David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Housekeeper Satsuki receives Yayoi’s milky-lipped baby daughter. By firelight and dawnlight, Satsuki’s tears are visible. No fresh snow fell during the night, so the track down Mekura Gorge is passable, and Yayoi’s twins are to be taken to the World Below this morning. ‘For shame, Housekeeper.’ Abbess Izu issues a gentle rebuke. ‘You’ve helped with dozens of Bestowals. If Sister Yayoi accepts that she isn’t losing little Shinobu and Binyô, but sending them on ahead into the World Below, surely you can control your feebler feelings. Today is a parting, not a bereavement.’

What you call ‘feebler feelings’, thinks Orito, I call ‘compassion’.

‘Yes, Abbess.’ Housekeeper Satsuki swallows. ‘It’s just… they’re so…’

‘Without the Bestowal of our Gifts,’ Yayoi half recites, ‘Kyôga Domain’s rivers would dry, its seedlings would wither, and all its mothers would be barren.’

Before the night of her escape and voluntary return, Orito would have considered such words to be despicably passive: now she understands that only this belief, that Life requires their sacrifice, makes the separation tolerable. The midwife rocks Yayoi’s hungry son, Binyô: ‘Your sister’s finished, now. Give your mother a little rest…’

Abbess Izu reminds her, ‘We say “Bearer”, Sister Aibagawa.’

‘You do, Abbess,’ Orito responds, as expected, ‘but I am not “we”…’

Sadaie empties crumbs of charcoal on to the fire: they snap and spit.

… We made, Orito holds the Abbess’s gaze, firm understandings: remember?

Our Lord Abbot, Abbess Izu holds Orito’s gaze, shall have the final word.

Until that day, Orito holds the Abbess’s gaze and repeats, ‘I am not “we”.’

Binyô’s face is damp, pink, velvet: it folds into a prolonged squawk.

‘Sister?’ Yayoi receives her son for his last feed from her breast.

The midwife scrutinises Yayoi’s inflamed nipple.

‘It’s much better,’ Yayoi tells her friend. ‘The motherwort works.’

Orito thinks of Otane of Kurozane, who no doubt supplied the herb, and wonders if she can insist on a yearly meeting as part of her terms. The Newest Sister remains the Shrine’s lowest-ranking captive, but her decision on the Todoroki Bridge to forfeit her escape, and her successful delivery of Yayoi’s twins, have elevated her status in many, subtle ways. Her right to refuse Suzaku’s drugs is recognised; she is trusted to walk around the Shrine’s ramparts three times each day; and Master Genmu agreed that the Goddess wouldn’t choose Orito for Engiftment, in return for Orito’s silence about the counterfeit letters. The moral price of the agreement is high; mild friction with the Abbess occurs daily; and Lord Abbot Enomoto may undo these advances… but that is a fight, Orito thinks, for a future day.

Asagao appears at Yayoi’s door. ‘Naster Suzaku is arriving, Avhess.’

Orito looks at Yayoi who is determined not to cry.

‘Thank you, Asagao.’ Abbess Izu rises with the suppleness of a girl.

Sadaie reties her headscarf around her misshapen skull.

With the Abbess’s departure, air and talk flow a little more freely.

‘Calm down,’ Yayoi tells the yowling Binyô, ‘I have two. Here, greedy one…’

Binyô finds his mother’s nipple at last, and feeds.

Housekeeper Satsuki gazes into Shinobu’s face. ‘A full, happy tummy.’

‘A full, smelly swaddling band,’ says Orito. ‘May I, before she’s too sleepy?’

‘Oh, let me.’ The housekeeper lays Shinobu on her back. ‘It’s no trouble.’

Orito allows the older woman the sad honour. ‘I’ll fetch some warm water.’

‘To think,’ says Sadaie, ‘how spidery the Gifts were just a week ago!’

‘We must thank Sister Aibagawa,’ says Yayoi, reattaching the guzzling Binyô, ‘that they’re sturdy enough for Bestowal so soon.’

‘We must thank her,’ adds Housekeeper Satsuki, ‘that they were born at all.’

The ten-day-old boy’s petal-soft hand clenches and unclenches.

‘It is thanks to your endurance,’ Orito tells Yayoi, mixing hot water from the kettle with a pan of cold water, ‘your milk, and your mother’s love.’ Don’t talk about love, she warns herself, not today. ‘Children want to be born: all the midwife does is help.’

‘Do you think,’ asks Sadaie, ‘the twins’ Engifter might be Master Chimei?’

‘This one,’ Yayoi strokes Binyô’s head, ‘is a chubby goblin: Chimei’s sallow.’

‘Master Seiryû, then,’ whispers Housekeeper Satsuki. ‘He turns into a Goblin King when he loses his temper…’

On an ordinary day, the women would smile at this.

‘Shinobu-chan’s eyes,’ says Sadaie, ‘remind me of poor Acolyte Jiritsu’s.’

‘I believe they are his,’ responds Yayoi. ‘I dreamt of him again.’

‘Strange to think of Acolyte Jiritsu buried,’ Satsuki removes the soiled cloth from the baby girl’s loins, ‘but his Gifts’ lives just beginning.’ The Housekeeper wipes away the pungent paste with a murky cotton rag. ‘Strange and sad.’ She washes the infant’s buttocks in the warm water. ‘Could Shinobu have one Engifter and Binyô another?’

‘No.’ Orito recalls her Dutch texts. ‘Twins have just one father.’

Master Suzaku is ushered into the room. ‘A mild morning, Sisters.’

The Sisters chorus, ‘Good morning,’ to Suzaku; Orito gives a slight bow.

‘Good weather for our first Bestowal of the year! How are our Gifts?’

‘Two feeds during the night, Master,’ replies Yayoi, ‘and one more now.’

‘Excellent. I’ll give them a drop of Sleep each; they won’t wake until Kurozane, where two wet-nurses are waiting at the inn. One is the same woman who took Sister Minori’s Gift to Niigata two years ago. The little ones will be in the best hands.’

‘The master,’ says Abbess Izu, ‘has wonderful news, Sister Yayoi.’

Suzaku shows his pointed teeth. ‘Your Gifts are to be raised together in a Buddhist temple near Hôfu by a childless priest and his wife.’

‘Think of that!’ exclaims Sadaie. ‘Little Binyô, growing up to be a priest!’

‘They’ll have a fine education,’ says the Abbess, ‘as children of a temple.’

‘And they’ll have each other,’ adds Satsuki. ‘A sibling is the best gift.’

‘My sincerest thanks,’ Yayoi’s voice is bloodless, ‘to the Lord Abbot.’

‘You may thank him yourself, Sister,’ says Abbess Izu, and Orito, washing Shinobu’s soiled swaddling, looks up. ‘The Lord Abbot is due to arrive tomorrow or the day after.’

Fear touches Orito. ‘I, too,’ she lies, ‘look forward to the honour of speaking with him.’

Abbess Izu glances at her with triumphant eyes.

Binyô, sated, is slowing down: Yayoi strokes his lips to remind him to slurp.

Satsuki and Sadaie finish wrapping the baby girl for her journey.

Master Suzaku opens his medicine box and unstops a conical bottle.

The first boom of the Bell of Amanohashira ebbs into Yayoi’s cell.

Nobody speaks: outside the House gate, a palanquin will be waiting.

Sadaie asks, ‘Where is Hôfu, Sister Aibagawa? As far as Edo?’

The second boom of the Bell of Amanohashira ebbs into Yayoi’s cell.

‘Much nearer.’ Abbess Izu receives the clean, sleepy Shinobu and holds her close to Suzaku. ‘Hôfu is the castle town of Suô Domain, one domain along from Nagato, and just five or six days away, if the Straits are calm…’

Yayoi stares at Binyô, and far away. Orito guesses at her thoughts: of her first daughter Kaho, perhaps, sent last year to candlemakers in Harima Domain, or of the future Gifts she must give away before her Descent, in eighteen or nineteen years’ time; or perhaps she is simply hoping that the wet-nurses in Kurozane have good, pure milk.