David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘To Abbot Enomoto-no-kami,’ the women chorus, ‘our spiritual guide…’

Orito pictures herself spitting on the illustrious colleague of her late father.

‘… whose sagacity guides the Shrine of Mount Shiranui…’

Abbess Izu and Housekeeper Satsuki notice Orito’s motionless lips.

‘… we, the Daughters of Izanazô render the gratitude of the nurtured child.’

It is a passive, futile protest but Orito lacks the means of more active dissent.

‘To Abbot Genmu-no-kami, whose wisdom protects the House of Sisters…’

Orito glares at Housekeeper Satsuki, who looks away, embarrassed.

‘… we, the Daughters of Izanazô render the gratitude of the justly-governed.’

Orito glares at Abbess Izu, who absorbs her defiance, kindly.

‘To the Goddess of Shiranui, Fountainhead of Life and Mother of Gifts…’

Orito looks over the heads of the sisters opposite to the hanging scrolls.

‘… we, the Sisters of Shiranui render the fruits of our wombs…’

The scrolls display seasonal paintings and quotations from Shintô texts.

‘… so that fertility cascades over Kyôga, so famine and drought are banished…’

The centre shows the Sisters’ precedence, ranked by numbers of births.

Exactly like, Orito thinks with disgust, a stable of sumo-wrestlers.

‘… so that the wheel of life shall turn through eternity…’

The wooden tablet inscribed ‘Orito’ is on the far right position.

‘… until the last star burns out and the wheel of Time is broken.’

Abbess Izu strikes her gong once to indicate the sutra’s conclusion. Housekeeper Satsuki closes the doors to the Prayer Room while Asagao and Sadaie bring rice and miso soup from the adjacent Kitchen.

When Abbess Izu strikes the gong again, the Sisters begin breakfast.

Speech and eye contact are forbidden, but friends pour one another’s water.

Fourteen mouths – Yayoi is excused today – chew, slurp and swallow.

What fine foods is Stepmother eating today? Hatred churns Orito’s insides.

Every Sister leaves a few grains of rice to feed the spirits of their ancestors.

Orito does the same, reasoning that in this place, any and all allies are needed.

Abbess Izu strikes the tubular gong to indicate the end of the meal. As Sadaie and Asagao clear the dishes, pink-eyed Hashihime asks Abbess Izu about the sick acolyte, Jiritsu.

‘He is being nursed in his cell,’ replies the Abbess. ‘He has a trembling fever.’

Several of the Sisters cover their mouths and murmur in alarm.

Why such pity, Orito burns to ask, for one of your captors?

‘A porter in Kurozane died from the disease: poor Jiritsu may have breathed in the same vapours. Master Suzaku asked us to pray for the acolyte’s recovery.’

Most of the Sisters nod earnestly, and promise to do so.

Abbess Izu then assigns the day’s housekeeping. ‘Sisters Hatsune and Hashihime, continue yesterday’s weaving. Sister Kiritsubo is to sweep the Cloisters; and Sister Umegae, twist the flax in the storeroom into twine, with Sisters Minori and Yûgiri. At the Hour of the Horse, go to the Great Shrine to polish the floor. Sister Yûgiri may be excused this, if she wishes, on account of her Gift.’

What ugly, twisted words, thinks Orito, for malformed thoughts.

Every head in the room looks at Orito. She spoke aloud again.

‘Sisters Hotaru and Sawarabi,’ continues the Abbess, ‘dust the Prayer Room, then attend to the latrines. Sisters Asagao and Sadaie are on Kitchen duty, of course, so Sister Kagerô and our Newest Sister,’ the crueller eyes turn to Orito, saying, see the fine lady, working like one of her old servants, ‘are to work in the Laundry. If Sister Yayoi is feeling better, she may join them.’

The Laundry, a long annex to the Kitchen, has two hearths to heat water, a pair of large tubs for washing linen, and a rack of bamboo poles where laundry is hung. Orito and Kagerô carry buckets of water from the pool in the Courtyard. To fill each tub costs forty or fifty trips and the two do not talk. At first the samurai’s daughter was exhausted by the work, but now her legs and arms are tougher, and the blisters on her palms are covered with calloused skin. Yayoi tends the fires to heat the water.

‘Soon,’ Fat Rat balances on the slop barrow, ‘your belly shall look like hers.’

‘I shan’t let the dogs touch me,’ mutters Orito. ‘I shan’t be here.’

‘Your body isn’t yours any more.’ Fat Rat smirks. ‘It’s the Goddess’s.

Orito loses her footing on the kitchen step and spills the bucket of water.

‘I don’t know how,’ says Kagerô, coolly, ‘we ever coped without you.’

‘The floor needed a good wash, anyway.’ Yayoi helps Orito mop the spillage.

When the water is warm enough, Yayoi stirs in the blankets and nightshirts. With wooden tongs, Orito transfers them, dripping and heavy, on to the laundry vice, a slanted table with a hinged door that Kagerô closes to squeeze out the water from the linen. Kagerô then hangs the damp laundry on the bamboo poles. Through the Kitchen door, Sadaie is telling Yayoi about last night’s dream. ‘There was a knocking at the gate. I left my room… it was summer – but it didn’t feel like summer, or night, or day… The House was deserted. Still, the knocking went on, so I asked, “Who is it?” And a man’s voice replied, “It’s me, it’s Iwai.” ’

‘Sister Sadaie was delivered of her first Gift,’ Yayoi tells Orito, ‘last year.’

‘Born on the Fifth Day of the Fifth Month,’ says Sadaie, ‘the Day of Boys.’

The date makes the women think of carp-streamers and festive innocence.

‘So Abbot Genmu,’ Sadaie continues, ‘named him Iwai, as in “Celebration”.’

‘A brewer’s family in Takamatsu,’ Yayoi says, ‘called Takaishi adopted him.’

Orito is hidden by a cloud of steam. ‘So I understand.’

Asagao says, ‘Phut you uur spheaking a’out your drean, Sister…’

‘Well,’ Sadaie scrubs at a crust of burnt-on rice, ‘I was surprised that Iwai had grown up so quickly, and worried that he’d be in trouble for breaking the Rule that bans Gifts from Mount Shiranui. But,’ she looks in the direction of the Prayer Room and lowers her voice, ‘I had to unbolt the Inner Gate.’

‘The ’olt,’ Asagao asks, ‘’os on the inside oph the Inner Gate, you say.’

‘Yes, it was. It didn’t occur to me at the time. So the gate opened-’

Yayoi provides a cry of impatience. ‘What did you see, Sister?’

‘Dry leaves. No Gift, no Iwai, just dry leaves. The wind carried them away.’

‘Now that,’ Kagerô puts her weight on the vice’s handle, ‘is an ill omen.’

Sadaie is unnerved by Kagerô’s certainty. ‘Do you really think so, Sister?’

‘How could your Gift turning into dead leaves be a good omen?’

‘Sister Kagerô,’ Yayoi stirs the cauldron, ‘you’ll upset Sadaie.’

‘Just speaking the truth,’ Kagerô squeezes out the water, ‘as I see it.’

‘Could you tell,’ Asagao asks Sadaie, ‘I’ai’s phather phon his phoice?’

‘That’s it,’ says Yayoi. ‘Your dream was a clue about Iwai’s father.’

Even Kagerô shows interest in the theory: ‘Which monks were your Engifters?’

Housekeeper Satsuki enters the Laundry carrying a new box of soap-nuts.

The rarefied sunset turns the snow-veined Bare Peak a bloodied fish pink and the evening star is as sharp as a needle. Smoke and smells of cooking leak from the Kitchen. With the exception of the week’s two cooks, the women’s time is their own until Master Suzaku’s arrival prior to supper. Orito embarks on her anti-clockwise walk around the Cloisters to distract her body from its clamorous longing for her Solace. Several Sisters are gathered in the Long Room, whitening one another’s faces or blackening their teeth. Yayoi is resting in her cell. Blind Sister Minori is teaching a koto arrangement of ‘Eight Miles Through a Mountain Pass’ to Sadaie. Umegae, Hashihime and Kagerô are also taking exercise, clockwise, around the Cloisters. Orito is obliged to stand aside as they pass. For the thousandth time since her kidnapping, Orito wishes she had the means to write. Unauthorised letters to the outside world, she knows, are forbidden, and she would burn anything she wrote for fear of her thoughts being exposed. But an ink-brush, she thinks, is a skeleton key for a prisoner’s mind. Abbess Izu has promised to present her with a writing set after her first Gifting is confirmed.