The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel (44 page)

Arashiyama hugs himself against the cold. 'Snow in the mountains, I hear.'

My guilt about Orito shall dog me
, Uzaemon fears,
for the rest of my life
.

'Otsuki-
sama
sent me to find you,' says Arashiyama. 'Dr Marinus is ready, and we are to sing for our supper.'

'The Ancient Assyrians,' Marinus sits with his lame leg at an awkward angle, 'used rounded glass to start fires; Archimedes the Greek, we read, destroyed the Roman fleet of Marcus Aurelius with giant burning-glasses at Syracuse, and the Emperor Nero allegedly employed a lens to correct myopia.'

Uzaemon explains 'Assyrians' and inserts 'the island of' before 'Syracuse'.

'The Arab Ibn al-Haytham,' continues the doctor, 'whose Latin translators named Alhazen, wrote his
Book of Optics
eight centuries ago. The Italian Galileo and the Dutchman Lippershey used al-Haytham's discoveries to invent what we now call microscopes and telescopes.'

Arashiyama confirms the Arabic name and delivers a confident rendering.

'The lens and its cousin the polished mirror, and their mathematical principles, have evolved a long way through time and space. By virtue of successive advancements, astronomers may now gaze upon a newly discovered planet beyond Saturn, Georgium Sidium, invisible to the naked eye. Zoologists may admire the true portrait of man's most loyal companion . . .

. . .
Pulex irritans
.' One of Marinus's seminarians exhibits the illustration from Hooke's
Micrografia
in a slow arc whilst Goto works on the translation. The scholars do not notice his omission of 'successive advancements', which Uzaemon can make no sense of either.

De Zoet is watching from the side, just a few paces away. When Uzaemon took his place on the stage, they exchanged a 'Good evening', but the tactful Dutchman has detected the interpreter's reticence and not imposed further.
He may have been a worthy husband for Orito
. Uzaemon's generous thought is stained by jealousy and regret.

Marinus peers through the lamp-lit smoke. Uzaemon wonders whether his discourses are prepared in advance or netted from the thick air extemporaneously. 'Microscopes and telescopes are begat by Science; their use, by Man and, where permitted, by Woman, begets further Science, and Creation's mysteries are unfolded in modes once undreamt of. In this manner Science broadens, deepens and disseminates itself - and via its invention of printing, its spores and seeds may germinate even within this Cloistered Empire.'

Uzaemon does his best to translate this, but it isn't easy: surely the Dutch word 'semen' cannot be related to this unknown verb 'disseminate'? Goto Shinpachi anticipates his colleague's difficulty and suggests 'distribute'. Uzaemon guesses 'germinate' means 'is accepted', but is warned by suspicious glances from the Shirando's audience:
If we don't understand the speaker, we blame the interpreter
.

'Science moves,' Marinus scratches his thick neck, 'year by year, towards a new state of being. Where, in the past, Man was the subject and Science his object, I believe this relationship is reversing. Science itself, gentlemen, is in the early stages of becoming sentient.'

Goto takes a safe gamble on 'sentience' meaning 'watchfulness', like a sentry. His Japanese rendition is streaked with mysticism, but so is the original.

'Science, like a general, is identifying its enemies: received wisdom and untested assumption; superstition and quackery; the tyrants' fear of educated commoners; and, most pernicious of all, man's fondness for fooling himself. Bacon the Englishman says it well: "The Human Understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it." Our honourable colleague Mr Takaki may know the passage?'

Arashiyama deals with the word 'quackery' by omitting it, censors the line about tyrants and commoners, and turns to the straight-as-a-pole Takaki, a translator of Bacon, who translates the quotation in his querulous voice.

'Science is still learning how to talk and walk. But the days are coming when Science shall transform what it is to be a Human Being. Academies like the Shirando, gentlemen, are its nurseries, its schools. Some years ago, a wise American, Benjamin Franklin, marvelled at an air-balloon in flight over London. His companion dismissed the balloon as a bauble, a frivolity, and demanded of Franklin, "Yes, but what
use
is it?" Franklin replied, "What use is a newborn child?" '

Uzaemon makes what he thinks is a fair translation until 'bauble' and 'frivolity': Goto and Arashiyama indicate with apologetic faces that they cannot help. The audience watch him, critically. In a low tone, Jacob de Zoet says, 'Toy of a child.' Using this substitute, the anecdote makes sense, and a hundred scholars nod in approval at the Franklin anecdote.

'Had a man fallen asleep two centuries ago,' Marinus speculates, 'and awoken this morning, he should recognise his world unchanged in essence. Ships are still wooden, disease is still rampant. No man may travel faster than a galloping horse, and no man may kill another out of eyeshot. But were the same fellow to fall asleep tonight and sleep for a hundred years, or eighty, or even sixty, on waking he shall not recognise the planet for the transformations wrought upon it by Science.'

Goto assumes 'rampant' is 'deadly' and must reconstruct the final clause.

Marinus's attention, meanwhile, has drifted away over the scholars' heads.

Yoshida Hayato clears his throat to indicate that he has a question.

Otsuki Monjuro looks at the still-absent Marinus, then nods his consent.

Yoshida writes Dutch more fluently than many interpreters, but the geographer fears making a mistake in public, so he addresses Goto Shinpachi in Japanese. 'Please ask Dr Marinus this, Interpreter: if Science is sentient, what are its ultimate desires? Or, to phrase this question another way, when the doctor's imagined Sleeper awakens in the year 1899, shall the world most closely resemble Paradise or the Inferno?'

Goto's fluency is slower in the Japanese-to-Dutch headwind, but Marinus is pleased by the question. He rocks gently to and fro. 'I shan't know until I see it, Mr Yoshida.'

XVII

The Altar Room at the House of Sisters, Mount Shiranui Shrine

The Twenty-sixth Day of the Eleventh Month

Don't let it be me
, Orito prays,
don't let it be me
. The Goddess is disrobed for the Annunciation of Engifting: her exposed breasts are ample with milk; and her belly, devoid of a navel, is swollen with a female foetus so fertile, according to Abbess Izu, that the foetus's own tiny womb encloses a still smaller female foetus, which is, in turn, impregnated with a still smaller daughter . . . and so on, to infinity. The Abbess watches the nine unEngifted Sisters during the Sutra of Supplication. For ten days, Orito has acted the part of the penitent Sister in hopes of earning access to the Precincts and a quiet escape over the wall, but her hopes have come to nothing. She has dreaded this day since she saw Yayoi's pregnant belly and understood what it must mean, and now that day is here. Speculation about the Goddess's choice has been rife. To Orito it has been unbearable. 'One of the Two has to be the Newest Sister,' said Umegae, with cruel satisfaction. 'The Goddess will want Sister Orito to feel at home here as soon as possible.' Blind Minori, in her eighteenth year here, says that Newest Sisters are Engifted by the fourth month, at the latest, but not always the second. Yayoi suggested that the Goddess may give Kagero and Minori, neither of whom conceived a Gift last month despite being chosen, another chance, but Orito suspects that Yayoi said so to calm her fears, not because it is true.

The Prayer Room falls silent. The sutra is over.

Don't let it be me
. The waiting is unendurable.
Don't let it be me
.

Abbess Izu strikes her tubular gong. The chime rises and falls in waves.

The Sisters press their head against the
tatami
mat in obeisance.

Like criminals
, Orito thinks,
waiting for the executioner's sword
.

The Abbess's ceremonial clothes rustle. 'Sisters of Mount Shiranui . . .'

The nine women all keep their foreheads on the floor.

'The Goddess has instructed Master Genmu that, in the Eleventh Month -'

A fallen icicle shatters on the Cloister walkway and Orito jumps.

'- in the Eleventh Month of the Eleventh Year of the Kansei Era -'

This is not where I belong
, Orito thinks.
This is not where I belong
.

'- the two Sisters to be Engifted in her name are Kagero and Hashihime.'

Orito smothers a groan of relief but cannot quieten her pounding heart.

Won't you thank me
, the Goddess asks Orito,
for sparing you this month?

I can't hear you
. Orito is careful to keep her mouth closed.
Lump of wood
.

Next month
, the Goddess laughs like Orito's stepmother,
I promise
.

* * *

Engiftment Days usher holiday mood into the House of Sisters. Within minutes, Kagero and Hashihime are being congratulated in the Long Room. Orito is dumbfounded at the sincerity of the other women's envy. Talk turns to the clothes, scents and oils the Goddess's choices shall wear to welcome their Engifters. Rice-dumplings and
azuki
beans sweetened with honey arrive for breakfast;
sake
and tobacco are sent from Abbot Enomoto's storehouse. Kagero's and Hashihime's cells are decorated with paper ornaments. Orito feels nauseous at this celebration of obligatory impregnation and is grateful when the sun shows its face and Abbess Izu has her and Sawarabi collect, air and beat the House's bedding. The straw-filled mattresses are folded over a pole in the Courtyard and, in rapid turns, struck with a bamboo beater: a faint fog of dust and mites hangs in the cold bright air. Sawarabi is a sturdy daughter of peasants from the Kirishima plateau but the doctor's daughter soon lags behind. Sawarabi notices, and is kind enough to suggest that they have a short rest, and sits on a pile of futons. 'I hope you aren't too disappointed that the Goddess overlooked you this month, Newest Sister.'