The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel (27 page)

And anyway
, Jacob thinks,
what would I even write in such a letter?

Picking slugs from the cabbages with a pair of chopsticks, Jacob notices a ladybird on his right hand. He makes a bridge for it with his left, which the insect obligingly crosses. Jacob repeats the exercise several times.
The ladybird believes
, he thinks,
she is on a momentous journey, but she is going nowhere
. He pictures an endless sequence of bridges between skin-covered islands over voids, and wonders if an unseen force is playing the same trick on him . . .

. . . until a woman's voice dispels his reverie: 'Mr Dazuto?'

Jacob removes his bamboo hat and stands up.

Miss Aibagawa's face eclipses the sun. 'I beg pardon to disturb.'

Surprise, guilt, nervousness . . . Jacob feels many things.

She notices the ladybird on his thumb. '
Tento-mushi
.'

In his eagerness to comprehend, he mishears: '
O
-ben-
to-mushi
?'

'
O
-ben-
to-mushi
is "luncheon-box bug".' She smiles. 'This,' she indicates the ladybird, 'is
O
-ten-
to-mushi
.'

'
Tento-mushi
,' he says, and she nods with a schoolmistress's approval.

Her deep blue summer kimono and white headscarf lend her a nun's air.

They are not alone: the inevitable guard stands by the garden gate.

Jacob tries to ignore him: ' "Ladybird". A gardener's friend . . .'

Anna would like you
, he thinks, looking into her face.
Anna would like you
.

'. . . because ladybirds eat greenfly.' Jacob raises his thumb to his lips and blows.

The ladybird flies all of three feet to the scarecrow's face.

She adjusts the scarecrow's hat as a wife might. 'How you call him?'

'A scarecrow, to "scare crows" away, but his name is Robespierre.'

'Warehouse Eik is "Warehouse Oak"; monkey is "William". Why scarecrow is "Robespierre"?'

'Because his head falls off when the wind changes. It's a dark joke.'

'Joke is secret language,' she frowns, 'inside words.'

Jacob decides against referring to the fan until she does: it would appear, at least, that she is not offended or angered. 'May I help you, miss?'

'Yes. Dr Marinus ask I come and ask you for
rozu-meri
. He ask . . .'

The better I know Marinus
, thinks Jacob,
the less I understand him
.

'. . . he ask, "Bid Dombaga give you six fresh . . . 'sprogs' of
rozu-meri
." '

'Over here, then, in the herb-garden.' He leads her down the path, unable to think of a single pleasantry that doesn't sound terminally inane.

She asks, 'Why Mr Dazuto work today as Dejima gardener?'

'Because,' the pastor's son lies through his teeth, 'I enjoy a garden's company. As a boy,' he leavens his lie with some truth, 'I worked in a relative's orchard. We cultivated the first plum trees ever to grow in our village.'

'In village of Domburg,' she says, 'in Province of Zeeland.'

'You are most kind to remember.' Jacob breaks off a half-dozen young sprigs. 'Here you are.' For a priceless coin of time, their hands are linked by a few inches of bitter herb, witnessed by a dozen blood-orange sunflowers.

I don't want a purchased courtesan
, he thinks.
I wish to earn you
.

'Thank you.' She smells the herb. ' "Rosemary" has meaning?'

Jacob blesses his foul-breathed martinet of a Latin master in Middelburg. 'Its Latin name is
Ros marinus
, wherein "
Ros
" is "dew" - do you know the word "dew"?'

She frowns, shakes her head a little and her parasol spins, slowly.

'Dew is water found early in the morning before the sun burns it away.'

The midwife understands. ' "Dew" . . . we say "
asa-tsuyu
".'

Jacob knows he shall never forget the word '
asa-tsuyu
' so long as he lives. ' "
Ros
" being dew, and "
marinus
" meaning "ocean",
Ros marinus
is "dew of the ocean". Old people say that rosemary thrives - grows well - only when it can hear the ocean.'

The story pleases her. 'Is it true tale?'

'It may be . . .'
let time stop
, Jacob wishes '. . . prettier than it is true.'

'Meaning of "
marinus
" is "sea"? So doctor is "Dr Ocean"?'

'You could say so, yes. Does "Aibagawa" have meaning?'

' "
Aiba
" is "indigo",' her pride in her name is plain, 'and "
gawa
" is "river".'

'So you are an indigo river. You sound like a poem.'
And
you, Jacob tells himself,
sound like a flirty lecher
. 'Rosemary is also a woman's Christian name - a given name. My own given name is,' he strains to sound casual, 'Jacob.'

'What is . . .' she swivels her head to show puzzlement '. . . Ya-ko-bu?'

'The name my parents gave me: Jacob. My full name is Jacob de Zoet.'

She gives a cautious nod. 'Yakobu Dazuto.'

I wish
, he thinks,
spoken words could be captured and kept in a locket
.

'My pronounce,' Miss Aibagawa asks, 'is not very good?'

'No no no: you are perfect in every way. Your pronounce is perfect.'

Crickets scritter and clirk in the garden's low walls of stones.

'Miss Aibagawa -' Jacob swallows, 'what is your given name?'

She makes him wait. 'My name from mother and father is Orito.'

The breeze twists a coil of her hair around its finger.

She looks down. 'Doctor is waiting. Thank you for rosemary.'

Jacob says, 'You are most welcome,' and doesn't dare say more.

She takes three or four paces, and turns back. 'I forget a thing.' She reaches into her sleeve and produces a fruit, the size and hue of an orange, but smooth as hairless skin. 'From my garden. I bring many to Dr Marinus so he ask I take one to Mr Dazuto. It is
kaki
.'

'Then, in Japanese, a persimmon is a
cacky
?'

'Ka-
ki
.' She rests it on the crook of the scarecrow's shoulder.

'Ka-
ki
. Robespierre and I shall eat it later, thank you.'

Her wooden slippers crunch the friable earth as she walks along the path.

Act
, implores the Ghost of Future Regret.
I shan't give you another chance
.

Jacob hurries past the tomatoes and catches her up near the gate.

'Miss Aibagawa? Miss Aibagawa. I must ask you to forgive me.'

She has turned around and has one hand on the gate. 'Why forgive?'

'For what I now say.' The marigolds are molten. 'You are beautiful.'

She understands. Her mouth opens and closes. She takes a step back . . .

. . . into the wicket gate. Still shut, it rattles. The guard swings it open.

Damn fool
, groans the Demon of Present Regret.
What have you done?

Crumpling, burning and freezing, Jacob retreats, but the garden has quadrupled in length, and it may take a Wandering Jew's eternity before he reaches the cucumbers, where he kneels behind a screen of dock leaves; where the snail on the pail flexes its stumpy horns; where ants carry patches of rhubarb leaf along the shaft of the hoe; and he wishes the Earth might spin backwards to a time she appeared, asking for rosemary, and he would do it all again, and he would do it all differently.

A doe cries for her yearling, slaughtered for the Lord of Satsuma.

* * *

Before the evening muster, Jacob climbs the Watchtower and takes out the persimmon from his jacket pocket. Hollows from the fingers of Aibagawa Orito are indented in her ripe gift and he places his own fingers there, holds the fruit under his nostrils, inhales its gritty sweetness, and rolls its rotundity along his cracked lips.
I regret my confession
, he thinks,
yet what choice did I have?
He eclipses the sun with her persimmon: the planet glows orange like a Jack o' Lantern. There is a dusting around its woody black cap and stem. Lacking a knife or spoon, he takes a nip of waxy skin between his incisors, and tears; juice oozes from the gash; he licks the sweet smears and sucks out a dribbling gobbet of threaded flesh and holds it gently,
gently
, against the roof of his mouth, where the pulp disintegrates into fermented jasmine, oily cinnamon, perfumed melon, melted damson . . . and in its heart he finds ten or fifteen flat stones, brown as Asian eyes and the same shape. The sun is gone now, cicadas fall silent, lilacs and turquoises dim and thin into greys and darker greys. A bat passes within a few feet, chased by its own furry turbulence. There is not the faintest breath of a breeze. Smoke emerges from the galley flue on the
Shenandoah
and sags around the brig's bows. Her gun-ports are open and the sound of ten dozen sailors dining in her belly carries over the water; and like a struck tuning fork, Jacob reverberates with the parts and the entirety of Orito, with all the
her
-ness of her. The promise he gave to Anna rubs his conscience like a burr,
But Anna
, he thinks uneasily,
is so far away in miles and in years; and she gave her consent, she as good as gave her consent, and she'd never know
, and Jacob's stomach ingests Orito's slithery gift.
Creation never ceased on the sixth evening
, it occurs to the young man.
Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us, at the speed of days and nights, and we like to call it 'Love'
.

* * *

'Kapitan Boru-suten-boshu,' intones Interpreter Sekita, a quarter-hour later at the flagpole's foot. Ordinarily the twice-daily muster is conducted by Constable Kosugi who requires only a minute to check the foreigners, all of whose names and faces he knows. This evening, however, Sekita has decided to assert his authority by conducting the muster whilst the constable stands to one side with a sour face. 'Where is the . . .' Sekita squints at his list '. . . the Boru- suten-boshu?'