The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel (42 page)

Suzaku interrupts her with a respectful hand. 'Let us show her a little indulgence, Abbess, even if undeserved. Contrariness, often, is best tamed by kindness.' The monk decants a muddy liquid into a thimble-sized stone cup.

See how painstakingly he moves
, she thinks,
to sharpen your hunger . . .

Orito stops her hand snatching the cup from the proffered tray.

She turns away to conceal with her sleeve the vulgar act of drinking.

'Once you are Engifted,' promises Suzaku, 'your sense of belonging shall grow, too . . .'

Never
, Orito thinks,
never
. Her tongue absorbs the oily fluid . . .

. . . and her blood pumps louder, her arteries widen, and well-being soothes her joints.

'The Goddess didn't choose you,' says Abbess Izu. 'You chose the Goddess.'

Warm snowflakes settle over Orito's skin, whispering as they melt.

Every evening, the doctor's daughter wants to ask Suzaku about the ingredients of Solace. Every evening, she stops herself.
The question
, she knows,
would initiate a conversation, and conversation is a step towards acceptance . . .

'What's good for the body,' Suzaku tells Orito's mouth, 'is good for the soul.'

Dinner is a festive occasion compared to Breakfast. After a brief blessing, Housekeeper Satsuki and the Sisters eat tofu in tempura batter, fried with garlic and rolled in sesame; pickled eggplant; pilchards and white rice. Even the haughtiest Sisters remember their commoners' origins when such a fine daily diet could only be dreamt of, and they relish each morsel. The Abbess has gone with Master Suzaku to dine with Master Genmu, so the mood in the Long Room is leisurely. When the table is cleared and the dishes and chopsticks washed, the Sisters smoke pipes around the table, swap stories, play mah jong, reread - or have reread - their New Year Letters, and listen to Hatsune play her
koto
. The effects of Solace wear out a little earlier every night, Orito notices. She leaves, as usual, without saying good-night.
Wait till she's been Engifted
, she feels the women think.
Wait till her belly is as big as a boulder, and she needs
us
to help
her
scrub, fetch and carry
.

Back in her cell, Orito finds that someone has lit her fire.
Yayoi
.

Umegae's spite or Kagero's hostility encourage her to reject the House.

But Yayoi's kindness
, she fears,
makes life here more tolerable . . .

. . . and ushers closer the day when Mount Shiranui becomes her home.

Who knows
, she wonders,
that Yayoi is not acting under Genmu's orders?

Orito, troubled and shivering in the icy air, wipes herself with a cloth.

Under her blankets, she lies on her side, gazing into the fire's garden.

* * *

The persimmon's branches sag with ripe fruit. They glow in the dusk.

An eyelash in the sky grows into a heron; the gawky bird descends . . .

Its eyes are green and its hair is red; Orito is afraid of his clumsy beak.

The heron says, in Dutch, of course,
You are beautiful
.

Orito wishes neither to encourage him, nor wound his feelings.

She is in the courtyard of the House of Sisters: she hears Yayoi groan.

Dead leaves fly like bats; bats fly like dead leaves.

How
can I escape?
Distraught, she replies to nobody.
The gate is locked
.

Since when
, mocks the moon-grey cat,
do cats need keys?

There is no time
, she is knotted by exasperation,
to speak in riddles
.

First, persuade them
, says the cat,
that you are happy here
.

Why
, she asks,
should I ever give them that false satisfaction?

Because only then
, answers the cat,
shall they stop watching you
.

XVI

The Shirando Academy at the Otsuki Residence in Nagasaki

Sunset on the Twenty-fourth Day of the Tenth Month

'I conclude,' Yoshida Hayato, the still-youthful author of an erudite monograph on the true age of the Earth, surveys his audience of eighty or ninety scholars, 'this widely-held belief that Japan is an impregnable fortress is a pernicious delusion. Honourable Academicians, we are a ramshackle farmhouse with crumbling walls, a collapsing roof and covetous neighbours.' Yoshida is succumbing to a bone disease, and projecting his voice over the large sixty-mat hall drains him. 'To our north-west, a morning's voyage from Tsushima Island, live the vainglorious Koreans. Who shall forget those provocative banners their last embassy flaunted? "Inspectorate of Dominions" and "We Are Purity", implying, naturally, "You Are Not"!'

Some of the scholars grizzle in agreement.

'North-east lies the vast domain of Ezo, home to the savage Ainu, but also to Russians who map our coastlines and claim Karafuto. They call it Sakhalin. It is a mere twelve years since a Frenchman . . .' Yoshida prepares his lips '. . . La Perouse, named the straits between Ezo and Karafuto after himself! Would the French tolerate the Yoshida Straits off their coast?' The point is well made and well received. 'The recent incursions by Captain Benyowsky and Captain Laxman warn us of a near future when straying Europeans no longer request provisions, but demand trade, quays and warehouses, fortified ports, unequal treaties. Colonies shall take root like thistles and weeds. Then, we shall understand that our "impregnable fortress" was a placebo and nothing more; that our seas are no "impassable moat" but, as my far-sighted colleague Hayashi Shihei wrote, "an ocean-road without frontiers which links China, Holland and Edo's Nihonbashi Bridge".'

Some in the audience nod in agreement; others look concerned.

Hayashi Shihei
, Ogawa Uzaemon remembers,
died under house arrest for his writings
.

'My lecture is finished.' Yoshida bows. 'I thank the Shirando for its gracious attention.'

Otsuki Monjuro, the Academy's bearded Director, hesitates to ask for questions, but Dr Maeno clears his well-respected throat and raises his fan. 'First, I wish to thank Yoshida-
san
for his stimulating thoughts. Second, I wish to ask how best the threats he enumerates can be countered?'

Yoshida takes a sip of warm water and a deep breath.

A vague and evasive answer
, thinks Uzaemon,
would be safest
.

'By the creation of a Japanese Navy, by the foundation of two large shipyards, and by the establishment of an academy where foreign instructors would train Japanese shipwrights, armourers, gunsmiths, officers and sailors.'

The audience was unprepared for the audacity of Yoshida's vision.

Awatsu, an algebraist, is the first to recover. 'Is that all?'

Yoshida smiles at Awatsu's irony. 'Emphatically not. We need a national army based on the French model; an armoury to produce the newest Prussian rifles; and an overseas empire. To avoid becoming a European colony, we need colonies of our own.'

'But what Yoshida-
san
proposes,' objects Dr Maeno, 'would require . . .'

A radical new government
, thinks Uzaemon,
and a radical new Japan
.

A chemist unknown to Uzaemon suggests, 'A trade mission to Batavia?'

Yoshida shakes his head. 'Batavia is a ditch, and whatever the Dutch tell us, Holland is a pawn. France, England, Prussia or the energetic United States must be our teachers. Two hundred bright, able-bodied scholars - a criterion that,' he smiles sadly, 'excludes
me
- must be sent to these countries to study the arts of industry. Upon their return, let them spread their knowledge, freely, to the ablest minds of all classes so we may set about constructing a
true
"Impregnable Fortress".'

'But,' Haga the ape-nosed druggist raises the obvious objection, 'the Separate Nation decree forbids any subject to leave Japan, on pain of death.'

Not even Yoshida Hayato dare suggest
, thinks Uzaemon,
the decree be annulled
.

'Hence the decree,' Yoshida Hayato is outwardly calm, 'must be annulled.'

The statement provokes fearful objections, and some nervous assent.

Should someone not save him
, Interpreter Arashiyama glances at Uzaemon,
from himself?

He's dying
, the young interpreter thinks.
The choice is his
.

'Yoshida-
san
,' calls out Haga the druggist, 'is naysaying the Third Shogun . . .'

'. . . who is not a debating partner,' the chemist agrees, 'but a deity!'

'Yoshida-
sama
,' counters Omori the Dutch-style painter, 'is a visionary patriot and he should be heard!'

'Our society of scholars,' Haga stands up, 'debates natural philosophy--'

'- and not matters of state,' agrees an Edo metallurgist, 'so--'

'Nothing is outside philosophy,' claims Omori, 'unless fear says it is.'

'So whoever disagrees with you,' asks Haga, 'is, therefore, a coward?'

'The Third Shogun closed the country to prevent Christian rebellions,' argues Aodo the historian, 'but its result was to pickle Japan in a specimen jar!'

Clamour breaks out, and Director Otsuki strikes two sticks together for order.

When relative quietness is re-established, Yoshida wins permission to address his detractors. 'The Separate Nation decree was a necessary measure, in the day of the Third Shogun. But new machines of power are shaping the world. What we learn from Dutch reports
and
Chinese sources is a grave warning. Peoples who do not acquire these machines of power are, at best, subjugated, like the Indians. At worst, like the natives of Van Diemen's Land, they are exterminated.'