The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (11 page)

“Muscle hole in back, Doctor.”

“Mr. Yano, you have Dr. Olof Acrel, my old master at Uppsala; his essay on cataracts I translated from the Swedish. For Mr. Ikematsu, a page of Lorenz Heister’s
Chirurgie
on disorders of the skin … and Miss Aibagawa shall peruse the admirable Dr. Smellie. This passage, however, is problematical. In the sickroom awaits the volunteer for today’s demonstration, who may assist you on matters of Dutch vocabulary …” Marinus’s lumpish head appears around the door frame.

“Domburger! I present Miss Aibagawa, and urge you,
Orate ne intretis in tentationem.”

Miss Aibagawa recognizes the red-haired green-eyed foreigner.

“Good afternoon”—his throat is dry—“Miss Aibagawa.”

“Good afternoon”—her voice is clear—“Mr …. ‘Dom-bugger’?”

“‘Dom
bur
ger’ is … is the doctor’s little joke. My name is De Zoet.”

She lowers her writing desk: a tray with legs. “‘Dom-bugger’ is funny joke?”

“Dr. Marinus thinks so: I am from a town called ‘Domburg.’”

She makes an unconvinced rising
mmm
noise. “Mr. de Zoet is sick?”

“Oh—that is to say—a little, yes. I have a pain in …” He pats his abdomen.

“Stools like water?” The midwife assumes control. “Bad smell?”

“No.” Jacob is thrown by her directness. “The pain is in my—in my liver.”

“Your”—she enunciates the
l
with great care—“
liv
er?”

“Just so: my liver pains me. I trust that Miss Aibagawa is well?”

“Yes, I am quite well. I trust that your friend monkey is well?”

“My—oh, William Pitt? My monkey friend is—well, he is no more.”

“I am sorry not to understand. Monkey is … no more what?”

“No more alive. I”—Jacob mimes breaking a chicken’s neck—“killed the rascal, you see; tanned his hide and turned him into a new tobacco pouch.”

Her mouth and eyes open in horror.

If Jacob had a pistol, he would shoot himself. “I joke, Miss! The monkey is happy and alive and well, shooling, somewhere—thieving, that is …”

“Cor
rect
, Mr. Muramoto.” Marinus’s voice travels from the surgery. “First one boils away the subcutaneous fat and after injects the veins with colored wax …”

“Shall we”—Jacob curses his misfired joke—“open your text?”

She is wondering how this can be done at a safe distance.

“Miss Aibagawa could seat herself
there.”
He points to the end of the bed. “Read your text aloud, and when you meet a difficult word, we shall discuss it.”

She nods that the arrangement is satisfactory, sits, and begins reading.

Van Cleef’s courtesan speaks at a shrill pitch, apparently considered to be feminine, but Miss Aibagawa’s reading voice is lower, quieter, and calming. Jacob blesses this excuse to study her part-burned face and her careful lips. “‘Soon after this occ-u-rrence …’” She looks up.

“What is, please?”

“An occurrence would be a—a happening, or an event.”

“Thank you. ‘… this occurrence, in consulting Ruysch about everything he had writ concerning women … I found him exclaiming against the premature extraction of the placenta, and his authority confirmed the opinion I had already adopted … and induced me a more natural way of proceeding. When I have separated the funis … and given away the child … I introduce my finger into the vagina …’”

In all his life, Jacob has never heard this word spoken aloud.

She senses his shock and looks up, half alarmed. “I mistake?”

Dr. Lucas Marinus
, Jacob thinks,
you sadistic monster
. “No,” he says.

Frowning, she finds her place again: “… to feel if the placenta is at the
os uteri
 … and if this is the case … I am sure it will come down of itself in any rate … I wait for some time, and commonly in ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes … the woman begins to be seized with some after-pains … which gradually separate and force it along … but pulling gently at the funis, it descends into the’”—she glances up at Jacob—“‘vagina. Then, taking hold of it, I bring it through the … the
os externum.’
There.” She looks up. “I finish sentences. Liver is making much pain?”

“Dr. Smellie’s language”—Jacob swallows—“is rather … direct.”

She frowns. “Dutch is foreign language. Words do not have same … power, smell, blood. Midwife is my”—she frowns—“‘vacation’ or ‘vocation’—which?”

“‘
Vo
cation,’ I hazard, Miss Aibagawa.”

“Midwife is my vocation. Midwife who fear blood is not helpful.”

“Distal phalanx,” comes Marinus’s voice, “middle and proximal phalanxes …”

“Twenty years ago,” Jacob decides to tell her, “when my sister was
born, the midwife couldn’t stop my mother bleeding. My job was to heat water in the kitchen.” He is afraid he is boring her, but Miss Aibagawa watches him with calm attention.
“If only I can heat enough water
, I thought,
my mother will live
. I was wrong, I’m sorry to say.” Now Jacob frowns, uncertain why he raised this personal matter.

A large wasp settles on the broad foot of the bed.

Miss Aibagawa produces a square of paper from her kimono’s sleeve. Jacob, aware of Oriental beliefs in the ascent of the soul from bedbug to saint, waits for her to guide the wasp out through the high window. Instead, she crushes it in the paper, scrunches it into a little ball, and, with perfect aim, tosses it through the window. “Your sister, too, have red hair and green eyes?”

“Her hair is redder than mine, to our uncle’s embarrassment.”

This is another new word for her. “‘Am
-bass-
a-ment’?”

Remember to ask Ogawa for the Japanese word later
, he thinks. “‘Embarrassment,’ or shame.”

“Why uncle feel shame because sister has red hair?”

“According to common people’s belief—or superstition—you understand?”

“
‘Meishin’
in Japanese. Doctor call it, ‘enemy of reason.’”

“According to superstition, then, Jezebels—that is, women of loose virtue—that is, prostitutes—are thought to have, and are depicted as having, red hair.”

“‘Loose virtue’? ‘Prostitutes’? Like ‘courtesan’ and ‘whore’s helper’?”

“Forgive me for that.” Jacob’s ears roar. “Now the embarrassment is mine.”

Her smile is both nettle and dock leaf. “Mr. de Zoet’s sister is honorable girl?”

“Geertje is a … very dear sister; she is kind, patient, and clever.”

“Metacarpals”—the doctor is demonstrating—“and here, the cunning carpals …”

“Miss Aibagawa,” Jacob dares to ask, “belongs to a large family?”

“Family was large, is small now. Father, father’s new wife, father’s new wife’s son.” She hesitates. “Mother, brothers, and sisters died, of cholera. Much years ago. Much die that time. Not just my family. Much, much suffer.”

“Yet your vocation—midwifery, I mean—is … an art of life.”

A wisp of black hair is escaped from her headscarf: Jacob wants it.

“At old days,” says Miss Aibagawa, “long ago, before great bridges built over wide rivers, travelers often drowned. People said, ‘Die because river god angry.’ People
not
said, ‘Die because big bridges not yet invented.’ People
not
say, ‘People die because we have ignoration too much.’ But one day, clever ancestors observe spiders’ webs, weave bridges of vines. Or see trees, fallen over fast rivers, and make stone islands in wide rivers, and lay from islands to islands. They build such bridges. People no longer drown in same dangerous river, or many less people. So far, my poor Dutch is understand?”

“Perfectly,” Jacob assures her. “Every word.”

“Nowadays, in Japan, when mother, or baby, or mother
and
baby die in childbirth, people say, ‘Ah … they die because gods decide so.’ Or, ‘They die because bad karma.’ Or, ‘They die because
o-mamori
—magic from temple—too cheap.’ Mr. de Zoet understand, it is same as bridge. True reason of many, many death of ignoration. I wish to build bridge
from
ignoration,” her tapering hands form the bridge, “to knowledge. This,” she lifts, with reverence, Dr. Smellie’s text, “is piece of bridge. One day, I teach this knowledge … make school … students who teach other students … and in future, in Japan, many less mothers die of ignoration.” She surveys her daydream for just a moment before lowering her eyes. “A foolish plan.”

“No, no, no. I cannot imagine a nobler aspiration.”

“Sorry …” She frowns. “What is ‘noble respiration’?”

“
As
piration, Miss: a plan, I mean to say. A goal in life.”

“Ah.” A white butterfly lands on her hand. “A goal in life.”

She puffs it away; it flies up to a bronze candle on a shelf.

The butterfly closes and opens and closes and opens its wings.

“Name is
‘monshiro,’
” she says, “in Japanese.”

“In Zeeland, we call the same butterfly cabbage white. My uncle—”

“‘Life is short; the art, long.’” Dr. Marinus enters the sickroom like a limping gray-haired comet. “‘Opportunity is fleeting; experience—’ and, Miss Aibagawa? To conclude our first Hippocratic aphorism?”

“‘Experience is fallacious’”—she stands and bows—“‘judgment difficult.’”

“All too true.” He beckons in his other students, whom Jacob half-recognizes from Warehouse Doorn. “Domburger, behold my seminarians: Mr. Muramoto of Edo.” The eldest, and dourest, bows. “Mr. Kajiwaki, sent by the Chôshu Court of Hagi.” A smiling youth not yet
grown into his ropy body bows. “Next is Mr. Yano of Osaka.” Yano peers at Jacob’s green eyes. “And, lastly, Mr. Ikematsu, native son of Satsuma.” Ikematsu, pocked by childhood scrofula, gives a cheerful bow. “Seminarians: Domburger is our brave volunteer today; please greet him.”

A chorus of “Good day, Domburger” fills the whitewashed sickroom.

Jacob cannot believe his allotted minutes have passed so soon.

Marinus produces a metal cylinder about eight inches in length. It has a plunger at one end and a nozzle at the other. “This is, Mr. Muramoto?”

The elderly-looking youth replies, “It is call glister, Doctor.”

“A glister.” Marinus grips Jacob’s shoulder. “Mr. Kajiwaki: to apply our glister?”

“Insert to rectum, and in-
jure
 … no, in-
pact
.… no,
aaa nan’dattaka?
In—”

“—ject,”
prompts Ikematsu, in a comic stage whisper.

“—in
ject
medicine for constipation, or pain of gut, or many other ailment.”

“So we do, so we do; and, Mr. Yano, where lies the advantage in
anally
administered medicines over their
orally
administered counterparts?”

After the male students have distinguished “anal” from “oral,” Yano responds, “Body more quick absorb medicine.”

“Good.” Marinus’s slight smile is menacing. “Now. Who knows the
smoke
glister?”

The male seminarians confer without including Miss Aibagawa. At length, Muramoto says, “We do not know, Doctor.”

“Nor could you, gentlemen: the smoke glister has never been seen in Japan until this hour. Eelattu, if you please!” Marinus’s assistant enters, carrying a leather tube as long as a forearm and a deep-bellied lit pipe. The tube he hands to his master, who flourishes it like a wayside performer. “Our
smoke
glister, gentlemen, possesses a valve in its midriff,
here
, into which the leather tube is inserted,
here
, via which the cylinder can be filled with smoke. Please, Eelattu …” The Ceylonese inhales smoke from the pipe and exhales it into the leather tube. “‘Intussusception’ is the ailment for which this instrument is the cure. Let us speak its name together, seminarians, for who can cure what he cannot pronounce?
‘In-tus-sus-
cep
-tion!’” He waves one finger like a conductor’s baton. “A-one, a-two, a-three …”

“‘In-tus-sus
-cep-
tion.’” The students falter. “‘Intus-sus
-cep-
tion.’”

“A terminal condition where an upper portion of the intestine passes into a lower,
thus
ly …” The doctor holds up a piece of sailcloth, stitched like a trouser leg. “This is the colon.” He narrows one end in his fist, and feeds it backward inside the cloth tube toward the other end.
“Ouch
and
itai
. Diagnosis is difficult, its symptoms being the classic alimentary triad, namely, Mr. Ikematsu?”

“Abdomen pain, groin swelling …” He massages his temples to loosen the third. “Ah! Blood in feces.”

“Good: death by intussusception, or,” he looks at Jacob, “in the vernacular, ‘shitting out your own intestines,’ is, as you would expect, a laborious affair. Its Latin name is
miserere mei
, translatable as ‘Lord have mercy.’ The
smoke
glister, however, can reverse this wrong,” he pulls the knotted end of the sailcloth tube out again, “by puffing in such a density of smoke that the ‘slippage’ is reversed and the intestine restored to its natural state. Domburger,
in guerno
for favors granted, shall loan his
gluteus maximus
to medical science, that I may demonstrate the passage of smoke ‘through caverns measureless to man’ from anus to esophagus, whence smoke trickles through his nostrils like incense from a stone dragon, though not, alas, so sweet-scented, given its malodorous voyage.”

Jacob begins to understand. “Surely, you don’t intend—”

“Remove your breeches. We are all servants of medicine.”

“Doctor.” The sickroom is disagreeably cool. “I never consented to
this
.”

“To treat nerves,” Marinus flips Jacob over with an agility belying the doctor’s partial lameness, “ignore them. Eelattu: let the seminarians inspect the apparatus. Then we begin.”

“A fine joke,” wheezes Jacob, under two hundred pounds of Dutch physician, “but—”

Marinus unhooks the now-squirming clerk’s braces.

“No
, Doctor! No! Your little joke has gone far e
nough
 …”

T
HE BED SHAKES ITS SLEEPER AWAKE; TWO OF ITS LEGS SNAP
, tipping Jacob onto the floor, whacking his jaw and knee.
Merciful Christ
is his first thought.
The Shenandoah’s magazine is exploded
. But the spasm seizing Tall House grows stronger and faster. Joists groan; plaster patters like grapeshot; a window casement flies from its mount and the lurching room is lit apricot; the mosquito net enwraps Jacob’s face and the unappeasable violence is magnified threefold, fivefold, tenfold, and the bed drags itself across the room like a wounded beast.
A frigate, or a man-of-war, is unloosing a broadside
, Jacob thinks. A candlestick hops in dithyrambic circles; sheaves of paper from high shelves swoop in loops.
Don’t let me die here
, Jacob prays, seeing his skull smashed under beams and yolky brains dashed in Dejima’s dust. Prayer grips the pastor’s nephew, raw-throated prayer, to the Jehovah of the early Psalms:
O God, Thou hast cast us off, Thou hast scattered us, Thou hast been displeased; O turn Thyself to us again!
Jacob is answered by roof tiles smashing on Long Street and cows lowing and goats bleating.
Thou hast made the earth to tremble; Thou hast broken it; heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh
. Glass panes shatter into false diamonds, timber cracks like bones, Jacob’s sea chest is tossed by undulating planks, the water jug spills and the chamber pot is upended and Creation herself is being undone and
God God God
, he implores,
bid it cease bid it cease bid it cease!