The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

by David Mitchell

  Kiyoshichi doubts that the gods employ such poor messengers.

  Uzaemon claps. “Don’t make me ask you again, Kiyoshichi!”

  “YOU ARE OTANE,” begins Uzaemon, wondering whether to give her an honorific title, “Otane-san, the herbalist of Kurozane. Earlier, outside, I did not understand …”

  The old woman sits like a curled-up wren. Her eyes are sharp and clear.

  Uzaemon has dismissed the servants. “I apologize for not listening to you.”

  Otane accepts her due deference but says nothing, yet.

  “It is long walk from Kyôga Domain. Did you sleep at an inn?”

  “The journey had to be made, and now I am here.”

  “Miss Aibagawa always spoke of Otane-san with great respect.”

  “On her second visit to Kurozane”—her Kyôga dialect carries an earthy dignity—“Miss Aibagawa spoke about Interpreter Ogawa in a similar fashion.”

  Her feet may be sore, thinks Uzaemon, but she knows how to kick. “The groom who marries according to his heart is a rare man. I had to marry according to the dictates of my family. It is the way of the world.”

  “Miss Aibagawa’s visits are three treasures of my life. Despite our great difference in rank, she was, and remains, a precious daughter to me.”

  “I understand Kurozane is at the foot of the trail that leads up Mount Shiranui. Is it possible”—Uzaemon can endure hope no longer—“you have met her since she entered the shrine?”

  Otane’s face is a bitter No. “All contact is forbidden. Twice yearly I take medicines to the shrine’s doctor, Master Suzaku, at the gatehouse. But no layperson is permitted farther, unless invited by Master Genmu or Lord Abbot Enomoto. Least of all—”

  The door slides open, and tea is brought in by Uzaemon’s mother’s maid.

  Mother wasted no time, Uzaemon registers, in sending her spy along.

  Otane bows as she receives the tea on a walnut-wood tray.

  The maid departs for a thorough interrogation.

  “Least of all,” continues Otane, “an old herb gatherer.” She wraps her bowl of tea with her medicine-stained bony fingers. “No, it is not a message from Miss Aibagawa I bring, but … Well, I will come to this shortly. Some weeks ago, on the night of first snow, a visitor sought shelter in my cottage. He was a young acolyte from Mount Shiranui Shrine. He had run away.”

  Yohei’s blurred outline crosses behind the snow-lit paper window.

  “What did he say?” Uzaemon’s mouth is dry. “Is she … is Miss Aibagawa well?”

  “She is alive, but he spoke about cruelties committed by the order against the sisters. He said that if these cruelties were widely known, not even the lord abbot’s connections in Edo could defend the shrine. That was the acolyte’s plan—to go to Nagasaki and denounce the Order of Mount Shiranui to the magistrate and to his court.”

  Someone sweeps snow in the courtyard with a stiff-bristled broom.

  Uzaemon is cold, despite the fire. “Where is this defector?”

  “I buried him the next day between two cherry trees in my garden.”

  Something scurries at the corners of Uzaemon’s vision. “How did he die?”

  “There exists a family of poisons that, once ingested, remain in the body, harmlessly, so long as an antidote is taken daily. But without that antidote, the poison will kill its host. This would be my best guess.”

  “So the acolyte was doomed from the moment he left?”

  Down the corridor, Uzaemon’s mother is scolding her maid.

  “Did the acolyte speak about his order’s practices before he died?”

  “No.” Otane tilts her old head closer. “But he wrote its creeds on a scroll.”

  “These creeds are the same ‘cruelties’ endured by the sisters?”

  “I am an old woman of peasant stock, Interpreter. I cannot read.”

  “This scroll.” His voice, too, is a whisper. “Is it in Nagasaki?”

  Otane stares at him like Time itself, made human. From her sleeve, she withdraws a dogwood scroll tube.

  “Are the sisters,” Uzaemon makes himself ask, “obliged to lie with the men? Is this the—the cruelty that the acolyte spoke of?”

  His mother’s sure footsteps approach along the creaking corridor.

  “I have grounds to fear,” Otane replies, handing the scroll tube to Uzaemon, “that the truth is worse.”

  Uzaemon hides the dogwood tube in his sleeve just as the door opens.

  “But excuse me!” His mother appears in the doorway. “I had no inkling you had company. Shall your …” She pauses. “Shall your guest be staying for dinner?”

  Otane bows very low. “Such generosity far exceeds what an old grandmother deserves. Thank you, madam, but I must not impose upon your household’s charity a minute longer …”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE HOUSE OF SISTERS, MOUNT SHIRANUI SHRINE

  Sunrise on the ninth day of the twelfth month

  SWEEPING THE CLOISTERS IS A VEXING CHORE THIS AFTERNOON: no sooner is a pile of leaves and pine needles gathered than the wind kicks it away again. Clouds unravel on Bare Peak and spill icy drizzle. Orito removes bird lime from the boards with a scrap of sacking. Today is the ninety-fifth day of her captivity: for thirteen days she has turned away from Suzaku and the abbess and tipped her solace into her sleeve. For four or five days she suffered from cramps and fever, but now her mind is her own again: the rats are no longer verbal, and the house’s tricks have dwindled away. Her victory is limited, however: she has not won permission to explore the precincts, and although she escaped another engiftment day, a newest sister’s chances of being so lucky a fourth time are meager, and a fifth escape would be unprecedented.

  Umegae approaches in her lacquered sandals, click-clack, click-clack.

  She shan’t be able to resist, Orito predicts, making a stupid joke.

  “So diligent, Newest Sister! Were you born with a broom in your hand?”

  No reply is expected, none is given, and Umegae walks on to the kitchen. Her jibe reminds Orito of her father praising Dejima’s cleanliness, in contrast to the Chinese factory where rubbish is left to rot and rats. She wonders if Marinus misses her. She wonders if a girl from the House of Wistaria is warming Jacob de Zoet’s bed and admiring his exotic eyes. She wonders if De Zoet even thinks of her now, except when he needs his lost dictionary.

  She wonders the same thing about Ogawa Uzaemon.

  De Zoet shall leave Japan never knowing she had chosen to accept him.

  Self-pity, Orito reminds herself yet again, is a noose dangling from a rafter.

  The gatekeeper shouts, “The gates are opening, Sisters!”

  Two acolytes push in a cart loaded with logs and kindling.

  Just as the gate closes, Orito notices a cat slip through. It is bright gray, like the moon on blurred evenings, and it swerves across the courtyard. A squirrel runs up the old pine, but the moon-gray cat knows that two-legged creatures offer better pickings than four, and it leaps onto the cloisters to try its luck with Orito. “I never saw you here before,” the woman tells the animal.

  The cat looks at her and meows, Feed me, for I am beautiful.

  Orito proffers a dried pilchard between finger and thumb.

  The moon-gray cat inspects the fish indifferently.

  “Someone carried this fish,” scolds Orito, “up this mountain.”

  The cat takes the fish, jumps to the ground, and goes beneath the walkway.

  Orito lowers herself onto the courtyard, but the cat has gone.

  She sees a narrow rectangular hole in the foundations of the house …

  … and a voice on the walkway asks, “Has the newest sister lost anything?”

  Guiltily, Orito looks up to see the housekeeper carrying a pile of robes. “A cat pleaded for a scrap of food, then slunk away when he got what he wanted.”

  “Must be a tom.” The housekeeper is doubled over by a sneeze.

  Orito helps her pick up the laundry
and carry it to the linen room. The newest sister feels some sympathy toward Housekeeper Satsuki. The abbess’s rank is clear—below the masters, above the acolytes—but Housekeeper Satsuki shoulders more duties than she enjoys privileges. By the logic of the world below, her lack of disfigurements and freedom from engiftment make her position an enviable one, but the House of Sisters has its own logic, and Umegae and Hashihime contrive a dozen means a day to remind the housekeeper that her post exists for their convenience. She rises early, retires late, and is excluded from many of the sisters’ shared intimacies. Orito notices how red are the housekeeper’s eyes, and how poor her color. “Pardon my asking,” says the doctor’s daughter, “but are you unwell?”

  “My health, Sister? My health is … satisfactory, thank you.”

  Orito is sure the housekeeper is concealing something.

  “Truly, Sister, I’m well enough: the mountain winters slow me down a little … That’s all.”

  “How many years have you spent on Mount Shiranui, Housekeeper?”

  “This will be my fifth in the shrine’s service.” She seems happy to talk.

  “Sister Yayoi told me you’re from a large island in Satsuma Domain.”

  “Oh, it’s a little-known place, a full day’s sail from Kagoshima Port, called Yakushima. Nobody’s heard of it. A few island men serve the lord of Satsuma as foot soldiers—they bring back stories they spend their lives embroidering, but otherwise very few islanders ever leave. The interior is mountainous and trackless. Only cautious woodsmen, foolish hunters, or wayward pilgrims venture there. The island’s kami gods aren’t used to humans. There is just one notable shrine, halfway up Miura Mountain, two days’ journey from the port, with a small monastery, smaller than Shiranui Shrine.”

  Hatsune passes the linen room’s doorway, blowing into her hands.

  “How did you come,” Orito asks, “to be appointed housekeeper here?”

  Yûgiri passes in the other direction, swinging a bucket.

  The housekeeper unfolds a sheet to fold again. “Master Byakko visited Yakushima on a pilgrimage. My father, a fifth son of a lesser family of the Miyake clan, was a samurai in name only—he was a rice and millet merchant and owned a fishing boat. As he supplied the Miura monastery with rice, he offered to guide Master Byakko up the mountain. I went to carry and cook; we Yakushima girls are bred sturdy.” The housekeeper risks a rare, shy smile. “On the return journey, Master Byakko told my father that the small nunnery attached to Mount Shiranui required a housekeeper who wasn’t afraid of hard work. Father jumped at the chance: I was one of four daughters, and the master’s offer meant one less dowry to find.”

  “What were your thoughts about vanishing over the horizon?”

  “I was nervous, but excited, too, at the idea of seeing the mainland with my own eyes. Two days later, I was on a boat, watching my home island shrink until it was small enough to fit into a thimble … and then there was no going back.”

  Sawarabi’s spiked laughter carries through from the kitchen.

  Housekeeper Satsuki is looking backward through time: her breath is short.

  You are more ill, Orito guesses, than you are admitting.

  “Well, what a gossip I am! Thank you for your help, Sister, but you mustn’t let me keep you from your chores. I can finish folding the robes on my own, thank you.”

  Orito returns to the cloisters and takes up her broom again.

  The acolytes knock on the gate to be allowed back into the precincts.

  As it opens, the moon-gray cat darts between their legs. It swerves across the courtyard; a squirrel darts up the old pine. The cat heads straight to Orito, slinks against her shins, and looks up at her meaningfully.

  “If you’ve come back for more fish, you rogue, there isn’t any.”

  The cat tells Orito that she is a poor dumb creature.

  “IN THE DOMAIN of Hizen,” First Sister Hatsune strokes her forever-shut eyelid as the night wind blows around the shrine, “a ravine climbs northward from the San’yôdo Highway to the castle town of Bitchu. At a narrow twist in this ravine, two footsore peddlers from Osaka were overtaken by night and made camp at the foot of an abandoned shrine to Inari, the fox god, underneath a venerable walnut tree draped in moss. Now, the first peddler, a cheerful fellow, sold ribbons, combs, and suchlike. He’d charm the girls, cajole the young men, and business had been good. ‘Ribbons for kisses,’ he’d sing, ‘from all the young misses!’ The second peddler was a knife seller. He was a darker-spirited fellow who believed that the world owed him a living, and his handcart was full of unsold merchandise. On the night this tale begins, they warmed themselves at their fire and talked about what they would do on their return to Osaka. The ribbon peddler was set on marrying his childhood sweetheart, but the knife seller planned to open a pawnbroker’s shop to earn the most money with the least work.”

  Sawarabi’s scissors snip snip snip through a band of cotton.

  “Before they slept, the knife seller suggested that they pray to Inari-sama for his protection through the night in such a lonely spot. The ribbon peddler agreed, but as he knelt before the abandoned altar, the knife seller chopped off his head with a single stroke of his biggest unsold ax.”

  Several of the sisters gasp, and Sadaie gives a little shriek. “No!”

  “Phut, Sister,” says Asagao, “you told us the two nen were phriends.”

  “So the poor ribbon seller thought, Sister. But now the knife seller stole his companion’s money, buried the body, and fell sound asleep. Surely nightmares, or strange groans, plagued him? Not at all. The knife seller woke up refreshed, enjoyed his victim’s food for breakfast, and had an uneventful journey back to Osaka. Setting himself up in business with the murdered man’s money, he prospered as a pawnbroker, and soon he was lining his robes and eating the daintiest delicacies with silver chopsticks. Four springs came and four autumns went. Then, one afternoon, a spruce, bushy customer in a brown cloak walked into the pawnbroker’s shop and produced a box of walnut wood. From inside, he removed a polished human skull. The pawnbroker said, ‘The box may be worth a few copper mon, but why are you showing me this old lump of bone?’ The stranger smiled at the pawnbroker with his fine white teeth and commanded the skull: ‘Sing!’ And as I live and breathe, Sisters, sing it did, and here is the song that it sang:

  “With beauty shall you sleep, on pleasure shall you dine,

  By the crane and the turtle and the goyô pine …”

  A log cracks open in the hearth and half the women jump.

  “The three tokens of good fortune,” says Minori.

  “So thought the pawnbroker,” continues Hatsune, “but to the spruce and bushy stranger he complained that the market was flooded with these Dutch novelties. He asked whether the skull would sing for anyone or just the stranger? In his silky voice, the stranger explained that it would sing for its true owner. ‘Well,’ grunted the pawnbroker, ‘here’s three koban: ask for one mon more, and the deal’s off.’ The stranger said not a word but bowed, placed the skull on its box, took his payment, and left. The pawnbroker lost no time in deciding how best to turn his magical acquisition into money. He clicked his fingers for his palanquin and rode to the den of a certain masterless samurai, a dissolute sort of ronin given to strange wagers. Being a cautious man, the pawnbroker tested his new purchase as he rode and ordered the skull, ‘Sing!’ And sure enough, the skull sang,

  “Wood is life and fire is time,

  By the crane and the turtle and the goyô pine!”

  “Once in the samurai’s presence, the pawnbroker produced his new acquisition and asked for a thousand koban for a song from his new friend, the skull. Quick as a blade, the samurai told the pawnbroker that he’d lose his head for insulting his credulity if it didn’t sing. The pawnbroker, who had expected this response, agreed to the wager in return for half the samurai’s wealth if the skull did sing. Well, the crafty samurai assumed that the pawnbroker had lost his wits—and saw an easy fortune to be had.
He objected that the pawnbroker’s neck was worth nothing and claimed all his visitor’s wealth as a prize. Delighted that the samurai had taken the bait, the pawnbroker raised the stakes again: if the skull sang, his rival must pay all his wealth—unless, of course, he was losing his nerve? In reply, the samurai bade his scribe draw up the wager as a blood oath, witnessed by the ward headman, a corrupt fellow well used to such shady goings-on. Then the greedy pawnbroker placed the skull on a box and ordered: ‘Sing!’”

  The women’s shadows are the uneasy shades of slanted giants.

  Hotaru is the first to crack. “What happened, Sister Hatsune?”

  “Silence was what happened, Sister. The skull uttered not one squeak. So the pawnbroker raised his voice a second time. ‘Sing, I command you. Sing!’”

  Housekeeper Satsuki’s busy needle has fallen still.

  “The skull said not a word. The pawnbroker turned pale. ‘Sing! Sing!’ But still the skull was mute. The blood oath lay there on the table, its red ink not yet dry. The pawnbroker, in despair, shouted at the skull: ‘Sing!’ Nothing, nothing, nothing. The pawnbroker expected no mercy, nor received any. The samurai called for his sharpest sword whilst the pawnbroker knelt there, trying to pray. Off came the pawnbroker’s head.”

  Sawarabi drops a thimble: it rolls to Orito, who picks it up and returns it.

  “Now,” Hatsune continues, nodding ponderously, “too late, the skull chose to sing:

  “Ribbons for kisses, from all the young misses!

  Ribbons for kisses, from all the young misses!”

  Hotaru and Asagao stare wide-eyed. Umegae’s mocking smile is gone.

  Hatsune leans backward, brushing her knees. “The samurai knew cursed silver when he saw it. He donated the pawnbroker’s money to Sanjusandengo Temple. The spruce and bushy stranger was never heard of again. Who knows that he wasn’t Inari-sama himself, come to avenge the wickedness committed against his shrine? The skull of the ribbon seller—if his it was—is still housed in a remote alcove in a rarely visited wing of Sanjusandengo. One of the older monks prays for its repose every year on the Day of the Dead. If any of you passes that way after your descent, you may go and see it for yourself …”