The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (6 page)

“Not f’ the likes o’ me,” replies Grote, “to be interrogatin’, eh, my superiors?”

“Then you’ll have to wait and see what the Chief decides.”

A bad answer
, realizes 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’,”
queries Grote, “for the
lower orders?”

The warped kitchen door shudders as the 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 stateroom, 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 a
dult
’ry,” says 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 stateroom, 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 neighbor is a slack-jawed viper of the Celebes.

“… 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.

“The debit column. You are 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 is genuine.”

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 meager, 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 stateroom 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 candor. “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 chinaware 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 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 farthest-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 ’94 and ’95 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 ’94, six thousand. Gijsbert Hemmij, who displayed good judgment 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 bejeweled 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 sugarcoating 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 inkpot, 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
six
teenth of May we left Batavia’s roadstead?”

The pastor’s nephew swallows. “The fourteenth, sir.”

“—‘on this, the … ninth day of May, 1799, 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 disfavor, 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 has been devalued three times in ten years, while 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 summarized thus …’” Jacob’s quill skips over an ink-blot. “‘Without the copper quota is increased to twenty thousand piculs’—underline 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’—underline
—‘one picul less
than twenty thousand, they shall, in effect, take an ax 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 lifelike 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
.