The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (54 page)

A man leaves from a brothel’s side door.
He is me
, Jacob thinks.

“… but I’d rather have broken a bone than be separated from Gloria. I begged my donor leave to return his guineas, asking only to keep the empty pouch to encourage me to fill it, and ten thousand more, with the fruits of my own acumen. All Cape Town’s tinsel and baubles, I claimed, were not worth an hour of my uncle’s company, and, time allowing, perhaps a game of chess? My uncle was silent, and I feared I’d over-sugared the tea, but then he declared that, whilst most young men
were rascally popinjays who considered it their birthright to spend their fathers’ hard-won fortunes in dissipation, heaven had sent him an exception for a nephew. He toasted the finest nephew in Christendom and, forgetting to conceal his clumsy test of marital fidelity, ‘a true little wife.’ He enjoined Gloria to raise his future sons with my image in mind, and his true little wife said, ‘May they be in our nephew’s image, Husband.’ Theo and I then played chess, and it taxed my ingenuity, De Zoet, to let the clod outmaneuver me.”

A bee hovers around Jacob’s face, and goes.

“Gloria’s and my loyalties now proven, my uncle felt at liberty to enter Cape Town society himself. These pursuits took him out of the villa for most of the day, and sometimes he even slept down in the town. Me, he set to the task of copying paperwork in the library. ‘I’d invite you along,’ he said, ‘but I want the Kaffirs hereabouts to know there’s a white man in the villa who can use a flintlock.’ Gloria was left to her books, diary, the garden, and the ‘improving stories’ of the sisters: a spring that ran dry by three o’clock daily, when their lunchtime brandy plunged them into bottomless siestas …”

Van Cleef’s flagon rolls down the tiles, falls through the Wistaria frames, and smashes in the courtyard. “My uncle’s bridal suite lay down a windowless corridor from the library. Concentrating on correspondence, I’ll admit, was harder than usual that afternoon … The library clock, in my memory, is silent. Perhaps it is wound down. Orioles are singing like the choirs of Bedlam, and I hear the
click
of a key … that pregnant silence, when someone is waiting … and here she is in silhouette at the far end. She …” Van Cleef rubs his sunburned face. “I was afraid Aagje would find us, and she says, ‘Haven’t you noticed, Aagje’s in love with the eldest son of the next farm?’ and it’s the most natural thing in the world to tell her I love her, and she kisses me, and she tells me she makes my uncle bearable by imagining he is me, and his is mine, and I ask, ‘What if there’s a child?’ and she says,
Shush
 …”

Mud-brown dogs race up the mud-brown street.

“Our unlucky number was four. The fourth time Gloria and I lay together, Uncle Theo’s horse threw him on his way to Cape Town. He walked back to the villa, so we didn’t hear the horse. One moment I was deep inside Gloria, as naked as silk. The next, I was still as naked as silk but lying amongst shards of the mirror my uncle had hurled me against.
He told me he’d snap my neck and throw my carcass to the beasts. He told me to go to town, withdraw fifty guilders from his agent, and make sure I was too ill to board the
Enkhuizen
when she sailed on to Batavia. Last, he swore that whatever I’d put inside that whore, his wife, he would be digging out with a spoon. To my shame—or not, I don’t know—I went away without saying goodbye to Gloria.” Van Cleef rubs his beard. “Two weeks later I watched the
Enkhuizen
embark. Five weeks later I shipped on a maggoty brig, the
Huis Marquette
, whose pilot spoke with dead spirits and whose captain suspected even the ship’s dog of plotting mutiny. Well, you’ve crossed the Indian Ocean, so I shan’t describe it: eternal, sinister, obsidian, mountainous, monotonous … After a seven-week crossing, we weighed anchor in Batavia by the grace of God, with little thanks due to the pilot or the captain. I walked along the stinking canal, steeling myself for a thrashing from Father, a duel with Theo, lately arrived on the
Enkhuizen
, disinheritance. I saw no familiar faces and none saw me—ten years is a long time—and knocked on the shrunken door of my boyhood home. My old nurse, wrinkled now like a walnut, opened the door and screamed. I remember Mother hurrying through from the kitchen. She held a vase of orchids. Next thing I knew, the vase had turned into a thousand broken pieces, and Mother was slumped against the wall. I assumed that Uncle Theo had made a
persona non grata
of me … but then noticed that Mother was in mourning. I asked if my father was dead. She answered,
‘You
are, Melchior: you drowned.’ Then there was a sobbing embrace, and I learned that the
Enkhuizen
had been wrecked on a reef just a mile from the Straits of Sunda, in a bright and savage sea, with all hands lost …”

“I’m sorry, Chief,” says Jacob.

“The happiest ending is Aagje’s. She married that farmer’s boy and now owns three thousand head of cattle. Each time I’m in the Cape I mean to go and pay my compliments, but never do.”

Excited shouts ring out nearby. The two foreigners have been spotted by a gang of carpenters at work on a nearby building. “Gaijin-
sama!”
calls one, with a grin wider than his face. He holds up a measuring rule and offers a service that makes his colleagues howl with laughter. “I didn’t catch all of that,” says Van Cleef.

“He volunteered to measure the length of your manhood, sir.”

“Oh? Tell the rogue he’d need three of those rules.”

In the jaws of the bay Jacob sees a fluttering rectangle of red, white, and blue.

No
, thinks the head clerk.
It’s a mirage … or a Chinese junk, or
 …

“What’s wrong, De Zoet? Are your breeches beshatten?”

“Sir—there’s a merchantman entering the bay or … a frigate?”

“A
frigate?
Who’s sending a
frigate?
Whose flag is it, man?”

“Ours, sir.” Jacob grips the roof and blesses his farsightedness. “It’s Dutch.”

L
ORD ABBOT ENOMOTO OF KYÔGA DOMAIN PLACES A WHITE STONE
on the board.

A way station
, sees Magistrate Shiroyama,
between his northern flank
 …

Shadows of slender maples stripe the board of gold
kaya
wood.

… 
and his eastern groups … or else a diversionary attack? Both
.

Shiroyama believed he was gaining control, but he was losing it.

Where is the hidden way
, he wonders,
to reverse my reverses?

“Nobody refutes,” says Enomoto, “we live in straitened times.”

One
may
refute
, thinks Shiroyama,
that
your
times are straitened
.

“A minor
daimyo
of the Aso Plateau who sought my assistance—”

Yes, yes
, thinks the magistrate,
your discretion is impeccable
.

“—observed that what grandfathers called ‘debt’ is now called ‘credit.’”

“Meaning”—Shiroyama extends his north–south group with a black stone—“that debts no longer have to be repaid?”

With a polite smile, Enomoto removes his next stone from his rosewood bowl. “Repayments remain a tiresome necessity, alas, but the Aso noble’s case illustrates the point. Two years ago he borrowed a sizable sum from Numa here”—Numa, one of the abbot’s pet moneylenders, bows in his corner—“to drain a marsh. In the seventh month of this year, his shareholders harvested their first rice crop. So in an age when
Edo’s stipends are tardy and dwindling, Numa’s client has well-fed, grateful peasants fattening his storehouses. His account with Numa shall be settled in full … when?”

Numa bows again. “A full two years early, Your Grace.”

“That same
daimyo’s
lofty neighbor, who swore never to owe a grain of rice to anyone, dispatches ever-more frantic begging letters to the Council of Elders”—Enomoto places an island stone between his two eastern groups—“whose servants use them for kindling. Credit is the seed of wealth. The finest minds of Europe study credit and money within a discipline they call”—Enomoto uses a foreign phrase—“‘political economy.’”

This merely confirms
, thinks Shiroyama,
my view of Europeans
.

“A young friend at the academy was translating a remarkable text,
The Wealth of Nations
. His death was a tragedy for us scholars but also, I believe, for Japan.”

“Ogawa Uzaemon?” Shiroyama remembers. “A distressing affair.”

“Had he but told me he was using the Ariake Road, I would have provided an escort through my domain. But on a pilgrimage for his ailing father, the modest young man wanted to eschew comfort …” Enomoto runs a thumbnail to and fro along his lifeline. The magistrate has been told the story by several sources but does not interrupt. “My men rounded up the bandits responsible. I beheaded the one who confessed and hung the others by iron spikes through the feet until wolves and crows had done their work. Then,” he sighs, “Ogawa the Elder died, before an heir was chosen.”

“The death of a family line,” Shiroyama concurs, “is a terrible thing.”

“A cousin from a lesser branch is rebuilding the house—I made a donation—but he’s a common cutler, and the Ogawa name is gone from Dejima forever.”

Shiroyama has nothing to add, but to change the subject is disrespectful.

Doors are slid open to reveal a veranda. Bright clouds bloom.

Over the hilly headland, smoke uncoils from a burning field.

One is here, one is gone
, thinks Shiroyama.
Platitudes are profundities
.

The game of
go
reasserts itself. Starched silk sleeves rustle. “It is customary,” observes Enomoto, “to flatter a magistrate’s skill at
go
, but
truly you are the best player I have met these last five years. I detect the influence of the Honinbo School.”

“My father”—the magistrate sees the old man’s ghost scowling at Enomoto’s moneylender—“reached the second
ryu
of the Honinbo. I am an unworthy disciple”—Shiroyama attacks an isolated stone of Enomoto’s—“when time permits.” He lifts the teapot, but it is empty. He claps once, and Chamberlain Tomine appears in person. “Tea,” says the magistrate. Tomine turns around and claps for another servant, who glides to the table, retrieves the tray in perfect silence, and vanishes, with a bow in the doorway. The magistrate imagines the tray descending the ladder of servitude to the toothless crone in the farthest kitchen, who warms the water to the perfect heat before pouring it over perfect leaves.

Chamberlain Tomine has gone nowhere: this is his mild protest.

“So, Tomine: the place is infested with landowners in boundary disputes, petty officials needing positions for errant nephews, bruised wives begging for divorces, all of whom assail you with offers of coins and daughters, chorusing and imploring, ‘Please, Chamberlain-
sama
, speak with the magistrate on my behalf.’”

Tomine makes an awkward
mmf
noise in his crushed nose.

A magistrate is the slave
, Shiroyama thinks,
of that many-headed wanting
 …

“Watch the goldfish,” he tells Tomine. “Fetch me in a few minutes.”

The circumspect chamberlain withdraws to the courtyard.

“Our game is unfair,” says Enomoto. “You are distracted by duty.”

A jade-and-ash dragonfly lands on the edge of the board.

“High office,” replies the magistrate, “
is
distractions, of all sizes.” He has heard that the abbot can remove the
ki
of insects and small creatures through the palm of his hand, and he half-hopes for a demonstration, but the dragonfly is already gone. “Lord Enomoto, too, has a domain to govern, a shrine to maintain, scholarly interests, and”—to accuse him of commercial interests would be an insult—“other matters.”

“My days, to be certain, are never idle.” Enomoto places a stone in the heart of the board. “But Mount Shiranui rejuvenates me.”

An autumn breeze drags its invisible robes around the fine room.

I am powerful enough
, the casual reference reminds the magistrate,
to
oblige the Aibagawa girl, a favorite of yours, to take vows in my shrine, and you could not intercede
.

Shiroyama tries to concentrate on the game’s present and future.

Once
, Shiroyama’s father taught him,
nobility ruled Japan
 …

The kneeling servant parts the doors, bows, and brings in the tray.

… but now it is deception, greed, corruption, and lust that govern
.

The servant brings two new cups and a teapot.

“Lord Abbot,” says Shiroyama, “would you care for some tea?”

“You shan’t be insulted,” he states, “by my preference for my own drink.”

“Your”—
what is the tactful word?
—“your caution is known.”

Enomoto’s indigo-clad aspirant is already there. The shaven-headed youth uncorks a gourd and leaves it with his master.

“Has your host ever …” Once again, the magistrate hunts for the right words.

“Been angered by an implicit accusation that he meant to poison me? Yes, upon occasion. But then I pacify him with the story of how an enemy’s servant—a woman—obtained a post at the residence of a famous Miyako family. She worked there as a trusted maid for two years until my next visit. She embellished my meal with a few grains of an odorless poison. Had my order’s doctor, Master Suzaku, not been on hand to administer an antidote, I would have died, and my friend’s family would have been disgraced.”

“You have some unscrupulous enemies, Lord Abbot.”

He lifts the neck of the gourd to his mouth, tilts his head, and drinks. “Enemies flock to power”—he wipes his lips—“like wasps to split figs.”

Shiroyama threatens Enomoto’s isolated stone by placing it in
atari
.

An earth tremor animates the stones; they blur and buzz …