The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

by David Mitchell

  “Domburg, sir: a coastal town on Walcheren Island, in Zeeland.”

  “Walcheren, is it? I visited Middelburg once.”

  “In point of fact, Doctor, I was educated in Middelburg.”

  Marinus barks a laugh. “Nobody is ‘educated’ in that nest of slavers.”

  “Perhaps I may raise your estimate of Zeelanders in the months ahead. I am to live in Tall House, so we are nearly neighbors.”

  “So propinquity propagates neighborliness, does it?”

  “I—” Jacob wonders at Marinus’s deliberate aggression. “I—well—”

  “This Cymbidium koran was found in the goats’ fodder: as you dither, it wilts.”

  “Mr. Vorstenbosch suggested you might drain some blood—”

  “Medieval quackery! Phlebotomy—and the Humoral Theory on which it rests—was exploded by Hunter twenty years ago.”

  But draining blood, thinks Jacob, is every surgeon’s bread. “But …”

  “But but but? But but? But? But but but but but?”

  “The world is composed of people who are convinced of it.”

  “Proving the world is composed of dunderheads. Your nose looks swollen.”

  Jacob strokes the kink. “Former Chief Snitker threw a punch and—”

  “You don’t have the build for brawling.” Marinus rises and limps toward the trapdoor with the aid of a stout stick. “Bathe your nose in cool water, twice daily, and pick a fight with Gerritszoon presenting the convex side, so he may hammer it flat. Good day to you, Domburger.” With a well-aimed whack of his stick, Dr. Marinus knocks away the prop holding up the trapdoor.

  BACK IN THE sun-blinding street, the indignant clerk finds himself surrounded by Interpreter Ogawa, his servant, a pair of inspectors: all four look sweaty and grim. “Mr. de Zoet,” says Ogawa, “I wish to speak about a book you bring. It is important matter …”

  Jacob loses the next clause to a rush of nausea and dread.

  Vorstenbosch shan’t be able to save me, he thinks, and why would he?

  “… and so to find such a book astonishes me greatly …. Mr. de Zoet?”

  My career is destroyed, thinks Jacob, my liberty is gone, and Anna is lost …

  “Where,” the prisoner manages to croak, “am I to be incarcerated?”

  Long Street is tilting up and down. The clerk shuts his eyes.

  “In cancer-ated?” Ogawa mocks him. “My poor Dutch is failing me.”

  The clerk’s heart pounds like a broken pump. “Is it human to toy with me?”

  “Toy?” Ogawa’s perplexity grows. “This is proverb, Mr. de Zoet? In Mr. de Zoet’s chest I found book of Mr …. Adamu Sumissu.”

  Jacob opens his eyes: Long Street is no longer tilting. “Adam Smith?”

  “Adam Smith—please excuse. The Wealth of Nations … You know?”

  I know it, yes, thinks Jacob, but I don’t yet dare hope. “The original English is a little difficult, so I bought the Dutch edition in Batavia.”

  Ogawa looks surprised. “Adam Smith is Englishman?”

  “He’d not thank you, Mr. Ogawa! Smith’s a Scot, living in Edinburgh. But can it be The Wealth of Nations about which you speak?”

  “What other? I am rangakusha—scholar of Dutch science. Four years ago, I borrow Wealth of Nations from Chief Hemmij. I began translation to bring,” Ogawa’s lips ready themselves, “‘Theory of Political Economy’ to Japan. But lord of Satsuma offered Chief Hemmij much money, so I returned it. Book was sold before I finish.”

  The incandescent sun is caged by a glowing bay tree.

  God called unto him, thinks Jacob, out of the midst of the bush …

  Hooked gulls and scraggy kites crisscross the blue-glazed sky

  … and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

  “I try to obtain another, but”—Ogawa flinches—“but difficulties is much.”

  Jacob resists an impulse to laugh like a child. “I understand.”

  “Then, this morning, in your book chest, Adam Smith I find. Very much surprise, and to speak with sincerity, Mr. de Zoet, I wish to buy or rent …”

  Across the street in the garden, cicadas shriek in ratcheted rounds.

  “Adam Smith is neither for sale nor rent,” says the Dutchman, “but you are welcome, Mr. Ogawa—very welcome indeed—to borrow him for as long as ever you wish.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OUTSIDE THE PRIVY BY GARDEN HOUSE ON DEJIMA

  Before breakfast on July 29, 1799

  JACOB DE ZOET EMERGES FROM BUZZING DARKNESS TO SEE HANZABURO, his house interpreter, being interrogated by two inspectors. “They’ll be ordering your boy”—Junior Clerk Ponke Ouwehand appears from thin air—“to open up your turds to see what you shat. I tormented my first snoop into an early grave three days ago, so the Interpreters’ Guild sent this hat stand.” Ouwehand jerks his head at the gangly youth behind him. “His name’s Kichibei, but I call him ‘Herpes’ after how closely he sticks to me. But I’ll defeat him in the end. Grote bet me ten guilders I can’t wear out five by November. Broken our fast yet, have we?”

  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 farther.

  “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 Seawall 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 rising up, and a well-traveled 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 Monday, Vorstenbosch, Van Cleef, and Dr. Marinus will 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 n
ight?”

  “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-flavored Dutch, “is—”

  “He’s the one sittin’ in judgment 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 jail.”

  “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 the Chief decides.”

  A bad answer, realizes 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’,” queries Grote, “for the lower orders?”

  The warped kitchen door shudders as the 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 stateroom, 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,” says 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 stateroom, 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 neighbor is a slack-jawed viper of the Celebes.

  “… 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 …”

  The alligator’s umbilical cord is attached to its shell for all eternity.

  “… who has not abused his advantage over Anna’s affections.”

  It was a posting to Halmahera from which Vorstenbosch rescued Jacob.

  “The debit column. You are not a merchant, not a shipper …”

  A tortoise from the Island of Diego Garcia appears to be weeping.

  “… or even a warehouse master, but a clerk. I don’t doubt your affection is genuine.”

  Jacob touches the jar of a Barbados lamprey with his broken nose.

  “But affection is merely the plum in the pudding: the pudding itself is wealth.”

  The lamprey’s O-shaped mouth is a grinding mill of razor-sharp Vs and Ws.

  “I am, however, willing to give you a chance to earn your pudding, De Zoet—out of respect for Anna’s judge of character. A director at East India House comes to my club. If you wish to become my son-in-law as strongly as you say, he can arrange a five-year clerical post for you in Java. The official salary is meager, but a young man of enterprise may make something of himself. You must give your answer today, however: the Fadrelandet is sailing from Copenhagen in a fortnight …”

  “New friends?” Deputy van Cleef watches him from the stateroom door.

  Jacob pulls his gaze from the lamprey’s. “I don’t have the luxury to pick and choose, Deputy.”

  Van Cleef hums at his candor. “Mr. Vorstenbosch shall see you now.”

  “Won’t you be joining our meeting, sir?”

  “Pig iron won’t carry and weigh itself, De Zoet, more’s the pity.”

  UNICO VORSTENBOSCH squints at the thermometer hung by the painting of William the Silent. He is pink with heat and shiny with sweat. “I shall have Twomey fashion me one of those ingenious cloth fans the English brought from India … oh, the word evades me …”

  “Might you be thinking of a punkah, sir?”

  “Just so. A punkah, with a punkah-wallah to tug its cord.”

  Cupido enters, carrying a familiar jade-and-silver teapot on a tray.

  “Interpreter Kobayashi is due at ten,” says Vorstenbosch, “with a gaggle of officials to brief me on court etiquette during our long-delayed audience with the magistrate. Antique chinaware shall signal that this chief resident is a man of refinement: the Orient is all about signals, De Zoet. Remind me what blue blood the tea service was crafted for, according to that Jew in Macao?”

  “He claimed it was from the trousseau of the last Ming emperor’s wife, sir.”

  “The last Ming emperor: just so. Oh, and I am desirous that you join us later.”

  “For the meeting with Interpreter Kobayashi and the officials, sir?”

  “For our interview with Magistrate Shirai … Shilo … Aid me.”

  “Magistrate Shiroyama, sir—sir, I am to visit Nagasaki?”

  “Unless you’d prefer to stay here and record catties of pig iron?”

  “To set foot on Japan proper would”—cause Peter Fischer, thinks Jacob, to expire with envy—“w
ould be a great adventure. Thank you.”

  “A chief needs a private secretary. Now, let us continue the morning’s business in the privacy of my bureau …”

  SUNLIGHT FALLS ACROSS the escritoire in the small adjacent room. “So,” Vorstenbosch settles himself, “after three days ashore, how are you finding life on the company’s farthest-flung outpost?”

  “More salubrious”—Jacob’s chair creaks—“than a posting on Halmahera, sir.”

  “Damnation by dim praise indeed! What irks you most of all: the spies, confinement, lack of liberties … or the ignorance of our countrymen?”

  Jacob considers telling Vorstenbosch about the scene at breakfast but sees nothing to be gained. Respect, he thinks, cannot be commanded from on high.

  “The hands view me with some … suspicion, sir.”

  “Naturally. To decree ‘private trade is henceforth banned’ would merely make their schemes more ingenious; a deliberate vagueness is, for the time being, the best prophylactic. The hands resent this, of course, but daren’t vent their anger on me. You bear the brunt.”

  “I’d not wish to appear ungrateful for your patronage, sir.”

  “There’s no gainsaying that Dejima is a dull posting. The days when a man could retire on the profit from two trading seasons here are long, long gone. Swamp fever and crocodiles shan’t kill you in Japan, but monotony might. But take heart, De Zoet: after one year we return to Batavia, where you shall learn how I reward loyalty and diligence. And speaking of diligence, how proceeds your restoration of the ledgers?”

  “The books are an unholy mess, but Mr. Ogawa is proving most helpful, and ’94 and ’95 are in large part reconstructed.”

  “A shoddy pass that we have to rely on Japanese archives. But come, we must address yet more pressing matters.” Vorstenbosch unlocks his desk and takes out a bar of Japanese copper. “The world’s reddest, its richest in gold, and, for a hundred years, the bride for whom we Dutch have danced in Nagasaki.” He tosses the flat ingot at Jacob, who catches it neatly. “This bride, however, grows skinnier and sulkier by the year. According to your own figures”—Vorstenbosch consults a slip of paper on his desk top—“in 1790 we exported eight thousand piculs. In ’94, six thousand. Gijsbert Hemmij, who displayed good judgment only in dying before being charged for incompetence, suffered the quota to drop under four thousand, and during Snitker’s year of misgovernance, a paltry three thousand two hundred, every last bar of which was lost with the Octavia, wherever her wreck may lie.”