The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, Page 41

  “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.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE ROOM OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM AT THE MAGISTRACY IN NAGASAKI

  The second day of the ninth month

  LORD 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-hea
ded 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 …

  … but are not dislocated, and the tremor passes.

  “Pardon my vulgarity,” says Enomoto, “for referring to the business of Numa once again, but that I keep a shogun’s magistrate from his duties troubles my conscience. How much credit would it be helpful for Numa to supply in the first instance?”

  Shiroyama feels acid in his stomach. “Perhaps … twenty?”

  “Twenty thousand ryo? Certainly.” Enomoto does not blink. “Half can be in your Nagasaki storehouse in two nights and half delivered to your Edo residence by the end of the tenth month. Would these times be satisfactory?”

  Shiroyama hides his gaze in the board. “Yes.” He forces himself to add, “There is a question of guarantees.”

  “An unnecessary slur,” avows Enomoto, “on so illustrious a name …”

  My illustrious name, thinks its owner, brings me costly obligations.

  “When the next Dutch ship arrives, money will flow uphill from Dejima through Nagasaki once again, with the largest tributary passing through the magistracy’s Exchequer. I am honored to guarantee the loan personally.”

  Mention of my Edo residence, Shiroyama thinks, is a faint threat.

  “Interest, Your Honor,” Numa bows again, “would amount to one quarter of the total sum paid annually over three years.”

  Shiroyama is unable to look at the moneylender. “Accepted.”

  “Excellent.” The lord abbot sips from his gourd. “Our host is busy, Numa.”

  The moneylender bows all the way to the door, bumps it, and is gone.

  Enomoto fortifies his north–south wall with his next stone. “Forgive me for bringing such a creature into your sanctuary, Magistrate. Papers must now be prepared for the loan, but these can be delivered to Your Honor tomorrow.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive. Your … assistance is … timely.”

  An understatement, Shiroyama admits, and studies the board for inspiration. Retainers on half pay; desertions imminent; daughters needing dowries; the roof of my Edo residence leaking and walls crumbling; and if my entourage at Edo slips below thirty, jokes about my poverty shall surely begin—and when the jokes reach the ears of my other creditors … His father’s ghost may hiss Shame! but his father inherited land to sell; nothing remained for Shiroyama but a costly rank and the position of Nagasaki magistrate. Once, the trading port was a silver mine, but in recent years the trade has been haphazard. Graft and wages, meanwhile, must be paid regardless. If only, Shiroyama dreams, human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks. If only this world was a clean board of lines and intersections. If only time was a sequence of considered moves and not a chaos of slippages and blunders.

  He wonders, Why hasn’t Tomine come back to haunt me?

  Shiroyama senses a change in the magistracy’s inner weather.

  Not quite audible … but it is audible: a low rumble of agitation.

  Footsteps hurry down the corridor. There is a breathless exchange of whispers outside.

  Jubilant, Chamberlain Tomine enters. “A ship is sighted, Your Honor!”

  “Ships are entering and leaving all the—the Dutch ship?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s flying the Dutch flag, clear as day.”

  “But …” A ship arriving in the ninth month is unheard of. “Are you—”

  The bells of every temple in Nagasaki begin to ring out in thanks.

  “Nagasaki,” observes the lord abbot, “is in no doubt at all.”

  Sugar, sandalwood, worsted, thinks Shiroyama, lead, cotton …

  The pot of commerce will bubble, and the longest ladle is his.

  Taxes on the Dutch, “gifts” from the chief, “patriotic” exchange rates …

  “May I be the first,” asks Enomoto, “to offer congratulations?”

  How well you hide your disappointment that I slipped through your net, Shiroyama thinks, breathing properly, it feels, for the first time in weeks. “Thank you, Lord Abbot.”

  “I shall, of course, tell Numa to darken your halls no longer.”

  My temporary reverses, Shiroyama dares to believe, are reversed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE FORECASTLE TAFFRAIL OF HMS PHOEBUS

  Ten o’clock sharp on October 18, 1800

  “I HAVE THE DUTCH FACTORY.” PENHALIGON SHARPENS THE IMAGE in his telescope, estimating the distance at two English miles. “Warehouses, a lookout post, so we shall assume they know we are here … It is a poke-hole. Some twenty or thirty junks at anchor, the Chinese factory … fishing boats … a few grand roofs … but where a fat, laden Dutch Indiaman ought to be anchored, gentlemen, I see a stretch of empty blue water. Tell me I am wrong, Mr. Hovell.”

  Hovell sweeps the bay with his own telescope. “Would that I could, sir.”

  Major Cutlip whistles between his teeth in lieu of a filthy oath.

  “Mr. Wren, do Clovelly’s famous eyes spy what ours do not?”

  Wren’s question—“Do you find our Indiaman?”—is relayed up the foremast.

  The answer descends to Wren, who repeats: “No Indiaman sighted, sir.”

  Then there is no quick killing to be made at Holland’s expense. Penhaligon lowers his telescope as the bad news circulates from trestle trees to orlop deck in seconds. In the gundeck below, a Liverpudlian bellows the bad news to a deaf comrade: “No effin’ ship is what’s what, Davy, an’ no effin’ ship equals no effin’ prize money an’ no effin’ prize money means we go home as piss-effin’-poor as we was when the effin’ navy nabbed us!”

  Daniel Snitker, under his wide-brimmed hat, needs no translation.

  Wren is first to vent his anger at the Dutchman. “Are we too late? Did it sail?”

  “Our misfortune is his, too, Lieutenant,” Penhaligon warns.

  Snitker addresses Hovell in Dutch, while pointing toward the city. “He says, Captain,” begins the first lieutenant, “that if our approach was sighted yesterday evening, then the Dutch may be concealing their Indiaman in an inlet behind that high wooded hill with the pagoda atop, east of the river mouth.”

  Penhaligon senses the crew’s hopes revive a little.

  Then he wonders whether the Phoebus is being lured into a trap.

  Snitker’s yarn of a daring escape at Macao fooled Governor Cornwallis …

  “Shall we take her in farther, sir?” Wren asks. “Or cast off in the boat?”

  Could such a small-minded lout truly execute such a complex plot?

  Master Wetz calls from the wheel: “Am I to drop the anchors, Captain?”

  Penhaligon lines up the questions. “Hold her steady for a minute, Mr. Wetz. Mr. Hovell, pray ask Mr. Snitker why the Dutch would hide their ship from us despite our Dutch colors. Might there be a code signal we have failed to fly?”

  Snitker sounds uncertain at first but speaks with increasing confidence. Hovell nods. “He says, sir, that there was no code-signal arrangement when the Shenandoah departed last autumn, and he doubts there is one in place now. He says that Chief van Cleef may have hidden the vesse
l as a precautionary measure.”

  Penhaligon glances at the sails to gauge the breeze. “The Phoebus could reach the inlet in a few minutes, but tacking our way out again would be much slower.” Spinach-green waves slurp at cracks between kelp-matted rocks. “Lieutenant Hovell, ask Mr. Snitker this: suppose no ship arrived from Batavia this year, due to shipwreck or the war; would the copper intended for her hold be stored on Dejima?”

  Hovell translates the questions: Snitker’s “Ja, ja” is firm enough.

  “And would that copper be Japanese property or Dutch?”

  Snitker’s reply is less committal: the answer, Hovell translates, is that the transfer of ownership of the copper depends upon the chief resident’s negotiations, which vary year on year.

  Deep bells begin ringing in the city and around the bay, and Snitker explains the noise to Hovell. “The bells are to thank the local gods for the safe arrival of the Dutch ship and the money it brings to Nagasaki. We may assume our disguise is working, sir.”