David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘Well, it ain’t seven years o’ bad luck here, Mr de Z., but seven ’undred, eh?’

Jacob hadn’t noticed Arie Grote enter.

‘Quite pard’nable ’twould be, eh, were a cove to lose count an’ enter a few whole mirrors as “smashed”, wholly in error…’

‘Is this a thinly veiled invitation,’ Jacob yawns, ‘to commit fraud?’

‘May wild dogs chew my head off first! Now, I’ve arranged a meetin’ for us. You,’ Grote glances at Weh, ‘can make yerself scarce: a gent’s comin’ what’d take offence at your shit-brown hide.’

‘Weh is going nowhere,’ counters Jacob. ‘And who is this “gent”?’

Grote hears something and peers out. ‘Oh, bloody oath, they’re early.’ He points to a wall of crates and orders Weh, ‘Hide behind there! Mr de Z., dispense with yer sentiments regardin’ our sable brethren ’cause piles an’ piles an’ piles o’ money is at stake.’

The slave youth looks at Jacob; Jacob, reluctantly, nods; Weh obeys.

‘I am here, eh, to play the go-between twixt you, and…’

Interpreter Yonekizu and Constable Kosugi appear at the door.

Ignoring Jacob altogether, both men usher in a familiar stranger.

Four young, lithe and dangerous-looking personal guards appear first.

Next enters their master: an older man who walks as if treading on water.

He wears a sky-blue cape and his head is shaven, though a sword-hilt shows from his waist sash.

His is the only face in the warehouse not sheathed in sweat.

From what flickering dream, wonders Jacob, do I know your face?

‘Lord Abbot Enomoto of the Domain of Kyôga,’ announces Grote. ‘My associate, Mr de Zoet.’

Jacob bows: the Abbot’s lips curl, tighten into a half-smile of recognition.

He turns to Yonekizu and speaks: his burnished voice is uninterruptible.

‘Abbot,’ translates Yonekizu, ‘says he believed you and he share affinity, on first time he see you at Magistracy. Today he know his belief was correct.’

Abbot Enomoto asks Yonekizu to teach him the Dutch word ‘affinity’.

Jacob now identifies his visitor: he was the man sitting close to Magistrate Shiroyama in the Hall of Sixty Mats.

The Abbot has Yonekizu repeat Jacob’s name three times over.

‘Da-zû-to,’ echoes the Abbot, and checks with Jacob: ‘I say correct?’

‘Your Grace,’ the clerk says, ‘speaks my name very well.’

‘The Abbot,’ Yonekizu adds, ‘translated Antoine Lavoisier into Japanese.’

Jacob is duly impressed. ‘Might Your Grace know Marinus?’

The Abbot has Yonekizu translate his reply: ‘Abbot meet Dr Marinus at Shirandô Academy often. He has much respect for Dutch scholar, he say. But Abbot also have many duties, so cannot devote all life to chemical arts…’

Jacob considers the power his visitor must wield to waltz into Dejima on a day turned upside down by the earthquake, and mingle with foreigners free from the usual phalanx of spies and Shogunal guards. Enomoto runs his thumb along the crates, as if divining their contents. He encounters the sleeping Hanzaburo and makes a motion in the air above the boy, like a genuflection. Hanzaburo mouths groggy syllables, wakes, sees the Abbot, yelps and rolls on to the floor. He flees from the warehouse like a frog from a water-snake.

‘Young mans,’ Enomoto says in Dutch, ‘hurry, hurry, hurry…’

The world outside, framed by the Eik’s double-doors, dims.

The Abbot handles an undamaged mirror. ‘This is quicksilver?’

‘Silver oxide, Your Grace,’ replies Jacob. ‘Of Italian manufacture.’

‘Silver is more truth,’ remarks the Abbot, ‘than copper mirrors of Japan. But truth is easy to break.’ He angles the mirror so as to capture Jacob’s reflection, and puts a question to Yonekizu in Japanese. Yonekizu says, ‘His Grace ask, “At Holland also, do dead people lack reflection?” ’

Jacob recalls his grandmother saying as much. ‘Old women believe so, sir, yes.’

The Abbot understands and is pleased with the answer.

‘There is a tribe at the Cape of Good Hope,’ Jacob ventures, ‘called the Basutos who credit a crocodile may kill a man by snapping his reflection in the water. Another tribe, the Zulus, avoid dark pools lest a ghost seize the reflection and devour the observer’s soul.’

Yonekizu gives a careful translation, and explains Enomoto’s reply. ‘The Abbot says idea is beautiful, and wishes to know, “Does Mr de Zoet believe in soul?” ’

‘To doubt the soul’s existence,’ says Jacob, ‘would strike me as peculiar.’

Enomoto asks, ‘Does Mr de Zoet believe human soul can be taked?’

‘Taken not by a ghost or crocodile, Abbot, no, but by the Devil, yes.’

Enomoto’s hah denotes surprise that he and a foreigner could agree so well.

Jacob steps out of the mirror’s field of reflection. ‘Your Grace’s Dutch is excellent.’

‘Listening difficult,’ Enomoto turns, ‘so glad interpreters is here. Once I speak – spoke – Spanish, but now knowledge is decayed.’

‘It is two centuries,’ says Jacob, ‘since the Spaniards walked Japan.’

‘Time…’ Idly, Enomoto lifts the lid of a box: Yonekizu exclaims in alarm.

Coiled like a small whip is a habu snake: it rears its angry head…

… its twin fangs glint white; its neck sways back, ready to strike.

Two of the Abbot’s guards swerve across the room, swords drawn…

… but Enomoto makes a strange pressing motion with his flat hand.

‘Don’t let it bite him!’ exclaims Grote. ‘He ain’t yet paid for the-’

Instead of attacking the Abbot’s hand, the habu’s neck turns limp, and it slumps back on its crate. Its jaws are frozen, wide open.

Jacob finds his jaws, too, are agape; he glances at Grote, who looks afraid.

‘Your Grace: did you… charm the snake? Is it… is it asleep?’

‘Snake is dead.’ Enomoto orders his guard to take it outside.

How did you do that? Jacob wonders, searching for tricks. ‘But…’

The Abbot watches the Dutchman’s bafflement, and speaks to Yonekizu.

‘Lord Abbot say,’ begins Yonekizu, ‘ “Not trick, not magic.” He says, “It is Chinese philosophy who scholars of Europe is too clever to understand.” He says… excuse, very difficult: he says… “All life is life because possess force of ki”.’

‘Force of key?’ Arie Grote mimes turning a key. ‘What’s that?’

Yonekizu shakes his head. ‘Not key: ki. Ki. Lord Abbot explain that his studies, his Order, teach how to… what is word? How to manipule force of ki, to heal sickness, et cetera.’

‘Oh I’d say Mr Snakey,’ mutters Grote, ‘got his fair share of et cetera.’

Given the Abbot’s status, Jacob worries that an apology is due. ‘Mr Yonekizu: pray tell His Grace how sorry I am that a snake threatened his well-being in a Dutch warehouse.’

Yonekizu does so: Enomoto shakes his head. ‘Nasty bite, but not very poison.’

‘… and say,’ continues Jacob, ‘what I just saw shall stay with me all my life.’

Enomoto replies with an ambiguous hnnnnnn noise.

‘In next life,’ the Abbot tells Jacob, ‘be born in Japan so come to Shrine, and – excuse, Dutch is difficult.’ He addresses several long sentences to Yonekizu in their mother tongue. The interpreter translates them in order. ‘Abbot says, Mr de Zoet must not think he is powerful lord like Lord of Satsuma. Kyôga Domain is only twenty miles wide, twenty miles long, very many mountains, and has just two towns, Isahaya and Kashima, and villages along road of Sea of Ariake. But,’ Yonekizu perhaps adds this on his own initiative, ‘special domain gives Lord Abbot high rank – in Edo can meet Shogun, in Miyako, can meet Emperor. Lord Abbot’s shrine is high on Shiranui Mountain. He say, “In spring and autumn, very beautiful; in winter, a little cold, but summer, cool.” Abbot say, “One can breathe; and does not grow old.” Abbot say, “He have two lifes. World Above, at Mount Shiranui, is spirit and prayer and ki. World Below is men and politics and scholars… and import drugs and money.” ’