The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (3 page)

Snitker upends the table and lunges at Vorstenbosch. Jacob glimpses Snitker’s fist over his patron’s head and attempts to intercept; flaming peacocks whirl across his vision; the cabin walls rotate through ninety degrees; the floor slams his ribs; and the taste of gunmetal in his mouth is surely blood. Grunts and gasps and groans are exchanged at a higher level. Jacob peers up in time to see the first mate land a pulverizing blow on Snitker’s solar plexus, causing the floored clerk to wince with involuntary sympathy. Two more marines burst in, just as Snitker totters and hits the floor.

Belowdecks, the fiddler plays “My Dark-eyed Damsel of Twente.”

Captain Lacy pours himself a glass of black-currant whiskey.

Vorstenbosch whacks Snitker’s face with his silver-knobbed cane until he is too tired to continue. “Put this cockchafer in irons in your berth deck’s foulest corner.” The first mate and the two marines drag the groaning body away. Vorstenbosch kneels by Jacob and claps his shoulder. “Thank you for taking that blow for me, my boy. Your noggin, I fear, is
une belle marmelade
 …”

The pain in Jacob’s nose suggests a breakage, but the stickiness on his hands and knees is not blood. Ink, the clerk realizes, hauling himself upright.

Ink, from his cracked inkpot, indigo rivulets and dribbling deltas …

Ink, drunk by thirsty wood, dripping between cracks …

Ink
, thinks Jacob,
you most fecund of liquids
 …

H
ATLESS AND BROILING IN HIS BLUE DRESS COAT, JACOB DE ZOET
is thinking of a day ten months ago, when a vengeful North Sea charged the dikes at Domburg, and spindrift tumbled along Church Street, past the parsonage where his uncle presented him with an oiled canvas bag. It contained a scarred Psalter bound in deerskin, and Jacob can, more or less, reconstruct his uncle’s speech from memory. “Heaven knows, nephew, you have heard this book’s history often enough. Your great-great-grandfather was in Venice when the plague arrived. His body erupted in buboes the size of frogs, but he prayed from this Psalter and God cured him. Fifty years ago, your grandfather Tys was soldiering in the Palatine when ambushers surprised his regiment. This Psalter stopped this musket ball”—he fingers the leaden bullet, still in its crater—“from shredding his heart. It is a literal truth that I, your father, and you and Geertje owe this book our very existences. We are not Papists: we do not ascribe magical powers to bent nails or old rags; but you understand how this Sacred Book is, by our faith, bound to our bloodline. It is a gift from your ancestors and a loan from your descendants. Whatever befalls you in the years ahead, never forget: this Psalter”—he touched the canvas bag—“this is your passport home. David’s Psalms are a Bible within the Bible. Pray from it, heed its teachings, and you shall not stray. Protect it
with your life that it may nourish your soul. Go now, Jacob, and God go with you.”

“‘Protect it with your life,’” Jacob mutters under his breath …

… 
which is
, he thinks,
the crux of my dilemma
.

Ten days ago, the
Shenandoah
anchored off Papenburg Rock—named for martyrs of the true faith thrown from its heights—and Captain Lacy ordered all Christian artifacts placed in a barrel to be nailed shut, surrendered to the Japanese, and returned only when the brig departed from Japan. Not even Chief-Elect Vorstenbosch and his protégé clerk were exempt. The
Shenandoah
’s sailors grumbled that they’d sooner surrender their testicles than their crucifixes, but their crosses and St. Christophers did vanish into hidden nooks when the Japanese inspectors and well-armed guards carried out their search of the decks. The barrel was filled with an assortment of rosary beads and prayer books brought by Captain Lacy for this purpose; the De Zoet Psalter was not among them.

How could I betray my uncle
, Jacob frets,
my Church and my God?

It is buried amid his other books in the sea chest on which he sits.

The risks
, he assures himself,
cannot be so very great
 … There is no marking or illustration by which the Psalter could be identified as a Christian text, and the interpreters’ Dutch is too poor, surely, to recognize antique biblical language.
I am an officer of the Dutch East Indies Company
, Jacob reasons.
What is the worst punishment the Japanese could inflict on me?

Jacob doesn’t know, and the truth is that Jacob is afraid.

A QUARTER HOUR PASSES;
of Chief Vorstenbosch or his two Malays there is no sign.

Jacob’s pale and freckled skin is frying like bacon.

A flying fish scissors and skims itself over the water.

“Tobiuo!”
one oarsman says to the other, pointing.
“Tobiuo!”

Jacob repeats the word, and both oarsmen laugh until the boat rocks.

Their passenger doesn’t mind. He watches the guard boats circling the
Shenandoah;
the fishing skips; a coast-hugging Japanese cargo ship, stocky as a Portuguese carrack but fatter-bellied; an aristocratic pleasure craft, accompanied by several attendant vessels, draped with the
ducal black-on-sky-blue colors; and a beak-prowed junk, similar to those of the Chinese merchants of Batavia …

Nagasaki itself, wood gray and mud brown, looks oozed from between the verdant mountains’ splayed toes. The smells of seaweed, effluence, and smoke from countless flues are carried over the water. The mountains are terraced by rice paddies nearly up to their serrated summits.

A madman
, Jacob supposes,
might imagine himself in a half-cracked jade bowl
.

Dominating the shorefront is his home for the next year: Dejima, a high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island, some two hundred paces along its outer curve, Jacob estimates, by eighty paces deep, and erected, like much of Amsterdam, on sunken piles. Sketching the trading factory from the
Shenandoah
’s foremast during the week gone, he counted some twenty-five roofs: the numbered warehouses of Japanese merchants; the chief’s and the captain’s residences; the deputy’s house, on whose roof perches the watchtower; the Guild of Interpreters; a small hospital. Of the four Dutch warehouses—the Roos, the Lelie, the Doorn, and the Eik—only the last two survived what Vorstenbosch is calling “Snitker’s Fire.” Warehouse Lelie is being rebuilt, but the incinerated Roos must wait until the factory’s debts are in better order. The land gate connects Dejima to the shore by a single-span stone bridge over a moat of tidal mud; the sea gate, at the top of a short ramp where the company sampans are loaded and unloaded, is opened only during the trading season. Attached is a customs house, where all Dutchmen except the chief resident and the captain are searched for prohibited items.

A list at whose head
, Jacob thinks,
is “Christian Artifacts”
 …

He turns to his sketch and sets about shading the sea with charcoal.

Curious, the oarsmen lean over; Jacob shows them the page:

The older oarsman makes a face to say,
Not bad
.

A shout from a guard boat startles the pair: they return to their posts.

THE SAMPAN ROCKS
under Vorstenbosch’s weight: he is a lean man, but today his silk surtout bulges with sections of “unicorn” or narwhal horn, valued in Japan as a powdered cure-all. “It is
this
buffoonery”—the incoming chief raps his knuckles on his garment’s sewn-in bumps—“that I intend to eradicate. ‘Why,’ I demanded of that serpent Kobayashi, ‘not simply have the cargo placed in a box, legitimately; rowed across,
legitimately; and sold at private auction, legitimately?’ His reply? ‘There is no precedent.’ I put it to him, ‘Then why not
create
a precedent?’ He stared at me as if I’d claimed paternity of his children.”

“Sir?” the first mate calls. “Shall your slaves accompany you ashore?”

“Send them with the cow. Snitker’s black shall serve me meanwhile.”

“Very good, sir; and Interpreter Sekita begs a ride ashore.”

“Let the mooncalf down, then, Mr. Wiskerke.”

Sekita’s ample rear juts over the bulwark. His scabbard catches in the ladder: his attendant earns a sharp slap for this mishap. Once the master and servant are safely seated, Vorstenbosch doffs his smart tricorn hat. “A divine morning, Mr. Sekita, is it not?”

“Ah.” Sekita nods without understanding. “We Japanese, an island race …”

“Indeed, sir. Sea in all directions; deep blue expanses of it.”

Sekita recites another rote-learned sentence: “Tall pines are deep roots.”

“For why must we waste our scant monies on your obese salary?”

Sekita purses his lips as if in thought. “How do you do, sir?”

If
he
inspects my books
, thinks Jacob,
all my worries are for nothing
.

Vorstenbosch orders the oarsmen “Go!” and points to Dejima.

Unnecessarily and unasked, Sekita translates the order.

The oarsmen propel the sampan by “sweeping” their oars in the manner of a water snake, in time to a breathy shanty.

“Might they be singing,” wonders Vorstenbosch, “‘Give Us Your Gold, O Stinking Dutchman’?”

“One trusts not, sir, in the presence of an interpreter.”

“That’s a charitable description of the man. Yet better him than Kobayashi: this may be our last chance to have a private discussion for a little while. Once ashore, my priority must be to ensure as profitable a trading season as our shoddy cargo can afford. Yours, De Zoet, is quite different: piece together the factory accounts, both for company trade and private trade since the year ’94. Without knowing what the officers have bought, sold, and exported, and for how much, we cannot know the full extent of the corruption we must deal with.”

“I’ll do my very best, sir.”

“Snitker’s incarceration is my statement of intent, but should we mete out the same treatment to every smuggler on Dejima, there would be nobody left but the two of us. Rather, we must show how honest
labor is rewarded with advancement, and theft punished with disgrace and jail. Thus, only thus, may we clean out this Augean stable. Ah, and here is Van Cleef, come to greet us.”

The acting deputy walks down the ramp from the sea gate.

“‘Every arrival,’” quotes Vorstenbosch, “‘is a particular death.’”

DEPUTY MELCHIOR VAN CLEEF,
born in Utrecht forty years ago, doffs his hat. His swarthy face is bearded and piratical; a friend might describe his narrow eyes as “observant,” an enemy as “Mephistophelian.” “Good morning, Mr. Vorstenbosch; and welcome to Dejima, Mr. de Zoet.” His handshake could crush stones. “To wish you a ‘pleasant’ stay is overly hopeful …” He notices the fresh kink in Jacob’s nose.

“I am obliged, Deputy van Cleef.” Solid ground sways under Jacob’s sea legs. Coolies are already unloading his sea chest and carrying it to the sea gate. “Sir, I should prefer to keep my luggage in sight—”

“So you should. Until recently we corrected the stevedores with blows, but the magistrate ruled that a beaten coolie is an affront to all Japan and forbade us. Now their knavery knows no bounds.”

Interpreter Sekita mistimes his jump from the sampan’s prow onto the ramp and dunks his leg up to the knee. Once on dry land, he smacks his servant’s nose with his fan and hurries ahead of the three Dutchmen, telling them, “Go! Go! Go!”

Deputy van Cleef explains, “He means ‘Come.’”

Once through the sea gate, they are ushered into the customs room. Here, Sekita asks the foreigners’ names and shouts them at an elderly registrar, who repeats them to a younger assistant, who writes them in his ledger. “Vorstenbosch” is transliterated Bôrusu Tenbôshu, “Van Cleef” becomes Bankureifu, and “De Zoet” is rechristened Dazûto. Rounds of cheese and barrels of butter unloaded from the
Shenandoah
are being poked with skewers by a team of inspectors. “Those damned blackguards,” Van Cleef complains, “are known to break open preserved
eggs
lest the chicken sneaked in a ducat or two.” A burly guard approaches. “Meet the frisker,” says the deputy. “The chief is exempt, but not clerks, alas.”

A number of young men gather: they have the same shaven foreheads and topknots as the inspectors and interpreters who visited the
Shenandoah
this week, but their robes are less impressive. “Unranked
interpreters,” says Van Cleef. “They hope to earn Sekita’s favor by doing his job for him.”

The frisker speaks to Jacob and they chorus, “Arms rise! Open pockets!”

Sekita silences them and orders Jacob, “Arms rise. Open pockets.”

Jacob obeys; the frisker pats his armpits and explores his pockets.

He finds Jacob’s sketchbook, examines it briefly, and issues another order.

“Show shoes to guard, sir!” say the quickest house interpreters.

Sekita sniffs. “Show shoes now.”

Jacob notices that even the stevedores stop their work to watch.