The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

  Let them still be there, prays the homesick traveler, when I go home.

  The Dutch Company professes an allegiance to the Dutch Reformed Church but makes little provision for its employees’ spiritual well-being. On Dejima, Chief Vorstenbosch, Deputy van Cleef, Ivo Oost, Grote, and Gerritszoon would also claim loyalty to the Dutch Reformed faith, yet no semblance of organized worship would ever be tolerated by the Japanese. Captain Lacy is an Episcopalian; Ponke Ouwehand a Lutheran; and Catholicism is represented by Piet Baert and Con Twomey. The latter has confided to Jacob that he conducts an “unholy mess of a holy Mass” every Sunday, and is frightened of dying without the ministrations of a priest. Dr. Marinus refers to the Supreme Creator in the same tone he uses to discuss Voltaire, Diderot, Herschel, and certain Scottish physicians: admiring, but less than worshipful.

  To what God, Jacob wonders, would a Japanese midwife pray?

  Jacob turns to the Ninety-third Psalm, known as the “Storm Psalm.”

  The floods have lifted up, O Lord, he reads, the floods have lifted up their voice …

  The Zeelander pictures the Westerscheldt between Vlissingen and Breskens.

  … the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise …

  The Bible’s storms, for Jacob, are North Sea storms, where even the sun is drowned.

  … than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea …

  Jacob thinks of Anna’s hands, her warm hands, her living hands. He fingers the bullet in the cover and turns to the Hundred and Fiftieth Psalm.

  Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet … with the psaltery and harp.

  The harpist’s slender fingers and sickle-shaped eyes are Miss Aibagawa’s.

  Praise Him with the timbrel and dance. King David’s dancer has one burned cheek.

  THE SUNKEN-EYED Interpreter Motogi waits under the awning of the guild and notices Jacob and Hanzaburo only when the invited clerk is directly in front of him. “Ah! De Zoet-san … To summon with little warning causes a great trouble, we fear.”

  “I’m honored”—Jacob returns Motogi’s bow—“not troubled, Mr. Motogi …”

  A coolie drops a crate of camphor and earns a kick from a merchant.

  “… and Mr. Vorstenbosch has excused me for the entire morning, if need be.”

  Motogi ushers him into the guild, where the men remove their shoes.

  Jacob then steps onto the knee-high interior floor and passes into the spacious rear office he has never yet ventured into. Sitting at tables arranged in the manner of a schoolroom are six men: Interpreters Isohachi and Kobayashi of the first rank; the pox-scarred Interpreter Narazake and the charismatic, shifty Namura of the second rank; Goto of the third rank, who is to act as scribe, and a thoughtful-eyed man who introduces himself as Maeno, a physician, who thanks Jacob for allowing him to attend, “so you may cure my sick Dutch.” Hanzaburo sits in the corner and pretends to be attentive. For his part, Kobayashi takes pains to prove that he bears no grudge over the peacock-fan incident and introduces Jacob as “Clerk de Zoet of Zeeland, Esquire” and “Man of Deep Learning.”

  The man of deep learning modestly denies this paean.

  Motogi explains that, in the course of their work, the interpreters encounter words whose meanings are unclear, and it is to illuminate these that Jacob has been invited. Dr. Marinus often leads these unofficial tutorials, but today he is busy and nominated Clerk de Zoet as his substitute.

  Each interpreter has a list of items that evade the guild’s collective understanding. These he reads out, one by one, and Jacob explains as clearly as he can, with examples, gestures, and synonyms. The group discusses an appropriate Japanese substitute, sometimes testing it on Jacob, until everyone is satisfied. Straightforward words such as “parched,” “plenitude,” or “saltpeter” do not detain them long. More abstract items such as “simile,” “figment,” or “parallax” prove more exacting. Terms without a ready Japanese equivalent, such as “privacy,” “splenetic,” or the verb “to deserve,” cost ten or fifteen minutes, as do phrases requiring specialist knowledge—“Hanseatic,” “nerve ending,” or “subjunctive.” Jacob notices that where a Dutch pupil would say, “I don’t understand,” the interpreters lower their eyes, so the teacher cannot merely explicate but must also gauge his students’ true comprehension.

  Two hours pass at the speed of one but exhaust Jacob like four, and he is grateful for green tea and a short interval. Hanzaburo slopes away without explanation. During the second half, Narazake asks how “He has gone to Edo” differs from “He has been to Edo”; Dr. Maeno wants to know when one uses “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg”; and Namura asks for the differences among “If I see,” “If I saw,” and “Had I but seen”; Jacob is thankful for his tedious hours of schoolboy grammar. The last queries of the morning come from Interpreter Kobayashi. “Please may Clerk de Zoet explain this word: ‘repercussions.’”

  Jacob suggests, “A consequence; the result of an action. A repercussion of spending my money is being poor. If I eat too much, one repercussion shall be”—he mimes a swollen belly—“fat.”

  Kobayashi asks about “in broad daylight.” “Each word I understand, but meaning of all is unclear. Can we say ‘I visit good friend Mr. Tanaka in broad daylight’? I think no, perhaps …”

  Jacob mentions the criminal connotations. “Especially when the miscreant—the bad man, that is—lacks both shame and fear of being caught. ‘My good friend Mr. Motogi was robbed in broad daylight.’”

  “‘Mr. Vorstenbosch’s teapot,’” asks Kobayashi, “‘was stolen in broad daylight’?”

  “A valid example,” agrees Jacob, glad that the chief isn’t present.

  The interpreters discuss various Japanese equivalents before agreeing on one.

  “Perhaps next word,” continues Kobayashi, “is simple—‘impotent.’”

  “‘Impotent’ is the opposite of ‘potent’ or ‘powerful’; that is, ‘weak.’”

  “A lion,” Dr. Maeno proposes, “is strong, but a mouse is impotent.”

  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.