The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (67 page)

But De Zoet
, the captain consoles himself,
shall be dead within the minute
.

“Double-tie those breech ropes,” orders Waldron. “You saw why.”

Might Hovell be right?
the captain wonders.
Has my pain been thinking for me these last three days?

“Carronades ready to fire, sir,” Waldron is saying, “at your word.”

The captain fills his lungs to pass the death sentence on the two Dutchmen.

They know
. Marinus grips the rail, looking away, flinching, but staying put. De Zoet removes his hat; his hair is copper, untamable, bedraggled …

… and Penhaligon sees Tristram, his beautiful, one-and-only, red-haired son, waiting for death …

W
ILLIAM PITT SNORTS AT THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS ON THE
stairs. Jacob de Zoet keeps his telescope trained on the
Phoebus:
the frigate is a thousand yards out, tacking adroitly against the wet northwesterly wind on a course to bring her past the Chinese factory—some inhabitants are sitting on their roofs to watch the spectacle—and alongside Dejima.

“So Arie Grote finally gave you his alleged boa constrictor hat?”

“I ordered all hands to the magistracy, Doctor. Even yours.”

“Stay here, Domburger, and you’ll be needing a physician.”

The frigate opens her gunports,
clack, clack, clack
, hammers on nails.

“Or else”—Marinus blows his nose—“a gravedigger. The rain is in for the day. Look.” He rustles something. “Kobayashi sends you a raincoat.”

Jacob lowers his telescope. “Did its previous owner die of pox?”

“A little kindness for a dead enemy, so your ghost won’t haunt him.”

Jacob puts the straw raincoat on his shoulders. “Where’s Eelattu?”

“Where all sane men are: at our magistracy quarters.”

“Was your harpsichord transported without mishap?”

“Harpsichord and pharmacopoeia alike; come and join them.”

Filaments of rain brush Jacob’s face. “Dejima is my station.”

“If you’re supposing the English shan’t fire because a jumped-up clerk—”

“I suppose nothing of the sort, Doctor, but—” He notices twenty or more scarlet-coated marines climbing up the shrouds. “They’re to repel boarders … probably. To take potshots, she’d have to come within … a hundred and twenty yards. There’d be too much risk of grounding the ship in waters hostile to British hulls.”

“I’d rather a swarm of musket balls than a volley of broadsides.”

Grant me courage
, Jacob prays. “My life is in the hands of God.”

“Oh, the
grief,”
Marinus heaves, “those few pious words can bring about.”

“Repair to the magistracy, then, so you won’t have to suffer them.”

Marinus leans on the railing. “Young Oost was thinking you must have some secret defense up your sleeve, something to reverse our reverses.”

“My defense,” Jacob removes his Psalter from his breast pocket, “is my faith.”

In the shelter of his greatcoat, Marinus examines the old, thick volume and fingers the musket ball, fast in its crater. “Whose heart was
this
boring into?”

“My grandfather’s, but it’s been in my family since Calvin’s day.”

Marinus reads the title page. “Psalms? Domburger, you
are
a two-legged cabinet of wonders! How did you smuggle ashore
this
rattle-bag of uneven translations from the Aramaic?”

“Ogawa Uzaemon turned a blind eye at a crucial moment.”

“‘It is
He
that giveth salvation unto kings,’” reads Marinus, “‘who delivereth David His servant from the hurtful sword.’”

The wind carries the sound of orders being relayed about the
Phoebus
.

In Edo Square, an officer shouts at his men; a chorus replies.

A few yards behind them, the Dutch flag flaps and rustles.

“That tricolored tablecloth wouldn’t die for
you
, Domburger.”

The
Phoebus
bears down: she is sleek, beautiful, and malign.

“Nobody ever died for a flag, only what the flag symbolizes.”

“I’m agog to learn what you
are
risking your life for.” Marinus thrusts his hands into his eccentric greatcoat. “It can’t just be because the English captain dubbed you a ‘shopkeeper.’”

“For all we know, that flag is the last Dutch flag in the world.”

“For all we know, it is. But it still wouldn’t die for you.”

“He”—Jacob notices the English captain watching them through his
telescope—“believes we Dutch are cowards. But starting with Spain, every power in our rowdy neighborhood has tried to extinguish our nation. Every power failed. Not even the North Sea has dislodged us from our muddy fringe of the continent, and why?”

“Here’s why, Domburger: because you have nowhere else to go!”

“It’s because we are stubborn sons of guns, Doctor.”

“Would your uncle want you to demonstrate Dutch manliness by dying in a crush of roof tiles and masonry?”

“My uncle would quote Goethe: ‘Our friends show us what we
can
do; our enemies teach us what we must do.’ Jacob distracts himself by studying the ship’s figurehead of the frigate—a mere six hundred yards away now—through his telescope. Its carver endowed Phoebus with a diabolic determination. “Doctor, you must go now.”

“But consider Dejima post De Zoet! We’d be reduced to Chief Ouwehand and Deputy Grote. Lend me your telescope.”

“Grote is our best merchant: he could sell sheep shit to shepherds.”

William Pitt snorts at the
Phoebus
with a very human defiance.

Jacob takes off Kobayashi’s straw coat and puts it on the ape.

“Please, Doctor.” Rain wets wooden boards. “Don’t add to my debt of guilt.”

Gulls vacate the roof ridge of the boarded-up Interpreters’ Guild.

“You’re absolved! I’m indestructible, like a serial Wandering Jew. I’ll wake up tomorrow—after a few months—and start all over again. Behold: Daniel Snitker is on the quarterdeck. It’s his hominid walk that betrays him …”

Jacob’s fingers touch his kinked nose.
Was it only last year?

The
Phoebus
’s master shouts orders. Sailors on the yards furl the topsails …

… and the warship drifts to a dead halt, three hundred yards out.

Jacob’s fear is the size of a new internal organ, between his heart and his liver.

A gang of the topmen cup their mouths and shout at the acting chief, “Scrub, little Dutch boy, scrub scrub scrub!” and wave the reverse of their index and middle fingers.

“Why”—Jacob’s voice is taut and high—“why
do
the English do that?”

“I believe it goes back to archers at the Battle of Agincourt.”

A cannon is run through the aft-most port; then another; then all twelve.

Lapwings fly low over the stony water; their wingtips drip.

“They’re going to do it.” Jacob’s voice is not his own. “Marinus!
Go!
”

“As a matter of fact, Piet Baert told me that one winter—near Palermo, I believe—Grote actually
did
sell sheep shit to shepherds.”

Jacob sees the English captain open his mouth and bellow …

“Fire!”
Jacob’s eyes clench tight; he puts his hand on the Psalter.

Rain baptizes each second until the cannons explode.

STACCATO THUNDER
bludgeoned Jacob’s senses. The sky swung sideways. One tardy cannon fired after the others. He has no memory of throwing himself onto the watchtower’s decking, but here is where he finds himself. He checks his limbs. They are still there. His knuckles are grazed and, mysteriously, his left testicle is aching, but he is otherwise unharmed.

All the dogs are barking and the crows are crazed.

Marinus is leaning on the railing. “Warehouse number six needs rebuilding; there’s a big hole in the seawall behind the guild; Constable Kosugi shall probably”—from Seawall Lane comes an almighty sigh and crash—“shall certainly be lodging elsewhere tonight, and I pissed my thigh from fear. Our glorious flag, as you see, is unhurt. Half of their shots flew over us”—the doctor looks landward—“and caused damage ashore.
Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, Auri sacra fames.”

The frigate’s smoke shroud is being torn by the breeze.

Jacob stands up and tries to breathe normally. “Where’s William Pitt?”

“Ran off: one
Macaca fuscata
is cleverer than two
Homines sapientes.”

“I didn’t know you were a veteran of battle, Doctor.”

Marinus blows out a mouthful of air. “Did close-range artillery knock any sense into you, or are we staying?”

I can’t abandon Dejima
, Jacob knows,
and I am terrified of dying
.

“Staying, then.” Marinus clicks his tongue. “We have a short interval before the British resume their performance.”

Ryûgaji Temple intones the Hour of the Horse, as on any other day.

Jacob watches the land gate. A few uncertain guards venture out.

A group runs from Edo Square, over Holland Bridge.

He remembers Orito being led away into the palanquin.

He wonders how she is surviving and prays a wordless prayer.

Ogawa’s dogwood scroll tube is snug in his jacket pocket.

If I am killed, let it be found and read by somebody in authority
 …

Some of the Chinese merchants are pointing and waving from their roofs.

Activity in the
Phoebus
’s gunports promises another round.

If I don’t keep talking
, Jacob realizes,
I shall crack like a dropped dish
.

“I know what you
don’t
believe in, Doctor: what
do
you believe?”

“Oh, Descartes’s methodology, Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas, the efficacy of Jesuits’ bark … So little is actually
worthy
of either belief or disbelief. Better to strive to coexist than seek to disprove …”

Clouds spill over mountain ridges; rain drips off Arie Grote’s hat.

“Northern Europe is a place of cold light and clear lines”—Jacob knows he is spouting nonsense but cannot stop—“and so is Protestantism. The Mediterranean world is indomitable sunshine and impenetrable shade. So is Catholicism. Then this”—Jacob sweeps his hand inland—“this … numinous … Orient … its bells, its dragons, its millions … Here, notions of transmigrations, of karma, which are heresies at home, possess a—a—” The Dutchman sneezes.

“Bless you.” Marinus splashes rainwater on his face. “A plausibility?”

Jacob sneezes again. “I am making little sense.”

“One may make most sense of all when one makes no sense at all.”

Up a slope of crowded roofs, smoke hemorrhages from a cleft house.

Jacob tries to find the House of Wistaria, but Nagasaki is a labyrinth. “Do believers in karma, Doctor, believe that one’s … one’s unintentional sins come back to haunt one not in the next life but within this one, within a single lifetime?”

“Whatever your putative crime, Domburger,” Marinus says, producing an apple for them each, “I doubt it can be so bad that our current situation is a measured and justified punishment.” He puts his apple to his mouth—

THE ARTILLERY BLAST
this time knocks both men over.

Jacob comes to, curled up like a boy under blankets in a haunted room.

Fragments of tile smash on the ground.
I lost my apple
, he thinks.

“By Christ, Mahomet, and Fhu Tsi Weh,” says Marinus, “that was close.”

I survived twice
, thinks Jacob,
but troubles come in threes
.

The Dutchmen help each other up like a pair of invalids.

The land gate’s doors are blown away, and the tidy ranks and files of guards in Edo Square are no longer tidy. Two shots tore through the soldiers in two different places:
like marbles
, Jacob recalls a boyhood game,
through wooden men
.

Five or six or seven flesh-and-blood men are down, twitching and screaming.

There is chaos and shouting and running and places of bright red.

More fruits of your principles
, mocks an inner voice,
President de Zoet
.

The
Phoebus
’s sailors have stopped taunting them now.

“Look below.” The doctor points to the roof underneath. A shot passed first through one side, then out through the other. Half the stairs going down to Flag Square were knocked away. As they watch, the roof ridge collapses into the upper room. “Poor Fischer,” remarks Marinus. “His new friends have broken all his toys. Look, Domburger, you’ve made your stand and there’s no dishonor in—”

Timber sings and the watchtower stairs crash to the ground.

“Well,” says Marinus, “we could jump into Fischer’s room … possibly …”

Damn me
—Jacob trains his telescope on Penhaligon—
if I run now
.

He sees gunners up on the quarterdeck. “Doctor, the carronades …”

He sees Penhaligon training his telescope on him.

Damn you, watch and learn
, Jacob thinks,
about Dutch shopkeepers
.

One of the English officers appears to be remonstrating with the captain.

The captain ignores him. Barrels are lifted to the mouths of the ship’s deadliest close-range guns. “Chain shot, Doctor,” says Jacob. “Hazard that leap.”

He lowers his telescope: there is no gain in looking further.

Marinus throws his apple at the
Phoebus. “Cras ingens iterabimus aequor.”

Jacob imagines the dense cones of shrapnel hurtling toward them ….

… about forty feet wide by the time they reach the platform.

The shrapnel will tear through his clothes, skin, and viscera and out again …

Don’t let death
, Jacob reproves himself,
be your final thought
.

He tries to map, backward, the tortuous paths that led to this present …

Vorstenbosch, Zwaardecroone, Anna’s father, Anna’s kiss, Napoleon …

“You have no objection if I say the Twenty-third Psalm, Doctor?”