The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel (38 page)

The dog wriggles on his back to scratch his flea-bites.

Otane recalls this summer's visit, as the strangest of Miss Aibagawa's three excursions to Kurozane. Two weeks before, when the azaleas were in flower, a salt merchant had brought news to the Harubayashi Inn about how Dr Aibagawa's daughter had performed 'a Dutch miracle' and breathed life into Magistrate Shiroyama's still-born child. So when she visited, half the village walked up to Otane's cottage, hoping for more Dutch miracles. 'Medicine is knowledge,' Miss Aibagawa told the villagers, 'not magic.' She gave advice to the small crowd, and they thanked her, but left disappointed. When they were alone, the young woman confided that it had been a trying year. Her father had been ill, and the careful way she avoided any mention of Ogawa the Interpreter indicated a badly bruised heart. Brighter news, however, was that the grateful Magistrate had given her permission to study on Dejima under the Dutch doctor. 'Well, I must have looked worried.' Otane strokes her cat. 'You hear such stories about foreigners. But she assured me that this Dutch doctor was a great teacher, known even to Lord Abbot Enomoto.'

Wings beat by the chimney flue. The owl is out hunting.

Then, six weeks ago, came the most shocking news of Otane's recent life.

Miss Aibagawa was to become a Sister at Mount Shiranui Shrine.

Otane tried to visit Miss Aibagawa at the Harubayashi Inn the night before she was taken up the mountain, but neither their existing friendship nor Otane's twice-yearly delivery of medicines to the Shrine convinced the monk to ignore the prohibition. She could not even leave a letter. She was told that the Newest Sister could have nothing to do with the World Below for twenty years.
What sort of a life
, Otane wonders,
shall she have in that place?
'Nobody knows,' she mutters to herself, 'and that is the problem.'

She turns over the few known facts about Mount Shiranui Shrine.

It is the spiritual seat of Lord Abbot Enomoto,
daimyo
of Kyoga Domain.

The Shrine's goddess ensures the fertility of Kyoga's streams and rice-fields.

None but the Masters and Acolytes of the Order enter and leave.

These men number about sixty in total, and the Sisters, about a dozen. The Sisters live in their own House, within the Shrine walls, and are governed by an Abbess. Servants at the Harubayashi Inn report blemishes or defects that, in most cases, would doom the girls to lives as freaks in brothels, and Abbot Enomoto is praised for giving these unfortunates a better life . . .

. . .
but surely not
, Otane frets,
the daughter of a samurai and doctor?

'A burnt face makes marriage harder,' she mumbles, 'but not impossible . . .'

The scarcity of facts leaves holes where rumours breed. Many villagers have heard how former Sisters of Shiranui received lodgings and a pension for the rest of their lives, but as the retired nuns never stop in Kurozane, no villager has ever spoken with one face to face. Buntaro, the blacksmith's son, who serves at the Halfway Gate up Mekura Gorge, claims that Master Kinten trains the monks to be assassins, which is why the Shrine is so secretive. A flirty chambermaid at the inn met a hunter who swore he had seen winged monster-women dressed as nuns flying around Bare Peak at the summit of Shiranui. This very afternoon, the mother-in-law of Otane's niece in Kurozane observed that monks' seeds are as fertile as any other men's, and asked how many bushels of 'angel-making' herbs the Shrine ordered. Otane denied, truthfully, supplying abortifacients to Master Suzaku, and realised that discovering this had been the mother-in-law's goal.

The villagers speculate, but they know better than to hunt for answers. They are proud of their association with the reclusive monastery, and are paid for provisioning it; to ask too many questions would be to bite the hand of a generous donor.
The monks probably
are
monks
, Otane hopes,
and the Sisters live as nuns . .
.

She hears the ancient hush of falling snow.

'No,' Otane tells her cat. 'All we can do is ask Our Lady to protect her.'

The wooden box-niche set into the mud-and-bamboo wall resembles an ordinary cottage altar-alcove, housing the death-name tablets of Otane's parents and a chipped vase holding a few green sprigs. After checking the bolt on the door twice, however, Otane removes the vase and slides up the back panel. In this small and secret space stands the true treasure of Otane's cottage and bloodline: a white-glazed, blue-veiled, dirt-cracked statuette of Maria-
sama
, the Mother of Iesu-
sama
and Empress of Heaven, crafted long ago to resemble Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy. She holds an infant in her arms. Otane's grandfather's grandfather, the story goes, received her from a Holy Saint named Xavier who sailed to Japan from Paradise on a magical flying boat pulled by golden swans.

Otane kneels on painful knees with an acorn rosary around her hands.

' "Holy Maria-
sama
, Mother of Adan and Ewa, who stole Deusu-
dono
's sacred persimmon; Maria-
sama
, Mother of Pappa Maruji, with his six sons in six canoes, who survived the great flood that cleansed all lands; Maria, Mother of Iesu-
sama
, who was crucified for four hundred silver coins; Maria-
sama
, hear my--" '

Was that a twig snapping
, Otane holds her breath,
under a man's foot?

Most of Kurozane's oldest ten or twelve families are, like Otane's, Hidden Christians, but vigilance must be constant. Her silver hair would grant her no clemency if her beliefs were ever exposed; only apostasy and the naming of other followers might transmute death into exile, but then San Peitoro and San Pauro would turn her away from the Gates of Paradise, and when seawater turns to oil and the world burns, she would fall into that Hell called Benbo.

The herbalist is confident that nobody is outside. 'Virgin Mother, it's Otane of Kurozane. Once again, this old woman begs Her Ladyship to watch over Miss Aibagawa in the Shiranui Shrine; and keep her safe from illness; and ward off bad spirits and . . . and dangerous men. Please give back what has been taken from her.'

Not one rumour
, Otane thinks,
ever told of a young nun being set free
.

'But if this old woman is asking too much of Maria-
sama
. . .'

The stiffness in Otane's knees is spreading to her hips and ankles.

'. . . please tell Miss Aibagawa that her friend, Otane of Kurozane, is thinking--'

Something strikes the door. Otane gasps. The dog is on his feet, growling . . .

Otane slides down the wooden screen as a second blow strikes.

The dog is barking now. She hears a man's voice. She arranges the alcove.

At the third knock, she walks to the door and calls out, 'There is nothing to steal here.'

'Is this,' a frail man's voice replies, 'the house of Otane the herbalist?'

'May I ask my honourable visitor to name himself, at this late hour?'

'Jiritsu of Akatokiyamu,' says the visitor, 'is how I was called . . .'

Otane is surprised to recognise the name of Master Suzaku's acolyte.

Might Maria
-sama, she wonders,
have a hand in this?

'We meet at the shrine's gatehouse,' says the voice, 'twice a year.'

She opens the door to a snow-covered figure wrapped in thick mountain clothing and a bamboo hat. He stumbles over her threshold, and snow swirls in. 'Sit by the fire, Acolyte.' Otane barges the door shut. 'It's a bad night.' She guides him to a log-stool.

With effort, he unfastens his hat, hood and mountain boot-bindings.

He is exhausted, his face is taut, and his eyes are not of this world.

Questions can come later
, Otane thinks.
First, he must be warmed up
.

She pours some tea and closes his frozen fingers around the bowl.

She unclasps the monk's damp robe and wraps her woollen shawl around him.

His throat muscles make a grinding noise as he drinks.

Perhaps he was gathering plants
, Otane wonders,
or meditating in a cave
.

She sets about heating the remains of the soup. They do not speak.

'I fled Mount Shiranui,' announces Jiritsu, coming abruptly to. 'I broke my Oath.'

Otane is astonished, but a wrong word now might silence him.

'My hand, this hand, my brush: they knew, before I did.'

She grinds some
yogi
root, waiting for words that make sense.

'I accepted the - the Deathless Way, but its truer name is "evil".'

The fire snaps, the animals breathe, the snow is falling.

Jiritsu coughs, as if winded. 'She sees so
far
! So very, very far . . . My father was a tobacco hawker, and gambler, around Sakai. We were just a rung above the outcasts . . . and one night the cards went badly and he sold me to a tanner. An untouchable. I lost my name and slept over the slaughterhouse. For years, for years, I slit horses' throats to earn my board. Slit . . . slit . . . slit. What the tanners' sons did to me, I . . . I . . . I . . . longed for someone to slit
my
throat. Come winter, boiling bones into glue was the only warmth. Come summer, the flies got into your eyes, your mouth, and we scraped up the dried blood and oily shit to mix it with Ezo seaweed, for fertiliser. Hell shall smell of that place . . .'

The roof-timbers of the cottage creak. Snow is piling up.

'One New Year's Day I climbed over the wall closing the
eta
village and ran away to Osaka, but the tanner sent two men to fetch me back. They underestimated my skill with knives. No man saw, but
She
saw.
She
drew me . . . day by rumour by crossroads by dream by month by hook,
She
urged me west, west, west . . . across the straits to Hizen Domain, to Kyoga Domain . . . and up . . .' Jiritsu looks at the ceiling, perhaps towards the summit of the mountain.

'Does Acolyte-
sama
,' Otane grinds her pestle, 'refer to someone at the Shrine?'

'They are all,' Jiritsu stares through her, 'as a saw is to a carpenter.'

'Then this foolish old crone doesn't understand who "
She
" may be.'

Tears sprout in Jiritsu's eyes. 'Are we no more than the totality of our acts?'

Otane decides to be direct. 'Acolyte-
sama
: in the shrine on Mount Shiranui, did you see Miss Aibagawa?'

He blinks and sees more clearly. 'The Newest Sister. Yes.'

'Is she . . .' now Otane wonders what to ask '. . . is she well?'

He makes a deep sad purr. 'The horses knew I was going to kill them.'

'How is Miss Aibagawa . . .' Otane's mortar and pestle fall still '. . . treated?'

'If
She
hears,' Jiritsu drifts away again, '
She
shall poke his finger through my heart . . . tomorrow, I shall . . . speak of . . . of that place - but her hearing is sharper at night. Then I am bound for Nagasaki. I . . . I . . . I . . . I . . .'