The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel (43 page)

'Yoshida-
san
's loyalty,' concedes Haga, 'is beyond question. What I doubt is the likelihood of an armada of European warships sailing into Edo or Nagasaki. You argue for revolutionary changes to our state, but why? To counter a phantom. To address a hypothetical "what if"?'

'The present is a battleground,' Yoshida straightens his spine as best he can, 'where rival what-ifs compete to become the future "what is". How does one what-if prevail over its adversaries? The answer -' the sick man coughs '- the answer, "Military and political power, of course!" is a postponement, for what is it that directs the minds of the powerful? The answer is "Belief". Beliefs that are ignoble or idealistic; democratic or Confucian; Occidental or Oriental; timid or bold; clear-sighted or delusional. Power is informed by Belief that
this
path, and not another, must be followed. What, then, or where, is the womb of Belief? What, or where, is the crucible of ideology? Academicians of the Shirando, I put it to you that
we
are one such crucible. We are one such womb.'

During the first interval the lanterns are lit, braziers are stoked against the cold and conversations stew and bubble. Interpreters Uzaemon, Arashiyama and Goto Shinpachi sit with five or six others. The algebraist Awatsu apologises for disturbing Uzaemon, 'but I hoped to hear news of an improvement in your father's health . . .'

'He is still bedbound,' replies Uzaemon, 'but finds ways to wield his will.'

Those who know Ogawa the Elder of the First Rank smile downwards.

'What ails the gentleman?' Yanaoka is a
sake
-blushed doctor from Kumamoto.

'Dr Maeno believes Father suffers from a cancer of the--'

'A notoriously difficult diagnosis! Let us hold a consultation tomorrow.'

'Dr Yanaoka is kind, but Father is particular about who--'

'Come, now, I have known your honourable father for twenty years.'

Yes
, thinks Uzaemon,
and he has despised you for forty
.

' "Too many captains," ' Awatsu quotes, ' "sail the ship up the mountain." Dr Maeno is no doubt doing an excellent job. I shall offer prayers for his swift recovery.'

The others promise to do the same, and Uzaemon expresses due gratitude.

'Another missing face,' Yanaoka mentions, 'is Dr Aibagawa's burnt daughter.'

'You didn't hear, then,' says Interpreter Arashiyama, 'about her happy ending? The late doctor's finances were found to be in so parlous a state, there was talk of the widow losing the house. When Lord Abbot Enomoto was apprised of the family's hardships, he not only paid every last
sen
of the debts - he found space for the daughter in his convent on Mount Shiranui.'

'Why is that a "happy ending"?' Uzaemon regrets opening his mouth already.

'A full rice bowl every day,' says Ozono, the squat chemist, 'for reciting a few sutras? For a woman with such an unmarriageable blemish this is a
jubilant
ending! Oh, I know her father encouraged her to play the scholar, but one must sympathise with the widow. What business has a samurai daughter to be dabbling with birth and mingling with sweaty Dutchmen?'

Uzaemon orders himself to say nothing.

Banda is an earthy engineer from marshy Sendai. 'During my stay in Isahaya, I overheard some strange rumours about Abbot Enomoto's shrine.'

'Without you want,' Awatsu warns Banda cheerfully, 'to accuse a close friend of Matsudaira Sadanobu and senior Academician of the Shirando of impropriety, then you should ignore any rumours whatsoever about Lord Enomoto's Shrine. The monks live their lives as monks and the nuns live their lives as nuns.'

Uzaemon wants to hear Banda's rumours, but he doesn't want to hear.

'Where
is
Abbot Enomoto tonight, anyway?' asks Yanaoka.

'In Miyako,' says Awatsu, 'settling some abstruse clerical point.'

'At his court in Kashima,' says Arashiyama. 'Exercising justice, I heard.'

'I heard he went to the Isle of Tsu,' says Ozono, 'to meet Korean traders.'

The door slides opens: a welcoming hubbub sweeps through the hall.

Dr Marinus and Sugita Genpaku, one of the most celebrated living Dutch scholars, stand at the threshold. Half-lame Marinus leans on his stick; elderly Sugita leans on a house-boy. The pair enjoys a verbal tussle over who should enter first. They settle the matter by a game of Scissors, Paper, Stone. Marinus wins, but uses his victory to insist that Sugita takes precedence.

'But
look
,' says Yanaoka, his neck craning, 'at that foreigner's
hair
!'

Ogawa Uzaemon sees Jacob de Zoet hit the crown of his head on the door-frame.

'Just thirty years ago,' Sugita Genpaku sits on the lecturer's low plinth, 'there were just three of us Dutch scholars in all Japan and a single book: this old man you see before you, Dr Nakagawa Jun'an and my dear friend Dr Maeno, whose more recent discoveries,' Sugita's fingers loop his stringy white beard, 'surely include the elixir of immortality, for he has aged not a day.'

Dr Maeno shakes his head with embarrassment and delight.

'The book,' Sugita tilts his head, 'was Kulmus's
Tafel Anatomia
, printed in Holland. This I had encountered on my very first visit to Nagasaki. I desired it with my whole being, but I could no more pay the asking price than swim to the moon. My clan purchased it on my behalf and, in so doing, determined my fate.' Sugita pauses and listens with professional interest to Interpreter Shizuki translate his words for Marinus and de Zoet.

Uzaemon has avoided Dejima since the
Shenandoah
departed, and avoids de Zoet's eye now. His guilt about Orito is knotted up with the Dutchman in ways Uzaemon cannot disentangle.

'Maeno and I took the
Tafel Anatomia
to Edo's execution ground,' continues Sugita, 'where a prisoner named Old Mother Tea had been sentenced to an hour-long strangulation for poisoning her husband.' Shizuki stumbles on 'strangulation': he mimes the action. 'We struck a bargain. In return for a painless beheading, she gave us permission to conduct the first medical dissection in the history of Japan on her body, and signed an oath not to haunt us in revenge . . . Upon comparing the subject's inner organs with the illustrations in the book, we saw, to our astonishment, the Chinese sources that dominated our learning were grossly inaccurate. There were no "ears of the lungs"; no "seven lobes of the kidneys", and the intestines differed markedly from the descriptions by the Ancient Sages . . .'

Sugita waits for Shizuki's translation to catch up.

De Zoet looks gaunter
, Uzaemon thinks,
than he did in the autumn
.

'My
Tafel Anatomia
, however, corresponded with our dissected body so precisely that Drs Maeno, Nakagawa and myself were of one mind:
European medicine surpasses the Chinese
. To say so nowadays, with Dutch medical schools in every city, is a self-evident truth. Thirty years ago, such an opinion was patricidal. Yet, with just a few hundred Dutch words between us, we resolved to translate
Tafel Anatomia
into Japanese. A few of you may have heard of our
Kaitai Shinsho
?'

His audience savours the understatement.

Shizuki renders 'patricidal' into Dutch as 'great crime'.

'Our task was formidable.' Sugita Genpaku straightens his tufted white eyebrows. 'Hours were spent in pursuit of single words, often to discover that no Japanese equivalent existed. We created words that our race shall use,' the old man is not immune to vanity, 'for all eternity. By dint of example, I devised "
shinkei
" for the Dutch "nerve", over a dinner of oysters. We were, to quote the proverb, "The one dog who barks at nothing answered by a thousand dogs barking at something . . ." '

During the final interval, Uzaemon hides in the not-quite-winter garden Courtyard from a possible encounter with de Zoet. An unearthly wail from the Hall is accompanied by appalled laughter: Director Otsuki is demonstrating his bagpipes, acquired earlier this year from Arie Grote. Uzaemon sits under a giant magnolia. The sky is starless and the young man's mind recalls the afternoon a year and a half ago when he asked his father for his views on Aibagawa Orito as a possible bride. 'Dr Aibagawa's a notable scholar, but not so notable as his debts, I am informed. Worse yet, what if that singed face of his daughter is passed on to my grandsons? The answer must be
no
. If you and the daughter have exchanged any
sentiments
,' his father's expression suggested a bad smell, 'disown them, without delay.' Uzaemon begged his father at least to consider an engagement a little longer, but Ogawa the Elder wrote an affronted letter to Orito's father. The servant returned with a short note from the doctor, apologising for the inconvenience his over-indulged daughter had caused, and assuring him that the matter was closed. That grimmest of days ended with Uzaemon receiving one last secret letter from Orito, and the shortest of their clandestine correspondence. 'I could never cause your father', it ended, 'to regret adopting you . . .'

Uzaemon's parents were prompted by the 'Aibagawa Incident' into finding their son a wife. A go-between knew of a low-ranking but wealthy family in Karatsu who had thriving business interests in dyes and was eager for a son-in-law with access to sappanwood entering Dejima.
Omiai
interviews were held and Uzaemon was informed by his father that the girl would be an acceptable Ogawa wife. They were married on New Year's Day, at an hour judged to be fortunate by the family's astrologer.
The good fortune
, Uzaemon thinks,
is yet to reveal itself
. His wife endured a second miscarriage a few days ago, a misfortune attributed by his mother and father to 'wanton carelessness' and 'a laxness of spirit' respectively. Uzaemon's mother considers it her duty to make her daughter-in-law suffer in the same way she suffered as a young bride in the Ogawa Residence.
I pity my wife
, Uzaemon concedes,
but the meaner part of me cannot forgive her for not being Orito
. What Orito must endure on Mount Shiranui, however, Uzaemon can only speculate: isolation, drudgery, cold, grief for her father and the life stolen from her and, surely, resentment at how the scholars of the Shirando Academy view her captor as a great benefactor. For Uzaemon to interrogate Enomoto, the Shirando's most eminent sponsor, about his Shrine's Newest Sister would be a near-scandalous breach of etiquette. It would imply an accusation of wrongdoing. Yet Mount Shiranui is as shut to enquiries from outside the domain as Japan is closed to the outside world. In the absence of facts about her well-being, Uzaemon's imagination torments him as much as his conscience. When Dr Aibagawa had seemed close to death, Uzaemon had hoped that by encouraging, or, at least, by not
dis
couraging, Jacob de Zoet's proposal of temporary marriage to Orito, he might ensure that she would stay on Dejima. He anticipated, in the longer term, a time when de Zoet would leave Japan, or grow tired of his prize, as foreigners usually do, and she would be willing to accept Uzaemon's patronage as a second wife. '
Feeble
-headed,' Uzaemon tells the magnolia tree, '
cock
-headed,
wrong
-headed . . .'

'Who's wrong-headed?' Arashiyama's feet crunch on the stones.

'Yoshida-
sama
's provocations. Those were dangerous words.'