David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘ “In-tus-sus-cep-tion,” ’ the students falter. ‘ “Intus-sus-cep-tion.” ’

‘A terminal condition where an upper portion of the intestine passes into a lower, thusly…’ The doctor holds up a piece of sailcloth, stitched like a trouser leg. ‘This is the colon.’ He narrows one end in his fist, and feeds it backwards inside the cloth tube towards the other end. ‘Ouch and itai. Diagnosis is difficult: its symptoms being the classic alimentary triad, namely, Mr Ikematsu?’

‘Abdomen pain, groin swelling…’ He massages his temples to loosen the third. ‘Ah! Blood in faeces.’

‘Good: death by intussusception or,’ he looks at Jacob, ‘in the vernacular, “shitting out your own intestines” is, as you would expect, a laborious affair. Its Latin name is “miserere mei ”, translatable as “Lord Have Mercy.” The smoke glister, however, can reverse this wrong,’ he pulls the knotted end of the sailcloth tube out again, ‘by puffing in such a density of smoke that the “slippage” is reversed; and the intestine restored to its natural state. Domburger: in guerno for favours granted, shall loan his gluteus maximus to medical science that I may demonstrate the passage of smoke “through caverns measureless to man” from anus to oesophagus, whence smoke trickles through his nostrils like incense from a stone dragon, though not, alas, so sweet-scented, given its malodorous voyage…’

Jacob begins to understand. ‘Surely, you don’t intend-’

‘Remove your breeches. We are all men – plus one lady – of medicine.’

‘Doctor.’ The Sick Room is disagreeably cool. ‘I never consented to this.’

‘To treat nerves,’ Marinus flips Jacob over with an agility belying the doctor’s partial lameness, ‘ignore them. Eelattu: let the seminarians inspect the apparatus. Then we begin.’

‘A fine joke,’ wheezes Jacob, under fourteen stone of Dutch physician, ‘but-’

Marinus unhooks the now-squirming clerk’s braces.

‘No, Doctor! No! Your little joke has gone far enough…’

Early on Tuesday the 27th August, 1799

The bed shakes its sleeper awake; two of its legs snap, tipping Jacob on to the floor, whacking his jaw and knee. Merciful Christ is his first thought. The Shenandoah’s magazine is exploded. But the spasm seizing Tall House grows stronger and faster. Joists groan; plaster patters like grapeshot; a window casement flies from its mount and the lurching room is lit apricot; the mosquito net enwraps Jacob’s face and the unappeasable violence is magnified threefold, fivefold, tenfold, and the bed drags itself across the room like a wounded beast. A frigate is unloosing a broadside, Jacob thinks, or a man-o’-war. A candlestick hops in dithyrambic circles; sheaves of paper from high shelves swoop in loops. Don’t let me die here, Jacob prays, seeing his skull smashed under beams and yolky brains dashed in Dejima’s dust. Prayer grips the pastor’s son: raw-throated prayer, to the Jehovah of the early Psalms, O God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us, thou hast been displeased; O turn Thyself to us again! Jacob is answered by roof-tiles smashing on Long Street and cows lowing and goats bleating. Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it; heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh. Glass panes shatter into false diamonds, timber cracks like bones, Jacob’s sea-chest is tossed by undulating planks, the water jug spills and the chamber pot is upended and Creation herself is being undone and God God God, he implores, bid it cease bid it cease bid it cease!

The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Jacob shuts his eyes. Silence is peace. He thanks Providence for subduing the earthquake and thinks, Dear Christ, the warehouses! My mercury calomel! He snatches his clothes, steps over the flattened door and meets Hanzaburo emerging from his nest. Jacob barks, ‘Guard my room!’ but the boy does not understand. The Dutchman stands in the doorway and makes the shape of an X with his arms and legs. ‘Nobody enter! Understand?’

Hanzaburo nods nervously, as if he must placate a madman.

Jacob clatters down the stairs, unbolts the door and finds Long Street looking as if an army of British looters just passed through. Shutters lie in pieces, tiles lie in shards, the entire garden wall has collapsed. Dust thickens the air, corroding the sun. On the city’s high eastern flank, black smoke billows, and somewhere a woman is wailing out her lungs. The clerk makes his way to the Chief’s Residence, but collides with Wybo Gerritszoon at the Crossroads. The hand sways and slurs, ‘Bastard French bastards’ve landed an’ the bastards’re everywhere!’

‘Mr Gerritszoon: see to the Doorn and the Eik. I’ll check the other warehouses.’

‘You,’ the tattooed strongman spits, ‘parleyin’ wi’ me, Monsewer Jacques?’

Jacob steps around him and tests the Doorn’s door: it is secure.

Gerritszoon grabs the clerk’s throat and roars, ‘Get yer filthy French hands off my house an’ take yer filthy French fingers off my sister!’ He relinquishes his grip in order to hurl a hay-maker: had its aim been true it could have killed Jacob, but instead its force flings Gerritszoon on to the ground. ‘French bastards winged me! Winged me!’

In Flag Square, the muster bell begins to ring.

‘Ignore that bell!’ Vorstenbosch, flanked by Cupido and Philander, paces up Long Street. ‘The jackals would line us up like children even as they reef us!’ He notices Gerritszoon. ‘Is he injured?’

Jacob rubs his aching throat. ‘By grog, I fear, sir.’

‘Leave him be. We must guard ourselves against our protectors.’

The damage caused by the earthquake is bad but not disastrous. Of the four Dutch-owned warehouses, the Lelie is still under reconstruction following ‘Snitker’s Fire’ and its frame held firm; the doors stayed up on the Doorn; and van Cleef and Jacob were able to guard the damaged Eik against looters until Con Twomey and the Shenandoah’s carpenter, a wraith-like Québecois, had rehung the thrown-down doors. Captain Lacy reported that whilst they didn’t feel the earthquake on board the ship, the noise was as loud as war between God and the Devil. Some tens of crates, moreover, toppled on to the floor in various warehouses: all must be inspected for breakages and spillages. Dozens of roof-tiles must be replaced, new earthenware urns must be procured; the flattened bath-house must be repaired at the Company’s expense and the toppled dovecote mended; and the plaster shaken loose from the north wall of Garden House will have to be applied again from scratch. Interpreter Kobayashi reported that the boathouses where the Company sampans are stored collapsed, and quoted what he called ‘a superlative price’ for repairs. Vorstenbosch shot back, ‘Superlative for whom?’ and swore not to part with a penning until he and Twomey had inspected the damage themselves. The interpreter left in a state of stony anger. From the Watchtower, Jacob could see that not every ward in Nagasaki escaped as lightly as Dejima: he counted twenty substantial buildings collapsed, and four serious fires pouring smoke into the late August sky.

In Warehouse Eik Jacob and Weh sort through crates of toppled Venetian mirrors: every last glass is to be unwrapped from its straw and recorded as undamaged, cracked or smashed. Hanzaburo curls up on a pile of sacking, and soon he is asleep. For most of the morning, the only sounds are mirrors being lain aside, Weh chewing betel nut, the scratch of Jacob’s nib and, over at the Sea-Gate, porters bringing ashore tin and lead. The carpenters who would ordinarily be at work on Warehouse Lelie, across the Weighing Yard, are engaged, Jacob guesses, on more pressing jobs in Nagasaki.