The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (39 page)

Orito gropes, fumbles, and understands.
A conduit … or a tunnel
.

T
HE HOLIDAY CROWDS THRONG AND JOSTLE. BOYS ARE SELLING
warblers in cages dangling from a pine tree. Over her smoking griddle, a palsy-handed grandmother croaks,
“Squiiiiiiiiid on a stick
-oh,
squiiiiiiiiid on a stick
-oh,
who will buy my squiiiiiiiiid on a stick
-oooh!” Inside his palanquin, Uzaemon hears Kiyoshichi shout, “Make way, make way!” less in hope of clearing a path than to insure himself against being scolded by Ogawa the Elder for laziness. “Pictures to as
tound!
Drawings to amaze!” hollers a seller of engravings. The man’s face appears in the grille of Uzaemon’s palanquin, and he holds up a pornographic wood-block print of a naked goblin, who bears an undeniable likeness to Melchior van Cleef. The goblin possesses a monstrous phallus as big as his body. “Might I
proffer
for sir’s delec
tation
a sample of ‘Dejima Nights’?” Uzaemon growls, “No!” and the man withdraws, bellowing, “See Kawahara’s Hundred and Eight Wonders of the Empire without leaving your house!” A storyteller points to his board about the Siege of Shimabara: “Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the Christian Amakusa Shirô, bent on selling our souls to the king of Rome!” The entertainer plays his audience well: there are boos and yells of abuse. “And so the great shogun expelled the foreign devils, and so the yearly rite of
Fumi-e
continues to the present day, to weed out these heretics feeding off our udders!” A disease-gnawed girl, breastfeeding a baby so deformed that Uzaemon mistakes it for a shaven puppy, implores, “Mercy
and a coin, sir, mercy and a coin …” He slides open the grille just as the palanquin lurches forward a dozen steps, and Uzaemon is left holding a one
-mon
piece against all the laughing, smoking, joking passersby. Their joy is insufferable.
I am like a dead spirit at
O-bon, Uzaemon thinks,
forced to watch the carefree and the living gorge themselves on Life
. His palanquin tips, and he must grip the lacquered handle as he slides backward. Near the top of the temple steps, a handful of girls on the cusp of womanhood whip their spinning tops.
To know the secrets of Mount Shiranui
, he thinks,
is to be banished from this world
.

A lumbering ox obscures Uzaemon’s view of the girls.

The creeds of Enomoto’s order shine darkness on all things
.

When the ox has passed, the girls are gone.

THE PALANQUINS ARE
set down in the Courtyard of the Jade Peony, an area reserved for samurai families. Uzaemon climbs out of his box and slides his swords into his sash. His wife stands behind his mother, while his father attacks Kiyoshichi like the snapping turtle he has come, in recent weeks, to resemble: “Why did you allow us to be buried alive in that”—he jabs his stick toward the thronged steps—“in that human mud?”

Kiyoshichi bows low. “My lapse was unforgivable, Master.”

“Yet this old fool,” growls Ogawa the Elder, “is to forgive you anyhow?”

Uzaemon tries to intervene. “With respect, Father, I’m sure—”

“‘With respect’ is what scoundrels say when they mean the opposite!”

“With sincere respect, Father, Kiyoshichi could not make the crowd vanish.”

“So sons now side with menservants against their fathers?”

Kannon
, Uzaemon implores,
grant me patience
. “Father, I’m not siding with—”

“Well, doubtless you find this silly old fool
very
behind the times.”

I am not your son
. The unexpected thought strikes Uzaemon.

“People will start wondering,” Uzaemon’s mother declares to the backs of her powdered hands, “whether the Ogawas are having doubts about the
fumi-e.”

Uzaemon turns to Ogawa Mimasaku. “Then let us enter … yes?”

“Shouldn’t you consult the servants first?” Ogawa Mimasaku walks toward the inner gates. He rose from his sickbed a few days ago only partially recovered, but to be absent from the
fumi-e
ritual is tantamount to announcing one’s own death. He slaps away Saiji’s offers of help. “My stick is more loyal.”

The Ogawas pass a queue of newly wed couples waiting to inhale incense smoke curling from the bronze Ryûgaji dragon’s mouth. Local legend promises them a healthy baby son. Uzaemon senses that his wife would like to join them but is too ashamed of her two miscarriages. The temple’s cavernous entrance is strung with twists of white paper to celebrate the forthcoming Year of the Sheep. Their servants help them out of their shoes, which they store on shelves marked with their names. An initiate greets them with a nervous bow, ready to guide them to the Gallery of Paulownia to perform the
fumi-e
ritual away from the prying eyes of the lower orders. “The head priest guides the Ogawas,” Uzaemon’s father remarks.

“The head priest,” the initiate apologizes, “is busy with te-te-te—”

Ogawa Mimasaku sighs and stares off to one side.

“—temple duties,” the stutterer says, mortified into fluency, “at present.”

“Whatever a man is busy with, that is what, or whom, he values.”

The initiate leads them to a line of thirty or forty strong. “The wait should”—he takes a deep breath—“n-n-n-nnn-n-n-not be long.”

“How, in Buddha’s name,” asks Uzaemon’s father, “do you say your sutras?”

The blushing initiate grimaces, bows, and returns the way he came.

Ogawa Mimasaku is half smiling for the first time in many days.

Uzaemon’s mother, meanwhile, greets the family ahead. “Nabeshima-
san!”

A portly matriarch turns around. “Ogawa-
san
!”

“Another year gone,” croons Uzaemon’s mother, “in the blink of an eye!”

Ogawa the Elder and the opposing patriarch, a rice-tax collector for the magistracy, exchange manly bows; Uzaemon greets the three Nabeshima sons, all close to him in age and employed in their father’s office.

“The blink of an eye,” sighs the matriarch, “and
two
new grandsons …”

Uzaemon glances at his wife, who is withering away with shame.

“Please accept,” says his mother, “our heartfelt congratulations.”

“I tell my daughters-in-law,” huffs Mrs. Nabeshima, “‘Slow down: it isn’t a race!’ But young people nowadays won’t listen, don’t you find? Now the middle one thinks she has another on the way. Between ourselves,” she leans close to Uzaemon’s mother, “I was too lenient when they arrived. Now they run amok. You three! Where are your manners? For shame!” Her forefinger plucks her daughters-in-law one step forward, each dressed in a seasonal kimono and tasteful sash. “Had
I
worn my mother-in-law down like these three tormentors,
I
would have been sent back to my parents’ house in disgrace.” The three young wives stare at the ground, while Uzaemon’s attention is drawn to their babies, in the arms of wet nurses over to one side. He is assailed, as he has been countless times since the day of the herbalist of Kurozane’s visit, by nightmarish images of Orito being “engifted” and, nine months later, of the masters “consuming” the Goddess’s gifts. The questions begin circling.
How do they actually kill the newborn? How is it kept secret from the mothers, from the world? How can men
believe
that this depravity lets them cheat death? How can their consciences be amputated?

“I see
your
wife—Okinu-
san
, isn’t it?”—Mrs. Nabeshima regards Uzaemon with a saint’s smile and a lizard’s eyes—“is a better-bred girl altogether than my three. ‘We’ are as yet”—she pats her stomach—“unblessed, are we?”

Okinu’s face paint hides her blush, but her cheeks quiver slightly.

“My son does his part,” Uzaemon’s mother declares, “but she is so careless.”

“And how,” Mrs. Nabeshima tuts, “have ‘we’ settled into Nagasaki?”

“She still pines for Karatsu,” says Uzaemon’s mother. “Such a crybaby!”

“Homesickness may be”—the matriarch pats her belly again—“the cause …”

Uzaemon wants to defend his wife, but how to combat a painted mud slide?

“Could your husband,” Mrs. Nabeshima is asking Uzaemon’s mother, “spare you and Okinu-
san
this afternoon, I wonder? We’re having a little party at home, and your daughter-in-law may benefit from the advice of mothers her own age. But—oh!” She regards Ogawa
the Elder with a dismayed frown. “What
must
you think of such an imposition at so short a notice, given your husband’s health—”

“Her husband’s health,” the old man interrupts, “is excellent. You two,” he sneers at his wife and daughter-in-law, “do whatever you wish. I’m going to have sutras recited for Hisanobu.”

“Such a devout father,” Mrs. Nabeshima says, shaking her head, “is a model for the youth of today. All’s settled, then, yes, Mrs. Ogawa? After the
fumi-e
, come back to our—” She breaks off her sentence to address a wet nurse. “Silence that mewling piglet! Have you forgotten where we are? For shame!”

The wet nurse turns away, bares her breast, and feeds the baby.

Uzaemon peers at the queue into the gallery, trying to gauge its speed.

THE BUDDHIST DEITY
Fudô Myôô glares from his candlelit shrine. His fury, Uzaemon was taught, frightens the impious; his sword slices their ignorance; his rope binds demons; his third eye scrutinizes human hearts; and the rock on which he stands signifies immovability. Seated before him are six officials from the Inspectorate of Spiritual Purity, dressed in ceremonial attire.

The first official asks Uzaemon’s father, “Please state your name and position.”

“Ogawa Mimasaku, Interpreter of the First Rank of Dejima Interpreters, head of the Ogawa household of the Higashizaka Ward.”

The first inspector tells a second, “Ogawa Mimasaku is present.”

The second finds the name on a register. “Ogawa Mimasaku’s name is listed.”

The third writes the name. “Ogawa Mimasaku hereby registered as present.”

A fourth declaims, “Ogawa Mimasaku will now perform the act of
fumi-e.”

Ogawa Mimasaku steps onto the well-worn bronze plaque of Jesus Christ and grinds his heel on the image for good measure.

A fifth official calls out, “Ogawa Mimasaku has performed
fumi-e.”

The interpreter of the first rank steps off the idolatrous plaque and is helped by Kiyoshichi to a low bench. Uzaemon suspects he is suffering more pain than he is willing to show.

A sixth official marks his register. “Ogawa Mimasaku is registered as having performed the act of
fumi-e.”

Uzaemon thinks about the foreigner De Zoet’s Psalms of David and the narrowness of his own escape when Kobayashi had the Dutchman’s apartment burgled. He wishes he had asked De Zoet about his mysterious religion last summer.

Noise washes in from the commoners’ ritual in a neighboring hall.

The first official is now addressing him: “Please state your name and profession …”

Once the formalities are completed, Uzaemon steps up to the
fumi-e
. He glances down and meets the pained eyes of the foreign god. Uzaemon presses his foot down on the bronze and thinks of the long line of Ogawas of Nagasaki who have stood on this same
fumi-e
. On previous New Year’s Days, Uzaemon felt proud to be the latest in this line: some ancestors would, like him, have been adoptive sons. But today he feels like an impostor, and he knows why.

My loyalty to Orito
, he phrases it,
is stronger than my loyalty to the Ogawas
.

He feels the face of Jesus Christ against the sole of his foot.

Whatever the cost
, Uzaemon vows,
I shall free her. But I need help
.

THE WALLS OF SHUZAI’S
dojo
hall echo with the two swordsmen’s shrieks and the crack of bamboo poles. They attack, parry, counter, rout; attack, parry, counter, rout. The sprung wooden floor creaks under their bare feet. Drips of rainwater are caught by buckets, which, when full, are changed by Shuzai’s last remaining apprentice. The practice bout comes to an abrupt end when the shorter of the two combatants deals his partner a blow on his right elbow, causing Uzaemon to drop his pole. The concerned victor slides up his mask, revealing a flat-nosed, well-weathered, and watchful man well into his forties. “Is it broken?”

“The fault was mine.” Uzaemon is clutching his elbow.

Yohei hurries over to help his master unfasten his mask.

Unlike his teacher’s face, Uzaemon’s drips with sweat. “There’s no breakage … look.” He bends and straightens his elbow. “Just a well-deserved bruise.”

“The light was too poor. I should have lit lamps.”

“Shuzai-
san
mustn’t waste oil on my account. Let us end here.”

“I hope you won’t oblige me to drink your generous gift alone?”

“On such an auspicious day, your engagements must be pressing …”

Shuzai looks around his empty
dojo
hall and shrugs at Uzaemon.

“Then,” the interpreter bows, “I accept your courteous invitation.”

Shuzai orders his pupil to light the fire in his private apartment. The men change out of their practice clothes, discussing the New Year promotions and demotions announced earlier by Magistrate Ômatsu. Stepping up into the teacher’s quarters, Uzaemon recalls the ten or more young disciples who ate, slept, and studied here when he first took lessons from Shuzai, and the pair of matronly neighborhood women who cajoled and cared for them. The rooms are colder and quieter nowadays, but as the fire comes to life, the two men slip into informal manners and their native Tosa dialect, and Uzaemon is warmed by his and Shuzai’s ten-year-old friendship.

Shuzai’s boy pours the heated
sake
into a chipped flask, bows, and leaves.

Now is the time
, Uzaemon prompts himself,
to say what I have to say
.