The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (69 page)

“My position on the watchtower,” says Jacob, “was also without hope.”

Chamberlain Tomine’s nod to Interpreter Goto indicates,
It is time
.

“Your Honor.” Nervously, Jacob produces the scroll from his inner jacket. “Humbly, I beg you to read this scroll when you are alone.”

Shiroyama frowns and looks at his chamberlain. “Precedent would instruct,” Tomine tells Jacob, “all letters from Dutchmen to be translated by two members of the Interpreters’ Guild of Dejima, and then—”

“A British warship sailed into Nagasaki and opened fire, and what did precedent do about it?” Shiroyama is irritated out of his melancholy. “But if this is a petition for more copper, or any other matter, then Chief de Zoet should know that my star in Edo is not on the rise ….”

“A sincere personal letter, Your Honor. Please forgive its poor Japanese.”

Jacob senses the lie deflate Tomine’s and Goto’s curiosity.

The innocuous-looking scroll tube passes into the magistrate’s hands.

G
ULLS WHEEL THROUGH SPOKES OF SUNLIGHT OVER GRACIOUS
roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike-topped walls, and triple-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas, and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule drivers, mules, and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunchbacked makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed from kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries’ vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bathhouse adulterers; heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters’ sons sharpening axes; candlemakers rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottled-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and
aging rakes by other men’s wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night soil; gatekeepers; beekeepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet nurses; perjurers; cutpurses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight.
This world
, he thinks,
contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself
.

KAWASEMI HOLDS UP
a white under-robe for Shiroyama. She is wearing her kimono decorated with blue Korean morning glories.
The wheel of seasons is broken
, says the spring pattern this autumn day,
and so am I
.

Shiroyama inserts his fifty-year-old arms into the sleeves.

She ducks in front of him, tugging and smoothing the material.

Kawasemi now wraps the
obi
sash above his waist.

She chose a green-and-white design:
Green for life, white for death?

The expensively trained courtesan ties it in a figure-of-ten cross.

“It always takes me ten times,” he used to say, “to get the knot to stay.”

Kawasemi lifts the thigh-length
haori
jacket; he takes it and puts it on. The fine black silk is crisp as snow and heavy as air. Its sleeves are embroidered with his family’s crest.

Two rooms away he hears Naozumi’s twenty-month-old footsteps.

Kawasemi passes him his
inyo
box: it contains nothing, but without it he would feel unprepared. Shiroyama threads its cord through the netsuke toggle; she has chosen him a Buddha carved in hornbill.

Kawasemi’s steady hands pass his
tantô
dagger in its scabbard.

Would that I could die in your house
, he thinks,
where I was happiest
 …

He slides its scabbard through his
obi
sash in the prescribed manner.

… but decorum must be seen to be observed
.

“Shush!” says the maid in the next room.
“Suss!”
laughs Naozumi.

A chubby hand slides the door open and the boy, who looks like Kawasemi when he smiles and like Shiroyama when he frowns, darts into the room, ahead of the mortified maid.

“I beg Your Lordship’s pardon,” she says, kneeling at the threshold.

“Found you!” singsongs the toothy grinning toddler, and tips over.

“Finish packing,” Kawasemi tells her maid. “I’ll summon you when it’s time.”

The maid bows and withdraws. Her eyes are red from crying.

The small human whirlwind stands, rubs his knee, and totters to his father.

“Today is an important day,” says the magistrate of Nagasaki.

Naozumi half-sings, half-asks, “‘Ducky in the duck pond,
ichi-nisan?’
”

With a look, Shiroyama tells his concubine not to fret.

Better for him now
, he thinks,
to be too young to understand
.

“Come here,” says Kawasemi, kneeling, “come here, Nao-
kun
 …”

The boy sits on his mother’s lap and loses his hand in her hair.

Shiroyama sits a pace away and circles his hands in a conjuror’s flourish …

… and in his palm is an ivory castle sitting on an ivory mountain.

The man turns it around, inches from the boy’s captured eyes.

Tiny steps; cloud motifs; pine trees; masonry grown from rock …

“Your great-grandfather carved this,” says Shiroyama, “from a unicorn horn.”

… an arched gate; windows; arrow slits; and, at the top, a pagoda.

“You can’t see him,” says the magistrate, “but a prince lives in this castle.”

You will forget this story
, he knows,
but your mother will remember
.

“The prince’s name is the same as ours:
shiro
for the castle,
yama
for the mountain. Prince Shiroyama is very special. You and I must one day go to our ancestors, but the prince in this tower never dies: not for so long as a Shiroyama outside—me, you, your son—is alive, and holds his castle, and looks inside.”

Naozumi takes the ivory carving and holds it against his eye.

Shiroyama does not gather his son into his arms and breathe in his sweet smell.

“Thank you, Father.” Kawasemi angles the boy’s head to imitate a bow.

Naozumi leaps away with his prize, from mat to mat to door.

He turns to look at his father, and Shiroyama thinks,
Now
.

Then the boy’s footfalls carry him away forever.

Lust tricks babies from their parents
, thinks Shiroyama,
mishap, duty
 …

Marigolds in the vase are the precise shade of summer, remembered.

… but perhaps the luckiest are those born from an unthought thought: that the intolerable gulf between lovers can be bridged only by the bones and cartilage of a new being
.

The bell of Ryûgaji Temple intones the Hour of the Horse.

Now
, he thinks,
I have a murder to commit
.

“It is best that you leave,” Shiroyama tells his concubine.

Kawasemi looks at the ground, determined not to cry.

“If the boy shows promise at
go
, engage a master of the Honinbo School.”

THE VESTIBULE OUTSIDE
the Hall of Sixty Mats and the long gallery leading to the front courtyard is crammed with kneeling advisers, councillors, inspectors, headmen, guards, servants, exchequer officials, and the staff of his household. Shiroyama stops.

Crows smear rumors across the matted, sticky sky.

“All of you: raise your faces. I want to see your faces.”

Two or three hundred heads look up: eyes, eyes, eyes …

… 
dining on a ghost
, Shiroyama thinks,
not yet dead
.

“Magistrate-
sama
!” Elder Wada has appointed himself spokesman.

Shiroyama looks at the irritating, loyal man. “Wada-
sama.”

“Serving the magistrate has been the deepest honor of my life …”

Wada’s face is taut with emotion; his eyes are shining.

“We learn from the magistrate’s wisdom and example …”

All
you
learned from me
, thinks Shiroyama,
is to ensure that one thousand men man the coastal defenses at all times
.

“Our memories of you shall dwell in our hearts and minds forever.”

As my body and my head
, thinks Shiroyama,
molder in the ground
.

“Nagasaki shall never”—his tears stream—“ever recover!”

Oh
, supposes Shiroyama,
by next week things will be back to normal
.

“On behalf of
all
who were—
are
—privileged to serve under you …”

Even the untouchable
, thinks the magistrate,
who empties the shit pot?

“… I, Wada, offer our undying gratitude for your patronage!”

Under the eaves, pigeons coo like grandmothers greeting babies.

“Thank you,” he says. “Serve my successor as you served me.”

So the stupidest speech I ever heard
, he thinks,
was the very last
.

Chamberlain Tomine opens the door for his final appointment.

THE DOOR RUMBLES
shut on the Hall of Sixty Mats. Nobody may enter now until Chamberlain Tomine emerges to announce Magistrate Shiroyama’s honorable death. The near-silent crowd in the gallery is returning to the bright realm of life. Out of respect for the magistrate, the entire wing shall remain vacant until nightfall but for the occasional guard.

One high screen is half open, but the hall is dim and cavernous.

Lord Abbot Enomoto is studying the state of play on the
go
board.

The abbot turns and bows. His acolyte bows low.

The magistrate begins the journey to the center of the room. His body pushes aside drapes of hushed air. His feet swish on the floor. Chamberlain Tomine follows in his master’s wake.

The Hall of Sixty Mats might be six hundred wide or six thousand long.

Shiroyama sits across the
go
table from his enemy. “It is unpardonably selfish to lay these last two impositions on such a busy man.”

“Your Honor’s requests,” replies Enomoto, “pay me a singular compliment.”

“I had heard of Enomoto-sama’s accomplishments as a swordsman, mentioned in low, awed tones, long before I met you in person.”

“People exaggerate such stories, but it is true that, down the years, five men have asked me to be a
kaishaku
second at their deaths. I discharged those duties competently.”

“Your name came to mind, Lord Abbot. Yours and no other.” Shiroyama glances down at Enomoto’s sash for his scabbard.

“My acolyte”—the abbot nods at the youth—“has brought it.”

The sword, wrapped in black, lies on a square of red velvet.

On a side table are a white tray, four black cups, and a red gourd.

A white linen sheet, large enough to enfold a corpse, lies at a tactful distance.

“Your wish is still”—Enomoto indicates the game—“to finish what we began?”

“One must do something before one dies.” The magistrate drapes his
haori
jacket over his knees and turns his attention to the game. “Have you decided your next move?”

Enomoto places a white stone to threaten black’s eastern outpost.

The cautious movement of the stone sounds like the
click
of a blind man’s cane.

Shiroyama makes a safe play that is both a bridge to and a bridgehead against white’s north.

To win
, his father taught him,
purify yourself of the
desire
to win
.

Enomoto secures his northern army by opening an eye in its ranks.

The blind man moves fast:
click
goes his cane;
click
, a stone is placed.

A few moves later, Shiroyama’s black takes six white prisoners.

“They were living on borrowed time,” Enomoto remarks, “at crippling interest.” He plants a spy deep behind black’s western frontier.

Shiroyama ignores it and starts a road between his western and central armies.

Enomoto places another strange stone in the southwest of nowhere.

Two moves later, Shiroyama’s bold black bridge is only three stones from completion.
Surely
, thinks the magistrate,
he can’t allow me to go unchallenged?

Enomoto places a stone within hailing distance of his western spy …

… and Shiroyama sees the way stations of a black cordon, curving in a crescent from southwest to northeast.

If white prevents black’s main armies conjoining at this late stage …

… 
my empire
, Shiroyama sees,
is split into three paltry fiefdoms
.