The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, Page 7

“Especial,” gasps Hori, as the gin burns his gullet, “to Mr. Ogawa here. Mr. Ogawa, he marry this year a beauty wife.” Hori’s elbow is covered with rhubarb mousse. “Each night”—he mimes riding a horse—“three, four, five gallopings!”

  The laughter is raucous, but Ogawa’s smile is weak.

  “You ask a starved man,” Gerritszoon says, “to drink to a glutton.”

  “Mr. Gerritszoon want girl?” Hori is solicitude personified. “My servant fetch. Say you want. Fat? Tight? Tiger? Gentle sister?”

  “We’d all like a gentle sister,” complains Arie Grote, “but what o’ the money, eh? A man could buy a brothel in Siam for a tumble with a Nagasaki doxy. Is there no case, Mr. Vorstenbosch, for the company providin’ a subsidy, eh, in this quarter? Consider poor Oost: on his official wages, sir, a little … feminine consolation, eh, would cost him a year’s wages.”

  “A diet of abstinence,” replies Vorstenbosch, “never hurt anyone.”

  “But, sir, what vices might a red-blooded Dutchman be pushed to without a conduit for the, eh, unloosin’ o’ Nature’s urges?”

  “You miss your wife, Mr. Grote,” Hori asks, “at home in Holland?”

  “‘South of Gibraltar,’” quotes Captain Lacy, “‘all men are bachelors.’”

  “Nagasaki’s latitude,” says Fischer, “is, of course, well north of Gibraltar.”

  “I never knew,” says Vorstenbosch, “you were a married man, Grote.”

  “He’d as soon not,” Ouwehand explains, “hear the subject raised.”

  “A mooing West Frieslander slut, sir.” The cook licks his brown incisors. “When I consider her at all, Mr. Hori, ’tis to pray the Ottomans’ll storm West Friesland an’ make off with the bitch.”

  “If not like wife,” asks Interpreter Yonekizu, “why do not divorce?”

  “Easier said than done, sir,” Grote sighs, “in the so-called Christian lands.”

  “So why marry,” Hori coughs out tobacco smoke, “at first place?”

  “Oh, ’tis a long an’ sorry saga, Mr. Hori, what’d not be of interest to—”

  “On Mr. Grote’s last trip home,” obliges Ouwehand, “he wooed a promising young heiress at her town house in Roomolenstraat who told him how her heirless, ailing papa yearned to see his dairy farm in the hands of a gentleman son-in-law, yet everywhere, she lamented, were thieving rascals posing as eligible bachelors. Mr. Grote agreed that the Sea of Courtship seethes with sharks and spoke of the prejudice endured by the young colonial parvenu, as if the annual fortunes yielded by his plantations in Sumatra were less worthy than old monies. The turtledoves were wedded within a week. The day after their nuptials, the taverner presented the bill and each says to the other, ‘Settle the account, my heart’s music.’ But to their genuine horror, neither could, for bride and groom alike had spent their last beans on wooing the other! Mr. Grote’s Sumatran plantations evaporated; the Roomolenstraat house reverted to a co-conspirator’s stage prop; the ailing father-in-law turned out to be a beer porter in rude health, not heirless but hairless, and—”

  A belch erupts from Lacy. “Pardon: ’twas the deviled eggs.”

  “Deputy van Cleef?” Goto is alarmed. “Do Ottomans invade Holland? This news is not in recentest fusetsuki report …”

  “Mr. Grote”—Van Cleef brushes his napkin—“spoke in jest, sir.”

  “‘In jest’?” The earnest young interpreter frowns and blinks. “‘In jest …’”

  Cupido and Philander are playing a languid air by Boccherini.

  “One grows despondent,” ruminates Vorstenbosch, “to think that, unless Edo authorizes an increase in the copper quota, these rooms shall fall forever silent.”

  Yonekizu and Hori grimace; Goto and Ogawa wear blank faces.

  Most of the Dutchmen have asked Jacob whether the extraordinary ultimatum is a bluff. He told each to ask the chief resident, knowing that none of them would. Having lost last season’s cargo aboard the doomed Octavia, many would be returning to Batavia poorer men than when they left.

  “Who was that bizarre female,” Van Cleef asks, squeezing a lemon into a Venetian glass, “in Warehouse Doorn?”

  “Miss Aibagawa,” says Goto, “is daughter of doctor and scholar.”

  Aibagawa. Jacob handles each syllable in turn. Ai-ba-ga-wa …

  “The magistrate give permission,” says Iwase, “to study under Dutch doctor.”

  And I called her a “whore’s helper,” remembers Jacob, and winces.

  “What a bizarre Locusta,” says Fischer, “to be at ease in a surgery.”

  “The fairer sex,” objects Jacob, “can show as much resilience as the uglier one.”

  “Mr. de Zoet must publish,” the Prussian picks his nose, “his dazzling epigrams.”

  “Miss Aibagawa,” states Ogawa, “is a midwife. She is used to blood.”

  “But I understood,” says Vorstenbosch, “a woman was forbidden to set foot on Dejima, without she be a courtesan, her maid, or one of the old crones at the guild.”

  “It is forbidden,” affirms Yonekizu indignantly. “No precedent. Never.”

  “Miss Aibagawa,” Ogawa speaks up, “work hard as midwife, both for rich customers and poor persons who cannot pay. Recently, she deliver Magistrate Shiroyama’s son. Birth was hard, and other doctor renounce, but she persevere and succeed. Magistrate Shiroyama was joyful. He gives Miss Aibagawa one wish for reward. Wish is, study under Dr. Marinus on Dejima. So, magistrate kept promise.”

  “Woman study in hospital,” declares Yonekizu, “is not good thing.”

  “Yet she held the blood basin steady,” says Con Twomey, “spoke good Dutch with Dr. Marinus, and chased an ape while her male classmates looked seasick.”

  I would ask a dozen questions, Jacob thinks, if I dared: a dozen dozen.

  “Doesn’t a girl,” asks Ouwehand, “arouse the boys in troublesome places?”

  “Not with that slice of bacon”—Fischer swirls his gin—“stuck to her face.”

  “Ungallant words, Mr. Fischer,” says Jacob. “They shame you.”

  “One cannot pretend it isn’t there, De Zoet! We’d call her a ‘tapping cane’ in my town because, of course, only a blind man would touch her.”

  Jacob imagines smashing the Prussian’s jaw with the Delft jug.

  A candle collapses; wax slides down the candlestick; the dribble hardens.

  “I am sure,” says Ogawa, “Miss Aibagawa one day make joyful marriage.”

  “What’s the one sure cure for love?” asks Grote. “Marriage is, is what.”

  A moth careers into a candle flame; it drops to the table, flapping.

  “Poor Icarus.” Ouwehand crushes it with his tankard. “Won’t you ever learn?”

  NIGHT INSECTS TRILL, tick, bore, ring; drill, prick, saw, sting.

  Hanzaburo snores in the cubbyhole outside Jacob’s door.

  Jacob lies awake, clad in a sheet, under a tent of netting.

  Ai, mouth opens; ba, lips meet; ga, tongue’s root; wa, lips.

  Involuntarily, he reenacts today’s scene over and over.

  He cringes at the boorish figure he cut and vainly edits the script.

  He opens the fan she left in Warehouse Doorn. He fans himself.

  The paper is white. The handle and struts are made of paulownia wood.

  A watchman smacks his wooden clappers to mark the Japanese hour.

  The yeasty moon is caged in his half-Japanese half-Dutch window …

  … Glass panes melt moonlight; paper panes filter it, to dust.

  Daybreak must be near. The 1796 ledgers are waiting for him.

  It is dear Anna whom I love, Jacob recites, and I whom Anna loves.

  Beneath his glaze of sweat, he sweats. His bed linen is sodden.

  Miss Aibagawa is as untouchable as a woman in a picture …

  Jacob imagines he can hear a harpsichord.

  … spied through a keyhole in a cottage happened upon, once …

  The notes are spidery and starl
it and spun from glass.

  Jacob can hear a harpsichord: it is the doctor, in his attic.

  Night silence and a freak of conductivity permit Jacob this privilege: Marinus rejects all requests to play, even for scholar friends or visiting nobility.

  The music provokes a sharp longing the music soothes.

  How can such a prig, wonders Jacob, play with such divinity?

  Night insects trill, tick, bore, ring; drill, prick, saw, sting …

  CHAPTER SIX

  JACOB’S ROOM IN TALL HOUSE ON DEJIMA

  Very early on the morning of August 10, 1799

  LIGHT BLEEDS IN AROUND THE CASEMENTS: JACOB NAVIGATES THE archipelago of stains across the low wooden ceiling. Outside, the slaves d’Orsaiy and Ignatius are talking as they feed the animals. Jacob recalls Anna’s birthday party a few days prior to his departure. Her father had invited half a dozen eminently eligible young men and given a sumptuous dinner prepared so artfully that the chicken tasted of fish and the fish of chicken. His ironic toast was to “the fortunes of Jacob de Zoet, Merchant Prince of the Indies.” Anna rewarded Jacob’s forbearance with a smile: her fingers stroked the necklace of Swedish white amber he had brought her from Gothenburg.

  On the far side of the world, Jacob sighs with longing and regret.

  Unexpectedly, Hanzaburo calls out, “Mr. Dazûto want thing?”

  “Nothing, no. It’s early, Hanzaburo: go back to sleep.” Jacob imitates a snore.

  “Pig? Want pig? Ah ah ah, surîpu! Yes … yes, I like surîpu …”

  Jacob gets up, drinks from a cracked jug, and rubs soap into lather.

  His green eyes watch from the freckled face in the speckled glass.

  The blunt blade tears his stubble and nicks the cleft in his chin.

  A tear of blood, red as tulips, oozes, mixes with soap, and foams pink.

  Jacob considers how a beard would save all this trouble …

  … but recalls his sister Geertje’s verdict when he returned from England with a short-lived mustache. “Ooh, dab it in lampblack, brother, and polish our boots!”

  He touches his nose, recently adjusted by the disgraced Snitker.

  The nick by his ear is a memento of a certain dog that bit him.

  When shaving, thinks Jacob, a man rereads his truest memoir.

  Tracing his lip with his finger, he recalls the very morning of his departure. Anna had persuaded her father to take them both to Rotterdam wharf in his carriage. “Three minutes,” he had told Jacob as he climbed out of the carriage to speak to the head clerk, “and no more.” Anna knew what to say. “Five years is a long time, but most women wait a lifetime before finding a kind and honest man.” Jacob had tried to reply, but she had silenced him. “I know how men overseas behave and, perhaps, how they must behave—shush, Jacob de Zoet—so all I ask is that you are careful in Java, that your heart is mine alone. I shan’t give you a ring or locket, because rings and lockets can be lost, but this, at least, cannot be lost.” Anna kissed him for the first and last time. It was a long, sad kiss. They watched rain stream down the windows, the boats, and the shale-gray sea, until it was time to go …

  Jacob’s shave is finished. He washes, dresses, and polishes an apple.

  Miss Aibagawa, he bites the fruit, is a scholar, not a courtesan …

  From the window, he watches d’Orsaiy water the runner beans.

  … Illicit rendezvous, much less illicit romances, are impossible here.

  He eats the core and spits out the pips onto the back of his hand.

  I just want to converse, Jacob is sure, to know her a little …

  He takes the chain from his neck and turns the key in his sea chest.

  Friendship can exist between the sexes, as with my sister and I.

  An enterprising fly buzzes over his urine in the chamber pot.

  He digs down, nearly as far as his Psalter, and finds the bound folio.

  Jacob unfastens the volume’s ribbons and studies the first page of music.

  The notes of the luminous sonatas hang like grapes from the staves.

  Jacob’s sight-reading skills end with the Hymnal of the Reformed Church.

  Today, he thinks, is a day to mend bridges with Dr. Marinus …

  JACOB TAKES A SHORT walk around Dejima, where all walks are short, to polish his plan and hone his script. Gulls and crows bicker on the ridge of Garden House.

  In the garden, the cream roses and red lilies are past their best.

  Bread is being delivered by provedores at the land gate.

  In Flag Square, Peter Fischer sits on the watchtower’s steps. “Lose an hour in the morning, Clerk de Zoet,” the Prussian calls down, “and you search for it all day.”

  In Van Cleef’s upper window, the deputy’s latest “wife” combs her hair.

  She smiles at Jacob; Melchior van Cleef, his chest hairy as a bear’s, appears. “‘Thou shalt not,’” he quotes, “‘dip thy nib in another man’s inkpot.’”

  The deputy chief slides shut the shoji window before Jacob can protest his innocence.

  Outside the Interpreters’ Guild, palanquin bearers squat in the shadows. Their eyes follow the red-haired foreigner as he passes.

  Up on the seawall, William Pitt gazes at the whale-rib clouds.

  By the kitchen, Arie Grote tells him, “Yer bamboo hat makes yer look like a Chinaman, Mr. de Z. Have yer not considered—”

  “No,” says the clerk, and walks on.

  Constable Kosugi nods at Jacob outside his small house on Seawall Lane.

  The slaves Ignatius and Weh argue in Malay as they milk the goats.

  Ivo Oost and Wybo Gerritszoon throw a ball to each other, in silence.

  “Bowwow,” one of them says as Jacob passes: he decides not to hear.

  Con Twomey and Ponke Ouwehand smoke pipes under the pines.

  “Some blue blood,” sniffs Ouwehand, “has died in Miyako, so hammering and music are forbidden for two days. There’ll be little work done anywhere, not just here but throughout the empire. Van Cleef swears it’s a stratagem to postpone the rebuilding of Warehouse Lelie so we’ll be more desperate to sell …”

  I am not polishing my plan, Jacob admits. I am losing my nerve …

  IN THE SURGERY, Dr. Marinus is lying flat on the operating table with his eyes closed. He hums a baroque melody inside his hoggish neck.

  Eelattu brushes his master’s jowls with scented oil and feminine delicacy.

  Steam rises from a bowl of water; light is sliced on the bright razor.

  On the floor, a toucan pecks beans from a pewter saucer.

  Plums are piled in a terra-cotta dish, blue-dusted indigo.

  Eelattu announces Jacob’s arrival in murmured Malay, and Marinus opens one displeased eye. “What?”

  “I should like to consult with you on a … certain matter.”

  “Continue shaving, Eelattu. Consult, then, Domburger.”

  “I’d be more comfortable in private, Doctor, as—”

  “Eelattu is ‘private.’ In our little corner of Creation, his grasp of anatomy and pathology is second only to mine. Unless it is the toucan you mistrust?”

  “Well, then …” Jacob sees he must rely on the servant’s discretion as well as Marinus’s. “I’m a little curious about one of your students.”

  “What business have you”—his other eye opens—“with Miss Aibagawa?”

  Jacob looks down. “None at all. I just … wished to converse with her …”

  “Then why are you here, conversing with me instead?”

  “… to converse with her without a dozen spies looking on.”

  “Ah. Ah. Ah. So you wish me to bring about an assignation?”

  “That word smacks of intrigue, Doctor, which would not—”

  “The answer is, ‘Never.’ Reason the first: Miss Aibagawa is no rented Eve to scratch your itch of Adam, but a gentleman’s daughter. Reason the second: even were Miss Aibagawa ‘available’ as a Dejima wife, which, emphatically, she is not�
�”

  “I know all this, Doctor, and upon my honor, I didn’t come here to—”

  “—which she is not, then spies would report the liaison within a half hour, whereupon my hard-won rights to teach, botanize, and scholarize around Nagasaki would be withdrawn. So be gone. Deflate your testicles comme à la mode: via the village pimp or Sin of Onan.”

  The toucan taps the dish of beans and utters “Raw!” or a word very similar.

  “Sir”—Jacob blushes—“you grievously misjudge my intentions. I’d never—”

  “It is not even Miss Aibagawa after whom you lust, in truth. It is the genus ‘The Oriental Woman’ who so infatuates you. Yes, yes, the mysterious eyes, the camellias in her hair, what you perceive as meekness. How many hundreds of you besotted white men have I seen mired in the same syrupy hole?”

  “You are wrong, for once, Doctor. There’s no—”

  “Naturally, I am wrong: Domburger’s adoration for his Pearl of the East is based on chivalry: behold the disfigured damsel, spurned by her own race! Behold our Occidental knight, who alone divines her inner beauty!”

  “Good day.” Jacob is too bruised to endure any more. “Good day.”

  “Leaving so soon? Without even offering that bribe under your arm?”

  “Not a bribe,” he half-lies, “but a gift from Batavia. I had hopes—vain and foolish ones, I now see—of establishing a friendship with the celebrated Dr. Marinus, and so Hendrik Zwaardecroone of the Batavian Society recommended me to bring you some sheet music. But I see now that an ignorant clerk is beneath your august notice. I shall trouble you no more.”

  Marinus scrutinizes Jacob. “What sort of a gift is it that the giver doesn’t offer until he wants something from the intended recipient?”

  “I tried to give it to you at our first meeting. You slammed a trapdoor on me.”

  Eelattu dips the razor in water and wipes it on a sheet of paper.

  “Irascibility,” the doctor admits, “occasionally gets the better of me. Who is”—Marinus flicks a finger at the folio—“the composer?”

  Jacob reads the title page: “‘Domenico Scarlatti’s Chefs-d’oeuvre, for the Harpsichord or Piano-Forte; Selected from an Elegant collection of Manuscripts, in the Possession of Muzio Clementi … London, and to be had at Mr. Broadwood’s Harpsichord Maker, in Great Pulteney Street, Golden Square.’”