David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘Less than the slave deserves. He was drinking stolen spirits and spoke to us in an abusive manner unforgivable in an equal, let alone a stinking Malay. When Mr Gerritszoon made shift to correct this impertinence with a length of rattan, he changed into a Black Fury, howled like a blood-crazed wolf and tried to batter our skulls with a crowbar.’

‘Then why did none of us,’ Jacob demands, ‘hear this blood-crazed howl?’

‘Because,’ Fischer expostulates, ‘he closed the door first, Clerk de Zoet!’

‘Sjako’d never hurt an ant,’ says Ivo Oost, ‘not so far as I know.’

‘Perhaps you are too close,’ Fischer refers to Oost’s blood, ‘to be impartial.’

Arie Grote gently removes a whittling knife from Oost’s grip. Marinus gives Eelattu an order in Ceylonese, and the servant runs in the direction of the Hospital. The doctor hurries as fast as his lameness allows into Flag Alley. Jacob follows, ignoring Sekita’s protestations, ahead of Constable Kosugi and his guards.

The evening light turns the whitewashed warehouses of Long Street dim bronze. Jacob catches up with Marinus. At the Crossroads they turn down Bony Alley, pass Warehouse Doorn and enter the hot, dim, cramped crate store.

‘Oh, you took yer time,’ says Gerritszoon, sat on a sack, ‘din’t yer?’

‘Where’s-’ Jacob sees the answer to his question.

The sack is Sjako. His once-handsome head is on the floor in a pond of blood; his lip is slit; one eye is half disappeared; and he gives no sign of life. Splintered crates, a smashed bottle and a broken chair lie around. Gerritszoon kneels on Sjako’s back, binding the slave’s wrists.

The others crowd into the crate store behind Jacob and the Doctor.

‘Jesus, Mary,’ Con Twomey exclaims, ‘and Oliver fecking Cromwell, man!’

The Japanese witnesses utter expressions of shock in their language.

‘Unfasten him,’ Marinus tells Gerritszoon, ‘and stay out of my reach.’

‘Oh, you ain’t the Chief an’ y’ain’t the Deputy neither an’ I swear by God-’

‘Unfasten him now,’ the doctor commands, ‘or when that bladder-stone of yours is so big that your piss is blood and you are screaming like a terrified child for a lithotomy, then I swear by my God that my hand shall slip with tragic, slow and agonising consequences.’

‘ ’Twas our duty,’ Gerritszoon growls, ‘to beat the evil out of him.’

He stands away. ‘It’s his life,’ declares Ivo Oost, ‘you beat out of him.’

Marinus hands his stick to Jacob and kneels by the slave’s side.

‘Were we supposed to look on,’ Fischer asks, ‘and let him kill us?’

Marinus works the cord free. With Jacob’s help, he tries to turn Sjako over.

‘Well, Chief V. ain’t goin’ to be pleased,’ sniffs Arie Grote, ‘at this handlin’ an’ stowage of Company property, eh?’

A cry of pain grows from Sjako’s chest, and fades again.

Marinus bundles his coat under Sjako’s head, murmurs to the beaten Malay in his own language and examines the opened skull. The slave shudders and Marinus grimaces and asks, ‘Why is there glass in this head wound?’

‘Like I said,’ replies Fischer, ‘if you listened, he was drinking stolen rum.’

‘And attacked himself,’ asks Marinus, ‘with the bottle in his hand?’

‘I wrestled it off of ’im,’ says Gerritszoon, ‘to use on ’im.’

‘The black dog tried to murder us!’ Fischer is shouting. ‘With a hammer!’

‘Hammer? Crowbar? Bottle? You’d better tally your story better than that.’

‘I shan’t tolerate,’ threatens Fischer, ‘these – these insinuations, Doctor.’

Eelattu arrives with the stretcher. Marinus tells Jacob, ‘Help, Domburger.’

Sekita taps aside the house interpreters with his fan and looks at the scene in disgust. ‘That is the Su-ya-ko?’

The first course of the officers’ supper is a sweet soup of French onions. Vorstenbosch drinks it in displeased silence. He and van Cleef returned to Dejima in buoyant spirits, but these were dashed by news of Sjako’s beating. Marinus is still at the Hospital, treating the Malay’s many wounds. The Chief even dismissed Cupido and Philander from their musical duties, saying that he was not in the mood for music. It is left to Deputy van Cleef and Captain Lacy to entertain the company with their impressions of the Nagasaki residence of the Lord of Satsuma and his household. Jacob suspects that his patron doesn’t wholly believe Fischer’s and Gerritszoon’s version of events in the crate store, but to say so would place the word of a Black slave above a White officer and hand. ‘What sort of precedent,’ Jacob imagines Vorstenbosch thinking, ‘would that set for the other slaves and servants?’ Fischer maintains a cautious reserve, sensing that his hopes of retaining the head clerk’s post are in jeopardy. When Arie Grote and his kitchen boy serve up the venison pie, Captain Lacy despatches his servant for a half-dozen bottles of barley mash, but Vorstenbosch doesn’t notice: he mutters, ‘What in God’s name is keeping Marinus?’ and sends Cupido to fetch the doctor. Cupido is a long time gone. Lacy recounts a polished narrative about fighting alongside George Washington at the Battle of Bunker Hill and devours three servings of apricot pudding before Marinus limps into the Dining Room.

‘We had despaired,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘of your joining us, Doctor.’

‘A cracked clavicle,’ Marinus sits down, ‘a fractured ulna; a broken jaw; a splintered rib; three teeth gone; grievous bruising in general, to his face and genitals in particular; and a kneecap part detached from its femur. When he walks again, he shall limp as skilfully as I, and, as you saw, his looks are gone for good.’

Fischer drinks his Yankee mash as if this has nothing to do with him.

‘Then the slave is not,’ asks van Cleef, ‘in danger of his life?’

‘As of now, no, but I don’t discount infections and fevers.’

‘For how long,’ Vorstenbosch snaps a toothpick, ‘should he convalesce?’

‘Until he is healed. Thereafter, I recommend his duties be light.’

Lacy snorts. ‘Here, all slaves’ duties are light: Dejima is a field of clover.’

‘Have you extracted,’ asks Vorstenbosch, ‘the slave’s version of events?’

‘I hope, sir,’ Fischer says, ‘that Mr Gerritszoon’s and my testimony is more than a mere “version of events”.’

‘Damage to Company property must be investigated, Fischer.’

Captain Lacy fans himself with his hat. ‘In Carolina, it would be Mr Fischer’s compensation from the slave’s owners we’d be discussing.’

‘After, one trusts, establishing the facts. Dr Marinus: why did the slave absent himself from the mustering? He’s been here years. He knows the rules.’

‘I’d blame those same “years”.’ Marinus spoons himself some pudding, ‘They have worn away at him and induced a nervous collapse.’

‘Doctor, you are -’ Lacy laughs and chokes ‘- you are incomparable! A “nervous collapse”? What next? A mule too melancholic to pull? A hen too lachrymose to lay?’

‘Sjako has a wife and son in Batavia,’ says Marinus. ‘When Gijsbert Hemmij brought him to Dejima seven years ago, this family was divided. Hemmij promised Sjako his freedom in return for faithful service when he returned to Java.’

‘Had I but one dollar for every nigger spoilt,’ Lacy exclaims, ‘by a rashly promised manumission, I could buy all of Florida!’

‘But when Chief Hemmij died,’ van Cleef objects, ‘his promise died too.’

‘This spring, Daniel Snitker told Sjako the oath would be honoured after the trading season. Sjako was led to believe,’ Marinus stuffs tobacco into his pipe, ‘he would be sailing to Batavia as a free man in a few weeks’ time, and had fixed his heart on labouring for his family’s liberty upon the Shenandoah’s arrival.’