David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘My mercury didn’t fetch so high a price, Con Twomey.’

‘Aye, but with Councillor Unico Vorstenbosch pulling strings for you…’

Jacob climbs into the second tub, thinking of his Investigation.

Unico Vorstenbosch, the clerk wants to say, is a fickle patron.

Heat soaks into his joints and robs him of the urge to speculate aloud.

‘What we need, de Zoet, is a smoke. I’ll fetch us a couple of pipes.’

Con Twomey rises like a stocky King Neptune. Jacob sinks until only a small island of lips, nostrils and eyes remains above the water.

When Twomey returns, Jacob is in a warm trance with his eyes shut. He listens to the carpenter rinse and re-immerse himself. Twomey makes no mention of smoking. Jacob mumbles, ‘Not a shred of leaf to be had, then?’

His neighbour clears his throat. ‘I am Ogawa, Mr de Zoet.’

Jacob lurches and water spills. ‘Mr Ogawa! I – I thought…’

‘You so peaceful,’ says Ogawa Uzaemon, ‘I do not wish disturb.’

‘I met your father earlier but…’ Jacob wipes his eyes, but with the steamy dark and his far-sightedness, his vision is no better. ‘I’ve not seen you since before the typhoon.’

‘I am sorry I could not come. Very many things happen.’

‘Were you able to – to fulfil my request, regarding the dictionary?’

‘Day after typhoon, I send servant to Aibagawa Residence.’

‘Then you didn’t deliver the volume yourself?’

‘Most trusted servant delivered dictionary. He did not say, “Parcel is from Dutchman de Zoet.” He explained, “Parcel is from Hospital on Dejima.” You see, it was misappropriate for me to go. Dr Aibagawa was ill. To visit at such hour is bad… breeding?’

‘I am sorry to hear it. Is he recovered now?’

‘His funeral was conducted a day before yesterday.’

‘Oh.’ Everything, Jacob thinks, is explained. ‘Oh. Then Miss Aibagawa…’

Ogawa hesitates. ‘There is bad news. She must leave Nagasaki…’

Jacob waits and listens, as droplets of condensed steam fall.

‘… for long time, for many years. She shall not return more to Dejima. Of your dictionary, of your letter, of how she thinks, I have no news. I am sorry.’

‘The dictionary be damned – but… where is she going, and why?’

‘It is domain of Abbot Enomoto. Man which bought your mercury…’

The man who kills snakes by magic. The Abbot looms in Jacob’s memory.

‘… he want her to enter temple of…’ Ogawa falters ‘… female monks. How say?’

‘Nuns? Pray don’t tell me Miss Aibagawa’s going to a nunnery.’

‘Species of nunnery, yes… on Mount Shiranui. There she is going.’

‘What use is a midwife to a pack of nuns? Does she want to go?’

‘Dr Aibagawa had great debts with money-lenders, to purchase telescopes et cetera.’ Pain strains Ogawa’s voice. ‘To be scholar is costly. His widow must now pay these debts. Enomoto makes contract, or deal, to widow. He pays debts. She gives Miss Aibagawa for nunnery.’

‘But this is tantamount,’ Jacob protests, ‘to selling her into slavery!’

‘Japanese custom,’ Ogawa sounds hollow, ‘is different to Dutch-’

‘What say her late father’s friends at the Shirandô Academy? Shall they stand by doing nothing whilst a gifted scholar is sold, like a mule, into a life of servitude up some bleak mountain? Would a son be sold to a monastery in such manner? Enomoto is a scholar too, is he not?’

Cooks in the Interpreters’ Guild can be heard laughing through the wall.

‘But,’ Jacob sees another implication, ‘I offered her sanctuary here.’

‘Nothing can be done.’ Ogawa stands up. ‘I must go now.’

‘So… she prefers incarceration to living here, on Dejima?’

Ogawa steps out of the bathtub. His silence is blunt and reproachful.

Jacob sees how boorish he must appear in the interpreter’s eyes: at no small risk, Ogawa tried to help a lovesick foreigner, who now rewards him with resentment. ‘Forgive me, Mr Ogawa, but surely if-’

The outer door slides open and a cheerful whistler enters.

A shadow parts the curtain and asks, in Dutch, ‘Who goes there?’

‘It is Ogawa, Mr Twomey.’

‘Good evening to you, Mr Ogawa. Mr de Zoet, our pipe must wait. Chief Vorstenbosch wishes to discuss an important matter with you in his bureau. Straight away. My bones tell me there is good news waiting.’

‘Why the glum face, de Zoet?’ Investigation into the Misgovernance of Dejima sits in front of Unico Vorstenbosch. ‘Lost in love, have we?’

Jacob is appalled that his secret is known even to his patron.

‘A quip, de Zoet! Nothing more. Twomey says I interrupt your ablutions?’

‘I was just finishing in the Bath House, sir.’

‘Cleanliness being next to godliness, I am told.’

‘I make no claims on godliness, but bathing wards off the lice; and the evenings are a little cooler now.’

‘You do look drawn, de Zoet. Did I drive you too long, too exactingly, on’ – Vorstenbosch drums his fingers on the Investigation – ‘on your assignment?’

‘Exacting or not, sir, my work is my work.’

The Chief Resident nods, like a judge hearing evidence.

‘May I hope that my report does not disappoint your expectations, sir?’

Vorstenbosch unstoppers a decanter of ruby Madeira.

Servants are setting the table in the Dining Room.

The Chief fills his own glass but offers nothing to Jacob. ‘We have gathered painstaking, merit-worthy and undeniable proof of Dejima’s shameful misrule in the nineties, proof that shall justify, amply, my punitive measures against ex-Acting-Chief Daniel Snitker…’

Jacob notices the ‘we’ and the omission of van Cleef’s name.

‘… assuming our proof is presented to Governor van Overstraten with the necessary vigour.’ Vorstenbosch opens the cabinet behind him and takes out another glass.

‘Nobody can doubt,’ Jacob says, ‘that Captain Lacy shall do a good job.’

‘Why should an American care about Company corruption, so long as he makes his profits?’ Vorstenbosch fills a glass and hands it to Jacob. ‘Anselm Lacy is no crusader but a hired hand. Back in Batavia he would dutifully deliver our Investigation to the Governor-General’s Private Secretary and never give it a second thought. The Private Secretary would, like as not, deposit it in a quiet canal, and warn the men you name – and Snitker’s cronies – who would grind their long knives in preparation for our return. No. The whys and wherefores of Dejima’s crisis, its correctives and the justice of Daniel Snitker’s punishment must be explicated by one whose future is bonded with the Company’s. Therefore, de Zoet, I ’ – the pronoun is voiced significantly – ‘shall return to Batavia on the Shenandoah, alone, to prosecute our case.’

The Almelo Clock is loud against the drizzle’s hush and the lamp’s hiss.

‘And,’ Jacob keeps his voice flat and steady, ‘your plans for me, sir?’

‘You are to be my eyes and ears in Nagasaki, until next trading season.’

Without protection, Jacob considers, I shall be eaten alive in a week…

‘I shall, therefore, appoint Peter Fischer as the new head clerk.’

The clatter of consequences tramples over the Almelo Clock.

Without status, Jacob thinks, I shall indeed be a lap-dog, thrown into a bear-pit.

‘The sole candidate for Chief,’ Vorstensbosch is saying, ‘is Mr van Cleef…’

Dejima is a long, long way, Jacob is afraid, from Batavia.

‘… but what say you to the sound of Deputy Chief Resident Jacob de Zoet?’

Morning mustering on the last day of October, 1799