The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (19 page)

Kobayashi nods and studies his list. “Next is ‘blithely unaware.’”

“A state of ignorance about a misfortune. Whilst one is unaware of it one is ‘blithe,’ that is, content. But when one becomes aware, one becomes unhappy.”

“Husband is ‘blithely unaware,’” suggests Hori, “his wife loves another?”

“Yes, Mr. Hori.” Jacob smiles and stretches out his cramped legs.

“Last word,” says Kobayashi, “is from book of law: ‘lack of proof positive.’”

Before the Dutchman opens his mouth, a grim Constable Kosugi appears at the door; a shaken Hanzaburo is in tow. Kosugi apologizes for the intrusion and delivers a stern narrative that, Jacob sees with mounting unease, includes both Hanzaburo and himself. At one key twist, the interpreters gasp in shock and stare at the bewildered Dutchman. The word for “thief,”
dorobô
, is used several times. Motogi verifies a detail
with the constable and announces, “Mr. de Zoet, Constable Kosugi bring bad news. Thiefs visit Tall House.”

“What?” blurts Jacob. “But when? How did they break in?
Why?
”

“Your house interpreter,” confirms Motogi, “believes ‘in this hour.’”

“What did they steal?” Jacob turns to Hanzaburo, who looks worried about being blamed. “What
is
there to steal?”

THE TALL HOUSE STAIRS
are less gloomy than usual: the door to Jacob’s upstairs apartment was chiseled off its hinges and, once inside, he finds that his sea chest has suffered the same indignity. The gouged holes on its six sides suggest the burglars were searching for secret compartments. Pained by the sight of his irreplaceable volumes and sketchbooks strewn across the floor, Jacob’s first action is to tidy these up. Interpreter Goto helps and asks, “Are some books taken?”

“I can’t be sure,” Jacob replies, “until they’re all gathered up …”

… but it appears not, and his valuable dictionary is scuffed but safe.

But I can’t check my Psalter
, Jacob thinks,
until I am left alone
.

There is no sign of this happening soon. As he retrieves his few personal effects, Vorstenbosch, Van Cleef, and Peter Fischer march up the stairs, and now his small room is crowded with more than ten people.

“First my teapot,” declares the chief, “now
this
fresh scandal.”

“We shall strive great efforts,” Kobayashi promises, “to find thiefs.”

Peter Fischer asks Jacob, “Where was the house interpreter during the theft?”

Interpreter Motogi puts the question to Hanzaburo, who answers sheepishly. “He go ashore for one hour,” says Motogi, “to visit very sick mother.”

Fischer snorts derisively. “I know where
I’d
begin my investigations.”

Van Cleef asks, “What items did the burglars take, Mr. de Zoet?”

“Fortunately, my remaining mercury—perhaps the thieves’ target—is under treble lock in Warehouse Eik. My pocket watch was on my person, as were, thank heaven, my spectacles, and so, on first inspection, it appears that—”

“In the name of God on high.” Vorstenbosch rounds on Kobayashi. “Are we not robbed enough by your government during our regular trade without these repeated acts of larceny against our persons and
property? Report to the Long Room in one hour, so I may dictate an official letter of complaint to the magistracy, which shall include a
full
list of items stolen by the thieves …”

“DONE.” CON TWOMEY
finishes rehanging the door and lapses into his Irish English. “Feckin’ langers’d need to rip out the feckin’ wall, like, to get through
that.”

Jacob sweeps up the sawdust. “Who is Feck Inlangers?”

The carpenter raps the door frame. “I’ll fix your sea chest tomorrow. Good, like new. This was a bad thing—and in broad daylight, too, yes?”

“I still have my limbs.” Jacob is sick with worry about his Psalter.

If the book is gone
, he fears,
the thieves will think:
blackmail.

“That’s the way.” Twomey wraps his tools in oilcloth. “Until dinner.”

As the Irishman walks down the stairs, Jacob closes the door and slides the bolt, shifts the bed a few inches …

Might Grote have ordered the break-in
, he wonders,
as vengeance for the ginseng bulbs?

Jacob lifts a floorboard, lies down, and reaches for the sack-wrapped book …

His fingertips find the Psalter and he gasps with relief. “The Lord preserveth all them that love Him.” He replaces the floorboard and sits on his bed. He is safe; Ogawa is safe.
Then what
, he wonders,
is wrong?
Jacob senses he is overlooking something crucial.
Like when I
know
a ledger is hiding a lie or an error, even when the totals appear to balance
.

Hammering starts up across Flag Square. The carpenters are late.

It’s concealed in the obvious
, Jacob thinks.
“In broad daylight.”
Truth batters him like a hod of bricks:
Kobayashi’s questions were a coded boast
. The break-in was a message. It declares,
The “repercussions” of crossing me, of which you are “blithely unaware,” are being enacted now, “in broad daylight.” You are “impotent” to retaliate, for there shall be not a scrap of “proof positive.”
Kobayashi claimed authorship of the robbery and placed himself above suspicion: how could a burglar be with his victim at the time of the burglary? If Jacob reported the code words, he would sound delusional.

The broiling day is cooling; its clatter has receded; Jacob feels sick.

He wants revenge, yes
, Jacob guesses,
but the gloater wants a prize, too
.

After the Psalter, what is the most damaging thing to have stolen?

The cooling day is broiling; its clatter condenses; Jacob has a headache.

The newest pages of my sketchbook
, he realizes,
under my pillow
 …

Trembling, Jacob throws away the pillow, snatches the sketchbook, fumbles with its ties, turns to the last page, and cannot breathe: here is the serrated edge of a torn-out sheet. It was filled with the drawings of the face, hands, and eyes of Miss Aibagawa,
and somewhere nearby, Kobayashi is contemplating these likenesses in malign delight
 …

Shutting his eyes against the picture only increases its clarity.

Make this not true
, Jacob prays, but this prayer tends to go unanswered.

The street door opens. Slow footsteps drag themselves up the stairs.

The extraordinary fact that Marinus is paying him a call scarcely dents Jacob’s adamantine misery.
What if her permission to study on Dejima is revoked?
A stout cane raps on the door. “Domburger.”

“I’ve had enough unwelcome visitors in one day, Doctor.”

“Open this door now, you village idiot.”

It is easiest for Jacob to obey. “Come to gloat, have you?”

Marinus peers around the clerk’s apartment, settles on the window ledge, and takes in the view over Long Street and the garden through the glass-and-paper window. He unties and reties his lustrous gray hair. “What did they take?”

“Nothing …” He remembers Vorstenbosch’s lie. “Nothing of value.”

“In cases of burglary”—Marinus coughs—“I prescribe a course of billiards.”

“Billiards, Doctor,” Jacob vows, “is the
last
thing I shall be doing today.”

JACOB’S CUE BALL
sails up the table, rebounds off the bottom cushion, and glides to a halt two inches from the top edge, a hand’s length closer than Marinus’s. “Take the first stroke, Doctor. To how many points shall we play?”

“Hemmij and I would set our finishing post at five hundred and one.”

Eelattu squeezes lemons into cloudy glasses; they scent the air yellow.

A breeze blows through the billiards room in Garden House.

Marinus concentrates hard on his first strike of the game …

Why this sudden kindness?
Jacob cannot help but wonder.

… but the doctor’s shot is misjudged, hitting the red but not Jacob’s cue ball.

Easily, Jacob pockets both his and the red. “Shall I tally the score?”

“You are the bookkeeper. Eelattu, the afternoon is your own.”

Eelattu thanks his master and leaves, and the clerk shoots a tight series of cannons, quickly taking his score to fifty. The billiard balls’ muffled trundling smooths his ruffled nerves.
The shock of the burglary
, he half-persuades himself,
made me go off at half cock: for Miss Aibagawa to be drawn by a foreigner cannot be a punishable offense, even here. It’s not as if she posed for me clandestinely
. After accruing sixty points, Jacob lets Marinus on the table.
Nor
, the clerk thinks,
is a page of sketches “proof positive” that I am infatuated with the woman
.

The doctor, Jacob realizes, is a middling amateur at billiards.

Nor is “infatuated,”
he corrects himself,
an accurate description
 …

“Time must hang heavy here, Doctor, once the ship departs?”

“For most, yes. The men seek solace in grog, the pipe, intrigues, hatred of our hosts, and in sex. For my part”—he misses an easy shot—“I prefer the company of botany, my studies, my teaching, and, of course, my harpsichord.”

Jacob chalks his cue. “How are the Scarlatti sonatas?”

Marinus sits on the upholstered bench. “Fishing for gratitude, are we?”

“Never, Doctor. I gather you belong to a native academy of science.”

“The Shirandô? It lacks government patronage. Edo is dominated by ‘patriots’ who mistrust all things foreign, so, officially, we are just another private school. Unofficially, we are a bourse for
rangakusha—
scholars of European sciences and arts—to exchange ideas. Ôtsuki Monjurô, the director, has influence enough at the magistracy to ensure my monthly invitations.”

“Is Dr. Aibagawa”—Jacob pots the red, long distance—“also a member?”

Marinus is watching his younger opponent meaningfully.

“I ask out of mere curiosity, Doctor.”

“Dr. Aibagawa is a keen astronomer and attends when his health permits. He was, in fact, the first Japanese to observe Herschel’s new planet through a telescope ordered here at wild expense. He and I, indeed, discuss optics more than medicine.”

Jacob returns the red ball to the balkline, wondering how not to change the subject.

“After his wife and sons died,” continued the doctor, “Dr. Aibagawa married a younger woman, a widow, whose son was to be inducted into Dutch medicine and carry on the Aibagawa practice. The young man turned out to be an idle disappointment.”

“And is Miss Aibagawa”—the younger man lines up an ambitious shot—“also permitted to attend the Shirandô?”

“There are laws ranged against you: your suit is hopeless.”

“Laws.” Jacob’s shot rattles in the pocket’s jaws. “Laws against a doctor’s daughter becoming a foreigner’s wife?”

“Not constitutional laws. I mean real laws: laws of the
non si fa.”

“So … Miss Aibagawa does
not
attend the Shirandô?”

“As a matter of fact, she is the academy’s registrar. But as I keep trying to tell you …” Marinus pockets the vulnerable red, but his cue ball fails to spin backward. “Women of her class do not become Dejima wives. Even were she to share your
tendresse
, what hopes of a decent marriage after being pawed by a red-haired devil? If you do love her, express your devotion by avoiding her.”

He’s right
, thinks Jacob, and asks, “May I accompany you to the Shirandô? Just the once?”

“Certainly not.” Marinus tries to pot both his cue ball and Jacob’s but misses.

There are limits, then
, Jacob realizes,
to this unexpected détente
.

“You are no scholar,” the doctor explains. “Nor am I your pimp.”

“Is it fair to berate the less privileged for womanizing, smoking, and drinking”—Jacob pots Marinus’s cue ball—“whilst refusing to help their self-betterment?”

“I am not a society for public improvement. What privileges I enjoy, I earned.”

Cupido or Philander is practicing an air on a viol da gamba.

The goats and a dog engage in a battle of bleating and barking.

“You spoke of how you and Mr. Hemmij”—Jacob miscues—“used to play for a wager?”

“You’re never proposing,” the doctor mock-whispers, “gambling on a Sabbath?”

“If I reach five hundred and one first, take me to the Shirandô.”

Marinus lines up his shot, looking doubtful. “What is my prize?”

He’s not rejecting the idea
, Jacob notices,
out of hand
. “Name it.”

“Six hours’ labor in my garden. Now, pass me the bridge.”

“FOR YOUR QUESTION’S
intents and purposes …” Marinus considers his next shot from all angles. “Sentience in this life began in the rain-sodden summer of 1757 in a Haarlem garret: I was a six-year-old boy who had been taken to death’s door by a savage fever that had seen off my entire family of cloth merchants.”

You, too
, thinks Jacob. “I’m most sorry, Doctor. I didn’t guess.”

“The world is a vale of tears. I was passed like a bad
penning
down a chain of relatives, each expecting a slice of an inheritance that had, in fact, been swallowed by debts. My illness made me”—he pats his lame thigh—“an unpromising investment. The last, a great-uncle of dubious vintage named Cornelis, told me I’d one evil eye and one queer one and took me to Leiden, where he deposited me on a canalside doorstep. He told me my ‘aunt-in-a-manner-of-speaking’ Lidewijde would take me in and vanished like a rat down a drain. Having no other choice, I rang the bell. Nobody answered. There was no point trying to limp after Great-Uncle Cornelis so I just waited on the high doorstep …”

Marinus’s next shot misses both the red and Jacob’s cue ball.

“… until a friendly constable threatened to thrash me for vagabondage.” Marinus drains his lemon juice. “I was dressed in my cousins’ castoffs, so my denial fell on deaf ears. Up and down the Rapenburg I walked, just to stay warm.” Marinus looks over the water toward the Chinese factory. “A sunless, locked-up, tiring afternoon, and chestnut sellers were out, and canine street urchins watched me, scenting prey, and across the canal, maples shed leaves like women tearing up letters … and are you going to play your shot or not, Domburger?”