David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

… tumbles off the chest, heels over arse, and lands on the beaten earth.

Mortification, thinks Jacob, as the pain eases, requires at least a little pride…

The woman is leaning against Hanzaburo’s improvised cot.

… but I have no pride left, for I am pissed upon by William Pitt.

She is dabbing her eyes and shivering with near-silent laughter.

Anna laughs that way, Jacob thinks. Anna laughs that very way.

‘I sorry.’ She inhales deeply and her lips twitch. ‘Excuse my… lewdness?’

‘ “Rudeness”, miss.’ He goes to the water pail. ‘ “Rude”, with an “R”.’

‘ “Rewdness”,’ she repeats, ‘with an “R”. It is nothing funny.’

Jacob washes his face, but to rinse the monkey urine from his second-best linen shirt he must first remove it. To do so here is out of the question.

‘You wish,’ she hunts in a sleeve pocket, taking out a closed fan and putting it on a crate of raw sugar, before producing a square of paper, ‘wipe face?’

‘Most kind.’ Jacob takes it and dabs his brow and cheeks.

‘Trade with monkey,’ she suggests. ‘Trade thing for leg.’

Jacob gives the idea its due. ‘The beast is a slave to tobacco.’

‘Ta-ba-ko?’ She claps her hands once in resolve. ‘You have?’

Jacob hands her the last of his Javanese leaf in a leather pouch.

She dangles the bait from a broom-head level with William Pitt’s eyrie.

The ape reaches out; the woman sways it away, mumbling entreaties…

… before William Pitt lets go of the leg to seize his new prize.

The limb thumps to earth and stops dead at the woman’s foot. She gives Jacob a glance of triumph, discards the broom and takes up the amputated limb as casually as a farm-hand picking up a turnip. Its hacked-through bone pokes from the bloody sheath and its toes are grubby. Up above, the casement rattles: William Pitt has escaped through the window with his bounty, over the roofs of Long Street. ‘Tobacco is lose, sir,’ says the woman. ‘Very sorry.’

‘No matter, miss. You have your leg. Well, not your leg…’

Shouted questions and answers fly up and down Bony Alley.

Jacob and his visitor take a couple of steps back from each other.

‘Forgive me, miss, but… are you a courtesan’s maid?’

‘Kôchi – zanzu – meido?’ This baffles her. ‘What is?’

‘A… a…’ Jacob grasps for a substitute word ‘… a whore’s… helper.’

She lays the limb on a square of cloth. ‘Why horse need helper?’

A guard appears in the doorway; he sees the Dutchman, the young woman and the lost foot. He grins and shouts into Bony Alley, and within moments more guards, inspectors and officials arrive; followed by Deputy van Cleef; then Dejima’s strutting Constable Kosugi; Marinus’s assistant, Eelattu, his apron as bloodied as the burnt woman’s; Arie Grote and a Japanese merchant with darting eyes; several scholars; and Con Twomey carrying his carpenter’s rule and asking Jacob in English, ‘What’s that feckin’ smell about ye, man?’

Jacob remembers his half-restored ledger on the table, wide open for all to see. Hastily he conceals it, just as four youths arrive, each with the shaven heads of medical disciples and aprons like the burnt woman’s, and commence to fire questions at her. The clerk guesses these are Dr Marinus’s ‘seminarians’, and soon the intruders let the woman recount her story. She indicates the tower of crates where William Pitt clambered up and now gestures towards Jacob, who blushes as twenty or thirty heads look his way. She speaks her language with quiet self-possession. The clerk awaits the hilarity that must greet his dousing in ape-piss, but she omits the episode, it seems, and her narrative ends in nods of approval. Twomey leaves with the Estonian’s limb to fashion a wooden substitute of the same length.

‘I saw you,’ van Cleef snatches a guard’s sleeve, ‘you damned thief!’

A shower of bright red nutmeg berries spills across the floor.

‘Baert! Fischer! Show these blasted robbers out of our warehouse!’ The deputy makes herding motions towards the door, shouting, ‘Out! Out! Grote, frisk whoever looks suspicious – aye, just as they frisk us. De Zoet, watch our merchandise or it’ll sprout legs and walk.’

Jacob stands on a crate, the better to survey the departing visitors.

He sees the burnt maid step into the sunlit alley, assisting a frail scholar.

Contrary to his expectations, she turns and waves her hand.

Jacob is delighted by this secret acknowledgement and waves back.

No, he sees, she is sheltering her eyes from the sun…

Yawning, Hanzaburo enters, carrying a pot of tea.

You didn’t even ask her name, Jacob realises. Jacob de Bonehead.

He notices that she left behind the closed fan on the crate of raw sugar.

Storm-faced van Cleef leaves last, pushing past Hanzaburo, who stands at the threshold holding the pot of tea. Hanzaburo asks, ‘Thing happen?’

By midnight, the Chief’s Dining Room is foggy with pipe-smoke. The servants Cupido and Philander play ‘Apples of Delft’ on viol da gamba and flute.

‘President Adams is our “Shogun”, yes, Mr Goto,’ Captain Lacy flicks crumbs of pie-crust from his moustache, ‘but he was chosen by the American people. This is the point of democracy.’

The five interpreters exchange a cautious look Jacob now recognises.

‘Great lords, et cetera,’ Ogawa Uzaemon clarifies, ‘choose President?’

‘Not lords, no.’ Lacy picks his teeth. ‘Citizens. Every one of us.’

‘Even…’ Interpreter Goto’s eyes settle on Con Twomey ‘… carpenters?’

‘Carpenters, bakers,’ Lacy belches, ‘and candlestick makers.’

‘Do Washington’s and Jefferson’s slaves,’ ask Marinus, ‘also vote?’

‘No, Doctor,’ smiles Lacy. ‘Nor do their horses, oxen, bees or women.’

But what junior geisha, wonders Jacob, would wrestle an ape for a leg?

‘What if,’ asks Goto, ‘people make bad choice and President is bad man?’

‘Come the next election – four years, at most – we vote him out of office.’

‘Old President,’ Interpreter Hori is maroon with rum, ‘is executed?’

‘ “Elected”, Mr Hori,’ says Twomey. ‘When the people choose their leader.’

‘A better system, surely,’ Lacy holds his glass for van Cleef’s slave Weh to fill, ‘than waiting for death to remove a corrupt, stupid or insane Shogun?’

The interpreters look uneasy: no informer is fluent enough in Dutch to understand Captain Lacy’s treasonous talk, but there is no guarantee that the Magistracy has not recruited one of the four to report on his colleagues’ reactions.

‘Democracy,’ says Goto, ‘is not a flower who bloom in Japan, I think.’

‘Soil in Asia,’ agrees Interpreter Hori, ‘is not correct for Europe and America flowers.’

‘Mr Washington, Mr Adams,’ Interpreter Iwase shifts the topic, ‘is royal bloodline?’

‘Our revolution,’ Captain Lacy clicks his fingers to order the slave Ignatius to bring the spittoon, ‘in which I played my part, when my paunch was flatter, sought to purge America of royal bloodlines.’ He spews out a dragon of phlegm. ‘A man might be a great leader – like General Washington – but why does it follow that his children inherit their pa’s qualities? Are not inbred royals more often dunderheads and wastrels – proper “King Georges” one might say – than those who climb the world using God-given talent?’ He mumbles an aside in English to Dejima’s secret subject of the British monarch. ‘No offence intended, Mr Twomey.’

‘Now I’d be the last fecker here,’ avows the Irishman, ‘to take offence.’