VI Jacob’s Room in Tall House on Dejima

Very early on the morning of the 10th August, 1799

Light bleeds in around the casements: Jacob navigates the archipelago of stains across the low wooden ceiling. Outside, the slaves d’Orsaiy and Ignatius are talking as they feed the animals. Jacob recalls Anna’s birthday party a few days prior to his departure. Her father had invited half a dozen eminently eligible young men and given a sumptuous dinner prepared so artfully that the chicken tasted of fish and the fish of chicken. His ironic toast was to ‘the fortunes of Jacob de Zoet, Merchant Prince of the Indies ’. Anna rewarded Jacob’s forbearance with a smile: her fingers stroked the necklace of Swedish white amber he had brought her from Gothenburg.

On the far side of the world, Jacob sighs with longing and regret.

Unexpectedly, Hanzaburo calls out, ‘Mr Dazûto want thing?’

‘Nothing, no. It’s early, Hanzaburo: go back to sleep.’ Jacob imitates a snore.

‘Pig? Want pig? Ah ah ah, surîpu! Yes… yes, I like surîpu…’

Jacob gets up and drinks from a cracked jug, then rubs soap into lather.

His green eyes watch him from the freckled face in the speckled glass.

The blunt blade tears his stubble and nicks the cleft in his chin.

A tear of blood, red as tulips, oozes out, mixes with soap and foams pink.

Jacob considers how a beard would save all this trouble…

… but recalls his sister Geertje’s verdict when he returned from England with a short-lived moustache. ‘Ooh, dab it in lampblack, brother; and polish our boots!’

He touches his nose, recently adjusted by the disgraced Snitker.

The nick by his ear is a memento of a certain dog that bit him.

When shaving, thinks Jacob, a man rereads his truest memoir.

Tracing his lip with his finger, he recalls the very morning of his departure. Anna had persuaded her father to take them both to Rotterdam wharf in his carriage. ‘Three minutes,’ he had told Jacob as he climbed out of the carriage to speak to the head clerk, ‘and no more.’ Anna knew what to say. ‘Five years is a long time, but most women wait a lifetime before finding a kind and honest man.’ Jacob had tried to reply, but she had silenced him. ‘I know how men overseas behave and, perhaps, how they must behave – shush, Jacob de Zoet – so all I ask is that you are careful in Java, that your heart is mine alone. I shan’t give you a ring or locket because rings and lockets can be lost, but this, at least, cannot be lost…’ Anna kissed him for the first and last time. It was a long, sad kiss. They watched rain stream down the windows, the boats, and the shale-grey sea, until it was time to go…

Jacob’s shave is finished. He wipes his face, dresses and polishes an apple.

Miss Aibagawa, he bites the fruit, is a scholar, not a courtesan…

From the window, he watches d’Orsaiy water the runner beans.

… illicit rendezvous, much less illicit romances, are impossible here.

He eats the core and spits out the pips on to the back of his hand.

I just want to converse, Jacob is sure, and know a little more about her…

He takes the chain from his neck and turns the key in his sea-chest.

Friendship can exist between the sexes: as with my sister and I.

An enterprising fly buzzes over his urine in the chamber pot.

He digs down, nearly as far as his Psalter, and finds the bound folio.

Jacob unfastens the volume’s ribbons and studies the first page of music.

The notes of the luminous sonatas hang like grapes from the staves.

Jacob’s sight-reading skills end with the Hymnal of the Reformed Church.

Perhaps today, he thinks, is a day to mend bridges with Dr Marinus…

Jacob takes a short walk around Dejima, where all walks are short, to polish his plan and hone his script. Gulls and crows bicker on the ridge of Garden House.

In the garden, the cream roses and red lilies are past their best.

Bread is being delivered by provedores at the Land-Gate.

In Flag Square, Peter Fischer sits on the Watchtower’s steps. ‘Lose an hour in the morning, Clerk de Zoet,’ the Prussian calls down, ‘and you search for it all day.’

In van Cleef’s upper window, the Deputy’s latest ‘wife’ combs her hair.

She smiles at Jacob; Melchior van Cleef, his chest hairy as a bear’s, appears.

‘ “Thou Shalt Not”,’ he quotes, ‘ “Dip Thy Nib in Another Man’s Inkwell.” ’

The Deputy Chief slides shut the shoji window before Jacob can protest his innocence.

Outside the Interpreters’ Guild, palanquin bearers squat in the shadows. Their eyes follow the red-haired foreigner as he passes.

Up on the Sea Wall, William Pitt gazes at the whale-rib clouds.

By the Kitchen, Arie Grote tells him, ‘Yer bamboo hat makes yer look like a Chinaman, Mr de Z. Have yer not considered-’

‘No,’ says the clerk, and walks on.

Constable Kosugi nods at Jacob outside his small house on Sea Wall Lane.

The slaves Ignatius and Weh row in heated Malay as they milk the goats.

Ivo Oost and Wybo Gerritszoon throw a ball to one another, in silence.

‘Bow-wow,’ one of them says as Jacob passes: he decides not to hear.

Con Twomey and Ponke Ouwehand smoke their pipes under the pines.

‘Some blue-blood,’ sniffs Ouwehand, ‘has died in Miyako, so hammering and music are forbidden for two days. There’ll be little work done anywhere, not just here but throughout the Empire. Van Cleef swears it’s a stratagem to postpone the rebuilding of Warehouse Lelie so we’ll be more desperate to sell…’

I am not polishing my plan, Jacob admits. I am losing my nerve…

In the Surgery, Dr Marinus is lying flat on the operating table with his eyes closed. He hums a baroque melody inside his hoggish neck.

Eelattu brushes his master’s jowls with scented oil and feminine delicacy.

Steam rises from a bowl of water; light is sliced on the bright razor.

On the floor, a toucan pecks beans from a pewter saucer.

Plums are piled in a terracotta dish, blue-dusted indigo.

Eelattu announces Jacob’s arrival in murmured Malay, and Marinus opens one displeased eye. ‘What?’

‘I should like to consult with you on a… certain matter.’

‘Continue shaving, Eelattu. Consult, then, Domburger.’

‘I’d be more comfortable in private, Doctor, as-’

‘Eelattu is “private”. On our little paradise, his grasp of anatomy and pathology is second only to mine. Unless it is the toucan you mistrust?’

‘Well, then…’ Jacob sees he must rely on the servant’s discretion as well as Marinus’s. ‘I’m a little curious about one of your students…’

‘What business have you’ – his other eye opens – ‘with Miss Aibagawa?’

‘None at all: I just… wished to converse with her…’

‘Then why are you here, conversing with me instead?’

‘… to converse with her without a dozen spies looking on.’

‘Ah. Ah. Ah. So you wish me to bring about an assignation?’

‘That word smacks of intrigue, Doctor, which would not-’

‘The answer is “Never”. Reason the first: Miss Aibagawa is no rented Eve to scratch your itch of Adam, but a gentleman’s daughter. Reason the second: even were Miss Aibagawa “available” as a Dejima wife, which, emphatically, she is not -’

‘I know all this, Doctor, and upon my honour, I didn’t come here to-’

‘- which she is not, then spies would report the liaison within a half-hour, whereupon my hard-won rights to teach, botanise and scholarise around Nagasaki would be withdrawn. So be gone. Deflate your testicles comme à la mode: via the village pimp or Sin of Onan.’

The toucan taps the dish of beans and utters ‘Raw!’ or a word very similar.

‘Sir,’ Jacob blushes, ‘you grievously misjudge my intentions: I’d never-’