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 nativebattalions 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
six
teenth 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 nolonger.’ 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