The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell Read Free Book Online

William the Silent. He is pink with heat and shiny with sweat. “I shall have Twomey fashion me one of those ingenious cloth fans the English brought from India … oh, the word evades me …”
    “Might you be thinking of a punkah, sir?”
    “Just so. A punkah, with a punkah-wallah to tug its cord.”
    Cupido enters, carrying a familiar jade-and-silver teapot on a tray.
    “Interpreter Kobayashi is due at ten,” says Vorstenbosch, “with a gaggle of officials to brief me on court etiquette during our long-delayed audience with the magistrate. Antique chinaware shall signal that
this
chief resident is a man of refinement: the Orient is all about signals, De Zoet. Remind me what blue blood the tea service was crafted for, according to that Jew in Macao?”
    “He claimed it was from the trousseau of the last Ming emperor’s wife, sir.”
    “The last Ming emperor: just so. Oh, and I am desirous that you join us later.”
    “For the meeting with Interpreter Kobayashi and the officials, sir?”
    “For our interview with Magistrate Shirai … Shilo … Aid me.”
    “Magistrate Shiroyama, sir—sir, I am to visit Nagasaki?”
    “Unless you’d prefer to stay here and record catties of pig iron?”
    “To set foot on Japan proper would”—
cause Peter Fischer
, thinks Jacob,
to expire with envy
—“would be a great adventure. Thank you.”
    “A chief needs a private secretary. Now, let us continue the morning’s business in the privacy of my bureau …”
    SUNLIGHT FALLS ACROSS the escritoire in the small adjacent room. “So,” Vorstenbosch settles himself, “after three days ashore, how
are
you finding life on the company’s farthest-flung outpost?”
    “More salubrious”—Jacob’s chair creaks—“than a posting on Halmahera, sir.”
    “Damnation by dim praise indeed! What irks you most of all: the spies, confinement, lack of liberties … or the ignorance of our countrymen?”
    Jacob considers telling Vorstenbosch about the scene at breakfast but sees nothing to be gained.
Respect
, he thinks,
cannot be commanded from on high
.
    “The hands view me with some … suspicion, sir.”
    “Naturally. To decree ‘private trade is henceforth banned’ would merely make their schemes more ingenious; a deliberate vagueness is, for the time being, the best prophylactic. The hands resent this, of course, but daren’t vent their anger on me. You bear the brunt.”
    “I’d not wish to appear ungrateful for your patronage, sir.”
    “There’s no gainsaying that Dejima is a dull posting. The days when a man could retire on the profit from two trading seasons here are long, long gone. Swamp fever and crocodiles shan’t kill you in Japan, but monotony might. But take heart, De Zoet: after one year we return to Batavia, where you shall learn how I reward loyalty and diligence. And speaking of diligence, how proceeds your restoration of the ledgers?”
    “The books
are
an unholy mess, but Mr. Ogawa is proving most helpful, and ’94 and ’95 are in large part reconstructed.”
    “A shoddy pass that we have to rely on Japanese archives. But come, we must address yet more pressing matters.” Vorstenbosch unlocks his desk and takes out a bar of Japanese copper. “The world’s reddest, its richest in gold, and, for a hundred years, the bride for whom we Dutch have danced in Nagasaki.” He tosses the flat ingot at Jacob, who catches it neatly. “This bride, however, grows skinnier and sulkier by the year. According to your own figures”—Vorstenbosch consults a slip of paper on his desk top—“in 1790 we exported eight thousand piculs. In ’94, six thousand. Gijsbert Hemmij, who displayed good judgment only in dying before being charged for incompetence, suffered the quota to drop under
four
thousand, and during Snitker’s year of misgovernance, a paltry three thousand two hundred, every last bar of which was lost with the
Octavia
, wherever her wreck may lie.”
    The Almelo clock divides time