‘A suspicious mind,’ Grote’s tone turns wintry, ‘for a God-fearin’ cove.’
‘Bookkeepers acquire suspicious minds, Mr Grote. I was at a loss to explain your success until I noticed you stroking the top edge of the cards you dealt. So I did the same, and felt the notches – those tiny nicks: the Knaves, sevens, Kings and Queens are all notched closer or further from the corners, according to their value. A sailor’s hands, or a warehouseman’s, or a carpenter’s, are too calloused. But a cook’s forefinger or a clerk’s is another matter.’
‘It’s custom’ry,’ Grote swallows, ‘that the house is paid for its trouble.’
‘In the morning we’ll find out if Gerritszoon agrees. Now, I really must-’
‘Such a pleasant evenin’: what say I reimburse your evening’s losses?’
‘All that matters is truth, Mr Grote: one version of the truth.’
‘Is this how you repay me for makin’ you rich? By blackmail?’
‘Suppose you tell me more about this bag of onions?’
Grote sighs, twice. ‘Yer a bloody ache in the arse, Mr de Z.’
Jacob relishes the inverted compliment and waits.
‘Yer know,’ the cook begins, ‘yer know o’ the ginseng bulb?’
‘I know ginseng is a commodity much revered by Japanese druggists.’
‘A Chinaman in Batavia – quite the gent – ships me a crate on every year’s sailin’. All well an’ good. Problem is, the Magistracy taxes the stuff come Auction Day: we was losin’ six parts in ten till Dr Marinus one day mentioned a local ginseng what grows here in the bay but what’s not so prized. So…’
‘So your man brings in bags of the local ginseng…’
‘… and leaves,’ Grote betrays a flash of pride, ‘with bags of the Chinese.’
‘The guards and friskers at the Land-Gate don’t find this odd?’
‘They’re paid not to find it odd. Now, here’s my question for you: how’s the Chief goin’ to act on this? On this an’ everythin’ else you’re snufflin’ up? ’Cause this is how Dejima works. Stop all these little perquisites, eh, an’ yer stop Dejima itself – an’ don’t evade me, eh, with your “That is a matter for Mr Vorstenbosch.” ’
‘But it is a matter for Mr Vorstenbosch.’ Jacob lifts the latch.
‘It ain’t right.’ Grote clamps the latch. ‘It ain’t just. One minute it’s “Private Trade is killin’ the Company”; next it’s “I’m not a man to sell my own men short”. Yer can’t have a cellar full o’ wine and yer wife drunk legless.’
‘Keep your dealings honest,’ Jacob says, ‘and there is no dilemma.’
‘Keep my dealings “honest” an’ my profits is potato peelin’s!’
‘It’s not I who make the Company’s rules, Mr Grote.’
‘Aye, but yer do its dirty work ’appily enough, though, don’t yer?’
‘I follow orders loyally. Now, unless you plan on imprisoning an officer, release this door.’
‘Loyalty looks simple,’ Grote tells him, ‘but it ain’t.’
IX Clerk de Zoet’s Quarters in Tall House
Morning of Sunday the 15th September, 1799
Jacob retrieves the de Zoet Psalter from under the floorboards and kneels in the corner of the room where he prays on his bare knees every night. Placing his nostril over the thin gap between the book’s spine and binding, Jacob inhales the damp aroma of the Domburg parsonage. The smell evokes Sundays when the villagers battle January gales up the cobbled high street as far as the church; Easter Sundays, when the sun warmed the pasty backs of boys idling guiltily by the lagoon; autumnal Sundays, when the sexton climbed the church tower to ring the bell through the sea-fog; Sundays of the brief Zeeland summer, when the season’s new hats would arrive from the milliners in Middelburg; and one Whitsunday when Jacob voiced to his uncle the thought that just as one man can be Pastor de Zoet of Domburg and ‘Geertje’s and my uncle’ and ‘Mother’s brother’, so God, His Son and the Holy Spirit are an indivisible Trinity. His reward was the one kiss his uncle ever gave him: wordless, respectful and here, on his forehead.
Let them still be there, prays the homesick traveller, when I go home.
The Dutch Company professes an allegiance to the Dutch Reformed Church, but makes little provision for its employees’ spiritual well-being. On Dejima Chief Vorstenbosch, Deputy van Cleef, Ivo Oost, Grote and Gerritszoon would also claim loyalty to the Dutch Reformed faith, yet no semblance of organised worship would ever be tolerated by the Japanese. Captain Lacy is an Episcopalian; Ponke Ouwehand a Lutheran; and Catholicism is represented by Piet Baert and Con Twomey. The latter has confided to Jacob that he conducts an ‘Unholy Mess of a Holy Mass’ every Sunday, and is frightened of dying without the ministrations of a priest. Dr Marinus refers to the Supreme Creator in the same tone he uses to discuss Voltaire, Diderot, Herschel and certain Scottish physicians: admiring, but less than worshipful.
To what God, Jacob wonders, would a Japanese midwife pray?
Jacob turns to the ninety-third psalm, known as the ‘Storm Psalm’.
The floods have lifted up, O Lord, he reads, the floods have lifted up their voice…
The Zeelander pictures the Westerscheldt between Vlissingen and Breskens.
… the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise…
The Bible’s storms for Jacob, are North Sea storms, where even the sun is drowned.
… than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea…
Jacob thinks of Anna’s hands, her warm hands, her living hands. He fingers the bullet in the cover and turns to the hundred and fiftieth psalm.
Praise him with the sound of the trumpet… with the psaltery and harp.
The harpist’s slender fingers and sickle-shaped eyes are Miss Aibagawa’s.
Praise him with the timbrel and dance. King David’s dancer has one burnt cheek.
The sunken-eyed Interpreter Motogi waits under the awning of the Guild and notices Jacob and Hanzaburo only when the invited clerk is directly in front of him. ‘Ah! De Zoet-san… To summon with little warning causes a great trouble, we fear.’
‘I’m honoured,’ Jacob returns Motogi’s bow, ‘not troubled, Mr Motogi…’
A coolie drops a crate of camphor and earns a kick from a merchant.
‘… and Mr Vorstenbosch has excused me for the entire morning, if need be.’
Motogi ushers him into the Guild where the men remove their shoes.
Jacob then steps onto the knee-high interior floor and passes into the spacious rear office he has never yet ventured into. Sitting at tables arranged in the manner of a schoolroom are six men: Interpreters Isohachi and Kobayashi of the First Rank; the pox-scarred Interpreter Narazake and the charismatic, shifty Namura of the Second Rank; Goto of the Third Rank, who is to act as scribe, and a thoughtful-eyed man who introduces himself as Maeno, a physician, who thanks Jacob for allowing him to attend, ‘so you may cure my sick Dutch’. Hanzaburo sits in the corner and pretends to be attentive. For his part, Kobayashi takes pains to prove that he bears no grudge over the peacock-fan incident, and introduces Jacob as ‘Clerk de Zoet of Zeeland, Esquire’ and ‘Man of Deep Learning.’
The man of deep learning denies this paean and his modesty is applauded.
Motogi explains that in the course of their work the interpreters encounter words whose meanings are unclear, and it is to illuminate these that Jacob has been invited. Dr Marinus often leads these unofficial tutorials, but today he is busy and nominated Clerk de Zoet as his substitute.
Each interpreter has a list of items that evade the Guild’s collective understanding. These he reads out, one by one, and Jacob explains as clearly as he can, with examples, gestures and synonyms. The group discusses an appropriate Japanese substitute, sometimes testing it on Jacob, until everyone is satisfied. Straightforward words such as ‘parched’, ‘plenitude’ or ‘saltpetre’ do not detain them long. More abstract items such as ‘simile’, ‘figment’ or ‘parallax’ prove more exacting. Terms without a ready Japanese equivalent, such as ‘privacy’, ‘splenetic’ or the verb ‘to deserve’ cost ten or fifteen minutes, as do phrases requiring specialist knowledge – ‘Hanseatic’, ‘nerve-ending’, or ‘subjunctive’. Jacob notices that where a Dutch pupil would say, ‘I don’t understand,’ the interpreters lower their eyes, so the teacher cannot merely explicate, but must also gauge his students’ true comprehension.