The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel (77 page)

. . . the cynical, the ambitious, his appalled allies, Omatsu's place-men . . .

Some of you leeches knew this
, Shiroyama thinks,
and said nothing
.

Doi is still crouching like a prisoner waiting for the sword to fall.

Omatsu
would
blame the messenger
. . . and Shiroyama, too, is tempted to lash out. 'Wait outside, Captain. Thank you for despatching your duty with such speed and . . . accuracy.'

Doi glances at Tomine to check he heard correctly, bows and leaves.

None of the advisers dares be first to violate the awed hush.

Blame the Lord of Hizen
, Shiroyama thinks.
He supplies the men
.

No: the Magistrate's enemies would depict him as a cowardly shirker.

Plead that the coastal garrisons have been undermanned for years.

To say so implies that he knew of the shortages yet did nothing.

Plead that no Japanese subject has been harmed by the shortage.

The dictate of the First Shogun, deified at Nikko, has been ignored. This crime alone is unpardonable. 'Chamberlain Tomine,' says Shiroyama, 'you are acquainted with the Standing Orders concerning the Defence of the Closed Empire.'

'It is my duty to be so informed, Your Honour.'

'In the case of foreigners arriving at a city without permission, its highest official is commanded to do what?'

'To decline all overtures, Your Honour, and send the foreigners away. If the latter request provisions, a minimal quantity may be supplied, but no payment must be received so that the foreigners cannot later claim a trading precedent.'

'But in the case that the foreigners commit acts of aggression?'

The advisers' fans in the Hall of Sixty Mats have all stopped moving.

'The Magistrate or
daimyo
in authority must seize the foreigners, Your Honour, and detain them until orders are received from Edo.'

Seize a fully armed warship
, Shiroyama thinks,
with sixty-seven men?

In this room the Magistrate has sentenced smugglers, robbers, rapists . . .

. . . murderers, pickpockets, and a Hidden Christian from the Goto Islands.

Now Fate, adopting the chamberlain's dense nasal voice, is sentencing him.

The Shogun will imprison me for wanton neglect of my duties.

His family in Edo will be stripped of his name and samurai rank.

Kawasemi, my precious Kawasemi, will have to go back to the tea-houses . . .

He thinks of his son, his miraculous son, eking out a living as a pimp's servant.

Unless I apologise for my crime and preserve my family honour . . .

He looks up at the advisers but none dares hold a condemned man's gaze.

. . . by ritually disembowelling myself before Edo orders my arrest.

A throat behind him is softly cleared. 'May I speak, Magistrate?'

'Better that someone says something, Lord Abbot.'

'Kyoga Domain is more a spiritual stronghold than a military one, but it is very close. By despatching a messenger now, I can raise two hundred and fifty men from Kashima and Isahaya to Nagasaki within three days.'

This strange man
, Shiroyama thinks,
is part of my life and my death
. 'Summon them, Lord Abbot, in the Shogun's name.' The Magistrate senses a glimmer of hope.
The greater glory of seizing a foreign aggressor's warship may,
may
, eclipse lesser crimes
. He turns to the commander-at-arms. 'Send riders to the Lords of Hizen, Chikugo and Higo with orders in the Shogun's name to despatch five hundred armed men apiece. No delay, no excuses. The Empire is at war.'

XXXIV

Captain Penhaligon's Bunk-Room Aboard HMS
Phoebus

Around dawn on the 19th October, 1800

John Penhaligon awakes from a dream of mildewed drapes and lunar forests to find his son at his bedside. 'Tristingle, my dear boy! Such horrid dreams I had! I dreamt you'd been killed on the
Blenheim
and . . .' Penhaligon sighs '. . . and I even dreamt I'd forgotten what you looked like. Not your hair--'

'Never my hair, Pa,' the handsome lad smiles, 'not
this
burning bush!'

'In my dream, I sometimes dreamt you were still alive . . . Waking was a - a bitterness.'

'Come!' He laughs like Meredith laughed. 'Is this a phantom's hand?'

John Penhaligon grips his son's warm hand and notices his captain's epaulettes.

'My
Phaeton
is sent to help your
Phoebus
crack this walnut, Father.'

'Ships-of-the-line hog the glory,' Penhaligon's mentor Captain Golding would say, 'but frigates bag the prizes!'

'There's no prize on Earth,' agrees Tristram, 'like the ports and markets of the Orient.'

'Black pudding, eggs and fried bread would be . . . heavenly, my lad.'

Why
, Penhaligon wonders,
did I answer an unasked question?

'I'll tell Jones,' Tristram withdraws, 'and bring your
Times of London
, too.'

Penhaligon listens to the gentle clatter of cutlery and plates . . .

. . . and sloughs off wasted years of unnecessary grief, like a snake's skin.

How can Tristram
, he wonders,
obtain
The Times
in Nagasaki Bay?

A malign cat watches him from the foot of his bed; or perhaps a bat . . .

With a deaf and dumb hum, the beast opens its mouth; a pouch of needles.

It means to bite
, thinks Penhaligon, and his thought is the Devil's cue.

Agony scalds his right foot; an
Aaaaaaaaagh!
escapes like steam.

Wide awake in closeted dark, dead Tristram's father bites on a scream.

The gentle clatter of cutlery and plates ceases and anxious steps hurry to his cabin door. Chigwin's voice calls out, 'Is all well, sir?'

'All well.' The Captain swallows. 'A nightmare ambushed me, is all.'

'I suffer them myself, sir. We'll have breakfast served by first bell.'

'Very good, Chigwin. Wait: are the native boats still circling us?'

'Just the two guard-boats, sir, but the marines watched them all night and they never came within two hundred yards or I'd've woken you, sir. Aside from them, nothing bigger than a duck is afloat this morning. We scared everything off.'

'I shall shake my leg shortly, Chigwin. Carry on.' But as Penhaligon shifts his swollen foot, thorns of pain lacerate his flesh. 'Chigwin, pray invite Surgeon Nash to call on the nonce: my podagra is troubling me, a little.'

Surgeon Nash examines the ankle, swollen to twice its usual size. 'Steeplechases and mazurkas are, more than like, behind you now, Captain. May I recommend a stick to help you walk? I shall have Rafferty fetch one.'

A cripple with a stick
, Penhaligon hesitates,
at forty-two
.

Young and agile feet pound to and fro above-decks.

'Yes. Better to advertise my infirmity with a stick than a fall down stairs.'

'Quite so, sir. Now, if I may examine this tophus. This may . . .'

The lancet probes the rupture: a violet agony explodes behind Penhaligon's eyeballs.

'. . . hurt just a little, sir . . . but it's weeping nicely - a good abundance of pus.'

The Captain peers at the frothing discharge. '
That
is good?'

'Pus,' Surgeon Nash unscrews a corked pot, 'is how the body purges itself of excessive blue bile, and blue bile is the root of gout. By widening the wound, applying a scraping of murine faecal matter,' he uncorks the pot and extracts a mouse dropping with a pair of tweezers, 'we can stimulate the discharge, and expect an improvement within seven days. Moreover I took the liberty of bringing a phial of Dover's Remedy so--'

'I'll drink it now, Surgeon. The next two days are crucial to our fut--'

The lancet sinks in: the stifled scream makes his entire body turn rigid.

'
Damn
it, Nash,' the Captain gasps finally. 'Will you not at least
warn
me?'

Major Cutlip looks askance at the sauerkraut on Penhaligon's spoon.

'Might your resistance,' asks the Captain, 'be weakening, Major?'

'Twice-rotted cabbage shall never conquer
this
soldier, Captain.'

Membranous sunlight lends the breakfast table the air of a painting.

'It was Admiral Jervis who first recommended sauerkraut to me.' The Captain crunches his fermented mouthful. 'But I told you that story before.'

'Never,' says Wren, 'in
my
hearing, sir.' He looks at the others, who concur. Penhaligon suspects them of dainty manners, but summarises the anecdote: 'Jervis had sauerkraut from William Bligh, and Bligh had it from Captain Cook himself. "The difference between La Perouse's tragedy and Cook's glory," Bligh was fond of saying, "was thirty barrels of sauerkraut." But when Cook embarked on the First Voyage, neither exhortation nor threat would induce the Endeavours to eat it. Thereupon Cook designated the "twice-rotted cabbage" as Officers' Food and forbade common Tars from touching the stuff. The result? Sauerkraut began to be filched from its own poorly guarded storeroom until six months later not a single man was buckling under scurvy, and the conversion was complete.'

'Low cunning,' Lieutenant Talbot observes, 'in the service of genius.'

'Cook is a great hero of mine,' avows Wren, 'and an inspiration.'

Wren's 'of mine' irritates Penhaligon like a tiny seed wedged between molars.

Chigwin fills the Captain's bowl: a drop splashes on the tablecloth's lovingly-embroidered Forget-Me-Nots.
Now is not the time
, thinks the widower,
to remember Meredith
. 'And so, gentlemen, to the day's business, and our Dutch guests.'