The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

by David Mitchell

  THE HALL OF SIXTY MATS AT THE MAGISTRACY

  After Acting Chief de Zoet’s departure on the second day of the ninth month

  “THE DUTCHMAN MAY LOOK LIKE A GOBLIN FROM A CHILD’S NIGHTMARE,” says Shiroyama, noticing his advisers’ sycophantic sneers, “but he is no fool.” The sneers quickly turn into wise nods of agreement.

  “His manners are polished,” approves one city elder, “and his reasoning clear.”

  “His Japanese was odd,” says another, “but I understood much.”

  “My spies on Dejima,” adds a third, “say he studies incessantly.”

  “But his accent,” complains an inspector, Wada, “was like a crow’s!”

  “And you, Wada, speak Dazûto’s tongue,” asks Shiroyama, “like a nightingale?”

  Wada, who speaks no Dutch at all, is wise enough to say nothing.

  “And the three of you.” Shiroyama waves his fan at the men held responsible for the kidnapping of the two Dutch hostages. “You owe your very lives to his clemency.”

  The nervous men respond with humble bows.

  “Interpreter Iwase, my report to Edo shall note that you, at least, tried to engage the abductors, however ineptly. You are needed at your guild and may go.”

  Iwase bows deeply and hurries from the hall.

  “You two,” Shiroyama continues, staring at the hapless inspector and official, “brought disrepute to your rank, and taught the Englishmen that Japan is populated by cowards.” Few of your peers, the magistrate admits to himself, would have acquitted themselves any better. “Stay confined to your houses until further notice.”

  The two disgraced men crawl backward to the door.

  Shiroyama finds Tomine. “Summon the captain of the coastal guards.”

  The swarthy captain is ushered onto the very mat vacated by De Zoet. He bows before the magistrate. “My name’s Doi, Your Honor.”

  “How soon, with what force, and how best may we retaliate?”

  Instead of replying, the man stares at the floor.

  Shiroyama looks at Chamberlain Tomine, who is as puzzled as his master.

  A half-mute incompetent, Shiroyama wonders, promoted by a relative?

  Wada clears his throat. “The hall is waiting, Captain Doi.”

  “I inspected”—the soldier glances up like a rabbit in a snare—“the battle-readiness of both guard posts, north and south of the bay, and consulted with the highest-ranking officers available.”

  “I want strategies for counterattacks, Doi, not regurgitated orders!”

  “It was … intimated to me, sir, that—that troop strength is …”

  Shiroyama notices the better-informed courtiers fanning themselves anxiously.

  “… less than the thousand men stipulated by Edo, Your Honor.”

  “Are you telling me that the garrisons of Nagasaki Bay are undermanned?”

  Doi’s cringing bow affirms that this is so. Advisers murmur in alarm.

  A small shortage shan’t damage me, thinks the magistrate. “By how many?”

  “The exact number,” Captain Doi swallows, “is sixty-seven, Your Honor.”

  Shiroyama’s guts untwist themselves: not even his most vitriolic rival Ômatsu, with whom he shares the post of magistrate, could portray a lack of sixty-seven men out of one thousand as dereliction. It could be written off as sickness. But a glance at the faces around the room tells the magistrate he is missing something …

  … until a fearful thought uproots all things.

  “Surely not”—he masters his voice—“sixty-seven men in total?”

  The weather-beaten captain is too nervous to reply.

  Chamberlain Tomine barks: “The magistrate asked you a question!”

  “There—” Doi disintegrates and must begin again. “There are thirty guards at the north garrison, and thirty-seven at the south. That is the total, Your Honor.”

  Now the advisers study Magistrate Shiroyama …

  Sixty-seven soldiers, he thinks, holding the damning numbers, in lieu of one thousand.

  … the cynical, the ambitious, his appalled allies, Ômatsu’s placemen …

  Some of you leeches knew this, Shiroyama thinks, and said nothing.

  Doi is still crouching like a prisoner waiting for the sword to fall.

  Ômatsu would blame the messenger … and Shiroyama, too, is tempted to lash out. “Wait outside, Captain. Thank you for dispatching your duty with such speed and … accuracy.”

  Doi glances at Tomine to check he heard correctly, bows, and leaves.

  None of the advisers dares be first to violate the awed hush.

  Blame the lord of Hizen, Shiroyama thinks. He supplies the men.

  No: the magistrate’s enemies would depict him as a cowardly shirker.

  Plead that the coastal garrisons have been undermanned for years.

  To say so implies that he knew of the shortages yet did nothing.

  Plead that no Japanese subject has been harmed by the shortage.

  The dictate of the shogun deified at Nikko has been ignored. This crime alone is unpardonable. “Chamberlain Tomine,” says Shiroyama, “you are acquainted with the standing orders concerning the defense of the Closed Empire.”

  “It is my duty to be so informed, Your Honor.”

  “In the case of foreigners arriving at a city without permission, its highest official is commanded to do what?”

  “To decline all overtures, Your Honor, and send the foreigners away. If the latter request provisions, a minimal quantity may be supplied, but no payment must be received, so that the foreigners cannot later claim a trading precedent.”

  “But in the case that the foreigners commit acts of aggression?”

  The advisers’ fans in the Hall of Sixty Mats have all stopped moving.

  “The magistrate or daimyo in authority must seize the foreigners, Your Honor, and detain them until orders are received from Edo.”

  Seize a fully armed warship, Shiroyama thinks, with sixty-seven men?

  In this room the magistrate has sentenced smugglers, robbers, rapists, murderers, pickpockets, and a Hidden Christian from the Goto Islands. Now Fate, adopting the chamberlain’s dense nasal voice, is sentencing him.

  The shogun will imprison me for wanton neglect of my duties.

  His family in Edo will be stripped of his name and samurai rank.

  My precious Kawasemi will have to go back to the teahouses …

  He thinks of his son, his miraculous son, eking out a living as a pimp’s servant.

  Unless I apologize for my crime and preserve my family honor …

  None of his advisers dares hold a condemned man’s gaze.

  … by ritually disemboweling myself before Edo orders my arrest.

  A throat behind him is softly cleared. “May I speak, Magistrate?”

  “Better that someone says something, Lord Abbot.”

  “Kyôga Domain is more a spiritual stronghold than a military one, but it is very close. By dispatching a messenger now, I can raise two hundred and fifty men from Kashima and Isahaya to Nagasaki within three days.”

  This strange man, Shiroyama thinks, is part of my life and my death. “Summon them, Lord Abbot, in the shogun’s name.” The magistrate senses a glimmer of hope. The greater glory of seizing a foreign aggressor’s warship may, may, eclipse lesser crimes. He turns to the commander-at-arms. “Send riders to the lords of Hizen, Chikugo, and Higo, with orders in the shogun’s name to dispatch five hundred armed men apiece. No delay, no excuses. The empire is at war.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CAPTAIN PENHALIGON’S BUNK ROOM ABOARD HMS PHOEBUS

  Around dawn on October 19, 1800

  JOHN PENHALIGON AWAKES FROM A DREAM OF MILDEWED DRAPES and lunar forests to find his son at his bedside. “Tristingle, my dear boy! Such horrid dreams I had! I dreamed you’d been killed on the Blenheim and”—Penhaligon sighs—“and I even dreamed I’d forgotten what you looked like. Not your hair—”

  “
Never my hair, Pa,” says the handsome lad, smiling. “Not this burning bush!”

  “In my dream, I sometimes dreamed you were still alive … Waking was a—a bitterness.”

  “Come!” He laughs like Meredith laughed. “Is this a phantom’s hand?”

  John Penhaligon grips his son’s warm hand and notices his captain’s epaulets.

  “My Phaeton is sent to help your Phoebus crack this walnut, Father.”

  Ships of the line hog the glory, Penhaligon’s mentor Captain Golding would say, but frigates bag the prizes!

  “There’s no prize on earth,” agrees Tristram, “like the ports and markets of the Orient.”

  “Black pudding, eggs, and fried bread would be heavenly, my lad.”

  Why, Penhaligon wonders, did I answer an unasked question?

  “I’ll tell Jones and bring your Times of London.” Tristram withdraws.

  Penhaligon listens to the gentle clatter of cutlery and plates …

  … and sloughs off wasted years of grief, like a snake’s skin.

  How can Tristram, he wonders, obtain The Times in Nagasaki Bay?

  A cat watches him from the foot of his bed; or perhaps a bat …

  With a deaf and dumb hum, the beast opens its mouth: a pouch of needles.

  It means to bite, thinks Penhaligon, and his thought is the devil’s cue.

  Agony scalds his right foot; an Aaaaaaaaagh! escapes like steam.

  Wide awake in closeted dark, dead Tristram’s father bites on a scream.

  The gentle clatter of cutlery and plates ceases, and anxious steps hurry to his cabin door. Chigwin’s voice calls out, “Is all well, sir?”

  The captain swallows. “A nightmare ambushed me, is all.”

  “I suffer them myself, sir. We’ll have breakfast served by first bell.”

  “Very good, Chigwin. Wait: are the native boats still circling us?”

  “Just the two guard boats, sir, but the marines watched them all night and they never came within two hundred yards or I’d’ve woken you, sir. Aside from them, nothing bigger than a duck is afloat this morning. We scared everything off.”

  “I shall shake my leg shortly, Chigwin. Carry on.” But as Penhaligon shifts his swollen foot, thorns of pain lacerate his flesh. “Chigwin, pray invite Surgeon Nash to call on the nonce: my podagra is troubling me, a little.”

  SURGEON NASH EXAMINES the ankle, swollen to twice its usual size. “Steeplechases and mazurkas are, more than like, behind you now, Captain. May I recommend a stick to help you walk? I shall have Rafferty fetch one.”

  Penhaligon hesitates. A cripple with a stick, at forty-two.

  Young and agile feet pound to and fro abovedecks.

  “Yes. Better to advertise my infirmity with a stick than a fall down stairs.”

  “Quite so, sir. Now, if I may examine this tophus. This may …”

  The lancet probes the rupture: a violet agony explodes behind Penhaligon’s eyeballs.

  “… hurt just a little, sir … but it’s weeping nicely—a good abundance of pus.”

  The captain peers at the frothing discharge. “That is good?”

  Surgeon Nash unscrews a corked pot. “Pus is how the body purges itself of excessive blue bile, and blue bile is the root of gout. By widening the wound, applying a scraping of murine fecal matter”—he uncorks the pot and extracts a mouse dropping with a pair of tweezers—“we can stimulate the discharge and expect an improvement within seven days. Moreover, I took the liberty of bringing a vial of Dover’s remedy, so—”

  “I’ll drink it now, Surgeon. The next two days are crucial to—”

  The lancet sinks in: the stifled scream makes his body go rigid.

  “Damn it, Nash,” the captain gasps finally. “Will you not at least warn me?”

  MAJOR CUTLIP LOOKS askance at the sauerkraut on Penhaligon’s spoon.

  “Might your resistance,” asks the captain, “be weakening, Major?”

  “Twice-rotted cabbage shall never conquer this soldier, Captain.”

  Membranous sunlight lends the breakfast table the air of a painting.

  “It was Admiral Jervis who first recommended sauerkraut to me.” The captain crunches his fermented mouthful. “But I told you that story before.”

  “Never,” says Wren, “in my hearing, sir.” He looks at the others, who concur. Penhaligon suspects them of dainty manners, but summarizes the anecdote: “Jervis had sauerkraut from William Bligh, and Bligh had it from Captain Cook himself. ‘The difference between La Pérouse’s tragedy and Cook’s glory,’ Bligh was fond of saying, ‘was thirty barrels of sauerkraut.’ But when Cook embarked on the first voyage, neither exhortation nor threat would induce the Endeavours to eat it. Thereupon Cook designated the ‘twice-rotted cabbage’ as officers’ food and forbade common tars from touching the stuff. The result? Sauerkraut began to be filched from its own poorly guarded storeroom, until six months later not a single man was buckling under scurvy and the conversion was complete.”

  “Low cunning,” Lieutenant Talbot observes, “in the service of genius.”

  “Cook is a great hero of mine,” avows Wren, “and an inspiration.”

  Wren’s “of mine” irritates Penhaligon like a tiny seed wedged between molars.

  Chigwin fills the captain’s bowl: a drop splashes on the tablecloth’s lovingly embroidered forget-me-nots. Now is not the time, thinks the widower, to remember Meredith. “And so, gentlemen, to the day’s business, and our Dutch guests.”

  “Van Cleef,” says Hovell, “passed an uncommunicative night in his cell.”

  “Aside,” sneers Cutlip, “from demanding to know why his supper was boiled rope.”

  “News of the VOC’s demise,” the captain asks, “makes him no less obdurate?”

  Hovell shakes his head. “Admission of weakness is a weakness.”

  “As for Fischer,” says Wren, “the wretch spent all night in his cabin, despite our entreaties to join us in the wardroom.”

  “How are relations between Fischer and his former chief, Snitker?”

  “They act like perfect strangers,” replies Hovell. “Snitker is nursing a head cold this morning. He wants Van Cleef court-martialed for the crime, if you please, of ‘battery against a “friend of the court of Saint James’s.”’”

  “I am sick,” says Penhaligon, “heartily sick, of that coxcomb.”

  “I’d agree, Captain,” says Wren, “that Snitker’s usefulness has run its course.”

  “We need a persuasive leader to win the Dutch,” says the captain, “and an”—abovedeck, three bells are rung—“envoy of gravitas and poise to persuade the Japanese.”

  “Deputy Fischer wins my vote,” says Major Cutlip, “as the more pliable man.”

  “Chief van Cleef,” argues Hovell, “would be the natural leader.”

  “Let us interview,” Penhaligon suggests, brushing crumbs away, “our two candidates.”

  “MR. VAN CLEEF.” Penhaligon stands, disguising his grimace of pain as an insincere smile. “I hope you slept well?”

  Van Cleef helps himself to burgoo, Seville preserve, and a hailstorm of sugar before replying to Hovell’s translation. “He says you can threaten him all you please, sir, but Dejima still has not one nail of copper for you to rob.”

  Penhaligon ignores this. “I’m pleased his appetite is robust.”

  Hovell translates and Van Cleef speaks through a mouthful of food.

  “He asks, sir, if we have decided what to do with our hostages yet.”

  “Tell him that we don’t consider him a hostage but a guest.”

  Van Cleef’s response to the assertion is a burgoo-spattering “Ha!”

  “Ask if he has digested the VOC’s bankruptcy.”

  Van Cleef pours himself a bowl of coffee as he listens to Hovell. He shrugs.

  “Tell him that the English East India Company wishes to trade with Japan.”

  Van Cleef sprinkles raisins on his burgoo as he gives his response.

  �
��His reply, sir, is, ‘Why else hire Snitker to bring you here?’”

  He is no novice at this, thinks Penhaligon, but then, neither am I.

  “We are seeking an old Japan hand to represent our interests.”

  Van Cleef listens, nods, stirs sugar into his coffee, and says, “Nee.”

  “Ask whether he ever heard of the Kew Memorandum, signed by his own monarch-in-exile, ordering Dutch overseas officers to hand their nations’ assets to the safekeeping of the British?”

  Van Cleef listens, nods, stands, and lifts his shirt to show a deep, wide scar.

  He sits down, tears a bread roll in two, and gives Hovell a calm explanation.

  “Mr. van Cleef says he earned that wound at the hands of Scotch and Swiss mercenaries hired by that same monarch-in-exile. They poured boiling oil down his father’s throat, he said. On behalf of the Batavian Republic, he begs us to keep both the ‘chinless tyrant’ and ‘British safekeeping’ and says that the Kew Memorandum is useful for the privy but nothing else.”

  “Plainly, sir,” declares Wren, “we are dealing with Jacobin.”

  “Tell him we’d prefer to achieve our goals diplomatically, but—”

  Van Cleef sniffs the sauerkraut and recoils as at boiling sulfur.

  “—failing that we shall seize the factory by force, and any loss of Japanese and Dutch life shall be on his account.”

  Van Cleef drinks his coffee, turns to Penhaligon, and insists on Hovell translating his reply line by line so that nothing is missed.

  “He says, Captain, that whatever Daniel Snitker has told us, Dejima is sovereign Japanese territory, leased to the company. It is not a Dutch possession.

  “He says that if we try to storm it, the Japanese will defend it.

  “He says our marines may fire off one round before being cut down.

  “He urges us not to throw our lives away, for our family’s sakes.”

  “The man is trying to scare us away,” remarks Cutlip.

  “More probably,” suspects Penhaligon, “he is driving up the price of his help.”

  But Van Cleef issues a final statement and stands.

  “He thanks you for breakfast, Captain, and says that Melchior van Cleef is not for sale to any monarch. Peter Fischer, however, shall be only too delighted to hammer out terms with you.”