David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Arashiyama whispers to Uzaemon, ‘What’s a hydra?’

Uzaemon knows but shrugs, unwilling to lose more of van Cleef’s sentences.

‘We make a toast, one by one,’ says Goto Shinpachi, ‘and -’

‘- and get drunker and drunker,’ belches Sekita, ‘minute by minute.’

‘… whereby our joint desires,’ van Cleef sways, ‘forge a – a – brighter future.’

As the custom dictates, each diner fills his neighbour’s glass.

‘And so, gentlemen,’ Van Cleef raises his glass, ‘to the Nineteenth Century!’

The room echoes the toast, despite its irrelevance to the Japanese calendar.

Uzaemon notices how unwell he is feeling.

‘I give you friendship,’ Deputy Fischer says, ‘betwixt Europe and the East!’

How often, wonders Uzaemon, am I doomed to hear these same hollow words?

Interpreter Kobayashi looks at Uzaemon. ‘To soon recovery of very dear friends, Ogawa Mimasaku and Gerritszoon-san.’ So Uzaemon must stand and bow to Kobayashi the Elder, knowing that he is manoeuvring at the Interpreters’ Guild to have his son promoted over Uzaemon’s head to Second Rank when Ogawa the Elder accepts the inevitable and retires from his coveted post.

Dr Marinus’s turn is next: ‘To the seekers of truth.’

For the benefit of the inspectors, Interpreter Yoshio proposes in Japanese, ‘To health of our wise, beloved Magistrate.’ Yoshio also has a son in the Third Rank with high hopes for the upcoming vacancies. To the Dutch, he says, ‘To our rulers.’

This is the game one must play, thinks Uzaemon, to rise at the Guild.

Jacob de Zoet swirls his wine. ‘To all our loved ones, near or far.’

The Dutchman happens to catch Uzaemon’s eye, and they both avert their gaze whilst the toast is chorused. The interpreter is still turning his napkin ring moodily when Goto clears his throat. ‘Ogawa-san?’

Uzaemon looks up to find the entire company looking at him.

‘Pardon, gentlemen, the wine stole my tongue.’

Goblin laughter sloshes around the room. The diners’ faces swell and recede. Lips do not correspond to blurred words. Uzaemon wonders, as consciousness drains away, Am I dying?

The steps of Higashizaka Street are slippery with frozen slush and strewn with bones, rags, decayed leaves and excrement. Uzaemon and bow-legged Yohei climb past a chestnut stall. The smell makes the interpreter’s stomach threaten rebellion. Unaware of the approaching samurai, a beggar up ahead is pissing against a wall. Lean dogs, kites and crows squabble over the street’s mean pickings.

From a doorway comes a funerary mantra and tendril of incense.

Shuzai is expecting me for sword practice, Uzaemon remembers…

A heavily pregnant girl at a crossroads is selling pig-fat candles.

… but to pass out twice in one day would start unhelpful rumours.

Uzaemon bids Yohei buy ten candles: the girl has cataracts in both eyes.

The candle-seller thanks her customer. Master and servant continue climbing.

Through a window, a man shouts, ‘I curse the day I married you!’

‘Samurai-sama?’ a lipless fortune-teller calls out from a half-open door. ‘Someone in the World Above needs your deliverance, Samurai-sama.’

Uzaemon, irritated by her presumption, walks on.

‘Sir,’ says Yohei, ‘if you’re feeling unsteady again, I could-’

‘Don’t fuss like a woman: the foreign wine disagreed with me.’

The foreign wine, Uzaemon thinks, on top of the surgical procedure.

‘Reports of my momentary lapse,’ he tells Yohei, ‘would worry Father.’

‘He’ll not hear it from my lips, sir.’

They pass through the ward-gate: the warden’s son bows to one of the neighbourhood’s most important residents. Uzaemon returns a brisk nod, and thinks, Nearly home. The prospect does not bring much comfort.

‘Might Ogawa-sama be generous enough to spare a little time?’

Waiting for his gate to be opened, Uzaemon hears an elderly voice.

A bent-backed mountain woman climbs from the thicket by the stream.

‘By what right,’ Yohei obstructs her, ‘do you use my master’s name?’

The servant Kiyoshichi opens the Ogawa gates from inside. He sees the mountain woman and explains, ‘Sir, this feeble-minded creature knocked at the side door earlier, asking to speak with Interpreter Ogawa the Younger. I bade the crazed old crow be gone but, as Sir can see…’

Her weathered face, framed by a hat and straw coat, lacks the seasoned beggar’s cunning. ‘We have a friend in common, Ogawa-sama.’

‘Enough, Grandmother,’ Kiyoshichi takes her arm. ‘Time for you to go home.’

He checks with Uzaemon who mouths, ‘Gently.’

‘The ward-gate is this way.’

‘But Kurozane is three days away, young man, on my old legs, and-’

‘The sooner you start back home, then, the better, don’t you think?’

Uzaemon steps through the Ogawa gate and crosses the sunless stone garden where only lichen thrives on the ailing shrubs. Saiji, his father’s gaunt and bird-faced manservant, slides opens the door to the Main House from inside: a beat before Yohei can open it from the outside. ‘Welcome home, sir.’ The servants are jostling for position ahead of the day when their master is not Ogawa Mimasaku but Ogawa Uzaemon. ‘The senior master is asleep in his room, sir; and Sir’s wife is suffering from a headache. Sir’s mother is nursing her.’

So my wife wants to be alone, thinks Uzaemon, but Mother won’t let her.

The new maid appears with slippers, warm water and a towel.

‘Light a fire in the library,’ he tells the maid, intending to write up his lithotomy notes. If I am working, he hopes, Mother and my wife may keep their distance.

‘Prepare tea for the master,’ Yohei tells the maid. ‘Not too strong.’

Saiji and Yohei wait to see whom the Master-in-Waiting chooses to attend him.

‘Attend to…’ Uzaemon sighs ‘… whatever needs attending to. Both of you.’

He walks down the cold, waxed corridor, hearing Yohei and Saiji blame each other for the master’s bad mood. Their bickering has a marital familiarity, and Uzaemon suspects they share more than a room at night. Gaining the sanctuary of the library, he shuts the door on the cheerless household, the mountain madwoman, the Christmas banquet’s babble and his ignominious exit, and sits at his writing-table. His calves ache. He enjoys scraping his ink-stone, mixing a few drops of water and dipping his brush. The precious books and Chinese scrolls sit on the oaken shelves. He remembers his awe at entering the library of Ogawa Mimasaku fifteen years ago, never dreaming then that he might one day be adopted by its master; much less become its master.

Be less ambitious, he warns the younger Uzaemon, and more content.

Catching his eye on the nearest shelf is de Zoet’s Wealth of Nations.

Uzaemon marshals his memories of the lithotomy.

There is a knock: the servant Kiyoshichi slides open the door.

‘The weak-witted creature shan’t be troubling us again, sir.’

Uzaemon needs a moment to make sense of the sentence. ‘Good. Her family should be told what a nuisance she is making of herself.’

‘I asked the warden’s son to do so, sir, but he didn’t know her.’

‘Then she might be from… Kurozaka, was it?’

‘ “Kurozane”, begging sir’s pardon. I believe it’s a small town on the Ariake Sea Road, in Kyôga Domain.’

The name sounds familiar. Perhaps Abbot Enomoto mentioned it once.

‘Did she say what her business with me was about?’

‘ “A private matter” was all she said, sir, and that she was an herbalist.’

‘Any addled crone able to brew fennel calls herself an herbalist.’