David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘No no no: you are perfect in every way. Your pronounce is perfect.’

Crickets scritter and clirk in the garden’s low walls of stones.

‘Miss Aibagawa -’ Jacob swallows, ‘what is your given name?’

She makes him wait. ‘My name from mother and father is Orito.’

The breeze twists a coil of her hair around its finger.

She looks down. ‘Doctor is waiting. Thank you for rosemary.’

Jacob says, ‘You are most welcome,’ and doesn’t dare say more.

She takes three or four paces, and turns back. ‘I forget a thing.’ She reaches into her sleeve and produces a fruit, the size and hue of an orange, but smooth as hairless skin. ‘From my garden. I bring many to Dr Marinus so he ask I take one to Mr Dazûto. It is kaki.’

‘Then, in Japanese, a persimmon is a cacky?’

‘Ka-ki.’ She rests it on the crook of the scarecrow’s shoulder.

‘Ka-ki. Robespierre and I shall eat it later, thank you.’

Her wooden slippers crunch the friable earth as she walks along the path.

Act, implores the Ghost of Future Regret. I shan’t give you another chance.

Jacob hurries past the tomatoes and catches her up near the gate.

‘Miss Aibagawa? Miss Aibagawa. I must ask you to forgive me.’

She has turned around and has one hand on the gate. ‘Why forgive?’

‘For what I now say.’ The marigolds are molten. ‘You are beautiful.’

She understands. Her mouth opens and closes. She takes a step back…

… into the wicket gate. Still shut, it rattles. The guard swings it open.

Damn fool, groans the Demon of Present Regret. What have you done?

Crumpling, burning and freezing, Jacob retreats, but the garden has quadrupled in length, and it may take a Wandering Jew’s eternity before he reaches the cucumbers, where he kneels behind a screen of dock leaves; where the snail on the pail flexes its stumpy horns; where ants carry patches of rhubarb leaf along the shaft of the hoe; and he wishes the Earth might spin backwards to a time she appeared, asking for rosemary, and he would do it all again, and he would do it all differently.

A doe cries for her yearling, slaughtered for the Lord of Satsuma.

Before the evening muster, Jacob climbs the Watchtower and takes out the persimmon from his jacket pocket. Hollows from the fingers of Aibagawa Orito are indented in her ripe gift and he places his own fingers there, holds the fruit under his nostrils, inhales its gritty sweetness, and rolls its rotundity along his cracked lips. I regret my confession, he thinks, yet what choice did I have? He eclipses the sun with her persimmon: the planet glows orange like a Jack o’ Lantern. There is a dusting around its woody black cap and stem. Lacking a knife or spoon, he takes a nip of waxy skin between his incisors, and tears; juice oozes from the gash; he licks the sweet smears and sucks out a dribbling gobbet of threaded flesh and holds it gently, gently, against the roof of his mouth, where the pulp disintegrates into fermented jasmine, oily cinnamon, perfumed melon, melted damson… and in its heart he finds ten or fifteen flat stones, brown as Asian eyes and the same shape. The sun is gone now, cicadas fall silent, lilacs and turquoises dim and thin into greys and darker greys. A bat passes within a few feet, chased by its own furry turbulence. There is not the faintest breath of a breeze. Smoke emerges from the galley flue on the Shenandoah and sags around the brig’s bows. Her gun-ports are open and the sound of ten dozen sailors dining in her belly carries over the water; and like a struck tuning fork, Jacob reverberates with the parts and the entirety of Orito, with all the her-ness of her. The promise he gave to Anna rubs his conscience like a burr, But Anna, he thinks uneasily, is so far away in miles and in years; and she gave her consent, she as good as gave her consent, and she’d never know, and Jacob’s stomach ingests Orito’s slithery gift. Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us, at the speed of days and nights, and we like to call it ‘Love’.

‘Kapitan Bôru-suten-bôshu,’ intones Interpreter Sekita, a quarter-hour later at the flagpole’s foot. Ordinarily the twice-daily muster is conducted by Constable Kosugi who requires only a minute to check the foreigners, all of whose names and faces he knows. This evening, however, Sekita has decided to assert his authority by conducting the muster whilst the constable stands to one side with a sour face. ‘Where is the…’ Sekita squints at his list ‘… the Bôru- suten-bôshu?’

Sekita’s scribe tells his master that Chief Vorstenbosch is attending the Lord of Satsuma this evening. Sekita administers a rebuke to his scribe and squints at the next name. ‘Where is the… the Banku-rei-fu?’

Sekita’s scribe reminds his master that Deputy van Cleef is with the Chief.

Constable Kosugi clears his throat loudly and unnecessarily.

The interpreter proceeds with the muster list. ‘Ma-ri-as-su…’

Marinus stands with thumbs in his jacket pocket. ‘It is Doctor Marinus.’

Sekita looks up, alarmed. ‘The Marinus need the doctor?’

Gerritszoon and Baert snort, amused: Sekita senses he has made a mistake, and says, ‘Friend in need is friend indeed.’ He peers at the next name: ‘Fui… shâ…’

‘That, I daresay,’ replies Peter Fischer, ‘is I, but one says it thus: “Fischer”.’

‘Yes yes, the Fuishâ.’ Sekita wrestles with the next name. ‘Ôe-hando.’

‘Present, for my sins,’ says Ouwehand, rubbing the ink-stains on his hands.

Sekita dabs his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Dazûto…’

‘Present,’ says Jacob. To list and name people, he thinks, is to subjugate them.

Working down the muster, Sekita butchers the hands’ names: the snide quips with which Gerritszoon and Baert respond do not alter the fact that they must, and do, answer. The White foreigners accounted for, Sekita proceeds to the four servants and four slaves who stand in two groups to the left and right of their masters. The interpreter begins with the servants: Eelattu, Cupido and Philander, then squints at the name of the muster list’s first slave. ‘Su-ya-ko.’

When there is no reply, Jacob looks around for the missing Malay.

Sekita hammers out the syllables, ‘Su-ya-ko,’ but there is no reply.

He fires a foul glare at his scribe, who asks Constable Kosugi a question.

Kosugi tells Sekita, Jacob guesses, ‘This is your mustering so missing names are your problem.’ Sekita addresses Marinus. ‘Where – are – Su-ya-ko?’

The doctor is humming a bass tune. When the verse ends and Sekita is riled, Marinus turns to the servants and slaves. ‘Would you be so kind as to locate Sjako and tell him that he is late for muster?’

The seven men hurry to Long Street, discussing Sjako’s likely whereabouts.

‘I’ll find where the dog is skulking,’ Peter Fischer tells Marinus, ‘faster than that Brown Rabble. Join me, Mr Gerritszoon, you are the man for this job.’

Peter Fischer emerges from Flag Alley less than five minutes later with a bloodied right hand, ahead of some house interpreters who all speak at once to Constable Kosugi and Interpreter Sekita. Moments later Eelattu appears and reports to Marinus in Ceylonese. Fischer informs the other Dutchmen, ‘We found the dung-beetle in the crate store down Bony Alley next to Warehouse Doorn. I’d seen him go in there earlier today.’

‘Why,’ Jacob asks, ‘didn’t you bring him here for mustering?’

Fischer smiles. ‘He shan’t be walking for a little while, I daresay.’

Ouwehand asks, ‘What did you do to him, in Jesus’ name?’