David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

At a nod from Penhaligon, Chigwin and Jones begin clearing the table.

‘The European War,’ Major Cutlip, only a shade or two less scarlet than his marine’s jacket, sucks a last shred of meat from his chicken drumstick, ‘is no damn concern of the Bloody Asiatic.’

‘A point of view,’ says Hovell, ‘the Bloody Asiatics may not share, Major.’

‘Then they must be -’ Cutlip snorts ‘- taught to share it, Mr Hovell.’

‘Suppose the Kingdom of Siam had, let us say, a trading post at Bristol -’

Cutlip glances at Second Lieutenant Wren with a triumphant grin.

‘- at Bristol,’ Hovell carries on undeterred, ‘for a century and a half, until one fine day a Chinese junk-of-war sails in, seizes our ally’s assets with never a by-your-leave, and announces to London that henceforth they shall take the place of the Siamese. Would Mr Pitt accept such terms?’

‘When next Mr Hovell’s critics,’ says Wren, ‘lampoon his humourlessness…’

Penhaligon knocks over the salt cellar and throws a pinch over his shoulder.

‘… I shall confound them with his fantasia of a Siamese factory in Bristol!’

‘The issue is sovereignty,’ states Robert Hovell. ‘The comparison is apt.’

Cutlip wags his drumstick. ‘If eight years in New South Wales taught me anything at all, it’s that well-read notions like “sovereignty” or “rights” or “property” or “jurisprudence” or “diplomacy” mean one thing to Whites, but another to the backward races. Poor Phillip at Sydney Cove, he did his damnedest to “negotiate” with the raggle-taggle Backward Blacks we found there. Did his fine ideals stop the lazy shit-weasels filching our supplies like they owned the place?’ Cutlip spits in the spittoon. ‘It’s red-blooded Englishmen and London muskets who lay down the law in the Colonies, not any lily-livered “Diplomacy”, and it’ll be twenty-four guns and forty well-drilled marines who win the day in Nagasaki too. One can only hope,’ he winks at Wren, ‘that the First Lieutenant’s delightful Chinese bed-mate in Bengal did not tinge his Caucasian spotlessness a shade yellow, hey?’

What is it, Penhaligon groans inwardly, about the Marine Corps?

A bottle slides off the table into the young hands of Third Lieutenant Talbot.

‘Does your remark,’ Hovell asks, in a deadly calm voice, ‘impugn my courage as a naval officer, or is it my loyalty to the King that you denigrate?’

‘Now come, Robert: Cutlip knows you’ – there are times, Penhaligon thinks, when I am less a captain and more a governess – ‘too well to do either: he was just… just…’

‘Dispensing a little affectionate elbowing,’ says Lieutenant Wren.

‘The most trivial quip!’ Cutlip protests, all charm. ‘Affectionate elbowing…’

‘The wit was sharp,’ Wren judges, ‘but wholly lacking in malice.’

‘… and I apologise unconditionally,’ adds Cutlip, ‘for any offence caused.’

The readiest apologies, Penhaligon observes, carry the littlest worth.

‘Major Cutlip should mind his sharp wit,’ says Hovell, ‘lest he cut himself.’

‘Is it your plan, Mr Talbot,’ Penhaligon asks, ‘to smuggle that bottle out?’

Talbot takes the question seriously for a moment; then he smiles with relief and fills the company’s glasses. Penhaligon orders Chigwin to bring another couple of bottles of the Chambolle Musigny. The steward is surprised by such generosity so late on, but goes to fetch them.

‘Were our single objective in Nagasaki,’ Penhaligon senses that a ruling is required, ‘to dispossess Jan Compagnie, we could be as direct as the Major advocates. Our orders, however, urge us also to negotiate a treaty with the Japanese. We needs must be diplomats as well as warriors.’

Cutlip picks his hairy nose. ‘Guns make the best diplomats, Captain.’

Hovell dabs his lips. ‘Belligerence shan’t impress these natives.’

‘Did we subdue the Indians by gentleness?’ Wren leans back. ‘Did the Dutch conquer the Javans by gifts of Edam cheese?’

‘The analogy is unsound,’ argues Hovell. ‘Japan is in Asia but not of Asia.’

Wren asks, ‘Another of your Gnostic statements, Lieutenant?’

‘To speak of “the Indians” or “the Javanese” is a European conceit: in truth, these are a patchwork of peoples, fissile and divisible. Japan, contrariwise, was unified four hundred years ago, and expelled the Spanish and Portuguese even at the zenith of Iberian might-’

‘Pit our artillery, cannonades and riflemen against their quaint medieval jousters and-’ With his lips and hands, the Major imitates an explosion.

‘Quaint medieval jousters,’ Hovell replies, ‘whom you have never even seen.’

Better teredo worm in the hull, thinks Penhaligon, than bickering officers.

‘No more than have you, Mr Hovell,’ says Wren. ‘Snitker, however-’

‘Snitker is with child to regain his little kingdom and humiliate his usurpers.’

In the wardroom directly below, Mr Waldron’s fiddle strikes up a jig.

Someone at least, thinks Penhaligon, is enjoying the evening.

Lieutenant Talbot opens his mouth to speak but closes it again.

Penhaligon says, ‘You wish to speak, Mr Talbot?’

Talbot is unnerved by all the eyes. ‘Nothing of consequence. Sir.’

Jones drops a plate of cutlery with an almighty clatter.

‘By the by,’ Cutlip transfers his snot to the tablecloth, ‘I overheard a pair of your Cornishmen, Captain, making a joke about Mr Hovell’s home-county: I repeat it without fear of offence, now we know he is man enough to enjoy a little affectionate elbowing: “What, pray, is a Yorkshireman?” ’

Robert Hovell rotates his wedding-ring around his finger.

‘ “A Scot, by Jove, with the generosity squeezed out!” ’

The Captain regrets ordering the bottles of ’91.

Why must all things, Penhaligon wonders, go around in stupid circles?

An uncertain time

Jacob de Zoet pursues the link-boy’s lamp along a putrid canal and into the nave of Domburg church. Geertje sets a roasted goose on the altar table. The link-boy, whose eyes are Asian and hair is copper, quotes, ‘I will incline mine ear to a parable, Papa, I will open my dark saying upon the harp.’ Jacob is aghast. An illegitimate son? He turns to Geertje, but finds the soured landlady of his makeshift lodgings in Batavia. ‘You don’t even know his mother, do you?’ Unico Vorstenbosch finds all this inordinately funny, and plucks meat from the half-eaten goose. The fowl lifts its crisped head and quotes, ‘Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut to pieces.’ The goose flies through a bamboo grove, through slanted bars of light dark and dark dark, and Jacob flies too, until they reach a clearing where the head of John the Baptist glowers from its Delftware dish. ‘Eighteen years in the Orient with nothing to show but a bastard half-breed!’

Eighteen years? Jacob notices this number. Eighteen…

The Shenandoah, he thinks, embarked less than one year ago…

His tether to the netherworld snipped, he wakes, next to Orito.

Praise merciful God in Heaven, the waker finds himself in Tall House…

… where everything is exactly as it appears to be.

Orito’s hair is mussed from last night’s lovemaking.

Dust is gold in the light of dawn; an insect sharpens its scalpels.

‘I am yours, Beloved,’ Jacob whispers, and kisses her burn…

Orito’s slim hands, her beautiful hands, wake, and cup his nipples…

So much suffering, Jacob thinks, but now you are here, I will heal you.