The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel (10 page)

After lunch on the 1st August, 1799

The cogs and levers of Time swell and buckle in the heat. In the stewed gloom, Jacob hears, almost, the sugar in its crates hissing into fused lumps. Come Auction Day, it shall be sold to the spice merchants for a pittance, or else, as well they know, it must be returned to the
Shenandoah
's hold for a profitless return voyage back to the warehouses of Batavia. The clerk drains his cup of green tea. The bitter dregs make him wince and amplify his headache but sharpen his wits.

On a bed of clove-crates and hempen sacking, Hanzaburo lies asleep.

A slug-trail of mucus descends from his nostril to rocky Adam's apple.

The scratch of Jacob's quill is joined by a not dissimilar noise from a rafter.

It is a rhythmic scratting, soon overlain by a tiny, sawing squeak.

A he-rat
, the young man realises,
mounting his she-rat . . .

Listening, he becomes enwrapped by memories of women's bodies.

These are not memories he is proud of, nor ones he ever discusses . . .

I dishonour Anna
, Jacob thinks,
by dwelling on such things
.

. . . but the images dwell on him, and thicken his blood like arrowroot.

Concentrate, Donkey
, the clerk orders himself,
on the job at hand . . .

With difficulty, he returns to his pursuit of the fifty rix-dollars fleeing through thickets of forged receipts found in one of Daniel Snitker's boots. He tries to pour some tea into his cup, but the pot is now empty. He calls out, 'Hanzaburo?'

The boy does not stir. The rutting rats have fallen silent.

'
Hai!
' Long seconds later, the boy jolts upright. 'Mr Dazuto?'

Jacob raises his ink-smudged cup. 'Fetch more tea, please, Hanzaburo.'

Hanzaburo squints and rubs his head and blurts, 'Hah?'

'More tea, please.' Jacob waggles his teapot. '
O-cha
.'

Hanzaburo sighs, heaves himself up, takes the teapot and plods away.

Jacob sharpens his quill, but within moments, his head is drooping . . .

. . . A hunchback dwarf stands silhouetted in the white glare of Bony Alley.

Gripped in his hairy hand is a club . . . no, it is a long joint of bony, bloodied pork.

Jacob lifts his heavy head. His stiff neck cricks.

The hunchback enters the warehouse, grunting and snuffling.

The joint of pork is, in fact, an amputated shin, with ankle and foot attached.

Nor is the hunchback a hunchback: it is William Pitt, the ape of Dejima.

Jacob jumps up and bangs his knee. The pain is prismatic.

William Pitt clambers up a tower of crates with his bloody prize.

'How in God's name,' Jacob rubs his kneecap, 'did you
come
by such a thing?'

There is no reply but the calm and steady breathing of the sea . . .

. . . and Jacob remembers: Dr Marinus was summoned to the
Shenandoah
yesterday where an Estonian seaman's foot had been crushed by a fallen crate. Gangrenous wounds spoiling faster than milk in a Japanese August, the doctor prescribed the knife. The surgery is being performed today in the Hospital so his four students and some local scholars may watch the procedure. However improbably, William Pitt must have forced an entry and stolen the limb: what other explanation is there?

A second figure, momentarily blinded by the warehouse darkness, enters. His willowy chest is heaving with exertion. His blue kimono is covered with an artisan's apron, spattered dark, and strands of hair have escaped from the headscarf that half conceals the right side of his face. Only when he steps into the shaft of light falling from the high window does Jacob see that the pursuer is a young woman.

Aside from the washerwomen and a few 'aunts' who serve at the Interpreters' Guild, the only women permitted through the Land-Gate are prostitutes, who are hired for a night, or 'wives' who stay under the roofs of the better-paid officers for longer periods. These costly courtesans are attended by a maid: Jacob's best guess is that the visitor is one such companion who wrestled with William Pitt for the stolen limb, failed to prise it from his grasp and chased the ape into the warehouse.

Voices - Dutch, Japanese, Malay - clatter down Long Street from the Hospital.

The doorway frames their outlines, brief as blinks, running down Bony Alley.

Jacob sifts his meagre Japanese vocabulary for any suitable items.

When she notices the red-haired, green-eyed foreigner she gasps with alarm.

'Miss,' implores Jacob in Dutch, 'I - I - I - please don't worry - I . . .'

The woman studies him and concludes that he is not much of a threat.

'Bad monkey,' she regains her composure, 'steal foot.'

He nods at this first, and realises: 'You speak Dutch, miss?'

Her shrug replies,
A little
. She says, 'Bad monkey - enter here?'

'Aye, aye. The hairy devil is up there.' Jacob indicates William Pitt up on his crates. Wanting to impress the woman, he strides over. 'William Pitt: unhand that leg. Give it to me.
Give!
'

The ape places the leg at his side, grips his rhubarb-pink penis and twangs it like a harpist in a madhouse, cackling through bared teeth. Jacob fears for his visitor's modesty, but she turns aside to hide her laughter and, in doing so, reveals a burn covering much of the left side of her face. It is dark, blotched and, close-up, very conspicuous.
How can a courtesan's maid
, Jacob wonders,
earn a living with such a disfigurement?
Too late, he is aware that she is watching him gawp. She pushes back her headscarf and thrusts her cheek towards Jacob.
There
, this gesture declares.
Drink your fill!

'I--' Jacob is mortified. 'Please forgive my rudeness, miss . . .'

Fearing she doesn't understand, he holds a deep bow for the count of five.

The woman reties her headscarf and directs her attention to William Pitt. Ignoring Jacob, she addresses the ape in lilting Japanese.

The thief hugs the leg like a motherless daughter hugs a doll.

Determined to cut a better figure, Jacob approaches the tower of crates.

He jumps up on to an adjacent chest. 'Listen to me, you flea-bitten
slave
--'

A warm and liquid whiplash, smelling of roast beef, flays his cheek.

In his effort to deflect the warm stream, he loses his balance . . .

. . . tumbles off the chest, heels over arse, and lands on the beaten earth.

Mortification
, thinks Jacob, as the pain eases,
requires at least a little pride . . .

The woman is leaning against Hanzaburo's improvised cot.

. . . but I have no pride left, for I am pissed upon by William Pitt.

She is dabbing her eyes and shivering with near-silent laughter.

Anna laughs that way
, Jacob thinks.
Anna laughs that very way
.

'I sorry.' She inhales deeply and her lips twitch. 'Excuse my . . .
lewdness
?'

' "Rudeness", miss.' He goes to the water pail. ' "Rude", with an "R".'

' "Rewdness",' she repeats, 'with an "R". It is nothing funny.'

Jacob washes his face, but to rinse the monkey urine from his second-best linen shirt he must first remove it. To do so here is out of the question.

'You wish,' she hunts in a sleeve pocket, taking out a closed fan and putting it on a crate of raw sugar, before producing a square of paper, 'wipe face?'

'Most kind.' Jacob takes it and dabs his brow and cheeks.

'Trade with monkey,' she suggests. 'Trade thing for leg.'

Jacob gives the idea its due. 'The beast
is
a slave to tobacco.'

'Ta-ba-ko?' She claps her hands once in resolve. 'You have?'

Jacob hands her the last of his Javanese leaf in a leather pouch.

She dangles the bait from a broom-head level with William Pitt's eyrie.

The ape reaches out; the woman sways it away, mumbling entreaties . . .

. . . before William Pitt lets go of the leg to seize his new prize.

The limb thumps to earth and stops dead at the woman's foot. She gives Jacob a glance of triumph, discards the broom and takes up the amputated limb as casually as a farm-hand picking up a turnip. Its hacked-through bone pokes from the bloody sheath and its toes are grubby. Up above, the casement rattles: William Pitt has escaped through the window with his bounty, over the roofs of Long Street. 'Tobacco is lose, sir,' says the woman. 'Very sorry.'

'No matter, miss. You have your leg. Well, not
your
leg . . .'

Shouted questions and answers fly up and down Bony Alley.

Jacob and his visitor take a couple of steps back from each other.

'Forgive me, miss, but . . . are you a courtesan's maid?'

'Kochi - zanzu - meido?' This baffles her. 'What is?'

'A . . . a . . .' Jacob grasps for a substitute word '. . . a whore's . . . helper.'

She lays the limb on a square of cloth. 'Why horse need helper?'

A guard appears in the doorway; he sees the Dutchman, the young woman and the lost foot. He grins and shouts into Bony Alley, and within moments more guards, inspectors and officials arrive; followed by Deputy van Cleef; then Dejima's strutting Constable Kosugi; Marinus's assistant, Eelattu, his apron as bloodied as the burnt woman's; Arie Grote and a Japanese merchant with darting eyes; several scholars; and Con Twomey carrying his carpenter's rule and asking Jacob in English, 'What's that
feckin'
smell about ye, man?'

Jacob remembers his half-restored ledger on the table, wide open for all to see. Hastily he conceals it, just as four youths arrive, each with the shaven heads of medical disciples and aprons like the burnt woman's, and commence to fire questions at her. The clerk guesses these are Dr Marinus's 'seminarians', and soon the intruders let the woman recount her story. She indicates the tower of crates where William Pitt clambered up and now gestures towards Jacob, who blushes as twenty or thirty heads look his way. She speaks her language with quiet self-possession. The clerk awaits the hilarity that must greet his dousing in ape-piss, but she omits the episode, it seems, and her narrative ends in nods of approval. Twomey leaves with the Estonian's limb to fashion a wooden substitute of the same length.