David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Orito is listening closely and treading carefully but her eyes are hidden.

‘A year later, I tried to make amends. Ogawa-sama asked me to keep safe a scroll he had been given by a fugitive from the shrine, your shrine, Enomoto’s shrine. Days later came the news of Ogawa-sama’s death. Month by month, I learnt enough Japanese to decipher the scroll. The day I understood what my inaction had exposed you to, was the worst day of my life. But despair wouldn’t help you. Nothing could help you. During the Phoebus Incident, I earned the trust of Magistrate Shiroyama, and he earned mine, so I took the grave risk of showing him the scroll. The rumours around his death, and Enomoto’s, were so thick that there was no making sense of them… but soon after, I learnt that the Shrine at Shiranui had been razed and Kyôga Domain given to the Lord of Hizen. I tell you this… I tell you this because – because not to tell you is a lie of omission, and I cannot lie to you.’

Irises bloom in the undergrowth. Jacob is blushing and crushed.

Orito prepares her answer. ‘When pain is vivid, when decisions are keen-edged, we believe that we are the surgeons. But time passes, and one sees the whole more clearly, and now I perceive us as surgical instruments used by the world to excise itself of the Order of Mount Shiranui. Had you given me sanctuary on Dejima that day, I would have been spared pain, yes, but Yayoi would still be a prisoner there. The Creeds would still be enforced. How can I forgive you when you did nothing wrong?’

They arrive at the foot of the hill. The river booms.

A stall sells amulets and grilled fish. Mourners revert to people.

Some talk, some joke, some watch the Dutch Chief and the midwife.

‘It must be hard,’ says Orito, ‘not knowing when you can see Europe again.’

‘To lessen that pain, I try to think of Dejima as home. My son is here.’

Jacob imagines embracing this woman he can never embrace…

… and imagines kissing her, once, on the place between her eyebrows.

‘Father?’ Yûan is frowning at Jacob. ‘Are you unwell?’

How quickly you grow, the father thinks. Why wasn’t I warned?

Orito says, in Dutch, ‘So, Chief de Zoet, our steps together is ended.’

Monday the 3rd November, 1817

… and when Jacob looks again, the morning star is gone. Dejima is falling away by the minute. He waves at the figure on the Watchtower and the figure waves back. The tide is turning but the wind is contrary, so eighteen Japanese boats of eight oars apiece are tugging the Profetes out of the long bay. The oarsmen chant the same song in rhythm: their ragged chorus merges with the sea’s percussion and the ship’s timbers. Fourteen boats would have done the job, thinks Jacob, but Chief Oost drove a fierce bargain on repairs to Warehouse Roos, so perhaps he was well advised to concede this point. Jacob rubs the fine drizzle into his tired face. A lantern still burns in the Sea Room window of his old house. He remembers the lean years when he was forced to sell Marinus’s library, volume by volume, to buy lamp oil.

‘Morning, Chief de Zoet.’ A young midshipman appears.

‘Good morning, though it’s plain old Mr de Zoet now. You are?’

‘Boerhaave, sir. I’m to be your servant on the voyage.’

‘Boerhaave… a fine nautical name.’ Jacob offers his hand.

The midshipman grips it firmly. ‘Honoured, sir.’

Jacob turns to the Watchtower, whose observer is now as small as a chessman.

‘Pardon my curiosity, sir,’ begins Boerhaave, ‘but the lieutenants were talking at supper about how you faced down a British frigate in this bay, all alone.’

‘All that happened before you were born. And I wasn’t alone.’

‘You mean Providence had a hand in your defence of our flag, sir?’

Jacob senses a devout mind. ‘Let us say so.’

Dawn breathes muddy greens and ember reds through grey woods.

‘And afterwards, sir, you were marooned on Dejima for seventeen years?’

‘ “Marooned” is not quite the word, Midshipman. I visited Edo three times – a most diverting journey. My friend the doctor and I could go botanising along these headlands, and in later years, I was allowed to visit acquaintances in Nagasaki more or less freely. The regime then more closely resembled that of a strict boarding-school than it did a prison island.’

A sailor on the mizzen yard shouts in a Scandinavian language.

The delayed reply from the ratline is a long and filthy laugh.

The crew is excited that twelve weeks of anchored idling is at an end.

‘You must be eager to see home, Mr de Zoet, after so many years.’

Jacob envies youth its clarities and certainties. ‘There’ll be more strangers’ faces than familiar ones on Walcheren, what with the War and the passage of twenty years. Truth be told, I petitioned Edo for permission to settle in Nagasaki as a sort of consul for the New Company, but no precedent could be found in the archives,’ he wipes his misted-over spectacles, ‘and so, as you see, I must leave.’ The Watchtower is clearer without his glasses, and far-sighted Jacob puts them in his jacket pocket. He suffers a lurch of panic to discover his pocket-watch is missing before remembering that he gave it to Yûan. ‘Mr Boerhaave, might you know the time?’

‘Two bells o’ the larboard watch was not so long ago, sir.’

Before Jacob can explain that he meant the land-time, the bell of Ryûgaji Temple booms for the Hour of the Dragon: a quarter past seven, at this time of year.

The hour of my parting, Jacob thinks, is Japan’s parting gift.

The figure on the Watchtower is shrunk to a tiny letter i.

He might be me, seen from the quarterdeck of the Shenandoah, though Jacob doubts that Unico Vorstenbosch was a man ever to look back. Captain Penhaligon, however, probably did… Jacob hopes, one day, to send a letter to the Englishman from the ‘Dutch Shopkeeper’ to ask what stayed his hand from firing the Phoebus’s carronades that autumn day: was it an act of Christian mercy, or did some more pragmatic consideration belay the order to fire?

The chances are, he must concede, Penhaligon, too, is dead by now…

A Black sailor scales a nearby rope, and Jacob thinks of Ogawa Uzaemon telling him how foreign vessels seem manned by phantoms and mirror-images who appear and disappear through hidden portals. Jacob says a brief prayer for the interpreter’s soul, watching the ship’s restless wake.

The figure on the Watchtower is an indistinct smudge. Jacob waves.

The smudge waves back, with two smudged arms, in wide arcs.

‘A particular friend of yours, sir?’ asks Midshipman Boerhaave.

Jacob stops waving. The figure stops waving. ‘My son.’

Boerhaave is unsure what to say. ‘You’re leaving him behind, sir?’

‘I have no choice. His mother was Japanese, and such is the law. Obscurity is Japan’s outermost defence. The country doesn’t want to be understood.’

‘But – so – when may you meet your son again?’

‘Today – this minute – is the last I shall ever see of him… in this world, at least.’

‘I could obtain the loan of a telescope, sir, if you desire it?’

Jacob is touched by Boerhaave’s concern. ‘Thank you, but no. I’d not see his face properly. But might I trouble you for a flask of hot tea from the galley?’

‘Of course, sir – though it may take a little while, if the stove isn’t yet lit.’