David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘Snitker’s word,’ says Lacy, ‘isn’t worth the paper it wasn’t written on.’

‘Just yesterday,’ Marinus lights a taper from the candle and sucks his pipe into life, ‘Sjako learnt this promise is reneged and his freedom is dashed to pieces.’

‘The slave is to stay here,’ says the Chief, ‘for my term of office. Dejima lacks hands.’

‘Then why profess surprise,’ the doctor breathes out a cloud of smoke, ‘at his state of mind? Seven plus five equals twelve when last I looked: twelve years. Sjako was brought here in his seventeenth year: he shan’t be leaving until his twenty-ninth. His son shall be sold long before then, and his wife mated to another.’

‘How can I “renege” on a promise I never made?’ Vorstenbosch objects.

‘That is an acute and logical point, sir,’ says Peter Fischer.

‘My wife and daughters,’ says van Cleef, ‘I haven’t seen in eight years!’

‘You are a deputy,’ Marinus picks at a scab of blood on his cuff, ‘here to make yourself rich. Sjako is a slave, here to make his masters comfortable.’

‘A slave is a slave,’ Peter Fischer declaims, ‘because he does a slave’s work!’

‘What about,’ Lacy cleans his ear with a fork-prong, ‘a night at the theatre, to lift his spirits? We could stage Othello, perhaps?’

‘Are we not in danger,’ asks van Cleef, ‘of losing sight of the principal point? That today a slave attempted to murder two of our colleagues?’

‘Another excellent point, sir,’ says Fischer, ‘if I may say so.’

‘Sjako,’ Marinus places his thumbs together, ‘denies attacking his assailants.’

Fischer leans back on his chair and declares to the chandelier ‘Fa!’

‘Sjako says the two White masters set about him quite unprovoked.’

‘The would-be cut-throat,’ Fischer states, ‘is a liar of the blackest dye.’

‘Blacks do lie,’ Lacy opens his snuff-box, ‘like geese shit slime.’

‘Why,’ Marinus places his pipe on its stand, ‘would Sjako attack you?’

‘Savages don’t need motives!’ Fischer spits in the spittoon. ‘Your type, Dr Marinus, sit at your meetings, nod wisely at wind about “the true cost of the sugar in our tea” from an “Improved Negro” in wig and waistcoat. I, I, am not a man created by Swedish gardens but by Surinam jungles where one sees the Negro in his natural habitat. Earn yourself one of these’ – Peter Fischer unbuttons his shirt to display a three-inch scar above his collarbone – ‘and then tell me a savage has a soul just because he can recite the Lord’s Prayer, like any parrot.’

Lacy peers close, impressed. ‘How did you pick up that souvenir?’

‘Whilst recuperating at Goed Accoord,’ Fischer answers, glowering at the doctor, ‘a plantation on the Commewina, two days upriver from Paramaribo. My platoon had gone to cleanse the basin of runaway slaves who attack in gangs. The colonists call them “Rebels”: I call them “Vermin”. We had burnt many of their nests and yam fields, but the dry season overtook us, when Hell has no worse hole. Not one of my men was free from beri-beri or ring-worm fever. The house-Blacks of Goed Accoord betrayed our weakness, and on the third dawn, they slithered up to the house and attacked. Hundreds of the vipers crawled out of the dry slime and dropped from the trees. With musket, bayonet and bare hands, my men and I made a valiant defence, but when a mace struck my skull, I collapsed. Hours must have passed. When I awoke, my arms and feet were bound. My jaw was – how do you say? – mislocated. I lay in a row of wounded men in the Drawing Room. Some begged for mercy, but no Negro understands the concept. The slave leader arrived and bidded his butchers extract the men’s hearts for their victory feast. This they did,’ Fischer swills his mash around his glass, ‘slowly, without first killing their victims.’

‘Such barbarity and wickedness,’ van Cleef declares, ‘beggars belief!’

Vorstenbosch sends Philander and Weh downstairs for bottles of Rhenish.

‘My unluckier comrades, Swiss Fourgeoud, DeJohnette, and my bosom friend, Tom Isberg, they suffered the agonies of Christ. Their screams shall haunt me until I die, and so shall the Blacks’ laughter. They stored the hearts in a chamber pot, just inches from where I lay. The room stunk of the slaughterhouse; the air was black with flies. It was darkness when my turn came. I was the last but one. They slung me on the table. Despite my fear, I played dead and prayed God to take my soul quickly. One then uttered, “Son de go sleeby caba. Mekewe liby den tara dago tay tamara.” Meaning, the sun was sinking, they’d leave these last two “dogs” for the following day. The drumming, feasting and fornication had begun and the butchers were loath to miss the fun. So, a butcher impaled me to the table with a bayonet, like a butterfly collector’s pin, and I was left without a guard.’

Insects dirty the air over the candelabra like a malign halo.

A rust-coloured lizard sits on the blade of Jacob’s butter-knife.

‘Now, I prayed to God for strength. By twisting my head, I could seize the bayonet’s blade between my teeth and slowly work it loose. I lost pints of blood, but refused to succumb to weakness. My freedom was won. Under the table was Joosse, my platoon’s last survivor. Joosse was a Zeelander, like Clerk de Zoet…’

Well, now, thinks Jacob, what an opportune coincidence.

‘… and Joosse was a coward, I am sorry to say. He was too afraid to move until my Reason conquered his fear. Under the coat of darkness, we left Goed Accoord behind. For seven days, we beat a path through that green pestilence with our bare hands. We had no food but the maggots breeding in our wounds. Many times, Joosse begged to be allowed to die. But honour obliged me to protect even the frail Zeelander from death. Finally, by God’s grace, we reached Fort Sommelsdyck, where the Commewina meets the Cottica. We were more dead than alive. My superior officer confessed later that he had expected me to die within hours. “Never underestimate a Prussian again,” I told him. The Governor of Surinam presented me with a medal, and six weeks later I led two hundred men back to Goed Accoord. A glorious revenge was extracted on the Vermin, but I am not a man who brags of his own achievements.’

Weh and Philander return with the bottles of Rhenish.

‘A most edifying history,’ says Lacy. ‘I salute your courage, Mr Fischer.’

‘The passage where you ate the maggots,’ remarks Marinus, ‘rather over-egged the brûlée.’

‘The doctor’s disbelief,’ Fischer addresses the senior officers, ‘is caused by his sentimental attitudes to savages, I am very sorry to say.’

‘The doctor’s disbelief,’ Marinus peers at the label on the Rhenish, ‘is a natural reaction to vainglorious piffle.’

‘Your accusations,’ Fischer retorts, ‘deserve no reply.’

Jacob finds an island chain of mosquito bites across his hand.

‘Slavery may be an injustice to some,’ says van Cleef, ‘but no one can deny that all Empires are founded upon the institution.’

‘Then may the Devil,’ Marinus twists in the corkscrew, ‘take all Empires.’

‘What an extraordinary utterance,’ declares Lacy, ‘to hear from the mouth of a colonial officer!’

‘Extraordinary,’ agrees Fischer, ‘and revealing, not to say Jacobinical.’

‘I am no “colonial officer”: I am a physician, scholar and traveller.’

‘You hunt for your fortune,’ says Lacy, ‘courtesy of the Dutch Empire.’

‘My treasure is botanical.’ The cork pops. ‘The fortunes I leave to you.’

‘How very “Enlightened”, outré and French, which nation, by the by, learnt the perils of abolishing slavery. Anarchy set the Caribbean alight; plantations were pillaged; men strung up from trees; and by the time Paris had its Negroes back in chains, Hispaniola was lost.’