The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (30 page)

Its eyes are black pearls and it vanishes in a furry blur.

If there
was
a rat
, Orito tells herself,
it
didn’t
speak, because rats
don’t. She hears her mother humming in the passageway, as on most mornings. She smells her servant Ayame’s toasted
onigiri
rice balls rolled in sesame.

“Ayame isn’t here, either,” Orito says. “Stepmother dismissed her.”

These “slippages” of time and senses, she is sure, are caused by the medicine Master Suzaku concocts for each sister before supper. Hers the master calls “solace.” She knows the pleasure it brings is harmful and addictive, but unless she drinks it she shan’t be fed, and what hope has a starving woman of escaping from a mountain shrine in the middle of winter? Better to eat.

Harder to tolerate are thoughts of her stepmother and stepbrother waking up in the Aibagawa residence in Nagasaki. Orito wonders what of her and her father’s belongings remains and what has been sold off: the telescopes, their apparatus, books, and medicines; Mother’s kimonos and jewelry … It is all her stepmother’s property now, to sell to the highest bidder.

Just like she sold me
, thinks Orito, feeling anger in her stomach …

… until she hears Yayoi, next door: vomiting; groaning; and vomiting again.

Orito struggles out of bed and puts on her padded over-kimono.

She ties her headscarf over her burn and hurries into the passageway.

I am no longer a daughter
, she thinks,
but I
am
still a midwife
 …

… 
WHERE WAS I GOING?
Orito stands in the musty corridor partitioned from the cloisters by the rows of sliding wooden screens. Daylight enters through a lattice carved along the top. She shivers and she sees her breath, knowing she was going somewhere, but where? Forgetfulness is another trick of Suzaku’s solace. She looks around for clues. The night lamp at the corner by the privy is extinguished. Orito places her palm on the wooden screen, stained dark by countless winters. She
pushes, and the screen yields a stubborn inch. Through the gap she sees icicles hanging from the cloisters’ eaves.

An old pine’s branches sag under snow; snow encrusts the seated stones.

A film of ice covers Square Pond. Bare Peak is streaked by veins of snow.

Sister Kiritsubo emerges from behind the pine’s trunk, walking along the cloisters opposite, trailing her withered arm’s fused fingers along the wooden screen. She circumnavigates the courtyard one hundred and eight times daily. Upon reaching the gap, she says, “Sister is up early this morning.”

Orito has nothing to say to Sister Kiritsubo.

Third Sister Umegae approaches up the inner corridor. “This is just the beginning of the Kyôga winter, Newest Sister.” In the snow light, Umegae’s dappled stains are berry purple. “A gift in your womb is like a warm stone in your pocket.”

Orito knows Umegae says this to frighten her. It works.

The stolen midwife hears the noise of vomiting and remembers,
Yayoi
 …

THE SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD
woman bends over a wooden bucket. Gastric fluid dangles from her lips, and a slop of fresh vomit is pumped out. Orito breaks the ice on the water bowl with a ladle and carries it to her. Yayoi, glassy-eyed, nods at her visitor to say,
The worst is over
. Orito wipes Yayoi’s mouth with a square of paper and gives her a cup of the numbingly cold water. “Most of it,” Yayoi says, hiding her fox’s ears with her headband, “went into the bucket this morning, at least.”

“Practice”—Orito wipes the splashes of vomit
—“does
make perfect, then.”

Yayoi dabs her eyes with her sleeve. “Why am I still sick so often, Sister?”

“The vomiting can sometimes continue right up to the birth.”

“Last time, I yearned for
dango
candy; this time, even the
thought
of it …”

“Each pregnancy is different. Now lie down for a little while.”

Yayoi lies back, puts her hands on her bulge, and withdraws into concern.

Orito reads her thoughts. “You still feel your baby kicking, yes?”

“Yes. My gift”—she pats her belly—“is happy when he hears you … but … but last year Sister Hotaru was vomiting late into
her
fifth month and then miscarried. The gift had died several weeks before. I was there and the stench was …”

“Sister Hotaru had not, then, felt the child kick for several weeks?”

Yayoi is both reluctant and eager to agree. “I … suppose not.”

“Yet yours
is
kicking, so what conclusions can you draw?”

Yayoi frowns, allows Orito’s logic to pacify her, and cheers up. “I bless the Goddess for bringing you here.”

Enomoto bought me
, Orito thinks, biting her tongue,
my stepmother sold me
 …

She begins rubbing goat fat into Yayoi’s distended belly.

… 
I curse them both and shall tell them so at the next opportunity
.

Here is a kick, below Yayoi’s inverted navel; below the lowest rib, a thump …

… adjacent to the sternum, a kick; over to the left, another stirring.

“There is a chance,” Orito decides to tell Yayoi, “you are carrying twins.”

Yayoi is worldly enough to know the dangers. “How sure are you?”

“Reasonably sure, and it would explain the prolonged vomiting.”

“Sister Hatsune had twins at
her
second gifting. She climbed two ranks with one labor. If the Goddess blessed me with twins—”

“What can
that
lump of wood,” Orito snaps, “know about human pain?”

“Please
, Sister!” Yayoi begs, afraid. “It’s like insulting your own mother!”

Here come fresh cramps in Orito’s intestines; here is the breathlessness.

“You see, Sister? She can hear. Say you’re sorry, Sister, and she’ll stop it.”

The more solace my body absorbs
, Orito knows,
the more it needs
.

SHE TAKES YAYOI’S
foul-smelling pail around the cloisters to the slop barrow.

Crows perch along the ridge of the steep roof, eyeing the prisoner.

Of all the women you could acquire
, she would ask Enomoto,
why rob
me
of my life?

But in fifty days, the Abbot of Shiranui has not once visited his shrine.

“In time,” Abbess Izu answers all her questions and entreaties, “in time.”

In the kitchen, Sister Asagao is stirring soup over a huffing fire. Asagao’s disfigurement is one of the more arresting in the house: her lips are fused into a circle that also deforms her speech. Her friend Sadaie was born with a misshapen skull, giving her head a feline shape that makes her eyes appear unnaturally large. When she sees Orito, she stops speaking in mid-sentence.

Why do those two watch me
, Orito wonders,
like squirrels watch a hungry cat?

Their faces inform her that she is uttering her thoughts aloud again.

This is another mortifying trick of solace and the house.

“Sister Yayoi is sick,” says Orito. “I wish to take her a bowl of tea. Please.”

Sadaie indicates the kettle with her eyes: one is brown, one is gray.

Beneath her gown, Sadaie’s own pregnancy is becoming visible.

It’s a girl
, thinks the doctor’s daughter, pouring the bitter brew.

WHEN ACOLYTE ZANÔ’S
stuffed-nose shout rings out, “Gates opening, Sisters!” Orito hurries to a point in the inner corridor midway between Abbess Izu’s and Housekeeper Satsuki’s rooms and slides open the wooden screen. From this position, just once, in her first week here, she saw through both sets of gates into the precincts and glimpsed steps, a cluster of maples, a blue-cloaked master, and an acolyte in undyed hemp …

… but this morning, as usual, the acolyte on sentry duty is more careful. Orito sees nothing but the closed outer gates, and a pair of acolytes bring in the day’s provisions by handcart.

Sister Sawarabi swoops from the stateroom. “Acolyte Chûai! Acolyte Maboroshi! This snow hasn’t frozen your bones, I hope? Master Genmu’s a heartless one, starving his young mustangs into skeletons.”

“We find ways,” Maboroshi flirts back, “to keep warm, Sister.”

“Oh, but how can I forget?” Sawarabi brushes her middle breast
with her fingertips. “Isn’t Jiritsu provisioning us this week, that shameless slugabed?”

Maboroshi’s levity vanishes. “The acolyte has fallen into sickness.”

“My, my. Sickness, you say. Not just … early-winter sneezes?”

“His condition”—Maboroshi and Chûai begin carrying supplies into the kitchen—“is grave, it seems.”

“We hope,” cleft-lipped Sister Hotaru adds, appearing from the stateroom, “that poor Acolyte Jiritsu is not in danger of death?”

“His condition is grave.” Maboroshi is terse. “We must prepare for the worst.”

“Well, the newest sister was a famous doctor’s daughter, in her previous life, so Master Suzaku could do worse than ask for her. She’d come, and gladly, because”—Sawarabi cups her mouth to her hand and calls across the courtyard to Orito’s hiding place—“she’d
die
to see the precincts, so as to plan her escape,
wouldn’t
you, Sister Orito?”

Blushing, the exposed observer beats a tearful retreat to her cell.

ALL THE SISTERS
except Yayoi, along with Abbess Izu and Housekeeper Satsuki, kneel at the low table in the long room. The doors to the prayer room, where the gold-leafed statue of the pregnant Goddess is housed, are open. The Goddess watches the sisters over the head of Abbess Izu, who strikes her tubular gong. The Sutra of Gratitude begins.

“To Abbot Enomoto
-no-kami,”
the women chorus, “our spiritual guide …”

Orito pictures herself spitting on the illustrious colleague of her late father.

“… whose sagacity guides the shrine of Mount Shiranui …”

Abbess Izu and Housekeeper Satsuki notice Orito’s motionless lips.

“… we, the Daughters of Izanazô, render the gratitude of the nurtured child.”

It is a passive protest, but Orito lacks the means of more active dissent.

“To Abbot Genmu-
no-kami
, whose wisdom protects the House of Sisters …”

Orito glares at Housekeeper Satsuki, who looks away, embarrassed.

“… we, the Daughters of Izanazô, render the gratitude of the justly governed.”

Orito glares at Abbess Izu, who absorbs her defiance kindly.

“To the Goddess of Shiranui, Fountainhead of Life and Mother of Gifts …”

Orito looks above the sisters opposite at the hanging scrolls.

“… we, the Sisters of Shiranui, render the fruits of our wombs …”

The scrolls display seasonal paintings and lines from Shintô texts.

“… so that fertility cascades over Kyôga, so famine and drought are banished …”

The center scroll shows the sisters’ precedence, ranked by numbers of births.

Exactly like
, Orito thinks with disgust,
a stable of sumo wrestlers
.

“… so that the wheel of life shall turn through eternity …”

The wooden tablet inscribed
ORITO
is on the far right position.

“… until the last star burns out and the wheel of time is broken.”

Abbess Izu strikes her gong once to indicate the sutra’s conclusion. Housekeeper Satsuki closes the doors to the prayer room, while Asagao and Sadaie bring rice and miso soup from the adjacent kitchen.

When Abbess Izu strikes the gong again, the sisters begin breakfast.

Speech and eye contact are forbidden, but friends pour one another’s water.

Fourteen mouths—Yayoi is excused—chew, slurp, and swallow.

What fine foods is Stepmother eating?
Hatred churns Orito’s insides.

Every sister leaves a few grains of rice to feed the spirits of their ancestors.

Orito does the same, reasoning that in this place, any and all allies are needed.

Abbess Izu strikes the tubular gong to indicate the end of the meal. As Sadaie and Asagao clear the dishes, pink-eyed Hashihime asks Abbess Izu about the sick acolyte, Jiritsu.

“He is being nursed in his cell,” replies the abbess. “He has a trembling fever.”

Several of the sisters cover their mouths and murmur in alarm.

Why such pity
, Orito burns to ask,
for one of your captors?

“A porter in Kurozane died from the disease: poor Jiritsu may have
breathed in the same vapors. Master Suzaku asked us to pray for the acolyte’s recovery.”

Most of the sisters nod earnestly and promise to do so.

Abbess Izu then assigns the day’s housekeeping. “Sisters Hatsune and Hashihime, continue yesterday’s weaving. Sister Kiritsubo is to sweep the cloisters; and Sister Umegae, twist the flax in the storeroom into twine, with Sisters Minori and Yûgiri. At the Hour of the Horse, go to the great shrine to polish the floor. Sister Yûgiri may be excused this, if she wishes, on account of her gift.”

What ugly, twisted words
, thinks Orito,
for malformed thoughts
.

Every head in the room looks at Orito. She spoke aloud again.

“Sisters Hotaru and Sawarabi,” continues the abbess, “dust the prayer room, then attend to the latrines. Sisters Asagao and Sadaie are on kitchen duty, of course, so Sister Kagerô and our newest sister”—the crueler eyes turn to Orito, saying,
See the fine lady, working like one of her old servants
—“are to work in the laundry. If Sister Yayoi is feeling better, she may join them.”

THE LAUNDRY,
a long annex to the kitchen, has two hearths to heat water, a pair of large tubs for washing linen, and a rack of bamboo poles where laundry is hung. Orito and Kagerô carry buckets of water from the pool in the courtyard. To fill each tub costs forty or fifty trips, and the two do not talk. At first the samurai’s daughter was exhausted by the work, but now her legs and arms are tougher, and the blisters on her palms are covered with calloused skin. Yayoi tends the fires to heat the water.

Soon
, Fat Rat taunts, balancing on the slop barrow,
your belly shall look like hers
.