The Way of the Traitor

by Laura Joh Rowland

“Watch the barbarian eat,” Interpreter Iishino said, giggling.

  Thoroughly tired of Iishino, Sano nonetheless couldn’t help staring as the Dutchman devoured the food. Instead of sipping soup from his bowl, he slurped it out of a wooden spoon. Instead of using chopsticks, he crammed rice, fish, and vegetables into his mouth with his hands. Between bites, he swilled huge, noisy gulps of water and sake. Such crude table manners disgusted Sano, while intuition told him that the Dutchman knew more about Director Spaen’s death than he’d admitted.

  Accompanied by Chief Ohira and Interpreter Iishino, Sano descended the stairs and walked down the street toward the residence of Dr. Nicolaes Huygens: Dr. Ito’s trusted friend and Sano’s last Dutch suspect, upon whom his hopes for a quick, successful end to the investigation now rested.

  The door to Dr. Huygens’s residence stood wide open and unguarded when Sano arrived there with Chief Ohira and Interpreter Iishino.

  “I can assure you that this negligence is atypical, and the sentries will be disciplined for it,” Ohira said grimly, preceding Sano and Iishino through the door.

  In the doctor’s study, shelves held wooden boxes labeled in foreign script; leatherbound books; a human skull; cases displaying seashells, rocks, butterflies, and other insects; and clear glass jars in which floated preserved specimens, including a two-headed newborn kitten. On the floor sat shallow pans filled with water, in which lived crabs, snails, and sea urchins. Potted plants stood on the windowsills, and a samurai youth was watering them with a spouted pot. Two guards leaned on either side of the desk beneath the window, watching the Dutchman.

  Dr. Huygens sat with his back to the door, his head bent over something he was working on amid a jumble of books and writing materials.

  “What are we going to see now?” a guard asked him.

  The youth spoke to the doctor in Dutch, then translated the reply as he tended the plants. “A drop of pond water.”

  Ohira stalked over to the guards; they looked up in dismay. “Fraternizing with a barbarian,” he fumed. “Disgraceful! Get back to your posts. Now!”

  The men fled.

  “I’ll take over here,” Iishino told the junior interpreter, who scurried from the room.

  The doctor turned and rose. With his bulky physique and disheveled appearance, he looked not at all like the Japanese ideal of a refined, elegant scholar. His skin was very pink; his round nose and cheeks glowed like cherries. He must have passed his fortieth year, for white hairs streaked the long, coppery waves that receded at his temples. On the bridge of his nose sat a pair of clear glass circles, joined with a loop of gold wire: the famed barbarian eyeglasses that miraculously improved vision. From behind these, the Dutchman’s pale amber eyes regarded Sano with intelligent curiosity. His hands had thick, blunt fingers that seemed unsuited to delicate medical procedures. In the right one he held a small metal object. The sight of this raised an instinctive flare of alarm in Sano.

  “Look out!” he shouted, drawing his sword. “He’s got a weapon!”

  Dr. Huygens shrank against the desk, his large, pink face aghast, eyes frightened behind his glasses.

  “Guards!” Ohira shouted.

  They burst into the room. Dr. Huygens fell to his knees, babbling in Dutch.

  “He says it’s not a weapon,” Iishino said. “It’s a scientific device. He begs permission to show you how it works.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” one of the guards said. With a nervous glance at Ohira, he added, “I’ve seen it myself.”

  Sano sheathed his sword, ashamed of his mistake and horrified at what had almost happened. Overreacting after too many unsettling encounters with barbarians, he might have slain an innocent man and provoked the war he was trying to prevent. Vowing to keep a tighter grip on his self-control, he nodded at Dr. Huygens.

  “All right. Show me.”

  The doctor got clumsily to his feet, cradling in his palm the strange device. It consisted of two rectangular brass plates, sandwiched together by rivets at each corner. A clamp at one end held a long, threaded bolt parallel to the plates along their lengthwise axis. The bolt ended at a flat metal crosspiece with a tiny screw at one end and a pointed probe sticking out of its center. An even smaller screw pierced the probe at a right angle. Directly opposite the probe’s tip, set into a hole in the plates, was a minute circle of glass. Sano almost forgot his troubles as he watched his first demonstration of foreign science.

  Dr. Huygens sat at the desk and bent over a cleared space surrounded by pages of foreign script and beautiful ink drawings of sea life. He evidently occupied his days with the study of nature, when he wasn’t acting as ship surgeon and his comrades didn’t require medical care. Ceramic dishes held grains of dirt and other specimens brought to him by the Deshima staff. Dr. Huygens held the scientific device upright by the flared end of the long bolt. Into a dish of clear water, he dipped a pick and transferred a drop to the device’s probe. He faced the window and brought the device to his eye. He looked through the glass while adjusting the screws on the probe and crosspiece. Then he turned to Sano, proffering the device.

  Warily Sano grasped the bolt between his thumb and finger. The guards watched him with expectant smiles. Was this a joke? He raised the device to his eye, peered through the glass—and cried out in shock.

  In the center of his field of vision squatted a lumpy green monster, rapidly spinning a wheel-like appendage. Around it floated long, undulating worms and prickly spheres.

  Sano dropped the device and leapt backward. Dr. Huygens, with surprising agility for such a stout man, caught the instrument before it hit the floor. Sano snatched up the water dish and looked into it, but saw no sign of monsters. What kind of barbarian magic had he witnessed?

  The guards and the doctor burst out laughing. Even Chief Ohira smirked. “The device is a magnifier, a magnifier,” Iishino explained with a superior smile. “It works on the same principle as Dutch spyglasses, making small creatures in the water look big.”

  Embarrassment burned Sano’s face. “Get out,” he told the guards. Mustering his dignity, he glared at Iishino and Ohira.

  The guards slunk away, hands over their mouths. The chief’s and interpreter’s expressions turned respectfully serious, but Dr. Huygens kept laughing. “Ho ho, hee hee, hoo hoo!” His belly shook; his face turned even redder.

  “Shut up!” Sano commanded.

  Then his eyes met the barbarian’s, and saw there good-natured enjoyment and pride in the scientific miracle, but not spite. And Dr. Huygens’s jolly foreign chortles were comical. Sano smiled, then laughed, too. Shared mirth formed a bond between them. Liking the Dutch physician, Sano regretted that Dr. Huygens was a murder suspect, whom he must incriminate if he could.

  Chief Ohira frowned; Iishino shook his head in disapproval. Sano ended his laughter on a rueful sigh. “Honorable Doctor, I have bad news for you. And I must ask you some questions.”

  The interview revealed that Dr. Huygens had joined the East India Company twelve years ago, accompanying Jan Spaen as ship surgeon on voyages since. Huygens had spent the evening of Spaen’s disappearance working in his study, and the night fast asleep. No motive for murder emerged, and Sano searched his quarters without result. Secretly Sano had hoped to clear Dr. Ito’s friend of suspicion, yet by doing so he’d lost a chance to save himself.

  Now, as Sano contemplated the barbarian, who sat meekly at the desk, an idea dawned on him. Inclined to trust this man because Dr. Ito did, he believed in Dr. Huygens’s innocence. And he needed his help.

  “Will that be all?” Interpreter Iishino asked. Chief Ohira waited impatiently.

  What Sano wanted to do was dangerous, illegal—treasonous. But he wanted the truth about Spaen’s murder. He wanted the personal and professional triumph of delivering the killer to justice. If he didn’t solve the case, he would lose the shogun’s favor and cause a war. And he wanted to know the barbarian doctor and explore the world of foreign science denied him by the Japanese laws he abho
rred.

  “I’d like a moment alone with Dr. Huygens,” he said.

  Ohira frowned. “This is highly irregular. The rules forbid me to allow it.”

  “Because it’s dangerous to be alone with a barbarian,” Iishino chimed in, “very dangerous. Why, people might think you were plotting against the government together! And how can you communicate with him by yourself?”

  The doctor watched curiously, waiting for a translation.

  “I’ll take full responsibility for my actions,” Sano said. “Go. I’ll meet you at the gate when I’m done.”

  He watched from the balcony as Ohira, Iishino, and the guards descended the stairs and walked down the street. Then, with a sense of stepping ever deeper into jeopardy, he went back inside the study, closing the door behind him. Through the window, he surveyed the yard. Two guards patrolled there, safely out of hearing range. Sano turned to Huygens. Taking Dr. Ito’s letter from beneath his sash, he handed it to Huygens, who looked puzzled, but adjusted his glasses, read silently, then smiled and nodded.

  “Ito Genboku,” he said, pointing to the letter, then at Sano. “Ito Genboku!”

  They’d established their mutual acquaintance with Dr. Ito, but how to proceed? Sano spoke loudly in an attempt to induce comprehension. “I need your help examining Director Spaen’s body. To see if the killer left any clues.” He gestured in vague pantomime, then shook his head. “This is hopeless!”

  Without an interpreter, the doctor would never understand what he wanted; he could never learn anything from Huygens. More than ever Sano missed Dr. Ito, who not only had the requisite scientific expertise but had also learned Dutch from forbidden books.

  “I help Ito friend,” Dr. Huygens said. “I look body.” His pronunciation was strange, but the words intelligible. “I maybe see how die. Who kill.”

  Sano stared in amazement. “You speak Japanese!”

  Glancing at the door, the doctor put a finger to his lips, then said, “Two years I here. People talk. I listen. Learn. Now I help friend. Yes?”

  “Come on.” Jubilant, Sano led Dr. Huygens to the house where Spaen’s corpse lay. To the guards outside, he said, “The doctor will prepare his comrade’s body for the funeral now. Bring it to his surgery.”

  The guards hesitated. “Chief Ohira told us to keep the body here, and the barbarians away from it,” one demurred.

  “I’ll take responsibility,” Sano said.

  The guards brought out the corpse, now shrouded in white cloth. They carried it into Dr. Huygens’s ground-floor surgery near the east guardhouse. The room ran the whole depth of the building, with large windows overlooking both street and back garden. Cabinets and shelves lined the walls; two long, waist-high tables with accompanying seats occupied the center. The guards unloaded the corpse onto a table. Servants appeared and started to open the shutters.

  “No. Light the lamps.” Sano wanted no witnesses. “Bring water and cloths.”

  The servants obeyed. Sano ordered the staff away. At last, he and the barbarian doctor were alone.

  “Unwrap the body,” Sano told Dr. Huygens. He had no intention of physically handling the examination if he didn’t have to. Already he sensed death’s foul aura seeping through the white shroud, suffusing the dim, hot surgery.

  The barbarian seemed not to share the Japanese distaste for death. Gently, but without squeamishness, he uncovered Director Spaen’s head, then peeled back the cloth to reveal the mutilated torso and stiff limbs. He didn’t flinch at the nauseous odor of decay; he surveyed the killer’s work with calm detachment.

  Sano experienced a sudden qualm. Shouldn’t the barbarian show surprise at Spaen’s wounds, or display respect for his dead superior? Or had he known what to expect? Sano tried to dismiss these disturbing thoughts while he watched Dr. Huygens examine the crucifix around Spaen’s neck, then the stab wounds. Perhaps the doctor had merely seen so many terrible deaths that he’d grown hardened to such experiences.

  Dr. Huygens shook his head. “This not kill,” he said, pointing to the crucifix’s chain. “Body swell up in water. Then—” He pantomimed choking, then indicated the stab wounds. “I think this not kill, too.”

  Taken aback, Sano said, “What do you mean? Surely that alone”—he pointed to the hacked area below Spaen’s breast—“would have been fatal. And he was badly beaten.”

  “No. No.” Dr. Huygens waved his hands and muttered in Dutch, obviously frustrated by his lack of Japanese vocabulary. “Beating not enough kill. And see?” He raised an imaginary knife and pretended to stab Sano, who instinctively threw up an arm to shield himself and reached for his sword. “You protect, you fight. But Spaen—”

  The doctor touched the dead man’s unmarked arms and hands, where Spaen would have suffered defensive injuries during a knife attack. “He very strong. Good fighter. No let kill easy. He hurt after die.”

  “Wonderful.” Sano expelled his breath in a gust of exasperation. The only thing about this case he’d been sure of was how Spaen had died. Now the Dutchman had dispelled that certainty. Thinking aloud, Sano said, “Maybe Spaen was killed while asleep. But there was no blood in his room. Maybe he was drowned. But why would the killer mutilate him after he was already dead? Why not let everyone think it was an accident? And why put the crucifix around his neck?”

  Dr. Huygens bent over the corpse, probing with his finger the torn flesh around the worst wound, scrutinizing it over the top of his eyeglasses. Then he opened a cabinet, muttering in Dutch.

  Sano’s breath caught when he saw the cabinet’s contents: saws, hammers, pincers, clamps, probes, shears, and knives of every description. Tools of the ship surgeon’s trade. Could one of them have inflicted Spaen’s wounds?

  Dr. Huygens selected a knife and a pair of pincers and set them on the table. Clearly intending to perform a dissection, he opened the shutters.

  “No!” Sano hurried over and slammed them shut.

  “Need light. Need air,” protested Dr. Huygens.

  “We can’t let anyone see. Dissection is a crime in this country.” Seeing the doctor’s blank look, Sano longed for a translator. But he couldn’t risk letting Iishino or anyone else witness the dissection and report him for participating in the practice of illegal foreign science, for which the penalty was execution. Sano rephrased his statement. “Cutting a dead body is wrong in Japan.”

  Comprehension lit the doctor’s face. “Not wrong in Netherlands,” he said. “We look in body, learn how work. Learn cure sick. Everyone watch. No punish.” He studied Sano with puzzlement. “Why bad here?”

  In the simplest language he could manage, Sano explained how the government so feared the encroachment of foreign ways that it forbade even beneficial barbarian practices. “I think the laws are wrong,” he finished. “We shouldn’t let fear close our eyes to the truth, or try to shut out the world. There’s so much I want to see and know, but can’t.”

  Huygens nodded and smiled, and Sano knew the doctor grasped his meaning, and sympathized with his plight. He felt closer to this barbarian than to his compatriots who accepted the laws without question. An increasing sense of alienation frightened Sano. In his estrangement from lord and regime, could not the seeds of treason take root?

  “You go school?” Huygens asked. At Sano’s assent, he said, “What learn?”

  “History,” Sano answered. “Calligraphy; mathematics; military strategy; the Chinese classics; the martial arts. After I left school, I taught those subjects.” But never science. Sano felt ashamed of his ignorance, and newly resentful of the laws that had restricted his education.

  “Ah.” Huygens bobbed his head enthusiastically. “You scholar, teacher.” He thumped his chest. “Like me.”

  They smiled at each other. The tentative friendship between them deepened, and Sano gave in to an impulse to confide. “I would have remained a scholar and teacher for the rest of my life,” he said, “but for family obligations.” He described how his father, eager to improve their clan’s status
, had gotten him the job of police detective, which had led to his current position. “Have you any family?”

  The cheerfulness vanished from Huygens’s plump face. “Wife and son dead,” he said somberly. “Father want me be scholar. In Netherlands, I doctor. I teach and study there; Paris and Rome, too. But no more.”

  He paused, as if mentally translating an explanation into Japanese. Sano waited, intrigued at the prospect of seeing into the life and soul of a barbarian.

  Then the doctor forced a smile and said, “We look Spaen’s body now. We learn. Good, maybe. Yes?” He walked back to the corpse, took up the knife, and beckoned. “Bring lamp, please?”

  Disappointed, Sano hesitated while other concerns took precedence over his wish to further their acquaintance. Witnessing a dissection in the relative safety of Edo Morgue, which even the most conscientious spies avoided, was one thing; to do so with a barbarian on Deshima, with guards lurking nearby, after the solemn oath he’d taken … Madness! But Sano wanted the truth about Director Spaen’s death. Without it, he might never identify the killer.

  He picked up a lamp, joined Dr. Huygens at the table, and held the light over the corpse.

  The doctor cut away pieces of torn flesh from in and around the chest wound. With the pincers, he lifted out blood clots, bone fragments, a snail that had lodged inside the opening. The odor of spoiled meat rose to Sano’s nostrils. His stomach convulsed. To distract himself and thus prevent sickness, he concentrated on unclasping the chain around Spaen’s neck and removing the crucifix, an important clue that he didn’t want buried with the body.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked, suppressing a gag and hoping the procedure would be over soon.

  Huygens spoke a word Sano couldn’t understand. Deeper and deeper he probed, twisting the pincers, churning the flesh. Foul-smelling liquid oozed from the wound. Nausea kept Sano from pressing for an explanation, and in the silence he heard the ocean lapping against Deshima’s foundations, and voices in the street. He hoped the guards would stay away. Then, with a soft click, the doctor’s pincers struck something hard.