The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (13 page)

His third thought is a number:
eight hundred and forty-eight
koban.

“Twice as much again,” Grote reminds him, “as the Osaka druggist.”

Eight hundred and forty-eight
koban
is a half fortune, at least.

Wait, wait, wait
, Jacob thinks.
Why so high a price?

“Mr. de Zoet’s so ’appy,” Grote assures Enomoto, “he can’t speak.”

The snake trick dazzled my senses, but keep a calm head now
 …

“A more de
servin
’ cove,” Grote says, clapping Jacob’s shoulder, “I never knew …”

… a monopoly
, Jacob hypothesizes.
He’s after a temporary monopoly
.

“I’ll sell six crates,” the young clerk announces. “Not eight.”

Enomoto understands; he scratches an ear and looks at Grote.

Grote’s smile says,
Nothing to worry about
. “A moment, Your Grace.”

The cook steers Jacob into a corner, near Weh’s hiding place.

“Listen: Zwaardecroone set the sell peg at eighteen per chest.”

How can you know
, Jacob wonders, astonished,
about my backer in Batavia?

“’Tain’t no import
how
I know, but I
do
. We’re up to
six times
that, yet here you are harpin’ for
more?
No better price’ll come knockin’, an’
six
chests ain’t on the table. It’s
eight
, see, or nothin’ at all.”

“In that case,” Jacob tells Grote, “I choose nothing at all.”

“’Tis plain we
ain’t
makin’ ourselfs
clear
! Our client is an
exalted personage
, eh? Irons in every fire: at the magistracy; in Edo; a moneylender’s moneylender; a druggist’s druggist. Word has it, he’s even”—Jacob smells chicken livers on Grote’s breath—“lendin’ to the magistrate to pay graft till next year’s ship from Batavia comes in! So when I promised him the entire supply o’ mercury, that’s exactly—”

“It appears you shall have to
un
promise him the entire supply.”

“No no
no
,” Grote almost whinnies. “You ain’t under
standin
’ what—”

“It was you who hatched a deal on
my
private goods; I refuse to dance to your piper; so now you stand to lose your brokerage fee. What am I not understanding?”

Enomoto is saying something to Yonekizu; the Dutchmen break off their argument.

“Abbot say,” Yonekizu clears his throat, “six crates only is sale today. So he buy just six crates today.” Enomoto continues. Yonekizu nods, clarifies a couple of points, and translates. “Mr. de Zoet: Abbot Enomoto credits your private account in Exchequer with six hundred thirty-six
kobans
. Magistracy scribe bring proof of payment in company ledger. Then, when you satisfied, his men remove six crates of mercury from Warehouse Eik.”

Such speed is unprecedented. “Doesn’t Your Grace wish to see it first?”

“Ah,” says Grote, “Mr. de Z. bein’ such a busy cove, I took the little liberty o’ borrowin’ the key from Deputy van C. an’ showin’ our guest a sample—”

“Yes, that
was
a liberty you took,” Jacob tells him. “A big one.”

“Hundred an’ six a box,” Grote sighs, “deserves a little
’nitiative
, eh?”

The abbot is waiting. “Do we deal mercury, Mr. Dazûto?”

“Deal he
does
, Your Grace.” Grote smiles like a delighted weasel.

“But the paperwork,” asks Jacob, “the bribes, documents of sale …?”

Enomoto swats away these difficulties and expels a
pfff
of air.

“Like I say”—Grote bows—“‘a
most
exalted personage.’”

“Then …” Jacob has no more objections. “Yes, Your Grace. The deal is agreed.”

A sigh of punctured anguish escapes the much-relieved Arie Grote.

Wearing a calm expression, the abbot gives Yonekizu a sentence to translate.

“‘What you not sell today,’” Yonekizu says, “‘you sell soon.’”

“Then the lord abbot”—Jacob remains defiant—“knows my mind better than I.”

Abbot Enomoto has the last word: the word is “Affinity.” Then he nods at Kosugi and Yonekizu, and his retinue leaves the warehouse without further ado.

“You can come out now, Weh.” Jacob is obscurely troubled, despite the likelihood of his going to bed tonight a much richer man than when the earthquake threw him from it this morning.
Provided
, he concedes,
Lord Abbot Enomoto is as good as his word
.

LORD ABBOT ENOMOTO
is as good as his word. At half past two, Jacob walks down the steps from the chief’s residence in possession of a Certificate of Lodgment. Witnessed by Vorstenbosch and Van Cleef, the document can be redeemed in Batavia or even at the company’s Zeeland offices in Vlissingen on Walcheren. The sum represents five or six years’ salary from his former job as a shipping clerk. He must repay the friend of his uncle in Batavia who lent him the capital to buy the medicinal mercury—
the luckiest gamble of my life
, Jacob thinks;
how nearly I bought the
bêche-de-mer
instead
—and no doubt Arie Grote has not done badly from the deal, but, by any measure, the transaction made with the enigmatic abbot is an exceptionally lucrative one.
And the remaining crates
, Jacob anticipates,
shall fetch an even higher price, once other traders see the profit that Enomoto earns
. By Christmas of next year
he should be back in Batavia with Unico Vorstenbosch, whose star should, by then, be even brighter as a consequence of purging Dejima of its notorious corruption. He could consult with Zwaardecroone or Vorstenbosch’s colleagues and invest his mercury money in a yet bigger venture—coffee, perhaps, or teak—to generate an income that might impress even Anna’s father.

Back on Long Street, Hanzaburo reappears from the Interpreters’ Guild. Jacob returns to Tall House to deposit his precious certificate in his sea chest. He hesitates before taking out a paulownia-handled fan and putting it in his jacket pocket. Then he hurries to the weighing yard, where, today, lead ingots are being weighed and checked for adulterants before being returned to their boxes and sealed. Even under the supervisors’ awning, the heat is sleepy and torrid, but a vigilant eye must be kept on the scales, the coolies, and the numbers of boxes.

“How kind of you,” says Peter Fischer, “to report for duty.”

News of the new clerk’s profit on his mercury is common knowledge.

Jacob cannot think of a reply, so he takes over the tally sheet.

Interpreter Yonekizu watches the adjacent awning. It is slow work.

Jacob thinks about Anna, trying to remember her as she is and not merely as in his sketches of her.

Sun-coppered coolies prize off the nailed-on lids from the crates …

Wealth brings our future together closer
, he thinks,
but five years is still a long, long time
.

Sun-coppered coolies hammer the lids back on to the crates.

Four o’clock, according to Jacob’s pocket watch, comes and goes.

At a certain point, Hanzaburo wanders away without explanation.

At a quarter to five, Peter Fischer says, “That is the two-hundredth box.”

At a minute past five, a senior merchant faints in the heat.

Immediately, Dr. Marinus is sent for, and Jacob makes a decision.

“Would you excuse me,” Jacob asks Fischer, “for a minute?”

Fischer fills his pipe with provocative slowness. “How long is your minute? Ouwehand’s minute is fifteen or twenty. Baert’s minute is longer than an hour.”

Jacob stands; his legs have pins and needles. “I shall return in ten.”

“So your ‘one’ means ‘ten’; in Prussia, a gentleman says what he means.”

“I’ll go,” mutters Jacob, perhaps audibly, “before I do just that.”

JACOB WAITS AT
the busy crossroads, watching the laborers pass to and fro. Dr. Marinus is not long in coming: he limps past, with a pair of house interpreters carrying his medical box to attend the fainted merchant. He sees Jacob but does not acknowledge him, which suits Jacob. The turd-scented smoke escaping his esophagus at the end of the smoke-glister experiment cured him of any desire for Marinus’s friendship. The humiliation he suffered that day has caused him to avoid Miss Aibagawa: how can she—and the other seminarians—ever regard him as anything but a half-naked apparatus of fatty valves and fleshy pipes?

Six hundred and thirty-six
koban
s
, he admits,
salve one’s self-esteem, however
 …

The seminarians leave the hospital: Jacob predicted that their lecture would be cut short by Marinus’s summons. Miss Aibagawa is rearmost, half hidden by a parasol. He withdraws a few steps into Bony Alley, as if he is going to Warehouse Lelie.

All I am doing
, Jacob assures himself,
is returning a lost item to its owner
.

The four young men, two guards, and one midwife turn into Short Street.

Jacob loses his nerve; Jacob regains his nerve. “Excuse me!”

The retinue turns around. Miss Aibagawa meets his eyes.

Muramoto, the senior student, greets Jacob. “Dombâga-
san
!”

Jacob removes his bamboo hat. “Another hot day, Mr. Muramoto.”

He is pleased that Jacob remembers his name; the others join his bow. “Hot, hot,” they agree warmly. “Hot!”

Jacob bows to the midwife. “Good afternoon, Miss Aibagawa.”

“How”—her eyes betray a droll mischief—“is Mr. Domburger’s liver?”

“Much better today, I thank you.” He swallows. “I thank you.”

“Ah,” says Ikematsu, with mock sobriety. “But how is in-tus-sus-
cep
-tion?”

“Dr. Marinus’s magic cured me. What did you study today?”

“Kan-somu-shan,”
says Kajiwaki. “When cough blood from lungs.”

“Oh, con
sum
ption. A terrible disease, and a common one.”

An inspector approaches from the land gate: a guard speaks.

“Your pardon, sir,” says Muramoto, “but he says we must leave.”

“Yes, I shan’t detain you. I just wish to return this”—he produces the fan from his jacket and proffers it—“to Miss Aibagawa, who left it at the hospital today.”

Her eyes flash with alarm: they demand,
What are you doing?

His courage evaporates. “The fan you for
got
in the hospital.”

The inspector arrives. Glowering, he speaks to Muramoto.

Muramoto says, “Inspector ask, ‘What is?’ Mr. Dombâga.”

“Tell him …”
This is a terrible mistake
. “Miss Aibagawa forgot her fan. At Dr. Marinus’s hospital. I am returning it.”

The inspector is unimpressed. He issues a curt demand and holds out his hand for the fan, like a schoolmaster demanding a schoolboy’s note.

“He ask, ‘Please show,’ Mr. Dombâga,” translates Ikematsu. “To check.”

If I obey
, Jacob realizes,
all Dejima, all Nagasaki, shall learn how I drew her likeness and pasted it, in strips, onto a fan
. This friendly token of esteem, Jacob sees, shall be misconstrued. It may even light the touch paper of a minor scandal.

The inspector’s fingers are troubled by the stiff catch.

Blushing in anticipation, Jacob prays for some—for any—deliverance.

Quietly, Miss Aibagawa says something to the inspector.

The inspector looks at her; his grimness softens, just a little …

… then he snorts with gruff amusement and hands her the fan. She gives a slight bow.

Jacob feels admonished by this narrowest of escapes.

THE BRIGHT NIGHT
is raucous with parties, both on Dejima and ashore, as if to frighten away the bad memory of the morning’s earthquake. Paper lanterns are strung along Nagasaki’s principal thoroughfares, and impromptu drinking parties are taking place at Constable Kosugi’s house, Deputy van Cleef’s residence, the Interpreters’ Guild, and even the land gate’s guardroom. Jacob and Ogawa Uzaemon have met on the watchtower. Ogawa brought an inspector to ward off accusations of fraternizing, but he was already drunk, and a flask of
sake
has
set him snoring. Hanzaburo is perched a few steps below the platform with Ouwehand’s latest much put-upon house interpreter: “I cured myself of herpes,” Ouwehand boasted, at the evening mustering. An overladen moon has run aground on Mount Inasa, and Jacob enjoys the cool breeze, despite its soot and smell of effluence. “What are
those
clustered lights,” he asks, pointing, “up above the city?”

“More
O-bon
parties, in … 
how to say
?… place where bury corpses.”

“Graveyards? You never hold parties in graveyards!” Jacob thinks of
gavottes
in Domburg’s graveyard and almost laughs.

“Graveyard is gate of dead,” says Ogawa, “so good place to call souls to world of life. Tomorrow night, small fireboats float on sea to guide souls home.”

On the
Shenandoah
, the officer of the watch strikes four bells.

“You truly,” Jacob asks, “believe souls migrate in such a manner?”

“Mr. de Zoet not believe what he is told when boy?”

But mine is the true faith
. Jacob pities Ogawa.
Whilst yours is idolatry
.

Down at the land gate, an officer is barking at an inferior.

I am a company employee
, he reminds himself,
not a missionary
.

“Anyway.” Ogawa produces a porcelain flask from his sleeve.

Jacob is already a little drunk. “How many of those are you hiding?”

“I am not on duty”—Ogawa refills their cups—“so drink to your good profit today.”

Jacob is warmed by the thought of his money and by the
sake
roaring down his gullet. “Is there anyone in Nagasaki who
doesn’t
know how much profit my mercury yielded?”

Firecrackers explode in the Chinese factory across the harbor.

“There is one monk in very very
very
highest cave,” Ogawa says, pointing up the mountainside, “who has not heard, not yet. To speak with sobriety, however: price goes higher, this is good, but sell last mercury to Lord Abbot Enomoto, not another. Please. He is dangerous enemy.”