David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Yayoi takes her friend’s hand and places it on her belly.

Orito feels the bulges move. ‘Twins,’ she says, ‘without a doubt.’

‘Arriving at the village that very night, however,’ Yayoi’s tone becomes low and droll, ‘so the story goes, was Yôben the Seer. For seven days and seven nights a white fox had led the holy man, whose halo of starlight lit his path, under mountains and across lakes. His long journey ended when the fox jumped on to the roof of a humble farmhouse above a village that barely warranted a name. Yôben knocked, and at the sight of such a personage, my father fell to his knees. When he heard about my birth, Yôben the Seer pronounced,’ Yayoi changes her voice, ‘ “The fox’s ears of the baby girl were no curse, but a blessing from our Lady Kannon.” By abandoning me, Father had spurned Kannon’s grace and invited her wrath. The baby girl had to be rescued, at all costs, before disaster struck…’

A door along the passageway is slid open and shut.

‘As my father and Yôben the Seer approached the Place of Winnowing,’ Yayoi continues her recital, ‘they heard all the dead babies wailing for their mothers. They heard wolves bigger than horses, howling for fresh meat. My father quivered with fear, but Yôben uttered holy incantations so they could pass through the ghosts and wolves unhurt, and enter the circle of pointed rocks, where all was calm and warm as the first day of spring. Lady Kannon sat there, with the white fox, breastfeeding Yayoi, the magical child. Yôben and my father sank to their knees. In a voice like the waves of a lake, Lady Kannon commanded Yôben to travel throughout the empire with me, healing the sick in her holy name. The mystic protested he wasn’t worthy, but the baby, who at one day old could speak, told him, “Where there is despair, let us bring hope: where there is death, let us breathe life.” What could he do but obey the Lady?’ Yayoi sighs and tries to make her distended stomach more comfortable. ‘So whenever Yôben the Seer and the Magical Fox Girl arrived at a new town, that was the story he put about to drum up trade.’

‘May I ask,’ Orito lies on her side, ‘whether Yôben was your real father?’

‘Maybe I say, “No,” because I don’t want it to be true…’

The night wind plays a rattling flue like a rank amateur plays shakuhachi flute.

‘… but certainly, my earliest memories are of sick people holding my ears as I breathe into their rotten mouths, and of their dying eyes, saying, “Heal me”, of the filthiest inns, of Yôben standing in marketplaces, reading “testimonials” to my powers from great families.’

Orito thinks of her own childhood amongst scholars and books.

‘Yôben dreamt of audiences at palaces, and we spent a year in Edo, but he smelt too much of the showman… of hunger… and, simply, he smelt too much. During our six or seven years on the road, the quality of our inns never improved. All his misfortunes, of course, were my fault, especially when he was drunk. One day, near the end, after we’d been chased out of a town, a fellow healing-trickster told him that where a magical fox girl could squeeze money from the desperate and dying, a magical fox woman was another matter. That got Yôben to thinking, and within the month he sold me to a brothel in Osaka.’ Yayoi looks at her hand. ‘My life there, I try hard to forget. Yôben didn’t even say goodbye. Perhaps he couldn’t face me. Perhaps he was my father.’

Orito wonders at Yayoi’s apparent lack of rancour.

‘When the Sisters tell you, “The House is far, far better than a brothel,” they don’t mean to be cruel. Well, one or two may, but not the others. For every successful geisha with wealthy patrons vying for her favours, there are five hundred chewed-up, spat-out girls dying of brothel diseases. This must be cold comfort for a woman of your rank, and I know you’ve lost a better life than the rest of us, but the House of Sisters is only a Hell, a prison, if you think it is. The masters and acolytes treat us kindly. Engiftment is an unusual duty, but is it so different from the duty any husband demands from his wife? The duty is certainly paid less often – much less.’

Orito is frightened by Yayoi’s logic. ‘But twenty years!’

‘Time passes. Sister Hatsune is leaving in two years. She can settle in the same town as one of her Gifts, with a stipend. Departed Sisters write to Abbess Izu, and they are fond and grateful letters.’

Shadows sway and coagulate amongst the low rafters.

‘Why did the last Newest Sister hang herself?’

‘Because being parted from her Gift broke her mind.’

Orito lets time pass. ‘And it’s not too much for you?’

‘Of course it hurt. But they haven’t died. They are in the World Below, well fed and cared-for, and thinking about us. After our Descent we can even meet them, if we wish it. It’s a… strange life, I don’t deny it, but earn Master Genmu’s trust, earn the Abbess’s trust, and it needn’t be a harsh life, or a wasted one…’

The day I believe this, Orito thinks, is the day Shiranui Shrine owns me.

‘… and you have me here,’ says Yayoi, ‘whatever this is worth.’

An hour before dinner on the Twenty-ninth Day of the Eleventh Month

‘Lithotomy: from the Greek lithos for “stone”; and tomos, for “cut”.’ Marinus addresses his four pupils. ‘Remind us, Mr Muramoto.’

‘Remove stone from bladder, kidneys, gall-bladder, Doctor.’

‘ “Till Kingdom Come…” ’ Wybo Gerritszoon is drunk, senseless, naked between his nipples and his socks, and trussed on the backward-slanting operating table like a frog on a dissection board. ‘ “Who Art Unleavened Bread…” ’

Uzaemon takes the patient’s words to be a Christian mantra.

Charcoal in the brazier rumbles; snow fell last night.

Marinus rubs his hands. ‘Symptoms of bladder stones, Mr Kajiwaki?’

‘Blood in urine, Doctor, pain to urine, and wants to urine but cannot.’

‘Indeed. A further symptom is fear of surgery, delaying the sufferer’s decision to undergo his stone’s removal until he can no longer lie down without aching to piss, notwithstanding that these few…’ Marinus peers at Gerritszoon’s dribble of pink urine in its specimen dish ‘… drops are all he can muster. Implying that the stone is now positioned… where, Mr Yano?’

‘ “Hello’ed be thy Daily Heaven…” ’ Gerritszoon belches. ‘Howz’ fockit go?’

Yano mimes a constriction with his fist. ‘Stone… stop… water.’

‘So,’ Marinus sniffs, ‘the stone is blocking the urethra. What fate awaits the patient who cannot pass urine, Mr Ikematsu?’

Uzaemon watches Ikematsu deduce the whole from the parts, ‘cannot’, ‘urine’ and ‘fate’. ‘Body who cannot pass urine cannot make blood pure, Doctor. Body die of dirty blood.’

‘It dies.’ Marinus nods. ‘The Great Hippocrates warned the phys-’

‘Will yer cork yer quack’n’ an’ do thef’ckin’t’doit yer f’ck’r…’

Jacob de Zoet and Con Twomey, here to assist the doctor, exchange glances.

Marinus takes a length of cotton dressing from Eelattu; tells Gerritszoon, ‘Open, please’, and gags his mouth. ‘The Great Hippocrates warned the physician to “cut no stones” and leave the job to lowly surgeons; the Roman Ammonius Lithotomus, the Hindoo Susruta and the Arab Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi – who, en passant, invented the ancestor of this -’ Marinus wiggles his blood-encrusted double-sided scalpel ‘- would cut the perineum’ – the doctor lifts the outraged Dutchman’s penis and indicates between its root and the anus – ‘here, by the pubic symphysis.’ Marinus drops the penis. ‘Rather more than half the patients in those bad old days died… in agonies.’