The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (68 page)

“Provided you have no objection if I join you, Jacob.”

Side by side, they grip the platform’s rail in the slippery rain.

The pastor’s nephew removes Grote’s hat to address his Creator.

“‘The Lord
is
my shepherd; I shall not want.’”

Marinus’s voice is a seasoned cello’s; Jacob’s is shaking.

“‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me …’”

Jacob closes his eyes and imagines his uncle’s church.

“‘… in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.’”

Geertje is at his side. Jacob wishes she had met Orito …

“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …’”

… and Jacob still has the scroll, and
I’m sorry, I’m sorry
 …

“‘I will fear no evil: for Thou
art
with me; Thy rod and Thy staff …’”

Jacob waits for the explosion and the swarm and the tearing.

“‘… they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me …’”

Jacob waits for the explosion and the swarm and the tearing.

“‘… in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil …’”

Marinus’s voice has fallen away: his memory must have failed him.”

“‘… my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me …’”

Jacob hears Marinus shake with quiet laughter.

He opens his eyes to see the
Phoebus
tacking away.

Her mainsails are falling, catching the wet wind and billowing …

JACOB SLEEPS FITFULLY
in Chief van Cleef’s bed. A habitual maker of lists, he lists the reasons for his fitful sleep: first, the fleas in Chief van Cleef’s bed; second, Baert’s celebratory “Dejima Gin,” so named because gin is the only drink it doesn’t taste of; third, the oysters sent from Magistrate Shiroyama; fourth, Con Twomey’s ruinous inventory of damage inflicted to the Dutch-owned properties; fifth, tomorrow’s
meetings with Shiroyama and magistracy officials; and sixth, his mental record of what history shall call the
Phoebus
Incident, and its ledger of outcomes. In the profit column, the English failed to extract one clove from the Dutch or crystal of camphor from the Japanese. Any Anglo-Japanese accord shall be unthinkable for two or three generations. In the debit column, the factory’s complement is now reduced to eight Europeans and a handful of slaves, a roster too lean even to be called “skeletal,” and unless a ship arrives next June—unlikely if Java is in British hands and the VOC is no longer extant—Dejima must rely on loans from the Japanese to meet its running costs. How welcome a guest the “ancient ally” will be when reduced to rags remains to be seen, especially if the Japanese view the Dutch as partly responsible for conjuring up the
Phoebus
. Interpreter Hori brought news of damage ashore: six soldiers dead in Edo Square and another six injured, and several townspeople burned in a fire begun when a ball struck a kitchen in Shinmachi Ward. The political consequences, he intimated, were even farther-reaching.
I never heard
, Jacob thinks,
of a twenty-six-year-old chief resident
 …

… or
, he turns,
a factory so beset by crises as Dejima
.

He misses Tall House, but the chief must sleep near the safe boxes.

EARLY THE FOLLOWING
morning, Jacob is met at the magistracy by Interpreter Goto and Chamberlain Tomine. Tomine apologizes for asking Jacob to perform a distasteful service before meeting the magistrate: the body of a foreign sailor was retrieved yesterday evening by a fishing boat, near the Papenburg Rock. Would Chief de Zoet examine the corpse and assess the likelihood of its being from the
Phoebus?

Jacob is not afraid of corpses, having helped his uncle at every funeral in Domburg.

The chamberlain leads him across a courtyard to a storehouse.

He says a word unknown to Jacob; Goto says, “Place dead body wait.”

A mortuary
, Jacob realizes. Goto asks Jacob to teach him the word.

Outside, an elderly Buddhist priest is waiting with a pail of water.

“To make pure,” Goto explains, “when leave … ‘mortuary.’”

They enter. There is one small window and the smell of death.

The single inmate is a young, pigtailed mestizo sailor on a pallet.

He wears nothing but a sailor’s duck trousers and a lizard tattoo.

A cold draft is sucked from the window through the open door.

It tousles the boy’s hair, accentuating his motionlessness.

Alive, the boy’s slack gray skin must have been bruised gold.

“Were any items,” Jacob asks in Japanese, “in his possession?”

The chamberlain produces a tray; on it is a British farthing.

GEORGIVS III REX
, reads the obverse; Britannia sits on the reverse.

“I am in no doubt,” says Jacob, “he was a sailor from the
Phoebus.”

“Sa,”
responds Chamberlain Tomine. “But is he an Englishman?”

Only his mother and his Creator could answer
, Jacob thinks. He tells Goto, “Please inform Tomine-
sama
that his father was probably European. His mother was probably Negro. Such is my best guess.”

The chamberlain is still not satisfied. “But is he English?”

Jacob exchanges a look with Goto: interpreters often have to provide both the answer and the tools to understand it. “If I had a son with a Japanese woman,” Jacob asks Tomine, “would he be Dutch or Japanese?”

Involuntarily, Tomine winces at the tasteless question. “A half.”

Then so
, says Jacob’s gesture over the corpse,
is he
.

“But,” the chamberlain persists, “does Chief de Zoet say he is English?”

Trilling of doves from under the eaves ruffles the still morning.

Jacob misses Ogawa. He asks Goto in Dutch: “What don’t I understand?”

“If foreigner is English,” replies the interpreter, “body shall throw in ditch.”

Thank you
, thinks Jacob. “Otherwise he rests in the foreigners’ cemetery?”

The intelligent Goto nods. “Chief de Zoet is correct.”

“Chamberlain.” Jacob addresses Tomine. “This youth is not English. His skin is too dark. It is my wish that he is buried
”—like a Christian
—“in the cemetery of Mount Inasa. Please place the coin in his grave.”

HALFWAY DOWN THE
corridor to the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum is a little-visited courtyard where a maple stands over a small pond. Jacob and Goto are asked to wait on the veranda while Chamberlain
Tomine consults with Magistrate Shiroyama prior to their audience.

Fallen red leaves drift over a smeared sun held in dark water.

“Congratulations,” says a voice in Dutch, “on promotion, Chief de Zoet.”

Somehow inevitable
. Jacob turns to Ogawa’s killer and Orito’s jailer.

“Good morning, Lord Abbot,” he replies in Dutch, feeling the dogwood scroll tube pressing against his ribs. A long, thin ridge must be visible down his left side.

Enomoto tells Goto, “Some paintings in the vestibule would interest you.”

Goto bows. “Lord Abbot, the rules of my guild forbid—”

“You are forgetting who I am. I forgive only once.”

Goto looks at Jacob; Jacob nods consent. He tries to turn a little to the left to hide the scroll tube.

One of Enomoto’s servants accompanies Goto; another stays nearby.

“Dutch chief was brave against warship.” Enomoto practices his Dutch. “News is traveling all over Japan, even now.”

Jacob can think only of the Twelve Creeds of the Order of Shiranui.
When members of your order die
, Jacob wonders,
are the creeds not exposed as false commandments? Is your Goddess not proven to be a lump of lifeless wood? Are all the sisters’ misery and the drowned infants not shown to be in vain?

Enomoto frowns, as if trying to catch a distant voice. “At first I saw you, in Hall of Sixty Mats, one year ago, I think …”

A slow white butterfly passes within inches of Jacob’s face.

“… I think,
Strange: he is foreigner, but there is affinity
. You know?”

“I remember that day,” affirms Jacob, “but I felt no affinity at all.”

Enomoto smiles like an adult at a child’s harmless lie. “When Mr. Grote say, ‘De Zoet sells mercury,’ I think,
There: affinity!”

A black-headed bird watches from the core of the flame-red tree.

“So I buy mercury, but still, I think,
Affinity still exist. Strange.”

Jacob wonders how Ogawa Uzaemon suffered before he died.

“Then I hear, ‘Mr. de Zoet propose to Aibagawa Orito.’ I think,
Ohooo!
”

Jacob cannot hide his shock that Enomoto knew. The leaves on the water spin, very slowly. “How did you …” and he thinks,
I am confirming it now
.

“Hanzaburo look very stupid; this is why he very good spy.”

A heaviness presses down on Jacob’s shoulders. His back aches.

He imagines Hanzaburo ripping a page from his sketchbook …

… and that page
, Jacob thinks,
passing up a chain of prurient eyes
.

“What do you do to the sisters at your shrine? Why must you—”

Jacob stops himself from blurting out proof that he knows what Acolyte Jiritsu knew. “Why did you kidnap her, when a man of your position could choose anyone?”

“She and I also—
affinity
. You, I, her. A pleasant triangle …”

There is a fourth corner
, thinks Jacob,
called Ogawa Uzaemon
.

“… but now she is content enough.” Enomoto is speaking Japanese. “Her work in Nagasaki was important, but her mission on Shiranui is deeper. She serves Kyôga Domain. She serves the Goddess. She serves my order.” He smiles pityingly at Jacob’s impotence. “So now I understand. Our affinity was not mercury. Our affinity was Orito.”

The white butterfly passes within inches of Enomoto’s face.

The abbot’s hand makes a circular motion over the butterfly …

… and it drops, lifeless as a twist of paper, into the dark pool.

Chamberlain Tomine sees the Dutchman and the abbot and stops.

“Our affinity is ended, Chief de Zoet. Enjoy a long, long life.”

THIN PAPER SCREENS
obscure the fine view of Nagasaki, lending the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum a mournful air like, Jacob thinks, a quiet chapel on a busy city street back home. The pinks and oranges of the flowers in the vase are bleached of half their vigor. Jacob and Goto kneel on the moss-green mat before the magistrate.
You have aged five years
, thinks Jacob,
in two days
.

“It is courteous of the Dutch chief to visit at such a … a busy time.”

“The honorable magistrate is equally busy, no doubt.” The Dutchman instructs Goto to thank the magistrate in suitably formal language for his support during the recent crisis.

Goto performs his job well: Jacob acquires the word for “crisis.”

“Foreign ships,” the magistrate responds, “visited our waters before. Sooner or later, their guns would speak. The
Phoebus
was prophet and teacher, and next time”—he inhales sharply—“the shogun’s servants shall be better prepared. Your ‘pontoon bridge’ is written in my record for Edo. But this time fortune did not favor me.”

Jacob’s starched collar scratches his neck.

“I watched you,” says the magistrate, “on the watchtower yesterday.”

“Thank you for”—Jacob is unsure how to respond—“for your concern.”

“I thought of Phaeton, with lightning and thunderbolts flying.”

“Luckily for me, the English do not aim as well as Zeus.”

Shiroyama opens his fan and closes it again. “Were you frightened?”

“I would like to say, ‘No,’ but truthfully … I was never more afraid.”

“Yet when you could have run, you stayed at your post.”

Not after the second round
, he thinks.
There was no way down
. “My uncle, who raised me, always scolded my—” He asks Goto to translate the word “stubbornness.”

Outside, the bamboo winnows the breeze: a sound ancient and sad.

Shiroyama notices the ridge of the scroll tube in Jacob’s coat …

… but he says, “My report to Edo must address a question.”

“If I am able answer it, Your Honor, I shall.”

“Why did the English sail away before Dejima was destroyed?”

“This same mystery troubled me all night long, Your Honor.”

“You must have seen how they loaded the cannons on the quarterdeck.”

Jacob has Goto explain how cannons are for punching big holes in ships and walls, whereas carronades are for punching small holes through lots of men.

“Then why did the English not kill their enemy’s chief with the ‘carronades’?”

“Possibly the captain wanted to limit damage to Nagasaki.” Jacob shrugs. “Possibly it was an …” He has Goto translate “act of mercy.”

A child’s voice can be heard, muffled by two or three rooms.

The magistrate’s celebrated son
, Jacob guesses,
delivered by Orito
.

“Perhaps,” Shiroyama muses, examining the joints of his thumb, “your courage made your enemy ashamed.”

Jacob, recalling his four years of living with Londoners, doubts the suggestion but bows at the compliment. “Will Your Honor be traveling to Edo to submit your report?”

Pain flashes across Shiroyama’s face, and Jacob wonders why. The magistrate addresses his difficult-to-understand answer to Goto. “His
Honor says …” Goto hesitates. “Edo requires a—the word is a merchant’s word, ‘settle of accounts’?”

Jacob is being instructed to leave this deliberate vagueness alone.

He notices the
go
board in its corner; he recognizes the same game from his visit two days ago, just a few moves further on.

“My opponent and I,” says Shiroyama, “can rarely meet.”

Jacob makes a safe guess: “The lord abbot of Kyôga Domain?”

The magistrate nods. “The lord abbot is a master of the game. He discerns his enemy’s weaknesses and uses them to confound his enemy’s strengths.” He considers the board ruefully. “I fear my position is without hope.”