David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Enomoto unfolds a sheet of European paper and holds it up:

Retain this, Uzaemon tells his memory. Show me her, at the end.

‘De Zoet draws a fair likeness.’ Enomoto folds it up. ‘Fair enough to worry Aibagawa Seian’s widow that a Dutchman had designs on the family’s best asset. The dictionary your servant smuggled to Orito settled the matter. My bailiff persuaded the widow to ignore funerary protocol and settle her stepdaughter’s future without further delay.’

‘Did you tell that wretched woman about your demented practices?’

‘What an earthworm knows of Copernicus you know of the Creeds.’

‘You keep a harem of deformities for your monks’ pleasure-’

‘Can you hear how like a child trying to postpone his bedtime you sound?’

‘Why not present a paper to the Academy,’ Uzaemon asks, ‘about-’

‘Why do you mortal gnats suppose that your incredulity matters?’

‘- about murdering your “Harvested Gifts” to “Distil their Souls”?’

‘This is your last opportunity to save the Ogawa house from-’

‘And then bottling them, like perfume, and “imbibing” them, like medicine, and cheating death? Why not share your magical revelation with the world?’ Uzaemon scowls at the shifting figures. ‘Here’s my guess: because there’s one small part of you that’s still sane, an inner Jiritsu who says, “This is evil”.’

‘Oh, Evil. Evil, evil, evil. You always wield that word as if it were a sword and not a vapid conceit. When you suck the yolk from an egg, is this “evil”? Survival is Nature’s law, and my Order holds – or, better, is – the secret of surviving mortality. Newborn infants are a messy requisite – after the first two weeks of life, the enmeshed soul can’t be extracted – and a fifty-strong Order needs a constant supply for its own use, and to purchase the favours of an elite few. Your Adam Smith would understand. Without the Order, moreover, the Gifts wouldn’t exist in the first place. They are an ingredient we manufacture. Where is your “evil”?’

‘Eloquent lunacy, Lord Abbot Enomoto, is still lunacy.’

‘I am more than six hundred years old. You shall die, in minutes…’

He believes his Creeds, Uzaemon sees. He believes every single word.

‘… so which is stronger, in the end? Your Reason? Or My Eloquent Lunacy?’

‘Free me,’ Uzaemon says, ‘free Miss Aibagawa, and I’ll tell you where the scr-’

‘No, no, there can be no bargaining. Nobody outside the Order may know the Creeds and live. You must die, just as Jiritsu did, and that busy old herbalist…’

Uzaemon groans with grief. ‘She was harmless.’

‘She wanted to harm my Order. We defend ourselves. But I want you to look at this – an artefact that Fate, in the guise of Vorstenbosch the Dutchman, sold me.’ Enomoto exhibits a foreign-made pistol, inches from Uzaemon’s face. ‘A pearl-inlaid handle, and craftsmanship exquisite enough to confound the Confucianists’ claim that Europeans lack souls. Since Shuzai told me of your heroic plans, it has been waiting. See – see, Ogawa, this concerns you – how one raises this “hammer” to “half-cock”, loads the gun down the “muzzle” thus: first, the gunpowder, and then with a lead ball wrapped in paper. One pushes it down with this “ramrod” stored on the underside of the barrel…’

It’s now, Uzaemon’s heart knocks like a bloodied fist, it’s now, it’s now…

‘… then one supplies the “flash-pan”, here, with a little powder, shuts its lid, and now our pistol is “primed and ready”. Done, in half a Hollander’s minute. Yes, a master archer can string another arrow in the blink of an eye, but guns are manufactured more quickly than master archers. Any son of a shit-carrier could wield one of these and bring down a mounted samurai. The day is coming – you shan’t see it, but I shall – when such firearms transform even our secretive world. When one squeezes the trigger, a flint strikes this “frizzen” as the flash-pan lid opens. The spark ignites the priming powder, sending a flame through this “touch-hole” into the combustion chamber. The main powder ignites, like a miniature cannon, and the lead ball bores through your-’

Enomoto presses the pistol’s muzzle against Uzaemon’s beating heart.

Uzaemon is aware of urine warming his thighs but is too scared for shame.

It’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now…

‘- or maybe…’ The pistol’s mouth plants a kiss on Uzaemon’s temple.

It’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now

‘Animal terror,’ a murmur enters Uzaemon’s ear, ‘has half dissolved your mind, so I shall provide you with a thought. Music, as it were, to die to. The acolytes of the Order of Mount Shiranui are initiated into the Twelve Creeds, but they stay ignorant of the Thirteenth until they become masters – one of whom you met this morning, the landlord at the Harubayashi Inn. The Thirteenth Creed pertains to an untidy loose end. Were our Sisters – and housekeepers, in fact – to descend to the World Below and discover that not one of their Gifts, their children, is alive or known, questions may be asked. To avoid such unpleasantness, Suzaku administers a gentle drug at their Rite of Departure. This drug ensures a dreamless death, long before their palanquin reaches the foot of Mekura Gorge. They are then buried in that very bamboo grove into which you blundered this morning. So here is your final thought: your childlike failure to rescue Aibagawa Orito sentences her not only to twenty years of servitude – your ineptitude has, literally, killed her.’

The pistol rests on Ogawa Uzaemon’s forehead…

He expends his last moment on a prayer. Avenge me.

A click, a spring, a strangled whimper nothing now but

Now Now Now Now now now now now nownownow-

Thunder splits the rift where the sun floods in.

The Seventh Month in the Thirteenth Year of the Era of Kansei

August, 1800

August, 1800

Last trading season, Moses whittled a spoon from a bone. A fine spoon, in the shape of a fish. Master Grote saw the fine spoon, and he told Moses, ‘Slaves eat with fingers. Slaves cannot own spoons.’ Then, Master Grote took the fine spoon. Later, I passed Master Grote and a Japanese gentleman. Master Grote was saying, ‘This spoon was made by the very hands of the famous Robinson Crusoe.’ Later, Sjako heard Master Baert tell Master Oost how the Japanese gentleman had paid five lacquer bowls for Robinson Crusoe’s spoon. D’Orsaiy told Moses to hide his spoon better next time, and trade with the coolies or carpenters. But Moses said, ‘Why? When Master Grote or Master Gerritszoon hunt through my straw next time, they find my earnings and take them. They say, “Slaves do not own. Slaves are owned.” ’

Sjako said that masters do not allow slaves to own goods or money because a slave with money could run away more easily. Philander said that such talk was bad talk. Cupido said to Moses that if he carves more spoons and gives them to Master Grote, Master Grote will value him more and surely treat him better. I said, those words are true if the master is a good master, but for a bad master, it is never true.

Cupido and Philander are favourites of the Dutch officers, because they play music at the dinner parties. They call themselves ‘servants’ and use fancy Dutch words like wigs and laces. They talk about ‘my flute’ and ‘my stockings’. But Philander’s flute and Cupido’s fat violin and their elegant costumes belong to their masters. They wear no shoes. When the Vorstenbosch left last year, he sold them to the van Cleef. They say they were ‘passed on’ from the Old Chief to the New Chief, but they were sold for five guineas each.