David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘Your ninety-one points, Doctor, against my three hundred and six.’

‘Shall we put our finishing post at a thousand points and double the prizes?’

‘Are you promising you’ll take me to the Shirandô Academy twice?’

To be seen by Miss Aibagawa there, he thinks, is to be seen in a new light.

‘Provided you are willing to dig horse manure into the beetroot beds for twelve hours.’

‘Very well, Doctor…’ the clerk wonders whether van Cleef might loan him the nimble-fingered Weh to repair the ruff on his best lace shirt ‘… I accept your terms.’

Late in the afternoon of the 16th September, 1799

Jacob digs the last of the day’s horse manure into the beetroot beds, and fetches water for the late cucumbers from the tarred barrels. He started his clerical work one hour early this morning so he could finish at four o’clock and begin repaying the twelve hours’ garden labour he owes the doctor. Marinus was a scoundrel, Jacob thinks, to hide his virtuosity at billiards, but a wager is a wager. He removes the straw from around the cucumber plants’ stems, empties both gourds, then replaces the mulch to keep the moisture in the thirsty soil. Now and then a curious head appears above the Long Street wall. The sight of a Dutch clerk pulling up weeds like a peasant is worth catching. Hanzaburo, when asked to help, laughed until he saw that Jacob was in earnest, then mimed a back-pain and walked away, pocketing a fistful of lavender heads by the garden gate. Arie Grote tried to sell Jacob his sharkhide hat so he could ‘toil with elegance, like a gentleman farmer’; Piet Baert offered to sell him billiard lessons; and Ponke Ouwehand helpfully pointed out some weeds. Gardening is harder labour than Jacob is used to, and yet, he admits to himself, I enjoy it. His tired eyes are rested by the living green; rosefinches pluck worms from the ramped-up earth; and a black-masked bunting, whose song sounds like clinking cutlery, watches from the empty cistern. Chief Vorstenbosch and Deputy van Cleef are at the Nagasaki Residence of the Lord of Satsuma, the Shogun’s father-in-law, to press their case for more copper, so Dejima enjoys an unsupervised air. The seminarians are in the Hospital: as Jacob hoes the rows of beans, he hears Marinus’s voice through the Surgery window. Miss Aibagawa is there. Jacob still hasn’t seen her, much less spoken to her, since giving her the daringly illustrated fan. The glimmers of kindness the doctor is showing him shall not extend to arranging a rendezvous. Jacob has considered asking Ogawa Uzaemon to take her a letter from him, but if it was discovered, both the interpreter and Miss Aibagawa could be prosecuted for secret negotiations with a foreigner.

And anyway, Jacob thinks, what would I even write in such a letter?

Picking slugs from the cabbages with a pair of chopsticks, Jacob notices a ladybird on his right hand. He makes a bridge for it with his left, which the insect obligingly crosses. Jacob repeats the exercise several times. The ladybird believes, he thinks, she is on a momentous journey, but she is going nowhere. He pictures an endless sequence of bridges between skin-covered islands over voids, and wonders if an unseen force is playing the same trick on him…

… until a woman’s voice dispels his reverie: ‘Mr Dazûto?’

Jacob removes his bamboo hat and stands up.

Miss Aibagawa’s face eclipses the sun. ‘I beg pardon to disturb.’

Surprise, guilt, nervousness… Jacob feels many things.

She notices the ladybird on his thumb. ‘Tentô-mushi.’

In his eagerness to comprehend, he mishears: ‘O-ben-tô-mushi?’

‘O-ben-tô-mushi is “luncheon-box bug”.’ She smiles. ‘This,’ she indicates the ladybird, ‘is O-ten-tô-mushi.’

‘Tentô-mushi,’ he says, and she nods with a schoolmistress’s approval.

Her deep blue summer kimono and white headscarf lend her a nun’s air.

They are not alone: the inevitable guard stands by the garden gate.

Jacob tries to ignore him: ‘ “Ladybird”. A gardener’s friend…’

Anna would like you, he thinks, looking into her face. Anna would like you.

‘… because ladybirds eat greenfly.’ Jacob raises his thumb to his lips and blows.

The ladybird flies all of three feet to the scarecrow’s face.

She adjusts the scarecrow’s hat as a wife might. ‘How you call him?’

‘A scarecrow, to “scare crows” away, but his name is Robespierre.’

‘Warehouse Eik is “Warehouse Oak”; monkey is “William”. Why scarecrow is “Robespierre”?’

‘Because his head falls off when the wind changes. It’s a dark joke.’

‘Joke is secret language,’ she frowns, ‘inside words.’

Jacob decides against referring to the fan until she does: it would appear, at least, that she is not offended or angered. ‘May I help you, miss?’

‘Yes. Dr Marinus ask I come and ask you for rôzu-meri. He ask…’

The better I know Marinus, thinks Jacob, the less I understand him.

‘… he ask, “Bid Dombâga give you six fresh… ‘sprogs’ of rôzu-meri.” ’

‘Over here, then, in the herb-garden.’ He leads her down the path, unable to think of a single pleasantry that doesn’t sound terminally inane.

She asks, ‘Why Mr Dazûto work today as Dejima gardener?’

‘Because,’ the pastor’s son lies through his teeth, ‘I enjoy a garden’s company. As a boy,’ he leavens his lie with some truth, ‘I worked in a relative’s orchard. We cultivated the first plum trees ever to grow in our village.’

‘In village of Domburg,’ she says, ‘in Province of Zeeland.’

‘You are most kind to remember.’ Jacob breaks off a half-dozen young sprigs. ‘Here you are.’ For a priceless coin of time, their hands are linked by a few inches of bitter herb, witnessed by a dozen blood-orange sunflowers.

I don’t want a purchased courtesan, he thinks. I wish to earn you.

‘Thank you.’ She smells the herb. ‘ “Rosemary” has meaning?’

Jacob blesses his foul-breathed martinet of a Latin master in Middelburg. ‘Its Latin name is Ros marinus, wherein “Ros” is “dew” – do you know the word “dew”?’

She frowns, shakes her head a little and her parasol spins, slowly.

‘Dew is water found early in the morning before the sun burns it away.’

The midwife understands. ‘ “Dew”… we say “asa-tsuyu”.’

Jacob knows he shall never forget the word ‘asa-tsuyu’ so long as he lives. ‘ “Ros” being dew, and “marinus” meaning “ocean”, Ros marinus is “dew of the ocean”. Old people say that rosemary thrives – grows well – only when it can hear the ocean.’

The story pleases her. ‘Is it true tale?’

‘It may be…’ let time stop, Jacob wishes ‘… prettier than it is true.’

‘Meaning of “marinus” is “sea”? So doctor is “Dr Ocean”?’

‘You could say so, yes. Does “Aibagawa” have meaning?’

‘ “Aiba” is “indigo”,’ her pride in her name is plain, ‘and “gawa” is “river”.’

‘So you are an indigo river. You sound like a poem.’ And you, Jacob tells himself, sound like a flirty lecher. ‘Rosemary is also a woman’s Christian name – a given name. My own given name is,’ he strains to sound casual, ‘Jacob.’

‘What is…’ she swivels her head to show puzzlement ‘… Ya-ko-bu?’

‘The name my parents gave me: Jacob. My full name is Jacob de Zoet.’

She gives a cautious nod. ‘Yakobu Dazûto.’

I wish, he thinks, spoken words could be captured and kept in a locket.

‘My pronounce,’ Miss Aibagawa asks, ‘is not very good?’