David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘Black pudding, eggs and fried bread would be… heavenly, my lad.’

Why, Penhaligon wonders, did I answer an unasked question?

‘I’ll tell Jones,’ Tristram withdraws, ‘and bring your Times of London, too.’

Penhaligon listens to the gentle clatter of cutlery and plates…

… and sloughs off wasted years of unnecessary grief, like a snake’s skin.

How can Tristram, he wonders, obtain The Times in Nagasaki Bay?

A malign cat watches him from the foot of his bed; or perhaps a bat…

With a deaf and dumb hum, the beast opens its mouth; a pouch of needles.

It means to bite, thinks Penhaligon, and his thought is the Devil’s cue.

Agony scalds his right foot; an Aaaaaaaaagh! escapes like steam.

Wide awake in closeted dark, dead Tristram’s father bites on a scream.

The gentle clatter of cutlery and plates ceases and anxious steps hurry to his cabin door. Chigwin’s voice calls out, ‘Is all well, sir?’

‘All well.’ The Captain swallows. ‘A nightmare ambushed me, is all.’

‘I suffer them myself, sir. We’ll have breakfast served by first bell.’

‘Very good, Chigwin. Wait: are the native boats still circling us?’

‘Just the two guard-boats, sir, but the marines watched them all night and they never came within two hundred yards or I’d’ve woken you, sir. Aside from them, nothing bigger than a duck is afloat this morning. We scared everything off.’

‘I shall shake my leg shortly, Chigwin. Carry on.’ But as Penhaligon shifts his swollen foot, thorns of pain lacerate his flesh. ‘Chigwin, pray invite Surgeon Nash to call on the nonce: my podagra is troubling me, a little.’

Surgeon Nash examines the ankle, swollen to twice its usual size. ‘Steeplechases and mazurkas are, more than like, behind you now, Captain. May I recommend a stick to help you walk? I shall have Rafferty fetch one.’

A cripple with a stick, Penhaligon hesitates, at forty-two.

Young and agile feet pound to and fro above-decks.

‘Yes. Better to advertise my infirmity with a stick than a fall down stairs.’

‘Quite so, sir. Now, if I may examine this tophus. This may…’

The lancet probes the rupture: a violet agony explodes behind Penhaligon’s eyeballs.

‘… hurt just a little, sir… but it’s weeping nicely – a good abundance of pus.’

The Captain peers at the frothing discharge. ‘That is good?’

‘Pus,’ Surgeon Nash unscrews a corked pot, ‘is how the body purges itself of excessive blue bile, and blue bile is the root of gout. By widening the wound, applying a scraping of murine faecal matter,’ he uncorks the pot and extracts a mouse dropping with a pair of tweezers, ‘we can stimulate the discharge, and expect an improvement within seven days. Moreover I took the liberty of bringing a phial of Dover’s Remedy so-’

‘I’ll drink it now, Surgeon. The next two days are crucial to our fut-’

The lancet sinks in: the stifled scream makes his entire body turn rigid.

‘Damn it, Nash,’ the Captain gasps finally. ‘Will you not at least warn me?’

Major Cutlip looks askance at the sauerkraut on Penhaligon’s spoon.

‘Might your resistance,’ asks the Captain, ‘be weakening, Major?’

‘Twice-rotted cabbage shall never conquer this soldier, Captain.’

Membranous sunlight lends the breakfast table the air of a painting.

‘It was Admiral Jervis who first recommended sauerkraut to me.’ The Captain crunches his fermented mouthful. ‘But I told you that story before.’

‘Never,’ says Wren, ‘in my hearing, sir.’ He looks at the others, who concur. Penhaligon suspects them of dainty manners, but summarises the anecdote: ‘Jervis had sauerkraut from William Bligh, and Bligh had it from Captain Cook himself. “The difference between La Pérouse ’s tragedy and Cook’s glory,” Bligh was fond of saying, “was thirty barrels of sauerkraut.” But when Cook embarked on the First Voyage, neither exhortation nor threat would induce the Endeavours to eat it. Thereupon Cook designated the “twice-rotted cabbage” as Officers’ Food and forbade common Tars from touching the stuff. The result? Sauerkraut began to be filched from its own poorly guarded storeroom until six months later not a single man was buckling under scurvy, and the conversion was complete.’

‘Low cunning,’ Lieutenant Talbot observes, ‘in the service of genius.’

‘Cook is a great hero of mine,’ avows Wren, ‘and an inspiration.’

Wren’s ‘of mine’ irritates Penhaligon like a tiny seed wedged between molars.

Chigwin fills the Captain’s bowl: a drop splashes on the tablecloth’s lovingly-embroidered Forget-Me-Nots. Now is not the time, thinks the widower, to remember Meredith. ‘And so, gentlemen, to the day’s business, and our Dutch guests.’

‘Van Cleef,’ says Hovell, ‘passed an uncommunicative night in his cell.’

‘Aside,’ sneers Cutlip, ‘from demanding to know why his supper was boiled rope.’

‘News of the VOC’s demise,’ the Captain asks, ‘makes him no less obdurate?’

Hovell shakes his head. ‘Admission of weakness is a weakness, perhaps.’

‘As for Fischer,’ says Wren, ‘the wretch spent all night in his cabin, despite our entreaties to join us in the wardroom.’

‘How are relations between Fischer and his former chief, Snitker?’

‘They act like perfect strangers,’ replies Hovell. ‘Snitker is nursing a head-cold this morning: he wants van Cleef court-martialled for the crime, if you please, of “Battery against a ‘Friend of the Court of Saint James’.” ’

‘I am sick,’ says Penhaligon, ‘heartily sick, of that conceited coxcomb.’

‘I’d agree, Captain,’ says Wren, ‘that Snitker’s usefulness has run its course.’

‘We need a persuasive leader to win the Dutch,’ says the Captain, ‘and an -’ above-deck, three bells are rung, ‘- and an envoy of gravitas and poise to persuade the Japanese.’

‘Deputy Fischer wins my vote,’ says Major Cutlip, ‘as the more pliable man.’

‘Chief van Cleef,’ argues Hovell, ‘would be the natural leader.’

‘Let us interview,’ Penhaligon brushes crumbs away, ‘our two candidates.’

‘Mr van Cleef.’ Penhaligon stands, disguising his grimace of pain as an insincere smile. ‘I hope you slept well?’

Van Cleef helps himself to burgoo, Seville preserve and a hailstorm of sugar before replying to Hovell’s translation. ‘He says you can threaten him all you please, sir, but Dejima still has not one nail of copper for you to rob.’

Penhaligon ignores this. ‘Tell him I’m pleased his appetite is robust.’

Hovell translates and van Cleef speaks through a mouthful of food.

‘He asks, sir, if we have decided what to do with our hostages yet.’

‘Tell him that we don’t consider him a hostage, but a guest.’

Van Cleef’s response to the assertion is a burgoo-spattering ‘Ha!’.

‘Ask if he has digested the VOC’s bankruptcy.’

Van Cleef pours himself a bowl of coffee as he listens to Hovell. He shrugs.

‘Tell him that the British East India Company wishes to trade with Japan.’

Van Cleef sprinkles raisins on his burgoo as he gives his response.

‘His reply, sir, is “Why else would you hire Snitker to bring you here?” ’

He is no novice at this, thinks Penhaligon, but then neither am I.

‘Tell him we are seeking an old Japan hand to represent our interests.’

Van Cleef listens, nods, stirs sugar into his coffee, and says, ‘Nee.’

‘Ask whether he ever heard of the Kew Memorandum, signed by his own monarch-in-exile, ordering Dutch overseas officers to hand their nations’ assets to the safekeeping of the British?’