David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Goto assumes ‘rampant’ is ‘deadly’ and must reconstruct the final clause.

Marinus’s attention, meanwhile, has drifted away over the scholars’ heads.

Yoshida Hayato clears his throat to indicate that he has a question.

Ôtsuki Monjurô looks at the still-absent Marinus, then nods his consent.

Yoshida writes Dutch more fluently than many interpreters, but the geographer fears making a mistake in public, so he addresses Goto Shinpachi in Japanese. ‘Please ask Dr Marinus this, Interpreter: if Science is sentient, what are its ultimate desires? Or, to phrase this question another way, when the doctor’s imagined Sleeper awakens in the year 1899, shall the world most closely resemble Paradise or the Inferno?’

Goto’s fluency is slower in the Japanese-to-Dutch headwind, but Marinus is pleased by the question. He rocks gently to and fro. ‘I shan’t know until I see it, Mr Yoshida.’

The Twenty-sixth Day of the Eleventh Month

Don’t let it be me, Orito prays, don’t let it be me. The Goddess is disrobed for the Annunciation of Engifting: her exposed breasts are ample with milk; and her belly, devoid of a navel, is swollen with a female foetus so fertile, according to Abbess Izu, that the foetus’s own tiny womb encloses a still smaller female foetus, which is, in turn, impregnated with a still smaller daughter… and so on, to infinity. The Abbess watches the nine unEngifted Sisters during the Sutra of Supplication. For ten days, Orito has acted the part of the penitent Sister in hopes of earning access to the Precincts and a quiet escape over the wall, but her hopes have come to nothing. She has dreaded this day since she saw Yayoi’s pregnant belly and understood what it must mean, and now that day is here. Speculation about the Goddess’s choice has been rife. To Orito it has been unbearable. ‘One of the Two has to be the Newest Sister,’ said Umegae, with cruel satisfaction. ‘The Goddess will want Sister Orito to feel at home here as soon as possible.’ Blind Minori, in her eighteenth year here, says that Newest Sisters are Engifted by the fourth month, at the latest, but not always the second. Yayoi suggested that the Goddess may give Kagerô and Minori, neither of whom conceived a Gift last month despite being chosen, another chance, but Orito suspects that Yayoi said so to calm her fears, not because it is true.

The Prayer Room falls silent. The sutra is over.

Don’t let it be me. The waiting is unendurable. Don’t let it be me.

Abbess Izu strikes her tubular gong. The chime rises and falls in waves.

The Sisters press their head against the tatami mat in obeisance.

Like criminals, Orito thinks, waiting for the executioner’s sword.

The Abbess’s ceremonial clothes rustle. ‘Sisters of Mount Shiranui…’

The nine women all keep their foreheads on the floor.

‘The Goddess has instructed Master Genmu that, in the Eleventh Month -’

A fallen icicle shatters on the Cloister walkway and Orito jumps.

‘- in the Eleventh Month of the Eleventh Year of the Kansei Era -’

This is not where I belong, Orito thinks. This is not where I belong.

‘- the two Sisters to be Engifted in her name are Kagerô and Hashihime.’

Orito smothers a groan of relief but cannot quieten her pounding heart.

Won’t you thank me, the Goddess asks Orito, for sparing you this month?

I can’t hear you. Orito is careful to keep her mouth closed. Lump of wood.

Next month, the Goddess laughs like Orito’s stepmother, I promise.

Engiftment Days usher holiday mood into the House of Sisters. Within minutes, Kagerô and Hashihime are being congratulated in the Long Room. Orito is dumbfounded at the sincerity of the other women’s envy. Talk turns to the clothes, scents and oils the Goddess’s choices shall wear to welcome their Engifters. Rice-dumplings and azuki beans sweetened with honey arrive for breakfast; sake and tobacco are sent from Abbot Enomoto’s storehouse. Kagerô’s and Hashihime’s cells are decorated with paper ornaments. Orito feels nauseous at this celebration of obligatory impregnation and is grateful when the sun shows its face and Abbess Izu has her and Sawarabi collect, air and beat the House’s bedding. The straw-filled mattresses are folded over a pole in the Courtyard and, in rapid turns, struck with a bamboo beater: a faint fog of dust and mites hangs in the cold bright air. Sawarabi is a sturdy daughter of peasants from the Kirishima plateau but the doctor’s daughter soon lags behind. Sawarabi notices, and is kind enough to suggest that they have a short rest, and sits on a pile of futons. ‘I hope you aren’t too disappointed that the Goddess overlooked you this month, Newest Sister.’

Orito, still catching her breath, shakes her head.

Across the Cloisters, Asagao and Hotaru are feeding crumbs to a squirrel.

Sawarabi reads others well. ‘Don’t be afraid of Engiftment. You can see for yourself the privileges Yayoi and Yûguri are enjoying: more food, better bedding, charcoal… and now the services of a learned midwife! What princess would be so pampered? The monks are kinder than husbands, much cleaner than brothel customers, and there are no Mothers-in-Law cursing your stupidity for giving birth to daughters but turning into Jealousy Incarnate when you produce a male heir.’

Orito pretends to agree. ‘Yes, Sister. I see that.’

Thawed snow falls from the old pine with a flat thud.

Stop lying, Fat Rat watches from under the Cloisters, and stop fighting.

‘Really, Sister,’ Sawarabi hesitates, ‘compared to what blemished girls suffer…’

The Goddess, Fat Rat stands on its hind legs, is your gentle, patient mother.

‘… down there,’ Sawarabi says, ‘in the World Below, this place is a palace.’

Asagao and Hotaru’s squirrel darts up a Cloister pillar.

Bare Peak is so sharp it might be etched on to glass with a needle.

My burn, Orito cannot add, doesn’t diminish the crime of my abduction.

‘Let’s finish the futons,’ she says, ‘before the others think we’re idling.’

The chores are done by mid-afternoon. A triangle of sunshine still lies over the pool in the Courtyard. In Long Room, Orito helps Housekeeper Satsuki repair nightgowns: needlework, she finds, numbs her longing for Solace. From the Training Ground across the Precincts ebbs the sound of the monks practising with bamboo swords. Charcoal and pine-needles rumble and snap in the brazier. Abbess Izu is seated at the head of the table, stitching a short mantra into one of the hoods worn by the Sisters at their Engiftment. Hashihime and Kagerô, wearing blood-red sashes as a mark of the Goddess’s favour, are applying each other’s face-powder; one of the few objects denied even to the highest-ranked Sisters is a mirror. With ill-concealed malevolence, it is Umegae’s turn to ask Orito whether she has recovered from her disappointment.

‘I am learning,’ Orito manages to say, ‘to submit to the Goddess’s will.’

‘Surely the Goddess,’ Kagerô assures Orito, ‘shall choose you next time.’

‘The Newest Sister,’ observes Blind Minori, ‘sounds happier in her new life.’

‘It certainly took her long enough,’ mutters Umegae, ‘to come to her senses.’

‘Getting used to the House,’ counters Kiritsubo, ‘can take time: remember that poor girl from Goto Island? She sobbed every night for two years.’

Pigeons scuffle and trill in the eaves of the Cloisters.

‘The Sister from Goto found joy in her three healthy Gifts,’ states Abbess Izu.