David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

It’s concealed in the obvious, Jacob thinks. ‘In broad daylight.’ Truth batters him like a hod of bricks: Kobayashi’s questions were a coded boast. The break-in was a message. It declares, ‘The consequences of crossing me, of which you are blithely unaware, are being enacted now, in broad daylight. You are impotent to retaliate, for there shall be not a scrap of proof positive.’ Kobayashi claimed authorship of the robbery and placed himself above suspicion: how could a burglar be with his victim at the time of the burglary? If Jacob reported the code-words, he would sound delusional.

The broiling day is cooling; its clatter has receded; Jacob feels sick.

He wants revenge, yes, Jacob guesses, but the gloater wants a prize, too.

After the Psalter, what is the most damaging thing to have stolen?

The cooling day is broiling; its clatter condenses; Jacob has a headache.

The newest pages of my latest sketchbook, he realises, under my pillow…

Trembling, Jacob throws away the pillow, snatches the sketchbook, fumbles with its ties, turns to the last page and cannot breathe: here is the serrated edge of a torn-out sheet. It was filled with the drawings of the face, hands and eyes of Miss Aibagawa, and somewhere nearby, Kobayashi is contemplating these likenesses in malign delight…

Shutting his eyes against the picture only increases its clarity.

Make this not true, Jacob prays, but this prayer tends to go unanswered.

The street door opens. Slow footsteps drag themselves up the stairs.

The extraordinary fact that Marinus is paying him a call scarcely dents Jacob’s adamantine misery. What if her permission to study on Dejima is revoked? A stout cane raps on the door. ‘Domburger.’

‘I’ve had enough unwelcome visitors in one day, Doctor.’

‘Open this door now, you Village Idiot.’

It is easiest for Jacob to obey. ‘Come to gloat, have you?’

Marinus peers around the clerk’s apartment, settles on the window-ledge, and takes in the view over Long Street and the garden through the glass-and-paper window. He unties and reties his lustrous grey hair. ‘What did they take?’

‘Nothing…’ He remembers Vorstenbosch’s lie. ‘Nothing of value.’

‘In cases of burglary,’ Marinus coughs, ‘I prescribe a course of billiards.’

‘Billiards, Doctor,’ Jacob vows, ‘is the last thing I shall be doing today.’

Jacob’s cue ball sails up the table, rebounds off the bottom cushion and glides to a halt two inches from the top edge, a hand’s length closer than Marinus’s. ‘Take the first stroke, Doctor. To how many points shall we play?’

‘Hemmij and I would set our finishing post at five hundred and one.’

Eelattu squeezes lemons into cloudy glasses; they scent the air, yellow.

A breeze blows through the Billiard Room in Garden House.

Marinus concentrates hard on his first strike of the game…

Why this sudden and peculiar kindness, Jacob cannot help but wonder.

… but the doctor’s shot is misjudged, hitting the red but not Jacob’s cue ball.

Easily, Jacob pockets both his and the red. ‘Shall I tally the score?’

‘You are the bookkeeper. Eelattu, the afternoon is your own.’

Eelattu thanks his master and leaves, and the clerk shoots a tight series of cannons, quickly taking his score to fifty. The billiard balls’ muffled trundling smooths his ruffled nerves. The shock of the burglary, he half persuades himself, made me go off at half-cock: for Miss Aibagawa to be drawn by a foreigner cannot be a punishable offence, even here. It’s not as if she posed for me clandestinely. After accruing sixty points, Jacob lets Marinus on to the table. Nor, the clerk thinks, is a page of sketches proof positive that I am infatuated with the woman.

The doctor, Jacob is surprised to see, is a middling amateur at billiards.

Nor is ‘infatuated’, he corrects himself, an accurate description…

‘Time must hang heavy here, Doctor, once the ship departs Batavia?’

‘For most, yes. The men seek solace in grog, the pipe, intrigues, hatred of our hosts, and in sex. For my part…’ he misses an easy shot ‘… I prefer the company of botany, my studies, my teaching and, of course, my harpsichord.’

‘How,’ Jacob chalks his cue, ‘are the Scarlatti sonatas?’

Marinus sits on the upholstered bench. ‘Fishing for gratitude, are we?’

‘Never, Doctor. I gather you belong to a native Academy of Science.’

‘The Shirandô? It lacks government patronage. Edo is dominated by “patriots” who mistrust all things foreign so, officially, we are just another private school. Unofficially, we are a bourse for rangakusha – scholars of European sciences and arts – to exchange ideas. Ôtsuki Monjurô, the Director, has influence enough at the Magistracy to ensure my monthly invitations.’

‘Is Dr Aibagawa’ – Jacob pots the red, long-distance – ‘also a member?’

Marinus is watching his younger opponent meaningfully.

‘I ask out of mere curiosity, Doctor.’

‘Dr Aibagawa is a keen astronomer and attends when his health permits. He was, in fact, the first Japanese to observe Herschel’s new planet through a telescope ordered here at wild expense. He and I, indeed, discuss optics more than medicine.’

Jacob returns the red ball to the balkline, wondering how not to change the subject.

‘After his wife and sons died,’ continued the doctor, ‘Doctor Aibagawa married a younger woman, a widow, whose son was to be inducted into Dutch medicine and carry on the Aibagawa practice. The young man turned out to be an idle disappointment.’

‘And is Miss Aibagawa…’ the younger man lines up an ambitious shot ‘… also permitted to attend the Shirandô?’

‘There are laws, you know, ranged against you: your suit is hopeless.’

‘Laws.’ Jacob’s shot rattles in the pocket’s jaws. ‘Laws against a doctor’s daughter becoming a foreigner’s wife?’

‘Not constitutional laws. I mean real laws: laws of the non si fa.’

‘So you are saying that Miss Aibagawa doesn’t attend the Shirandô?’

‘As a matter of fact, she is the Academy’s registrar. But as I keep trying to tell you…’ Marinus pockets the vulnerable red but his cue ball fails to spin backwards ‘… women of her class do not become Dejima wives. Even were she to share your tendresse, what hopes of a decent marriage after being pawed by a red-haired devil? If you do love her, express your devotion by avoiding her.’

He’s right, thinks Jacob, and asks, ‘May I accompany you to the Shirandô?’

‘Certainly not.’ Marinus tries to pot both his cue ball and Jacob’s, but misses.

There are limits, then, Jacob realises, to this unexpected detente.

‘You are no scholar,’ the doctor explains. ‘Nor am I your pimp.’

‘Is it fair to berate the less-privileged for womanising, smoking and drinking…’ Jacob pots Marinus’s cue ball ‘… whilst refusing to help their self-betterment?’

‘I am not a Society for Public Improvement. What privileges I enjoy, I earned.’

Cupido or Philander is practising an air on a viol da gamba.

The goats and a dog engage in a battle of bleating and barking.

‘You spoke of how you and Mr Hemmij -’ Jacob miscues ‘- used to play for a wager?’

‘You’re never proposing,’ the doctor mock-whispers, ‘gambling on a Sabbath?’

‘If I reach five hundred and one first, grant me one visit to the Shirandô.’

Marinus lines up his shot, looking doubtful. ‘What is my prize?’

He’s not rejecting the idea, Jacob notices, out of hand. ‘Name it.’

‘Six hours’ labour in my garden. Now, pass me the bridge.’