen?’
Jacob considers telling Vorstenbosch about the scene at breakfast, but sees nothing to be gained. Respect, he thinks, cannot be commanded from on high.
‘The hands view me with some… suspicion, sir.’
‘Naturally. To decree, “Private Trade is Henceforth Banned” would merely make their schemes more ingenious; a deliberate vagueness is, for the time being, the best prophylactic. The hands resent this, of course, but daren’t vent their anger on me. You bear the brunt.’
‘I’d not wish to appear ungrateful for your patronage, sir.’
‘There’s no gainsaying that Dejima is a dull posting. The days when a man could retire on the profit from two trading seasons here are long, long gone. Swamp-fever and crocodiles shan’t kill you in Japan, but monotony might. But take heart, de Zoet: after one year we return to Batavia where you shall learn how I reward loyalty and diligence. And speaking of diligence, how proceeds your restoration of the ledgers?’
‘The books are an unholy mess, but Mr Ogawa is proving most helpful, and ’ninety-four and ’ninety-five are in large part reconstructed.’
‘A shoddy pass that we have to rely on Japanese archives. But come, we must address yet more pressing matters.’ Vorstenbosch unlocks his desk and takes out a bar of Japanese copper. ‘The world’s reddest, its richest in gold and, for a hundred years, the bride for whom we Dutch have danced in Nagasaki.’ He tosses the flat ingot at Jacob, who catches it neatly. ‘This bride, however, grows skinnier and sulkier by the year. According to your own figures…’ Vorstenbosch consults a slip of paper on his desk-top ‘… in 1790 we exported eight thousand piculs. In ’ninety-four, six thousand. Gijsbert Hemmij, who displayed good judgement only in dying before being charged for incompetence, suffered the quota to drop under four thousand, and during Snitker’s year of misgovernance, a paltry three thousand two hundred, every last bar of which was lost with the Octavia, wherever her wreck may lie.’
The Almelo Clock divides time with bejewelled tweezers.
‘You recall, de Zoet, my visit to the Old Fort prior to our sailing?’
‘I do, sir, yes. The Governor-General spoke with you for two hours.’
‘It was a weighty discussion about nothing less than the future of Dutch Java. Which you hold in your hands.’ Vorstenbosch nods at the copper bar. ‘That’s it.’
Jacob’s melted reflection is captured in the metal. ‘I don’t understand, sir.’
‘The bleak picture of the Company’s dilemma painted by Daniel Snitker was not, alas, hyperbole. What he did not add, because none outside the Council of the Indies knows, is that Batavia’s Treasury is starved away to nothing.’
Carpenters hammer across the street. Jacob’s bent nose aches.
‘Without Japanese copper, Batavia cannot mint coins.’ Vorstenbosch’s fingers twirl an ivory paper-knife. ‘Without coins, the native battalions shall melt back into the jungle. There is no sugar-coating this truth, de Zoet: the High Government can maintain our garrisons on half-pay until next July. Come August, the first deserters leave; come October, the native chiefs smoke our weakness out; and by Christmas, Batavia succumbs to anarchy, rapine, slaughter and John Bull.’
Unbidden, Jacob’s mind pictures these same catastrophes unfolding.
‘Every chief resident in Dejima’s history,’ Vorstenbosch continues, ‘tried to squeeze more precious metals out of Japan. All they ever received were hand-wringing and unkept promises. The wheels of commerce trundled on regardless, but should we fail, de Zoet, the Netherlands loses the Orient.’
Jacob places the copper on the desk. ‘How can we succeed where…’
‘Where so many others failed? Audacity, pugnacity, and by an historic letter.’ Vorstenbosch slides a writing set across the desk. ‘Pray take down a rough copy.’
Jacob readies his board, uncorks the inkwell and dips a quill.
‘ “I, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, P.G. van Overstraten,” ’ Jacob looks at his patron, but there is no mistake, ‘ “on this, the -” Was it the sixteenth of May we left Batavia’s roadstead?’
The pastor’s son swallows. ‘The fourteenth, sir.’
‘ “- on this, the… Ninth day of May, seventeen hundred and ninety-nine, send cordial salutations to their August Excellencies the Council of Elders, as one true friend may communicate his innermost thoughts to another with neither flattery nor fear of disfavour, concerning the venerable amity between the Empire of Japan and the Batavian Republic”, stop.’
‘The Japanese have not been informed of the revolution, sir.’
‘Then let us be “the United Provinces of the Netherlands” for now. “Many times have the Shogun’s servants in Nagasaki amended the terms of trade to the Company’s impoverishment…” No, use “disadvantage”. Then, “The so-called ‘Flower-Money’ tax is at a usurious level; the rix-dollar’s value has been devalued three times in ten years, whilst the copper quota has decreased to a trickle”… stop.’
Jacob’s hard-pressed nib crumples: he takes up another.
‘ “Yet the Company’s petitions are met with endless excuses. The dangers of the voyage from Batavia to your distant Empire were demonstrated by the Octavia’s foundering, in which two hundred Dutchmen lost their lives. Without fair compensation, the Nagasaki trade is tenable no longer.” New paragraph. “The Company’s directors in Amsterdam have issued a final memorandum concerning Dejima. Its substance may be summarised thus…’ Jacob’s quill skips over an ink-blot. ‘ “Without the copper quota is increased to twenty thousand piculs” – italicise the words, de Zoet, and add it in numerals – “the seventeen directors of the Dutch East Indies Company must conclude that its Japanese partners no longer wish to maintain foreign trade. We shall evacuate Dejima, removing our goods, our livestock and such materials from our warehouses as may be salvaged with immediate effect.” There. That should set loose the fox in the chicken coop, should it not?’
‘A half-dozen large ones, sir. But did the Governor-General make this threat?’
‘Asiatic minds respect force majeure; best they are prodded into compliancy.’
The answer, then, sees Jacob, is No. ‘Suppose the Japanese call this bluff?’
‘One calls a bluff only if one scents a bluff. Thus you are party to this stratagem, as are van Cleef, Captain Lacy and myself, and nobody else. Now conclude: “For a copper quota of twenty thousand piculs I shall send another ship next year. Should the Shogun’s Council offer” – italicise – “one picul less than twenty thousand, they shall, in effect, be taking an axe to the tree of commerce, consign Japan’s single major port to rot, and brick over your Empire’s sole window to the world” – yes?’
‘Bricks are not in wide usage here, sir. “Board up”?’
‘Make good. “This loss shall blind the Shogun to new European progress, to the delight of the Russians and other foes who survey your empire with acquisitive eyes. Your own descendants yet unborn beg you to make the correct choice at this hour, as does,” new line, “Your sincere ally, et cetera, et cetera, P.G. van Overstraten, Governor-General of the East Indies; Chevalier of the Order of the Orange Lion”, and any other titular lilies that occur to you, de Zoet. Two fair copies by noon, in time for Kobayashi; end both with van Overstraten’s signature – as life-like as you may – one to be sealed with this.’ Vorstenbosch passes him the signet ring embossed with the ‘VOC’ of the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie.
Jacob is startled by the last two commands. ‘I am to sign and seal the letters, sir?’
‘Here is…’ Vorstenbosch finds a sample ‘… van Overstraten’s signature.’
‘To forge the Governor-General’s signature would be…’ Jacob suspects the true answer would be ‘a capital crime.’
‘Don’t look so privy-faced, de Zoet! I’d sign it myself, but our strategem requires van Overstraten’s masterly flourish and not my crabby left-handed smudge. Consider the Governor-General’s gratitude when we return to Batavia with a threefold increase in copper exports: my claim to a seat on the Council shall be irrefutable. Why would I then forsake my loyal secretary? Of course, if… qualms or a loss of nerve prevent you from doing as I ask, I could just as easily summon Mr Fischer.’
Do it now, thinks Jacob, worry later. ‘I shall sign, sir.’
‘There is no time to waste, then: Kobayashi shall be here in -’ the Chief Resident consults the clock ‘- forty minutes. We’ll want the sealing wax on the finished letter cool by then, won’t we?’
The frisker at the Land-Gate finishes his task; Jacob climbs into his two-bearer palanquin. Peter Fischer squints in the merciless afternoon sunlight. ‘Dejima is yours for an hour or two, Mr Fischer,’ Vorstenbosch tells him from the Chief’s palanquin. ‘Return her to me in her current condition.’
‘Of course.’ The Prussian achieves a flatulent grimace. ‘Of course.’
Fischer’s grimace turns to a glower as Jacob’s palanquin passes.
The retinue leaves the Land-Gate and passes over Holland Bridge.
The tide is out: Jacob sees a dead dog in the silt…
… and now he is hovering three feet over the forbidden ground of Japan.
There is a wide square of sand and grit, deserted but for a few soldiers. This plaza is named, van Cleef told him, Edo Square to remind the independent-minded Nagasaki populace where the true power lies. On one side is the Shogunal Keep: ramped stones, high walls and steps. Through another set of gates, the retinue is submersed in a shaded thoroughfare. Hawkers cry, beggars implore, tinkers clang pans, ten thousand wooden clogs knock against flagstones. Their own guards yell, ordering the townspeople aside. Jacob tries to capture every fleeting impression for letters to Anna, and to his sister, Geertje, and his uncle. Through the palanquin’s grille, he smells steamed rice, sewage, incense, lemons, sawdust, yeast and rotting seaweed. He glimpses gnarled old women, pocked monks, unmarried girls with blackened teeth. Would that I had a sketchbook, the foreigner thinks, and three days ashore to fill it. Children on a mud wall make owl-eyes with their forefingers and thumbs, chanting ‘Oranda-me, Oranda-me, Oranda-me’: Jacob realises they are impersonating ‘round’ European eyes and remembers a string of urchins following a Chinaman in London. The urchins pulled their eyes into narrow slants and sang, ‘Chinese, Siamese, if you please, Japanese.’
People pray cheek by jowl before a cramped shrine whose gate is shaped like a π.
There is a row of stone idols; twists of paper tied to a plum tree.
Nearby, street acrobats perform a snonky song to drum up business.
The palanquins pass over an embanked river; the water stinks.
Jacob’s armpits, groin and knees are itchy with sweat; he fans himself with his clerk’s portfolio.
There is a girl in an upper window; there are red lanterns hanging from the eaves, and she is idly tickling the hollow of her throat with a goose feather. Her body cannot be ten years old, but her eyes belong to a much older woman’s.
Wistaria in bloom foams over a crumbling wall.
A hairy beggar kneeling over a puddle of vomit turns out to be a dog.
A minute later, the retinue stops by a gate of iron and oak.
The doors open and guards salute the palanquins passing into a courtyard.
Twenty pikemen are being drilled in the ferocious sun.
In the shade of a deep overhang, Jacob’s palanquin is lowered on to its stand.
Ogawa Uzaemon opens its door. ‘Welcome to Magistracy, Mr de Zoet.’
The long gallery ends at a shady vestibule. ‘Here, we wait,’ Interpreter Kobayashi tells them, and motions for them to sit on floor cushions brought by servants. The right branch of the vestibule ends in a row of sliding doors emblazoned with striped bulldogs boasting luxuriant long eyelashes. ‘Tigers, supposedly,’ says van Cleef. ‘Behind it is our destination: the Hall of Sixty Mats.’ The left branch leads to a more modest door decorated with a chrysanthemum. Jacob hears a baby crying a few rooms away. Ahead is a view over the Magistracy walls and hot roofs, down to the bay where the Shenandoah is anchored in the bleached haze. The smell of summer mingles with beeswax and fresh paper. The Dutchmen’s party removed their shoes at the entrance, and Jacob is thankful for van Cleef’s earlier warning about holes in stockings. If Anna’s father could see me now, he thinks, paying court to the Shogun’s highest official in Nagasaki. The officials and interpreters maintain a stern silence. ‘The floorboards,’ van Cleef comments, ‘are sprung to squeak, to foil assassins.’
‘Are assassins,’ asks Vorstenbosch, ‘a serious nuisance in these parts?’
‘Probably not, nowadays, but old habits die hard.’
‘Remind me,’ says the Chief, ‘why one Magistracy has two Magistrates.’
‘When Magistrate Shiroyama is on duty in Nagasaki, Magistrate Ômatsu resides in Edo, and vice versa. They rotate annually. Should either commit any indiscretion, his counterpart would eagerly denounce him. Every seat of power in the Empire is divided, and thereby neutered, in this way.’
‘Niccolò Machiavelli could teach the Shogun very little, I fancy.’
‘Indeed not, sir. The Florentine would be the novice, I credit.’
Interpreter Kobayashi shows disapproval at the bandying about of august names.
‘Might I direct your attention,’ van Cleef changes the subject, ‘to that antique crow-scarer hanging in the alcove over there?’
‘Good God,’ Vorstenbosch peers closer, ‘it’s a Portuguese arquebus.’
‘Muskets were manufactured on an island in Satsuma after the Portuguese arrived there. Later, when it was realised that ten muskets wielded by ten steady-handed peasants could slay ten samurai, the Shogun curtailed their manufacture. One can imagine the fate of a European monarch who sought to impose such a decree-’
A tiger-emblazoned screen slides open, and a high official with a crushed nose emerges and walks to Interpreter Kobayashi. The interpreters bow low and Kobayashi introduces the official to Chief Vorstenbosch as Chamberlain Tomine. Tomine speaks in a tone as wintry as his demeanour. ‘ “Gentlemen”,’ Kobayashi translates. ‘ “In Hall of Sixty Mats is Magistrate and many advisers. You must show same obedience to Magistrate as to Shogun”.’
‘Magistrate Shiroyama shall receive,’ Vorstenbosch assures the interpreter, ‘exactly the respect he deserves.’
Kobayashi does not look reassured.
The Hall of Sixty Mats is airy and shaded. Fifty or sixty sweating, fanning officials – all important-looking samurai – enclose a precise rectangle. Magistrate Shiroyama is identified by his central position and raised dais. His fifty-year-old face looks weathered by high office. Light enters the hall from a sunlit courtyard of white pebbles, contorted pine trees and moss-coated rocks to the south. Hangings sway over openings to the west and east. A meaty-necked guard announces, ‘Oranda Kapitan!’ and ushers the Dutchmen into the rectangle of courtiers to three crimson cushions. Chamberlain Tomine speaks and Kobayashi translates: ‘Let the Dutchmen now pay respect.’
Jacob kneels on his cushion, places his clerk’s portfolio at his side, and bows. To his right, he is aware of van Cleef doing the same, but straightening up, he realises that Vorstenbosch is still standing.
‘Where,’ the Chief Resident turns to Kobayashi, ‘is my chair?’
The demand causes the muted commotion that Vorstenbosch intended.
The chamberlain fires a curt question at Interpreter Kobayashi.
‘In Japan,’ Kobayashi tells Vorstenbosch, reddening, ‘there is no dishonour to seat on floor.’
‘Very laudable, Mr Kobayashi, but I am more comfortable on a chair.’
Kobayashi and Ogawa must pacify an angry chamberlain and placate a stubborn chief.
‘Please, Mr Vorstenbosch,’ says Ogawa, ‘in Japan, we have no chairs.’
‘May one not be improvised for a visiting dignitary? You!’
The pointed-at official gasps, and touches the tip of his own nose.
‘Yes: bring ten cushions. Ten. You understand “ten”?’
In consternation, the official looks from Kobayashi to Ogawa and back.
‘Look, man!’ Vorstenbosch dangles the cushion for a moment, drops it and holds up ten fingers. ‘Bring ten cushions! Kobayashi, tell the tadpole what I want.’
Chamberlain Tomine is demanding answers. Kobayashi explains why the Chief refuses to kneel, whilst Vorstenbosch wears a smile of tolerant condescension.
The Hall of Sixty Mats falls silent, ahead of the Magistrate’s reaction.
Shiroyama and Vorstenbosch hold each other’s gaze for a magnified moment.
Then the Magistrate produces a victor’s easy smile and nods. The chamberlain claps: two servants fetch cushions and pile them up until Vorstenbosch glows with satisfaction. ‘Observe,’ the Dutch Chief tells his compatriots, ‘the rewards of the resolute. Chief Hemmij and Daniel Snitker undermined our dignity by their kowtowing and it falls to me,’ he thumps the unwieldy pile, ‘to win it back.’
Magistrate Shiroyama speaks to Kobayashi.
‘Magistrate asks,’ translates the interpreter, ‘ “You are comfort now?” ’
‘Thank His Honour. Now we sit face to face, like equals.’
Jacob assumes that Kobayashi omits Vorstenbosch’s last two words.
Magistrate Shiroyama nods, and musters a long sentence. ‘He says,’ begins Kobayashi, ‘ “Congratulate” to new Chief Resident and “Welcome to Nagasaki”; and “Welcome again to Magistracy”, to Deputy Chief.’ Jacob, a mere clerk, passes unacknowledged. ‘Magistrate hope voyage not too… “strenuous” and hope sun not too strong for weak Dutch skin.’
‘Thank our host for his concern,’ replies Vorstenbosch, ‘but assure him that, compared to July in Batavia, his Nagasaki summer is child’s play.’
Shiroyama nods at the translated rendering, as though a long-held suspicion is at last confirmed.
‘Ask,’ Vorstenbosch orders, ‘how His Honour enjoyed the coffee I presented.’
The question, Jacob notices, provokes arch glances between the courtiers. The Magistrate considers his reply. ‘Magistrate says,’ translates Ogawa, ‘ “Coffee tastes of no other.” ’
‘Tell him our plantations in Java can supply enough to satisfy even Japan’s bottomless stomach. Tell him future generations shall bless the name “Shiroyama” as the man who discovered this magical beverage for their homeland.’
Ogawa delivers a suitable translation and is met by a gentle rebuttal.
‘The Magistrate says,’ explains Kobayashi, ‘ “Japan is no appetite for coffee.” ’
‘Stuff! Once, coffee was unknown in Europe too, but now every street in our great capitals has its own coffee-house – or ten! Vast fortunes are made.’
Pointedly, Shiroyama changes the subject before Ogawa can translate.
‘The Magistrate give sympathy,’ says Kobayashi, ‘for wreck of Octavia on voyage home last winter.’
‘It’s curious, tell him,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘how our discussion turns to the travails suffered by the Honourable Company in its struggle to bring prosperity to Nagasaki…’
Ogawa, who senses trouble he cannot avoid, must nevertheless translate.
Magistrate Shiroyama’s face expresses a knowing Oh?
‘I bear an urgent communiqué from the Governor-General on this same topic.’
Ogawa turns to Jacob for help: ‘What is “communiqué”?’
‘A letter,’ replies Jacob in a low voice. ‘A diplomat’s message.’
Ogawa translates the sentence; Shiroyama’s hands signal ‘Give.’
From his tower of cushions, Vorstenbosch nods to his secretary.
Jacob unties his portfolio, removes the freshly forged letter from His Excellency P.G. van Overstraten, and proffers it with both hands to the chamberlain.
Chamberlain Tomine places the envelope before his unsmiling master.
The Hall of Sixty Mats looks on with undisguised curiosity.
‘It is meet, Mr Kobayashi,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘to warn these good gentlemen – and even the Magistrate – that our Governor-General sends an ultimatum.’
Kobayashi glares at Ogawa, who begins to ask, ‘What is “ultim -”?’
‘Ultimatum,’ says van Cleef. ‘A threat; a demand; a strong warning.’
‘Very bad time,’ Kobayashi shakes his head, ‘for strong warning.’
‘But surely Magistrate Shiroyama must know as soon as possible,’ Chief Vorstenbosch’s concern is soft with malice, ‘that Dejima is to be abandoned after the current trading season unless Edo gives us twenty thousand piculs?’
‘ “Abandoned”,’ repeats van Cleef, ‘meaning stopped; ended; finished.’
Blood drains from the three interpreters’ faces.
Inwardly, Jacob squirms with sympathy for Ogawa.
‘Please, sir,’ Ogawa tries to swallow, ‘not such news, here, now…’
Running out of patience, Chamberlain Tomine demands a translation.
‘Best not keep His Honour waiting,’ Vorstenbosch tells Kobayashi.
Word by faltering word, Kobayashi delivers the appalling news.
Questions are fired from all quarters but Kobayashi and Ogawa’s replies would be drowned out even if they tried to answer. During this mayhem, Jacob notices a man seated three places to the left of Magistrate Shiroyama. His face disturbs the clerk, though he could not say why; neither could Jacob guess his age. His shaven head and water-blue robes suggest a monk or even a confessor. The lips are tight, the cheekbones high, the nose hooked and the eyes ferocious with intelligence. Jacob finds himself as little able to evade the man’s gaze as a book can, of its own volition, evade the scrutiny of a reader. The silent observer twists his head, like a hunting dog listening to the sound of its prey.
After lunch on the 1st August, 1799
The cogs and levers of Time swell and buckle in the heat. In the stewed gloom, Jacob hears, almost, the sugar in its crates hissing into fused lumps. Come Auction Day, it shall be sold to the spice merchants for a pittance, or else, as well they know, it must be returned to the Shenandoah’s hold for a profitless return voyage back to the warehouses of Batavia. The clerk drains his cup of green tea. The bitter dregs make him wince and amplify his headache but sharpen his wits.
On a bed of clove-crates and hempen sacking, Hanzaburo lies asleep.
A slug-trail of mucus descends from his nostril to rocky Adam’s apple.
The scratch of Jacob’s quill is joined by a not dissimilar noise from a rafter.
It is a rhythmic scratting, soon overlain by a tiny, sawing squeak.
A he-rat, the young man realises, mounting his she-rat…
Listening, he becomes enwrapped by memories of women’s bodies.
These are not memories he is proud of, nor ones he ever discusses…
I dishonour Anna, Jacob thinks, by dwelling on such things.
… but the images dwell on him, and thicken his blood like arrowroot.
Concentrate, Donkey, the clerk orders himself, on the job at hand…
With difficulty, he returns to his pursuit of the fifty rix-dollars fleeing through thickets of forged receipts found in one of Daniel Snitker’s boots. He tries to pour some tea into his cup, but the pot is now empty. He calls out, ‘Hanzaburo?’
The boy does not stir. The rutting rats have fallen silent.
‘Hai!’ Long seconds later, the boy jolts upright. ‘Mr Dazûto?’
Jacob raises his ink-smudged cup. ‘Fetch more tea, please, Hanzaburo.’
Hanzaburo squints and rubs his head and blurts, ‘Hah?’
‘More tea, please.’ Jacob waggles his teapot. ‘O-cha.’
Hanzaburo sighs, heaves himself up, takes the teapot and plods away.
Jacob sharpens his quill, but within moments, his head is drooping…
… A hunchback dwarf stands silhouetted in the white glare of Bony Alley.
Gripped in his hairy hand is a club… no, it is a long joint of bony, bloodied pork.
Jacob lifts his heavy head. His stiff neck cricks.
The hunchback enters the warehouse, grunting and snuffling.
The joint of pork is, in fact, an amputated shin, with ankle and foot attached.
Nor is the hunchback a hunchback: it is William Pitt, the ape of Dejima.
Jacob jumps up and bangs his knee. The pain is prismatic.
William Pitt clambers up a tower of crates with his bloody prize.
‘How in God’s name,’ Jacob rubs his kneecap, ‘did you come by such a thing?’
There is no reply but the calm and steady breathing of the sea…
… and Jacob remembers: Dr Marinus was summoned to the Shenandoah yesterday where an Estonian seaman’s foot had been crushed by a fallen crate. Gangrenous wounds spoiling faster than milk in a Japanese August, the doctor prescribed the knife. The surgery is being performed today in the Hospital so his four students and some local scholars may watch the procedure. However improbably, William Pitt must have forced an entry and stolen the limb: what other explanation is there?
A second figure, momentarily blinded by the warehouse darkness, enters. His willowy chest is heaving with exertion. His blue kimono is covered with an artisan’s apron, spattered dark, and strands of hair have escaped from the headscarf that half conceals the right side of his face. Only when he steps into the shaft of light falling from the high window does Jacob see that the pursuer is a young woman.
Aside from the washerwomen and a few ‘aunts’ who serve at the Interpreters’ Guild, the only women permitted through the Land-Gate are prostitutes, who are hired for a night, or ‘wives’ who stay under the roofs of the better-paid officers for longer periods. These costly courtesans are attended by a maid: Jacob’s best guess is that the visitor is one such companion who wrestled with William Pitt for the stolen limb, failed to prise it from his grasp and chased the ape into the warehouse.
Voices – Dutch, Japanese, Malay – clatter down Long Street from the Hospital.
The doorway frames their outlines, brief as blinks, running down Bony Alley.
Jacob sifts his meagre Japanese vocabulary for any suitable items.
When she notices the red-haired, green-eyed foreigner she gasps with alarm.
‘Miss,’ implores Jacob in Dutch, ‘I – I – I – please don’t worry – I…’
The woman studies him and concludes that he is not much of a threat.
‘Bad monkey,’ she regains her composure, ‘steal foot.’
He nods at this first, and realises: ‘You speak Dutch, miss?’
Her shrug replies, A little. She says, ‘Bad monkey – enter here?’
‘Aye, aye. The hairy devil is up there.’ Jacob indicates William Pitt up on his crates. Wanting to impress the woman, he strides over. ‘William Pitt: unhand that leg. Give it to me. Give!’
The ape places the leg at his side, grips his rhubarb-pink penis and twangs it like a harpist in a madhouse, cackling through bared teeth. Jacob fears for his visitor’s modesty, but she turns aside to hide her laughter and, in doing so, reveals a burn covering much of the left side of her face. It is dark, blotched and, close-up, very conspicuous. How can a courtesan’s maid, Jacob wonders, earn a living with such a disfigurement? Too late, he is aware that she is watching him gawp. She pushes back her headscarf and thrusts her cheek towards Jacob. There, this gesture declares. Drink your fill!
‘I-’ Jacob is mortified. ‘Please forgive my rudeness, miss…’
Fearing she doesn’t understand, he holds a deep bow for the count of five.
The woman reties her headscarf and directs her attention to William Pitt. Ignoring Jacob, she addresses the ape in lilting Japanese.
The thief hugs the leg like a motherless daughter hugs a doll.
Determined to cut a better figure, Jacob approaches the tower of crates.
He jumps up on to an adjacent chest. ‘Listen to me, you flea-bitten slave-’
A warm and liquid whiplash, smelling of roast beef, flays his cheek.
In his effort to deflect the warm stream, he loses his balance…
… tumbles off the chest, heels over arse, and lands on the beaten earth.
Mortification, thinks Jacob, as the pain eases, requires at least a little pride…
The woman is leaning against Hanzaburo’s improvised cot.
… but I have no pride left, for I am pissed upon by William Pitt.
She is dabbing her eyes and shivering with near-silent laughter.
Anna laughs that way, Jacob thinks. Anna laughs that very way.
‘I sorry.’ She inhales deeply and her lips twitch. ‘Excuse my… lewdness?’
‘ “Rudeness”, miss.’ He goes to the water pail. ‘ “Rude”, with an “R”.’
‘ “Rewdness”,’ she repeats, ‘with an “R”. It is nothing funny.’
Jacob washes his face, but to rinse the monkey urine from his second-best linen shirt he must first remove it. To do so here is out of the question.
‘You wish,’ she hunts in a sleeve pocket, taking out a closed fan and putting it on a crate of raw sugar, before producing a square of paper, ‘wipe face?’
‘Most kind.’ Jacob takes it and dabs his brow and cheeks.
‘Trade with monkey,’ she suggests. ‘Trade thing for leg.’
Jacob gives the idea its due. ‘The beast is a slave to tobacco.’
‘Ta-ba-ko?’ She claps her hands once in resolve. ‘You have?’
Jacob hands her the last of his Javanese leaf in a leather pouch.
She dangles the bait from a broom-head level with William Pitt’s eyrie.
The ape reaches out; the woman sways it away, mumbling entreaties…
… before William Pitt lets go of the leg to seize his new prize.
The limb thumps to earth and stops dead at the woman’s foot. She gives Jacob a glance of triumph, discards the broom and takes up the amputated limb as casually as a farm-hand picking up a turnip. Its hacked-through bone pokes from the bloody sheath and its toes are grubby. Up above, the casement rattles: William Pitt has escaped through the window with his bounty, over the roofs of Long Street. ‘Tobacco is lose, sir,’ says the woman. ‘Very sorry.’
‘No matter, miss. You have your leg. Well, not your leg…’
Shouted questions and answers fly up and down Bony Alley.
Jacob and his visitor take a couple of steps back from each other.
‘Forgive me, miss, but… are you a courtesan’s maid?’
‘Kôchi – zanzu – meido?’ This baffles her. ‘What is?’
‘A… a…’ Jacob grasps for a substitute word ‘… a whore’s… helper.’
She lays the limb on a square of cloth. ‘Why horse need helper?’
A guard appears in the doorway; he sees the Dutchman, the young woman and the lost foot. He grins and shouts into Bony Alley, and within moments more guards, inspectors and officials arrive; followed by Deputy van Cleef; then Dejima’s strutting Constable Kosugi; Marinus’s assistant, Eelattu, his apron as bloodied as the burnt woman’s; Arie Grote and a Japanese merchant with darting eyes; several scholars; and Con Twomey carrying his carpenter’s rule and asking Jacob in English, ‘What’s that feckin’ smell about ye, man?’
Jacob remembers his half-restored ledger on the table, wide open for all to see. Hastily he conceals it, just as four youths arrive, each with the shaven heads of medical disciples and aprons like the burnt woman’s, and commence to fire questions at her. The clerk guesses these are Dr Marinus’s ‘seminarians’, and soon the intruders let the woman recount her story. She indicates the tower of crates where William Pitt clambered up and now gestures towards Jacob, who blushes as twenty or thirty heads look his way. She speaks her language with quiet self-possession. The clerk awaits the hilarity that must greet his dousing in ape-piss, but she omits the episode, it seems, and her narrative ends in nods of approval. Twomey leaves with the Estonian’s limb to fashion a wooden substitute of the same length.
‘I saw you,’ van Cleef snatches a guard’s sleeve, ‘you damned thief!’
A shower of bright red nutmeg berries spills across the floor.
‘Baert! Fischer! Show these blasted robbers out of our warehouse!’ The deputy makes herding motions towards the door, shouting, ‘Out! Out! Grote, frisk whoever looks suspicious – aye, just as they frisk us. De Zoet, watch our merchandise or it’ll sprout legs and walk.’
Jacob stands on a crate, the better to survey the departing visitors.
He sees the burnt maid step into the sunlit alley, assisting a frail scholar.
Contrary to his expectations, she turns and waves her hand.
Jacob is delighted by this secret acknowledgement and waves back.
No, he sees, she is sheltering her eyes from the sun…
Yawning, Hanzaburo enters, carrying a pot of tea.
You didn’t even ask her name, Jacob realises. Jacob de Bonehead.
He notices that she left behind the closed fan on the crate of raw sugar.
Storm-faced van Cleef leaves last, pushing past Hanzaburo, who stands at the threshold holding the pot of tea. Hanzaburo asks, ‘Thing happen?’
By midnight, the Chief’s Dining Room is foggy with pipe-smoke. The servants Cupido and Philander play ‘Apples of Delft’ on viol da gamba and flute.
‘President Adams is our “Shogun”, yes, Mr Goto,’ Captain Lacy flicks crumbs of pie-crust from his moustache, ‘but he was chosen by the American people. This is the point of democracy.’
The five interpreters exchange a cautious look Jacob now recognises.
‘Great lords, et cetera,’ Ogawa Uzaemon clarifies, ‘choose President?’
‘Not lords, no.’ Lacy picks his teeth. ‘Citizens. Every one of us.’
‘Even…’ Interpreter Goto’s eyes settle on Con Twomey ‘… carpenters?’
‘Carpenters, bakers,’ Lacy belches, ‘and candlestick makers.’
‘Do Washington’s and Jefferson’s slaves,’ ask Marinus, ‘also vote?’
‘No, Doctor,’ smiles Lacy. ‘Nor do their horses, oxen, bees or women.’
But what junior geisha, wonders Jacob, would wrestle an ape for a leg?
‘What if,’ asks Goto, ‘people make bad choice and President is bad man?’
‘Come the next election – four years, at most – we vote him out of office.’
‘Old President,’ Interpreter Hori is maroon with rum, ‘is executed?’
‘ “Elected”, Mr Hori,’ says Twomey. ‘When the people choose their leader.’
‘A better system, surely,’ Lacy holds his glass for van Cleef’s slave Weh to fill, ‘than waiting for death to remove a corrupt, stupid or insane Shogun?’
The interpreters look uneasy: no informer is fluent enough in Dutch to understand Captain Lacy’s treasonous talk, but there is no guarantee that the Magistracy has not recruited one of the four to report on his colleagues’ reactions.
‘Democracy,’ says Goto, ‘is not a flower who bloom in Japan, I think.’
‘Soil in Asia,’ agrees Interpreter Hori, ‘is not correct for Europe and America flowers.’
‘Mr Washington, Mr Adams,’ Interpreter Iwase shifts the topic, ‘is royal bloodline?’
‘Our revolution,’ Captain Lacy clicks his fingers to order the slave Ignatius to bring the spittoon, ‘in which I played my part, when my paunch was flatter, sought to purge America of royal bloodlines.’ He spews out a dragon of phlegm. ‘A man might be a great leader – like General Washington – but why does it follow that his children inherit their pa’s qualities? Are not inbred royals more often dunderheads and wastrels – proper “King Georges” one might say – than those who climb the world using God-given talent?’ He mumbles an aside in English to Dejima’s secret subject of the British monarch. ‘No offence intended, Mr Twomey.’
‘Now I’d be the last fecker here,’ avows the Irishman, ‘to take offence.’
Cupido and Philander strike up ‘Seven White Roses For My One True Love’.
Baert’s drunken head droops and settles in a plate of sweet beans.
Does her burn, Jacob wonders, register touch as heat, cold or numbness?
Marinus takes up his stick. ‘The party shall excuse me: I have left Eelattu rendering the Estonian’s shinbone. Without an expert eye, tallow shall be dripping from the ceiling. Mr Vorstenbosch, my compliments…’ He bows to the interpreters and limps out of the room.
‘Does the law of Japan,’ Captain Lacy’s smile is soapy, ‘permit polygamy?’
‘What is po-ri-ga-mi, Deputy?’ Hori stuffs a pipe. ‘Why need permit?’
‘You explain, Mr de Zoet,’ van Cleef is saying. ‘Words are your forte.’
‘Polygamy is…’ Jacob considers ‘… one husband, many wives.’
‘Ah. Oh.’ Hori grins and the other interpreters nod. ‘Polygamy.’
‘Mohammedans sanction four wives.’ Captain Lacy tosses an almond into the air and captures it in his mouth. ‘Chinese may round up seven under one roof. How many may a Japanese man lock up in his personal collection, eh?’
‘In all countries, same,’ says Hori. ‘In Japan, Holland, China; all same. I say why. All mans marry first wife. He’ – leering, Hori makes an obscene gesture with a fist and finger – ‘until she’ – he mimes a pregnant belly – ‘yes? After this, all mans keep number wives his purse says he may. Captain Lacy plans to have Dejima wife for trading season, like Mr Snitker and Mr van Cleef?’
‘I’d rather,’ Lacy bites a thumbnail, ‘visit the famous Maruyama District.’
‘Mr Hemmij,’ recalls Interpreter Yonekizu, ‘ordered courtesans for his feasts.’
‘Chief Hemmij,’ says Vorstenbosch, darkly, ‘partook of many pleasures at the Company’s expense, as did Mr Snitker. Hence, the latter dines on hard-tack tonight, whilst we enjoy the rewards of honest employees.’
Jacob glances at Ivo Oost: Ivo Oost is scowling at him.
Baert lifts his bean-spattered face, exclaims, ‘But, sir, she ain’t really my aunt!’, giggles like a schoolgirl and falls off his chair.
‘I propose a toast,’ declares Deputy van Cleef, ‘to all our absent ladies.’
The drinkers and diners fill one another’s glasses. ‘To all our absent ladies!’
‘Especial,’ gasps Hori, as the gin burns his gullet, ‘to Mr Ogawa here. Mr Ogawa, he marry this year a beauty wife.’ Hori’s elbow is covered with rhubarb mousse. ‘Each night’ – he mimes riding a horse – ‘three, four, five gallopings!’
The laughter is raucous but Ogawa’s smile is weak.
‘You ask a starved man,’ Gerritszoon answers, ‘to drink to a glutton.’
‘Mr Gerritszoon want girl?’ Hori is solicitude personified. ‘My servant fetch. Say you want. Fat? Tight? Tiger? Baby cat? Gentle sister?’
‘We’d all like a gentle sister,’ complains Arie Grote, ‘but what o’ the money, eh? A man could buy a brothel in Siam for a tumble with a Nagasaki doxy. Is there no case, Mr Vorstenbosch, for the Company providin’ a subsidy, eh, in this quarter? Consider poor Oost: on his official wages, sir, a little… feminine consolation, eh, would cost him a year’s wages.’
‘A diet of abstinence,’ replies Vorstenbosch, ‘never hurt anyone.’
‘But, sir, what vices might a red-blooded Dutchman be pushed to without a conduit for the, eh, unloosin’ o’ Nature’s urges?’
‘You miss your wife, Mr Grote,’ Hori asks, ‘at home in Holland?’
‘ “South of Gibraltar”,’ quotes Captain Lacy, ‘ “all men are bachelors.” ’
‘Nagasaki’s latitude,’ says Fischer, ‘is, of course, well north of Gibraltar.’
‘I never knew,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘you were a married man, Grote.’
‘He’d as soon not,’ Ouwehand explains, ‘hear the subject raised, sir.’
‘A mooing West Frieslander slut, sir.’ The cook licks his brown incisors. ‘When I consider her at all, Mr Hori, ’tis to pray the Ottomans’ll storm West Friesland an’ make off with the bitch.’
‘If not like wife,’ asks Interpreter Yonekizu, ‘why not do divorce?’
‘Easier said than done, sir,’ Grote sighs, ‘in the so-called Christian lands.’
‘So why marry,’ Hori coughs out tobacco smoke, ‘at first place?’
‘Oh, ’tis a long an’ sorry saga, Mr Hori, what’d not be of interest to-’
‘On Mr Grote’s last trip home,’ obliges Ouwehand, ‘he wooed a promising young heiress at her town-house in Roomolenstraat who told him how her heirless, ailing papa yearned to see his dairy farm in the hands of a gentleman son-in-law, yet everywhere, she lamented, were thieving rascals posing as eligible bachelors. Mr Grote agreed that the Sea of Courtship seethes with sharks, and spoke of the prejudice endured by the young colonial parvenu, as if the annual fortunes yielded by his plantations in Sumatra were less worthy than old monies. The turtledoves were wedded within a week. The day after their nuptials, the taverner presented the bill and each says to the other, “Settle the account, my Heart’s Music.” But to their genuine horror, neither could, for bride and groom alike had spent their last beans on wooing the other! Mr Grote’s Sumatran plantations evaporated; the Roomolenstraat house reverted to a co-conspirator’s stage prop; the ailing father-in-law turned out to be a beer-porter in rude health, not heirless but hairless, and-’
A belch erupts from Lacy. ‘Pardon: ’twas the Devilled Eggs.’
‘Deputy van Cleef?’ Goto is alarmed. ‘Do Ottomans invade Holland? This news is not in recentest fusetsuki report…’
‘Mr Grote,’ van Cleef brushes his napkin, ‘spoke in jest, sir.’
‘In jest?’ The earnest young interpreter frowns and blinks. ‘In jest…’
Cupido and Philander are playing a languid air by Boccherini.
‘One grows despondent,’ ruminates Vorstenbosch, ‘to think that, unless Edo authorises an increase in the copper quota, these rooms shall fall for ever silent.’
Yonekizu and Hori grimace; Goto and Ogawa wear blank faces.
Most of the Dutchmen have asked Jacob whether the extraordinary ultimatum is a bluff. He told each to ask the Chief Resident, knowing that none of them would. Having lost last season’s cargo aboard the doomed Octavia, many would be returning to Batavia poorer men than when they left.
‘Who was that bizarre female,’ van Cleef squeezes a lemon into a Venetian glass, ‘in Warehouse Doorn?’
‘Miss Aibagawa,’ says Goto, ‘is daughter of doctor and scholar.’
Aibagawa. Jacob handles each syllable in turn. Ai-ba-ga-wa…
‘The Magistrate give permission,’ says Iwase, ‘to study under Dutch doctor.’
And I called her a ‘whore’s helper’, remembers Jacob, and winces.
‘What a bizarre Locusta,’ says Fischer, ‘to be at ease in a surgery.’
‘The fairer sex,’ objects Jacob, ‘can show as much resilience as the uglier one.’
‘Mr de Zoet must publish,’ the Prussian picks his nose, ‘his dazzling epigrams.’
‘Miss Aibagawa,’ states Ogawa, ‘is a midwife. She is used to blood.’
‘But I understood,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘a woman was forbidden to set foot on Dejima, without she be a courtesan, her maid or one of the old crones at the Guild.’
‘It is forbidden,’ affirms Yonekizu, indignantly. ‘No precedent. Never.’
‘Miss Aibagawa,’ Ogawa speaks up, ‘work hard as midwife, both for rich customers and poor persons who cannot pay. Recently, she deliver Magistrate Shiroyama’s son. Birth was hard, and other doctor renounce, but she persevere and succeed. Magistrate Shiroyama was joyful. He gives Miss Aibagawa one wish for reward. Wish is, study under Dr Marinus on Dejima. So, Magistrate kept promise.’
‘Woman study in Hospital,’ declares Yonekizu, ‘is not good thing.’
‘Yet she held the blood-basin steady,’ says Con Twomey, ‘spoke good Dutch with Dr Marinus, and chased an ape while her male classmates looked seasick.’
I would ask a dozen questions, Jacob thinks, if I dared: a dozen dozen.
‘Doesn’t a girl,’ asks Ouwehand, ‘arouse the boys in troublesome places?’
‘Not with that slice of bacon,’ Fischer swirls his gin, ‘stuck to her face.’
‘Those are ungallant words, Mr Fischer,’ says Jacob. ‘They shame you.’
‘One cannot pretend it isn’t there, de Zoet! We’d call her a “tapping cane” in my home-town because, of course, only a blind man would touch her.’
Jacob imagines smashing the Prussian’s jaw with the Delft jug.
A candle collapses; wax slides down the candlestick; the dribble hardens.
‘I am sure,’ says Ogawa, ‘Miss Aibagawa one day make joyful marriage.’
‘What’s the one sure cure for love?’ asks Grote. ‘Marriage is, is what.’
A moth careers into a candle flame; it drops to the table, flapping.
‘Poor Icarus.’ Ouwehand crushes it with his tankard. ‘Won’t you ever learn?’
Night insects trill, tick, bore, ring; drill, prick, saw, sting.
Hanzaburo snores in the cubby-hole outside Jacob’s door.
Jacob lies awake clad in a sheet, under a tent of netting.
Ai, mouth opens; ba, lips meet; ga, tongue’s root; wa, lips.
Involuntarily, he re-enacts today’s scene over and over.
He cringes at the boorish figure he cut, and vainly edits the script.
He opens the fan she left in Warehouse Doorn. He fans himself.
The paper is white. The handle and struts are made of paulownia wood.
A watchman smacks his wooden clappers to mark the Japanese hour.
The yeasty moon is caged in his half-Japanese half-Dutch window…
… Glass panes melt the moonlight; paper panes filter it, to chalk dust.
Daybreak must be near. 1796’s ledgers are waiting in Warehouse Doorn.
It is dear Anna whom I love, Jacob recites, and I whom Anna loves.
Beneath his glaze of sweat he sweats. His bed linen is sodden.
Miss Aibagawa is as untouchable, he thinks, as a woman in a picture…
Jacob imagines he can hear a harpsichord.
… spied through a keyhole in a cottage happened upon once in a lifetime…
The notes are spidery and starlit and spun from glass.
Jacob can hear a harpsichord: it is the doctor, playing in his long attic.
Night silence and a freak of conductivity permit Jacob this privilege: Marinus rejects all requests to play, even for scholar friends or visiting nobility.
The music provokes a sharp longing the music soothes.
How can such a prig, wonders Jacob, play with such divinity?
Night insects trill, tick, bore, ring; drill, prick, saw, sting…
Very early on the morning of the 10th August, 1799
Light bleeds in around the casements: Jacob navigates the archipelago of stains across the low wooden ceiling. Outside, the slaves d’Orsaiy and Ignatius are talking as they feed the animals. Jacob recalls Anna’s birthday party a few days prior to his departure. Her father had invited half a dozen eminently eligible young men and given a sumptuous dinner prepared so artfully that the chicken tasted of fish and the fish of chicken. His ironic toast was to ‘the fortunes of Jacob de Zoet, Merchant Prince of the Indies ’. Anna rewarded Jacob’s forbearance with a smile: her fingers stroked the necklace of Swedish white amber he had brought her from Gothenburg.
On the far side of the world, Jacob sighs with longing and regret.
Unexpectedly, Hanzaburo calls out, ‘Mr Dazûto want thing?’
‘Nothing, no. It’s early, Hanzaburo: go back to sleep.’ Jacob imitates a snore.
‘Pig? Want pig? Ah ah ah, surîpu! Yes… yes, I like surîpu…’
Jacob gets up and drinks from a cracked jug, then rubs soap into lather.
His green eyes watch him from the freckled face in the speckled glass.
The blunt blade tears his stubble and nicks the cleft in his chin.
A tear of blood, red as tulips, oozes out, mixes with soap and foams pink.
Jacob considers how a beard would save all this trouble…
… but recalls his sister Geertje’s verdict when he returned from England with a short-lived moustache. ‘Ooh, dab it in lampblack, brother; and polish our boots!’
He touches his nose, recently adjusted by the disgraced Snitker.
The nick by his ear is a memento of a certain dog that bit him.
When shaving, thinks Jacob, a man rereads his truest memoir.
Tracing his lip with his finger, he recalls the very morning of his departure. Anna had persuaded her father to take them both to Rotterdam wharf in his carriage. ‘Three minutes,’ he had told Jacob as he climbed out of the carriage to speak to the head clerk, ‘and no more.’ Anna knew what to say. ‘Five years is a long time, but most women wait a lifetime before finding a kind and honest man.’ Jacob had tried to reply, but she had silenced him. ‘I know how men overseas behave and, perhaps, how they must behave – shush, Jacob de Zoet – so all I ask is that you are careful in Java, that your heart is mine alone. I shan’t give you a ring or locket because rings and lockets can be lost, but this, at least, cannot be lost…’ Anna kissed him for the first and last time. It was a long, sad kiss. They watched rain stream down the windows, the boats, and the shale-grey sea, until it was time to go…
Jacob’s shave is finished. He wipes his face, dresses and polishes an apple.
Miss Aibagawa, he bites the fruit, is a scholar, not a courtesan…
From the window, he watches d’Orsaiy water the runner beans.
… illicit rendezvous, much less illicit romances, are impossible here.
He eats the core and spits out the pips on to the back of his hand.
I just want to converse, Jacob is sure, and know a little more about her…
He takes the chain from his neck and turns the key in his sea-chest.
Friendship can exist between the sexes: as with my sister and I.
An enterprising fly buzzes over his urine in the chamber pot.
He digs down, nearly as far as his Psalter, and finds the bound folio.
Jacob unfastens the volume’s ribbons and studies the first page of music.
The notes of the luminous sonatas hang like grapes from the staves.
Jacob’s sight-reading skills end with the Hymnal of the Reformed Church.
Perhaps today, he thinks, is a day to mend bridges with Dr Marinus…
Jacob takes a short walk around Dejima, where all walks are short, to polish his plan and hone his script. Gulls and crows bicker on the ridge of Garden House.
In the garden, the cream roses and red lilies are past their best.
Bread is being delivered by provedores at the Land-Gate.
In Flag Square, Peter Fischer sits on the Watchtower’s steps. ‘Lose an hour in the morning, Clerk de Zoet,’ the Prussian calls down, ‘and you search for it all day.’
In van Cleef’s upper window, the Deputy’s latest ‘wife’ combs her hair.
She smiles at Jacob; Melchior van Cleef, his chest hairy as a bear’s, appears.
‘ “Thou Shalt Not”,’ he quotes, ‘ “Dip Thy Nib in Another Man’s Inkwell.” ’
The Deputy Chief slides shut the shoji window before Jacob can protest his innocence.
Outside the Interpreters’ Guild, palanquin bearers squat in the shadows. Their eyes follow the red-haired foreigner as he passes.
Up on the Sea Wall, William Pitt gazes at the whale-rib clouds.
By the Kitchen, Arie Grote tells him, ‘Yer bamboo hat makes yer look like a Chinaman, Mr de Z. Have yer not considered-’
‘No,’ says the clerk, and walks on.
Constable Kosugi nods at Jacob outside his small house on Sea Wall Lane.
The slaves Ignatius and Weh row in heated Malay as they milk the goats.
Ivo Oost and Wybo Gerritszoon throw a ball to one another, in silence.
‘Bow-wow,’ one of them says as Jacob passes: he decides not to hear.
Con Twomey and Ponke Ouwehand smoke their pipes under the pines.
‘Some blue-blood,’ sniffs Ouwehand, ‘has died in Miyako, so hammering and music are forbidden for two days. There’ll be little work done anywhere, not just here but throughout the Empire. Van Cleef swears it’s a stratagem to postpone the rebuilding of Warehouse Lelie so we’ll be more desperate to sell…’
I am not polishing my plan, Jacob admits. I am losing my nerve…
In the Surgery, Dr Marinus is lying flat on the operating table with his eyes closed. He hums a baroque melody inside his hoggish neck.
Eelattu brushes his master’s jowls with scented oil and feminine delicacy.
Steam rises from a bowl of water; light is sliced on the bright razor.
On the floor, a toucan pecks beans from a pewter saucer.
Plums are piled in a terracotta dish, blue-dusted indigo.
Eelattu announces Jacob’s arrival in murmured Malay, and Marinus opens one displeased eye. ‘What?’
‘I should like to consult with you on a… certain matter.’
‘Continue shaving, Eelattu. Consult, then, Domburger.’
‘I’d be more comfortable in private, Doctor, as-’
‘Eelattu is “private”. On our little paradise, his grasp of anatomy and pathology is second only to mine. Unless it is the toucan you mistrust?’
‘Well, then…’ Jacob sees he must rely on the servant’s discretion as well as Marinus’s. ‘I’m a little curious about one of your students…’
‘What business have you’ – his other eye opens – ‘with Miss Aibagawa?’
‘None at all: I just… wished to converse with her…’
‘Then why are you here, conversing with me instead?’
‘… to converse with her without a dozen spies looking on.’
‘Ah. Ah. Ah. So you wish me to bring about an assignation?’
‘That word smacks of intrigue, Doctor, which would not-’
‘The answer is “Never”. Reason the first: Miss Aibagawa is no rented Eve to scratch your itch of Adam, but a gentleman’s daughter. Reason the second: even were Miss Aibagawa “available” as a Dejima wife, which, emphatically, she is not -’
‘I know all this, Doctor, and upon my honour, I didn’t come here to-’
‘- which she is not, then spies would report the liaison within a half-hour, whereupon my hard-won rights to teach, botanise and scholarise around Nagasaki would be withdrawn. So be gone. Deflate your testicles comme à la mode: via the village pimp or Sin of Onan.’
The toucan taps the dish of beans and utters ‘Raw!’ or a word very similar.
‘Sir,’ Jacob blushes, ‘you grievously misjudge my intentions: I’d never-’
‘It is not even Miss Aibagawa after whom you lust, in truth. It is the genus, “The Oriental Woman” who so infatuates you. Yes, yes, the mysterious eyes, the camellias in her hair, what you perceive as meekness. How many hundreds of you besotted white men have I seen mired in the same syrupy hole?’
‘You are wrong, for once, Doctor. There’s no-’
‘Naturally, I am wrong: Domburger ’s adoration for his Pearl of the East is based on chivalry: behold the disfigured damsel, spurned by her own race! Behold our Occidental Knight, who alone divines her inner beauty!’
‘Good day.’ Jacob is too bruised to endure any more. ‘Good day.’
‘Leaving so soon? Without even offering that bribe under your arm?’
‘Not a bribe,’ he half lies, ‘but a gift from Batavia. I had hopes – vain and foolish ones, I now see – of establishing a friendship with the celebrated Dr Marinus, and so Hendrik Zwaardecroone of the Batavian Society recommended me to bring you some sheet music. But I see now that an ignorant clerk is beneath your august notice. I shall trouble you no more.’
Marinus scrutinises Jacob. ‘What sort of a gift is it that the giver doesn’t offer until he wants something from the intended recipient?’
‘I tried to give it to you at our first meeting. You slammed a trapdoor on me.’
Eelattu dips the razor in water and wipes it on a sheet of paper.
‘Irascibility,’ the doctor admits, ‘occasionally gets the better of me.’
‘Who is’ – Marinus flicks a finger at the folio – ‘the composer?’
Jacob reads the title page: ‘ “Domenico Scarlatti’s Chefs-d’oeuvre, for the Harpsichord or Piano-Forte; Selected from an Elegant collection of Manuscripts in the Possession of Muzio Clementi… London, and to be had at Mr Broadwood’s Harpsichord Maker, in Great Pulteney Street, Golden Square.” ’
Dejima’s rooster crows. Noisy feet tromp down Long Street.
‘Domenico Scarlatti, is it? He has flown a long way to be here.’
Marinus’s indifference, Jacob suspects, is too airy to be genuine.
‘He shall fly a long way back.’ He turns. ‘I incommode you no longer.’
‘Oh, wait, Domburger: sulking doesn’t suit you. Miss Aibagawa-’
‘- is no courtesan: I know. I don’t view her in that light.’ Jacob would tell Marinus about Anna, but he doesn’t trust the doctor enough to unlock his heart.
‘Then in what light,’ Marinus probes, ‘do you see her?’
‘As a…’ Jacob searches for the right metaphor ‘… as a book whose cover fascinates, and in whose pages I desire to look, a little. Nothing more.’
A draught nudges open the creaking door of the two-bed Sick Room.
‘Then I propose the following bargain: return here by three o’clock and you may have twenty minutes in the Sick Room to peruse what pages Miss Aibagawa cares to show you – but the door remains open throughout, and should you treat her with one dram less respect than you would your own sister, Domburger, my vengeance shall be Biblical.’
‘Thirty seconds per sonata hardly represents good value.’
‘Then you and your sometime gift know where the door is.’
‘No bargain. Good day.’ Jacob leaves and blinks in the steepening sunlight.
He walks down Long Street to Garden House and waits in its shade.
The cicadas’ songs are fierce and primal on this hot morning.
Over by the pine trees, Twomey and Ouwehand are laughing.
But dear Jesus in Heaven, thinks Jacob, I am lonely in this place.
Eelattu is not sent after him. Jacob returns to the Hospital.
‘We have a deal, then.’ Marinus’s shave is finished. ‘But my seminarian’s spy must be blind-sided. My lecture this afternoon is on Human Respiration, which I intend to illustrate via a practical demonstration. I’ll have Vorstenbosch loan you as a demonstrator.’
Jacob finds himself saying, ‘Agreed…’
‘Congratulations.’ Marinus wipes his hands. ‘Maestro Scarlatti, if I may?’
‘… but your fee is payable upon delivery.’
‘Oh? My word as a gentleman is not enough?’
‘Until a quarter to three, then, Doctor.’
Fischer and Ouwehand fall silent as Jacob enters the Records Office.
‘Pleasant and cool,’ says the newcomer, ‘in here, at least.’
‘I,’ Ouwehand declares to Fischer, ‘find it heated and oppressive.’
Fischer snorts like a horse and retires to his desk: the highest one.
Jacob puts on his glasses at the shelf housing the current decade’s ledgers.
He returned the 1793 to 1798 accounts yesterday; now they are missing.
Jacob looks at Ouwehand; Ouwehand nods at Fischer’s hunched back.
‘Would you know where the ’ninety-three to ’ninety-eight ledgers are, Mr Fischer?’
‘I know where everything is in my office.’
‘Then would you kindly tell me where to find the ’ninety-three to ’ninety-eight ledgers?’
‘Why do you need them,’ Fischer looks around, ‘exactly?’
‘To carry out the duties assigned to me by Chief Resident Vorstenbosch.’
Ouwehand hums a nervous bar of the Prinsenlied.
‘Errors,’ Fischer gnashes his words, ‘here’ – the Prussian thumps the pile of ledgers in front of him – ‘occur not because we unfrauded the Company’ – his Dutch deteriorates – ‘but because Snitker forbade us to keep proper ledgers.’
Long-sighted Jacob removes his glasses to dissolve Fischer’s face.
‘Who has accused you of defrauding the Company, Mr Fischer?’
‘I am sick – do you hear? Sick! – of the… of the never-ending inference!’
Lethargic waves die on the other side of the Sea Wall.
‘Why does the Chief,’ demands Fischer, ‘not instruct I to repair the ledgers?’
‘Is it not logical to appoint an auditor unconnected with Snitker’s regime?’
‘So I, too, am an embezzler, now?’ Fischer’s nostrils dilate. ‘You admit it! You plot against us all! I dare you to deny it!’
‘All the Chief wants,’ says Jacob, ‘is one version of the truth.’
‘My powers of logic,’ Fischer waves an erect index finger at Jacob, ‘destroy your lie! I warn you, in Surinam I shot more Blacks than Clerk de Zoet can count on his abacus. Attack me, and I crush you under my foot. So here,’ the ill-tempered Prussian deposits the pile of ledgers in Jacob’s hands. ‘Sniff for “errors”. I go to Mr van Cleef to discuss – to make a profit for the Company this season!’
Fischer rams on his hat and leaves, slamming the door.
‘It’s a compliment, in a way,’ says Ouwehand. ‘You make him nervous.’
I just want to do my job, Jacob thinks. ‘Nervous about what?’
‘Ten dozen boxes marked “Kumamoto Camphor” loaded in ’ninety-six and ’ninety-seven.’
‘Were they something other than Kumamoto Camphor?’
‘No, but page fourteen of our ledgers lists twelve-pound boxes: the Japanese records, as Ogawa can tell you, list thirty-six-pounders.’ Ouwehand goes to the water pitcher. ‘At Batavia,’ he continues, ‘one Johannes van der Broeck, a Customs officer, sells the excess: the son-in-law of Chairman van der Broeck of the Council of the Indies. It’s a swindle as sweet as honey. A cup of water?’
‘Yes, please.’ Jacob drinks. ‘And this you tell me because…’
‘Blank self-interest: Mr Vorstenbosch is here for five whole years, no?’
‘Yes,’ Jacob lies, because he must. ‘I shall serve my contract with him.’
A fat fly traces a lazy oval through light and shadow.
‘When Fischer wakes up to the fact that it’s Vorstenbosch and not van Cleef he must wed and bed, he’ll stick a knife into my back.’
‘With what knife,’ Jacob sees the next question, ‘might he do that?’
‘Can you promise,’ Ouwehand scratches his neck, ‘I shan’t be Snitkered?’
‘I promise,’ power has an unpleasant taste, ‘to tell Mr Vorstenbosch that Ponke Ouwehand is a helper and not a hinderer.’
Ouwehand weighs Jacob’s sentence. ‘Last year’s private sales records will show that I brought in fifty bolts of Indian Chintz. The Japanese private sales accounts, however, shall show me selling one hundred and fifty. Of the surplus, Captain Hofstra of the Octavia commandeered half, though of course I can’t prove that; and neither can he, God grant mercy to his drowned soul.’
‘A helper,’ the fat fly settles on Jacob’s blotter, ‘not a hinderer, Mr Ouwehand.’
Dr Marinus’s students arrive at three o’clock precisely.
The Sick Room door is ajar, but Jacob cannot see into the Surgery.
Four male voices chorus, ‘Good afternoon, Dr Marinus.’
‘Today, Seminarians,’ says Marinus, ‘we have a practical experiment. Whilst Eelattu and I prepare this, each of you shall study a different Dutch text, and translate it into Japanese. My friend Dr Maeno has agreed to inspect your handiwork later this week. The paragraphs are relevant to your interests: to Mr Muramoto, our bonesetter-in-chief, I proffer Albinus’s Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani; Mr Kajiwaki, a passage on cancer from Jean-Louis Petit, who lends his name to the trigonum Petiti which is what and where?’
‘Muscle hole in back, Doctor.’
‘Mr Yano, you have Dr Olof Acrel, my old master at Uppsala; his essay on cataracts I translated from the Swedish. For Mr Ikematsu, a page of Lorenz Heister’s Chirurgie on disorders of the skin… and Miss Aibagawa shall peruse the admirable Dr Smellie. This passage, however, is problematical. In the Sick Room awaits the volunteer for today’s demonstration, who may assist you on matters of Dutch vocabulary…’ Marinus’s lumpish head appears around the door-frame. ‘Domburger! I present Miss Aibagawa, and urge you, Orate ne intretis in tentationem.’
Miss Aibagawa recognises the red-haired green-eyed foreigner.
‘Good afternoon,’ his throat is dry, ‘Miss Aibagawa.’
‘Good afternoon,’ her voice is clear, ‘Mr… “Dom-bugger”?’
‘ “Domburger” is… is the doctor’s little joke. My name is de Zoet.’
She lowers her writing desk: a tray with legs. ‘ “Dom-bugger” is funny joke?’
‘Dr Marinus thinks so: my home-town is called “Domburg”.’
She makes an unconvinced rising mmm noise. ‘Mr de Zoet is sick?’
‘Oh – that is to say – a little, yes. I have a pain in…’ He pats his abdomen.
‘Stools like water?’ The midwife assumes control. ‘Bad smell?’
‘No.’ Jacob is thrown by her directness. ‘The pain is in my – in my liver.’
‘Your’ – she enunciates the l with great care – ‘liver?’
‘Just so: my liver pains me. I trust that Miss Aibagawa is well?’
‘Yes, I am quite well. I trust that your friend monkey is well?’
‘My – oh, William Pitt? My monkey friend is – well, he is no more.’
‘I am sorry not to understand. Monkey is… no more what?’
‘No more alive. I -’ Jacob mimes breaking a chicken’s neck ‘- killed the rascal, you see; tanned his hide and turned him into a new tobacco pouch.’
Her mouth and eyes open in horror.
If Jacob had a pistol, he would shoot himself. ‘I joke, miss! The monkey is happy and alive and well, shooling, somewhere – thieving, that is…’
‘Correct, Mr Muramoto.’ Marinus’s voice travels from the surgery. ‘First one boils away the subcutaneous fat, and after, injects the veins with coloured wax…’
‘Shall we…’ Jacob curses his misfired joke ‘… open your text?’
She is wondering how this can be done at a safe distance.
‘Miss Aibagawa could seat herself there.’ He points to the end of the bed. ‘Read your text aloud, and when you meet a difficult word we shall discuss it.’
She nods that the arrangement is satisfactory, sits and begins reading.
Van Cleef’s courtesan speaks at a shrill pitch, apparently considered to be feminine, but Miss Aibagawa’s reading voice is lower, quieter and calming. Jacob blesses this excuse to study her part-burnt face and her careful lips… ‘ “Soon after this occ-u-rrence”…’ She looks up. ‘What is, please?’
‘An occurrence would be a – a happening, or an event.’
‘Thank you. ”… this occurrence, in consulting Ruysch about every thing he had writ concerning women… I found him exclaiming against the premature extraction of the placenta and his authority confirmed the opinion I had already adopted… and induced me a more natural way of proceeding. When I have separated the Funis… and given away the child… I introduce my finger into the vagina… ” ’
In all his life, Jacob has never heard this word spoken aloud.
She senses his shock and looks up, half alarmed. ‘I mistake?’
Dr Lucas Marinus, Jacob thinks, you sadistic monster. ‘No,’ he says.
Frowning, she finds her place again: ‘ ”… to feel if the placenta is at the os uteri… and if this is the case… I am sure it will come down of itself in any rate… I wait for some time, and commonly in ten, fifteen or twenty minutes… the woman begins to be seized with some after-pains… which gradually separate and force it along… but pulling gently at the funis, it descends into the -” ’ she glances up at Jacob ‘ “- vagina. Then, taking hold of it, I bring it through the… the os externum.” There.’ She looks up. ‘I finish sentences. Liver is making much pain?’
‘Dr Smellie’s language,’ Jacob swallows, ‘is rather… direct.’
She frowns. ‘Dutch is foreign language. Words do not have same… power, smell, blood. Midwife is my…’ she frowns ‘… “vacation” or “vocation” – which?’
‘ “Vocation”, I hazard, Miss Aibagawa.’
‘Midwife is my vocation. Midwife who fear blood is not helpful.’
‘Distal phalanx,’ comes Marinus’s voice, ‘middle and proximal phalanxes…’
‘Twenty years ago,’ Jacob decides to tell her, ‘when my sister was born, the midwife couldn’t stop my mother bleeding. My job was to heat water in the kitchen.’ He is afraid he is boring her, but Miss Aibagawa watches him with calm attention. ‘If only I can heat enough water, I thought, my mother will live. I was wrong, I’m sorry to say.’ Now Jacob frowns, uncertain why he raised this personal matter.
A large wasp settles on the broad foot of the bed.
Miss Aibagawa produces a square of paper from her kimono’s sleeve. Jacob, aware of Oriental beliefs in the ascent of the soul from bedbug to saint, waits for her to guide the wasp out through the high window. Instead, she crushes it in the paper, scrunches it into a little ball and, with perfect aim, tosses it through the window. ‘Your sister, too, have red hair and green eyes?’
‘Her hair is redder than mine, to our uncle’s embarrassment.’
This is another new word for her. ‘ “Am-bass-a-ment”?’
Remember to ask Ogawa for the Japanese word later, he thinks. ‘ “Embarrassment”, or shame.’
‘Why uncle feel shame because sister has red hair?’
‘According to common people’s belief – or superstition – you understand?’
‘Meishin in Japanese. Doctor call it, “Enemy of Reason”.’
‘According to superstition, then, Jezebels – that is, women of loose virtue – that is, prostitutes – are thought to have, and are depicted as having, red hair.’
‘ “Loose virtue”? “Prostitutes”? Like “courtesan” and “whore’s helper”?’
‘Forgive me for that.’ Jacob’s ears roar. ‘Now the embarrassment is mine.’
Her smile is both nettle and dock leaf. ‘Mr de Zoet’s sister is honourable girl?’
‘Geertje is a… very dear sister; she is kind, patient and clever.’
‘Metacarpals,’ the doctor is demonstrating, ‘and here, the cunning carpals…’
‘Miss Aibagawa,’ Jacob dares to ask, ‘belongs to a large family?’
‘Family was large, is small now. Father, father’s new wife, father’s new wife’s son.’ She hesitates. ‘Mother, brothers and sisters died, of cholera. Much years ago. Much die that time. Not just my family. Much, much suffer.’
‘Yet your vocation – midwifery, I mean – is… an art of life.’
A wisp of black hair is escaped from her headscarf: Jacob wants it.
‘At old days,’ says Miss Aibagawa, ‘long ago, before great bridges built over wide rivers, travellers often drowned. People said, “Die because river god angry.” People not said, “Die because big bridges not yet invented.” People not say, “People die because we have ignoration too much.” But one day, clever ancestors observe spiders’ webs, weave bridges of vines. Or see trees, fallen over fast rivers, and make stones islands in wide rivers, and lay from islands to islands. They build such bridges. People no longer drown in same dangerous river, or many less people. So far, my poor Dutch is understand?’
‘Perfectly,’ Jacob assures her. ‘Every word.’
‘Nowdays, in Japan, when mother, or baby, or mother and baby die in childbirth, people say, “Ah… they die because gods decide so.” Or, “They die because bad karma.” Or, “They die because o-mamori – magic from temple – too cheap.” Mr de Zoet understand, it is same as bridge. True reason of many, many death of ignoration. I wish to build bridge from ignoration,’ her tapering hands form the bridge, ‘to knowledge. This,’ she lifts, with reverence, Dr Smellie’s text, ‘is piece of bridge. One day, I teach this knowledge… make school… students who teach other students… and in future, in Japan, many less mothers die of ignoration.’ She surveys her daydream for just a moment before lowering her eyes. ‘A foolish plan.’
‘No, no, no. I cannot imagine a nobler aspiration.’
‘Sorry…’ she frowns ‘… what is “noble respiration”?’
‘Aspiration, miss: a plan, I mean to say. A goal in life.’
‘Ah…’ a white butterfly lands on her hand ‘… a goal in life.’
She puffs it away; it flies up to a bronze candle on a shelf.
The butterfly closes and opens and closes and opens its wings.
‘Name is monshiro,’ she says, ‘in Japanese.’
‘In Zeeland, we call the same butterfly Cabbage-white. My uncle-’
‘ “Life is short; the art, long.” ’ Dr Marinus enters the Sick Room like a limping, grey-haired comet. ‘ “Opportunity is fleeting; experience-” and, Miss Aibagawa? To conclude our first Hippocratic Aphorism?’
‘ “Experience is fallacious,” ’ she stands and bows, ‘ “judgement difficult.” ’
‘All too true.’ He beckons in his other students, whom Jacob half recognises from Warehouse Doorn. ‘Domburger, behold my seminarians: Mr Muramoto of Edo…’ the eldest and dourest, bows ‘… Mr Kajiwaki, sent by the Chôshu Court of Hagi…’ A smiling youth not yet grown into his ropy body bows. ‘Next is Mr Yano of Osaka…’ Yano peers at Jacob’s green eyes ‘… and, lastly, Mr Ikematsu, native son of Satsuma.’ Ikematsu, pocked by childhood scrofula, gives a cheerful bow. ‘Seminarians: Domburger is our brave volunteer today; please greet him.’
A chorus of ‘Good day, Domburger’ fills the whitewashed Sick Room.
Jacob cannot believe his allotted minutes have passed so soon.
Marinus produces a metal cylinder about eight inches in length.
It has a plunger at one end and a nozzle at the other. ‘This is, Mr Muramoto?’
The elderly-looking youth replies, ‘It is call glister, Doctor.’
‘A glister.’ Marinus grips Jacob’s shoulder. ‘Mr Kajiwaki: to apply our glister?’
‘Insert to rectum, and in-jure… no, in-pact… no, aaa nan’dattaka? In-…’
‘-ject,’ prompts Ikematsu, in a comic stage-whisper.
‘- inject medicine for constipation, or pain of gut, or many other ailment.’
‘So we do, so we do; and, Mr Yano, where lies the advantage in anally ministered medicines over their orally ministered counterparts?’
After the male students have distinguished ‘anal’ from ‘oral’, Yano responds, ‘Body more quick absorb medicine.’
‘Good.’ Marinus’s slight smile is menacing. ‘Now. Who knows the smoke glister?’
The male seminarians confer without including Miss Aibagawa. At length, Muramoto says, ‘We do not know, Doctor.’
‘Nor could you, gentlemen: the smoke glister has never been seen in Japan until this hour. Eelattu, if you please!’ Marinus’s assistant enters, carrying a leather tube as long as a forearm and a deep-bellied, lit pipe. The tube he hands to his master, who flourishes it like a wayside performer. ‘Our smoke glister, gentlemen, possesses a valve in its midriff, here, into which the leather tube is inserted, here, via which the cylinder can be filled with smoke. Please, Eelattu…’ The Ceylonese inhales smoke from the pipe and exhales it into the leather tube. ‘ “Intussusception” is the ailment for which this instrument is the cure. Let us speak its name together, seminarians, for who can cure what he cannot pronounce? “In-tus-sus-cep-tion!” ’ He waves one finger like a conductor’s baton. ‘A-one, a-two, a-three…’
‘ “In-tus-sus-cep-tion,” ’ the students falter. ‘ “Intus-sus-cep-tion.” ’
‘A terminal condition where an upper portion of the intestine passes into a lower, thusly…’ The doctor holds up a piece of sailcloth, stitched like a trouser leg. ‘This is the colon.’ He narrows one end in his fist, and feeds it backwards inside the cloth tube towards the other end. ‘Ouch and itai. Diagnosis is difficult: its symptoms being the classic alimentary triad, namely, Mr Ikematsu?’
‘Abdomen pain, groin swelling…’ He massages his temples to loosen the third. ‘Ah! Blood in faeces.’
‘Good: death by intussusception or,’ he looks at Jacob, ‘in the vernacular, “shitting out your own intestines” is, as you would expect, a laborious affair. Its Latin name is “miserere mei ”, translatable as “Lord Have Mercy.” The smoke glister, however, can reverse this wrong,’ he pulls the knotted end of the sailcloth tube out again, ‘by puffing in such a density of smoke that the “slippage” is reversed; and the intestine restored to its natural state. Domburger: in guerno for favours granted, shall loan his gluteus maximus to medical science that I may demonstrate the passage of smoke “through caverns measureless to man” from anus to oesophagus, whence smoke trickles through his nostrils like incense from a stone dragon, though not, alas, so sweet-scented, given its malodorous voyage…’
Jacob begins to understand. ‘Surely, you don’t intend-’
‘Remove your breeches. We are all men – plus one lady – of medicine.’
‘Doctor.’ The Sick Room is disagreeably cool. ‘I never consented to this.’
‘To treat nerves,’ Marinus flips Jacob over with an agility belying the doctor’s partial lameness, ‘ignore them. Eelattu: let the seminarians inspect the apparatus. Then we begin.’
‘A fine joke,’ wheezes Jacob, under fourteen stone of Dutch physician, ‘but-’
Marinus unhooks the now-squirming clerk’s braces.
‘No, Doctor! No! Your little joke has gone far enough…’
Early on Tuesday the 27th August, 1799
The bed shakes its sleeper awake; two of its legs snap, tipping Jacob on to the floor, whacking his jaw and knee. Merciful Christ is his first thought. The Shenandoah’s magazine is exploded. But the spasm seizing Tall House grows stronger and faster. Joists groan; plaster patters like grapeshot; a window casement flies from its mount and the lurching room is lit apricot; the mosquito net enwraps Jacob’s face and the unappeasable violence is magnified threefold, fivefold, tenfold, and the bed drags itself across the room like a wounded beast. A frigate is unloosing a broadside, Jacob thinks, or a man-o’-war. A candlestick hops in dithyrambic circles; sheaves of paper from high shelves swoop in loops. Don’t let me die here, Jacob prays, seeing his skull smashed under beams and yolky brains dashed in Dejima’s dust. Prayer grips the pastor’s son: raw-throated prayer, to the Jehovah of the early Psalms, O God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us, thou hast been displeased; O turn Thyself to us again! Jacob is answered by roof-tiles smashing on Long Street and cows lowing and goats bleating. Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it; heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh. Glass panes shatter into false diamonds, timber cracks like bones, Jacob’s sea-chest is tossed by undulating planks, the water jug spills and the chamber pot is upended and Creation herself is being undone and God God God, he implores, bid it cease bid it cease bid it cease!
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Jacob shuts his eyes. Silence is peace. He thanks Providence for subduing the earthquake and thinks, Dear Christ, the warehouses! My mercury calomel! He snatches his clothes, steps over the flattened door and meets Hanzaburo emerging from his nest. Jacob barks, ‘Guard my room!’ but the boy does not understand. The Dutchman stands in the doorway and makes the shape of an X with his arms and legs. ‘Nobody enter! Understand?’
Hanzaburo nods nervously, as if he must placate a madman.
Jacob clatters down the stairs, unbolts the door and finds Long Street looking as if an army of British looters just passed through. Shutters lie in pieces, tiles lie in shards, the entire garden wall has collapsed. Dust thickens the air, corroding the sun. On the city’s high eastern flank, black smoke billows, and somewhere a woman is wailing out her lungs. The clerk makes his way to the Chief’s Residence, but collides with Wybo Gerritszoon at the Crossroads. The hand sways and slurs, ‘Bastard French bastards’ve landed an’ the bastards’re everywhere!’
‘Mr Gerritszoon: see to the Doorn and the Eik. I’ll check the other warehouses.’
‘You,’ the tattooed strongman spits, ‘parleyin’ wi’ me, Monsewer Jacques?’
Jacob steps around him and tests the Doorn’s door: it is secure.
Gerritszoon grabs the clerk’s throat and roars, ‘Get yer filthy French hands off my house an’ take yer filthy French fingers off my sister!’ He relinquishes his grip in order to hurl a hay-maker: had its aim been true it could have killed Jacob, but instead its force flings Gerritszoon on to the ground. ‘French bastards winged me! Winged me!’
In Flag Square, the muster bell begins to ring.
‘Ignore that bell!’ Vorstenbosch, flanked by Cupido and Philander, paces up Long Street. ‘The jackals would line us up like children even as they reef us!’ He notices Gerritszoon. ‘Is he injured?’
Jacob rubs his aching throat. ‘By grog, I fear, sir.’
‘Leave him be. We must guard ourselves against our protectors.’
The damage caused by the earthquake is bad but not disastrous. Of the four Dutch-owned warehouses, the Lelie is still under reconstruction following ‘Snitker’s Fire’ and its frame held firm; the doors stayed up on the Doorn; and van Cleef and Jacob were able to guard the damaged Eik against looters until Con Twomey and the Shenandoah’s carpenter, a wraith-like Québecois, had rehung the thrown-down doors. Captain Lacy reported that whilst they didn’t feel the earthquake on board the ship, the noise was as loud as war between God and the Devil. Some tens of crates, moreover, toppled on to the floor in various warehouses: all must be inspected for breakages and spillages. Dozens of roof-tiles must be replaced, new earthenware urns must be procured; the flattened bath-house must be repaired at the Company’s expense and the toppled dovecote mended; and the plaster shaken loose from the north wall of Garden House will have to be applied again from scratch. Interpreter Kobayashi reported that the boathouses where the Company sampans are stored collapsed, and quoted what he called ‘a superlative price’ for repairs. Vorstenbosch shot back, ‘Superlative for whom?’ and swore not to part with a penning until he and Twomey had inspected the damage themselves. The interpreter left in a state of stony anger. From the Watchtower, Jacob could see that not every ward in Nagasaki escaped as lightly as Dejima: he counted twenty substantial buildings collapsed, and four serious fires pouring smoke into the late August sky.
In Warehouse Eik Jacob and Weh sort through crates of toppled Venetian mirrors: every last glass is to be unwrapped from its straw and recorded as undamaged, cracked or smashed. Hanzaburo curls up on a pile of sacking, and soon he is asleep. For most of the morning, the only sounds are mirrors being lain aside, Weh chewing betel nut, the scratch of Jacob’s nib and, over at the Sea-Gate, porters bringing ashore tin and lead. The carpenters who would ordinarily be at work on Warehouse Lelie, across the Weighing Yard, are engaged, Jacob guesses, on more pressing jobs in Nagasaki.
‘Well, it ain’t seven years o’ bad luck here, Mr de Z., but seven ’undred, eh?’
Jacob hadn’t noticed Arie Grote enter.
‘Quite pard’nable ’twould be, eh, were a cove to lose count an’ enter a few whole mirrors as “smashed”, wholly in error…’
‘Is this a thinly veiled invitation,’ Jacob yawns, ‘to commit fraud?’
‘May wild dogs chew my head off first! Now, I’ve arranged a meetin’ for us. You,’ Grote glances at Weh, ‘can make yerself scarce: a gent’s comin’ what’d take offence at your shit-brown hide.’
‘Weh is going nowhere,’ counters Jacob. ‘And who is this “gent”?’
Grote hears something and peers out. ‘Oh, bloody oath, they’re early.’ He points to a wall of crates and orders Weh, ‘Hide behind there! Mr de Z., dispense with yer sentiments regardin’ our sable brethren ’cause piles an’ piles an’ piles o’ money is at stake.’
The slave youth looks at Jacob; Jacob, reluctantly, nods; Weh obeys.
‘I am here, eh, to play the go-between twixt you, and…’
Interpreter Yonekizu and Constable Kosugi appear at the door.
Ignoring Jacob altogether, both men usher in a familiar stranger.
Four young, lithe and dangerous-looking personal guards appear first.
Next enters their master: an older man who walks as if treading on water.
He wears a sky-blue cape and his head is shaven, though a sword-hilt shows from his waist sash.
His is the only face in the warehouse not sheathed in sweat.
From what flickering dream, wonders Jacob, do I know your face?
‘Lord Abbot Enomoto of the Domain of Kyôga,’ announces Grote. ‘My associate, Mr de Zoet.’
Jacob bows: the Abbot’s lips curl, tighten into a half-smile of recognition.
He turns to Yonekizu and speaks: his burnished voice is uninterruptible.
‘Abbot,’ translates Yonekizu, ‘says he believed you and he share affinity, on first time he see you at Magistracy. Today he know his belief was correct.’
Abbot Enomoto asks Yonekizu to teach him the Dutch word ‘affinity’.
Jacob now identifies his visitor: he was the man sitting close to Magistrate Shiroyama in the Hall of Sixty Mats.
The Abbot has Yonekizu repeat Jacob’s name three times over.
‘Da-zû-to,’ echoes the Abbot, and checks with Jacob: ‘I say correct?’
‘Your Grace,’ the clerk says, ‘speaks my name very well.’
‘The Abbot,’ Yonekizu adds, ‘translated Antoine Lavoisier into Japanese.’
Jacob is duly impressed. ‘Might Your Grace know Marinus?’
The Abbot has Yonekizu translate his reply: ‘Abbot meet Dr Marinus at Shirandô Academy often. He has much respect for Dutch scholar, he say. But Abbot also have many duties, so cannot devote all life to chemical arts…’
Jacob considers the power his visitor must wield to waltz into Dejima on a day turned upside down by the earthquake, and mingle with foreigners free from the usual phalanx of spies and Shogunal guards. Enomoto runs his thumb along the crates, as if divining their contents. He encounters the sleeping Hanzaburo and makes a motion in the air above the boy, like a genuflection. Hanzaburo mouths groggy syllables, wakes, sees the Abbot, yelps and rolls on to the floor. He flees from the warehouse like a frog from a water-snake.
‘Young mans,’ Enomoto says in Dutch, ‘hurry, hurry, hurry…’
The world outside, framed by the Eik’s double-doors, dims.
The Abbot handles an undamaged mirror. ‘This is quicksilver?’
‘Silver oxide, Your Grace,’ replies Jacob. ‘Of Italian manufacture.’
‘Silver is more truth,’ remarks the Abbot, ‘than copper mirrors of Japan. But truth is easy to break.’ He angles the mirror so as to capture Jacob’s reflection, and puts a question to Yonekizu in Japanese. Yonekizu says, ‘His Grace ask, “At Holland also, do dead people lack reflection?” ’
Jacob recalls his grandmother saying as much. ‘Old women believe so, sir, yes.’
The Abbot understands and is pleased with the answer.
‘There is a tribe at the Cape of Good Hope,’ Jacob ventures, ‘called the Basutos who credit a crocodile may kill a man by snapping his reflection in the water. Another tribe, the Zulus, avoid dark pools lest a ghost seize the reflection and devour the observer’s soul.’
Yonekizu gives a careful translation, and explains Enomoto’s reply. ‘The Abbot says idea is beautiful, and wishes to know, “Does Mr de Zoet believe in soul?” ’
‘To doubt the soul’s existence,’ says Jacob, ‘would strike me as peculiar.’
Enomoto asks, ‘Does Mr de Zoet believe human soul can be taked?’
‘Taken not by a ghost or crocodile, Abbot, no, but by the Devil, yes.’
Enomoto’s hah denotes surprise that he and a foreigner could agree so well.
Jacob steps out of the mirror’s field of reflection. ‘Your Grace’s Dutch is excellent.’
‘Listening difficult,’ Enomoto turns, ‘so glad interpreters is here. Once I speak – spoke – Spanish, but now knowledge is decayed.’
‘It is two centuries,’ says Jacob, ‘since the Spaniards walked Japan.’
‘Time…’ Idly, Enomoto lifts the lid of a box: Yonekizu exclaims in alarm.
Coiled like a small whip is a habu snake: it rears its angry head…
… its twin fangs glint white; its neck sways back, ready to strike.
Two of the Abbot’s guards swerve across the room, swords drawn…
… but Enomoto makes a strange pressing motion with his flat hand.
‘Don’t let it bite him!’ exclaims Grote. ‘He ain’t yet paid for the-’
Instead of attacking the Abbot’s hand, the habu’s neck turns limp, and it slumps back on its crate. Its jaws are frozen, wide open.
Jacob finds his jaws, too, are agape; he glances at Grote, who looks afraid.
‘Your Grace: did you… charm the snake? Is it… is it asleep?’
‘Snake is dead.’ Enomoto orders his guard to take it outside.
How did you do that? Jacob wonders, searching for tricks. ‘But…’
The Abbot watches the Dutchman’s bafflement, and speaks to Yonekizu.
‘Lord Abbot say,’ begins Yonekizu, ‘ “Not trick, not magic.” He says, “It is Chinese philosophy who scholars of Europe is too clever to understand.” He says… excuse, very difficult: he says… “All life is life because possess force of ki”.’
‘Force of key?’ Arie Grote mimes turning a key. ‘What’s that?’
Yonekizu shakes his head. ‘Not key: ki. Ki. Lord Abbot explain that his studies, his Order, teach how to… what is word? How to manipule force of ki, to heal sickness, et cetera.’
‘Oh I’d say Mr Snakey,’ mutters Grote, ‘got his fair share of et cetera.’
Given the Abbot’s status, Jacob worries that an apology is due. ‘Mr Yonekizu: pray tell His Grace how sorry I am that a snake threatened his well-being in a Dutch warehouse.’
Yonekizu does so: Enomoto shakes his head. ‘Nasty bite, but not very poison.’
‘… and say,’ continues Jacob, ‘what I just saw shall stay with me all my life.’
Enomoto replies with an ambiguous hnnnnnn noise.
‘In next life,’ the Abbot tells Jacob, ‘be born in Japan so come to Shrine, and – excuse, Dutch is difficult.’ He addresses several long sentences to Yonekizu in their mother tongue. The interpreter translates them in order. ‘Abbot says, Mr de Zoet must not think he is powerful lord like Lord of Satsuma. Kyôga Domain is only twenty miles wide, twenty miles long, very many mountains, and has just two towns, Isahaya and Kashima, and villages along road of Sea of Ariake. But,’ Yonekizu perhaps adds this on his own initiative, ‘special domain gives Lord Abbot high rank – in Edo can meet Shogun, in Miyako, can meet Emperor. Lord Abbot’s shrine is high on Shiranui Mountain. He say, “In spring and autumn, very beautiful; in winter, a little cold, but summer, cool.” Abbot say, “One can breathe; and does not grow old.” Abbot say, “He have two lifes. World Above, at Mount Shiranui, is spirit and prayer and ki. World Below is men and politics and scholars… and import drugs and money.” ’
‘Oh, at flamin’ last,’ mutters Arie Grote. ‘Mr de Z.: this is our cue.’
Jacob looks uncertainly at Grote; at the Abbot; and back at the cook.
‘Raise,’ sighs Grote, ‘the subject o’ trade.’ He mouths the word, ‘mercury’.
Jacob, belatedly, understands. ‘Pardon my directness, Your Grace,’ he addresses Enomoto whilst glancing at Yonekizu, ‘but may we render any service today?’
Yonekizu translates; with a glance, Enomoto sends the query back to Grote.
‘Fact, Mr de Z., is this: Abbot Enomoto wishes to purchase, eh, all eight chests of our mercury powder for the sum of one hundred an’ six koban per crate.’
Jacob’s first thought is, ‘our’ mercury? His second is, ‘One hundred and six’?
His third thought is a number: eight hundred and forty-eight koban.
‘Twice as much again,’ Grote reminds him, ‘as the Osaka druggist.’
Eight hundred and forty-eight koban is a half-fortune, at least.
Wait, wait, wait, Jacob thinks. Why is he willing to pay so high a price?
‘Mr de Zoet’s so gladsome,’ Grote assures Enomoto, ‘he can’t speak.’
The snake trick dazzled my senses, Jacob thinks, but keep a calm head now…
‘A more deservin’ cove,’ Grote claps his shoulder, ‘I never knew…’
… a monopoly, Jacob hypothesises. He wants to create temporary monopoly.
‘I’ll sell six crates,’ the young clerk announces. ‘Not eight.’
Enomoto understands: he scratches an ear and looks at Grote.
Grote’s smile says, Nothing to worry about. ‘A moment, Your Grace.’
The cook steers Jacob into a corner, near Weh’s hiding-place.
‘Listen: I know that Zwaardecroone set the sell-peg at eighteen per chest.’
How can you know, Jacob wonders, astonished, about my backer in Batavia?
‘ ’Tain’t no import how I know but I do. We’re up to six times that yet here you are harpin’ for more? No better price’ll come knockin’, an’ six chests ain’t on the table. It’s eight, see, or nothin’ at all.’
‘In that case,’ Jacob tells Grote, ‘I choose nothing at all.’
‘ ’Tis plain we ain’t makin’ ourselfs clear! Our client is an exalted personage, eh? Irons in every fire: at the Magistracy; in Edo; a money-lender’s money-lender; a druggist’s druggist. Word has it, he’s even’ – Jacob smells chicken livers on Grote’s breath – ‘lendin’ to the Magistrate to pay graft till next year’s ship from Batavia comes in! So when I promised him the entire supply o’ mercury, that’s exactly-’
‘It appears you shall have to unpromise him the entire supply.’
‘No no no,’ Grote almost whinnies. ‘You ain’t understandin’ what-’
‘It was you who hatched a deal on my private goods; I refuse to dance to your piper; so now you stand to lose your brokerage fee. What am I not understanding?’
Enomoto is saying something to Yonekizu; the Dutchmen break off their argument.
‘Abbot say,’ Yonekizu clears his throat, ‘ “Six crates only is sale today. So, he buy just six crates today.” ’ Enomoto continues. Yonekizu nods, clarifies a couple of points, and translates. ‘Mr de Zoet: Abbot Enomoto credits your private account in Exchequer with six hundred thirty-six kobans. Magistracy scribe bring proof of payment in Company Ledger. Then, when you satisfied, his men remove six crates of mercury from Warehouse Eik.’
Such speed is unprecedented. ‘Doesn’t Your Grace wish to see it first?’
‘Ah,’ says Grote, ‘Mr de Z. bein’ such a busy cove, I took the little liberty o’ borrowin’ the key from Deputy v. C. an’ showin’ our guest a sample…’
‘Yes, that was a liberty you took,’ Jacob tells him. ‘A big one.’
‘Hundred an’ six a box,’ Grote sighs, ‘deserves a little ’nitiative, eh?’
The Abbot is waiting. ‘Do we do deal of mercury today, Mr Dazûto?’
‘Deal he does, Your Grace,’ Grote smiles like a shark, ‘he surely does.’
‘But the paperwork,’ asks Jacob, ‘the bribes, documents of sale…?’
Enomoto swats away these difficulties and expels a pfff of air.
‘Like I say,’ Grote smiles like a saint, ‘ “a most exalted personage”.’
‘Then,’ Jacob has no more objections, ‘yes, Your Grace. The deal is agreed.’
A sigh of punctured anguish escapes the much-relieved Arie Grote.
Wearing a calm expression, the Abbot gives Yonekizu a sentence to translate.
‘ “What you not sell today”,’ Yonekizu says, ‘ “you sell soon.” ’
‘Then the Lord Abbot,’ Jacob remains defiant, ‘knows my mind better than I.’
Abbot Enomoto has the last word: the word is, ‘ “Affinity.” ’ Then he nods at Kosugi and Yonekizu and his retinue leaves the warehouse without further ado.
‘You can come out now, Weh.’ Jacob is obscurely troubled, despite the likelihood of his going to bed tonight a much richer man than when the earthquake threw him from it this morning. Provided, he concedes, Lord Abbot Enomoto is as good as his word.
Lord Abbot Enomoto was as good as his word. At half past two Jacob walks down the steps from the Chief’s Residence in possession of a Certificate of Lodgement. Witnessed by Vorstenbosch and van Cleef, the document can be redeemed in Batavia or even at the Company’s Zeeland offices in Vlissingen on Walcheren. The sum represents five or six years’ salary from his former job as a shipping clerk. He must repay the friend of his uncle in Batavia who lent him the capital to buy the medicinal mercury – the luckiest gamble of my life, Jacob thinks, how nearly I bought the bêche-de-mer instead – and no doubt Arie Grote has not done badly from the deal but, by any measure, the transaction made with the enigmatic Abbot is an exceptionally lucrative one. And the remaining crates, Jacob anticipates, shall fetch an even higher price, once other traders see the profit that Enomoto earns. By Christmas of next year he should be back in Batavia with Unico Vorstenbosch, whose star should, by then, be even brighter as a consequence of purging Dejima of its notorious corruption. He could consult with Zwaardecroone or Vorstenbosch’s colleagues and invest his mercury money in a yet bigger venture – coffee, perhaps, or teak – to generate an income that might impress even Anna’s father.
Back on Long Street, Hanzaburo reappears from the Interpreters’ Guild. Jacob returns to Tall House to deposit his precious certificate in his sea-chest. He hesitates before taking out a paulownia-handled fan and putting it in his jacket pocket. Then he hurries to the Weighing Yard where, today, lead ingots are being weighed and checked for adulterants before being returned to their boxes and sealed. Even under the supervisors’ awning the heat is sleepy and torrid, but a vigilant eye must be kept on the scales, the coolies and the numbers of boxes.
‘How kind of you,’ says Peter Fischer, ‘to report for duty.’
News of the new clerk’s profit on his mercury is common knowledge.
Jacob cannot think of a reply so he takes over the tally sheet.
Interpreter Yonekizu watches the adjacent awning. It is slow work.
Jacob thinks about Anna, trying to remember her as she is, and not merely as in his sketches of her.
Sun-coppered coolies prise off the nailed-on lids from the crates…
Wealth brings our future together closer, he thinks, but five years is still a long, long time.
Sun-coppered coolies hammer the lids back on to the crates.
Four o’clock, according to Jacob’s pocket watch, comes and goes.
At a certain point, Hanzaburo wanders away without explanation.
At a quarter to five, Peter Fischer says, ‘That is the two-hundredth box.’
At a minute past five, a senior merchant faints in the heat.
Immediately, Dr Marinus is sent for, and Jacob makes a decision.
‘Would you excuse me,’ Jacob asks Fischer, ‘for a minute?’
Fischer fills his pipe with provocative slowness. ‘How long is your minute? Ouwehand’s minute is fifteen or twenty. Baert’s minute is longer than an hour.’
Jacob stands: his legs have pins and needles. ‘I shall return in ten.’
‘So your “one” means “ten”; in Prussia, a gentleman says what he means.’
‘I’ll go,’ mutters Jacob, perhaps audibly, ‘before I do just that.’
Jacob waits at the busy Crossroads, watching the labourers pass to and fro. Dr Marinus is not long in coming: he limps past, with a pair of house interpreters carrying his medical box to attend the fainted merchant. He sees Jacob but does not acknowledge him, which suits Jacob. The turd-scented smoke escaping his oesophagus at the end of the smoke-glister experiment cured him of any desire for Marinus’s friendship. The humiliation he suffered that day has caused him to avoid Miss Aibagawa: how can she – and the other seminarians – ever regard him as anything but a half-naked apparatus of fatty valves and fleshy pipes?
Six hundred and thirty-six kobans, he admits, salve one’s self-esteem, however…
The seminarians leave the Hospital: Jacob predicted that their lecture would be cut short by Marinus’s summons. Miss Aibagawa is rearmost, half hidden by a parasol. He withdraws a few steps into Bony Alley, as if he is going to Warehouse Lelie.
All I am doing, Jacob assures himself, is returning a lost item to its owner.
The four young men, two guards and one midwife turn into Short Street.
Jacob loses his nerve: Jacob regains his nerve and follows. ‘Excuse me!’
The retinue turns around: Miss Aibagawa meets his eyes for a moment.
Muramoto, the senior student, walks back to greet him. ‘Dombâga-san!’
Jacob removes his bamboo hat. ‘It is another hot day, Mr Muramoto.’
He is pleased that Jacob remembers his name; the others join his bow. ‘Hot, hot,’ they agree warmly. ‘Hot!’
Jacob bows to the midwife. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Aibagawa.’
‘How,’ her eyes betray a droll mischief, ‘is Mr Domburger’s liver?’
‘Much better today, I thank you.’ He swallows. ‘I thank you.’
‘Ah,’ says Ikematsu with mock sobriety. ‘But how is in-tus-sus-cep-tion?’
‘Dr Marinus’s magic cured me. What did you study today?’
‘Kan-somu-shan,’ says Kajiwaki. ‘When cough blood from lungs.’
‘Oh, consumption. A terrible disease, and a common one.’
An inspector approaches from the Land-Gate: one of the guard complains.
‘Your pardon, sir,’ says Muramoto, ‘but he says, “We must leave”.’
‘Yes, I shan’t detain you: I just wish to return this,’ he produces the fan from his jacket and proffers it, ‘to Miss Aibagawa, who left it at the Hospital today.’
Her eyes flash with alarm: they demand, What are you doing?
His courage evaporates. ‘The fan you forgot in Dr Marinus’s Hospital.’
The inspector arrives. Glowering, he speaks to Muramoto.
Muramoto says, ‘Inspector wish to know “What is?” Mr Dombâga.’
‘Tell him,’ this is a terrible mistake. ‘Miss Aibagawa forgot her fan.’
The inspector is unimpressed: he issues a curt demand and holds out his hand for the fan, like a schoolmaster demanding a schoolboy’s note.
‘He ask, “Please show”, Mr Dombâga,’ translates Ikematsu. ‘To check.’
If I obey, Jacob realises, all Dejima, all Nagasaki, shall learn how I drew her likeness and pasted it, in strips, on to a fan. This friendly token of esteem, Jacob sees, shall be misconstrued. It may even light the touch-paper of a minor scandal.
The inspector’s fingers are troubled by the stiff catch.
Blushing in anticipation, Jacob prays for some – for any – deliverance.
Quietly, Miss Aibagawa says something to the inspector.
The inspector looks at her: his grimness softens, just a little…
… then he snorts with gruff amusement, and hands her the fan. She gives a slight bow.
Jacob feels admonished by this narrowest of escapes.
The bright night is raucous with parties, both on Dejima and ashore, as if to frighten away the bad memory of the morning’s earthquake. Paper lanterns are strung along Nagasaki’s principal thoroughfares, and impromptu drinking parties are taking place at Constable Kosugi’s house, Deputy van Cleef’s residence, the Interpreters’ Guild and even the Land-Gate’s guard-room. Jacob and Ogawa Uzaemon have met on the Watchtower. Ogawa brought an inspector to ward off accusations of fraternising, but he was already drunk, and a flask of sake has set him snoring. Hanzaburo is perched a few steps below the platform with Ouwehand’s latest much put-upon house interpreter: ‘I cured myself of Herpes,’ Ouwehand boasted, at the evening mustering. An overladen moon has run aground on Mount Inasa and Jacob enjoys the cool breeze, despite its soot and smell of effluence. ‘What are those clustered lights,’ he points, ‘up above the city?’
‘More O-bon parties, in… in how-to-say? Place where bury corpses.’
‘Graveyards? You never hold parties in graveyards?’ Jacob thinks of gavottes in Domburg’s graveyard and almost laughs.
‘Graveyard is gate of dead,’ says Ogawa, ‘so good place to call souls to world of life. Tomorrow night, small fire-boats float on sea to guide souls home.’
On the Shenandoah, the officer of the watch strikes four bells.
‘You truly,’ Jacob asks, ‘believe souls migrate in such a manner?’
‘Mr de Zoet not believe what he is told when boy?’
But mine is the true faith, Jacob pities Ogawa, whilst yours is idolatry.
Down at the Land-Gate, an officer is barking at an inferior.
I am a Company employee, he reminds himself, not a missionary.
‘Anyway.’ Ogawa produces a porcelain flask from his sleeve.
Jacob is already a little drunk. ‘How many of those are you hiding?’
‘I am not on duty…’ Ogawa refills their cups ‘… so drink to your good profit today.’
Jacob is warmed by the thought of his money and by the sake roaring down his gullet. ‘Is there anyone in Nagasaki who doesn’t know how much profit my mercury yielded?’
Firecrackers explode in the Chinese factory across the harbour.
‘There is one monk in very very very highest cave,’ Ogawa points up the mountainside, ‘who has not heard, not yet. To speak with sobriety, however. Price goes higher, this is good, but sell last mercury to Lord Abbot Enomoto, not another. Please. He is dangerous enemy.’
‘Arie Grote has the same fearful opinion of His Grace.’
The breeze carries over the smell of the Chinamen’s gunpowder.
‘Mr Grote is wise. Abbot’s domain is small, but he is…’ Ogawa hesitates ‘… he is much power. Besides shrine in Kyôga, he has residence here in Nagasaki, house in Miyako. In Edo, he is guest of Matsudaira Sadanobu. Sadanobu-sama is much power… “Kingmaker”, you say? Any close friend such as Enomoto is also power. Is bad enemy. Please, remember.’
‘Surely,’ Jacob drinks, ‘as a Dutchman, I have safety from “bad enemies”.’
When Ogawa makes no reply, the Dutchman feels a degree less secure.
Beach fires dot the shoreline, all the way to the bay’s mouth.
Jacob wonders what Miss Aibagawa thinks of her illustrated fan.
Cats tryst on Deputy van Cleef’s roof, below the platform.
Jacob surveys the hillsides of roofs and wonders which is hers.
‘Mr Ogawa: in Japan, how does a gentleman propose to a lady?’
The interpreter decodes. ‘Mr de Zoet want to “butter your artichoke”?’
Jacob loses half a mouthful of sake in spectacular fashion.
Ogawa is very concerned. ‘I make mistake with Dutch?’
‘Captain Lacy has been enriching your vocabulary again?’
‘He give tuition for I and Interpreter Iwase on “Gentlemanly Dutch”.’
Jacob lets it pass for now. ‘When you asked for your wife’s hand in marriage, did you first approach her father? Or give her a ring? Or flowers? Or…?’
Ogawa fills their cups. ‘I not see wife before wedding day. Our nakôdo made match. How to say nakôdo? Woman who knows families who want marriage…’
‘An interfering busybody? No, forgive me: a go-between.’
‘ “Go-between”? Funny word. “Go-between” go between our families, achi-kochi,’ Ogawa moves his hand like a shuttle, ‘describes bride to Father. Her father is rich merchant of sappanwood dye in Karatsu, three days’ journey. We investigate family… no madness, secret debt, et cetera. Her father come in Nagasaki to meet Ogawas of Nagasaki. Merchants lower class than samurai but…’ Ogawa’s hands become the pans of a weighing-scale. ‘Ogawa stipend is safe, and we involve sappanwood trade via Dejima, and so Father agrees. We meet next in shrine on wedding day.’
The buoyant moon has freed itself from Mount Inasa.
‘What about,’ Jacob speaks with sake-inspired frankness, ‘what about love?’
‘We say, “When husband love wife, mother-in-law loses best servant.” ’
‘What a joyless proverb! Don’t you yearn for love, in your hearts?’
‘Yes, Mr de Zoet say truth: love is thing of heart. Or love is like this sake: drink, night of joy, yes, but in cold morning, headache, sick stomach. A man should love concubine so when love dies he say, “Goodbye,” easy and no injury. Marriage is different: marriage is matter of head… rank… business… bloodline. Holland families are not same?’
Jacob recalls Anna’s father. ‘We are exactly the same, alas.’
A shooting star lives and dies in an instant.
‘Do I not keep you from welcoming your own ancestors, Mr Ogawa?’
‘My father performs rituals at family residence tonight.’
The cow lows in the Pine Tree Corner, upset by the firecrackers.
‘To speak with sincerity,’ says Ogawa, ‘my blood ancestors is not here: I was borned at Tosa Domain, on Shikoku. Shikoku is big island…’ Ogawa points east ‘… that way, to father of low retainer of Lord Yamanouchi of Tosa. Lord gave my schooling, and sent me in Nagasaki for learn Dutch under Ogawa Mimasaku’s house to make bridge between his Tosa and Dejima. But then old Lord Yamanouchi died. His son has no interest in Dutch studies. So I was “marooned”, you say? But then Ogawa Mimasaku’s two sons died in cholera, ten years ago. Much, much death in city that year. So Ogawa Mimasaku adopted me, to continue family name…’
‘What about your own mother and father back on Shikoku?’
‘Tradition says, “After adoption, do not go back”. So, I not go back.’
‘Didn’t you…’ Jacob recalls his own bereavement ‘… miss them?’
‘I had new name, new life, new father, new mother, new ancestors.’
Does the Japanese race, wonders Jacob, derive gratification from self-inflicted misery?
‘My study of Dutch,’ says Ogawa, ‘is great – solace. Is correct word?’
‘Yes, and your fluency,’ the clerk is quite sincere, ‘shows how hard you work.’
‘To progress is difficult. Merchants, officials, guards not understand how hard. They think, My work I do: why lazy and foolish interpreter cannot do same?’
‘During my apprenticeship,’ Jacob unfolds his stiff legs, ‘to a timber company, I worked at the ports of not only Rotterdam but also London, Paris, Copenhagen and Gothenburg. I know the vexations of foreign languages: but unlike you, I had the advantages of dictionaries and an education populated by French schoolmasters.’
Ogawa’s ‘Ah…’ is full of longing. ‘So many places, you can go…’
‘In Europe, yes, but not one toe can I put past the Land-Gate.’
‘But Mr de Zoet may pass through Sea-Gate and away, over ocean. But I – all Japanese…’ Ogawa listens to Hanzaburo and his friend’s conspiratorial grumbles ‘… prisoners all life. Who plot to leave is executed. Who leave and return from abroad is executed. My precious wish is one year in Batavia, to speak Dutch… to eat Dutch, to drink Dutch, to sleep Dutch. One year, just one year…’
These are new thoughts for Jacob. ‘Do you recall your first visit to Dejima?’
‘Very well I recall! Before Ogawa Mimasaku adopt me as son. One day, master announce, “Today, we go Dejima.” I-’ Ogawa clutches his heart and mimes awe. ‘We walk over Holland Bridge and my master says, “This is longest bridge you ever cross because this bridge go between two worlds.” We pass through Land-Gate and I see giant from story! Nose big like potato! Clotheses with no tie-strings but buttons, buttons, buttons and hair yellow, like straw! Smell bad too. Just as astonishment, I first see kuronbô, black boys who skin like eggplant. Then foreigner opened mouth, and say, “Schffgg-evingen-flinder-vasschen-morgengen!” This was same Dutch I study so hard? I just bow, and bow, and master hits my head and says, “Introduce self, foolish baka!” so I say, “My name is Sôzaemon degozaimsu weather is clement today I thank you very well, sir.” Yellow giant laugh and says, “Ksssfffkkk schevingen-pevingen!” and points to marvel white bird who walk like man and tall as man. Master says, “This is Ostrich.” Then much bigger marvel, animal big as shack, blocks out sun; nyoro-nyoro nose he dips in bucket and drinks and shoots water! Master Ogawa say, “Elephant,” and I say “Zô?” and master says, “No foolish baka it is elephant.” Then we see cockatoo in cage, and parrot who repeat words, strange game with sticks and balls on table-of-walls, called “billiards”. Bloody tongues lying on ground here, there, here, there: cud of betel juice, spat by Malay servants.’
‘What,’ Jacob has to ask, ‘was an elephant doing on Dejima?’
‘Batavia sent for gift for Shogun. But Magistrate sent message to Edo to say he eat much food so Edo discuss and say, no, Company must take elephant back. Elephant die of mystery ill very soon…’
Running footsteps thump up the stairs of the Watchtower: it is a messenger.
Jacob can tell from Hanzaburo’s response that the news is bad.
‘We must go,’ Ogawa informs him. ‘Thieves in house of Chief Vorstenbosch.’
‘The strongbox being too heavy to steal,’ Unico Vorstenbosch shows the audience crowded into his Private Quarters, ‘the robbers heaved it around and staved in the back with a hammer and chisel – look.’ He pulls a strip of teak from the iron frame. ‘When the hole was big enough, they extracted their prize and made good their escape. This was not petty theft. They had the right tools. They knew exactly what they were after. They had spies, spotters and the skills to smash a strongbox in total silence. They also had a blind eye at the Land-Gate. In short,’ the Chief Resident glares at Interpreter Kobayashi, ‘they had help.’
Constable Kosugi asks a question: ‘The Headman asks,’ translates Iwase, ‘when last time you saw teapot?’
‘This morning: Cupido checked it was unscathed by the earthquake.’
The Constable heaves a weary sigh and issues a flat observation.
‘Constable say,’ Iwase translates, ‘slave is last who see teapot on Dejima.’
‘The thieves, sir,’ Vorstenbosch exclaims, ‘were the last ones to see it!’
Interpreter Kobayashi tilts his shrewd head. ‘What was value of teapot?’
‘Exquisite craftsmanship, silver leafing on jade, a thousand kobans could not buy another. You have seen it yourself. It belonged to the last Ming ruler of China – the “Chongzhen” Emperor, as I gather he is known. It is an irreplaceable antique – as someone surely told the thieves, damn their eyes.’
‘Chongzhen Emperor,’ observes Kobayashi, ‘hang himself from Pagoda tree.’
‘I did not summon you here for a history lesson, Interpreter!’
‘I hope earnestly,’ Kobayashi explains, ‘that teapot is not curse.’
‘Oh, it’s cursed for the damned dogs who stole it! The Company is the owner of the teapot, not Unico Vorstenbosch, and so the Company is the victim of this crime. You, Interpreter, shall go with Constable Kosugi to the Magistracy now.’
‘Magistracy is close tonight,’ Kobayashi wrings his palms, ‘for O-bon Festival.’
‘The Magistracy,’ the Chief hits the desk with his cane, ‘will have to open!’
Jacob knows the look on the Japanese faces: Impossible foreigners, it says.
‘May I suggest, sir,’ says Peter Fischer, ‘that you demand searches of the Japanese warehouses on Dejima? Perhaps the sly bastards are waiting until the fuss has died down before smuggling your treasure away.’
‘Well spoke, Fischer.’ The Chief looks at Kobayashi. ‘Tell the constable so.’
The interpreter’s tilted head denotes reluctance. ‘But precedent is-’
‘Hang precedent! I am the precedent now and you, sir, you’ – he pokes a chest that, Jacob would wager a sheaf of banknotes, has never been poked before – ‘are paid usuriously to protect our interests! Do your job! Some coolie, or merchant, or inspector or, yes, even an interpreter stole the Company’s property. This act insults the Company’s honour. And by damn, I shall have the Interpreters’ Guild searched, as well! The perpetrators shall be hunted down like pigs and I shall make them squeal. De Zoet – go and tell Arie Grote to make a large jug of coffee. None of us shall be sleeping for some time yet…’
Ten o’clock in the morning on the 3rd September, 1799
‘The Shogun’s reply to my ultimatum is a message for me,’ complains Vorstenbosch. ‘Why must a piece of paper rolled up in a tube spend the night at the Magistracy, like a pampered guest? If it arrived yesterday evening, why wasn’t it brought to me straight away?’ Because, Jacob thinks, a Shogunal communiqué is the equivalent of a Papal edict and to deny it due ceremony would be capital treason. He keeps his mouth shut, however: in recent days, he has noticed a growing coolness in his patron’s attitude towards him. The process is discreet: a word of praise to Peter Fischer here, a curt remark to Jacob there, but the one-time ‘Indispensable de Zoet’ fears that his halo is dimming. Nor does van Cleef attempt to answer the Chief Resident’s question: long ago, he acquired the courtier’s knack of distinguishing the rhetorical question from the actual. Captain Lacy leans back on his groaning chair with his head behind his hands and whistles between his teeth very softly. Waiting on the Japanese side of the State Table are Interpreters Kobayashi and Iwase and just two senior scribes. ‘Magistrate’s chamberlain,’ Iwase offers, ‘shall bring Shogun’s message soon.’
Unico Vorstenbosch scowls at the gold signet on his ring finger.
‘What did William the Silent,’ wonders Lacy, ‘say about his moniker?’
The grandfather clock is grave and loud. The men are hot and silent.
‘Sky this afternoon is…’ remarks Interpreter Kobayashi ‘… unstable.’
‘The barometer in my cabin,’ agrees Lacy, ‘promises a blow.’
Interpreter Kobayashi’s expression is courteous but blank.
‘ “A blow” is a nautical storm,’ explains van Cleef, ‘or gale, or a typhoon.’
‘Ah, ah,’ Interpreter Iwase understands, ‘ “typhoon”… tai-fû, we say.’
Kobayashi dabs his shaved forehead. ‘Funeral for summer.’
‘Unless the Shogun has agreed to raise the copper quota,’ Vorstenbosch folds his arms, ‘it is Dejima that shall need a funeral: Dejima, and the well-feathered careers of its interpreters. Speaking of which, Mr Kobayashi, do I take it from your studied silence regarding the Company’s stolen item of China-ware that not one inch of progress has been made towards its recovery?’
‘Investigation is continuing,’ replies the senior interpreter.
‘At the speed of a slug,’ mutters the malcontent Chief Resident. ‘Even if we do remain on Dejima, I shall report to the Governor-General van Overstraten how indifferently you defend the Company’s property.’
Jacob’s sharp ears hear marching feet; van Cleef has heard them too.
The Deputy goes to a window and looks down on to Long Street. ‘Ah, at last.’
Two guards stand on either side of the doorway. A banner-man enters first: his pennant displays the three-leafed hollyhock of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Chamberlain Tomine enters, holding the revered scroll-tube on a perfect lacquered tray. All the men in the room bow towards the scroll, except Vorstenbosch who says, ‘Come in, then, Chamberlain, sit down, and let us learn whether His Highness in Edo has decided to put this damned island out of its misery.’
Jacob notices the half-repressed winces on the Japanese faces.
Iwase translates the ‘sit down’ part, and indicates a chair.
Tomine looks with distaste at the foreign furniture but has no choice.
He places the lacquered tray before Interpreter Kobayashi and bows.
Kobayashi bows to him, to the scroll-tube, and slides its tray to the Chief.
Vorstenbosch takes up the cylinder, emblazoned on one end with the same hollyhock insignia, and tries to pull it apart. Failing, he tries to unscrew it. Failing, he tries to find a toggle or catch.
‘Your pardon, sir,’ murmurs Jacob: ‘but it may need a clockwise twist.’
‘Oh, back to front and topsy-turvy, like this whole blasted country…’
Out slides a parchment wound tight around two dowels of cherry wood.
Vorstenbosch unrolls it on the table, vertically, like a European scroll.
Jacob has a good view. The ornate columns of brush-stroked kanji characters offer, to the clerk’s eyes, moments of recognition: the Dutch lessons he gives Ogawa Uzaemon involve a reciprocal aspect, and his notebook now contains some five hundred of the symbols. Here the clandestine student recognises Give; there, Edo; in the next column, ten…
‘Naturally,’ Vorstenbosch sighs, ‘nobody at the Shogun’s Court writes Dutch. Would either of you prodigies,’ he looks at the interpreters, ‘care to oblige?’
The grandfather clock counts off one minute; two; three…
Kobayashi’s eyes travel down, up and across the columns of the scroll.
It is not so arduous or long, thinks Jacob. He is dragging the exercise out.
The interpreter’s ponderous reading is punctuated by thoughtful nods.
Elsewhere in the Chief’s Residence, servants go about their business.
Vorstenbosch refuses to satisfy Kobayashi by voicing his impatience.
Kobayashi growls in his throat enigmatically, and opens his mouth…
‘I read once more, to ensure no mistake.’
If looks really could kill, thinks Jacob, watching Vorstenbosch, Kobayashi would be screaming the agonies of the damned.
A minute passes. Vorstenbosch tells his slave Philander, ‘Bring me water.’
From his side of the table, Jacob continues to study the Shogun’s scroll.
Two minutes pass. Philander returns with the pitcher.
‘How,’ Kobayashi turns to Iwase, ‘may one say “rôju” in Dutch?’
The colleague’s considered reply contains the words ‘First Minister’.
‘Then,’ Kobayashi announces, ‘I am ready to translate message.’
Jacob dips his sharpest quill into his ink-pot.
‘The message reads: “Shogun’s First Minister sends cordialest greetings to Governor-General van Overstraten and Chief of Dutchmen on Dejima, Vorstenbosch. First Minister asks for…” the interpreter peers at the scroll ”… one thousand fans of finest peacock feathers. Dutch ship must carry this order back to Batavia, so fans of peacock feathers will arrive next year trading season.” ’
Jacob’s pen scratches out a summary.
Captain Lacy belches. ‘ ’Twas my breakfast oysters… past their ripest…’
Kobayashi looks at Vorstenbosch, as if awaiting his response.
Vorstenbosch drains his glass of water. ‘Speak to me about copper.’
With innocent insolence, Kobayashi blinks and says, ‘Message says nothing about copper, Chief Resident.’
‘Do not tell me,’ a vein throbs in Vorstenbosch’s temple, ‘Mr Kobayashi, that this is the sum of the message.’
‘No…’ Kobayashi peers at the left of the scroll. ‘First Minister also hope autumn in Nagasaki is clement and winter is mild. But I think, “Not relevant”.’
‘One thousand peacock-feather fans.’ Van Cleef whistles.
‘Finest peacock-feather fans,’ corrects Kobayashi, unembarrassed.
‘Back in Charleston,’ says Captain Lacy, ‘we’d call that a Begging Letter.’
‘Here in Nagasaki,’ says Iwase, ‘we call that Order of Shogun.’
‘Are those sons of bitches in Edo,’ asks Vorstenbosch, ‘toying with us?’
‘Good news,’ suggests Kobayashi, ‘that Council of Elders continues discussions on copper. To not say “no” is to half say “yes”.’
‘The Shenandoah sails in seven or eight weeks’ time.’
‘Copper quota,’ Kobayashi purses his lips, ‘complicated matter.’
‘Contrariwise, it is a simple matter. Should twenty thousand piculs of copper not arrive on Dejima by the middle of October, this benighted country’s sole window on to the world is bricked up. Does Edo imagine the Governor-General is bluffing? Do they think I wrote the ultimatum myself?’
Well, says Kobayashi’s shrug, it is all beyond my power…
Jacob lets his quill rest and studies the First Minister’s scroll.
‘How reply to Edo on peacock fans?’ asks Iwase. ‘ “Yes” may help copper…’
‘Why must my petitions,’ Vorstenbosch demands, ‘wait until Kingdom Come, yet when the Court wants something we are supposed to act’ – he clicks his fingers – ‘thus? Does this minister suppose peacocks are pigeons? Might not a few windmills please His Elevated Eye?’
‘Peacock fan,’ says Kobayashi, ‘enough token of esteem for First Minister.’
‘I am sick,’ Vorstenbosch complains to Heaven, ‘sick of these damned -’ he thumps the scroll on the table, causing the Japanese to gasp in horror at the disrespect ‘- “tokens of esteem”! On Mondays it is, “The Magistrate’s Falconer’s guano sweeper asks for a roll of Bangalore chintz”; on Wednesdays, “The City Elders’ Monkey-Keeper requires a box of cloves”; on Fridays, it is “His Lord So-and-so of Such-and-such admires your whalebone cutlery: he is powerful friend of foreigners” so Hey Diddle Diddle, it is chipped pewter spoons for me. Yet when we need assistance, where are these “powerful friends of foreigners” to be found?’
Kobayashi savours his victory under an ill-fitting mask of empathy.
Jacob is provoked into a rash gamble. ‘Mr Kobayashi?’
The senior interpreter looks at the clerk of uncertain status.
‘Mr Kobayashi, an incident occurred earlier during the sale of peppercorns.’
‘What in Hell,’ asks Vorstenbosch, ‘have peppercorns to do with our copper?’
‘Je vous prie de m’excuser, Monsieur,’ Jacob seeks to assure his superior, ‘mais je crois savoir ce que je fais.’
‘Je prie Dieu que vous savez,’ the Chief warns him. ‘Le jour a déjà bien mal commencé sans pour cela y ajouter votre aide.’
‘You see,’ Jacob speaks to Kobayashi, ‘Mr Ouwehand and I argued with a merchant, regarding the Chinese ideogram – the konji, I believe you call them?’
‘Kanji,’ says Kobayashi.
‘Forgive me, the kanji for the number ten. During my stay in Batavia, I learnt a small number from a Chinese merchant and, perhaps unwisely, used my limited knowledge instead of sending to the Guild for an Interpreter. Tempers grew heated, and now I fear a charge of dishonesty may have been made against your countryman.’
‘What,’ Kobayashi sniffs fresh Dutch humiliation, ‘kanji of argument?’
‘Well, sir, Mr Ouwehand said that the kanji for “ten” is…’ with a show of clumsy concentration, Jacob inscribes a character on his blotter ‘… drawn thus…
‘But I told Ouwehand, no; the true character for “ten” is writ… thus…’
Jacob fouls the stroke order to exaggerate his ineptitude. ‘The merchant swore we were both wrong: he drew -’ Jacob sighs and frowns ‘- a cross, I believe, thus…
‘I became convinced the merchant was a swindler, and may have said as much: could Interpreter Kobayashi kindly tell me the truth of the matter?’
‘Mr Ouwehand’s number,’ Kobayashi points to the topmost character, ‘is “thousand”, not “ten”. Mr de Zoet’s number, too, is wrong: it mean “hundred”. This,’ he indicates the X, ‘is wrong memory. Merchant wrote this…’ Kobayashi turns to his scribe for a brush. ‘Here is “ten”. Two strokes, yes, but one up, one across…’
Jacob groans with contrition, and inserts the numbers 10, 100 and 1000 beside the corresponding characters. ‘These, then, are the true symbols for the numbers in question?’
Cautious Kobayashi examines the numbers a final time, and nods.
‘I am sincerely grateful,’ Jacob bows, ‘for the senior interpreter’s guidance.’
‘There are,’ the interpreter fans himself, ‘no more questions?’
‘Just one more, sir,’ says Jacob. ‘Why did you claim that the Shogun’s First Minister requests one thousand peacock-feather fans when, according to the numerals you were just kind enough to teach me, the number in question is a much more modest one hundred’ – every eye in the room follows Jacob’s finger on the scroll, resting on the corresponding kanji ‘hundred’ – ‘as written here?’
Ramifications hatch from the appalling hush. Jacob thanks his God.
‘Well, ding dong bell,’ says Captain Lacy. ‘Pussy is in the well.’
Kobayashi reaches for the scroll. ‘Shogun’s request not for eyes of clerk.’
‘Indeed not!’ Vorstenbosch pounces. ‘It is for my eyes, sir; mine! Mr Iwase: you translate this letter so we may verify how many fans we are dealing with – one thousand, or one hundred for the Council of Elders and nine hundred for Mr Kobayashi and his cronies? But before we begin, Mr Iwase, refresh my memory: what are the penalties for wilfully mistranslating a Shogunal order?’
At four minutes to four o’clock, Jacob presses blotting paper over the page on his desk in Warehouse Eik. He drinks another cup of water of which he shall sweat every last drop. The clerk then lifts the blotter and reads the title: Sixteenth Addendum: True Quantities of Japanned Lacquer-ware exported from Dejima to Batavia Not Declared on the Bills of Lading submitted between the Years 1793 and 1799. He closes the black book, fastens its ties, and puts it into his portfolio. ‘We stop now, Hanzaburo. Chief Vorstenbosch summoned me to the State Room for a meeting at four o’clock. Please take these papers to Mr Ouwehand in the Clerks’ Office.’ Hanzaburo sighs, takes the files, and drifts disconsolately away.
Jacob follows, locking the warehouse. Floating seeds fill the sticky air.
The sunburnt Dutchman thinks of a Zeeland winter’s first snowflakes.
Go via Short Street, he tells himself. You may catch sight of her.
The Dutch flag on Flag Square twitches, very nearly lifeless.
If you mean to betray Anna, Jacob thinks, why chase the unobtainable?
At the Land-Gate, a frisker sifts a handcart of fodder for contraband.
Marinus is right. Hire a courtesan. You have the money, now…
Jacob walks up Short Street to the Crossroads, where Ignatius is sweeping.
The slave tells the clerk that the doctor’s students left some time ago.
One glance, Jacob knows, would tell me if the fan charmed or offended her.
He stands where she passed, maybe. A couple of spies are watching him.
When he reaches the Chief’s Residence he is accosted by Peter Fischer who appears from the under way. ‘Well, well, aren’t you just the dog who mounted the bitch today?’ The Prussian’s breath smells of rum.
Jacob can only suppose Fischer is referring to this morning’s fans.
‘Three years in this God-forlorn gaol… Snitker swore I would be van Cleef’s deputy when he left. He swore it! Then you, you and your damn mercury, you come ashore, in his silk-lined pocket…’ Fischer looks up the stairs to the Chief’s Residence, swaying uncertainly. ‘You forget, de Zoet, I am not a weak and common clerk. You forget-’
‘That you were a rifleman in Surinam? You remind us all daily.’
‘Rob me of my rightful promotion and I shall break all your bones.’
‘I bid you a soberer evening than your afternoon, Mr Fischer.’
‘Jacob de Zoet! I break my enemy’s bones, one by one…’
Vorstenbosch ushers Jacob into his bureau with a conviviality not shown for days. ‘Mr van Cleef reports you ran the gauntlet of Mr Fischer’s displeasure.’
‘Unfortunately, Mr Fischer is convinced that I devote my every waking minute to the frustration of his interests.’
Van Cleef pours a rich and ruby port into three fluted glasses.
‘… but it might have been Mr Grote’s rum making the accusation.’
‘There’s no denying,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘that Kobayashi’s interests were frustrated today.’
‘I never saw his tail,’ agrees van Cleef, ‘so far back between his stumpy legs.’
Birds scrat, thud and issue dire warnings on the roof above.
‘His own greed trapped him, sir,’ says Jacob. ‘I just… nudged him.’
‘He’ll not,’ van Cleef laughs into his beard, ‘see it that way!’
‘When I met you, de Zoet,’ begins Vorstenbosch, ‘I knew. Here is an honest soul in a human swamp of back-stabbers, a sharp quill amongst blunt nibs, and a man who, with a little guidance, shall be a chief resident by his thirtieth year! Your resourcefulness this morning saved the Company’s money and honour. Governor-General van Overstraten shall hear about it, I give my word.’
Jacob bows. Am I summoned here, he wonders, to be made head clerk?
‘To your future,’ says the Chief. He, his deputy and the clerk touch glasses.
Perhaps his recent coolness, Jacob thinks, was to avert charges of favouritism.
‘Kobayashi’s punishment was to be made to tell Edo,’ gloats van Cleef, ‘that ordering goods from a trading factory that may expire in fifty days for want of copper is premature and injudicious. We’ll scare more concessions out of him, besides.’
Light skitters off the Almelo Clock’s bearings like splinters of stars.
‘We have,’ Vorstenbosch’s voice shifts, ‘a further assignment for you, de Zoet. Mr van Cleef shall explain.’
Van Cleef drains his glass of port. ‘Before breakfast, come rain or shine, Mr Grote receives a visitor: a provedore, who enters with a full bag, in plain view.’
‘Bigger than a pouch,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘smaller than a pillowcase.’
‘One minute later he leaves with the same bag, still full, in plain view.’
‘What,’ Jacob banishes his disappointment that he is not to be promoted on the spot, ‘is Mr Grote’s story?’
‘A “story”,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘is precisely what he would regale van Cleef or me with. High office, as you shall one day discover, distances one from one’s men. But this morning proves beyond doubt that yours is the nose to smoke out a rascal. You hesitate. You think, Nobody loves an informer, and, alas, you are right. But he who is destined for high office, de Zoet, as van Cleef and I divine you are, must not fear a little clambering and elbowing. Pay Mr Grote a call tonight…’
This is a test, Jacob divines, of my willingness to get dirty hands.
‘I shall redeem a long-standing invitation to the cook’s card table.’
‘You see, van Cleef? De Zoet never says, “Must I?”, only “How may I?”
Jacob indulges in thoughts of Anna reading news of his promotion.
In the after-dinner half-dark, swifts stream along Sea Wall Lane and Jacob finds Ogawa Uzaemon at his side. The interpreter says something to Hanzaburo to make him disappear and accompanies Jacob to the pines in the far corner. Under the humid trees Ogawa stops, neuters the inevitable spy in the shadows by means of an amiable greeting, and says, in a low voice, ‘All Nagasaki talks about this morning. About Interpreter Kobayashi and fans.’
‘Perhaps he won’t try to scull us again so shamelessly.’
‘Recently,’ says Ogawa, ‘I warn you not to make Enomoto enemy.’
‘I take your advice very seriously.’
‘Here is more advice. Kobayashi is a little Shogun. Dejima is his empire.’
‘Then I am fortunate not to rely on his good offices.’
Ogawa doesn’t understand ‘good offices’. ‘He harms you, de Zoet-san.’
‘Thank you for your concern, Mr Ogawa, but I’m not afraid of him.’
‘He may search apartment,’ Ogawa looks around, ‘for stolen items…’
Seagulls riot in the dusk above a boat hidden by the Sea Wall.
‘… or forbidden items. So if such item in your room, please to hide.’
‘But I own nothing,’ Jacob protests, ‘that might incriminate me.’
A tiny muscle ripples under Ogawa’s cheek. ‘If there is forbidden book… hide. Hide under floor. Hide very well. Kobayashi wants revenge. For you, penalty is exile. Interpreter who searched your library when you arrive not so lucky…’
I am failing to understand something, Jacob knows, but what?
The clerk opens his mouth to ask a question, but the question expires.
Ogawa knew about my Psalter, Jacob realises, all along.
‘I shall do as you say, Mr Ogawa, before I do anything else…’
A pair of inspectors appear from Bony Alley and walk up Sea Wall Lane.
Without another word, Ogawa walks towards them. Jacob leaves via Garden House.
Con Twomey and Piet Baert rise and their candlelit shadows slide. The impromptu card table is made of one door and four legs. Ivo Oost stays seated, chewing tobacco, Wybo Gerritszoon spits at, rather than into, the spittoon, and Arie Grote is as charming as a ferret welcoming a rabbit. ‘We was beginnin’ to despair you’d ever accept my hospitality, eh?’ He uncorks the first of twelve jars of rum lined up on a plank shelf.
‘I intended to come days ago,’ says Jacob, ‘but work prevented me.’
‘Buryin’ Mr Snitker’s reputation,’ remarks Oost, ‘must be a taxing job.’
‘It is.’ Jacob brushes aside the attack. ‘To make good falsified ledgers is taxing work. How homely your quarters are, Mr Grote.’
‘ ’F I liked livin’ in a tub o’ piss,’ Grote winks, ‘I’d o’ stayed in Enkhuizen, eh?’
Jacob takes a seat. ‘What is the game, gentlemen?’
‘Knave and Devil – our Germanic cousins, eh, play it.’
‘Ah, Karnöffel. I played it a little in Copenhagen.’
‘S’prised,’ says Baert, ‘you’d be familiar with cards.’
‘The sons – or nephews – of vicarages are less naïve than supposed.’
‘Each o’ these,’ Grote picks up a nail from his cache, ‘is one stuiver off of our wages. We ante up one nail in the pot afore each round. Seven tricks per round, an’ who bags most tricks scoops the pot. When the nails is gone, the night’s done.’
‘But how are winnings redeemed, with wages payable only in Batavia?’
‘A touch of, eh, legerdemainery: this -’ he waves a sheet of paper ‘- is a record o’ who won what off of who; an’ Deputy van Cleef records our ’djusted balances in the actual Pay Book. Mr Snitker approved this practice, knowin’ how his men’s edge is kept sharp by these convivial, eh, pleasures.’
‘Mr Snitker was a welcome guest,’ says Ivo Oost, ‘afore losin’ his liberty.’
‘Fischer an’ Ouwehand an’ Marinus stay aloof, but you, Mr de Z., look cut off of gayer cloth…’
Nine jars are left on the plank shelf. ‘So I run away from Pa,’ says Grote, stroking his cards, ‘afore he did rip out my liver, an’ off I tromped to Amsterdam, seekin’ fortune an’ true love, eh?’ He pours himself another glass of urine-coloured rum. ‘But the only love I saw was what’s paid in cash afore an’ clap in arrears, an’ not a sniff of a fortune. Nah, hunger was all I found, snow an’ ice an’ cutpurses what fed off the weak like dogs… Speculate to ’ccumulate, thinks I, so I spends my “inheritance”, eh, on a barrow o’ coal, but a pack o’ coalmen tipped my cart in the canal – an’ me in after it, yellin’, “This is our patch yer West Frieslander mongrel! Come back when it’s bath-time again!” Aside from this schoolin’ in monopolies, eh, that icy dunkin’ give me such a fever I couldn’t stir from my lodgin’s for a week; an’ then my cuddly landlord planted his iron toe in my arse. Holes in my shoes, naught to eat but the stinkin’ fog, I sat me down on the steps of Nieuwe Kerk wonderin’ if I should thief a bite while I’d still strength enough to scarper, or jus’ freeze to death an’ get it over with…’
‘Thief an’ scarper,’ says Ivo Oost, ‘ev’ry time…’
‘Who should gander along but this gent in a top hat, ivory-knobbed cane an’ a friendly manner. “Know who I am, boy?” I says, “I don’t, sir.” He says, “I, boy, am your Future Prosperity.” Figured he meant he’d feed me f’joinin’ his Church, an’ so starvin’ was I I’d’ve turned Jew for a bowl o’ pottage, but no. “You have heard of the noble an’ munificent Dutch East Indies Company, boy, have you not?” Says I, “Who ain’t, sir?” Says he, “So you are cognisant of the diamond prospects the Company offers stout an’ willin’ lads in its possessions throughout our Creator’s blue an’ silver globe, yes?” Says I, catchin’ on at last, “That I do, sir, aye.” Says he, “Well, I am a Master Recruiter for the Amsterdam Head Quarters an’ my name is Duke van Eys. What d’ you say to half a guilder advance on your wages, an’ board an’ lodgin’ till the next Company flotilla sets forth on the finny way to the Mysterious East?” An’ I say, “Duke van Eys, you are my Saviour.” Mr de Z., does our rum disagree with you?’
‘My stomach is dissolving, Mr Grote, but it is otherwise delicious.’
Grote places the five of diamonds: Gerritszoon slaps down the queen.
‘Cry havoc!’ Baert slams down a five of trumps and scoops up the nails.
Jacob next discards a low heart. ‘Your Saviour, Mr Grote?’
Grote inspects his cards. ‘The gentleman led me to a tottery house behind Rasphuys, a slanty street an’ his office was poky but dry ’n’ warm an’ the smell o’ bacon wafted up from below stairs an’, oh, it smelt good! I even asked, might I have me a rasher or two there ’n’ then an’ van Eys laughs an’ says, “Write your name here, boy, and after five years in the Orient you can build a Palace of smoked hog!” Couldn’t read nor write my name back in them days: I just inked my thumb at the foot o’ the papers. “Splendid,” says van Eys, “and here is an advance on your bounty, to prove I am a man of my word.” He paid me my own new an’ shiny half-guilder, an’ I was never happier. “The remainder is payable aboard the Admiral de Ruyter, who sails on the thirtieth or thirty-first. One trusts you have no objection to being quartered with a few other stout an’ willing lads, future shipmates and partners in prosperity?” Any roof beat no roof, so I pocketed my booty an’ said I’d no objection at all.’
Twomey discards a worthless diamond. Ivo Oost, the four of spades.
‘So two servants,’ Grote studies his hand, ‘lead me downstairs but I din’t rumble what was afoot, eh, till the key was turned in the lock behind me. In a cellar no bigger’n this room was twenty-four lads, my age or older. Some’d been there weeks; some was half-skel’tons, coughin’ up blood… Oh, I banged on the door to be freed, but this great scabby grunt strolls over sayin’, “Better give me your half-guilder now for safe-keepin’.” Says I, “What half-guilder?” an’ he says I can give it him volunt’ry or else he’ll tenderise me an’ have it anyways. I asks when we’re allowed out for exercise an’ air. “We ain’t let out,” says he, “till the ship sails or unless we cark it. Now, the money.” Wish I could say I stood my ground, but Arie Grote ain’t no liar. He weren’t jokin’ ’bout carkin’ it neither: eight o’ them “stout an’ willing lads” left horizontally, two crammed into one coffin. Just an iron grid at street level for air ’n’ light, see, an’ slops so bad you’d not know which bucket was to eat from an’ which to shit in.’
‘Why didn’t you knock down the doors?’ asks Twomey.
‘Iron doors an’ guards with nailed truncheons is why.’ Grote sweeps headlice from his hair. ‘Oh, I found ways to live to tell the tale. It’s my chief hobby-hawk is the noble art of survivin’. But on the day we was marched to the tender what’d take us out to the Admiral de Ruyter, roped to the others like prisoners, eh, I swore three oaths to myself. First: never credit a Company gent who says, “We’ve yer interests at heart.” ’ He winks at Jacob. ‘Second: never be so poor again, come what may, that human pustules like van Eys could buy ’n’ sell me like a slave. Third? To get my half-guilder back off of Scabby Grunt before we reached Curaçao. My first oath I honour to this day; my second oath, well, I have grounds to hope it’ll be no pauper’s grave for Arie Grote when his time is done; and my third oath – oh, yes, I got my half-guilder back that very same night.’
Wybo Gerritszoon picks his nose and asks, ‘How?’
Grote shuffles the cards. ‘My deal, shipmates.’
Five jars of rum wait on the shelf. The hands are drinking more than the clerk, but Jacob feels a drunken glow in his legs. Karnöffel, he knows, shall not make me a rich man tonight. ‘Letters,’ Ivo Oost is saying, ‘they taught us at the orphanage, an’ arithmetic, an’ Scripture: a powerful dose o’ Scripture, what with Chapel twice daily. We was made to learn the gospels verse by verse an’ one slip’d earn you a stroke o’ the cane. What a pastor I might o’ made! But then, who’d take lessons from “Somebody’s Natural Son” on the Ten Commandments?’ He deals seven cards to each player. Oost turns over the top card of the remnant pack. ‘Diamonds is trumps.’
‘I heard tell,’ says Grote, playing the eight of clubs, ‘the Company shipped some Head-Shrinker, black as a sweep, to pastor’s school in Leiden. The idea bein’ he’ll go home to his jungle an’ show the cannibals the Light o’ the Lord an’ so render ’em more pacific, eh? Bibles bein’ cheaper’n rifles an’ all.’
‘Oh, but rifles make f’better sport,’ remarks Gerritszoon. ‘Bang bang bang.’
‘What good’s a slave,’ asks Grote, ‘what’s full o’ bullet holes?’
Baert kisses his card and plays the Queen of clubs.
‘She’s the only bitch on Earth,’ says Gerritszoon, ‘who’ll let yer do that.’
‘With tonight’s winnin’s,’ says Baert, ‘I may order a gold-skinned miss.’
‘Did the orphanage in Batavia give you your name, also, Mr Oost?’ I would never ask that question sober, Jacob berates himself.
But Oost, on whom Grote’s rum is having a benign effect, takes no offence. ‘Aye, it did. “Oost” is from “Oost-Indische Compagnie” who founded the orphanage, and who’d deny there’s “East” in my blood? “Ivo” is ’cause I was left on the steps o’ the orphanage on the twentieth o’ May what’s the old feast day of St Ivo. Master Drijver at the orphanage’d be kind enough to point out, ev’ry now an’ then, how “Ivo” is the male “Eve” an’ a fittin’ reminder o’ the original sin o’ my birth.’
‘Its a man’s conduct that God is interested in,’ avows Jacob, ‘not the circumstances of his birth.’
‘More’s the pity it was wolfs like Drijver an’ not God who reared me.’
‘Mr de Zoet,’ Twomey prompts, ‘your turn.’
Jacob plays the five of hearts; Twomey lays down the four.
Oost runs the corners of his cards over his Javanese lips. ‘I’d clamber out o’ the attic window, ’bove the jacarandas, an’ there, northwards, out past the Old Fort, was a strip o’ blue… or green… or grey… an’ smell the brine, ’bove the stink o’ the canals; there was the ships layin’ hard by Onrust, like livin’ things, an’ sails billowin’… an’, “This ain’t my home,” I told that buildin’, “an’ you ain’t my masters,” I told the wolfs, “ ’cause you’re my home,” I told the sea. An’ on some days I’d make-believe it heard me an’ was answering, “Yeah, I am, an’ one o’ these days I’ll send for you.” Now I know it didn’t speak, but… you carry your cross as best you can, don’t you? So that’s how I grew up through them years an’ when the wolfs was beatin’ me in the name of rectifyin’ my wrongs… it was the sea I’d dream of even though I’d never yet seen its swells an’ its rollers… even tho’, aye, I’d never set my big toe on a boat all my life…’ He places the five of clubs.
Baert wins the trick. ‘I may take twin gold-skinned misses for the night…’
Gerritszoon plays the seven of diamonds, announcing, ‘The Devil.’
‘Judas damn you,’ says Baert, losing the ten of clubs, ‘you damn Judas.’
‘So how was it,’ asks Twomey, ‘the sea did call you, Ivo?’
‘From our twelfth year – that is, whenever the Director decided we was twelve – we’d be set to “Fruitful Industry”. For girls, this was sewin’, weavin’, stirrin’ the vats in the Laundry. Us boys, we was hired out to crate-makers an’ coopers, to officers at the barracks to go-for, or to the docks, as stevedores. Me, I was given to a rope-maker who set me pickin’ oakum out o’ tarry old ropes. Cheaper than servants, us; cheaper than slaves. Drijver’d pocket his “acknowledgement”, he’d call it, an’ with above an hundred of us at it “Fruitful Industry” it was, right enough, for him. But what it did do was let us out o’ the orphanage walls. We weren’t guarded: where’d we run to? The jungle? I’d not known Batavia’s streets much at all, save for the walk from the orphanage to church, so now I could wander a little, takin’ roundabout ways to work an’ back, an’ run errands for the rope-maker, through the Chinamen’s bazaar an’ most of all along the wharfs, happy as a granary rat, lookin’ at the sailors from far-off lands…’ Ivo Oost plays the Jack of diamonds, winning the trick. ‘Devil beats the Pope but the Knave beats the Devil.’
‘My rotted tooth’s hurtin’,’ says Baert, ‘hurtin’ me frightful.’
‘Artful play,’ compliments Grote, losing a card of no consequence.
‘One day,’ Oost continues, ‘I was fourteen, most like – I was deliverin’ a coil o’ rope to a chandler’s an’ a snug brig was in, small an’ sweet an’ with a figurehead of a… a good woman. Sara Maria was the brig’s name, an’ I… I heard a voice, like a voice, without the voice, sayin’, “She’s the one an’ it’s today.” ’
‘Well, that’s clear,’ mutters Gerritszoon, ‘as a Frenchman’s shit-pot.’
‘You heard,’ suggests Jacob, ‘a sort of inner prompting?’
‘Whatever it was, up that gangplank I hopped, an’ waited for this big man who was doin’ the directin’ an’ yellin’ to notice me. He never did so I summoned my courage an’ said, “Excuse me, sir.” He peered close an’ barked, “Who let this ragamuffin on deck?” I begged his pardon an’ said that I wanted to run away to sea an’ might he speak with the Captain? Laughter was the last thing I expected but laugh he did so I begged his pardon but said I weren’t jokin’. He says, “What’d your ma ’n’ pa think of me for spiritin’ you away without even a by-their-leave? And why d’you suppose you’d make a sailor with its aches an’ its pains an’ its colds an’ its hots an’ the cargo-master’s moods, ’cause anyone aboard’ll agree the man’s a very devil?” I just says that my ma ’n’ pa’d not say nothin’ ’cause I was raised in the House of Bastardy an’ if I could survive that then no disrespect but I weren’t afeard o’ the sea nor any cargo-master’s mood… an’ he din’t mock or talk snidey-like but asked, “So do your custodians know you’re arranging a life at sea?” I confessed Drijver’d flay me alive. So he makes his decision, an’ says, “My name is Daniel Snitker an’ I am cargo-master of the Sara Maria an’ my cabin-boy died o’ ship-fever.” They was embarkin’ Banda for nutmeg the next day, an’ he promised he’d have the Captain put me on the Ship’s Book, but till the Sara Maria set sail he bade me hide in the cockpit with the other lads. I obeyed sharpish, but I’d been seen boardin’ the brig an’ right ’nuff the Director sent three big bad wolfs to fetch back his “stolen property”. Mr Snitker an’ his mates pitched ’em in the harbour.’
Jacob strokes his broken nose. I am convicting the lad’s father.
Gerritszoon discards an impotent five of clubs.
‘I b’lieve,’ Baert puts nails in his purse, ‘the necessessessary house is callin’.’
‘What yer takin’ yer winnin’s for?’ asks Gerritszoon. ‘Don’t yer trust us?’
‘I’d fry my own liver first,’ says Baert, ‘with cream an’ onions.’
Two jars of rum sit on the plank-shelf, unlikely to survive the night. ‘With the weddin’ ring in my pocket,’ sniffs Piet Baert, ‘I… I…’
Gerritszoon spits. ‘Oh, quit yer blubbin’, yer pox-livered pussy!’
‘You say that,’ Baert’s face hardens, ‘ ’cause you’re a cess-pool hog what no’un’s ever loved, but my one true love was yearnin’ to marry me an’ I’m thinkin’, My evil luck is gone away at long last. All we needed was Neeltje’s father’s blessin’ an’ we’d be sailin’ down the aisle. A beer-porter, her father was, in St-Pol-sur-Mer an’ it was there I was headed that night, but Dunkirk was a strange town an’ rain was pissin’ down an’ night was fallin’ an’ the streets led back where they’d come an’ when I stopped at a tavern to ask my way the barmaid’s knockers was two juggly piglets an’ she lights up all witchy an’ says, “My oh my, ain’t you just strayed to the wrong side o’ town, my poor lickle lambkin?” I says, “Please, miss, I just want to get to St-Pol-sur-Mer,” so she says, “Why so hasty? Ain’t our ’stablishment to your likin’?” an’ thrusted them piglets at me, an’ I says, “Your ’stablishment is fine, miss, but my one true love Neeltje is waitin’ with her father so’s I can ask for her hand in marriage an’ turn my back on the sea,” an’ the barmaid says, “So you are a sailor?” an’ I says, “I was, aye, but no more,” an’ she cries out to the whole house, “Who’ll not drink to Neeltje the luckiest lass in Flanders?” an’ she puts a tumbler o’ gin in my hand an’ says, “A little somethin’ to warm your bone,” an’ promises her brother’ll walk me to St-Pol-sur-Mer bein’ as all sorts o’ villains stalk Dunkirk after dark. So I thinks, Yes, for sure, my evil luck is gone away at long, long last, an’ I raised that glass to my lips.’
‘Game girl,’ notes Arie Grote. ‘What’s that tavern named, by the by?’
‘It’ll be named Smokin’ Cinders afore I leave Dunkirk again: that gin goes down an’ my head swims an’ the lamps are snuffed out. Bad dreams follow, then I’m wakin’, swayin’ this way an’ that way, like I’m out at sea, but I’m squashed under bodies like a grape in a wine-press, and I think, I’m dreamin’ still, but that cold puke bungin’ up my ear-hole weren’t no dream, an’ I cries, “Dear Jesus am I dead?” an’ some cackly demon laughs, “No Fishy wriggles free o’ this hook that simple!” an’ a grimmer voice says, “You been crimped, friend. We’re on the Venguer du Peuple an’ we’re in the Channel sailin’ west,” an’ I says, “The Venguer du What?” an’ then I remember Neeltje an’ shout, “But tonight I’m to be engaged to my one true love!” an’ the demon says, “There’s just one engagement you’ll see here, matey, an’ that’s a naval one,” an’ I thinks, Sweet Jesus in Heaven, Neeltje’s ring, an’ I wriggles my arm to see if it’s in my jacket but it ain’t. I despair. I weep. I gnash my teeth. But nothin’ helps. Mornin’ comes an’ we’re brought up on deck an’ lined along the gunwale. ’Bout a score of us southern Netherlanders there was, an’ the Captain appears. Captain’s an evil Paris weasel; his first officer’s a shaggy hulkin’ bruiser, a Basque. “I am Captain Renaudin an’ you are my privileged volunteers. Our orders are to rendezvous,” says he, “with a convoy bringin’ grain from North America an’ escort her to Republican soil. The British shall try to stop us. We shall blast them to matchwood. Any questions?” One chancer – a Swissman – pipes up, “Captain Renaudin: I belong to the Mennonite Church an’ my religion forbids me to kill.” Renaudin tells his first officer, “We must inconvenience this Man o’ Brotherly Love no longer,” an’ up the bruiser steps an’ shoves the Swissman overboard. We hear him shoutin’ for help. We hear him beggin’ for help. We hear the beggin’ stop. The Captain asks, “Any more questions?” Well, my sea-legs come back fast ’nough so when the English fleet is sighted on the first o’ June two weeks later I was loadin’ powder into a twenty-four-pounder. The Third Battle of Ushant, the French call what happened next, an’ The Glorious First o’ June, the English call it. Well, blastin’ lagrange shot through each other’s gun-ports at ten feet off may be “glorious” to Sir Johnny Roast Beef but it ain’t glorious to me. Sliced-open men writhin’ in the smoke; aye, men bigger an’ tougher’n you, Gerritszoon, beggin’ for their mammies through raggy holes in their throats… an’ a tub carried up from the surgeon’s full o’…’ Baert fills his glass. ‘Nah, when the Brunswick holed us at the waterline an’ we knew we was goin’ down, the Venguer weren’t no ship-o’-the-line no more: we was an abattoir… an abattoir…’ Baert looks into his rum, then at Jacob. ‘What saved me that terrible day? An empty cheese barrel what floated my way is what. All night I clung to it, too cold, too dead to fear the sharks. Dawn come, an’ brought a sloop flyin’ the Union Jack. Its launch hauls me aboard an’ squawks at me in that jackdaw jabber they speak – no offence, Twomey…’
The carpenter shrugs. ‘Irish would be my mother tongue now, Mr Baert.’
‘This ancient Salt translates for me. “The mate’s askin’ where you’re from?” an’ says I, “Antwerp, sir: I got pressed by the French an’ I damn their eyes.” The Salt translates that, an’ the mate jabbers some more what the Salt translates. Gist was, ’cause I weren’t a Frenchie, I weren’t a prisoner. Nearly kissed his boots in gratefulness! But then he told me if I volunteered for His Majesty’s Navy as an ordinary seaman I’d get proper pay an’ a new set o’ slops, well almost new. But if I din’t volunteer, I’d be pressed anyhow and paid salty sod-all as a landsman. To keep from despairin’ I ask where we’re bound, thinkin’ I’d find a way to slip ashore in Gravesend or Portsmouth an’ get back to Dunkirk an’ darlin’ Neeltje in a week or two… and the Salt says, “Our next port o’ call’ll be Ascension Island, for victuallin’ – not that you’ll be settin’ foot ashore – and from there it’s on to the Bay o’ Bengal…” an’, grown man that I am, I couldn’t keep from weepin’…’
Not one drop of rum is left. ‘Lady Luck was passin’ indifferent to yer tonight, Mr de Z.,’ Grote snuffs out all but two candles, ‘but there’s always another day, eh?’
‘Indifferent?’ Jacob hears the others close the door. ‘I was shorn.’
‘Oh, yer mercury profits’ll keep Famine an’ Pestilence at bay for a fair while yet, eh? ’Twas a risky stance yer took with the sale, Mr de Z., but so long as the Abbot’s willin’ to indulge yer, yer last two crates may yet earn a better price. Think what riches eighty crates’d fetch, ’stead o’ just eight…’
‘Such a quantity,’ Jacob’s head steams with drink, ‘would violate-’
‘ ’Twould bend Company rules on Private Trade, aye, but the trees what survive cruel winds are those what do bend, eh, are they not?’
‘A tidy metaphor does not make a wrong thing right.’
Grote puts the precious glass bottles back on the shelf. ‘Five hundred per cent profit, you made: word travels, an’ yer’ve two seasons at most ’fore the Chinese flood this market. Deputy v. C. an’ Captain Lacy both have the capital back in Batavia an’ they ain’t men to say, “Oh dearie, but I mayn’t for my quota is jus’ eight boxes.” Or the Chief himself’ll do it.’
‘Chief Vorstenbosch is here to eradicate corruption, not aid it.’
‘Chief Vorstenbosch’s interests are as starved by the war as anyone’s.’
‘Chief Vorstenbosch is too honest a man to profit at the Company’s expense.’
‘What man ain’t the honestest cove,’ Grote’s round face is a bronze moon in the dark, ‘in his own eyes? ’Tain’t good intentions what paves the road to hell: it’s self-justifyin’s. Now, speakin’ of honest coves, what’s yer true reason for the pleasure of yer comp’ny tonight?’
Along Sea Wall Lane the guards clap the hour with their wooden clappers.
I am too drunk, thinks Jacob, to practise cunning. ‘I am here about two delicate matters.’
‘My lips’ll be waxed and sealed, on my beloved pa’s distant grave.’
‘The truth is, then, the Chief suspects a… misappropriation is taking place…’
‘Saints! Not a misappropriation, Mr de Zoet? Not on Dejima?’
‘… involving a provedore who visits your kitchen every morning -’
‘Several provedores visit my kitchen every morning, Mr de Z.’
‘- whose small bag is as full when he leaves as when he arrives.’
‘Glad I am to dispel the misunderstandin’, eh? Yer can tell Mr Vorstenbosch as how the answer’s “onions”. Aye, onions. Rotten, stinkin’ onions. That provedore’s the rascalliest dog of all. Each mornin’ he tries it on but some blackguards won’t listen to “Begone you shameless Knave!” an’ that one is one I fear.’
Fishermen’s voices travel through the warm and salty night.
I’m not too drunk, thinks Jacob, to miss a calculated insolence.
‘Well,’ the clerk stands, ‘there’s no need to trouble you any further.’
‘There isn’t?’ Arie Grote is suspicious. ‘There isn’t.’
‘No. Another long day in the yard tomorrow, so I’ll bid you good-night.’
Grote frowns. ‘You did say two delicate matters, Mr de Z.?’
‘Your tale about onions -’ Jacob ducks below the beam ‘- requires the second item to be raised with Mr Gerritszoon. I’ll speak with him tomorrow, in the sober light of day – the news will be an unwelcome revelation, I fear.’
Grote half blocks the door. ‘To what might this second matter pertain?’
‘Your playing cards, Mr Grote. Thirty-six rounds of Karnöffel, and of those thirty-six, you dealt twelve, and of those twelve, you won ten. An improbable outcome! Baert and Oost may not detect a deck of cards conceived in sin, but Twomey and Gerritszoon would. That ancient trick, then, I discounted. No mirrors behind us; no servants to tip you the wink… I was at a loss.’
‘A suspicious mind,’ Grote’s tone turns wintry, ‘for a God-fearin’ cove.’
‘Bookkeepers acquire suspicious minds, Mr Grote. I was at a loss to explain your success until I noticed you stroking the top edge of the cards you dealt. So I did the same, and felt the notches – those tiny nicks: the Knaves, sevens, Kings and Queens are all notched closer or further from the corners, according to their value. A sailor’s hands, or a warehouseman’s, or a carpenter’s, are too calloused. But a cook’s forefinger or a clerk’s is another matter.’
‘It’s custom’ry,’ Grote swallows, ‘that the house is paid for its trouble.’
‘In the morning we’ll find out if Gerritszoon agrees. Now, I really must-’
‘Such a pleasant evenin’: what say I reimburse your evening’s losses?’
‘All that matters is truth, Mr Grote: one version of the truth.’
‘Is this how you repay me for makin’ you rich? By blackmail?’
‘Suppose you tell me more about this bag of onions?’
Grote sighs, twice. ‘Yer a bloody ache in the arse, Mr de Z.’
Jacob relishes the inverted compliment and waits.
‘Yer know,’ the cook begins, ‘yer know o’ the ginseng bulb?’
‘I know ginseng is a commodity much revered by Japanese druggists.’
‘A Chinaman in Batavia – quite the gent – ships me a crate on every year’s sailin’. All well an’ good. Problem is, the Magistracy taxes the stuff come Auction Day: we was losin’ six parts in ten till Dr Marinus one day mentioned a local ginseng what grows here in the bay but what’s not so prized. So…’
‘So your man brings in bags of the local ginseng…’
‘… and leaves,’ Grote betrays a flash of pride, ‘with bags of the Chinese.’
‘The guards and friskers at the Land-Gate don’t find this odd?’
‘They’re paid not to find it odd. Now, here’s my question for you: how’s the Chief goin’ to act on this? On this an’ everythin’ else you’re snufflin’ up? ’Cause this is how Dejima works. Stop all these little perquisites, eh, an’ yer stop Dejima itself – an’ don’t evade me, eh, with your “That is a matter for Mr Vorstenbosch.” ’
‘But it is a matter for Mr Vorstenbosch.’ Jacob lifts the latch.
‘It ain’t right.’ Grote clamps the latch. ‘It ain’t just. One minute it’s “Private Trade is killin’ the Company”; next it’s “I’m not a man to sell my own men short”. Yer can’t have a cellar full o’ wine and yer wife drunk legless.’
‘Keep your dealings honest,’ Jacob says, ‘and there is no dilemma.’
‘Keep my dealings “honest” an’ my profits is potato peelin’s!’
‘It’s not I who make the Company’s rules, Mr Grote.’
‘Aye, but yer do its dirty work ’appily enough, though, don’t yer?’
‘I follow orders loyally. Now, unless you plan on imprisoning an officer, release this door.’
‘Loyalty looks simple,’ Grote tells him, ‘but it ain’t.’
Morning of Sunday the 15th September, 1799
Jacob retrieves the de Zoet Psalter from under the floorboards and kneels in the corner of the room where he prays on his bare knees every night. Placing his nostril over the thin gap between the book’s spine and binding, Jacob inhales the damp aroma of the Domburg parsonage. The smell evokes Sundays when the villagers battle January gales up the cobbled high street as far as the church; Easter Sundays, when the sun warmed the pasty backs of boys idling guiltily by the lagoon; autumnal Sundays, when the sexton climbed the church tower to ring the bell through the sea-fog; Sundays of the brief Zeeland summer, when the season’s new hats would arrive from the milliners in Middelburg; and one Whitsunday when Jacob voiced to his uncle the thought that just as one man can be Pastor de Zoet of Domburg and ‘Geertje’s and my uncle’ and ‘Mother’s brother’, so God, His Son and the Holy Spirit are an indivisible Trinity. His reward was the one kiss his uncle ever gave him: wordless, respectful and here, on his forehead.
Let them still be there, prays the homesick traveller, when I go home.
The Dutch Company professes an allegiance to the Dutch Reformed Church, but makes little provision for its employees’ spiritual well-being. On Dejima Chief Vorstenbosch, Deputy van Cleef, Ivo Oost, Grote and Gerritszoon would also claim loyalty to the Dutch Reformed faith, yet no semblance of organised worship would ever be tolerated by the Japanese. Captain Lacy is an Episcopalian; Ponke Ouwehand a Lutheran; and Catholicism is represented by Piet Baert and Con Twomey. The latter has confided to Jacob that he conducts an ‘Unholy Mess of a Holy Mass’ every Sunday, and is frightened of dying without the ministrations of a priest. Dr Marinus refers to the Supreme Creator in the same tone he uses to discuss Voltaire, Diderot, Herschel and certain Scottish physicians: admiring, but less than worshipful.
To what God, Jacob wonders, would a Japanese midwife pray?
Jacob turns to the ninety-third psalm, known as the ‘Storm Psalm’.
The floods have lifted up, O Lord, he reads, the floods have lifted up their voice…
The Zeelander pictures the Westerscheldt between Vlissingen and Breskens.
… the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise…
The Bible’s storms for Jacob, are North Sea storms, where even the sun is drowned.
… than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea…
Jacob thinks of Anna’s hands, her warm hands, her living hands. He fingers the bullet in the cover and turns to the hundred and fiftieth psalm.
Praise him with the sound of the trumpet… with the psaltery and harp.
The harpist’s slender fingers and sickle-shaped eyes are Miss Aibagawa’s.
Praise him with the timbrel and dance. King David’s dancer has one burnt cheek.
The sunken-eyed Interpreter Motogi waits under the awning of the Guild and notices Jacob and Hanzaburo only when the invited clerk is directly in front of him. ‘Ah! De Zoet-san… To summon with little warning causes a great trouble, we fear.’
‘I’m honoured,’ Jacob returns Motogi’s bow, ‘not troubled, Mr Motogi…’
A coolie drops a crate of camphor and earns a kick from a merchant.
‘… and Mr Vorstenbosch has excused me for the entire morning, if need be.’
Motogi ushers him into the Guild where the men remove their shoes.
Jacob then steps onto the knee-high interior floor and passes into the spacious rear office he has never yet ventured into. Sitting at tables arranged in the manner of a schoolroom are six men: Interpreters Isohachi and Kobayashi of the First Rank; the pox-scarred Interpreter Narazake and the charismatic, shifty Namura of the Second Rank; Goto of the Third Rank, who is to act as scribe, and a thoughtful-eyed man who introduces himself as Maeno, a physician, who thanks Jacob for allowing him to attend, ‘so you may cure my sick Dutch’. Hanzaburo sits in the corner and pretends to be attentive. For his part, Kobayashi takes pains to prove that he bears no grudge over the peacock-fan incident, and introduces Jacob as ‘Clerk de Zoet of Zeeland, Esquire’ and ‘Man of Deep Learning.’
The man of deep learning denies this paean and his modesty is applauded.
Motogi explains that in the course of their work the interpreters encounter words whose meanings are unclear, and it is to illuminate these that Jacob has been invited. Dr Marinus often leads these unofficial tutorials, but today he is busy and nominated Clerk de Zoet as his substitute.
Each interpreter has a list of items that evade the Guild’s collective understanding. These he reads out, one by one, and Jacob explains as clearly as he can, with examples, gestures and synonyms. The group discusses an appropriate Japanese substitute, sometimes testing it on Jacob, until everyone is satisfied. Straightforward words such as ‘parched’, ‘plenitude’ or ‘saltpetre’ do not detain them long. More abstract items such as ‘simile’, ‘figment’ or ‘parallax’ prove more exacting. Terms without a ready Japanese equivalent, such as ‘privacy’, ‘splenetic’ or the verb ‘to deserve’ cost ten or fifteen minutes, as do phrases requiring specialist knowledge – ‘Hanseatic’, ‘nerve-ending’, or ‘subjunctive’. Jacob notices that where a Dutch pupil would say, ‘I don’t understand,’ the interpreters lower their eyes, so the teacher cannot merely explicate, but must also gauge his students’ true comprehension.
Two hours pass at the speed of one but exhaust Jacob like four, and he is grateful for green tea and a short interval. Hanzaburo slopes away without explanation. During the second half, Narazake asks how ‘He has gone to Edo’ differs from ‘He has been to Edo’; Dr Maeno wants to know when one uses, ‘It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg’; and Namura asks for the differences between ‘If I see’, ‘If I saw’ and ‘Had I but seen’; Jacob is thankful for his tedious hours of schoolboy grammar. The last queries of the morning come from Interpreter Kobayashi. ‘Please may Clerk de Zoet explain this word: “Repercussions”.’
Jacob suggests, ‘A consequence; the result of an action. A repercussion of spending my money is being poor. If I eat too much, one repercussion shall be’ – he mimes a swollen belly – ‘fat.’
Kobayashi asks about ‘in broad daylight’. ‘Each word I understand, but meaning of all is unclear. Can we say “I visit good friend Mr Tanaka in broad daylight”? I think no, perhaps…’
Jacob mentions the criminal connotations. ‘Especially when the miscreant – the bad man, that is – lacks both shame and fear of being caught. “My good friend Mr Motogi was robbed in broad daylight.” ’
‘ “Mr Vorstenbosch’s teapot,” ’ asks Kobayashi, ‘ “was stolen in broad daylight”?’
‘A valid example,’ agrees Jacob, glad that the Chief isn’t present.
The interpreters discuss various Japanese equivalents before agreeing on one.
‘Perhaps next word,’ continues Kobayashi, ‘is simple… “Impotent”.’
‘ “Impotent” is the opposite of “potent” or “powerful”; that is, “weak”.’
‘A lion,’ Dr Maeno proposes, ‘is strong, but a mouse is impotent.’
Kobayashi nods and studies his list. ‘Next is “blithely unaware”.’
‘A state of ignorance about a misfortune. Whilst one is unaware of it one is “blithe”, that is, content. But when one becomes aware, one becomes unhappy.’
‘Husband is “blithely unaware”,’ suggests Hori, ‘his wife loves another?’
‘Yes, Mr Hori.’ Jacob smiles and stretches out his cramped legs.
‘Last word,’ says Kobayashi, ‘is from book of law: “lack of proof positive”.’
Before the Dutchman opens his mouth, a grim Constable Kosugi appears at the door; a shaken Hanzaburo is in tow. Kosugi apologises for the intrusion and delivers a stern narrative that, Jacob sees with mounting unease, includes both Hanzaburo and himself. At one key twist, the interpreters gasp in shock and stare at the bewildered Dutchman. The word for ‘thief’, dorobô, is used several times. Motogi verifies a detail with the constable and announces, ‘Mr de Zoet, Constable Kosugi bring bad news. Thiefs visit Tall House.’
‘What?’ blurts Jacob. ‘But when? How did they break in? Why?’
‘Your house interpreter,’ confirms Motogi, ‘believes “in this hour.” ’
‘What did they steal?’ Jacob turns to Hanzaburo, who looks worried about being blamed. ‘What is there to steal?’
The Tall House stairs are less gloomy than usual: the door to Jacob’s upstairs apartment was chiselled off its hinges and, once inside, he finds that his sea-chest has suffered the same indignity. The gouged holes on its six sides suggest the burglars were searching for secret compartments. Pained by the sight of his irreplaceable volumes and sketchbooks strewn across the floor, Jacob’s first action is to tidy these up. Interpreter Goto helps and asks, ‘Are some books taken?’
‘I can’t be sure,’ Jacob replies, ‘until they’re all gathered up…’
… but it appears not, and his valuable dictionary is scuffed but untaken.
But I can’t check my Psalter, Jacob thinks, until I am left alone.
There is no sign of this happening soon. As he retrieves his few personal effects, Vorstenbosch, van Cleef and Peter Fischer march up the stairs and now his small room is crowded with more than ten people.
‘First my teapot,’ declares the Chief, ‘now this fresh scandal.’
‘We shall strive great efforts,’ Kobayashi promises, ‘to find thiefs.’
Peter Fischer asks Jacob, ‘Where was the house interpreter during the theft?’
Interpreter Motogi puts the question to Hanzaburo who answers sheepishly. ‘He go ashore for one hour,’ says Motogi, ‘to visit very sick mother.’
Fischer snorts derisively. ‘I know where I’d begin my investigations.’
Van Cleef asks, ‘What items did the burglars take, Mr de Zoet?’
‘Fortunately, my remaining mercury – perhaps the thieves’ target – is under treble-lock in Warehouse Eik. My pocket-watch was on my person, as were, thank Heaven, my spectacles, and so, on first inspection, it appears that-’
‘In the name of God on high.’ Vorstenbosch rounds on Kobayshi. ‘Are we not robbed enough by your government during our regular trade without these repeated acts of larceny against our persons and property? Report to the Long Room in one hour, so I may dictate an official letter of complaint to the Magistracy which shall include a full list of items stolen by the thieves…’
‘Done.’ Con Twomey finishes rehanging the door and lapses into his Irish English. ‘Feckin’ langers’d need to rip out the feckin’ wall, like, to get through that.’
‘Who,’ Jacob sweeps up the sawdust, ‘is Feck Inlangers?’
The carpenter raps the door-frame. ‘I’ll fix your sea-chest tomorrow. Good, like new. This was a bad thing – and in broad daylight, too, yes?’
‘I still have my limbs.’ Jacob is sick with worry about his Psalter.
If the book is gone, he fears, the thieves will think ‘Blackmail’.
‘That’s the way.’ Twomey wraps his tools in oilcloth. ‘Until dinner.’
As the Irishman walks down the stairs, Jacob closes the door and slides the bolt, shifts the bed a few inches…
Might Grote have ordered the break-in, he wonders, as vengeance for the ginseng bulbs?
Jacob lifts a floorboard, lies down, and reaches for the sack-wrapped book…
His fingertips find the Psalter and he gasps with relief. ‘The Lord preserveth all them that love him.’ He replaces the floorboard and sits on his bed. He is safe, Ogawa is safe. Then what, he wonders, is wrong? Jacob senses he is overlooking something crucial. Like when I know a ledger is hiding a lie or an error, even when the totals appear to balance…
Hammering starts up across Flag Square. The carpenters are late.
It’s concealed in the obvious, Jacob thinks. ‘In broad daylight.’ Truth batters him like a hod of bricks: Kobayashi’s questions were a coded boast. The break-in was a message. It declares, ‘The consequences of crossing me, of which you are blithely unaware, are being enacted now, in broad daylight. You are impotent to retaliate, for there shall be not a scrap of proof positive.’ Kobayashi claimed authorship of the robbery and placed himself above suspicion: how could a burglar be with his victim at the time of the burglary? If Jacob reported the code-words, he would sound delusional.
The broiling day is cooling; its clatter has receded; Jacob feels sick.
He wants revenge, yes, Jacob guesses, but the gloater wants a prize, too.
After the Psalter, what is the most damaging thing to have stolen?
The cooling day is broiling; its clatter condenses; Jacob has a headache.
The newest pages of my latest sketchbook, he realises, under my pillow…
Trembling, Jacob throws away the pillow, snatches the sketchbook, fumbles with its ties, turns to the last page and cannot breathe: here is the serrated edge of a torn-out sheet. It was filled with the drawings of the face, hands and eyes of Miss Aibagawa, and somewhere nearby, Kobayashi is contemplating these likenesses in malign delight…
Shutting his eyes against the picture only increases its clarity.
Make this not true, Jacob prays, but this prayer tends to go unanswered.
The street door opens. Slow footsteps drag themselves up the stairs.
The extraordinary fact that Marinus is paying him a call scarcely dents Jacob’s adamantine misery. What if her permission to study on Dejima is revoked? A stout cane raps on the door. ‘Domburger.’
‘I’ve had enough unwelcome visitors in one day, Doctor.’
‘Open this door now, you Village Idiot.’
It is easiest for Jacob to obey. ‘Come to gloat, have you?’
Marinus peers around the clerk’s apartment, settles on the window-ledge, and takes in the view over Long Street and the garden through the glass-and-paper window. He unties and reties his lustrous grey hair. ‘What did they take?’
‘Nothing…’ He remembers Vorstenbosch’s lie. ‘Nothing of value.’
‘In cases of burglary,’ Marinus coughs, ‘I prescribe a course of billiards.’
‘Billiards, Doctor,’ Jacob vows, ‘is the last thing I shall be doing today.’
Jacob’s cue ball sails up the table, rebounds off the bottom cushion and glides to a halt two inches from the top edge, a hand’s length closer than Marinus’s. ‘Take the first stroke, Doctor. To how many points shall we play?’
‘Hemmij and I would set our finishing post at five hundred and one.’
Eelattu squeezes lemons into cloudy glasses; they scent the air, yellow.
A breeze blows through the Billiard Room in Garden House.
Marinus concentrates hard on his first strike of the game…
Why this sudden and peculiar kindness, Jacob cannot help but wonder.
… but the doctor’s shot is misjudged, hitting the red but not Jacob’s cue ball.
Easily, Jacob pockets both his and the red. ‘Shall I tally the score?’
‘You are the bookkeeper. Eelattu, the afternoon is your own.’
Eelattu thanks his master and leaves, and the clerk shoots a tight series of cannons, quickly taking his score to fifty. The billiard balls’ muffled trundling smooths his ruffled nerves. The shock of the burglary, he half persuades himself, made me go off at half-cock: for Miss Aibagawa to be drawn by a foreigner cannot be a punishable offence, even here. It’s not as if she posed for me clandestinely. After accruing sixty points, Jacob lets Marinus on to the table. Nor, the clerk thinks, is a page of sketches proof positive that I am infatuated with the woman.
The doctor, Jacob is surprised to see, is a middling amateur at billiards.
Nor is ‘infatuated’, he corrects himself, an accurate description…
‘Time must hang heavy here, Doctor, once the ship departs Batavia?’
‘For most, yes. The men seek solace in grog, the pipe, intrigues, hatred of our hosts, and in sex. For my part…’ he misses an easy shot ‘… I prefer the company of botany, my studies, my teaching and, of course, my harpsichord.’
‘How,’ Jacob chalks his cue, ‘are the Scarlatti sonatas?’
Marinus sits on the upholstered bench. ‘Fishing for gratitude, are we?’
‘Never, Doctor. I gather you belong to a native Academy of Science.’
‘The Shirandô? It lacks government patronage. Edo is dominated by “patriots” who mistrust all things foreign so, officially, we are just another private school. Unofficially, we are a bourse for rangakusha – scholars of European sciences and arts – to exchange ideas. Ôtsuki Monjurô, the Director, has influence enough at the Magistracy to ensure my monthly invitations.’
‘Is Dr Aibagawa’ – Jacob pots the red, long-distance – ‘also a member?’
Marinus is watching his younger opponent meaningfully.
‘I ask out of mere curiosity, Doctor.’
‘Dr Aibagawa is a keen astronomer and attends when his health permits. He was, in fact, the first Japanese to observe Herschel’s new planet through a telescope ordered here at wild expense. He and I, indeed, discuss optics more than medicine.’
Jacob returns the red ball to the balkline, wondering how not to change the subject.
‘After his wife and sons died,’ continued the doctor, ‘Doctor Aibagawa married a younger woman, a widow, whose son was to be inducted into Dutch medicine and carry on the Aibagawa practice. The young man turned out to be an idle disappointment.’
‘And is Miss Aibagawa…’ the younger man lines up an ambitious shot ‘… also permitted to attend the Shirandô?’
‘There are laws, you know, ranged against you: your suit is hopeless.’
‘Laws.’ Jacob’s shot rattles in the pocket’s jaws. ‘Laws against a doctor’s daughter becoming a foreigner’s wife?’
‘Not constitutional laws. I mean real laws: laws of the non si fa.’
‘So you are saying that Miss Aibagawa doesn’t attend the Shirandô?’
‘As a matter of fact, she is the Academy’s registrar. But as I keep trying to tell you…’ Marinus pockets the vulnerable red but his cue ball fails to spin backwards ‘… women of her class do not become Dejima wives. Even were she to share your tendresse, what hopes of a decent marriage after being pawed by a red-haired devil? If you do love her, express your devotion by avoiding her.’
He’s right, thinks Jacob, and asks, ‘May I accompany you to the Shirandô?’
‘Certainly not.’ Marinus tries to pot both his cue ball and Jacob’s, but misses.
There are limits, then, Jacob realises, to this unexpected detente.
‘You are no scholar,’ the doctor explains. ‘Nor am I your pimp.’
‘Is it fair to berate the less-privileged for womanising, smoking and drinking…’ Jacob pots Marinus’s cue ball ‘… whilst refusing to help their self-betterment?’
‘I am not a Society for Public Improvement. What privileges I enjoy, I earned.’
Cupido or Philander is practising an air on a viol da gamba.
The goats and a dog engage in a battle of bleating and barking.
‘You spoke of how you and Mr Hemmij -’ Jacob miscues ‘- used to play for a wager?’
‘You’re never proposing,’ the doctor mock-whispers, ‘gambling on a Sabbath?’
‘If I reach five hundred and one first, grant me one visit to the Shirandô.’
Marinus lines up his shot, looking doubtful. ‘What is my prize?’
He’s not rejecting the idea, Jacob notices, out of hand. ‘Name it.’
‘Six hours’ labour in my garden. Now, pass me the bridge.’
‘For your question’s intents and purposes…’ Marinus considers his next shot from all angles ‘… sentience in this life began in the rain-sodden summer of 1757 in a Haarlem garret: I was a six-year-old boy who had been taken to death’s door by a savage fever that had seen off my entire family of cloth merchants.’
You too, thinks Jacob. ‘I’m most sorry, Doctor. I didn’t guess.’
‘The world is a vale of tears. I was passed like a bad penning down a chain of relatives, each expecting a slice of an inheritance that had, in fact, been swallowed by debts. My illness made me,’ he pats his lame thigh, ‘an unpromising investment. The last, a great-uncle of dubious vintage named Cornelis, told me I’d one evil eye and one queer one, and took me to Leiden where he deposited me on a canal-side doorstep. He told me my “aunt-in-a-manner-of-speaking” Lidewijde would take me in, and vanished like a rat down a drain. Having no other choice, I rang the bell. Nobody answered. There was no point trying to limp after Great-Uncle Cornelis so I just waited on the high doorstep…’
Marinus’s next shot misses both the red and Jacob’s cue ball.
‘… until a friendly constable,’ Marinus drains his lemon juice, ‘threatened to thrash me for vagabondage. I was dressed in my cousins’ cast-offs, so my denial fell on deaf ears. Up and down the Rapenburg I walked, just to stay warm…’ Marinus looks over the water towards the Chinese factory ‘… a sunless, locked-up, tiring afternoon, and chestnut sellers were out, and canine street urchins watched me, scenting prey, and across the canal, maples shed leaves like women tearing up letters… and are you going to play your shot or not, Domburger?’
Jacob achieves a rare double-cannon: twelve points.
‘Back at the house the lights were still off. I rang the bell, beseeching the aid of every god I knew, and an old maid’s old maid flung the door open, swearing that were she the mistress I’d be turned away with no further ado, for tardiness was a sin in her book, but as she wasn’t, Klaas would see me in the back garden, though my entrance was the tradesman’s, down the steps. She slammed the door. So I made my descent, knocked, and the same wrathful Cerberus in Petticoats appeared, noticed my stick and led me down a dingy basement corridor to a beautiful sunken garden. Play your shot, or we’ll still be here at midnight.’
Jacob pots both cue balls and lines up the red nicely.
‘An old gardener emerged from a curtain of lilac and told me to show him my hands. Puzzled, he asked whether I’d done so much as one day’s work as a gardener in my life. No, I said. “We’ll let the garden decide,” said Klaas the Gardener, and very little besides all the live-long day. We mixed hornbeam leaves with horse manure; laid sawdust around the feet of roses; raked leaves in the small apple orchard… these were my first pleasant hours for a long, long time. We lit a fire with swept-up leaves and roasted a potato. A robin sat on my spade – it was already my spade – and sang.’ Marinus imitates a robin’s chk-chk-chk. ‘It was getting dark when a lady in a satrap’s dressing-gown and short white hair strode over the lawn. “My name,” she declared, “is Lidewijde Mostaart, but the mystery is you.” She had just heard, you see, that the real gardener’s boy, due that afternoon, had broken his leg. So I explained who I was and about Great-Uncle Cornelis…’
Passing a hundred and fifty points, Jacob misses a shot to let Marinus on the table.
In the garden, the slave Sjako is brushing aphids from the salad leaves.
Marinus leans out of the window and addresses him in fluent Malay. Sjako replies and Marinus returns to the game, amused. ‘My mother, it transpired, was a second cousin of Lidewijde Mostaart, whom she had never met. Abigail, the old maid, huffed, puffed and complained that anyone would have taken me for the new gardener’s boy, given the rags I wore. Klaas said I had the makings of a gardener and retired to the shed. I asked Mrs Mostaart to let me stay and be Klaas’s assistant. She told me it was “Miss”, not “Mrs”, to most, but “Aunt” to me, and took me inside to meet Elisabeth. I ate fennel soup and answered their questions, and in the morning they told me I could live with them for as long as I wished. My old clothes were sacrificed to the deity in the fireplace.’
Cicadas hiss in the pines. They sound like fat frying in a shallow pan.
Marinus misses a side-pocket pot and pockets his own cue ball by mistake.
‘Bad luck,’ commiserates Jacob, adding the foul to his total.
‘No such thing, in a game of skill. Well, bibliophiles are not uncommon in Leiden, but bibliophiles made wise by reading are as rare there as anywhere. Aunts Lidewijde and Elisabeth were two such readers, as sagacious as they were rapacious devourers of the word. Lidewijde had had “associations” with the stage in her day, in Vienna and Naples, and Elisabeth was what we’d now call a blauw-stocking, and their house was a trove of books. To this printed garden, I was given the keys. Lidewijde, moreover, taught me the harpsichord; Elisabeth taught me both French and Swedish, her mother tongue; and Klaas the Gardener was my first, unlettered but vastly learned teacher of botany. Moreover, my aunts’ circle of friends included some of Leiden’s freest-thinking scholars, which is to say, “of the age”. My own personal Enlightenment was breathed into being. I bless Great-Uncle Cornelis to this day for abandoning me there.’
Jacob pockets Marinus’s cue ball and the red alternately three or four times.
A dandelion seed lands on the green baize of the table.
‘Genus Taraxacum,’ Marinus frees it and launches it from the window, ‘of the family Asteraceae. But erudition alone fills neither belly nor pocket-book, and my aunts survived frugally on slender annuities, so as I reached maturity, it was settled that I should study medicine to support my scientific endeavours. I won a place at the medical school at Uppsala, in Sweden. The choice, of course, was no accident: cumulative weeks of my boyhood had been spent poring through Species Plantarum and Systema Naturae, and, once ensconced at Uppsala, I became a disciple of the celebrated Professor Linnaeus.’
‘My uncle says,’ Jacob slaps a fly, ‘he was one of the great men of our age.’
‘Great men are greatly complex beings. It’s true that Linnaean taxonomy underlies botany, but he taught also that swallows hibernate under lakes; that twelve-foot giants thump about Patagonia; and that Hottentots are monorchids, possessing but a single testicle. They have two. I looked. “Deus creavit,” his motto ran, “Linnaeus disposuit”, and dissenters were heretics whose careers must be crushed. Yet he influenced my fate directly by advising me to win a professorship by travelling the East as one of his “Apostles”, mapping the flora of the Indies and trying to gain entry into Japan.’
‘You are approaching your fiftieth birthday, are you not, Doctor?’
‘Linnaeus’s last lesson, of which he himself was unaware, was that professorships kill philosophers. Oh, I’m vain enough to want my burgeoning Flora Japonica to be published one day – as a votive offering to Human Knowledge – but a seat at Uppsala, or Leiden, or Cambridge, holds no allure. My heart is the East’s, in this lifetime. This is my third year in Nagasaki and I have work enough for another three, or six. During the Court Embassy I can see landscapes no European botanist ever saw. My seminarians are keen young men – with one young woman – and visiting scholars bring me specimens from all over the Empire.’
‘But aren’t you afraid of dying here, so far away from…?’
‘One has to die somewhere, Domburger. What are the scores?’
‘Your ninety-one points, Doctor, against my three hundred and six.’
‘Shall we put our finishing post at a thousand points and double the prizes?’
‘Are you promising you’ll take me to the Shirandô Academy twice?’
To be seen by Miss Aibagawa there, he thinks, is to be seen in a new light.
‘Provided you are willing to dig horse manure into the beetroot beds for twelve hours.’
‘Very well, Doctor…’ the clerk wonders whether van Cleef might loan him the nimble-fingered Weh to repair the ruff on his best lace shirt ‘… I accept your terms.’
Late in the afternoon of the 16th September, 1799
Jacob digs the last of the day’s horse manure into the beetroot beds, and fetches water for the late cucumbers from the tarred barrels. He started his clerical work one hour early this morning so he could finish at four o’clock and begin repaying the twelve hours’ garden labour he owes the doctor. Marinus was a scoundrel, Jacob thinks, to hide his virtuosity at billiards, but a wager is a wager. He removes the straw from around the cucumber plants’ stems, empties both gourds, then replaces the mulch to keep the moisture in the thirsty soil. Now and then a curious head appears above the Long Street wall. The sight of a Dutch clerk pulling up weeds like a peasant is worth catching. Hanzaburo, when asked to help, laughed until he saw that Jacob was in earnest, then mimed a back-pain and walked away, pocketing a fistful of lavender heads by the garden gate. Arie Grote tried to sell Jacob his sharkhide hat so he could ‘toil with elegance, like a gentleman farmer’; Piet Baert offered to sell him billiard lessons; and Ponke Ouwehand helpfully pointed out some weeds. Gardening is harder labour than Jacob is used to, and yet, he admits to himself, I enjoy it. His tired eyes are rested by the living green; rosefinches pluck worms from the ramped-up earth; and a black-masked bunting, whose song sounds like clinking cutlery, watches from the empty cistern. Chief Vorstenbosch and Deputy van Cleef are at the Nagasaki Residence of the Lord of Satsuma, the Shogun’s father-in-law, to press their case for more copper, so Dejima enjoys an unsupervised air. The seminarians are in the Hospital: as Jacob hoes the rows of beans, he hears Marinus’s voice through the Surgery window. Miss Aibagawa is there. Jacob still hasn’t seen her, much less spoken to her, since giving her the daringly illustrated fan. The glimmers of kindness the doctor is showing him shall not extend to arranging a rendezvous. Jacob has considered asking Ogawa Uzaemon to take her a letter from him, but if it was discovered, both the interpreter and Miss Aibagawa could be prosecuted for secret negotiations with a foreigner.
And anyway, Jacob thinks, what would I even write in such a letter?
Picking slugs from the cabbages with a pair of chopsticks, Jacob notices a ladybird on his right hand. He makes a bridge for it with his left, which the insect obligingly crosses. Jacob repeats the exercise several times. The ladybird believes, he thinks, she is on a momentous journey, but she is going nowhere. He pictures an endless sequence of bridges between skin-covered islands over voids, and wonders if an unseen force is playing the same trick on him…
… until a woman’s voice dispels his reverie: ‘Mr Dazûto?’
Jacob removes his bamboo hat and stands up.
Miss Aibagawa’s face eclipses the sun. ‘I beg pardon to disturb.’
Surprise, guilt, nervousness… Jacob feels many things.
She notices the ladybird on his thumb. ‘Tentô-mushi.’
In his eagerness to comprehend, he mishears: ‘O-ben-tô-mushi?’
‘O-ben-tô-mushi is “luncheon-box bug”.’ She smiles. ‘This,’ she indicates the ladybird, ‘is O-ten-tô-mushi.’
‘Tentô-mushi,’ he says, and she nods with a schoolmistress’s approval.
Her deep blue summer kimono and white headscarf lend her a nun’s air.
They are not alone: the inevitable guard stands by the garden gate.
Jacob tries to ignore him: ‘ “Ladybird”. A gardener’s friend…’
Anna would like you, he thinks, looking into her face. Anna would like you.
‘… because ladybirds eat greenfly.’ Jacob raises his thumb to his lips and blows.
The ladybird flies all of three feet to the scarecrow’s face.
She adjusts the scarecrow’s hat as a wife might. ‘How you call him?’
‘A scarecrow, to “scare crows” away, but his name is Robespierre.’
‘Warehouse Eik is “Warehouse Oak”; monkey is “William”. Why scarecrow is “Robespierre”?’
‘Because his head falls off when the wind changes. It’s a dark joke.’
‘Joke is secret language,’ she frowns, ‘inside words.’
Jacob decides against referring to the fan until she does: it would appear, at least, that she is not offended or angered. ‘May I help you, miss?’
‘Yes. Dr Marinus ask I come and ask you for rôzu-meri. He ask…’
The better I know Marinus, thinks Jacob, the less I understand him.
‘… he ask, “Bid Dombâga give you six fresh… ‘sprogs’ of rôzu-meri.” ’
‘Over here, then, in the herb-garden.’ He leads her down the path, unable to think of a single pleasantry that doesn’t sound terminally inane.
She asks, ‘Why Mr Dazûto work today as Dejima gardener?’
‘Because,’ the pastor’s son lies through his teeth, ‘I enjoy a garden’s company. As a boy,’ he leavens his lie with some truth, ‘I worked in a relative’s orchard. We cultivated the first plum trees ever to grow in our village.’
‘In village of Domburg,’ she says, ‘in Province of Zeeland.’
‘You are most kind to remember.’ Jacob breaks off a half-dozen young sprigs. ‘Here you are.’ For a priceless coin of time, their hands are linked by a few inches of bitter herb, witnessed by a dozen blood-orange sunflowers.
I don’t want a purchased courtesan, he thinks. I wish to earn you.
‘Thank you.’ She smells the herb. ‘ “Rosemary” has meaning?’
Jacob blesses his foul-breathed martinet of a Latin master in Middelburg. ‘Its Latin name is Ros marinus, wherein “Ros” is “dew” – do you know the word “dew”?’
She frowns, shakes her head a little and her parasol spins, slowly.
‘Dew is water found early in the morning before the sun burns it away.’
The midwife understands. ‘ “Dew”… we say “asa-tsuyu”.’
Jacob knows he shall never forget the word ‘asa-tsuyu’ so long as he lives. ‘ “Ros” being dew, and “marinus” meaning “ocean”, Ros marinus is “dew of the ocean”. Old people say that rosemary thrives – grows well – only when it can hear the ocean.’
The story pleases her. ‘Is it true tale?’
‘It may be…’ let time stop, Jacob wishes ‘… prettier than it is true.’
‘Meaning of “marinus” is “sea”? So doctor is “Dr Ocean”?’
‘You could say so, yes. Does “Aibagawa” have meaning?’
‘ “Aiba” is “indigo”,’ her pride in her name is plain, ‘and “gawa” is “river”.’
‘So you are an indigo river. You sound like a poem.’ And you, Jacob tells himself, sound like a flirty lecher. ‘Rosemary is also a woman’s Christian name – a given name. My own given name is,’ he strains to sound casual, ‘Jacob.’
‘What is…’ she swivels her head to show puzzlement ‘… Ya-ko-bu?’
‘The name my parents gave me: Jacob. My full name is Jacob de Zoet.’
She gives a cautious nod. ‘Yakobu Dazûto.’
I wish, he thinks, spoken words could be captured and kept in a locket.
‘My pronounce,’ Miss Aibagawa asks, ‘is not very good?’
‘No no no: you are perfect in every way. Your pronounce is perfect.’
Crickets scritter and clirk in the garden’s low walls of stones.
‘Miss Aibagawa -’ Jacob swallows, ‘what is your given name?’
She makes him wait. ‘My name from mother and father is Orito.’
The breeze twists a coil of her hair around its finger.
She looks down. ‘Doctor is waiting. Thank you for rosemary.’
Jacob says, ‘You are most welcome,’ and doesn’t dare say more.
She takes three or four paces, and turns back. ‘I forget a thing.’ She reaches into her sleeve and produces a fruit, the size and hue of an orange, but smooth as hairless skin. ‘From my garden. I bring many to Dr Marinus so he ask I take one to Mr Dazûto. It is kaki.’
‘Then, in Japanese, a persimmon is a cacky?’
‘Ka-ki.’ She rests it on the crook of the scarecrow’s shoulder.
‘Ka-ki. Robespierre and I shall eat it later, thank you.’
Her wooden slippers crunch the friable earth as she walks along the path.
Act, implores the Ghost of Future Regret. I shan’t give you another chance.
Jacob hurries past the tomatoes and catches her up near the gate.
‘Miss Aibagawa? Miss Aibagawa. I must ask you to forgive me.’
She has turned around and has one hand on the gate. ‘Why forgive?’
‘For what I now say.’ The marigolds are molten. ‘You are beautiful.’
She understands. Her mouth opens and closes. She takes a step back…
… into the wicket gate. Still shut, it rattles. The guard swings it open.
Damn fool, groans the Demon of Present Regret. What have you done?
Crumpling, burning and freezing, Jacob retreats, but the garden has quadrupled in length, and it may take a Wandering Jew’s eternity before he reaches the cucumbers, where he kneels behind a screen of dock leaves; where the snail on the pail flexes its stumpy horns; where ants carry patches of rhubarb leaf along the shaft of the hoe; and he wishes the Earth might spin backwards to a time she appeared, asking for rosemary, and he would do it all again, and he would do it all differently.
A doe cries for her yearling, slaughtered for the Lord of Satsuma.
Before the evening muster, Jacob climbs the Watchtower and takes out the persimmon from his jacket pocket. Hollows from the fingers of Aibagawa Orito are indented in her ripe gift and he places his own fingers there, holds the fruit under his nostrils, inhales its gritty sweetness, and rolls its rotundity along his cracked lips. I regret my confession, he thinks, yet what choice did I have? He eclipses the sun with her persimmon: the planet glows orange like a Jack o’ Lantern. There is a dusting around its woody black cap and stem. Lacking a knife or spoon, he takes a nip of waxy skin between his incisors, and tears; juice oozes from the gash; he licks the sweet smears and sucks out a dribbling gobbet of threaded flesh and holds it gently, gently, against the roof of his mouth, where the pulp disintegrates into fermented jasmine, oily cinnamon, perfumed melon, melted damson… and in its heart he finds ten or fifteen flat stones, brown as Asian eyes and the same shape. The sun is gone now, cicadas fall silent, lilacs and turquoises dim and thin into greys and darker greys. A bat passes within a few feet, chased by its own furry turbulence. There is not the faintest breath of a breeze. Smoke emerges from the galley flue on the Shenandoah and sags around the brig’s bows. Her gun-ports are open and the sound of ten dozen sailors dining in her belly carries over the water; and like a struck tuning fork, Jacob reverberates with the parts and the entirety of Orito, with all the her-ness of her. The promise he gave to Anna rubs his conscience like a burr, But Anna, he thinks uneasily, is so far away in miles and in years; and she gave her consent, she as good as gave her consent, and she’d never know, and Jacob’s stomach ingests Orito’s slithery gift. Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us, at the speed of days and nights, and we like to call it ‘Love’.
‘Kapitan Bôru-suten-bôshu,’ intones Interpreter Sekita, a quarter-hour later at the flagpole’s foot. Ordinarily the twice-daily muster is conducted by Constable Kosugi who requires only a minute to check the foreigners, all of whose names and faces he knows. This evening, however, Sekita has decided to assert his authority by conducting the muster whilst the constable stands to one side with a sour face. ‘Where is the…’ Sekita squints at his list ‘… the Bôru- suten-bôshu?’
Sekita’s scribe tells his master that Chief Vorstenbosch is attending the Lord of Satsuma this evening. Sekita administers a rebuke to his scribe and squints at the next name. ‘Where is the… the Banku-rei-fu?’
Sekita’s scribe reminds his master that Deputy van Cleef is with the Chief.
Constable Kosugi clears his throat loudly and unnecessarily.
The interpreter proceeds with the muster list. ‘Ma-ri-as-su…’
Marinus stands with thumbs in his jacket pocket. ‘It is Doctor Marinus.’
Sekita looks up, alarmed. ‘The Marinus need the doctor?’
Gerritszoon and Baert snort, amused: Sekita senses he has made a mistake, and says, ‘Friend in need is friend indeed.’ He peers at the next name: ‘Fui… shâ…’
‘That, I daresay,’ replies Peter Fischer, ‘is I, but one says it thus: “Fischer”.’
‘Yes yes, the Fuishâ.’ Sekita wrestles with the next name. ‘Ôe-hando.’
‘Present, for my sins,’ says Ouwehand, rubbing the ink-stains on his hands.
Sekita dabs his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Dazûto…’
‘Present,’ says Jacob. To list and name people, he thinks, is to subjugate them.
Working down the muster, Sekita butchers the hands’ names: the snide quips with which Gerritszoon and Baert respond do not alter the fact that they must, and do, answer. The White foreigners accounted for, Sekita proceeds to the four servants and four slaves who stand in two groups to the left and right of their masters. The interpreter begins with the servants: Eelattu, Cupido and Philander, then squints at the name of the muster list’s first slave. ‘Su-ya-ko.’
When there is no reply, Jacob looks around for the missing Malay.
Sekita hammers out the syllables, ‘Su-ya-ko,’ but there is no reply.
He fires a foul glare at his scribe, who asks Constable Kosugi a question.
Kosugi tells Sekita, Jacob guesses, ‘This is your mustering so missing names are your problem.’ Sekita addresses Marinus. ‘Where – are – Su-ya-ko?’
The doctor is humming a bass tune. When the verse ends and Sekita is riled, Marinus turns to the servants and slaves. ‘Would you be so kind as to locate Sjako and tell him that he is late for muster?’
The seven men hurry to Long Street, discussing Sjako’s likely whereabouts.
‘I’ll find where the dog is skulking,’ Peter Fischer tells Marinus, ‘faster than that Brown Rabble. Join me, Mr Gerritszoon, you are the man for this job.’
Peter Fischer emerges from Flag Alley less than five minutes later with a bloodied right hand, ahead of some house interpreters who all speak at once to Constable Kosugi and Interpreter Sekita. Moments later Eelattu appears and reports to Marinus in Ceylonese. Fischer informs the other Dutchmen, ‘We found the dung-beetle in the crate store down Bony Alley next to Warehouse Doorn. I’d seen him go in there earlier today.’
‘Why,’ Jacob asks, ‘didn’t you bring him here for mustering?’
Fischer smiles. ‘He shan’t be walking for a little while, I daresay.’
Ouwehand asks, ‘What did you do to him, in Jesus’ name?’
‘Less than the slave deserves. He was drinking stolen spirits and spoke to us in an abusive manner unforgivable in an equal, let alone a stinking Malay. When Mr Gerritszoon made shift to correct this impertinence with a length of rattan, he changed into a Black Fury, howled like a blood-crazed wolf and tried to batter our skulls with a crowbar.’
‘Then why did none of us,’ Jacob demands, ‘hear this blood-crazed howl?’
‘Because,’ Fischer expostulates, ‘he closed the door first, Clerk de Zoet!’
‘Sjako’d never hurt an ant,’ says Ivo Oost, ‘not so far as I know.’
‘Perhaps you are too close,’ Fischer refers to Oost’s blood, ‘to be impartial.’
Arie Grote gently removes a whittling knife from Oost’s grip. Marinus gives Eelattu an order in Ceylonese, and the servant runs in the direction of the Hospital. The doctor hurries as fast as his lameness allows into Flag Alley. Jacob follows, ignoring Sekita’s protestations, ahead of Constable Kosugi and his guards.
The evening light turns the whitewashed warehouses of Long Street dim bronze. Jacob catches up with Marinus. At the Crossroads they turn down Bony Alley, pass Warehouse Doorn and enter the hot, dim, cramped crate store.
‘Oh, you took yer time,’ says Gerritszoon, sat on a sack, ‘din’t yer?’
‘Where’s-’ Jacob sees the answer to his question.
The sack is Sjako. His once-handsome head is on the floor in a pond of blood; his lip is slit; one eye is half disappeared; and he gives no sign of life. Splintered crates, a smashed bottle and a broken chair lie around. Gerritszoon kneels on Sjako’s back, binding the slave’s wrists.
The others crowd into the crate store behind Jacob and the Doctor.
‘Jesus, Mary,’ Con Twomey exclaims, ‘and Oliver fecking Cromwell, man!’
The Japanese witnesses utter expressions of shock in their language.
‘Unfasten him,’ Marinus tells Gerritszoon, ‘and stay out of my reach.’
‘Oh, you ain’t the Chief an’ y’ain’t the Deputy neither an’ I swear by God-’
‘Unfasten him now,’ the doctor commands, ‘or when that bladder-stone of yours is so big that your piss is blood and you are screaming like a terrified child for a lithotomy, then I swear by my God that my hand shall slip with tragic, slow and agonising consequences.’
‘ ’Twas our duty,’ Gerritszoon growls, ‘to beat the evil out of him.’
He stands away. ‘It’s his life,’ declares Ivo Oost, ‘you beat out of him.’
Marinus hands his stick to Jacob and kneels by the slave’s side.
‘Were we supposed to look on,’ Fischer asks, ‘and let him kill us?’
Marinus works the cord free. With Jacob’s help, he tries to turn Sjako over.
‘Well, Chief V. ain’t goin’ to be pleased,’ sniffs Arie Grote, ‘at this handlin’ an’ stowage of Company property, eh?’
A cry of pain grows from Sjako’s chest, and fades again.
Marinus bundles his coat under Sjako’s head, murmurs to the beaten Malay in his own language and examines the opened skull. The slave shudders and Marinus grimaces and asks, ‘Why is there glass in this head wound?’
‘Like I said,’ replies Fischer, ‘if you listened, he was drinking stolen rum.’
‘And attacked himself,’ asks Marinus, ‘with the bottle in his hand?’
‘I wrestled it off of ’im,’ says Gerritszoon, ‘to use on ’im.’
‘The black dog tried to murder us!’ Fischer is shouting. ‘With a hammer!’
‘Hammer? Crowbar? Bottle? You’d better tally your story better than that.’
‘I shan’t tolerate,’ threatens Fischer, ‘these – these insinuations, Doctor.’
Eelattu arrives with the stretcher. Marinus tells Jacob, ‘Help, Domburger.’
Sekita taps aside the house interpreters with his fan and looks at the scene in disgust. ‘That is the Su-ya-ko?’
The first course of the officers’ supper is a sweet soup of French onions. Vorstenbosch drinks it in displeased silence. He and van Cleef returned to Dejima in buoyant spirits, but these were dashed by news of Sjako’s beating. Marinus is still at the Hospital, treating the Malay’s many wounds. The Chief even dismissed Cupido and Philander from their musical duties, saying that he was not in the mood for music. It is left to Deputy van Cleef and Captain Lacy to entertain the company with their impressions of the Nagasaki residence of the Lord of Satsuma and his household. Jacob suspects that his patron doesn’t wholly believe Fischer’s and Gerritszoon’s version of events in the crate store, but to say so would place the word of a Black slave above a White officer and hand. ‘What sort of precedent,’ Jacob imagines Vorstenbosch thinking, ‘would that set for the other slaves and servants?’ Fischer maintains a cautious reserve, sensing that his hopes of retaining the head clerk’s post are in jeopardy. When Arie Grote and his kitchen boy serve up the venison pie, Captain Lacy despatches his servant for a half-dozen bottles of barley mash, but Vorstenbosch doesn’t notice: he mutters, ‘What in God’s name is keeping Marinus?’ and sends Cupido to fetch the doctor. Cupido is a long time gone. Lacy recounts a polished narrative about fighting alongside George Washington at the Battle of Bunker Hill and devours three servings of apricot pudding before Marinus limps into the Dining Room.
‘We had despaired,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘of your joining us, Doctor.’
‘A cracked clavicle,’ Marinus sits down, ‘a fractured ulna; a broken jaw; a splintered rib; three teeth gone; grievous bruising in general, to his face and genitals in particular; and a kneecap part detached from its femur. When he walks again, he shall limp as skilfully as I, and, as you saw, his looks are gone for good.’
Fischer drinks his Yankee mash as if this has nothing to do with him.
‘Then the slave is not,’ asks van Cleef, ‘in danger of his life?’
‘As of now, no, but I don’t discount infections and fevers.’
‘For how long,’ Vorstenbosch snaps a toothpick, ‘should he convalesce?’
‘Until he is healed. Thereafter, I recommend his duties be light.’
Lacy snorts. ‘Here, all slaves’ duties are light: Dejima is a field of clover.’
‘Have you extracted,’ asks Vorstenbosch, ‘the slave’s version of events?’
‘I hope, sir,’ Fischer says, ‘that Mr Gerritszoon’s and my testimony is more than a mere “version of events”.’
‘Damage to Company property must be investigated, Fischer.’
Captain Lacy fans himself with his hat. ‘In Carolina, it would be Mr Fischer’s compensation from the slave’s owners we’d be discussing.’
‘After, one trusts, establishing the facts. Dr Marinus: why did the slave absent himself from the mustering? He’s been here years. He knows the rules.’
‘I’d blame those same “years”.’ Marinus spoons himself some pudding, ‘They have worn away at him and induced a nervous collapse.’
‘Doctor, you are -’ Lacy laughs and chokes ‘- you are incomparable! A “nervous collapse”? What next? A mule too melancholic to pull? A hen too lachrymose to lay?’
‘Sjako has a wife and son in Batavia,’ says Marinus. ‘When Gijsbert Hemmij brought him to Dejima seven years ago, this family was divided. Hemmij promised Sjako his freedom in return for faithful service when he returned to Java.’
‘Had I but one dollar for every nigger spoilt,’ Lacy exclaims, ‘by a rashly promised manumission, I could buy all of Florida!’
‘But when Chief Hemmij died,’ van Cleef objects, ‘his promise died too.’
‘This spring, Daniel Snitker told Sjako the oath would be honoured after the trading season. Sjako was led to believe,’ Marinus stuffs tobacco into his pipe, ‘he would be sailing to Batavia as a free man in a few weeks’ time, and had fixed his heart on labouring for his family’s liberty upon the Shenandoah’s arrival.’
‘Snitker’s word,’ says Lacy, ‘isn’t worth the paper it wasn’t written on.’
‘Just yesterday,’ Marinus lights a taper from the candle and sucks his pipe into life, ‘Sjako learnt this promise is reneged and his freedom is dashed to pieces.’
‘The slave is to stay here,’ says the Chief, ‘for my term of office. Dejima lacks hands.’
‘Then why profess surprise,’ the doctor breathes out a cloud of smoke, ‘at his state of mind? Seven plus five equals twelve when last I looked: twelve years. Sjako was brought here in his seventeenth year: he shan’t be leaving until his twenty-ninth. His son shall be sold long before then, and his wife mated to another.’
‘How can I “renege” on a promise I never made?’ Vorstenbosch objects.
‘That is an acute and logical point, sir,’ says Peter Fischer.
‘My wife and daughters,’ says van Cleef, ‘I haven’t seen in eight years!’
‘You are a deputy,’ Marinus picks at a scab of blood on his cuff, ‘here to make yourself rich. Sjako is a slave, here to make his masters comfortable.’
‘A slave is a slave,’ Peter Fischer declaims, ‘because he does a slave’s work!’
‘What about,’ Lacy cleans his ear with a fork-prong, ‘a night at the theatre, to lift his spirits? We could stage Othello, perhaps?’
‘Are we not in danger,’ asks van Cleef, ‘of losing sight of the principal point? That today a slave attempted to murder two of our colleagues?’
‘Another excellent point, sir,’ says Fischer, ‘if I may say so.’
‘Sjako,’ Marinus places his thumbs together, ‘denies attacking his assailants.’
Fischer leans back on his chair and declares to the chandelier ‘Fa!’
‘Sjako says the two White masters set about him quite unprovoked.’
‘The would-be cut-throat,’ Fischer states, ‘is a liar of the blackest dye.’
‘Blacks do lie,’ Lacy opens his snuff-box, ‘like geese shit slime.’
‘Why,’ Marinus places his pipe on its stand, ‘would Sjako attack you?’
‘Savages don’t need motives!’ Fischer spits in the spittoon. ‘Your type, Dr Marinus, sit at your meetings, nod wisely at wind about “the true cost of the sugar in our tea” from an “Improved Negro” in wig and waistcoat. I, I, am not a man created by Swedish gardens but by Surinam jungles where one sees the Negro in his natural habitat. Earn yourself one of these’ – Peter Fischer unbuttons his shirt to display a three-inch scar above his collarbone – ‘and then tell me a savage has a soul just because he can recite the Lord’s Prayer, like any parrot.’
Lacy peers close, impressed. ‘How did you pick up that souvenir?’
‘Whilst recuperating at Goed Accoord,’ Fischer answers, glowering at the doctor, ‘a plantation on the Commewina, two days upriver from Paramaribo. My platoon had gone to cleanse the basin of runaway slaves who attack in gangs. The colonists call them “Rebels”: I call them “Vermin”. We had burnt many of their nests and yam fields, but the dry season overtook us, when Hell has no worse hole. Not one of my men was free from beri-beri or ring-worm fever. The house-Blacks of Goed Accoord betrayed our weakness, and on the third dawn, they slithered up to the house and attacked. Hundreds of the vipers crawled out of the dry slime and dropped from the trees. With musket, bayonet and bare hands, my men and I made a valiant defence, but when a mace struck my skull, I collapsed. Hours must have passed. When I awoke, my arms and feet were bound. My jaw was – how do you say? – mislocated. I lay in a row of wounded men in the Drawing Room. Some begged for mercy, but no Negro understands the concept. The slave leader arrived and bidded his butchers extract the men’s hearts for their victory feast. This they did,’ Fischer swills his mash around his glass, ‘slowly, without first killing their victims.’
‘Such barbarity and wickedness,’ van Cleef declares, ‘beggars belief!’
Vorstenbosch sends Philander and Weh downstairs for bottles of Rhenish.
‘My unluckier comrades, Swiss Fourgeoud, DeJohnette, and my bosom friend, Tom Isberg, they suffered the agonies of Christ. Their screams shall haunt me until I die, and so shall the Blacks’ laughter. They stored the hearts in a chamber pot, just inches from where I lay. The room stunk of the slaughterhouse; the air was black with flies. It was darkness when my turn came. I was the last but one. They slung me on the table. Despite my fear, I played dead and prayed God to take my soul quickly. One then uttered, “Son de go sleeby caba. Mekewe liby den tara dago tay tamara.” Meaning, the sun was sinking, they’d leave these last two “dogs” for the following day. The drumming, feasting and fornication had begun and the butchers were loath to miss the fun. So, a butcher impaled me to the table with a bayonet, like a butterfly collector’s pin, and I was left without a guard.’
Insects dirty the air over the candelabra like a malign halo.
A rust-coloured lizard sits on the blade of Jacob’s butter-knife.
‘Now, I prayed to God for strength. By twisting my head, I could seize the bayonet’s blade between my teeth and slowly work it loose. I lost pints of blood, but refused to succumb to weakness. My freedom was won. Under the table was Joosse, my platoon’s last survivor. Joosse was a Zeelander, like Clerk de Zoet…’
Well, now, thinks Jacob, what an opportune coincidence.
‘… and Joosse was a coward, I am sorry to say. He was too afraid to move until my Reason conquered his fear. Under the coat of darkness, we left Goed Accoord behind. For seven days, we beat a path through that green pestilence with our bare hands. We had no food but the maggots breeding in our wounds. Many times, Joosse begged to be allowed to die. But honour obliged me to protect even the frail Zeelander from death. Finally, by God’s grace, we reached Fort Sommelsdyck, where the Commewina meets the Cottica. We were more dead than alive. My superior officer confessed later that he had expected me to die within hours. “Never underestimate a Prussian again,” I told him. The Governor of Surinam presented me with a medal, and six weeks later I led two hundred men back to Goed Accoord. A glorious revenge was extracted on the Vermin, but I am not a man who brags of his own achievements.’
Weh and Philander return with the bottles of Rhenish.
‘A most edifying history,’ says Lacy. ‘I salute your courage, Mr Fischer.’
‘The passage where you ate the maggots,’ remarks Marinus, ‘rather over-egged the brûlée.’
‘The doctor’s disbelief,’ Fischer addresses the senior officers, ‘is caused by his sentimental attitudes to savages, I am very sorry to say.’
‘The doctor’s disbelief,’ Marinus peers at the label on the Rhenish, ‘is a natural reaction to vainglorious piffle.’
‘Your accusations,’ Fischer retorts, ‘deserve no reply.’
Jacob finds an island chain of mosquito bites across his hand.
‘Slavery may be an injustice to some,’ says van Cleef, ‘but no one can deny that all Empires are founded upon the institution.’
‘Then may the Devil,’ Marinus twists in the corkscrew, ‘take all Empires.’
‘What an extraordinary utterance,’ declares Lacy, ‘to hear from the mouth of a colonial officer!’
‘Extraordinary,’ agrees Fischer, ‘and revealing, not to say Jacobinical.’
‘I am no “colonial officer”: I am a physician, scholar and traveller.’
‘You hunt for your fortune,’ says Lacy, ‘courtesy of the Dutch Empire.’
‘My treasure is botanical.’ The cork pops. ‘The fortunes I leave to you.’
‘How very “Enlightened”, outré and French, which nation, by the by, learnt the perils of abolishing slavery. Anarchy set the Caribbean alight; plantations were pillaged; men strung up from trees; and by the time Paris had its Negroes back in chains, Hispaniola was lost.’
‘Yet the British Empire,’ Jacob says, ‘is embracing abolition.’
Vorstenbosch looks at his one-time protégé like an evaluator.
‘The British,’ Lacy warns, ‘are engaged in some trickery or other: as time shall tell.’
‘And those citizens in your own northern states,’ says Marinus, ‘who recognise-’
‘Those Yankee leeches,’ Captain Lacy wags his knife, ‘grow fat on our taxes!’
‘In the animal kingdom,’ says van Cleef, ‘the vanquished are eaten by those more favoured by Nature. Slavery is merciful by comparison: the lesser races keep their lives in exchange for their labour.’
‘What use,’ the Doctor pours himself a glass of wine, ‘is an eaten slave?’
The grandfather clock in the State Room strikes ten times.
‘Displeased as I am,’ Vorstenbosch arrives at a decision, ‘about the events in the crate store, Fischer, I accept that you and Gerritszoon acted in self-defence.’
‘I swear, sir,’ Fischer tilts his head, ‘we had no other choice.’
Marinus grimaces at his glass of Rhenish. ‘Atrocious aftertaste.’
Lacy brushes his moustache. ‘What about your slave, Doctor?’
‘Eelattu, sir, is no more a slave than your first mate. I found him in Jaffna five years ago, beaten and left for dead by a gang of Portuguese whalers. During his recovery, the boy’s quickness of mind persuaded me to offer him employ as my chirurgical assistant, for pay, from my own pocket. He may quit his post when he wishes, with wages and character. Can any man on the Shenandoah say as much?’
‘Indians, I’ll admit,’ Lacy walks over to the chamber pot, ‘ape civilised manners well enough; and I’ve entered Pacific Islanders and Chinamen into the Shenandoah’s books, so I know of what I speak. But for Africans…’ the Captain unbuttons his breeches and urinates into the pot ‘… slavery’s the best life: were they ever turned loose, they’d starve before the week was out, without they murdered White families for their larders. They know only the present moment: they cannot plan, farm, invent or imagine.’ He shakes free the last drops of urine and tucks his shirt into his breeches. ‘To condemn slavery,’ Captain Lacy scratches beneath his collar, ‘is, moreover, to condemn Holy Scripture. Blacks are descended from Noah’s bestial son Ham, who bedded his own mother: Ham’s lineage were thereby accursed. It’s there in the ninth book of Genesis, plain as day. “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren.” The White race, however, is descended from Japheth: “God shall enlarge Japheth, and Canaan shall be his servant.” Or do I lie, Mr de Zoet?’
All the assembled eyes turn to the nephew of the parsonage.
‘Those particular verses are problematical,’ says Jacob.
‘So the clerk calls God’s word,’ taunts Peter Fischer, ‘ “problematical”?’
‘The world would be happier without slavery,’ replies Jacob, ‘and-’
‘The world would be happier,’ sniffs van Cleef, ‘if golden apples grew on trees.’
‘Dear Mr Vorstenbosch,’ Captain Lacy raises his glass, ‘this Rhenish is a superlative vintage. Its aftertaste is the purest nectar.’
Before the typhoon of the 19th October, 1799
The noises of battening, nailing and herding are gusted in through the warehouse doors. Hanzaburo stands on the threshold, watching the darkening sky. At the table, Ogawa Uzaemon is translating the Japanese version of Shipping Document 99b from the trading season of 1797, relating to a consignment of camphor crystals. Jacob records the gaping discrepancies in prices and quantities between it and its Dutch counterpart. The signature verifying the document as ‘An Honest and True Record of the Consignment’ is Acting-Deputy Melchior van Cleef’s: the deputy’s twenty-seventh falsified entry Jacob has so far uncovered. The clerk has told Vorstenbosch of this growing list, but the Chief Resident’s zeal as a reformer of Dejima is dimming by the day. Vorstenbosch’s metaphors have changed from ‘excising the cancer of corruption’ to ‘best employing what tools we have to hand’ and, perhaps the clearest indicator of the Chief’s attitude, Arie Grote is busier and more cheerful by the day.
‘It is soon too dark,’ says Ogawa Uzaemon, ‘to see clear.’
‘How long do we have,’ Jacob asks, ‘before we should stop working?’
‘One more hour, with oil in lantern. Then I should leave.’
Jacob writes a short note asking Ouwehand to give Hanzaburo a jar of oil from the office store, and Ogawa instructs him in Japanese. The boy leaves, his clothes tugged by the wind.
‘Last typhoons of season,’ says Ogawa, ‘can attack Hizen Domain worst. We think, Gods save Nagasaki from bad typhoon this year, and then…’ Ogawa mimes a battering ram with his hands.
‘Autumn gales in Zeeland, too, are quite notorious.’
‘Pardon me,’ Ogawa opens his notebook, ‘but what is “notorious”?’
‘Something that is notorious is “famous for being bad”.’
‘Mr de Zoet say,’ recalls Ogawa, ‘home island is below level of sea.’
‘ Walcheren? So it is, so it is. We Dutch live beneath the fishes.’
‘To stop the sea to flood the land,’ Ogawa imagines, ‘is ancient war.’
‘ “War” is the word, and we lose battles sometimes…’ Jacob notices dirt underneath his thumbnail from his last hour in Dr Marinus’s garden this morning ‘… and dikes break. Yet whilst the sea is the Dutchman’s enemy, it is also his provider and the – the “shaper” of his ingenuity. Had Nature blessed us with high, fertile ground like our neighbours, what need to invent the Amsterdam Bourse, the Joint Stock Company and our empire of middle-men?’
Carpenters lash the timbers of the half-built Warehouse Lelie.
Jacob decides to broach a delicate subject before Hanzaburo returns. ‘Mr Ogawa, when you searched my books, on my first morning ashore, you saw my dictionary, I believe?’
‘New Dictionary of Dutch Language. Very fine and rare book.’
‘It would, I assume, be of use to a Japanese scholar of Dutch?’
‘Dutch dictionary is magic key to open many lock doors.’
‘I desire, then…’ Jacob hesitates ‘… to present it to Miss Aibagawa.’
Wind-harried voices reach them like echoes from a deep well.
Ogawa’s face is stern and unreadable.
‘How do you think,’ probes Jacob, ‘she might respond to such a gift?’
Ogawa’s fingers pluck at a knot around his sash. ‘Much surprise.’
‘Not, I hope, an unpleasant surprise?’
‘We have proverb.’ The interpreter pours himself a bowl of tea. ‘ “Nothing more costly than item that has no price.” When Miss Aibagawa receive such a gift, she may worry, “What is true price if I accept”?’
‘But there is no obligation. Upon my honour, none whatsoever.’
‘So…’ Ogawa sips his tea, still avoiding Jacob’s eyes. ‘Why Mr de Zoet give?’
This is worse, thinks Jacob, than speaking with Orito in the garden.
‘Because,’ flails the clerk, ‘well, why I wish to present her with the gift, I mean, the source of that urge, what motivates the puppet-master, as it were, is, as Dr Marinus might express is, that is… one of the great imponderables.’
What inchoate garble, replies Ogawa’s expression, are you spouting?
Jacob removes his spectacles, looks out and sees a dog cocking its leg.
‘Book is…’ Ogawa peers at Jacob under an invisible frame ‘… love gift?’
‘I know…’ Jacob feels like an actor obliged to go on stage without a glimpse of the script ‘… that she – Miss Aibagawa – is no courtesan, that a Dutchman is not an ideal husband, but nor am I a pauper, thanks to my mercury – but none of that matters, and doubtless some would consider me the world’s greatest fool…’
A twisted ribbon of muscle ripples under Ogawa’s eye.
‘Yes, perhaps one could call it a love gift, but if Miss Aibagawa cares nothing for me, it doesn’t matter. She may keep it. To think of her using the book would…’ bring me happiness, Jacob cannot quite add. ‘Were I to give the dictionary to her,’ he explains, ‘spies, inspectors and her classmates would notice. Nor may I stroll over to her house of an evening. A ranked interpreter, however, carrying a dictionary, would raise no alarums… Nor, I trust, would it be smuggling, for this is a straightforward gift. And so… I would like to ask you to deliver the volume on my behalf.’
Twomey and the slave d’Orsaiy dismantle the great tripod in the Weighing Yard.
Ogawa’s lack of surprise suggests that he anticipated this request.
‘There is no one else on Dejima,’ says Jacob, ‘whom I can trust.’
No, indeed, agrees Ogawa’s clipped hmm noise, there is not.
‘Inside the dictionary, I would – I have inserted a… well, a short letter.’
Ogawa lifts his head and views the phrase with suspicion.
‘A letter… to say that the dictionary is hers for always, but if ’ – now I sound, Jacob thinks, like a costermonger honey-talking housewives at the market – ‘were she… ever… to consider me a patron, or let us say a protector, or… or…’
‘Letter is,’ Ogawa’s tone is brusque, ‘to propose marriage?’
‘Yes. No. Not unless…’ Wishing he had never begun, Jacob produces the dictionary, wrapped in sailcloth and tied with twine, from under his table. ‘Yes, damn it. It is a proposal. I beg you, Mr Ogawa, cut short my misery and just give her the damned thing.’
The wind is dark and thunderous; Jacob locks the warehouse and crosses Flag Square, shielding his eyes against dust and grit. Ogawa and Hanzaburo have returned to their homes while it is still safe to be out. At the foot of the flagpole, van Cleef is bellowing up at d’Orsaiy who is, Jacob sees, having difficulty shimmying up. ‘You’d do it for a coconut sharp enough so you’ll damn well do it for our flag!’
A senior interpreter’s palanquin is carried by: its window is shut.
Van Cleef notices Jacob. ‘Blasted flag’s knotted and can’t be lowered – but I’ll not have it ripped to shreds just because this sloth’s too afeared to untangle it!’
The slave reaches the top, grips the pole between his thighs, untangles the old United Provinces tricolour and slides down with the prize, his hair waving in the wind, and hands it to van Cleef.
‘Now run and see what use Mr Twomey can put your damn hide to!’
D’Orsaiy runs off between the Deputy’s and Captain’s houses.
‘Mustering is cancelled.’ Van Cleef folds the flag in his jacket and shelters under a gable. ‘Snatch a bowl of whatever Grote has cooked, and go home. My latest wife predicts the wind’ll turn twice as fierce as this before the typhoon’s eye passes over.’
‘I thought I’d just,’ Jacob points up the Watchtower, ‘take in the view.’
‘Keep your sightseeing short! You’ll be blown to Kamchatka!’
Van Cleef shambles up the alley to the front of his house.
Jacob climbs up the stairs, two at a time. Once above roof-level, the wind attacks him: he grips the rails tight and lies flat against the platform’s planks. From Domburg’s church tower, Jacob has watched many a gale gallop down from Scandinavia, but an Oriental typhoon possesses a sentience and menace. Daylight is bruised; woods thrash on the prematurely twilit mountains; the black bay is crazed by choppy surf; gobbets of sea-spray spatter Dejima’s roofs; timber grunts and sighs. The men of the Shenandoah are lowering her third anchor; the First Mate is on the quarterdeck, bellowing inaudibly. To the east, the Chinese merchants and sailors are likewise busy securing their property. The interpreter’s palanquin crosses an otherwise empty Edo Square; the row of plane trees bends and whiplashes; no birds fly; the fishermen’s boats are dragged high up the shorefront and lashed together. Nagasaki is digging itself in for a bad, bad night.
Which of those hundreds of huddled roofs, he wonders, is yours?
At the Crossroads, Constable Kosugi is tying up the bell-rope.
Ogawa shan’t deliver the dictionary tonight, Jacob realises.
Twomey and Baert hammer shut the door and casements of Garden House.
My gift and letter are clumsy and rash, Jacob admits, but a subtle courtship is impossible.
Something cracks and shatters, over in the Garden…
At least now, I can stop cursing myself for cowardice.
Marinus and Eelattu are struggling with trees in clay pots and a handcart…
… and twenty minutes later, two dozen apple saplings are safe in the Hospital’s hallway.
‘I – we…’ panting, the doctor indicates the young trees ‘… are in your debt.’
Eelattu ascends through the darkness and vanishes through the trapdoor.
‘I watered those saplings.’ Jacob catches his breath. ‘I feel protective towards them.’
‘I didn’t consider damage from sea-salt until Eelattu raised the matter. Those saplings I brought all the way from Hakine: unbaptised in Latin binomials, they might have all perished. There’s no fool like an old fool.’
‘Not a soul shall know,’ Jacob promises, ‘not even Klaas.’
Marinus frowns, thinks, and asks: ‘Klaas?’
‘The gardener,’ Jacob brushes his coat, ‘at your aunts’ house.’
‘Ah, Klaas! Dear Klaas reverted to compost many years ago.’
The typhoon howls like a thousand wolves: the attic lamp is lit.
‘Well,’ says Jacob, ‘I’d best run home to Tall House while I still can.’
‘God grant it may still be tall in the morning.’
Jacob pushes open the Hospital door: it is struck with a great blow that knocks the clerk back. Jacob and the doctor peer outside and see a barrel bounding down Long Street towards Garden House where it smashes into kindling.
‘Better you take refuge upstairs,’ Marinus proposes, ‘for the duration.’
‘I’d not want to intrude,’ Jacob replies. ‘You value your privacy.’
‘What use would your corpse be for my seminarians were your body to share the fate of that barrel? Lead the way upstairs, lest I fall and crush us both…’
The wheezing lantern reveals the unburied treasure on Marinus’s bookshelves. Jacob twists his head and squints at the titles: Novum Organum by Francis Bacon; Von Goethe’s Versuch die Metamorphose de Pflanzen zu erklären; Antoine Galland’s translation of One Thousand and One Nights. ‘The printed word is food,’ says Marinus, ‘and you look hungry, Domburger.’ The System of Nature by Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud: the pseudonym, as any Dutch pastor’s nephew knows, of the atheist Baron d’Holbach; and Voltaire’s Candide, ou l’Optimisme. ‘Enough heresy,’ remarks Marinus, ‘to crush an Inquisitor’s rib-cage.’ Jacob makes no reply, encountering next Newton ’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica; Juvenal’s Satires; Dante’s Inferno in its original Italian; and a sober Kosmotheeros by their countryman Christiaan Huygens. This is one shelf of twenty or thirty, stretching the attic’s breadth. On Marinus’s desk is a folio volume: Osteographia by William Cheselden.
‘See who’s waiting inside for you,’ says the doctor.
Jacob contemplates the details and the devil plants a seed.
What if this engine of bones, the seed germinates, is a man’s entirety…
Wind wallops the walls like a dozen tree-trunks tumbling.
… and Divine Love is a mere means of extracting baby engines of bones?
Jacob thinks about Abbot Enomoto’s questions at their one meeting. ‘Doctor, do you believe in the Soul’s existence?’
Marinus prepares, the clerk expects, an erudite and arcane reply. ‘Yes.’
‘Then where…’ Jacob indicates the pious, profane skeleton ‘… is it?’
‘The soul is a verb,’ he impales a lit candle on a spike, ‘not a noun.’
Eelattu brings two beakers of bitter beer and sweet dried figs…
Each time Jacob is certain the wind cannot rampage more maniacally without the roof tearing free; the wind does, but the roof doesn’t, not yet. Joists and beams strain and clunk and shudder like a windmill rattling at full kilter. A terrifying night, Jacob thinks, yet even terror can pale into monotony. Eelattu darns a sock whilst the doctor reminisces about his journey to Edo with the late Chief Hemmij and Head Clerk van Cleef. ‘They bemoaned the lack of buildings to compare to St Peter’s or Notre Dame: but the genius of the Japanese race is manifest in its roads. The Tôkaido Highway runs from Osaka to Edo – from the Empire’s belly to the head, if you will – and knows of no equal, I assert, anywhere on Earth, in either modernity or antiquity. The road is a city, fifteen feet in width, but three hundred well-drained, well-maintained and well-ordered German miles in length, served by fifty-three way stations where travellers can hire porters, change horses and rest or carouse for the night. And the simplest, most commonsensical joy of all? All traffic proceeds on the left-hand side, so the numerous collisions, seizures and stand-offs that so clog Europe ’s arteries are here unknown. On less populated stretches of the road, I unnerved our inspectors by slipping out of my palanquin and botanising along the verges. I found more than thirty new species for my Flora Japonica, missed by Thunberg and Kaempfer. And then, at the end, is Edo.’
‘Which no more than… what, a dozen Europeans alive have seen?’
‘Fewer. Seize the head clerk’s chair within three years, you’ll see it yourself.’
I shan’t be here, hopes Jacob, and then, uneasily, thinks of Orito.
Eelattu snips a thread. The sea writhes, just one street and a wall away.
‘ Edo is a million people in a grid of streets that stretches as far as the eye can travel. Edo is a tumultuous clatter of clogs, looms, shouts, barks, cries, whispers. Edo is a codex of every human demand and Edo is the means of supplying them. Every daimyo must keep a residence there for his designated heir and principal wife, and the largest such compounds are de facto walled towns. The Great Edo Bridge – to which every milestone in Japan refers – is two hundred paces across. Would that I could have slipped into a native’s skin and roamed that labyrinth, but naturally, Hemmij, van Cleef and I were confined to our inn “for our own protection”, until the appointed Day of our Interview with the Shogun. The stream of scholars and sightseers was an antidote to monotony, especially those with plants, bulbs and seeds.’
‘Upon what matters were you consulted?’
‘The medical, the erudite, the puerile: “Is electricity a fluid?”; “Do foreigners wear boots because they have no ankles?”; “For any real number φ does Euler’s formula universally guarantee that the complex exponential function satisfies eiφ = cos φ + sin φ?”; “How may we construct a Montgolfier Balloon?”; “Can a cancerous breast be removed without killing the patient?”; and once, “Given that the Flood of Noah never submerged Japan, do we conclude Japan is a more elevated country than others?” Interpreters, officials and innkeepers all charged admittance to the Delphic Oracle, but, as I intimated-’
The building shudders, as in the earthquake: its timbers shriek.
‘- I find a certain comfort,’ confesses Marinus, ‘in humanity’s helplessness.’
Jacob cannot agree. ‘What of your meeting with the Shogun?’
‘Our costume was the mothballed pomp of a century and a half: Hemmij was bedecked in a pearl-buttoned jacket, a Moorish waistcoat, an ostrich-feathered hat, and white tapijns over his shoes, and with van Cleef and I in like mishmash, we were a true trio of decayed French pastries. We rode in palanquins to the castle gates, thereafter proceeding on foot three hours down corridors, across courtyards, through gates to vestibules where we swapped stilted pleasantries with officials, councillors and princes until, at last, we gained the Throne Room. Here the pretence that the Court Embassy is a Court Embassy, and not a ten-weeks’ tributary arse-licking pilgrimage, becomes impossible to maintain. The Shogun – half hidden by a screen – sits on the raised rear of the room. When his interlocutor announces, “Oranda Kapitan”, Hemmij scuttled, crab-wise, Shogun-wards, knelt at a designated spot, forbidden even to look at the lofty personage, and waited in silence until the barbarian-quelling generalissimo lifted a single finger. A chamberlain recited a text unrevised since the 1660s, forbidding us to proselytise the wicked Christian faith or to accost the junks of the Chinese or the Ryûkyû Islanders, and commanding us to report any designs against Japan that came to our ears. Hemmij scuttled backwards, and the ritual was complete. That evening, I recorded in my journal, Hemmij complained of stomach-gripes, which turned into dysenteric fever – an uncertain diagnosis, I confess – on the way home.’
Eelattu has finished his darning; he unrolls the bedding.
‘A foul death. The rain was incessant. The place was called Kakegawa. “Not here, Marinus, not like this,” he groaned, and died…’
Jacob imagines a grave in pagan soil: and his own body lowered there.
‘… as if I, of all people, had powers of divine intercession.’
They are aware of a change in the timbre of the typhoon’s roar.
‘Its eye,’ Marinus glances upwards, ‘is above us…’
Minutes after ten o’clock on the 23rd October, 1799
‘We are all busy men,’ Unico Vorstenbosch stares at Interpreter Kobayashi over the State Table. ‘Pray discard the garnish for once and tell me the number.’
Drizzle hisses on the roofs. Jacob dips his quill in ink.
Interpreter Iwase translates for Chamberlain Tomine, who arrived with the hollyhock-crested scroll-tube delivered this morning from Edo.
Kobayashi’s Dutch translation of Edo ’s message is half unrolled. ‘Number?’
‘What,’ Vorstenbosch’s patience is exaggerated, ‘is the Shogun’s offer?’
‘Nine thousand six hundred piculs,’ announces Kobayashi. ‘Best copper.’
9,600, scratches the nib of Jacob’s quill, piculs copper.
‘This offer is,’ affirms Iwase Banri, ‘a good and big increase.’
A ewe bleats. Jacob fails to guess what his patron is thinking.
‘We request twenty thousand piculs,’ assesses Vorstenbosch, ‘and we are offered less than ten? Does the Shogun mean to insult Governor van Overstraten?’
‘To treble quota in single year,’ Iwase is no fool, ‘is not insult.’
‘Such generosity,’ Kobayashi uses the weapon of offence, ‘is no precedent! I strive earnestly for many weeks to achieve result.’
Vorstenbosch’s glance at Jacob means, Do not record this.
‘Copper can arrive,’ says Kobayashi, ‘in two or three days, if you send.’
‘Warehouse is in Saga,’ says Iwase, ‘castle town of Hizen, is near. I amaze Edo release so much copper. As High Councillor say in message,’ he indicates the scroll, ‘most warehouses are empty.’
Unimpressed, Vorstenbosch takes up the Dutch translation and reads.
The clock’s pendulum scrapes at time like a sexton’s shovel.
William the Silent looks into a future that became past long, long ago.
‘Why does this letter,’ Vorstenbosch addresses Kobayashi over his half-moon glasses, ‘omit any mention of Dejima’s impending closure?’
‘I was not present,’ Kobayashi says innocently, ‘at Edo when reply made.’
‘One wonders whether your translation of Governor van Overstraten’s original letter was enhanced à la mode of your notorious peacock feathers?’
Kobayashi looks at Iwase as if to say, Can you make sense of this remark?
‘Translation,’ declares Iwase, ‘had seals of all four senior interpreters.’
‘Ali Baba,’ mutters Lacy, ‘had forty thieves: did they make him honest?’
‘Our question, gentlemen, is this.’ Vorstenbosch stands. ‘Shall nine thousand six hundred piculs buy Dejima a twelve-month stay of execution?’
Iwase translates this for the benefit of Chamberlain Tomine.
Eaves drip; dogs bark; an angry rash itches against Jacob’s stockings.
‘The Shenandoah has space for Dejima’s stock.’ Lacy fishes in his jacket for a jewelled box of snuff. ‘We can begin loading this afternoon.’
‘Shall we incur the wrath of our masters in Batavia,’ Vorstenbosch taps the barometer, ‘by accepting this paltry increase and keep Dejima open? Or…’ Vorstenbosch strolls to the grandfather clock and scrutinises its venerable dial ‘… abandon this unprofitable factory and deprive a backward Asian island of its single European ally?’
Lacy snorts a huge pinch of snuff. ‘Jesus have Mercy: a fine kick!’
Kobayashi keeps his gaze on the chair Vorstenbosch vacated.
‘Nine thousand six hundred piculs,’ states Vorstenbosch, ‘purchases a year’s reprieve for Dejima. Send a message to Edo. Send to Saga for the copper.’
Iwase’s relief is apparent as he informs Tomine of the news.
The Magistrate’s chamberlain nods, as if no other decision was viable.
Kobayashi gives his sinister and sardonic bow.
‘Chief Resident Unico Vorstenbosch,’ writes Jacob, ‘accepted this offer…’
‘But Governor van Overstraten,’ warns the Chief, ‘shall not be rebuffed twice.’
‘… but warned interpreters,’ adds the clerk’s quill, ‘settlement is not final.’
‘We must redouble our efforts to earn the Company just recompense for the dreadful risks and inflated expenses of this factory. But for today let us adjourn.’
‘A moment, Chief Resident, please,’ says Kobayashi. ‘More good news.’
Jacob feels something malign entering the State Room.
Vorstenbosch leans on the back of his chair. ‘Oh?’
‘I exhort at Magistracy very much about stealed teapot. I say, “If we do not find teapot, great dishonour falls on our nation.” So, chamberlain sends many…’ he asks for Iwase’s help ‘… yes, “constables”, many constables, to find teapot. Today, at Guild, when I finish’ – Kobayashi gestures at his translation of the Shogun’s reply – ‘messenger arrive from Magistracy. Jade teapot of Chongzhen Emperor is found.’
‘Oh? Good. What…’ Vorstenbosch looks for a trap ‘… what is its condition?’
‘Perfect condition. Two thiefses confessed to crime.’
‘One thief,’ Iwase continues, ‘make box in Constable Kosugi’s palanquin. Other thief put teapot into box in palanquin, and so smuggled through Land-Gate.’
‘How,’ asks van Cleef, ‘were the thieves captured?’
‘I advise,’ says Kobayashi, whilst Iwase explains to the chamberlain the matter now in hand, ‘Magistrate Ômatsu offer reward so thiefses were betrayed. My plan worked. Teapot shall deliver later today. There is better news: Magistrate Ômatsu grant permission to execute thieves in Flag Square.’
‘Here?’ Vorstenbosch’s satisfaction clouds over. ‘On Dejima? When?’
‘Before Shenandoah departs,’ Iwase answers, ‘after morning muster.’
‘So all Dutchmen,’ Kobayashi’s smile is saintly, ‘can see Japanese justice.’
The shadow of a bold rat trots along the oiled paper pane.
You demanded blood, is Kobayashi’s challenge, for your precious teapot…
The watch bell on the Shenandoah rings.
… are you now man enough, the interpreter waits, to accept delivery?
The hammering on the roof of Warehouse Lelie stops.
‘Excellent,’ says Vorstenbosch. ‘Convey my thanks to Magistrate Ômatsu.’
In Warehouse Doorn, Jacob dips his quill into the ink and writes across the hitherto blank title page: True and Complete Investigation into the Misgovernance of Dejima during the Residences of Gijsbert Hemmij and Daniel Snitker, including Rectifications to those False Ledgers submitted by the Above-named. For a moment he considers adding his name, but the rash idea passes. As his patron, Vorstenbosch has every right to pass off his underling’s work as his own. And maybe, Jacob thinks, it is safer this way. Any councillor in Batavia whose illicit profits Jacob’s Investigation curtails could finish a lowly clerk with a single stroke of a pen. Jacob places a sheet of blotting paper on the page and evenly presses it down.
It is finished, thinks the tired-eyed clerk.
Red-nosed Hanzaburo sneezes and wipes his nose on a fistful of straw.
A pigeon trills on the high window-ledge.
Ouwehand’s penetrating voice hurries past, along Bony Alley.
However widely Dejima was or wasn’t believed to be on the brink of closure, the morning’s news has roused the factory from lethargy. The copper – many hundreds of crates – shall arrive within four days. Captain Lacy wants it loaded in the Shenandoah’s hold within six, and to be leaving Nagasaki in a week, before winter turns the China Sea wild and mountainous. Questions that Vorstenbosch has equivocated upon all summer long shall be resolved in the next few days. Shall the men be given the paltry official quota for private goods in the Shenandoah, or what they grew used to under Vorstenbosch’s predecessors? Deals with merchants are being negotiated with keen urgency. Is Peter Fischer or Jacob de Zoet to be the next head clerk, with the greater salary and control over the Shipping Office? And shall Vorstenbosch use my Investigation, Jacob wonders, putting his report into his portmanteau, to condemn Daniel Snitker alone, or shall other scalps be claimed? The cabal of smugglers that operates from Batavia ’s warehouses has friends as high up as the Council of the Indies, but Jacob’s report gives enough evidence for a reform-minded governor-general to shut them down.
Obeying a whim, Jacob clambers up the tower of crates.
Hanzaburo makes a Heh? noise and sneezes again.
From William Pitt’s roost, Jacob sees fiery maples in the tired mountains.
Orito was absent from yesterday’s seminar in the Hospital…
Nor has Ogawa come to Dejima since the day of the typhoon.
But one modest gift, he assures himself, cannot have had her banished…
Jacob secures the shutters, climbs down, takes up his portmanteau, ushers Hanzaburo into Bony Alley and locks the warehouse door.
Jacob emerges at the Crossroads in time to meet Eelattu walking up Short Street. Eelattu is supporting a gaunt young man, dressed in an artisan’s loose trousers, tied at the ankles, a padded jacket and a European hat last in style fifty years ago. Jacob notes the youth’s sunken eyes, lunar complexion and lethargic gait and thinks, Consumption. Eelattu bids Jacob a good morning but does not introduce his charge, who, the clerk now sees, is not a pure-blood Japanese but a Eurasian with hair browner than black and eyes as round as his own. The visitor doesn’t notice him in the alley’s mouth, and continues down Long Street towards the Hospital.
Filaments of rain drift across the walled-in scene.
‘In the midst of life we are in death, eh?’
Hanzaburo jumps and Jacob drops his portmanteau.
‘Sorry’f we startled yer, Mr de Z.’ Arie Grote does not look sorry.
Piet Baert appears beside Grote, with a bulky sack on his shoulders.
‘No harm done, Mr Grote.’ Jacob picks up his bag. ‘I shall recover.’
‘More’n that,’ Baert nods at the Eurasian, ‘poor half-an’-half can say.’
As if on cue, the shuffling youth coughs the unmistakable cough.
Hanzaburo is summoned across the street by an idle inspector.
Jacob watches the Eurasian crouch and cough. ‘Who is he?’
Grote spits. ‘Shunsuke Thunberg, beggin’ the query, “Whose is he, eh?” His daddy, so I hear tell, was one Carl Thunberg from Sweden what was Quack here twenty years back for a couple o’ seasons. Like Dr M., he was an educated gent an’ one for the botanisin’ by all accounts, but as yer see, he din’t just harvest seeds hereabouts, eh?’
A three-legged dog licks up the bald cook’s phlegm.
‘Did Mr Thunberg make no provision for his son’s future?’
‘ ’F he did or no,’ Grote sucks through his teeth, ‘ “provision” needs upkeep an’ Sweden ’s far as Saturn, eh? The Company treats its men’s bastards, out o’ pity, but they ain’t allowed out of Nagasaki without a pass; an’ the Magistrate has the final Say-So on their lives ’n’ marriages an’ all. Girls earn a fair clip, while their looks last; the “Corals o’ Maruyama”, the pimps call ’em. But for boys, it’s harder: Thunberg Junior’s a goldfish-breeder I hear, but he’ll be a worm-breeder by an’ by, an’ no mistake.’
Marinus and an older Japanese scholar approach from the Hospital.
Jacob recognises Dr Maeno from the Interpreters’ Guild.
Shunsuke Thunberg’s coughing fit is, at last, easing.
I should have helped, Jacob thinks. ‘Does the poor fellow speak Dutch?’
‘Nah. He was still a babe-in-arms when his daddy sailed away.’
‘What about his mother? A courtesan, one presumes.’
‘Long dead. Well ’scuse us, Mr de Z., but three dozen chickens’re waitin’ at the Customs House f’loadin’ on the Shenandoah what need inspectin’ ’cause last year half of ’em was half-dead, half of ’em was dead an’ three was pigeons what the provisioner called “Rare Japanese Hens”.’
‘Worm-breeder!’ Baert starts laughing. ‘I just smoked yer, Grote!’
Something in Baert’s sack kicks and Grote looks anxious to leave. ‘Off we go then, Greasy Lightnin’.’ They hurry off up Long Street.
Jacob watches Shunsuke Thunberg being helped into the Hospital.
Birds are notched on the low sky. Autumn is aging.
Halfway up two flights of steps to the Chief’s Residence, Jacob encounters Ogawa Mimasaku, the father of Ogawa Uzaemon, coming down.
‘Good day,’ Jacob stands aside, ‘Interpreter Ogawa.’
The older man’s hands are hidden in his sleeves. ‘Clerk de Zoet.’
‘I haven’t seen the younger Mr Ogawa for… it must be four days.’
Ogawa Mimasaku’s face is haughtier and stonier than his son’s.
An inky growth is spreading out from near his ear.
‘My son,’ says the interpreter, ‘is very busy outside of Dejima at this time.’
‘Do you know when he shall be back at the Guild?’
‘No, I do not.’ The tone of rebuff is intentional.
Have you discovered, Jacob wonders, what I asked your son to do?
From the Customs House comes the noise of outraged hens.
A carelessly tossed stone, he frets, can sometimes result in a rock-fall.
‘I was concerned he might be sick, or… or unwell.’
Ogawa Mimasaku’s servants are staring at the Dutchman with disapproval.
‘He is well,’ says the older man. ‘I report your kind concern. Good afternoon.’
‘You find me…’ Vorstenbosch is peering at a bloated cane toad in a specimen jar ‘… enjoying a quiet discourse with Interpreter Kobayashi.’
Jacob looks around before realising the Chief means the toad. ‘I left my sense of humour in bed this morning, sir.’
‘But not, I see,’ Vorstenbosch looks at Jacob’s portmanteau, ‘your Report.’
What lies behind, Jacob wonders, this shift from ‘our’ to ‘your’.
‘The gist, sir, you know from our periodic meetings…’
‘Law requires details, not gist.’ The Chief Resident holds out his palm for the black book. ‘Details beget facts, and facts, judiciously sent forth, become assassins.’
Jacob removes the Investigation and delivers it to the Chief.
Vorstenbosch balances it in his hands, as if determining its weight.
‘Sir, if you’d forgive me, I’m curious about -’
‘- the post you are to hold in the forthcoming year, yes, but you shall wait, young de Zoet, with everyone else, until the Officers’ Supper tonight. The copper quota was the penultimate component of my future plans, and this -’ he holds up the black book ‘- this is the last.’
During the afternoon Jacob works with Ouwehand in the Clerks’ Office, copying this season’s Bills of Lading for the archives. Peter Fischer makes restless exits and entrances, radiating even more hostility than usual. ‘A sign,’ Ouwehand tells Jacob, ‘that he thinks the head clerkship is as good as yours.’ Evening brings steady rain and the coolest air of the season, and Jacob decides to bathe before supper. Dejima’s small Bath House is attached to the Guild’s kitchen: the pans of water are heated on copper-plated hobs jutting through the stone wall, and precedent permits the ranked interpreters to treat the facility as their own, despite the exorbitant price the Company is obliged to pay for charcoal and faggots. Jacob undresses in the outer changing room and crouches to enter the steamy enclosure, little larger than a big cupboard. It smells of cedar wood. Damp heat fills Jacob’s lungs and unplugs the clogged pores on his face. A single storm-lamp, steam-fogged, provides enough light for him to recognise Con Twomey soaking in one of the two tubs. ‘So it is the sulphur of Jean Calvin,’ says the Irishman, in English, ‘making war on my nostrils.’
‘Why,’ Jacob ladles lukewarm water over himself, ‘it’s the Popish heretic, first in the bath, again. Not enough work, is it?’
‘The typhoon gave me all I could wish for. ’Tis daylight I lack.’
Jacob scrubs himself with a wad of sailcloth. ‘Where’s your spy?’
‘Drowned under my fat arse, he is. Where’s your Hanzaburo?’
‘Stuffing his face in the Guild’s Kitchen.’
‘Well, with the Shenandoah leaving next week, he must fatten himself up whilst he may.’ Twomey sinks up to his chin like a dugong. ‘Come a twelve-month, my five years’ service’ll be finished…’
‘Are you fixed,’ Jacob turns away to scrub his groin, ‘on going home?’
They hear the cooks talking in the Interpreters’ Guild.
‘A new start in the New World might suit better, like, I’m thinking.’
Jacob removes the wooden lid from the bathtub.
‘Lacy tells,’ says Twomey, ‘the Indians’re being cleared west of Lousiana…’
Warmth sinks into every muscle and bone in Jacob’s body.
‘… and no man afraid of hard work need go without. Settlers need carts to get where they’re going and houses once they’re there. Lacy reckoned I could work my passage to Charleston from Batavia as ship’s carpenter. I’ve no appetite for war, or being pressed into fighting for the British. Would you go back to Holland in the present weather?’
‘I don’t know.’ Jacob thinks of Anna’s face by a rainy window. ‘I do not know.’
‘A Coffee King you’ll be, sure, with a plantation up in Buitenzorg, or else a Merchant Prince with new warehouses along the Ciliwung…’
‘My mercury didn’t fetch so high a price, Con Twomey.’
‘Aye, but with Councillor Unico Vorstenbosch pulling strings for you…’
Jacob climbs into the second tub, thinking of his Investigation.
Unico Vorstenbosch, the clerk wants to say, is a fickle patron.
Heat soaks into his joints and robs him of the urge to speculate aloud.
‘What we need, de Zoet, is a smoke. I’ll fetch us a couple of pipes.’
Con Twomey rises like a stocky King Neptune. Jacob sinks until only a small island of lips, nostrils and eyes remains above the water.
When Twomey returns, Jacob is in a warm trance with his eyes shut. He listens to the carpenter rinse and re-immerse himself. Twomey makes no mention of smoking. Jacob mumbles, ‘Not a shred of leaf to be had, then?’
His neighbour clears his throat. ‘I am Ogawa, Mr de Zoet.’
Jacob lurches and water spills. ‘Mr Ogawa! I – I thought…’
‘You so peaceful,’ says Ogawa Uzaemon, ‘I do not wish disturb.’
‘I met your father earlier but…’ Jacob wipes his eyes, but with the steamy dark and his far-sightedness, his vision is no better. ‘I’ve not seen you since before the typhoon.’
‘I am sorry I could not come. Very many things happen.’
‘Were you able to – to fulfil my request, regarding the dictionary?’
‘Day after typhoon, I send servant to Aibagawa Residence.’
‘Then you didn’t deliver the volume yourself?’
‘Most trusted servant delivered dictionary. He did not say, “Parcel is from Dutchman de Zoet.” He explained, “Parcel is from Hospital on Dejima.” You see, it was misappropriate for me to go. Dr Aibagawa was ill. To visit at such hour is bad… breeding?’
‘I am sorry to hear it. Is he recovered now?’
‘His funeral was conducted a day before yesterday.’
‘Oh.’ Everything, Jacob thinks, is explained. ‘Oh. Then Miss Aibagawa…’
Ogawa hesitates. ‘There is bad news. She must leave Nagasaki…’
Jacob waits and listens, as droplets of condensed steam fall.
‘… for long time, for many years. She shall not return more to Dejima. Of your dictionary, of your letter, of how she thinks, I have no news. I am sorry.’
‘The dictionary be damned – but… where is she going, and why?’
‘It is domain of Abbot Enomoto. Man which bought your mercury…’
The man who kills snakes by magic. The Abbot looms in Jacob’s memory.
‘… he want her to enter temple of…’ Ogawa falters ‘… female monks. How say?’
‘Nuns? Pray don’t tell me Miss Aibagawa’s going to a nunnery.’
‘Species of nunnery, yes… on Mount Shiranui. There she is going.’
‘What use is a midwife to a pack of nuns? Does she want to go?’
‘Dr Aibagawa had great debts with money-lenders, to purchase telescopes et cetera.’ Pain strains Ogawa’s voice. ‘To be scholar is costly. His widow must now pay these debts. Enomoto makes contract, or deal, to widow. He pays debts. She gives Miss Aibagawa for nunnery.’
‘But this is tantamount,’ Jacob protests, ‘to selling her into slavery!’
‘Japanese custom,’ Ogawa sounds hollow, ‘is different to Dutch-’
‘What say her late father’s friends at the Shirandô Academy? Shall they stand by doing nothing whilst a gifted scholar is sold, like a mule, into a life of servitude up some bleak mountain? Would a son be sold to a monastery in such manner? Enomoto is a scholar too, is he not?’
Cooks in the Interpreters’ Guild can be heard laughing through the wall.
‘But,’ Jacob sees another implication, ‘I offered her sanctuary here.’
‘Nothing can be done.’ Ogawa stands up. ‘I must go now.’
‘So… she prefers incarceration to living here, on Dejima?’
Ogawa steps out of the bathtub. His silence is blunt and reproachful.
Jacob sees how boorish he must appear in the interpreter’s eyes: at no small risk, Ogawa tried to help a lovesick foreigner, who now rewards him with resentment. ‘Forgive me, Mr Ogawa, but surely if-’
The outer door slides open and a cheerful whistler enters.
A shadow parts the curtain and asks, in Dutch, ‘Who goes there?’
‘It is Ogawa, Mr Twomey.’
‘Good evening to you, Mr Ogawa. Mr de Zoet, our pipe must wait. Chief Vorstenbosch wishes to discuss an important matter with you in his bureau. Straight away. My bones tell me there is good news waiting.’
‘Why the glum face, de Zoet?’ Investigation into the Misgovernance of Dejima sits in front of Unico Vorstenbosch. ‘Lost in love, have we?’
Jacob is appalled that his secret is known even to his patron.
‘A quip, de Zoet! Nothing more. Twomey says I interrupt your ablutions?’
‘I was just finishing in the Bath House, sir.’
‘Cleanliness being next to godliness, I am told.’
‘I make no claims on godliness, but bathing wards off the lice; and the evenings are a little cooler now.’
‘You do look drawn, de Zoet. Did I drive you too long, too exactingly, on’ – Vorstenbosch drums his fingers on the Investigation – ‘on your assignment?’
‘Exacting or not, sir, my work is my work.’
The Chief Resident nods, like a judge hearing evidence.
‘May I hope that my report does not disappoint your expectations, sir?’
Vorstenbosch unstoppers a decanter of ruby Madeira.
Servants are setting the table in the Dining Room.
The Chief fills his own glass but offers nothing to Jacob. ‘We have gathered painstaking, merit-worthy and undeniable proof of Dejima’s shameful misrule in the nineties, proof that shall justify, amply, my punitive measures against ex-Acting-Chief Daniel Snitker…’
Jacob notices the ‘we’ and the omission of van Cleef’s name.
‘… assuming our proof is presented to Governor van Overstraten with the necessary vigour.’ Vorstenbosch opens the cabinet behind him and takes out another glass.
‘Nobody can doubt,’ Jacob says, ‘that Captain Lacy shall do a good job.’
‘Why should an American care about Company corruption, so long as he makes his profits?’ Vorstenbosch fills a glass and hands it to Jacob. ‘Anselm Lacy is no crusader but a hired hand. Back in Batavia he would dutifully deliver our Investigation to the Governor-General’s Private Secretary and never give it a second thought. The Private Secretary would, like as not, deposit it in a quiet canal, and warn the men you name – and Snitker’s cronies – who would grind their long knives in preparation for our return. No. The whys and wherefores of Dejima’s crisis, its correctives and the justice of Daniel Snitker’s punishment must be explicated by one whose future is bonded with the Company’s. Therefore, de Zoet, I ’ – the pronoun is voiced significantly – ‘shall return to Batavia on the Shenandoah, alone, to prosecute our case.’
The Almelo Clock is loud against the drizzle’s hush and the lamp’s hiss.
‘And,’ Jacob keeps his voice flat and steady, ‘your plans for me, sir?’
‘You are to be my eyes and ears in Nagasaki, until next trading season.’
Without protection, Jacob considers, I shall be eaten alive in a week…
‘I shall, therefore, appoint Peter Fischer as the new head clerk.’
The clatter of consequences tramples over the Almelo Clock.
Without status, Jacob thinks, I shall indeed be a lap-dog, thrown into a bear-pit.
‘The sole candidate for Chief,’ Vorstensbosch is saying, ‘is Mr van Cleef…’
Dejima is a long, long way, Jacob is afraid, from Batavia.
‘… but what say you to the sound of Deputy Chief Resident Jacob de Zoet?’
Morning mustering on the last day of October, 1799
‘Little miracle, it is,’ Piet Baert looks at the sky, ‘the rain’s drained away…’
‘Forty days an’ forty nights,’ says Ivo Oost, ‘we was in for, I thought.’
‘Bodies was washed down the river,’ Wybo Gerritszoon remarks. ‘I saw the boats haulin’ ’em in with big hooks on poles.’
‘Mr Kobayashi?’ Melchior van Cleef calls louder. ‘Mr Kobayashi?’
Kobayashi turns around and looks in van Cleef’s approximate direction.
‘We have a lot of work before the Shenandoah is loaded: why this delay?’
‘Flood broke convenient bridges in city. There is much lateness today.’
‘Then why,’ asks Peter Fischer, ‘did the party not leave the prison earlier?’
But Interpreter Kobayashi has turned back and watches Flag Square. Converted to an execution ground, it holds the biggest assembly Jacob has seen in Japan. The Dutchmen, their backs to the flagpole, stand in a half-moon. An oblong is drawn in the dirt where the teapot thieves are to be decapitated. Opposite ascend three steps under an awning: on the topmost row sit Chamberlain Tomine and a dozen senior officials from the Magistracy; the middle row is filled with other dignitaries of Nagasaki; on the lowest step sit all sixteen ranked interpreters, barring Kobayashi, who is on duty at Vorstenbosch’s side. Ogawa Uzaemon, whom Jacob has not met since the Bath House, looks tired. Three Shintô priests in white robes and ornate headpieces conduct a purification ritual involving chants and the throwing of salt. To the left and right stand servants; eighty or ninety unranked interpreters; coolies and day labourers, happy to be enjoying the sport at the Company’s expense, and assorted guards, friskers, oarsmen and carpenters. Four men in ragged clothing wait by a hand-cart. The executioner is a hawk-eyed samurai whose assistant holds a drum. Dr Marinus stands to one side with his four male seminarians.
Orito was a fever, Jacob reminds himself. Now the fever is lifted.
‘Hangin’s’re more of a holiday’n this in Antwerp,’ notes Baert.
Captain Lacy looks at the flag, thinking of winds and tides.
Vorstenbosch asks, ‘Shall we be needing tug-boats later, Captain?’
Lacy shakes his head. ‘We’ll have puff enough if this breeze holds.’
Van Cleef warns, ‘The tugs’ skippers’ll try to attach the ropes regardless.’
‘Then the pirates’ll have a lot of sliced ropes to replace, ’specially if-’
Towards the Land-Gate, the crowd stirs, hums louder and parts.
The prisoners are conveyed in large rope nets suspended on poles carried by four men each. They are paraded past the grandstand and dumped on the oblong where the nets are opened. The youngest of the two is only sixteen or seventeen; he was probably handsome until his arrest. His older accomplice is broken and shivering. They wear only long cloths wrapped around their loins and a carapace of dried blood, welts and gashes. Several fingers and toes are scabby maroon lumps. Constable Kosugi, the stern master of today’s grisly ceremony, opens a scroll. The crowd falls silent. Kosugi proceeds to read a Japanese text.
‘It is statement of accuse,’ Kobayashi tells the Dutch, ‘and confessment.’
When Constable Kosugi finishes he proceeds to the awning where he bows as Chamberlain Tomine delivers a statement. Constable Kosugi then walks to Unico Vorstenbosch to relay the chamberlain’s message. Kobayashi translates with marked brevity: ‘Do Dutch Chief grant pardon?’
Four or five hundred eyes fix themselves on Unico Vorstenbosch.
Show mercy, Deputy-Elect de Zoet prays in the rotating moment. Mercy.
‘Ask the thieves,’ Vorstenbosch instructs Kobayashi, ‘whether they knew the likely punishment for their crime.’
Kobayashi addresses the question to the kneeling pair.
The older thief cannot speak. The defiant younger one declares, ‘Hai.’
‘Then why should I interfere in Japanese justice? The answer is no.’
Kobayashi delivers the verdict to Constable Kosugi, who marches back to Chamberlain Tomine. When it is delivered, the crowd mutters its disapproval. The young thief says something to Vorstenbosch and Kobayashi asks, ‘Do you wish to me for translate?’
‘Tell me what he says,’ says the Chief Resident.
‘The criminal say, “Remember my face when you drink tea.” ’
Vorstenbosch folds his arms. ‘Assure him that twenty minutes from now I shall forget his face for ever. In twenty days, few of his friends shall recall his features with clarity. In twenty months, even his mother shall wonder how her son looked.’
Kobayashi translates the sentence with stern relish.
Nearby spectators overhear and watch the Dutchmen ever more balefully.
‘I translate,’ Kobayashi assures Vorstenbosch, ‘very faithful.’
Constable Kosugi asks the executioner to ready himself for duty whilst Vorstenbosch addresses the Dutchmen. ‘There are those amongst our hosts, gentlemen, who hope to see us choke on this dish of rightful vengeance: I pray you deprive them of the pleasure.’
‘Beggin’ yer pardon, sir,’ says Baert, ‘I ain’t graspin’ yer meanin’.’
‘Don’t puke an’ don’t swoon,’ says Arie Grote, ‘afore the Yellow Host.’
‘Precisely, Grote,’ says Vorstenbosch. ‘We are ambassadors for our race.’
The older thief is first. His head is in a cloth bag. He is knelt down.
The drummer drums a dry rhythm: the executioner unsheathes his sword.
Urine darkens the ground beneath the quivering victim.
Ivo Oost, next to Jacob, draws a cross in the dirt with the toe of his shoe.
Two or more dogs across Edo Square let loose a frenzy of barking.
Gerritszoon mutters, ‘Well, here it comes, my pretty…’
The executioner’s raised sword is bright with polishing but dark with oil.
Jacob hears a chord, always present but rarely audible.
The drummer strikes his drum for the fourth or fifth time.
There is the noise of a spade cutting through soil…
… and the thief’s head thuds on to the sand, still in its bag.
Blood ejaculates from the shorn stump with a thin, whistling sound.
The gaping stump slumps forwards and settles on the thief’s knees, vomiting blood.
Gerritszoon mutters, ‘Bravo my pretty!’
I am poured out like water, recites Jacob, shutting his eyes, my tongue cleaveth to my jaws and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
‘Seminarians,’ directs Marinus, ‘observe the aorta: the jugular and spinal cord; and how the venous blood is, in tone, a rich plum colour, whilst the arterial blood is the scarlet of ripe hibiscus. They differ in taste, moreover: the arterial blood has a metallic tang, whilst venous blood is fruitier.’
‘For the Love of God, Doctor,’ complains van Cleef. ‘Must you?’
‘Better that someone benefit from this futile act of barbarity.’
Jacob watches Unico Vorstenbosch remain aloof. Peter Fischer sniffs. ‘The safeguarding of Company property is a “futile act of barbarity”? What if the stolen item were your treasured harpsichord, Doctor?’
‘Better bid it farewell.’ The headless body is slung on to the cart. ‘Spilt blood would clog up its levers and its tone would never recover.’
Ponke Ouwehand asks, ‘What happens to the bodies, Doctor?’
‘The bile is harvested for druggists, and then the remains are pawed apart for the gratification of a paying audience. Such are the difficulties the native scholars face in establishing surgery and anatomy…’
The younger thief appears to be refusing his hood.
He is brought forward to the dark stains where his friend was beheaded.
The drummer strikes his drum a first time…
‘It’s a rare art,’ Gerritszoon tells nobody in particular, ‘is choppin’: executioners’ll mind the client’s weight, an’ the season, ’cause come summer there’s more fat on the neck than at winter’s end, an’ if the skin be wet in the rain or no…’
The drummer strikes his drum a second time…
‘A philosopher of Paris,’ the doctor tells his students, ‘was sentenced to the guillotine during the recent Terror…’
The drummer strikes his drum the third time…
‘… he conducted an intriguing experiment: he arranged with an assistant that he would begin blinking as the blade fell…’
The drummer strikes his drum a fourth time.
‘… and continue blinking thereafter for as long as he might. By counting the blinks, the assistant could measure the brief life of a severed head.’
Cupido intones some words in Malay, perhaps to ward off the evil eye.
Gerritszoon turns around and says, ‘Stop that darkie jabberin’, boy.’
Deputy-Elect Jacob de Zoet cannot bring himself to watch again.
He inspects his shoes and finds a splash of blood on one toe.
The wind passes through Flag Square, soft as a robe’s hem.
‘Which brings us,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘almost to the end of things…’
It is eleven o’clock by the Almelo Clock in the departing Chief’s Bureau.
Vorstenbosch slides the last sheaf of paperwork aside; produces the Papers of Commission; dips his pen in its well and signs the first document. ‘May fortune smile on your tenure, Chief Resident Melchior van Cleef of the Dejima Factory…’
Van Cleef’s beard shrugs as its owner smiles. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘… and last but not least,’ Vorstenbosch signs the second document, ‘Deputy Chief Resident Jacob de Zoet.’ He replaces the pen. ‘To think, de Zoet, back in April, you were a lesser clerk bound for a swampy pit in Halmahera.’
‘An open grave.’ Van Cleef puffs out air. ‘Escape the crocs, swamp-fever shall do for you. Escape the swamp-fever, a poison blow-dart ends your days. You owe Mr Vorstenbosch not only a bright future but your very life.’
You, you embezzler, Jacob thinks, owe him your freedom from Snitker’s fate. ‘My gratitude to Mr Vorstenbosch is as profound as it is sincere.’
‘We have time for a brief toast. Philander!’
Philander comes in, balancing three glasses of wine on a silver tray.
Each man takes one of the long-stemmed glasses: they clink rims.
His glass drained, Vorstenbosch presents Melchior van Cleef with the keys to Warehouses Eik and Doorn, and to the safe-box that houses the Trading Pass issued fifteen decades ago by the Great Shogun. ‘May Dejima flourish under your custodianship, Chief van Cleef. I bequeathed you an able and promising deputy. Next year I desire you both surpass my achievement and wring twenty thousand piculs of copper out of our miserly slit-eyed hosts.’
‘If it is humanly possible,’ promises van Cleef, ‘we shall.’
‘I shall pray for your safe voyage, sir,’ says Jacob.
‘Thank you: and now the matter of succession is settled…’ Vorstenbosch takes an envelope from his coat and unfolds a document ‘… Dejima’s three senior officers may sign the Summation of Exported Goods, as Governor van Overstraten now insists we must.’ He writes his own name in the first space beneath the three-page index of Company commodities stowed in the Shenandoah’s hold, divided into ‘Copper’, ‘Camphor’ and ‘Other’, and subdivided into lot numbers, quantities and qualities.
Van Cleef signs the record he compiled without a second glance.
Jacob takes the proffered pen and, by dint of professional habit, studies the figures: this is the morning’s single document not prepared by his own hand.
‘Deputy,’ chides van Cleef, ‘surely you shan’t oblige Mr Vorstenbosch to wait?’
‘The Company desires me, sir, to be thorough in all things.’
This remark, Jacob notices, is greeted by a frosty silence.
‘The sun,’ says van Cleef, ‘is winning the battle for the day, Mr Vorstenbosch.’
‘So it is.’ Vorstenbosch finishes his wine. ‘Were it Kobayashi’s intention to conjure a Jonah with the executions this morning, his plan is another failure.’
Jacob finds a surprising error. Total Copper Export: 2,600 piculs.
Van Cleef clears his throat. ‘Is aught amiss, Deputy?’
‘Sir… here, in the total column. The “nine” looks like a “two”.’
Vorstenbosch states: ‘The Summation is quite in order, de Zoet.’
‘But, sir, we are exporting nine thousand six hundred piculs.’
Van Cleef’s levity is infused with threat. ‘Just sign the paper, de Zoet.’
Jacob looks at van Cleef, who stares at Jacob, who turns to Vorstenbosch. ‘Sir: one unfamiliar with your reputation for integrity might see this Summation and…’ he struggles for a diplomatic phrase ‘… might be forgiven for supposing that seven thousand piculs of copper have been omitted from the tally deliberately.’
Vorstenbosch’s face is that of a man resolved to let his son beat him at chess no longer.
‘Do you,’ Jacob’s voice has a slight shake, ‘intend to steal this copper?’
‘ “Steal” is for Snitker, boy: I claim my rightful perquisites.’
‘But “rightful perquisites”,’ Jacob blurts, ‘is the very phrase Snitker minted!’
‘For your career’s sake, don’t compare me to that wharf-rat.’
‘I don’t, sir.’ Jacob taps the Summation of exports. ‘This does.’
‘The lurid beheadings we witnessed this morning,’ says van Cleef, ‘muddied your wits, Mr de Zoet. Luckily, Mr Vorstenbosch does not bear grudges, so apologise for your hotheadedness, ink your name on this scrap of paper and let us forget this disharmony.’
Vorstenbosch is displeased but does not contradict van Cleef.
Feeble sunshine lights the paper panes of the Bureau window.
What de Zoet of Domburg, thinks Jacob, ever prostituted his conscience?
Melchior van Cleef smells of eau-de-Cologne and pork fat.
‘Whatever happened,’ says van Cleef, ‘to “My gratitude to Mr Vorstenbosch is as profound as it is sincere”, hey?’
A bluebottle is drowning in his wine. Jacob has torn the Summation in two…
… and again, into four. His heart is pounding, like a murderer’s after the kill.
I shall be hearing that tearing sound, Jacob knows, until I die.
The Almelo Clock taps at time with its tiny hammers.
‘I had de Zoet down,’ Vorstenbosch addresses van Cleef, ‘as a young man of sound judgement.’
‘I had you down,’ Jacob tells Vorstenbosch, ‘as a man worthy of emulation.’
Vorstenbosch takes up Jacob’s Paper of Commission and tears it in two…
… and again, into four. ‘I hope you like life on Dejima, de Zoet: you shall know no other for five years. Mr van Cleef: do you choose Fischer or Ouwehand for your deputy?’
‘A poor choice. I desire neither. But let it be Fischer.’
In the State Room Philander says, ‘Pardon but masters all busy still.’
‘Leave my sight,’ Vorstenbosch tells Jacob, without looking at him.
‘Suppose Governor van Overstraten,’ Jacob wonders aloud, ‘were to learn-’
‘Threaten me, you pious Zeelander shit-weasel,’ responds Vorstenbosch, calmly, ‘and where Snitker is plucked, you shall be butchered. Tell me, Chief van Cleef: what are the penalties for forging a letter from His Excellency the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies?’
Jacob feels a sudden weakness in his thighs and calves.
‘That would depend on the motives and circumstances, sir.’
‘What about an unconscionable clerk who sends a counterfeit letter to none other than the Shogun of Japan, threatening to abandon the Company’s venerable outpost unless twenty thousand piculs of copper are sent to Nagasaki, copper which he manifestly intended to sell on himself – or why else conceal his misdeed from his colleagues?’
‘Twenty years in gaol, sir,’ says van Cleef, ‘would be the most lenient sentence.’
‘This…’ Jacob stares ‘… entrapment you planned as early as July?’
‘One insures oneself against disappointments. I told you to be gone.’
I shall return to Europe, Jacob sees, no richer than when I left.
As Jacob opens the Bureau door, Vorstenbosch calls, ‘Philander!’
The Malay pretends not to have been listening at the keyhole. ‘Master?’
‘Fetch me Mr Fischer on the instant. We have welcome news for him.’
‘I’ll tell Fischer!’ Jacob calls over his shoulder. ‘Why, he can finish my wine!’
‘Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.’ Jacob studies the thirty-seventh psalm. ‘For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed…’
Sunshine rusts the upstairs apartment in Tall House.
The Sea-Gate is closed now until next trading season.
Peter Fischer shall be moving into the Deputy’s spacious residence.
After fifteen weeks at anchor, the Shenandoah shall be unfurling her sails, her sailors yearning for the open sea and a fat purse in Batavia.
Don’t pity yourself, thinks Jacob. Maintain your dignity, at least.
Hanzaburo’s footsteps come up the stairs. Jacob closes the Psalter.
Even Daniel Snitker must be looking forward for the voyage to begin…
… at least, in Batavia Gaol, he can enjoy the company of his friends and wife.
Hanzaburo busies himself in his cubby-hole in the ante-room.
Orito preferred incarceration in a nunnery, his loneliness whispers…
A bird in the bay tree sings an ambling, musical doodle.
… to a Dejima marriage with you. Hanzaburo’s footsteps go down the stairs.
Jacob worries about his letters home to Anna, to his sister and uncle.
Vorstenbosch shall post them, he fears, through the Shenandoah’s privy.
Hanzaburo is gone, the common clerk realises, without even a goodbye.
One-sided news of his disgrace shall travel: first to Batavia, then Rotterdam.
‘The Orient’, Anna’s father shall opine, ‘tests a man’s true character.’
Jacob calculates she shan’t hear from him until January of 1801.
Until then, every rich, horny, eligible son of Rotterdam shall pay her court…
Jacob reopens his Psalter, but is too agitated even for David’s verses.
I am a righteous man, he thinks, but see what righteousness has done.
Going outside is intolerable. Staying inside is intolerable.
The others will think you are afraid to show your face. He puts on his jacket.
On the bottom stair Jacob steps in something slippery, falls backwards…
… and bangs his coccyx on the edge of a step. He sees, and smells, that the mishap was caused by a large human turd.
Long Street is deserted but for two coolies who grin at the red-haired foreigner and make goblin horns on their heads in the way the French denote a cuckold.
The air is swimming with insects, born of damp earth and autumn sun.
Arie Grote trots down the steps of Chief van Cleef’s Residence. ‘Mr de Z. was conspicuous by his absence, eh, at Vorstenbosch’s farewell.’
‘He and I had said our goodbyes,’ Jacob finds his path blocked, ‘earlier.’
‘My jaw dropped this far -’ Grote demonstrates ‘- when I heard the news!’
‘Your jaw, I see, has since recovered its customary altitude.’
‘So yer’ll be servin’ out yer sentence in Tall House an’ not the Deputy’s… “A Difference of Opinion over the Deputy’s Role”, I understand, eh?’
Jacob has nowhere to look but the walls, the gutters or Arie Grote’s face.
‘Meanin’, the rats tell me, you’d not sign off on that crooked Summation, eh? Expensive habit is honesty. Loyalty ain’t a simple matter. Din’t I warn yer? Y’know, Mr de Z., a nastier-minded cove, smartin’ from the loss of his friendly playin’ cards, might even be tempted to gloat a little at his, eh, antagonist’s misfortunes…’
Limping, Sjako walks by, carrying the toucan in its cage.
‘… but I reckon as I’ll leave the gloatin’ to Fischer.’ The leathery cook places his hand on his heart. ‘All’s well as ends well, I say. Mr V. let me ship my whole stock for ten per cent: last year Snitker wanted fifty-fifty for a mouldy corner o’ the Octavia, that graspin’ grasper – an’ given her fate ’twas a blessin’ we din’t agree! The trusty Shenandoah’s’ – Grote nods at the Sea-Gate – ‘leavin’ laden with the harvest o’ three honest years’ toil, eh. Chief V. even cut me a fifth slice of four gross Arita figurines in lieu, eh, o’ my brokerage fees.’
A night-soil man’s buckets, swinging on his pole, stain the air.
‘Wonder how close,’ Grote thinks aloud, ‘the friskers search them.’
‘Four gross figurines,’ Jacob registers the number, ‘not two gross?’
‘Forty-eight dozen, aye. Tidy packet they’ll fetch at auction. Why d’yer ask?’
‘No reason.’ Vorstenbosch lied, thinks Jacob, from the start. ‘Now if there’s nothing I can do for you-’
‘ ’S’ matter o’ fact,’ Grote produces a bundle from his jerkin, ‘it’s what I…’
Jacob recognises his tobacco pouch, given by Orito to William Pitt.
‘… can do f’you. This well-sewn item is yours, I do believe.’
‘Do you intend to charge me for my own tobacco pouch?’
‘Just returnin’ it to its rightful owner, Mr de Z., at no price what-so-ever…’
Jacob waits for Grote to name his true price.
‘… though it may be an opportune time, eh, to remind yer that a Wise Head’d sell our two last crates o’ pox-powder to Enomoto sooner an’ not later. The Chinese junks’ll come back laden low with every ounce o’ mercury to be had within their, eh, Sphere of Commerce an’ entre nous, eh, Messrs Lacy an’ V-bosch’ll be sendin’ a German ton o’ the stuff next year, an’ when the market floods, the prices turn soggy.’
‘I shan’t be selling to Enomoto. Find another buyer. Any other buyer.’
‘Clerk de Zoet!’ Peter Fischer marches into Long Street from Back Alley. He shines with vengefulness. ‘Clerk de Zoet. What is this?’
‘We call it a “thumb” in Dutch.’ Jacob cannot yet muster a Sir.
‘Yes, I know it is a thumb. But what is this on my thumb?’
‘That would be,’ Jacob senses Arie Grote has disappeared, ‘a dirty smudge.’
‘The clerks and hands address me,’ Fischer draws level, ‘as “Deputy Fischer” or “sir”. Do you understand?’
Two years of this, Jacob calculates, turn into five if he becomes Chief.
‘I understand what you say very well, Deputy Fischer.’
Fischer wears triumphant Caesar’s smile. ‘Dirt! Yes. Dirt. It is on the shelfs of the Clerks’ Office. So, I direct you to clean it.’
‘Ordinarily,’ Jacob swallows, ‘Sir, one of the servants-’
‘Ah, yes, but I direct you’ – Fischer prods Jacob’s sternum with his dirty thumb – ‘to clean the shelfs now, because you dislike slaves, servants and unequalities.’
A ewe, escaped from her paddock, ambles down Long Street.
He wants me to hit him, thinks Jacob. ‘I shall clean them later.’
‘You shall address the Deputy as Deputy Fischer, at all times.’
Years of this ahead, thinks Jacob. ‘I shall clean them later, Deputy Fischer.’
Protagonist and antagonist stare at each other; the ewe squats and pisses.
‘I order you to clean the shelfs now, Clerk de Zoet. If you do not-’
Jacob is breathless with a fury he knows he shan’t control: he walks off.
‘Chief van Cleef,’ Fischer calls after him, ‘and I shall discuss your insolence!’
‘It’s a long way,’ Ivo Oost smokes in a doorway, ‘down to the bottom…’
‘It is my signature,’ Fischer shouts after him, ‘that authorises your wages!’
Jacob climbs the Watchtower, praying that nobody is on the platform.
Anger and self-pity are lodged in his throat like fish-bones.
This one prayer, at least, he gains the unoccupied platform, is answered.
The Shenandoah is half a mile up Nagasaki Bay. Tug-boats trail in her wake like unwanted goslings. The narrowing bay, pouring clouds and the brig’s billowing canvas suggest a model ship being drawn from its bottle’s mouth.
Now I understand, thinks Jacob, why I have the Watchtower to myself.
The Shenandoah fires her cannons to salute the guard-posts.
What prisoner wants to behold his prison door slammed shut?
Petals of smoke are plucked by the wind from the Shenandoah’s gun-ports…
… and the shot reverberates, like the lid of a harpsichord, dropped shut.
The far-sighted clerk removes his spectacles in order to see better.
The burgundy blotch on the quarterdeck is certainly Captain Lacy…
… so the olive one must be the Incorruptible Unico Vorstenbosch. Jacob imagines his erstwhile patron using Investigation into Misgovernance to blackmail Company officials. ‘The Company’s Mint,’ Vorstenbosch could now argue most persuasively, ‘requires a director with my experience and discretion.’
Landwards, citizens of Nagasaki are sitting on their roofs to watch the Dutch ship embark, and dream of its destinations. Jacob thinks of the peers and fellow-voyagers in Batavia; of colleagues in various offices during his days as a shipping clerk; of classmates in Middelburg and childhood friends in Domburg. Whilst they are out in the wide world, finding their paths and good-hearted wives, I shall be spending my twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth and thirtieth year – my last best years – trapped in a dying factory with whatever flotsam and jetsam happen to wash up.
Below, out of sight, a reluctant window of the Deputy’s House is opened.
‘Be careful with that upholstery,’ commands Fischer, ‘you mule…’
Jacob looks in his tobacco pouch for a shred of leaf, but there is none.
‘… or I shall use your shit-brown skin to repair it: you savvy?’
Jacob imagines returning to Domburg to find strangers in the parsonage.
In Flag Square, priests conduct purification rites on the execution ground.
‘If you not pay priest,’ Kobayashi warned van Cleef yesterday, when Jacob’s future was silver if not golden, ‘ghosts of thiefses not find rest and become demon so no Japanese enter Dejima again.’
Hook-beaked gulls duel above a fishing skiff hauling up its nets.
Time passes, and when Jacob looks down the bay, he is just in time to see the Shenandoah’s bowsprit vanish behind Tempelhoek…
Then her fo’c’sle is eaten by the rocky headland, then her three masts…
… until the bottle’s mouth is blue and vacant as the Third Day of Creation.
A woman’s strong voice rouses Jacob from his half-doze. She is nearby, and sounds angry or frightened or both. Curious, he looks around for the source of the commotion. In Flag Square, the priests are still chanting prayers for the executed men.
The Land-Gate is open to let the water-vendor’s ox off Dejima.
Standing outside the gate, Aibagawa Orito is arguing with the guards.
The Watchtower lurches: Jacob finds he has lain flat on the platform, out of her line of vision.
She is brandishing her wooden pass and pointing up Short Street.
The guard examines her pass with suspicion; she looks over her shoulder.
The ox, an empty urn hanging from each shoulder, is led over Holland Bridge.
She was a fever, Jacob hides behind his eyelids. The fever is lifted.
He looks again. The Captain of the guard is inspecting the pass.
Can she be here, he wonders, to seek sanctuary from Enomoto?
His proposal of marriage now returns like a risen golem.
I did want her, yes, he fears, when I knew I could never have her.
The water-vendor flicks his switch on his ox’s lumbering shanks.
She may just be here, Jacob tries to calm himself, to visit the Hospital.
He notices her disarray: a sandal is missing; her neat hair is awry.
But where are the other students? Why won’t the guards admit her?
The Captain is questioning Orito in sharp tones.
Orito’s clarity is fraying; her despair is growing; this is no ordinary visit.
Act! Jacob commands himself. Show the guards she is expected; fetch Dr Marinus; fetch an interpreter: this is a balance that you may still tip.
The three priests walk in a slow circle around the bloodstained dirt.
It’s not you she wants, whispers Pride. It’s incarceration she wants to avoid.
Thirty feet away, the Captain turns Orito’s pass over, unimpressed.
Suppose she were Geertje, asks Compassion, seeking sanctuary in Zeeland?
In the Captain’s resonant string of words Jacob hears the name ‘Enomoto’.
Across Edo Square, a shaven-headed figure appears in a sky-blue robe.
He catches sight of Orito and calls over his shoulder, motioning, Hurry!
A sea-grey palanquin appears: it has eight bearers, denoting an owner of the highest rank.
Jacob has a sense of entering a theatre well into the play’s final act.
I love her, comes the thought, as true as sunlight.
Jacob is flying down the stairs, barking his shin on a corner-post.
He leaps the last six or eight steps and runs across Flag Square.
Everything is happening too slow and too fast and all at once.
Jacob clips an astonished priest and reaches the Land-Gate as it closes.
The Captain is brandishing his pike, warning him not to take another step.
Jacob’s rectangle of vision is narrowing as the gates close.
He sees Orito’s back as she is led away over Holland Bridge.
Jacob opens his mouth to call out her name…
… but the Land-Gate slams shut.
The well-oiled bolt slides home.