David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘But surely Magistrate Shiroyama must know as soon as possible,’ Chief Vorstenbosch’s concern is soft with malice, ‘that Dejima is to be abandoned after the current trading season unless Edo gives us twenty thousand piculs?’

‘ “Abandoned”,’ repeats van Cleef, ‘meaning stopped; ended; finished.’

Blood drains from the three interpreters’ faces.

Inwardly, Jacob squirms with sympathy for Ogawa.

‘Please, sir,’ Ogawa tries to swallow, ‘not such news, here, now…’

Running out of patience, Chamberlain Tomine demands a translation.

‘Best not keep His Honour waiting,’ Vorstenbosch tells Kobayashi.

Word by faltering word, Kobayashi delivers the appalling news.

Questions are fired from all quarters but Kobayashi and Ogawa’s replies would be drowned out even if they tried to answer. During this mayhem, Jacob notices a man seated three places to the left of Magistrate Shiroyama. His face disturbs the clerk, though he could not say why; neither could Jacob guess his age. His shaven head and water-blue robes suggest a monk or even a confessor. The lips are tight, the cheekbones high, the nose hooked and the eyes ferocious with intelligence. Jacob finds himself as little able to evade the man’s gaze as a book can, of its own volition, evade the scrutiny of a reader. The silent observer twists his head, like a hunting dog listening to the sound of its prey.

After lunch on the 1st August, 1799

The cogs and levers of Time swell and buckle in the heat. In the stewed gloom, Jacob hears, almost, the sugar in its crates hissing into fused lumps. Come Auction Day, it shall be sold to the spice merchants for a pittance, or else, as well they know, it must be returned to the Shenandoah’s hold for a profitless return voyage back to the warehouses of Batavia. The clerk drains his cup of green tea. The bitter dregs make him wince and amplify his headache but sharpen his wits.

On a bed of clove-crates and hempen sacking, Hanzaburo lies asleep.

A slug-trail of mucus descends from his nostril to rocky Adam’s apple.

The scratch of Jacob’s quill is joined by a not dissimilar noise from a rafter.

It is a rhythmic scratting, soon overlain by a tiny, sawing squeak.

A he-rat, the young man realises, mounting his she-rat…

Listening, he becomes enwrapped by memories of women’s bodies.

These are not memories he is proud of, nor ones he ever discusses…

I dishonour Anna, Jacob thinks, by dwelling on such things.

… but the images dwell on him, and thicken his blood like arrowroot.

Concentrate, Donkey, the clerk orders himself, on the job at hand…

With difficulty, he returns to his pursuit of the fifty rix-dollars fleeing through thickets of forged receipts found in one of Daniel Snitker’s boots. He tries to pour some tea into his cup, but the pot is now empty. He calls out, ‘Hanzaburo?’

The boy does not stir. The rutting rats have fallen silent.

‘Hai!’ Long seconds later, the boy jolts upright. ‘Mr Dazûto?’

Jacob raises his ink-smudged cup. ‘Fetch more tea, please, Hanzaburo.’

Hanzaburo squints and rubs his head and blurts, ‘Hah?’

‘More tea, please.’ Jacob waggles his teapot. ‘O-cha.’

Hanzaburo sighs, heaves himself up, takes the teapot and plods away.

Jacob sharpens his quill, but within moments, his head is drooping…

… A hunchback dwarf stands silhouetted in the white glare of Bony Alley.

Gripped in his hairy hand is a club… no, it is a long joint of bony, bloodied pork.

Jacob lifts his heavy head. His stiff neck cricks.

The hunchback enters the warehouse, grunting and snuffling.

The joint of pork is, in fact, an amputated shin, with ankle and foot attached.

Nor is the hunchback a hunchback: it is William Pitt, the ape of Dejima.

Jacob jumps up and bangs his knee. The pain is prismatic.

William Pitt clambers up a tower of crates with his bloody prize.

‘How in God’s name,’ Jacob rubs his kneecap, ‘did you come by such a thing?’

There is no reply but the calm and steady breathing of the sea…

… and Jacob remembers: Dr Marinus was summoned to the Shenandoah yesterday where an Estonian seaman’s foot had been crushed by a fallen crate. Gangrenous wounds spoiling faster than milk in a Japanese August, the doctor prescribed the knife. The surgery is being performed today in the Hospital so his four students and some local scholars may watch the procedure. However improbably, William Pitt must have forced an entry and stolen the limb: what other explanation is there?

A second figure, momentarily blinded by the warehouse darkness, enters. His willowy chest is heaving with exertion. His blue kimono is covered with an artisan’s apron, spattered dark, and strands of hair have escaped from the headscarf that half conceals the right side of his face. Only when he steps into the shaft of light falling from the high window does Jacob see that the pursuer is a young woman.

Aside from the washerwomen and a few ‘aunts’ who serve at the Interpreters’ Guild, the only women permitted through the Land-Gate are prostitutes, who are hired for a night, or ‘wives’ who stay under the roofs of the better-paid officers for longer periods. These costly courtesans are attended by a maid: Jacob’s best guess is that the visitor is one such companion who wrestled with William Pitt for the stolen limb, failed to prise it from his grasp and chased the ape into the warehouse.

Voices – Dutch, Japanese, Malay – clatter down Long Street from the Hospital.

The doorway frames their outlines, brief as blinks, running down Bony Alley.

Jacob sifts his meagre Japanese vocabulary for any suitable items.

When she notices the red-haired, green-eyed foreigner she gasps with alarm.

‘Miss,’ implores Jacob in Dutch, ‘I – I – I – please don’t worry – I…’

The woman studies him and concludes that he is not much of a threat.

‘Bad monkey,’ she regains her composure, ‘steal foot.’

He nods at this first, and realises: ‘You speak Dutch, miss?’

Her shrug replies, A little. She says, ‘Bad monkey – enter here?’

‘Aye, aye. The hairy devil is up there.’ Jacob indicates William Pitt up on his crates. Wanting to impress the woman, he strides over. ‘William Pitt: unhand that leg. Give it to me. Give!’

The ape places the leg at his side, grips his rhubarb-pink penis and twangs it like a harpist in a madhouse, cackling through bared teeth. Jacob fears for his visitor’s modesty, but she turns aside to hide her laughter and, in doing so, reveals a burn covering much of the left side of her face. It is dark, blotched and, close-up, very conspicuous. How can a courtesan’s maid, Jacob wonders, earn a living with such a disfigurement? Too late, he is aware that she is watching him gawp. She pushes back her headscarf and thrusts her cheek towards Jacob. There, this gesture declares. Drink your fill!

‘I-’ Jacob is mortified. ‘Please forgive my rudeness, miss…’

Fearing she doesn’t understand, he holds a deep bow for the count of five.

The woman reties her headscarf and directs her attention to William Pitt. Ignoring Jacob, she addresses the ape in lilting Japanese.

The thief hugs the leg like a motherless daughter hugs a doll.

Determined to cut a better figure, Jacob approaches the tower of crates.

He jumps up on to an adjacent chest. ‘Listen to me, you flea-bitten slave-’

A warm and liquid whiplash, smelling of roast beef, flays his cheek.

In his effort to deflect the warm stream, he loses his balance…