David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

The inspectors now notice Kichibei and summon him over.

‘I was on my way,’ says Jacob, wiping his hands.

‘We should go before all the hands piss in your coffee.’

The two clerks set off up Long Street, passing two pregnant deer.

‘Nice shank of venison,’ comments Ouwehand, ‘for Christmas dinner.’

Dr Marinus and the slave Ignatius are watering the melon patch. ‘Another furnace of a day ahead, Doctor,’ says Ouwehand, over the fence.

Marinus must have heard but does not deign to look up.

‘He’s courteous enough to his students,’ Ouwehand remarks to Jacob, ‘and to his handsome Indian, and he was gentleness made man, so van Cleef says, when Hemmij was dying, and when his scholar friends bring him a weed or a dead starfish, he wags his tail off. So why is he Old Master Misery with us? In Batavia, even the French Consul – the French Consul, mark you – called him “un buffalo insufferable”.’ Ouwehand squeaks in the back of his throat.

A gang of porters is gathering at the Crossroads to bring ashore the pig-iron. When they notice Jacob, the usual nudges, stares and grins begin. He turns down Bony Alley rather than run the gauntlet any further.

‘Don’t deny you enjoy the attention,’ says Ouwehand, ‘Mr Red-Hair.’

‘But I do deny it,’ objects Jacob. ‘I deny it utterly.’

The two clerks turn into Sea Wall Lane and reach the Kitchen.

Arie Grote is plucking a bird under a canopy of pans and skillets. Oil is frying, a pile of improvised pancakes is piling up and a well-travelled round of Edam and sour apples are divided between two mess tables. Piet Baert, Ivo Oost and Gerritszoon sit at the hands’ table; Peter Fischer, the senior clerk, and Con Twomey, the carpenter, eat at the officers’: today being Wednesday, Vorstenbosch, van Cleef and Dr Marinus take their breakfast upstairs in the Bay Room.

‘We was just wond’rin’,’ says Grote, ‘where you coves’d got to, eh?’

‘Pottage of nightingales’ tongues to begin with, Maestro,’ says Ouwehand, poking at the gritty bread and rancid butter, ‘followed by a quail-and-blackberry pie with artichokes in cream, and last, the quince and white rose trifle.’

‘How Mr O.’s evergreen jests,’ says Grote, ‘spice up the day.’

‘That is,’ Ouwehand peers over, ‘a pheasant’s arsehole your hand is up?’

‘Envy,’ the cook tuts, ‘is one o’ the Seven Deadlies, eh, Mr de Z.?’

‘They say so.’ Jacob wipes a smear of blood from an apple. ‘Yes.’

‘We readied yer coffee.’ Baert carries over a bowl. ‘Nice an’ fresh.’

Jacob looks at Ouwehand who makes a ‘told you so’ face.

‘Thank you, Mr Baert, but I may abstain today.’

‘But we made it special,’ protests the Antwerper. ‘Just for you.’

Oost yawns, cavernously; Jacob risks a pleasantry. ‘Bad night?’

‘Out smuggling and robbing the Company till dawn, weren’t I?’

‘I wouldn’t know, Mr Oost.’ Jacob breaks his bread. ‘Were you?’

‘Thought you had all the answers afore y’even set foot ashore.’

‘A civil tongue,’ cautions Twomey, in his Irish-flavoured Dutch, ‘is-’

‘He’s the one sittin’ in judgement on us all, Con, an’ you think it too.’

Oost is the only hand rash enough to speak so bluntly to the new clerk’s face without the excuse of grog, but Jacob knows that even van Cleef views him as Vorstenbosch’s spy. The Kitchen is waiting for his answer. ‘To man its ships, maintain its garrisons and pay its tens of thousands of salaries, Mr Oost, including yours, the Company must make a profit. Its trading factories must keep books. Dejima’s books for the last five years are a pig’s dinner. It is Mr Vorstenbosch’s duty to order me to piece those books together. It is my duty to obey. Why must this make my name “Iscariot”?’

No one cares to reply. Peter Fischer eats with his mouth open.

Ouwehand scoops up some sauerkraut with his gritty bread.

‘Strikes me,’ Grote says, plucking out the fowl’s innards, ‘that it all rests on what the Chief does about any… irregularities, eh, spotted durin’ this piecin’ together. Whether it’s a “Naughty-Boy-Now-Sin-No-More”, or a firm but fair canin’ of one’s derrière, eh? Or ruination an’ a six-by-five-by-four in Batavia gaol…’

‘If-’ Jacob stops himself saying, ‘if you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear’: everyone present violates the Company rules on private trade. ‘I’m not the-’ Jacob stops himself saying ‘Chief’s Private Confessor’. ‘Have you tried asking Mr Vorstenbosch directly?’

‘Not f’the likes o’ me,’ replies Grote, ‘to be interrogatin’, eh, my superiors?’

‘Then you’ll have to wait and see what Chief Vorstenbosch decides.’

A bad answer, realises Jacob, implying I know more than I’m saying.

‘Yap yap,’ mumbles Oost. ‘Yap.’ Baert’s laughter could be hiccups.

An apple skin slides off Fischer’s knife in one perfect coil. ‘Can we expect you to visit our office later? Or will you be doing more piecing together in Warehouse Doorn with your friend Ogawa?’

‘I shall do,’ Jacob hears his voice rise, ‘whatever the Chief bids.’

‘Oh? Did I touch a rotten tooth? Ouwehand and I merely wish to know -’

‘Did I’ – Ouwehand consults the ceiling – ‘utter a single word?’

‘- to know whether our alleged third clerk shall help us today.’

‘ “Articled”,’ Jacob states, ‘not “alleged” or “third”, just as you are not “head”.’

‘Oh? So you and Mr Vorstenbosch have discussed matters of succession?’

‘Is this squabblin’ edifyin’, eh,’ queries Grote, ‘afore the lower orders?’

The warped kitchen door shudders as the Chief’s servant Cupido enters.

‘What d’you want, yer dusky dog?’ asks Grote. ‘You was fed earlier.’

‘I bring a message for Clerk de Zoet: “Chief bids you come to State Room”, sir.’

Baert’s laugh is born, lives and dies in his ever-congested nose.

‘I’ll keep yer breakfast,’ Grote chops off the pheasant’s feet, ‘good an’ safe.’

‘Here, boy!’ whispers Oost to an invisible dog. ‘Sit, boy! Up, boy!’

‘Just a sip o’ coffee,’ Baert proffers the bowl, ‘to fortify yer, like?’

‘I don’t think I’d care,’ Jacob stands to go, ‘for its adulterants.’

‘Not a soul’s ’cusin yer ’f adult’ry,’ gurns Baert, incomprehending, ‘just-’

The pastor’s nephew kicks the coffee bowl out of Baert’s hands.

It smashes against the ceiling: fragments smash on the floor.

The onlookers are astonished; Oost’s yaps cease; Baert is drenched.

Even Jacob is surprised. He pockets his bread and leaves.

In the Antechamber of Bottles outside the State Room, a wall of fifty or sixty glass demijohns, wired tight against earthquakes, exhibit creatures from the Company’s once-vast empire. Preserved from decay by alcohol, pig-bladder and lead, they warn not so much that all flesh perishes – what sane adult forgets this truth for long? – but that immortality comes at a steep price.

A pickled dragon of Kandy bears an uncanny resemblance to Anna’s father, and Jacob recalls a fateful conversation with that gentleman in his Rotterdam drawing-room. Carriages passed by below, and the lamplighter was doing his rounds. ‘Anna has told me,’ her father began, ‘the surprising facts of the situation, de Zoet…

The Kandy dragon’s neighbour is a slack-jawed viper of the Celebes.

‘… and I have, accordingly, enumerated your merits and demerits.

A baby alligator from Halmahera has a demon’s delighted grin.

‘In the credit column: you are a fastidious clerk of good character…