The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

  The Almelo clock divides time with bejeweled tweezers.

  “You recall, De Zoet, my visit to the old fort prior to our sailing?”

  “I do, sir, yes. The governor-general spoke with you for two hours.”

  “It was a weighty discussion about nothing less than the future of Dutch Java. Which you hold in your hands.” Vorstenbosch nods at the copper bar. “That’s it.”

  Jacob’s melted reflection is captured in the metal. “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “The bleak picture of the company’s dilemma painted by Daniel Snitker was not, alas, hyperbole. What he did not add, because none outside the Council of the Indies knows, is that Batavia’s treasury is starved away to nothing.”

  Carpenters hammer across the street. Jacob’s bent nose aches.

  “Without Japanese copper, Batavia cannot mint coins.” Vorstenbosch’s fingers twirl an ivory paper-knife. “Without coins, the native battalions shall melt back into the jungle. There is no sugarcoating this truth, De Zoet: the High Government can maintain our garrisons on half pay until next July. Come August, the first deserters leave; come October, the native chiefs smoke our weakness out; and by Christmas, Batavia succumbs to anarchy, rapine, slaughter, and John Bull.”

  Unbidden, Jacob’s mind pictures these same catastrophes unfolding.

  “Every chief resident in Dejima’s history,” Vorstenbosch continues, “tried to squeeze more precious metals out of Japan. All they ever received were hand-wringing and unkept promises. The wheels of commerce trundled on regardless, but should we fail, De Zoet, the Netherlands loses the Orient.”

  Jacob places the copper on the desk. “How can we succeed where …”

  “Where so many others failed? Audacity, pugnacity, and by an historic letter.” Vorstenbosch slides a writing set across the desk. “Pray take down a rough copy.”

  Jacob readies his board, uncorks the inkpot, and dips a quill.

  “‘I, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, P. G. van Overstraten,’” Jacob looks at his patron, but there is no mistake, “‘on this, the’—was it the sixteenth of May we left Batavia’s roadstead?”

  The pastor’s nephew swallows. “The fourteenth, sir.”

  “—‘on this, the … ninth day of May, 1799, send cordial salutations to their august excellencies the Council of Elders, as one true friend may communicate his innermost thoughts to another with neither flattery nor fear of disfavor, concerning the venerable amity between the Empire of Japan and the Batavian Republic’—stop.”

  “The Japanese have not been informed of the revolution, sir.”

  “Then let us be ‘the United Provinces of the Netherlands’ for now. ‘Many times have the shogun’s servants in Nagasaki amended the terms of trade to the company’s impoverishment’—no, use ‘disadvantage.’ Then, ‘The so-called flower-money tax is at a usurious level; the rix-dollar has been devalued three times in ten years, while the copper quota has decreased to a trickle’—stop.”

  Jacob’s hard-pressed nib crumples; he takes up another.

  “‘Yet the company’s petitions are met with endless excuses. The dangers of the voyage from Batavia to your distant empire were demonstrated by the Octavia’s foundering, in which two hundred Dutchmen lost their lives. Without fair compensation, the Nagasaki trade is tenable no longer.’ New paragraph. ‘The company’s directors in Amsterdam have issued a final memorandum concerning Dejima. Its substance may be summarized thus …’” Jacob’s quill skips over an ink-blot. “‘Without the copper quota is increased to twenty thousand piculs’—underline the words, De Zoet, and add it in numerals—‘the seventeen directors of the Dutch East Indies Company must conclude that its Japanese partners no longer wish to maintain foreign trade. We shall evacuate Dejima, removing our goods, our livestock, and such materials from our warehouses as may be salvaged with immediate effect.’ There. That should set loose the fox in the chicken coop, should it not?”

  “A half dozen large ones, sir. But did the governor-general make this threat?”

  “Asiatic minds respect force majeure; best they are prodded into compliancy.”

  The answer, then, sees Jacob, is no. “Suppose the Japanese call this bluff?”

  “One calls a bluff only if one scents a bluff. Thus you are party to this stratagem, as are Van Cleef, Captain Lacy, and myself, and nobody else. Now conclude: ‘For a copper quota of twenty thousand piculs, I shall send another ship next year. Should the shogun’s council offer’—underline—‘one picul less than twenty thousand, they shall, in effect, take an ax to the tree of commerce, consign Japan’s single major port to rot, and brick over your empire’s sole window to the world’—yes?”

  “Bricks are not in wide usage here, sir. ‘Board up’?”

  “Make good. ‘This loss shall blind the shogun to new European progress, to the delight of the Russians and other foes who survey your empire with acquisitive eyes. Your own descendants yet unborn beg you to make the correct choice at this hour, as does,’ new line, ‘Your sincere ally, et cetera, et cetera, P. G. van Overstraten, Governor-General of the East Indies, Chevalier of the Order of the Orange Lion,’ and any other titular lilies that occur to you, De Zoet. Two fair copies by noon, in time for Kobayashi; end both with van Overstraten’s signature—as lifelike as you may—one to be sealed with this.” Vorstenbosch passes him the signet ring embossed with the VOC of the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie.

  Jacob is startled by the last two commands. “I am to sign and seal the letters, sir?”

  “Here is”—Vorstenbosch finds a sample—“Van Overstraten’s signature.”

  “To forge the governor-general’s signature would be …” Jacob suspects the true answer would be “a capital crime.”

  “Don’t look so privy-faced, De Zoet! I’d sign it myself, but our stratagem requires Van Overstraten’s masterly flourish and not my crabby left-handed smudge. Consider the governor-general’s gratitude when we return to Batavia with a threefold increase in copper exports: my claim to a seat on the council shall be irrefutable. Why would I then forsake my loyal secretary? Of course, if … qualms or a loss of nerve prevents you from doing as I ask, I could just as easily summon Mr. Fischer.”

  Do it now, thinks Jacob, worry later. “I shall sign, sir.”

  “There is no time to waste, then: Kobayashi shall be here in”—the chief resident consults the clock—“forty minutes. We’ll want the sealing wax on the finished letter cool by then, won’t we?”

  THE FRISKER AT THE land gate finishes his task; Jacob climbs into his two-bearer palanquin. Peter Fischer squints in the merciless afternoon sunlight. “Dejima is yours for an hour or two, Mr. Fischer,” Vorstenbosch tells him from the chief’s palanquin. “Return her to me in her current condition.”

  “Of course.” The Prussian achieves a flatulent grimace. “Of course.”

  Fischer’s grimace turns to a glower as Jacob’s palanquin passes.

  The retinue leaves the land gate and passes over Holland Bridge.

  The tide is out: Jacob sees a dead dog in the silt and now …

  … he is hovering three feet over the forbidden ground of Japan.

  There is a wide square of sand and grit, deserted but for a few soldiers. This plaza is named, Van Cleef told him, Edo Square, to remind the independent-minded Nagasaki populace where the true power lies. On one side is the shogunal keep: ramped stones, high walls and steps. Through another set of gates, the retinue is submersed in a shaded thoroughfare. Hawkers cry, beggars implore, tinkers clang pans, ten thousand wooden clogs knock against flagstones. The Dutchmen’s guards yell, ordering the townspeople aside. Jacob tries to capture every fleeting impression for letters to Anna, and to his sister, Geertje, and his uncle. Through the palanquin’s grille, he smells steamed rice, sewage, incense, lemons, sawdust, yeast, and rotting seaweed. He glimpses gnarled old women, pocked monks, unmarried girls with blackened teeth. Would that I had a sketchbook, the foreigner thinks, and three days ashore to fill
it. Children on a mud wall make owl eyes with their forefingers and thumbs, chanting “Oranda-me, Oranda-me, Oranda-me”: Jacob realizes they are impersonating “round” European eyes and remembers a string of urchins following a Chinaman in London. The urchins pulled their eyes into narrow slants and sang, “Chinese, Siamese, if you please, Japanese.”

  People pray cheek by jowl before a cramped shrine whose gate is shaped like a π.

  There is a row of stone idols; twists of paper tied to a plum tree.

  Nearby, street acrobats perform a snonky song to drum up business.

  The palanquins pass over an embanked river; the water stinks.

  Jacob’s armpits, groin, and knees are itchy with sweat; he fans himself with his clerk’s portfolio.

  There is a girl in an upper window; there are red lanterns hanging from the eaves, and she is idly tickling the hollow of her throat with a goose feather. Her body cannot be ten years old, but her eyes belong to a much older woman.

  Wistaria in bloom foams over a crumbling wall.

  A hairy beggar kneeling by a puddle of vomit turns out to be a dog.

  A minute later, the retinue stops before a gate of iron and oak.

  The doors open and guards salute the palanquins passing into a courtyard.

  Twenty pikemen are being drilled in the ferocious sun.

  In the shade of a deep overhang, Jacob’s palanquin is lowered onto its stand.

  Ogawa Uzaemon opens its door. “Welcome to magistracy, Mr. de Zoet.”

  THE LONG GALLERY ends at a shady vestibule. “Here, we wait,” Interpreter Kobayashi tells them, and motions for them to sit on floor cushions brought by servants. The right branch of the vestibule ends in a row of sliding doors emblazoned with striped bulldogs boasting luxuriant eyelashes. “Tigers, supposedly,” says Van Cleef. “Behind it is our destination: the Hall of Sixty Mats.” The left branch leads to a more modest door decorated with a chrysanthemum. Jacob hears a baby crying a few rooms away. Ahead is a view over the magistracy walls and hot roofs, down to the bay, where the Shenandoah is anchored in the bleached haze. The smell of summer mingles with beeswax and fresh paper. The Dutchmen’s party removed their shoes at the entrance, and Jacob is thankful for Van Cleef’s earlier warning about holes in stockings. If Anna’s father could see me now, he thinks, paying court to the shogun’s highest official in Nagasaki. The officials and interpreters maintain a stern silence. “The floorboards,” Van Cleef comments, “are sprung to squeak, to foil assassins.”

  “Are assassins,” asks Vorstenbosch, “a serious nuisance in these parts?”

  “Probably not, nowadays, but old habits die hard.”

  “Remind me,” says the chief, “why one magistracy has two magistrates.”

  “When Magistrate Shiroyama is on duty in Nagasaki, Magistrate Ômatsu resides in Edo, and vice versa. They rotate annually. Should either commit any indiscretion, his counterpart would eagerly denounce him. Every seat of power in the empire is divided, and thereby neutered, in this way.”

  “Niccolò Machiavelli could teach the shogun very little, I fancy.”

  “Indeed not, sir. The Florentine would be the novice, I credit.”

  Interpreter Kobayashi shows disapproval at the bandying about of august names.

  “Might I direct your attention,” Van Cleef changes the subject, “to that antique crow-scarer hanging in the alcove over there?”

  “Good God,” Vorstenbosch peers closer, “it’s a Portuguese harquebus.”

  “Muskets were manufactured on an island in Satsuma after the Portuguese arrived there. Later, when it was realized that ten muskets wielded by ten steady-handed peasants could slay ten samurai, the shogun curtailed their manufacture. One can imagine the fate of a European monarch who sought to impose such a decree—”

  A tiger-emblazoned screen slides open, and a high official with a crushed nose emerges and walks to Interpreter Kobayashi. The interpreters bow low and Kobayashi introduces the official to Chief Vorstenbosch as Chamberlain Tomine. Tomine speaks in a tone as wintry as his demeanor. “‘Gentlemen,’” Kobayashi translates. “‘In Hall of Sixty Mats is magistrate and many advisers. You must show same obeisance to magistrate as to shogun.’”

  “Magistrate Shiroyama shall receive,” Vorstenbosch assures the interpreter, “exactly the respect he deserves.”

  Kobayashi does not look reassured.

  THE HALL OF SIXTY MATS is airy and shaded. Fifty or sixty sweating, fanning officials—all important-looking samurai—enclose a precise rectangle. Magistrate Shiroyama is identified by his central position and raised dais. His fifty-year-old face looks weathered by high office. Light enters the hall from a sunlit courtyard of white pebbles, contorted pine trees, and moss-coated rocks to the south. Hangings sway over openings to the west and east. A meaty-necked guard announces, “Oranda Kapitan!” and ushers the Dutchmen into the rectangle of courtiers, to three crimson cushions. Chamberlain Tomine speaks and Kobayashi translates: “‘Let the Dutchmen now pay respect.’”

  Jacob kneels on his cushion, places his clerk’s portfolio at his side, and bows. To his right, he is aware of Van Cleef doing the same, but, straightening up, he realizes that Vorstenbosch is still standing.

  “Where,” the chief resident turns to Kobayashi, “is my chair?”

  This triggers the muted commotion Vorstenbosch intended.

  The chamberlain fires a curt question at Interpreter Kobayashi.

  “In Japan,” Kobayashi tells Vorstenbosch, reddening, “there is no dishonor to seat on floor.”

  “How laudable. But I am more comfortable on a chair.”

  Kobayashi and Ogawa must pacify an angry chamberlain and placate a stubborn chief.

  “Please, Mr. Vorstenbosch,” says Ogawa, “in Japan, we have no chairs.”

  “May one not be improvised for a visiting dignitary? You!”

  The pointed-at official gasps and touches the tip of his own nose.

  “Yes: bring ten cushions. Ten. You understand ‘ten’?”

  In consternation, the official looks from Kobayashi to Ogawa and back.

  “Look, man!” Vorstenbosch dangles the cushion for a moment, drops it, and holds up ten fingers. “Bring ten cushions! Kobayashi, tell the tadpole what I want.”

  Chamberlain Tomine is demanding answers. Kobayashi explains why the chief refuses to kneel, while Vorstenbosch wears a smile of tolerant condescension.

  The Hall of Sixty Mats falls silent, ahead of the magistrate’s reaction.

  Shiroyama and Vorstenbosch hold each other’s gaze for a magnified moment.

  Then the magistrate produces a victor’s easy smile and nods. The chamberlain claps: two servants fetch cushions and pile them up until Vorstenbosch glows with satisfaction. “Observe,” the Dutch chief tells his compatriots, “the rewards of the resolute. Chief Hemmij and Daniel Snitker undermined our dignity by their kowtowing, and it falls to me,” he thumps the unwieldy pile, “to win it back.”

  Magistrate Shiroyama speaks to Kobayashi.

  “Magistrate asks,” translates the interpreter, “‘You are comfort now?’”

  “Thank His Honor. Now we sit face-to-face, like equals.”

  Jacob assumes that Kobayashi omits Vorstenbosch’s last two words.

  Magistrate Shiroyama nods and musters a long sentence. “He says,” begins Kobayashi, “‘Congratulate’ to new chief resident and ‘Welcome to Nagasaki’; and ‘Welcome again to magistracy,’ to deputy chief.” Jacob, a mere clerk, passes unacknowledged. “Magistrate hope voyage not too … ‘strenuous’ and hope sun not too strong for weak Dutch skin.”

  “Thank our host for his concern,” replies Vorstenbosch, “but assure him that, compared to July in Batavia, his Nagasaki summer is child’s play.”

  Shiroyama nods at the translated rendering, as though a long-held suspicion is at last confirmed.

  “Ask,” Vorstenbosch orders, “how His Honor enjoyed the coffee I presented.”

  The question, Jacob notices, provokes arc
h glances between the courtiers. The magistrate considers his reply. “Magistrate says,” translates Ogawa, “‘Coffee tastes of no other.’”

  “Tell him our plantations in Java can supply enough to satisfy even Japan’s bottomless stomach. Tell him future generations shall bless the name Shiroyama as the man who discovered this magical beverage for their homeland.”

  Ogawa delivers a suitable translation and is met by a gentle rebuttal.

  “The magistrate says,” explains Kobayashi, “‘Japan is no appetite for coffee.’”

  “Stuff! Once, coffee was unknown in Europe, too, but now every street in our great capitals has its own coffeehouse—or ten! Vast fortunes are made.”

  Shiroyama changes the subject before Ogawa can translate.

  “The magistrate gives sympathy,” says Kobayashi, “for wreck of Octavia on voyage home last winter.”

  “It’s curious, tell him,” says Vorstenbosch, “how our discussion turns to the travails suffered by the honorable company in its struggle to bring prosperity to Nagasaki …”

  Ogawa, who senses trouble he cannot avoid, must nevertheless translate.

  Magistrate Shiroyama’s face expresses a knowing Oh?

  “I bear an urgent communiqué from the governor-general on this same topic.”

  Ogawa turns to Jacob for help: “What is ‘communiqué’?”

  “A letter,” replies Jacob in a low voice. “A diplomat’s message.”

  Ogawa translates the sentence; Shiroyama’s hands signal Give.

  From his tower of cushions, Vorstenbosch nods to his secretary.

  Jacob unties his portfolio, removes the freshly forged letter from His Excellency P. G. van Overstraten, and proffers it with both hands to the chamberlain.

  Chamberlain Tomine places the envelope before his master.