David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘The fault was mine.’ Uzaemon is clutching his elbow.

Yohei hurries over to help his master unfasten his mask.

Unlike his teacher’s face, Uzaemon’s drips with sweat. ‘There’s no breakage… look.’ He bends and straightens his elbow. ‘Just a well-deserved bruise.’

‘The light was too poor. I should have lit lamps.’

‘Shuzai-san mustn’t waste oil on my account. Let us end here.’

‘I hope you won’t oblige me to drink your generous gift alone?’

‘On such an auspicious day, your engagements must be pressing…’

Shuzai looks around his empty dojo hall and shrugs at Uzaemon.

‘Then,’ the interpreter bows, ‘I accept your courteous invitation.’

Shuzai orders his pupil to light the fire in his private apartment. The men change out of their practice clothes, discussing the New Year Promotions and Demotions announced earlier by Magistrate Ômatsu. Stepping up into the teacher’s quarters, Uzaemon recalls the ten or more young disciples who ate, slept and studied here when he first took lessons from Shuzai, and the pair of matronly neighbourhood women who cajoled and cared for them. The rooms are colder and quieter nowadays, but as the fire comes to life, the two men slip into informal manners and their native Tosa dialect, and Uzaemon is warmed by his and Shuzai’s ten-year-old acquaintance.

Shuzai’s boy pours the heated sake into a chipped flask, bows and leaves.

Now is the time, Uzaemon prompts himself, to say what I have to say…

The thoughtful host and his hesitant guest fill each other’s cups.

‘To the fortunes of the Ogawas of Nagasaki,’ proposes Shuzai, ‘and to the speedy recovery of your honourable father.’

‘To a prosperous Year of the Sheep for the dojo hall of Master Shuzai.’

The men empty the first cup of sake, and Shuzai sighs contentedly. ‘But prosperity is gone for good, I fear. I pray I’m wrong but I doubt I am. The old values are decaying, that’s the problem. The smell of decadence hangs everywhere, like smoke. Oh, samurai enjoy the notion of wading into battle like their valiant ancestors, but when the storehouse is hungry, it’s swordsmanship they say goodbye to, not their concubines and silk linings. Those who do care about the old ways are the very ones who fall foul of the new. Another of my students quit last week, with tears in his eyes: his father’s stipend at the Armoury has been paid at half-rate for two years running – and now the gentleman learns that his rank won’t be eligible for a New Year payment. This at the end of the Twelfth Month, when the money-lenders and bailiffs do their rounds, badgering decent people! Have you heard Edo ’s newest advice to its unpaid officials? “Cover your indulgences by breeding goldfish.” Goldfish! Who has money to waste on goldfish, other than merchants? Now if merchants’ sons were permitted to carry swords -’ Shuzai lowers his voice ‘- I would have a line of pupils stretching from here to the Fish Market, but better to plant silver coins in horse-shit than wait for Edo to pass that edict.’ He refills his cup and Uzaemon’s. ‘Ah, so much for my woes: your mind was on other things during sword-practice.’

Uzaemon is no longer surprised by Shuzai’s perspicacity. ‘I don’t know if I have the right to involve you.’

‘To a believer in Fate,’ replies Shuzai, ‘it’s not you who is involving me.’

Damp twigs on the weak fire crackle as if trodden upon.

‘Some disturbing news came into my possession, some days ago…’

A cockroach, shiny as lacquer, crawls along the base of the wall.

‘… in the form of a scroll. It concerns the Order of the Shrine of Shiranui.’

Shuzai, privy to Uzaemon’s intimacy with Orito, studies his friend.

‘The scroll lists the Order’s secret precepts. It’s… deeply disturbing.’

‘It’s a secretive place, Mount Shiranui. You are certain this scroll is genuine?’

Uzaemon produces the dogwood scroll-tube from his sleeve. ‘Yes. I wish it was a forgery, but it was written by an acolyte of the Order who was no longer able to bury his conscience. He ran away, and to read the scroll is to understand why…’

The rain’s innumerable hoofs clatter on the streets and roofs.

Shuzai holds out his open palm for the scroll-tube.

‘To read it may implicate you, Shuzai. It could be dangerous.’

Shuzai holds out his open palm for the scroll-tube.

‘But this is’ – Shuzai speaks in an appalled whisper – ‘this is insanity: that this…’ he gestures at the scroll on his low table ‘… murderous garble could purchase immortality. The phrases are misshapen but… these Third and Fourth Creeds – if the “Engifters” are the initiates of the Order and the “Bearers” are the women and their newborn the “Gifts”, then the Shrine of Shiranui is a – a – not a harem but…’

‘A farm.’ Uzaemon’s throat tightens. ‘The Sisters are livestock.’

‘This Sixth Creed, about “Extinguishing the Gifts in the Bowl of Hands”…’

‘They must drown the newborn children, like unwanted puppies.’

‘But the men doing the drowning… they must be the fathers.’

‘The Seventh Creed orders five “Engifters” to lie with the same “Bearer” over as many nights so no one can know that he is killing his own offspring.’

‘It – it violates Nature: the women, how could…’ Shuzai aborts his sentence.

Uzaemon forces himself to voice his worst fears. ‘The women are violated when they are most fertile, and when the children are born, they are stolen. The women’s consent, I presume, is not a matter of concern. Hell is Hell because there evil passes unremarked upon.’

‘But might some not prefer to take their own lives to this?’

‘Perhaps some do. But look at the Eighth Creed: “Letters from the Extinguished”. A mother who believes that her children are living good lives with foster-families may, perhaps, endure what she must – especially if she can nurture hopes of meeting her children again, after her “Descent”. That these reunions can never occur is a truth that, evidently, never reaches the House of Sisters.’

Shuzai passes no comment, but squints at the scroll. ‘There are sentences I cannot decipher… see this last line of all: “The Final Word of Shiranui is Silence.” Your runaway apostate must translate his testimony into plain Japanese.’

‘He was poisoned. To read the Creeds, as I said, is dangerous.’

Uzaemon’s servant and Shuzai’s apprentice talk as they sweep the hall.

‘Yet Lord Abbot Enomoto,’ Shuzai speaks with incredulity, ‘is known as a…’

‘A respected judge, yes; a humane lord, yes; an Academician of the Shirandô, a confidant of the great, and a dealer in rare medicines, yes. Yet it appears he is also a believer in an arcane Shintô ritual that buys blood-drenched immortality.’

‘How could these abominations be kept a secret for so many decades?’

‘Isolation, ingenuity, power… fear… These achieve most ends.’

A clutch of drenched New Year revellers hurries along the street outside.

Uzaemon looks at the alcove where Shuzai’s master is honoured: a mildewed hanging proclaims, ‘The hawk may be starving, yet he won’t touch corn.’

‘The author of this scroll,’ Shuzai says cautiously, ‘did you meet him face-to-face?’

‘No. He gave the scroll to an old herbalist living near Kurozane. Miss Aibagawa visited her, two or three times, which is how the herbalist knew my name. She sought me out in the hope that I have the will and the means to help the Shrine’s Newest Sister…’

The two men listen to the percussion of dripping water.

‘The will I have; the means are another matter. If a Dutch interpreter of the Third Rank mounted a campaign against the Lord of Kyôga armed with nothing but this scroll of illegitimate provenance…’