The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel (53 page)

The thoughtful host and his hesitant guest fill each other's cups.

'To the fortunes of the Ogawas of Nagasaki,' proposes Shuzai, 'and to the speedy recovery of your honourable father.'

'To a prosperous Year of the Sheep for the
dojo
hall of Master Shuzai.'

The men empty the first cup of
sake
, and Shuzai sighs contentedly. 'But prosperity is gone for good, I fear. I pray I'm wrong but I doubt I am. The old values are decaying, that's the problem. The smell of decadence hangs everywhere, like smoke. Oh, samurai enjoy the notion of wading into battle like their valiant ancestors, but when the storehouse is hungry, it's swordsmanship they say goodbye to, not their concubines and silk linings. Those who do care about the old ways are the very ones who fall foul of the new. Another of my students quit last week, with tears in his eyes: his father's stipend at the Armoury has been paid at half-rate for two years running - and now the gentleman learns that his rank won't be eligible for a New Year payment. This at the end of the Twelfth Month, when the money-lenders and bailiffs do their rounds, badgering decent people! Have you heard Edo's newest advice to its unpaid officials? "Cover your indulgences by breeding goldfish." Goldfish! Who has money to waste on goldfish, other than merchants? Now if merchants' sons were permitted to carry swords -' Shuzai lowers his voice '- I would have a line of pupils stretching from here to the Fish Market, but better to plant silver coins in horse-shit than wait for Edo to pass
that
edict.' He refills his cup and Uzaemon's. 'Ah, so much for my woes: your mind was on other things during sword-practice.'

Uzaemon is no longer surprised by Shuzai's perspicacity. 'I don't know if I have the right to involve you.'

'To a believer in Fate,' replies Shuzai, 'it's not you who is involving me.'

Damp twigs on the weak fire crackle as if trodden upon.

'Some disturbing news came into my possession, some days ago . . .'

A cockroach, shiny as lacquer, crawls along the base of the wall.

'. . . in the form of a scroll. It concerns the Order of the Shrine of Shiranui.'

Shuzai, privy to Uzaemon's intimacy with Orito, studies his friend.

'The scroll lists the Order's secret precepts. It's . . . deeply disturbing.'

'It's a secretive place, Mount Shiranui. You are certain this scroll is genuine?'

Uzaemon produces the dogwood scroll-tube from his sleeve. 'Yes. I wish it was a forgery, but it was written by an acolyte of the Order who was no longer able to bury his conscience. He ran away, and to read the scroll is to understand why . . .'

The rain's innumerable hoofs clatter on the streets and roofs.

Shuzai holds out his open palm for the scroll-tube.

'To read it may implicate you, Shuzai. It could be dangerous.'

Shuzai holds out his open palm for the scroll-tube.

'But this is' - Shuzai speaks in an appalled whisper - 'this is insanity: that
this
. . .' he gestures at the scroll on his low table '. . . murderous garble could purchase immortality. The phrases are misshapen but . . . these Third and Fourth Creeds - if the "Engifters" are the initiates of the Order and the "Bearers" are the women and their newborn the "Gifts", then the Shrine of Shiranui is a - a - not a harem but . . .'

'A farm.' Uzaemon's throat tightens. 'The Sisters are livestock.'

'This Sixth Creed, about "Extinguishing the Gifts in the Bowl of Hands" . . .'

'They must drown the newborn children, like unwanted puppies.'

'But the men doing the drowning . . . they must be the fathers.'

'The Seventh Creed orders five "Engifters" to lie with the same "Bearer" over as many nights so no one can know that he is killing his own offspring.'

'It - it violates Nature: the women, how could . . .' Shuzai aborts his sentence.

Uzaemon forces himself to voice his worst fears. 'The women are violated when they are most fertile, and when the children are born, they are stolen. The women's consent, I presume, is not a matter of concern. Hell
is
Hell because there evil passes unremarked upon.'

'But might some not prefer to take their own lives to this?'

'Perhaps some do. But look at the Eighth Creed: "Letters from the Extinguished". A mother who believes that her children are living good lives with foster-families may, perhaps, endure what she must - especially if she can nurture hopes of meeting her children again, after her "Descent". That these reunions can never occur is a truth that, evidently, never reaches the House of Sisters.'

Shuzai passes no comment, but squints at the scroll. 'There are sentences I cannot decipher . . . see this last line of all: "The Final Word of Shiranui is Silence." Your runaway apostate must translate his testimony into plain Japanese.'

'He was poisoned. To read the Creeds, as I said, is dangerous.'

Uzaemon's servant and Shuzai's apprentice talk as they sweep the hall.

'Yet Lord Abbot Enomoto,' Shuzai speaks with incredulity, 'is known as a . . .'

'A respected judge, yes; a humane lord, yes; an Academician of the Shirando, a confidant of the great, and a dealer in rare medicines, yes. Yet it appears he is also a believer in an arcane Shinto ritual that buys blood-drenched immortality.'

'How could these abominations be kept a secret for so many decades?'

'Isolation, ingenuity, power . . . fear . . . These achieve most ends.'

A clutch of drenched New Year revellers hurries along the street outside.

Uzaemon looks at the alcove where Shuzai's master is honoured: a mildewed hanging proclaims, 'The hawk may be starving, yet he won't touch corn.'

'The author of this scroll,' Shuzai says cautiously, 'did you meet him face-to-face?'

'No. He gave the scroll to an old herbalist living near Kurozane. Miss Aibagawa visited her, two or three times, which is how the herbalist knew my name. She sought me out in the hope that I have the will and the means to help the Shrine's Newest Sister . . .'

The two men listen to the percussion of dripping water.

'The will I have; the means are another matter. If a Dutch interpreter of the Third Rank mounted a campaign against the Lord of Kyoga armed with nothing but this scroll of illegitimate provenance . . .'

'Enomoto would have you beheaded for casting a slur on his reputation.'

This minute
, Uzaemon thinks,
is a crossroads
. 'Shuzai, if I had persuaded my father to let me marry Miss Aibagawa, as I once promised, she wouldn't be enslaved in this . . .' he jabs at the parchment '. . . farm. Do you understand why I have to free her?'

'What I understand is that if you act alone you'll get sliced like a tuna fish. Give me a few days. I may take a short journey.'

XXI

Orito's Room at the House of Sisters

The Eighth Night of the First Month in the Twelfth Year of the Era of Kansei

Orito considers the luck required in the hours ahead: the cat's tunnel must be wide enough to admit a slim woman and not barred at its exit; Yayoi must sleep until morning without checking on her; she must descend an ice-bound gorge without injury, and pass the Halfway Gate without alerting the guards; and by dawn, she must find Otane's house and trust her friend to give her sanctuary.
All of which
, Orito thinks,
is just the beginning
. Returning to Nagasaki would mean recapture, but escape to the relative safety of Chikugo Domain, or Kumamoto or Kagoshima, would mean arriving in a strange town as a homeless, friendless woman without a sen to her name.

Engiftment is next week
, Orito thinks.
Next week is your turn
.

Inch by cautious inch, Orito slides open her door.

My first footstep
, she thinks,
as a fugitive
, and passes Yayoi's room.

Her heavily pregnant friend is snoring. Orito whispers, 'I am sorry.'

For Yayoi, Orito's escape will be a brutal abandonment.

It's the Goddess
, the midwife reminds herself,
who forces you to do this
.

Orito slides her feet around the passageway to the Kitchen where a screen serves as the curfew exit out on to the Cloisters. Here she binds a pair of straw-and-canvas shoes on to her feet.

Outside, icy air soaks into her padded jacket and mountain trousers.

A gibbous moon is grubby. Stars are bubbles, trapped in ice. The old pine is gnarled and malign. Orito navigates the Cloisters back to the place the cat showed her a few weeks ago. Watching the shadows, she lowers herself on to the frost-fused stones. She ducks underneath the walkway, bracing herself for a shout of alarm . . .

. . . but there is no shout. Orito crawls under the inner passageway until her groping hand finds the rectangle between the foundation stones. She found it once again after the moon-grey cat showed it to her, but in doing so earned the attention of Sisters Asagao and Sawarabi, and had to concoct a dubious story about a dropped pin. In the nine days since, she has not risked reconnoitring the tunnel.
If
, she thinks,
it is a tunnel, and not just a few missing blocks in the foundations
. Head first, she inserts herself through the black rectangle and crawls forward.

Inside, the 'roof' is knee-height, the walls a forearm apart. To move, Orito must wriggle laterally, like an eel, less elegantly but as quietly. Soon her kneecaps are scraped, her shins are bruised and her fingertips hurt as they grapple for traction on the frozen stones. The floor feels smoothed, as if by running water. The darkness is one degree short of absolute. When her probing knuckles slap a stone block, she despairs, thinking she is come to a dead end . . . but then the conduit bends to the left. Twisting her body around the sharp corner, she pushes onward. She shivers uncontrollably and her lungs hurt. She tries not to think of giant rats or entombment.
I must be under Umegae's room
, she supposes, imagining the Sister pressed against Hashihime, just two layers of floorboard, a
tatami
mat and an under-futon above her.

Is the darkness ahead
, she wonders,
growing less dark?

Hope pushes her onwards. She makes out another corner.

Rounding it, Orito sees a small triangle of moonlit stone.

A hole in the House's outer wall
, she realises.
Please, please let it be big enough
.

But after a minute's slow struggle, she finds the hole little bigger than a fist: just the right size for a cat. Years of ice and sun, she guesses, loosened a single lump of stone.
Were the hole any larger
, she thinks,
it would have been noticed from the outside
. Anchoring herself, she places her hand against the stone adjacent to the hole and pushes with all her strength until a painful crick in her bent neck obliges her to stop.