The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

by David Mitchell

  Deputy van Cleef explains, “He means ‘Come.’”

  Once through the sea gate, they are ushered into the customs room. Here, Sekita asks the foreigners’ names and shouts them at an elderly registrar, who repeats them to a younger assistant, who writes them in his ledger. “Vorstenbosch” is transliterated Bôrusu Tenbôshu, “Van Cleef” becomes Bankureifu, and “De Zoet” is rechristened Dazûto. Rounds of cheese and barrels of butter unloaded from the Shenandoah are being poked with skewers by a team of inspectors. “Those damned blackguards,” Van Cleef complains, “are known to break open preserved eggs lest the chicken sneaked in a ducat or two.” A burly guard approaches. “Meet the frisker,” says the deputy. “The chief is exempt, but not clerks, alas.”

  A number of young men gather: they have the same shaven foreheads and topknots as the inspectors and interpreters who visited the Shenandoah this week, but their robes are less impressive. “Unranked interpreters,” says Van Cleef. “They hope to earn Sekita’s favor by doing his job for him.”

  The frisker speaks to Jacob and they chorus, “Arms rise! Open pockets!”

  Sekita silences them and orders Jacob, “Arms rise. Open pockets.”

  Jacob obeys; the frisker pats his armpits and explores his pockets.

  He finds Jacob’s sketchbook, examines it briefly, and issues another order.

  “Show shoes to guard, sir!” say the quickest house interpreters.

  Sekita sniffs. “Show shoes now.”

  Jacob notices that even the stevedores stop their work to watch.

  Some are pointing at the clerk, unabashed and declaring, “Kômô, kômô.”

  “They’re talking about your hair,” explains Van Cleef. “‘Kômô’ is how Europeans are often dubbed: kô signifying ‘red,’ and mô, ‘hair.’ Few of us, in truth, do boast hair of your tint; a genuine ‘red-haired barbarian’ is worth a good gawp.”

  “You study the Japanese tongue, Mr. van Cleef?”

  “There are rules against it, but I pick up a little from my wives.”

  “Should you teach me what you know, sir, I would be greatly obliged.”

  “I’d not be much of a teacher,” Van Cleef confesses. “Dr. Marinus chats with the Malays as if he were born black, but the Japanese language is hard won, he says. Any interpreter caught teaching us could feasibly be charged with treason.”

  The frisker returns Jacob’s shoes and issues a fresh command.

  “Off clotheses, sir!” say the interpreters. “Clotheses off!”

  “Clotheses stay on!” retorts Van Cleef. “Clerks don’t strip, Mr. de Zoet; the nasty-turdy wants us robbed of another dignity. Obey him today, and every clerk entering Japan until Doomsday would perforce follow suit.”

  The frisker remonstrates; the chorus rises, “Clotheses off!”

  Interpreter Sekita recognizes trouble and creeps away.

  Vorstenbosch hits the floor with his cane until quietness reigns. “No!”

  The displeased frisker decides to concede the point.

  A customs guard taps Jacob’s sea chest with his spear and speaks.

  “Open please,” says an unranked interpreter. “Open big box!”

  The box, taunts Jacob’s inner whisperer, containing your Psalter.

  “Before we all grow old, De Zoet,” says Vorstenbosch.

  Sick to his core, Jacob unlocks the chest as ordered.

  One of the guards speaks; the chorus translates, “Go back, sir! Step behind!”

  More than twenty curious necks crane as the frisker lifts the lid and unfolds Jacob’s five linen shirts; his woolen blanket; stockings; a drawstring bag of buttons and buckles; a tatty wig; a set of quills; yellowing undergarments; his boyhood compass; half a bar of Windsor soap; the two dozen letters from Anna tied with her hair ribbon; a razor blade; a Delft pipe; a cracked glass; a folio of sheet music; a moth-eaten bottle-green velvet waistcoat; a pewter plate, knife, and spoon; and, stacked at the bottom, some fifty assorted books. A frisker speaks to an underling, who runs out of the customs room.

  “Fetch duty interpreter, sir,” says an interpreter. “Bring to see books.”

  “Is not”—Jacob’s rib cage contracts—“Mr. Sekita to conduct the dissection?”

  A brown-toothed grin appears in Van Cleef’s beard. “Dissection?”

  “Inspection, I meant, sir: the inspection of my books.”

  “Sekita’s father purchased his son’s place in the guild, but the prohibition against”—Van Cleef mouths “Christianity”—“is too important for blockheads. Books are checked by an abler man: Iwase Banri, perhaps, or one of the Ogawas.”

  “Who are the”—Jacob chokes on his own saliva—“Ogawas?”

  “Ogawa Mimasaku is one of the four interpreters of the first rank. His son, Ogawa Uzaemon, is of the third rank, and”—a young man enters—“ah! Speak of the devil and listen for his feet! A warm morning, Mr. Ogawa.”

  Ogawa Uzaemon, in his midtwenties, has an open, intelligent face. The unranked interpreters all bow low. He bows to Vorstenbosch, Van Cleef, and lastly the new arrival. “Welcome ashore, Mr. de Zoet.” His pronunciation is excellent. He extends his hand for a European handshake just as Jacob delivers an Asian bow: Ogawa Uzaemon reciprocates with an Asian bow as Jacob offers his hand. The vignette amuses the room. “I am told,” says the interpreter, “Mr. de Zoet brings many book … and here they are”—he points to the chest—“many many book. A ‘plethora’ of book, you say?”

  “A few books,” says Jacob, nervous enough to vomit. “Or quite a few: yes.”

  “May I remove books to see?” Ogawa does so eagerly, without waiting for an answer. For Jacob, the world is narrowed to a thin tunnel between him and his Psalter, visible between the two volumes of Sara Burgerhart. Ogawa frowns. “Many, many books here. A little time, please. When finish, I send message. It is agreeable?” He misreads Jacob’s hesitancy. “Books all safe. I too”—Ogawa places his palm over his heart—“am ‘bibliophile.’ This is correct word? ‘Bibliophile’?”

  OUT IN THE WEIGHING YARD, the sun feels as hot as a branding iron.

  Any minute now, thinks the reluctant smuggler, my Psalter will be found.

  A small party of Japanese officials is waiting for Vorstenbosch.

  A Malay slave bows, waiting for the chief with a bamboo parasol.

  “Captain Lacy and I,” says the chief, “have a gamut of engagements in the stateroom until luncheon. You look sickly, De Zoet: have Dr. Marinus drain half a pint after Mr. van Cleef has shown you around.” He nods a parting at his deputy and walks to his residence.

  The weighing yard is dominated by one of the company’s tripod scales, as high as two men. “We’re weighing the sugar today,” says Van Cleef, “for what that junk is worth. Batavia sent the very dregs of their warehouses.”

  The small square bustles with more than a hundred merchants, interpreters, inspectors, servants, spies, lackeys, palanquin bearers, porters. So these, thinks Jacob, are the Japanese. Their hair color—black to gray—and skin tones are more uniform than those of a Dutch crowd, and their modes of dress, footwear, and hairstyles appear rigidly prescribed according to rank. Fifteen or twenty near-naked carpenters are perched on the frame of a new warehouse. “Idler than a gang of gin-soused Finns …” mumbles Van Cleef. Watching from the roof of a customs house is a pink-faced, soot-on-snow-colored monkey, dressed in a sailcloth jerkin. “I see you’ve spotted William Pitt.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “King George’s first minister, yes. He answers to no other name. A sailor bought him some six or seven seasons ago, but on the day his owner sailed, the ape vanished, only to reappear the next day, a freedman of Dejima. Speaking of brute apes, over there”—Van Cleef indicates a lantern-jawed and pig-tailed laborer engaged in opening boxes of sugar—“is Wybo Gerritszoon, one of our hands.” Gerritszoon places the precious nails in his jerkin pocket. The bags of sugar are carried past a Japanese inspector and a striking foreign youth of seventeen or eighteen
: his hair is gold and cherubic, his lips have a Javanese thickness, and his eyes an Oriental slant. “Ivo Oost: somebody’s natural son, with a generous glug of mestizo blood.”

  THE BAGS OF SUGAR arrive at a trestle table by the company tripod.

  The weighing is viewed by another trio of Japanese officials, an interpreter, and two Europeans in their twenties. “On the left,” Van Cleef points, “is Peter Fischer, a Prussian out of Brunswick”—Fischer is nut-colored, brown-haired but balding—“and an articled clerk—although Mr. Vorstenbosch tells me you are also qualified, giving us an embarrassment of riches. Fischer’s companion is Con Twomey, an Irishman of Cork.” Twomey has a half-moon face and a sharkish smile; his hair is cropped close and he is roughly tailored in sailcloth. “Don’t fret if you forget these names: once the Shenandoah departs, we’ll have a tedious eternity in which to learn all about one another.”

  “Don’t the Japanese suspect some of our men aren’t Dutch?”

  “We account for Twomey’s bastard accent by saying he hails from Groningen. When were there ever enough pure-blooded Dutch to man the company? Especially now”—the stressed word alludes to the sensitive matter of Daniel Snitker’s incarceration—“we must catch as catch can. Twomey’s our carpenter but doubles as inspector on weighing days, for the infernal coolies’ll spirit away a bag of sugar in a blink without they’re watched like hawks. As will the guards—and the merchants are the slyest bastards of all: yesterday one of the whoresons slipped a stone into a bag, which he then ‘discovered’ and tried to use as ‘evidence’ to lower the average tare.”

  “Shall I begin my duties now, Mr. van Cleef?”

  “Have Dr. Marinus breathe a vein first, and join the fray once you’re settled. Marinus you shall find in his surgery at the end of Long Street—this street—by the bay tree. You shan’t get lost. No man ever lost his way on Dejima, without he had a bladderful of grog in him.”

  “FINE THING I happened along,” says a wheezing voice, ten paces later. “A cove’ll lose his way on Dejima faster’n shit through a goose. Arie Grote’s my name, an’ you’ll be”—he thumps Jacob’s shoulder—“Jacob de Zoet of Zeeland the Brave an’, my oh my, Snitker did put your nose out of joint, didn’t he?”

  Arie Grote has a grin full of holes and a hat made of shark hide.

  “Like my hat, do you? Boa constrictor, this was, in the jungles of Ternate, what slunk one night into my hut what I shared with my three native maids. My first thought was, well, one of my bedmates was wakin’ me gentle to toast my beans, eh? But no no no, there’s this tightenin’ an’ my lungs’re squeezed tight an’ three of my ribs go pop! snap! crack! an’ by the light o’ the Southern Cross, eh, I see him gazin’ into my bulgin’ eyes—an’ that, Mr. de Z., was the squeezy bugger’s downfall. My arms was locked behind me, but my jaws was free, an’ oh I bit the beggar’s head that ’ard … A screamin’ snake ain’t a sound you’ll forget in an hurry! Squeezy bugger squeezed me tighter—he weren’t done yet—so I went for the worm’s jugular an’ bit it clean through. The grateful villagers made me a robe of its skin and coronated me, eh, Lord of Ternate—that snake’d been the terror of their jungle—but,” Grote sighs, “a sailor’s heart’s the sea’s plaything, eh? Back in Batavia a milliner turned my robe to hats what fetched ten rix-dollars a throw … but nothing’d splice me from this last one ’cept, mayhap, a favor to welcome a young cove whose need be sharper’n mine, eh? This beauty’s yours not for ten rix-dollars, no no no, not eight but five stuivers. As good a price as none.”

  “The milliner switched your boa skin for poorly cured shark hide, alas.”

  “I’ll wager you rise from the card table,” Arie Grote looks pleased, “with a well-fed purse. Most of us hands gather of an evenin’ in my humble billet, eh, for a little hazard ’n’ companionship, an’ as you plainly ain’t no stuffed-shirt hoity-toity, why not join us?”

  “A pastor’s nephew like me would bore you, I fear: I drink little and gamble less.”

  “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life? Of every ten coves who sail out, six’ll survive to make what hay they may, eh, but four’ll sink into some swampy grave an’ forty-sixty is damned poor odds. By the by, for every twelve jewels or ducatoons sewn into a coat lining, eleven get seized at the sea gate, and only a one slips through. They’re best poked up yer fig hole an’ by the by should your cavity, eh, be so primed, Mr. de Z., I can get you the best price of all …”

  At the crossroads, Jacob stops: ahead, Long Street continues its curve.

  “That’s Bony Alley,” Grote points to their right, “goin’ to Seawall Lane; an’ thataways,” Grote points left, “is Short Street; and the land gate …”

  … and beyond the land gate, thinks Jacob, is the Cloistered Empire.

  “Them gates’ll not budge for us, Mr. de Z., no no no. The chief, deputy, an’ Dr. M. pass through from time to time, aye, but not us. ‘The shogun’s hostages’ is what the natives dub us, an’ that’s the size of it, eh? But listen,” Grote propels Jacob forward, “it ain’t just gems and coins I deal in, let me tell yer. Just yesterday,” he whispers, “I earned a select client aboard the Shenandoah a box of purest camphor crystals for some ratty bagpipes what you’d not fish from a canal back home.”

  He’s dangling bait, Jacob thinks, and replies, “I do not smuggle, Mr. Grote.”

  “Strike me dead afore I’d accuse yer ’f malpractice, Mr. de Z.! Just informin’ you, eh, as how my commission is one quarter o’ the selling price, regular-like: but a smart young cove like you’ll keep seven slices per pie o’ ten, for I’m partial to feisty Zeelanders, eh? ’Twill be a pleasure to handle your pox powder, too”—Grote has the casual tone of a man masking something crucial—“what with certain merchants who call me ‘Brother’ beatin’ up the price faster an’ fatter ’n a stallion’s stiffy as we speak, Mr. de Z., aye, as we speak, an’ why?”

  Jacob stops. “How can you possibly know about my mercury?”

  “Hearken to my joyous tidin’s, eh? One o’ the shogun’s numerous sons,” Grote lowers his voice, “undertook the mercury cure, this spring. The treatment’s been known here twenty years but weren’t never trusted, but this princeling’s gherkin was so rotted it glowed green; one course o’ Dutch pox powder an’ praise the Lord, he’s cured! The story spread like wildfire; ev’ry apothecary in the land’s howlin’ f’ the miraculous elixir, eh; an’ here comes you with eight crates! Let me negotiate an’ yer’ll make enough to buy a thousand hats; do it yerself an’ they’ll skin yer an’ make you into the hat, my friend.”

  “How,” Jacob finds himself walking again, “do you know about my mercury?”

  “Rats,” Arie Grote whispers. “Aye, rats. I feed the rats tidbits now an’ then, an’ the rats tell me what’s what an’ that’s that. Voilà, eh? Here’s the hospital; a journey shared’s a journey halved, eh? So, we’re agreed: I’ll act as yer agent forthwith, eh? No need for contracts or such stuff: a gentleman’ll not break his word. Until later …”

  Arie Grote is walking back down Long Street to the crossroads.

  Jacob calls after him, “But I never gave you my word!”

  THE HOSPITAL DOOR opens into a narrow hall. Ahead, a ladder ascends to a trapdoor, propped open; to the right, a doorway gives in to the surgery, a large room ruled over by an age-mottled skeleton crucified on a T-frame. Jacob tries not to think of Ogawa finding his Psalter. An operating table is equipped with cords and apertures and plastered with bloodstains. There are racks for the surgeon’s saws, knives, scissors, and chisels; mortars and pestles; a giant cabinet to house, Jacob assumes, materia medica; bleeding bowls; and several benches and tables. The smell of fresh sawdust mingles with wax, herbs, and a clayey whiff of liver. Through a doorway is the sickroom, with three vacant beds. Jacob is tempted by an earthenware jar of water: he drinks with the ladle—it is cool and sweet.

  Why is nobody here, he wonders, to protect the place from thieves?

  A young servant
or slave appears, swishing a broom: he is barefoot, handsome, and attired in a fine surplice and loose Indian trousers.

  Jacob feels a need to justify his presence. “Dr. Marinus’s slave?”

  “The doctor employs me,” the youth’s Dutch is good, “as an assistant, sir.”

  “Is that so? I’m the new clerk, De Zoet; and your name is?”

  The man’s bow is courteous, not servile. “My name is Eelattu, sir.”

  “What part of the world do you hail from, Eelattu?”

  “I was born in Colombo on the island of Ceylon, sir.”

  Jacob is unsettled by his suavity. “Where is your master now?”

  “At study, upstairs; do you desire that I fetch him?”

  “There’s no need—I shall go up and introduce myself.”

  “Yes, sir; but the doctor prefers not to receive visitors—”

  “Oh, he’ll not object when he learns what I bring him …”

  THROUGH THE TRAPDOOR, Jacob peers into a long, well-furnished attic. Halfway down is Marinus’s harpsichord, referred to weeks ago in Batavia by Jacob’s friend Mr. Zwaardecroone; it is allegedly the only harpsichord ever to travel to Japan. At the far end is a ruddy and ursine European of about fifty years, with tied-back stony hair. He is sitting on the floor at a low table in a well of light, drawing a flame-orange orchid. Jacob knocks on the trapdoor. “Good afternoon, Dr. Marinus.”

  The doctor, his shirt unbuttoned, does not respond.

  “Dr. Marinus? I am delighted to make your acquaintance at last …”

  Still, the doctor gives no indication of having heard.

  The clerk raises his voice: “Dr. Marinus? I apologize for disturb—”

  “From what mouse hole,” Marinus glares, “did you spring?”

  “I just arrived a quarter hour ago, from the Shenandoah. My name’s—”

  “Did I ask for your name? No: I asked for your fons et origo.”