The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (49 page)

The human forms around the edges bestir themselves.

I shan’t beg for my life
, Uzaemon avows,
but I shall learn why and how
. “How much did you pay Shuzai to betray me?”

“Come! The lord of Kyôga’s favor is worth more than a hunter’s bounty.”

“There was a young man, a guard, who died at the halfway gate …”

“A spy in the pay of the lord of Saga: your adventure gave us a pleasing way to kill him.”

“Why bother bringing me all the way up Mount Shiranui?”

“Assassinations in Nagasaki can lead to awkward questions, and the poetry of your dying so very near your beloved—mere rooms away!—was irresistible.”

“Let me see her.” The wasps swarm in Uzaemon’s brain. “Or I will kill you from the other side.”

“How gratifying: a dying curse from a Shirandô scholar! Alas, I have empirical proof enough to satisfy a Descartes or even a Marinus that dying curses don’t work. Down the ages, many hundreds of men, women, and even quite small children have all vowed to drag me down to hell. Yet, as you see, I am still here, walking this beautiful earth.”

He wants to taste my fear
. “So you believe your order’s demented creeds?”

“Ah, yes. We found some pleasant letters on your person, but not a certain dogwood scroll tube. Now, I shan’t pretend you can save yourself: your death became necessary from the hour the herbalist came
knocking on your gate. But you can save the Ogawa residence from the ruinous fire that shall incinerate it in the sixth month of this year. What do you say?”

“Two letters,” Uzaemon lies, “were delivered to Ogawa Mimasaku today. One removes me from the Ogawa family register. The other divorces my wife. Why destroy a house that has no connection to me?”

“Pure spite. Give me the scroll, or die knowing they die, too.”

“Tell me why you abducted Dr. Aibagawa’s daughter when you did.”

Enomoto decides to indulge him. “I feared I might lose her. A page from a Dutchman’s notebook came into my possession, thanks to your colleague Kobayashi’s good offices. Look. I brought it.”

Enomoto unfolds a sheet of European paper and holds it up:

Retain this
, Uzaemon tells his memory.
Show me her, at the end
.

“De Zoet draws a fair likeness.” Enomoto folds it up. “Fair enough to worry Aibagawa Seian’s widow that a Dutchman had designs on the family’s best asset. The dictionary your servant smuggled to Orito settled the matter. My bailiff persuaded the widow to ignore funerary protocol and settle her stepdaughter’s future without further delay.”

“Did you tell that wretched woman about your demented practices?”

“What an earthworm knows of Copernicus, you know of the creeds.”

“You keep a harem of deformities for your monks’ pleasure—”

“Can you hear how like a child trying to postpone his bedtime you sound?”

“Why not present a paper to the academy,” Uzaemon asks, “about—”

“Why do you mortal
gnats
suppose that your incredulity
matters?”

“—about murdering your ‘harvested gifts’ to ‘distill their souls’?”

“This is your last opportunity to save the Ogawa house from—”

“And then
bottling
them, like perfume, and ‘imbibing’ them, like medicine, and cheating death? Why not share your magical revelation with the world?” Uzaemon scowls at the shifting figures. “Here’s my guess: because there’s one small part of you that’s still sane, an inner Jiritsu who says, ‘This is evil.’”

“Oh,
e
vil. Evil, evil, evil. You always wield that word as if it were a sword and not a vapid conceit. When you suck the yolk from an egg, is this ‘evil’? Survival is Nature’s law, and my order holds—or, better,
is
—the secret of surviving mortality. Newborn infants are a messy requisite—after the first two weeks of life, the enmeshed soul can’t be extracted—and a fifty-strong order needs a constant supply for its own use, and to purchase the favors of an elite few. Your Adam Smith would understand. Without the order, moreover, the gifts wouldn’t exist in the first place. They are an ingredient we manufacture. Where is your ‘evil’?”

“Eloquent lunacy, Lord Abbot Enomoto, is still lunacy.”

“I am over six hundred years old. You shall die, in minutes …”

He believes his creeds
, Uzaemon sees.
He believes every single word
.

“… so which is stronger? Your reason? Or my eloquent lunacy?”

“Free me,” Uzaemon says, “free Miss Aibagawa, and I’ll tell you where the scr—”

“No, no, there can be no bargaining. Nobody outside the order may know the creeds and live. You must die, just as Jiritsu did, and that busy old herbalist …”

Uzaemon groans with grief. “She was
harmless.”

“She wanted to harm my order. We defend ourselves. But I want you to look at this—an artifact that Fate, in the guise of Vorstenbosch the Dutchman, sold me.” Enomoto exhibits a foreign-made pistol, inches from Uzaemon’s face. “A pearl-inlaid handle, and craftsmanship exquisite enough to confound the Confucianists’ claim that Europeans lack souls. Since Shuzai told me of your heroic plans, it has been waiting. See
—see
, Ogawa, this concerns you—how one raises this ‘hammer’ to ‘half cock,’ loads the gun down the ‘muzzle’ thus: first, the gunpowder, and then with a lead ball wrapped in paper. One pushes it down with this ‘ramrod’ stored on the underside of the barrel …”

It’s now
. Uzaemon’s heart knocks like a bloodied fist.
It’s now
.

“… then one supplies the ‘flashpan,’ here, with a little powder, shuts its lid, and now our pistol is ‘primed and ready.’ Done, in half a Hollander’s minute. Yes, a master archer can string another arrow in the blink of an eye, but guns are manufactured more quickly than master archers. Any son of a shit carrier could wield one of these and bring down a mounted samurai. The day is coming—you shan’t see it, but I shall—when such firearms transform even our secretive world. When one squeezes the trigger, a flint strikes this ‘frizzen’ as the flashpan lid opens. The spark ignites the priming powder, sending a flame through this ‘touchhole’ into the combustion chamber. The main powder ignites, like a miniature cannon, and the lead ball bores through your—”

Enomoto presses the pistol’s muzzle against Uzaemon’s heart.

Uzaemon is aware of urine warming his thighs but is too scared for shame.

It’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now
 …

“—or maybe …” The pistol’s mouth plants a kiss on Uzaemon’s temple.

It’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now

“Animal terror,” a murmur enters Uzaemon’s ear, “has half dissolved your mind, so I shall provide you with a thought. Music, as it
were, to die to. The acolytes of the Order of Mount Shiranui are initiated into the twelve creeds, but they stay ignorant of the thirteenth until they become masters—one of whom you met this morning, the landlord at the Harubayashi Inn. The thirteenth creed pertains to an untidy loose end. Were our sisters—and housekeepers, in fact—to descend to the world below and discover that not one of their gifts, their children, is alive or known, questions might be asked. To avoid such unpleasantness, Suzaku administers a gentle drug at their rite of departure. This drug ensures a dreamless death, long before their palanquin reaches the foot of Mekura Gorge. They are then buried in that very bamboo grove into which you blundered this morning. So here is your final thought: your childlike failure to rescue Aibagawa Orito sentences her not only to twenty years of servitude—your ineptitude has, literally, killed her.”

The pistol rests on Ogawa Uzaemon’s forehead …

He expends his last moment on a prayer.
Avenge me
.

A click, a spring, a strangled whimper nothing now but

Now Now Now Now now now now now nownownow—

Thunder splits the rift where the sun floods in.

L
AST TRADING SEASON, IGNATIUS WHITTLED A SPOON FROM A BONE
. A fine spoon, in the shape of a fish. Master Grote saw the fine spoon, and he told Ignatius, “Slaves eat with fingers. Slaves cannot own spoons.” Then, Master Grote took the fine spoon. Later, I passed Master Grote and a Japanese gentleman. Master Grote was saying, “This spoon was made by the very hands of the famous Robinson Crusoe.” Later, Sjako heard Master Baert tell Master Oost how the Japanese gentleman had paid five lacquer bowls for Robinson Crusoe’s spoon. D’Orsaiy told Ignatius to hide his spoon better next time and trade with the coolies or carpenters. But Ignatius said, “Why? When Master Grote or Master Gerritszoon hunt through my straw next time, they find my earnings and take them. They say, ‘Slaves do not own. Slaves are owned.’”

Sjako said that masters do not allow slaves to own goods or money, because a slave with money could run away more easily. Philander said that such talk was bad talk. Cupido said to Ignatius that if he carves more spoons and gives them to Master Grote, Master Grote will value him more and surely treat him better. I said, those words are true if the master is a good master, but for a bad master, it is never true.

Cupido and Philander are favorites of the Dutch officers, because they play music at the dinner parties. They call themselves “servants” and use fancy Dutch words like “wigs” and “laces.” They talk about “my flute” and “my stockings.” But Philander’s flute and Cupido’s fat violin and their elegant costumes belong to their masters. They wear no
shoes. When the Vorstenbosch left last year, he sold them to the Van Cleef. They say they were “passed on” from the old chief to the new chief, but they were sold for five guineas each.

No, a slave cannot even say, “These are my fingers,” or “This is my skin.” We do not own our bodies. We do not own our families. Once, Sjako would talk about “my children back in Batavia.” He fathered his children, yes. But to his masters they are not “his.” To his masters, Sjako is like a horse, who fathered a foal on a mare. Here is the proof: when Sjako complained too bitterly that he had not seen his family for many years, Master Fischer and Master Gerritszoon beat him severely. Sjako walks with a limp now. He talks less.

Once, I thought this question:
Do I own my name?
I do not mean my slave names. My slave names change at the whims of my masters. The Acehnese slavers who stole me named me “Straight Teeth.” The Dutchman who bought me at Batavia slave market named me “Washington.” He was a bad master. Master Yang named me Yang Fen. He taught me tailoring and fed me the same food as his sons. My third owner was Master van Cleef. He named me “Weh” because of a mistake. When he asked Master Yang—using fancy Dutch words—for my name, the Chinaman thought the question was “From where does he hail?” and replied, “An island called Weh,” and my next slave name was fixed. But it is a happy mistake for me. On Weh, I was not a slave. On Weh, I was with my people.

My true name I tell nobody, so nobody can steal my name.

The answer, I think, is yes—my true name is a thing I own.

Sometimes another thought comes to me:
Do I own my memories?

The memory of my brother diving from the turtle rock, sleek and brave …

The memory of the typhoon bending the trees like grass, the sea roaring …

The memory of my tired, glad mother rocking the new baby to sleep, singing …

Yes—like my true name, my memories are things I own.

Once, I thought this thought:
Do I own this thought?

The answer was hidden in mist, so I asked Dr. Marinus’s servant, Eelattu.

Eelattu answered, yes, my thoughts are born in my mind, so they are mine. Eelattu said that I can own my mind, if I choose. I said, “Even a
slave?” Eelattu said, yes, if the mind is a strong place. So I created a mind like an island, like Weh, protected by deep blue sea. On my mind island, there are no bad-smelling Dutchmen, or sneering Malay servants, or Japanese men.

Master Fischer owns my body, then, but he does not own my mind. This I know, because of a test. When I shave Master Fischer, I imagine slitting open his throat. If he owned my mind, he would see this evil thought. But instead of punishing me, he just sits there with his eyes shut.

But I discovered there are problems with owning your mind. When I am on my mind island, I am as free as any Dutchman. There, I eat capons and mango and sugared plums. There, I lie with Master van Cleef’s wife in the warm sand. There, I build boats and weave sails with my brother and my people. If I forget their names, they remind me. We speak in the tongue of Weh and drink
kava
and pray to our ancestors. There, I do not stitch or scrub or fetch or carry for masters.

Then I hear, “Are you
listening
to me, idle dog?”

Then I hear, “If you won’t move for
me
, here’s my whip!”