The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (31 page)

“I shan’t let the dogs touch me,” mutters Orito. “I shan’t be here.”

Your body isn’t yours anymore
. Fat Rat smirks.
It’s the Goddess’s
.

Orito loses her footing on the kitchen step and spills her bucket.

“I don’t know how,” says Kagerô coolly, “we coped without you.”

“The floor needed a good wash, anyway.” Yayoi helps Orito mop the spillage.

When the water is warm enough, Yayoi stirs in the blankets and nightshirts. With wooden tongs, Orito transfers them, dripping and
heavy, onto the laundry vise, a slanted table with a hinged door that Kagerô closes to squeeze out the water from the linen. Kagerô then hangs the damp laundry on the bamboo poles. Through the kitchen door, Sadaie is telling Yayoi about last night’s dream. “There was a knocking at the gate. I left my room—it was summer—but it didn’t feel like summer, or night, or day …. The house was deserted. Still, the knocking went on, so I asked, ‘Who is it?’ And a man’s voice replied, ‘It’s me, it’s Iwai.’”

“Sister Sadaie was delivered of her first gift,” Yayoi tells Orito, “last year.”

“Born on the fifth day of the fifth month,” says Sadaie, “the Day of Boys.”

The women think of carp streamers and festive innocence.

“So Abbot Genmu,” Sadaie continues, “named him Iwai, as in ‘celebration.’”

“A brewer’s family in Takamatsu,” Yayoi says, “called Takaishi adopted him.”

Orito is hidden by a cloud of steam. “So I understand.”

Asagao says, “
Ph
ut you
uu
r s
ph
eaking a’
out
your drea
n
, Sister …”

“Well,” Sadaie says, scrubbing at a crust of burned-on rice, “I was surprised that Iwai had grown up so quickly and worried that he’d be in trouble for breaking the rule that bans gifts from Mount Shiranui. But”—she looks in the direction of the prayer room and lowers her voice—“I had to unbolt the inner gate.”

“The
’olt
,” Asagao asks, “
’as
on the
in
side o
ph
the inner gate, you say.”

“Yes, it was. It didn’t occur to me at the time. So the gate opened—”

Yayoi provides a cry of impatience. “What did you see, Sister?”

“Dry leaves. No gift, no Iwai, just dry leaves. The wind carried them away.”

“That,”
Kagerô leans hard on the vise’s handle, “is an ill omen.”

Sadaie is unnerved by Kagerô’s certainty. “Do you really think so, Sister?”

“How could your gift turning into dead leaves be a good omen?”

Yayoi stirs the cauldron. “Sister Kagerô, you’ll upset Sadaie.”

“Just speaking the truth,” Kagerô replies, squeezing out the water, “as I see it.”

“Could you tell,” Asagao asks Sadaie, “I’ai’s
pha
ther
phon
his
phoi
ce?”

“That’s it,” says Yayoi. “Your dream was a clue about Iwai’s father.”

Even Kagerô shows interest in the theory: “Which monks were your engifters?”

Housekeeper Satsuki enters, carrying a new box of soap nuts.

THE RAREFIED SUNSET
turns the snow-veined Bare Peak a bloodied fish pink, and the evening star is as sharp as a needle. Smoke and smells of cooking leak from the kitchen. With the exception of the week’s two cooks, the women’s time is their own until Master Suzaku’s arrival prior to supper. Orito embarks on her anticlockwise walk around the cloisters to distract her body from its clamorous longing for her solace. Several sisters are gathered in the long room, whitening one another’s faces or blackening their teeth. Yayoi is resting in her cell. Blind Sister Minori is teaching a
koto
arrangement of “Eight Miles Through a Mountain Pass” to Sadaie. Umegae, Hashihime, and Kagerô are also taking exercise, clockwise, around the cloisters. Orito is obliged to stand aside as they pass. For the thousandth time since her kidnapping, Orito wishes she had the means to write. Unauthorized letters to the outside world, she knows, are forbidden, and she would burn anything she wrote for fear of her thoughts being exposed.
But an ink brush
, she thinks,
is a skeleton key for a prisoner’s mind
. Abbess Izu has promised to present her with a writing set after her first gifting is confirmed.

How could I endure that act
, Orito shudders,
and live afterward?

When she turns the next corner, Bare Peak is no longer pink but gray.

She considers the twelve women in the house who do endure it.

She thinks about the last newest sister, who hanged herself.

“Venus,” Orito’s father once told her, “follows a clockwise orbit. All her sister and brother planets circle the sun in an anticlockwise manner …”

… but the memory of her father is chased away by jeering
if
s.

Umegae, Hashihime, and Kagerô form a shuffling wall of padded kimonos.

If Enomoto had never seen me or chosen to add me to his collection
 …

Orito hears the
chop chop chop
of knives in the kitchen.

If Stepmother was as compassionate a woman as she once pretended
 …

Orito must press herself against the wooden screen to let them pass.

If Enomoto hadn’t guaranteed Father’s loans with the moneylenders
 …

“Some
of us are so well bred,” Kagerô remarks, “they think rice grows on trees.”

If Jacob de Zoet had seen me at Dejima land gate, on my last day
 …

The three women drift by, hems traipsing along the wooden planks.

A Dutch alphabet V of geese crosses the sky; a forest monkey shrieks.

Better a Dejima wife
, Orito thinks,
protected by a foreigner’s money
 …

A mountain bird on the old pine sings in intricate stitches.

… 
than what happens to me in the engifting week, if I don’t escape
.

The walled stream enters and leaves the courtyard under the raised cloister floor, feeding the pool. Orito presses herself against the wooden screen.

“She supposes,” says Hashihime, “a magic cloud shall whisk her away.”

Stars pollinate the banks of Heaven’s River, germinate and sprout.

Europeans
, Orito remembers,
call it the Milky Way
. Her soft-spoken father is back. “Here is Umihebi, the sea snake; there Tokei, the clock; over here, Ite, the archer”—she can smell his warm smell—“and above, Ranshinban, the compass …”

The bolt of the inner gate screeches open: “Opening!”

Every sister hears. Every sister thinks,
Master Suzaku
.

THE SISTERS GATHER
in the long room, wearing their finest clothes, save for Sadaie and Asagao, who are still preparing supper, and Orito, who owns only the work-kimono in which she was abducted, a warm quilted
hakata
jacket, and a couple of headscarves. Even lower-ranked sisters like Yayoi already have a choice of two or three kimonos of fair quality—one for every child born—with simple necklaces and bamboo hair combs. Senior sisters, like Hatsune and Hashihime, have acquired, over the years, as rich a wardrobe as that of a high-ranking merchant wife.

Her hunger for solace is now an incessant pounding, but Orito also has the longest wait: one by one, in order of the list of precedence, the sisters are summoned to the square room, where Suzaku holds his consultations and administers his potions. Suzaku spends two or three minutes with each patient; for some sisters, the minutiae of their ailments and the master’s thoughts on the same are a fascination second only to the New Year letters. First Sister Hatsune returns from her consultation with the news that Acolyte Jiritsu’s fever is worsening, and Master Suzaku doubts he shall survive the night.

Most of the sisters express shock and dismay.

“Our masters and acolytes,” swears Hatsune, “are so very rarely ill …”

Orito catches herself wondering what febrifuges have been administered, before thinking,
He is no concern of mine
.

The women swap memories of Jiritsu, using the past tense.

Sooner than expected, Yayoi is touching her shoulder. “Your turn.”

“HOW DO WE FIND
the newest sister this evening?” Master Suzaku gives the impression of a man perpetually on the brink of laughter that never comes. The effect is sinister. Abbess Izu occupies one corner and an acolyte another.

Orito answers her usual answer: “Alive, as you see.”

“Do we know”—Suzaku indicates the young man—“Acolyte Chûai?”

Kagerô and the meaner sisters nickname Chûai “the Swollen Toad.”

“Certainly not.” Orito does not look at the acolyte.

Suzaku clicks his tongue. “The first snow is not sapping our constitution?”

Don’t plead for solace
. She says, “No.”
He loves you to plead
.

“We have no symptoms to report, then? No aches or bleedings?”

The world
, she guesses,
is his own vast private joke
. “Nothing.”

“Or constipation? Diarrhea? Hemorrhoids? Thrush? Migraines?”

“What I am suffering from,” Orito is goaded into saying, “is incarceration.”

Suzaku smiles at Acolyte Chûai and the abbess. “Our ties to the world below cut us, like wire. Sever them, and be as happy as your dear sisters.”

“My ‘dear sisters’ were rescued from brothels and freak shows, and perhaps, for them, life here is better. I lost more, and Enomoto”—Abbess Izu and Acolyte Chûai flinch to hear the abbot named with such contempt—“hasn’t even faced me since he bought me; and don’t
dare
”—Orito stops herself pointing at Suzaku like an angry Dutchman—“spout your platitudes about destiny and divine balance. Just give me my solace.
Please
. The women want their supper.”

“It scarcely behooves you,” begins the abbess, “to address—”

Suzaku interrupts her with a respectful hand. “Let us show her a little indulgence, Abbess, even if undeserved. Contrariness often is best tamed by kindness.” The monk decants a muddy liquid into a thimble-sized stone cup.

See how painstakingly he moves
, she thinks,
to sharpen your hunger
 …

Orito stops her hand from snatching the cup from the proffered tray.

She turns away to conceal with her sleeve the vulgar act of drinking.

“Once you are engifted,” promises Suzaku, “your sense of belonging shall grow, too.”

Never
, Orito thinks,
never
. Her tongue absorbs the oily fluid …

… and her blood pumps louder, her arteries widen, and well-being soothes her joints.

“The Goddess didn’t choose you,” says Abbess Izu. “You chose the Goddess.”

Warm snowflakes settle over Orito’s skin, whispering as they melt.

Every evening, the doctor’s daughter wants to ask Suzaku about the ingredients of solace. Every evening, she stops herself.
The question
, she knows,
would initiate a conversation, and conversation is a step toward acceptance
.

“What’s good for the body,” Suzaku tells Orito’s mouth, “is good for the soul.”

DINNER IS A FESTIVE
occasion compared to breakfast. After a brief blessing, Housekeeper Satsuki and the sisters eat tofu in tempura batter, fried with garlic and rolled in sesame; pickled eggplant; pilchards and white rice. Even the haughtiest sisters remember their commoners’ origins, when such a fine daily diet could only be dreamed of, and they relish each morsel. The abbess has gone with Master Suzaku to dine with Master Genmu, so the mood in the long room is leisurely. When the
table is cleared and the dishes and chopsticks washed, the sisters smoke pipes around the table, swap stories, play mah-jongg, reread—or have reread—their New Year letters, and listen to Hatsune play her
koto
. The effects of solace wear out a little earlier every night, Orito notices. She leaves, as usual, without saying good night.
Wait till she’s been engifted
, she feels the women think.
Wait till her belly is as big as a boulder, and she needs
us
to help
her
scrub, fetch, and carry
.

Back in her cell, Orito finds that someone has lit her fire.
Yayoi
.

Umegae’s spite or Kagerô’s hostility encourages her to reject the house.

But Yayoi’s kindness
, she fears,
makes life here more tolerable
 …

… and ushers closer the day when Mount Shiranui becomes her home.

Who knows
, she wonders,
if Yayoi is not acting under Genmu’s orders?

Orito, troubled and shivering in the icy air, wipes herself with a cloth.

Under her blankets, she lies on her side, gazing into the fire’s garden.

THE PERSIMMON’S
branches sag with ripe fruit. They glow in the dusk.

An eyelash in the sky grows into a heron; the gawky bird descends …

Its eyes are green and its hair is red; Orito is afraid of his clumsy beak.

The heron says, in Dutch, of course,
You are beautiful
.

Orito wishes neither to encourage him nor wound his feelings.

She is in the courtyard of the House of Sisters: she hears Yayoi groan.

Dead leaves fly like bats; bats fly like dead leaves.

How can I escape?
Orito asks nobody.
The gate is locked
.

Since when
, mocks the moon-gray cat,
do cats need keys?

There is no time
—she is knotted by exasperation
—to speak in riddles
.

First, persuade them
, says the cat,
that you are happy here
.

Why
, she asks,
should I ever give them that false satisfaction?

Because only then
, answers the cat,
shall they stop watching you
.

“I
CONCLUDE,” SAYS YOSHIDA HAYATO, THE STILL-YOUTHFUL AUTHOR
of an erudite monograph on the true age of the earth, surveying his audience of eighty or ninety scholars, “this widely held belief that Japan is an impregnable fortress is a pernicious delusion. Honorable Academicians, we are a ramshackle farmhouse with crumbling walls, a collapsing roof, and covetous neighbors.” Yoshida is succumbing to a bone disease, and projecting his voice over the large sixty-mat hall drains him. “To our northwest, a morning’s voyage from Tsushima Island, live the vainglorious Koreans. Who shall forget those provocative banners their last embassy flaunted? ‘Inspectorate of Dominions’ and ‘We Are Purity,’ implying, naturally, ‘You Are Not’!”