David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

A cold, strong draught is sucked from the window through the open door.

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

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

‘Were any items,’ Jacob asks in Japanese, ‘found in his possession?’

The chamberlain produces a tray from a shelf; 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 gaoler. ‘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.’

‘Lord Abbot,’ Goto bows, ‘the rules of the Interpreters’ 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 silent servants accompanies Goto; another stays nearby.

‘Dutch Chief was brave against warship.’ Enomoto practises his Dutch. ‘News is travelling 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 lump of lifeless wood? Are all the Sisters’ misery and the drowned infants not shown to be 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 of Orito 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 Goddess. She serves my Order.’ He smiles pityingly at Jacob’s impotence. ‘So now I understand. Affinity was not mercury. 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 vigour. 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 Honourable 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 creditably: 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 favour me.’

Jacob’s starched collar scratches his neck.

‘I was watching 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 around.’

‘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. The sound is ancient and sad.

Shiroyama’s eyes hover on the ridge of the scroll-tube in Jacob’s coat…

… but the Magistrate says, ‘My report to Edo must address a question.’