David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Filaments of rain drift across the walled-in scene.

‘In the midst of life we are in death, eh?’

Hanzaburo jumps and Jacob drops his portmanteau.

‘Sorry’f we startled yer, Mr de Z.’ Arie Grote does not look sorry.

Piet Baert appears beside Grote, with a bulky sack on his shoulders.

‘No harm done, Mr Grote.’ Jacob picks up his bag. ‘I shall recover.’

‘More’n that,’ Baert nods at the Eurasian, ‘poor half-an’-half can say.’

As if on cue, the shuffling youth coughs the unmistakable cough.

Hanzaburo is summoned across the street by an idle inspector.

Jacob watches the Eurasian crouch and cough. ‘Who is he?’

Grote spits. ‘Shunsuke Thunberg, beggin’ the query, “Whose is he, eh?” His daddy, so I hear tell, was one Carl Thunberg from Sweden what was Quack here twenty years back for a couple o’ seasons. Like Dr M., he was an educated gent an’ one for the botanisin’ by all accounts, but as yer see, he din’t just harvest seeds hereabouts, eh?’

A three-legged dog licks up the bald cook’s phlegm.

‘Did Mr Thunberg make no provision for his son’s future?’

‘ ’F he did or no,’ Grote sucks through his teeth, ‘ “provision” needs upkeep an’ Sweden ’s far as Saturn, eh? The Company treats its men’s bastards, out o’ pity, but they ain’t allowed out of Nagasaki without a pass; an’ the Magistrate has the final Say-So on their lives ’n’ marriages an’ all. Girls earn a fair clip, while their looks last; the “Corals o’ Maruyama”, the pimps call ’em. But for boys, it’s harder: Thunberg Junior’s a goldfish-breeder I hear, but he’ll be a worm-breeder by an’ by, an’ no mistake.’

Marinus and an older Japanese scholar approach from the Hospital.

Jacob recognises Dr Maeno from the Interpreters’ Guild.

Shunsuke Thunberg’s coughing fit is, at last, easing.

I should have helped, Jacob thinks. ‘Does the poor fellow speak Dutch?’

‘Nah. He was still a babe-in-arms when his daddy sailed away.’

‘What about his mother? A courtesan, one presumes.’

‘Long dead. Well ’scuse us, Mr de Z., but three dozen chickens’re waitin’ at the Customs House f’loadin’ on the Shenandoah what need inspectin’ ’cause last year half of ’em was half-dead, half of ’em was dead an’ three was pigeons what the provisioner called “Rare Japanese Hens”.’

‘Worm-breeder!’ Baert starts laughing. ‘I just smoked yer, Grote!’

Something in Baert’s sack kicks and Grote looks anxious to leave. ‘Off we go then, Greasy Lightnin’.’ They hurry off up Long Street.

Jacob watches Shunsuke Thunberg being helped into the Hospital.

Birds are notched on the low sky. Autumn is aging.

Halfway up two flights of steps to the Chief’s Residence, Jacob encounters Ogawa Mimasaku, the father of Ogawa Uzaemon, coming down.

‘Good day,’ Jacob stands aside, ‘Interpreter Ogawa.’

The older man’s hands are hidden in his sleeves. ‘Clerk de Zoet.’

‘I haven’t seen the younger Mr Ogawa for… it must be four days.’

Ogawa Mimasaku’s face is haughtier and stonier than his son’s.

An inky growth is spreading out from near his ear.

‘My son,’ says the interpreter, ‘is very busy outside of Dejima at this time.’

‘Do you know when he shall be back at the Guild?’

‘No, I do not.’ The tone of rebuff is intentional.

Have you discovered, Jacob wonders, what I asked your son to do?

From the Customs House comes the noise of outraged hens.

A carelessly tossed stone, he frets, can sometimes result in a rock-fall.

‘I was concerned he might be sick, or… or unwell.’

Ogawa Mimasaku’s servants are staring at the Dutchman with disapproval.

‘He is well,’ says the older man. ‘I report your kind concern. Good afternoon.’

‘You find me…’ Vorstenbosch is peering at a bloated cane toad in a specimen jar ‘… enjoying a quiet discourse with Interpreter Kobayashi.’

Jacob looks around before realising the Chief means the toad. ‘I left my sense of humour in bed this morning, sir.’

‘But not, I see,’ Vorstenbosch looks at Jacob’s portmanteau, ‘your Report.’

What lies behind, Jacob wonders, this shift from ‘our’ to ‘your’.

‘The gist, sir, you know from our periodic meetings…’

‘Law requires details, not gist.’ The Chief Resident holds out his palm for the black book. ‘Details beget facts, and facts, judiciously sent forth, become assassins.’

Jacob removes the Investigation and delivers it to the Chief.

Vorstenbosch balances it in his hands, as if determining its weight.

‘Sir, if you’d forgive me, I’m curious about -’

‘- the post you are to hold in the forthcoming year, yes, but you shall wait, young de Zoet, with everyone else, until the Officers’ Supper tonight. The copper quota was the penultimate component of my future plans, and this -’ he holds up the black book ‘- this is the last.’

During the afternoon Jacob works with Ouwehand in the Clerks’ Office, copying this season’s Bills of Lading for the archives. Peter Fischer makes restless exits and entrances, radiating even more hostility than usual. ‘A sign,’ Ouwehand tells Jacob, ‘that he thinks the head clerkship is as good as yours.’ Evening brings steady rain and the coolest air of the season, and Jacob decides to bathe before supper. Dejima’s small Bath House is attached to the Guild’s kitchen: the pans of water are heated on copper-plated hobs jutting through the stone wall, and precedent permits the ranked interpreters to treat the facility as their own, despite the exorbitant price the Company is obliged to pay for charcoal and faggots. Jacob undresses in the outer changing room and crouches to enter the steamy enclosure, little larger than a big cupboard. It smells of cedar wood. Damp heat fills Jacob’s lungs and unplugs the clogged pores on his face. A single storm-lamp, steam-fogged, provides enough light for him to recognise Con Twomey soaking in one of the two tubs. ‘So it is the sulphur of Jean Calvin,’ says the Irishman, in English, ‘making war on my nostrils.’

‘Why,’ Jacob ladles lukewarm water over himself, ‘it’s the Popish heretic, first in the bath, again. Not enough work, is it?’

‘The typhoon gave me all I could wish for. ’Tis daylight I lack.’

Jacob scrubs himself with a wad of sailcloth. ‘Where’s your spy?’

‘Drowned under my fat arse, he is. Where’s your Hanzaburo?’

‘Stuffing his face in the Guild’s Kitchen.’

‘Well, with the Shenandoah leaving next week, he must fatten himself up whilst he may.’ Twomey sinks up to his chin like a dugong. ‘Come a twelve-month, my five years’ service’ll be finished…’

‘Are you fixed,’ Jacob turns away to scrub his groin, ‘on going home?’

They hear the cooks talking in the Interpreters’ Guild.

‘A new start in the New World might suit better, like, I’m thinking.’

Jacob removes the wooden lid from the bathtub.

‘Lacy tells,’ says Twomey, ‘the Indians’re being cleared west of Lousiana…’

Warmth sinks into every muscle and bone in Jacob’s body.

‘… and no man afraid of hard work need go without. Settlers need carts to get where they’re going and houses once they’re there. Lacy reckoned I could work my passage to Charleston from Batavia as ship’s carpenter. I’ve no appetite for war, or being pressed into fighting for the British. Would you go back to Holland in the present weather?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jacob thinks of Anna’s face by a rainy window. ‘I do not know.’

‘A Coffee King you’ll be, sure, with a plantation up in Buitenzorg, or else a Merchant Prince with new warehouses along the Ciliwung…’