The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (9 page)

Cupido and Philander strike up “Seven White Roses for My One True Love.”

Baert’s drunken head droops and settles in a plate of sweet beans.

Does her burn
, Jacob wonders,
register touch as heat, cold, or numbness?

Marinus takes up his stick. “The party shall excuse me: I have left Eelattu rendering the Estonian’s shinbone. Without an expert eye, tallow shall be dripping from the ceiling. Mr. Vorstenbosch, my compliments …” He bows to the interpreters and limps out of the room.

Captain Lacy’s smile is soapy. “Does the law of Japan permit
polygamy?”

“What is po-ri-ga-mi?” Hori stuffs a pipe. “Why need permit?”

“You explain, Mr. de Zoet,” Van Cleef is saying. “Words are your forte.”

“Polygamy is …” Jacob considers. “One husband, many wives.”

“Ah. Oh.” Hori grins, and the other interpreters nod. “Polygamy.”

“Mohammedans sanction four wives.” Captain Lacy tosses an almond into the air and captures it in his mouth. “Chinese may round up seven under one roof. How many may a Japanese man lock up in his personal collection, eh?”

“In all countries, same,” says Hori. “In Japan, Holland, China; all same. I say why. All mans marry first wife. He”—leering, Hori makes an obscene gesture with a fist and finger—“until she”—he mimes a pregnant belly—“yes? After
this
, all mans keep number wives his purse
says
he may. Captain Lacy plans to have Dejima wife for trading season, like Mr. Snitker and Mr. van Cleef?”

“I’d rather,” Lacy bites a thumbnail, “visit the famous Maruyama District.”

“Mr. Hemmij,” recalls Interpreter Yonekizu, “ordered courtesans for his feasts.”

“Chief Hemmij,” says Vorstenbosch darkly, “partook of many pleasures at the company’s expense, as did Mr. Snitker. Hence, the latter dines on hardtack tonight, whilst we enjoy the rewards of honest employees.”

Jacob glances at Ivo Oost: Ivo Oost is scowling at him.

Baert lifts his bean-spattered face, exclaims, “But, sir, she ain’t really my aunt!,” giggles like a schoolgirl, and falls off his chair.

“I propose a toast,” declares Deputy van Cleef, “to all our absent ladies.”

The drinkers and diners fill one another’s glasses. “To all our absent ladies!”

“Especial,” gasps Hori, as the gin burns his gullet, “to Mr. Ogawa here. Mr. Ogawa, he marry this year a beauty wife.” Hori’s elbow is covered with rhubarb mousse. “Each night”—he mimes riding a horse—“three, four, five gallopings!”

The laughter is raucous, but Ogawa’s smile is weak.

“You ask a starved man,” Gerritszoon says, “to drink to a glutton.”

“Mr. Gerritszoon want girl?” Hori is solicitude personified. “My servant fetch. Say you want. Fat? Tight? Tiger? Gentle sister?”

“We’d
all
like a gentle sister,” complains Arie Grote, “but what o’ the money, eh? A man could buy a brothel in Siam for a tumble with a Nagasaki doxy. Is there no case, Mr. Vorstenbosch, for the company
providin’ a subsidy, eh, in this quarter? Consider poor Oost: on his
official
wages, sir, a little … feminine consolation, eh, would cost him a year’s wages.”

“A diet of abstinence,” replies Vorstenbosch, “never hurt anyone.”

“But, sir, what vices might a red-blooded Dutchman be pushed to without a conduit for the, eh, unloosin’ o’ Nature’s urges?”

“You miss your wife, Mr. Grote,” Hori asks, “at home in Holland?”

“‘South of Gibraltar,’” quotes Captain Lacy, “‘all men are bachelors.’”

“Nagasaki’s latitude,” says Fischer, “is, of course, well
north
of Gibraltar.”

“I never knew,” says Vorstenbosch, “you were a married man, Grote.”

“He’d as soon not,” Ouwehand explains, “hear the subject raised.”

“A mooing West Frieslander slut, sir.” The cook licks his brown incisors. “When I consider her at
all
, Mr. Hori, ’tis to pray the Ottomans’ll storm West Friesland an’ make off with the bitch.”

“If not like wife,” asks Interpreter Yonekizu, “why do not divorce?”

“Easier said than done, sir,” Grote sighs, “in the so-called Christian lands.”

“So why marry,” Hori coughs out tobacco smoke, “at first place?”

“Oh, ’tis a long an’ sorry saga, Mr. Hori, what’d not be of interest to—”

“On Mr. Grote’s last trip home,” obliges Ouwehand, “he wooed a promising young heiress at her town house in Roomolenstraat who told him how her heirless, ailing papa yearned to see his dairy farm in the hands of a gentleman son-in-law, yet everywhere, she lamented, were thieving rascals
posing
as eligible bachelors. Mr. Grote agreed that the Sea of Courtship seethes with sharks and spoke of the prejudice endured by the young colonial parvenu, as if the annual fortunes yielded by his plantations in Sumatra were less worthy than old monies. The turtledoves were wedded within a week. The day after their nuptials, the taverner presented the bill and each says to the other, ‘Settle the account, my heart’s music.’ But to their genuine horror, neither
could
, for bride and groom alike had spent their last beans on wooing the other! Mr. Grote’s Sumatran plantations evaporated; the Roomolenstraat house reverted to a co-conspirator’s stage prop; the ailing father-in-law turned out to be a beer porter in rude health, not heirless but hairless, and—”

A belch erupts from Lacy. “Pardon: ’twas the deviled eggs.”

“Deputy van Cleef?” Goto is alarmed. “Do Ottomans invade Holland? This news is not in recentest
fusetsuki
report …”

“Mr. Grote”—Van Cleef brushes his napkin—“spoke in jest, sir.”

“‘In jest’?” The earnest young interpreter frowns and blinks. “‘In jest …’”

Cupido and Philander are playing a languid air by Boccherini.

“One grows despondent,” ruminates Vorstenbosch, “to think that, unless Edo authorizes an increase in the copper quota, these rooms shall fall forever silent.”

Yonekizu and Hori grimace; Goto and Ogawa wear blank faces.

Most of the Dutchmen have asked Jacob whether the extraordinary ultimatum is a bluff. He told each to ask the chief resident, knowing that none of them would. Having lost last season’s cargo aboard the doomed
Octavia
, many would be returning to Batavia poorer men than when they left.

“Who
was
that bizarre female,” Van Cleef asks, squeezing a lemon into a Venetian glass, “in Warehouse Doorn?”

“Miss Aibagawa,” says Goto, “is daughter of doctor and scholar.”

Aibagawa
. Jacob handles each syllable in turn.
Ai-ba-ga-wa
 …

“The magistrate give permission,” says Iwase, “to study under Dutch doctor.”

And I called her a “whore’s helper,”
remembers Jacob, and winces.

“What a bizarre Locusta,” says Fischer, “to be at ease in a surgery.”

“The fairer sex,” objects Jacob, “can show as much resilience as the uglier one.”

“Mr. de Zoet
must
publish,” the Prussian picks his nose, “his dazzling epigrams.”

“Miss Aibagawa,” states Ogawa, “is a midwife. She is used to blood.”

“But I understood,” says Vorstenbosch, “a woman was forbidden to set foot on Dejima, without she be a courtesan, her maid, or one of the old crones at the guild.”

“It
is
forbidden,” affirms Yonekizu indignantly. “No precedent. Never.”

“Miss Aibagawa,” Ogawa speaks up, “work hard as midwife, both for rich customers and poor persons who cannot pay. Recently, she deliver Magistrate Shiroyama’s son. Birth was hard, and other doctor renounce,
but she persevere and succeed. Magistrate Shiroyama was joyful. He gives Miss Aibagawa one wish for reward. Wish is, study under Dr. Marinus on Dejima. So, magistrate kept promise.”

“Woman study in hospital,” declares Yonekizu, “is not good thing.”

“Yet she held the blood basin steady,” says Con Twomey, “spoke good Dutch with Dr. Marinus, and chased an ape while her male classmates looked seasick.”

I would ask a dozen questions
, Jacob thinks,
if I dared: a dozen dozen
.

“Doesn’t a girl,” asks Ouwehand,
“arouse
the boys in troublesome places?”

“Not with that slice of bacon”—Fischer swirls his gin—“stuck to her face.”

“Ungallant words, Mr. Fischer,” says Jacob. “They shame you.”

“One cannot pretend it isn’t there, De Zoet! We’d call her a ‘tapping cane’ in
my
town because, of course, only a blind man would touch her.”

Jacob imagines smashing the Prussian’s jaw with the Delft jug.

A candle collapses; wax slides down the candlestick; the dribble hardens.

“I am sure,” says Ogawa, “Miss Aibagawa one day make joyful marriage.”

“What’s the one sure cure for love?” asks Grote.
“Marriage
is, is what.”

A moth careers into a candle flame; it drops to the table, flapping.

“Poor Icarus.” Ouwehand crushes it with his tankard. “Won’t you ever learn?”

NIGHT INSECTS TRILL,
tick, bore, ring; drill, prick, saw, sting.

Hanzaburo snores in the cubbyhole outside Jacob’s door.

Jacob lies awake, clad in a sheet, under a tent of netting.

Ai
, mouth opens;
ba
, lips meet;
ga
, tongue’s root;
wa
, lips.

Involuntarily, he reenacts today’s scene over and over.

He cringes at the boorish figure he cut and vainly edits the script.

He opens the fan she left in Warehouse Doorn. He fans himself.

The paper is white. The handle and struts are made of paulownia wood.

A watchman smacks his wooden clappers to mark the Japanese hour.

The yeasty moon is caged in his half-Japanese half-Dutch window …

… Glass panes melt moonlight; paper panes filter it, to dust.

Daybreak must be near. The 1796 ledgers are waiting for him.

It is dear Anna whom I love
, Jacob recites,
and I whom Anna loves
.

Beneath his glaze of sweat, he sweats. His bed linen is sodden.

Miss Aibagawa is as untouchable as a woman in a picture
 …

Jacob imagines he can hear a harpsichord.

… spied through a keyhole in a cottage happened upon, once
 …

The notes are spidery and starlit and spun from glass.

Jacob
can
hear a harpsichord: it is the doctor, in his attic.

Night silence and a freak of conductivity permit Jacob this privilege: Marinus rejects all requests to play, even for scholar friends or visiting nobility.

The music provokes a sharp longing the music soothes.

How can such a prig
, wonders Jacob,
play with such divinity?

Night insects trill, tick, bore, ring; drill, prick, saw, sting …

L
IGHT BLEEDS IN AROUND THE CASEMENTS: JACOB NAVIGATES THE
archipelago of stains across the low wooden ceiling. Outside, the slaves d’Orsaiy and Ignatius are talking as they feed the animals. Jacob recalls Anna’s birthday party a few days prior to his departure. Her father had invited half a dozen eminently eligible young men and given a sumptuous dinner prepared so artfully that the chicken tasted of fish and the fish of chicken. His ironic toast was to “the fortunes of Jacob de Zoet, Merchant Prince of the Indies.” Anna rewarded Jacob’s forbearance with a smile: her fingers stroked the necklace of Swedish white amber he had brought her from Gothenburg.

On the far side of the world, Jacob sighs with longing and regret.

Unexpectedly, Hanzaburo calls out, “Mr. Dazûto want thing?”

“Nothing, no. It’s early, Hanzaburo: go back to sleep.” Jacob imitates a snore.

“Pig? Want pig? Ah ah ah,
surîpu!
Yes … yes, I like
surîpu
 …”

Jacob gets up, drinks from a cracked jug, and rubs soap into lather.

His green eyes watch from the freckled face in the speckled glass.

The blunt blade tears his stubble and nicks the cleft in his chin.

A tear of blood, red as tulips, oozes, mixes with soap, and foams pink.

Jacob considers how a beard would save all this trouble …

… but recalls his sister Geertje’s verdict when he returned from England with a short-lived mustache. “Ooh, dab it in lampblack, brother, and polish our boots!”

He touches his nose, recently adjusted by the disgraced Snitker.

The nick by his ear is a memento of a certain dog that bit him.

When shaving
, thinks Jacob,
a man rereads his truest memoir
.

Tracing his lip with his finger, he recalls the very morning of his departure. Anna had persuaded her father to take them both to Rotterdam wharf in his carriage. “Three minutes,” he had told Jacob as he climbed out of the carriage to speak to the head clerk, “and no more.” Anna knew what to say. “Five years is a long time, but most women wait a lifetime before finding a kind and honest man.” Jacob had tried to reply, but she had silenced him. “I know how men overseas behave and, perhaps, how they
must
behave—shush, Jacob de Zoet—so all I ask is that you are
careful
in Java, that your
heart
is mine alone. I shan’t give you a ring or locket, because rings and lockets can be lost, but this, at least, cannot be lost.” Anna kissed him for the first and last time. It was a long, sad kiss. They watched rain stream down the windows, the boats, and the shale-gray sea, until it was time to go …

Jacob’s shave is finished. He washes, dresses, and polishes an apple.

Miss Aibagawa
, he bites the fruit,
is a scholar, not a courtesan
 …

From the window, he watches d’Orsaiy water the runner beans.

… Illicit rendezvous, much less illicit romances, are impossible here
.

He eats the core and spits out the pips onto the back of his hand.

I just want to converse
, Jacob is sure,
to know her a little
 …

He takes the chain from his neck and turns the key in his sea chest.