The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

by David Mitchell

  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 grays and darker grays. 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 gunports 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 BÔRU-SU TEN-BÔSHU,” 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 while the constable stands to one side with a sour face. “Where is the”—Sekita squints at his list—“the Bôru-su ten-bôshu?”

  Sekita’s scribe tells his master that Chief Vorstenbosch is attending the lord of Satsuma this evening. Sekita administers a rebuke to his scribe and squints at the next name. “Where is the … the Banku-rei-fu?”

  Sekita’s scribe reminds his master that Deputy van Cleef is with the chief.

  Constable Kosugi clears his throat loudly and unnecessarily.

  The interpreter proceeds with the muster list. “Ma-ri-as-su …”

  Marinus stands with thumbs in his jacket pocket. “Doctor Marinus.”

  Sekita looks up, alarmed. “The Marinus need the doctor?”

  Gerritszoon and Baert snort, amused. Sekita senses he has made a mistake and says, “Friend in need is friend indeed.” He peers at the next name: “Fui … shâ …”

  “That, I daresay,” replies Peter Fischer, “is I, but one says it thus: ‘Fischer.’”

  “Yes yes, the Fuishâ.” Sekita wrestles with the next name. “Ôehando.”

  “Present, for my sins,” says Ouwehand, rubbing the ink stains on his hands.

  Sekita dabs his brow with a handkerchief. “Dazûto …”

  “Present,” says Jacob. To list and name people, he thinks, is to subjugate them.

  Working down the muster, Sekita butchers the hands’ names: the snide quips with which Gerritszoon and Baert respond do not alter the fact that they must, and do, answer. The white foreigners accounted for, Sekita proceeds to the servants and slaves, who stand in two groups to the left and right of their masters. The interpreter begins with the servants: Eelattu, Cupido, and Philander, then squints at the name of the muster list’s first slave. “Su-ya-ko.”

  When there is no reply, Jacob looks around for the missing Malay.

  Sekita hammers out the syllables, “Su-ya-ko,” but there is no reply.

  He fires a foul glare at his scribe, who asks Constable Kosugi a question. Kosugi tells Sekita, Jacob guesses, “This is your mustering, so missing names are your problem.” Sekita addresses Marinus. “Where—are—Su-ya-ko?”

  The doctor is humming a bass tune. When the verse ends and Sekita is riled, Marinus turns to the servants and slaves. “Would you be so kind as to locate Sjako and tell him that he is late for muster?”

  The seven men hurry to Long Street, discussing Sjako’s likely whereabouts.

  “I’ll find where the dog is skulking,” Peter Fischer tells Marinus, “faster than that brown rabble. Join me, Mr. Gerritszoon; you are the man for this job.”

  PETER FISCHER EMERGES from Flag Alley less than five minutes later with a bloodied right hand, ahead of some house interpreters who all speak at once to Constable Kosugi and Interpreter Sekita. Moments later, Eelattu appears and reports to Marinus in Ceylonese. Fischer informs the other Dutchmen, “We found the dung beetle in the crate store down Bony Alley next to Warehouse Doorn. I’d seen him go in there earlier today.”

  “Why,” Jacob asks, “didn’t you bring him here for mustering?”

  Fischer smiles. “He shan’t be walking for a little while, I daresay.”

  Ouwehand asks, “What did you do to him, in Jesus’ name?”

  “Less than the slave deserves. He was drinking stolen spirits and spoke to us in an abusive manner unforgivable in an equal, let alone a stinking Malay. When Mr. Gerritszoon made shift to correct this impertinence with a length of rattan, he changed into a black fury, howled like a blood-crazed wolf, and tried to batter our skulls with a crowbar.”

  “Then why did none of us,” Jacob demands, “hear this blood-crazed howl?”

  “Because,” Fischer expostulates, “he closed the door first, Clerk de Zoet!”

  “Sjako’d never hurt an ant,” says Ivo Oost, “not so far as I know.”

  “Perhaps you are too close,” Fischer refers to Oost’s blood, “to be impartial.”

  Arie Grote gently removes a whittling knife from Oost’s grip. Marinus gives Eelattu an order in Ceylonese, and the servant runs in the direction of the hospital. The doctor hurries as fast as his lameness allows into Flag Alley. Jacob follows, ignoring Sekita’s protestations, ahead of Constable Kosugi and his guards.

  The evening light turns the whitewashed warehouses of Long Street dim bronze. Jacob catches up with Marinus. At the crossroads they turn down Bony Alley, pass Warehouse Doorn, and enter the hot, dim, cramped crate store.

  “Oh, you took yer time,” says Gerritszoon, sitting on a sack, “di’n’t yer?”

  “Where’s—” Jacob sees the answer to his question.

  The sack is Sjako. His once-handsome head is on the floor in a pond of blood; his lip is slit; one eye is half disappeared; and he gives no sign of life. Splintered crates, a smashed bottle, and a broken chair lie around. Gerritszoon kneels on Sjako’s back, binding the slave’s wrists.

  The others crowd into the crate store behind Jacob and the doctor.

  “Jesus, Mary,” Con Twomey exclaims, “and Oliver fecking Cromwell, man!”

  The Japanese witnesses utter expressions of shock in their language.

  “Unfasten him,” Marinus tells Gerritszoon, “and stay out of my reach.”

  “Oh, you ain’t the chief an’ y’ain’t the deputy, neither, an’ I swear by God—”

  “Unfasten him now,” the doctor commands, “or when that bladder stone of yours is so big that your piss is blood and you are screaming like a terrified child for a lithotomy, then I swear by my God that my hand shall slip with tragic, slow, and agonizing consequences.”

  “’Twas our duty,” Gerritszoon growls, “to beat the evil out of him.” He stands away.

  “It’s his life,” declares Ivo Oost, “you beat out of him.”

  Marinus hands his stick to Jacob and kn
eels by the slave’s side.

  “Were we supposed to look on,” Fischer asks, “and let him kill us?”

  Marinus works the cord free. With Jacob’s help, he turns Sjako over.

  “Well, Chief V. ain’t goin’ to be pleased,” sniffs Arie Grote, “at this handlin’ an’ stowage of company property, eh?”

  A cry of pain grows from Sjako’s chest and fades again.

  Marinus bundles his coat under Sjako’s head, murmurs to the beaten Malay in his own language, and examines the opened skull. The slave shudders, and Marinus grimaces and asks, “Why is there glass in this head wound?”

  “Like I said,” replies Fischer, “if you listened, he was drinking stolen rum.”

  “And attacked himself,” asks Marinus, “with the bottle in his hand?”

  “I wrestled it off of ’im,” says Gerritszoon, “to use on ’im.”

  “The black dog tried to murder us!” Fischer is shouting. “With a hammer!”

  “Hammer? Crowbar? Bottle? You’d better tally your story better than that.”

  “I shan’t tolerate,” threatens Fischer, “these—these insinuations, Doctor.”

  Eelattu arrives with the stretcher. Marinus tells Jacob, “Help, Domburger.”

  Sekita taps aside the house interpreters with his fan and looks at the scene in disgust. “That is the Su-ya-ko?”

  THE FIRST COURSE of the officers’ supper is a sweet soup of French onions. Vorstenbosch drinks it in displeased silence. He and Van Cleef returned to Dejima in buoyant spirits, but these were dashed by news of Sjako’s beating. Marinus is still at the hospital, treating the Malay’s many wounds. The chief even dismissed Cupido and Philander from their musical duties, saying that he was not in the mood for music. It is left to Deputy van Cleef and Captain Lacy to entertain the company with their impressions of the Nagasaki residence of the Satsuma lord and his household. Jacob suspects that his patron doesn’t wholly believe Fischer and Gerritszoon’s version of events in the crate store, but to say so would place the word of a black slave above a white officer and hand. What sort of precedent, Jacob imagines Vorstenbosch thinking, would that set for the other slaves and servants? Fischer maintains a cautious reserve, sensing that his hopes of retaining the head clerk’s post are in jeopardy. When Arie Grote and his kitchen boy serve up the codfish pie, Captain Lacy dispatches his servant for a half dozen bottles of barley mash, but Vorstenbosch doesn’t notice; he mutters, “What in God’s name is keeping Marinus?” and sends Cupido to fetch the doctor. Cupido is a long time gone. Lacy recounts a polished narrative about fighting alongside George Washington at the Battle of Bunker Hill and devours three servings of apricot pudding before Marinus limps into the dining room.

  “We despaired,” says Vorstenbosch, “of your joining us, Doctor.”

  “A cracked clavicle,” Marinus begins, as he sits down, “a fractured ulna; a broken jaw; a splintered rib; three teeth gone; grievous bruising in general, to his face and genitals in particular; and a kneecap part detached from its femur. When he walks again, he shall limp as skillfully as I, and, as you saw, his looks are gone for good.”

  Fischer drinks his Yankee mash as if this has nothing to do with him.

  “Then the slave is not,” asks Van Cleef, “in danger of his life?”

  “As of now, no, but I don’t discount infections and fevers.”

  “For how long”—Vorstenbosch snaps a toothpick—“should he convalesce?”

  “Until he is healed. Thereafter, I recommend his duties be light.”

  Lacy snorts. “Here, all slaves’ duties are light: Dejima is a field of clover.”

  “Have you extracted,” asks Vorstenbosch, “the slave’s version of events?”

  “I hope, sir,” Fischer says, “that Mr. Gerritszoon’s and my testimony is more than a mere ‘version of events.’”

  “Damage to company property must be investigated, Fischer.”

  Captain Lacy fans himself with his hat. “In Carolina, it would be Mr. Fischer’s compensation from the slave’s owners we’d be discussing.”

  “After, one trusts, establishing the facts. Dr. Marinus: why did the slave absent himself from the mustering? He’s been here years. He knows the rules.”

  “I’d blame those same ‘years.’” Marinus spoons himself some pudding. “They have worn away at him and induced a nervous collapse.”

  “Doctor, you are—” Lacy laughs and chokes. “You are incomparable! A ‘nervous collapse’? What next? A mule too melancholic to pull? A hen too lachrymose to lay?”

  “Sjako has a wife and son in Batavia,” says Marinus. “When Gijsbert Hemmij brought him to Dejima seven years ago, this family was divided. Hemmij promised Sjako his freedom in return for faithful service when he returned to Java.”

  “Had I but one dollar for every nigger spoiled,” Lacy exclaims, “by a rashly promised manumission, I could buy all of Florida!”

  “But when Chief Hemmij died,” Van Cleef objects, “his promise died, too.”

  “This spring, Daniel Snitker told Sjako the oath would be honored after the trading season.” Marinus stuffs tobacco into his pipe. “Sjako was led to believe he would be sailing to Batavia as a free man in a few weeks’ time and had fixed his heart on laboring for his family’s liberty upon the Shenandoah’s arrival.”

  “Snitker’s word,” says Lacy, “isn’t worth the paper it wasn’t written on.”

  “Just yesterday,” Marinus continues, pausing to light a taper from the candle and suck his pipe into life, “Sjako learned this promise is reneged and his freedom is dashed to pieces.”

  “The slave is to stay here,” says the chief, “for my term of office. Dejima lacks hands.”

  “Then why profess surprise”—the doctor breathes out a cloud of smoke—“at his state of mind? Seven plus five equals twelve when last I looked: twelve years. Sjako was brought here in his seventeenth year: he shan’t be leaving until his twenty-ninth. His son shall be sold long before then, and his wife mated to another.”

  “How can I ‘renege’ on a promise I never made?” Vorstenbosch objects.

  “That is an acute and logical point, sir,” says Peter Fischer.

  “My wife and daughters,” says Van Cleef, “I haven’t seen in eight years!”

  “You are a deputy.” Marinus picks at a scab of blood on his cuff. “Here to make yourself rich. Sjako is a slave, here to make his masters comfortable.”

  “A slave is a slave,” Peter Fischer declaims, “because he does a slave’s work!”

  “What about,” Lacy says, cleaning his ear with a fork prong, “a night at the theater, to lift his spirits? We could stage Othello, perhaps?”

  “Are we not in danger,” asks Van Cleef, “of losing sight of the principal point? That today a slave attempted to murder two of our colleagues?”

  “Another excellent point, sir,” says Fischer, “if I may say so.”

  Marinus places his thumbs together. “Sjako denies attacking his assailants.”

  Fischer leans back on his chair and declares to the chandelier, “Fa!”

  “Sjako says the two white masters set about him quite unprovoked.”

  “The would-be cutthroat,” Fischer states, “is a liar of the blackest dye.”

  “Blacks do lie.” Lacy opens his snuffbox. “Like geese shit slime.”

  Marinus places his pipe on its stand. “Why would Sjako attack you?”

  “Savages don’t need motives!” Fischer spits in the spittoon. “Your type, Dr. Marinus, sit at your meetings, nod wisely at wind about ‘the true cost of the sugar in our tea’ from an ‘improved Negro’ in wig and waistcoat. I, I, am not a man created by Swedish gardens but by Surinam jungles, where one sees the Negro in his natural habitat. Earn yourself one of these”—Peter Fischer unbuttons his shirt to display a three-inch scar above his collarbone—“and then tell me a savage has a soul just because he can recite the Lord’s Prayer, like any parrot.”

  Lacy peers close, impressed. “How did you
pick up that souvenir?”

  “Whilst recuperating at Goed Accoord,” Fischer answers, glowering at the doctor, “a plantation on the Commewina, two days upriver from Paramaribo. My platoon had gone to cleanse the basin of runaway slaves who attack in gangs. The colonists call them ‘rebels’; I call them ‘vermin.’ We had burned many of their nests and yam fields, but the dry season overtook us, when hell has no worse hole. Not one of my men was free from beriberi or ringworm fever. The house blacks of Goed Accoord betrayed our weakness, and on the third dawn, they slithered up to the house and attacked. Hundreds of the vipers crawled out of the dry slime and dropped from the trees. With musket, bayonet, and bare hands, my men and I made a valiant defense, but when a mace struck my skull, I collapsed. Hours must have passed. When I awoke, my arms and feet were bound. My jaw was—how do you say?—mislocated. I lay in a row of wounded men in the drawing room. Some begged for mercy, but no Negro understands the concept. The slave leader arrived and bidded his butchers extract the men’s hearts for their victory feast. This they did”—Fischer swills his mash around his glass—“slowly, without first killing their victims.”

  “Such barbarity and wickedness,” Van Cleef declares, “beggars belief!”

  Vorstenbosch sends Philander and Weh downstairs for bottles of Rhenish.

  “My unluckier comrades, Swiss Fourgeoud, DeJohnette, and my bosom friend, Tom Isberg, they suffered the agonies of Christ. Their screams shall haunt me until I die, and so shall the blacks’ laughter. They stored the hearts in a chamber pot, just inches from where I lay. The room stunk of the slaughterhouse; the air was black with flies. It was darkness when my turn came. I was the last but one. They slung me on the table. Despite my fear, I played dead and prayed God to take my soul quickly. One then uttered, “Son de go sleeby caba. Mekewe liby den tara dago tay tamara.” Meaning, the sun was sinking, they’d leave these last two ‘dogs’ for the following day. The drumming, feasting, and fornication had begun, and the butchers were loath to miss the fun. So, a butcher impaled me to the table with a bayonet, like a butterfly collector’s pin, and I was left without a guard.”