David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Cupido and Philander strike up ‘Seven White Roses For My One True Love’.

Baert’s drunken head droops and settles in a plate of sweet beans.

Does her burn, Jacob wonders, register touch as heat, cold or numbness?

Marinus takes up his stick. ‘The party shall excuse me: I have left Eelattu rendering the Estonian’s shinbone. Without an expert eye, tallow shall be dripping from the ceiling. Mr Vorstenbosch, my compliments…’ He bows to the interpreters and limps out of the room.

‘Does the law of Japan,’ Captain Lacy’s smile is soapy, ‘permit polygamy?’

‘What is po-ri-ga-mi, Deputy?’ Hori stuffs a pipe. ‘Why need permit?’

‘You explain, Mr de Zoet,’ van Cleef is saying. ‘Words are your forte.’

‘Polygamy is…’ Jacob considers ‘… one husband, many wives.’

‘Ah. Oh.’ Hori grins and the other interpreters nod. ‘Polygamy.’

‘Mohammedans sanction four wives.’ Captain Lacy tosses an almond into the air and captures it in his mouth. ‘Chinese may round up seven under one roof. How many may a Japanese man lock up in his personal collection, eh?’

‘In all countries, same,’ says Hori. ‘In Japan, Holland, China; all same. I say why. All mans marry first wife. He’ – leering, Hori makes an obscene gesture with a fist and finger – ‘until she’ – he mimes a pregnant belly – ‘yes? After this, all mans keep number wives his purse says he may. Captain Lacy plans to have Dejima wife for trading season, like Mr Snitker and Mr van Cleef?’

‘I’d rather,’ Lacy bites a thumbnail, ‘visit the famous Maruyama District.’

‘Mr Hemmij,’ recalls Interpreter Yonekizu, ‘ordered courtesans for his feasts.’

‘Chief Hemmij,’ says Vorstenbosch, darkly, ‘partook of many pleasures at the Company’s expense, as did Mr Snitker. Hence, the latter dines on hard-tack tonight, whilst we enjoy the rewards of honest employees.’

Jacob glances at Ivo Oost: Ivo Oost is scowling at him.

Baert lifts his bean-spattered face, exclaims, ‘But, sir, she ain’t really my aunt!’, giggles like a schoolgirl and falls off his chair.

‘I propose a toast,’ declares Deputy van Cleef, ‘to all our absent ladies.’

The drinkers and diners fill one another’s glasses. ‘To all our absent ladies!’

‘Especial,’ gasps Hori, as the gin burns his gullet, ‘to Mr Ogawa here. Mr Ogawa, he marry this year a beauty wife.’ Hori’s elbow is covered with rhubarb mousse. ‘Each night’ – he mimes riding a horse – ‘three, four, five gallopings!’

The laughter is raucous but Ogawa’s smile is weak.

‘You ask a starved man,’ Gerritszoon answers, ‘to drink to a glutton.’

‘Mr Gerritszoon want girl?’ Hori is solicitude personified. ‘My servant fetch. Say you want. Fat? Tight? Tiger? Baby cat? Gentle sister?’

‘We’d all like a gentle sister,’ complains Arie Grote, ‘but what o’ the money, eh? A man could buy a brothel in Siam for a tumble with a Nagasaki doxy. Is there no case, Mr Vorstenbosch, for the Company providin’ a subsidy, eh, in this quarter? Consider poor Oost: on his official wages, sir, a little… feminine consolation, eh, would cost him a year’s wages.’

‘A diet of abstinence,’ replies Vorstenbosch, ‘never hurt anyone.’

‘But, sir, what vices might a red-blooded Dutchman be pushed to without a conduit for the, eh, unloosin’ o’ Nature’s urges?’

‘You miss your wife, Mr Grote,’ Hori asks, ‘at home in Holland?’

‘ “South of Gibraltar”,’ quotes Captain Lacy, ‘ “all men are bachelors.” ’

‘Nagasaki’s latitude,’ says Fischer, ‘is, of course, well north of Gibraltar.’

‘I never knew,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘you were a married man, Grote.’

‘He’d as soon not,’ Ouwehand explains, ‘hear the subject raised, sir.’

‘A mooing West Frieslander slut, sir.’ The cook licks his brown incisors. ‘When I consider her at all, Mr Hori, ’tis to pray the Ottomans’ll storm West Friesland an’ make off with the bitch.’

‘If not like wife,’ asks Interpreter Yonekizu, ‘why not do divorce?’

‘Easier said than done, sir,’ Grote sighs, ‘in the so-called Christian lands.’

‘So why marry,’ Hori coughs out tobacco smoke, ‘at first place?’

‘Oh, ’tis a long an’ sorry saga, Mr Hori, what’d not be of interest to-’

‘On Mr Grote’s last trip home,’ obliges Ouwehand, ‘he wooed a promising young heiress at her town-house in Roomolenstraat who told him how her heirless, ailing papa yearned to see his dairy farm in the hands of a gentleman son-in-law, yet everywhere, she lamented, were thieving rascals posing as eligible bachelors. Mr Grote agreed that the Sea of Courtship seethes with sharks, and spoke of the prejudice endured by the young colonial parvenu, as if the annual fortunes yielded by his plantations in Sumatra were less worthy than old monies. The turtledoves were wedded within a week. The day after their nuptials, the taverner presented the bill and each says to the other, “Settle the account, my Heart’s Music.” But to their genuine horror, neither could, for bride and groom alike had spent their last beans on wooing the other! Mr Grote’s Sumatran plantations evaporated; the Roomolenstraat house reverted to a co-conspirator’s stage prop; the ailing father-in-law turned out to be a beer-porter in rude health, not heirless but hairless, and-’

A belch erupts from Lacy. ‘Pardon: ’twas the Devilled Eggs.’

‘Deputy van Cleef?’ Goto is alarmed. ‘Do Ottomans invade Holland? This news is not in recentest fusetsuki report…’

‘Mr Grote,’ van Cleef brushes his napkin, ‘spoke in jest, sir.’

‘In jest?’ The earnest young interpreter frowns and blinks. ‘In jest…’

Cupido and Philander are playing a languid air by Boccherini.

‘One grows despondent,’ ruminates Vorstenbosch, ‘to think that, unless Edo authorises an increase in the copper quota, these rooms shall fall for ever silent.’

Yonekizu and Hori grimace; Goto and Ogawa wear blank faces.

Most of the Dutchmen have asked Jacob whether the extraordinary ultimatum is a bluff. He told each to ask the Chief Resident, knowing that none of them would. Having lost last season’s cargo aboard the doomed Octavia, many would be returning to Batavia poorer men than when they left.

‘Who was that bizarre female,’ van Cleef squeezes a lemon into a Venetian glass, ‘in Warehouse Doorn?’

‘Miss Aibagawa,’ says Goto, ‘is daughter of doctor and scholar.’

Aibagawa. Jacob handles each syllable in turn. Ai-ba-ga-wa…

‘The Magistrate give permission,’ says Iwase, ‘to study under Dutch doctor.’

And I called her a ‘whore’s helper’, remembers Jacob, and winces.

‘What a bizarre Locusta,’ says Fischer, ‘to be at ease in a surgery.’

‘The fairer sex,’ objects Jacob, ‘can show as much resilience as the uglier one.’

‘Mr de Zoet must publish,’ the Prussian picks his nose, ‘his dazzling epigrams.’

‘Miss Aibagawa,’ states Ogawa, ‘is a midwife. She is used to blood.’

‘But I understood,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘a woman was forbidden to set foot on Dejima, without she be a courtesan, her maid or one of the old crones at the Guild.’

‘It is forbidden,’ affirms Yonekizu, indignantly. ‘No precedent. Never.’

‘Miss Aibagawa,’ Ogawa speaks up, ‘work hard as midwife, both for rich customers and poor persons who cannot pay. Recently, she deliver Magistrate Shiroyama’s son. Birth was hard, and other doctor renounce, but she persevere and succeed. Magistrate Shiroyama was joyful. He gives Miss Aibagawa one wish for reward. Wish is, study under Dr Marinus on Dejima. So, Magistrate kept promise.’