Gagged Gerritszoon sighs as the pain lessens from unendurable to gruelling.

Dr Maeno asks, ‘What is oil, Doctor, if you please?’

‘Extract of the bark and leaves of Hamamelis japonica – which I named myself. It’s a local variety of witch hazel, which lessens the risk of fevers – a trick taught me by an unschooled old woman, many lifetimes ago.’

Orito too, remembers Uzaemon, learnt from old mountain herbalists.

Eelattu changes the dressing, then binds its replacement against Gerritszoon’s waist. ‘The patient should lie down for three days, and eat and drink in moderation. Urine shall leak through the wound in his bladder wall; one must be ready for fevers and swellings; but urine should be appearing by the usual means within two or three weeks.’ Marinus now unties Gerritszoon’s gag and tells him. ‘About the same time required by Sjako to walk again in the wake of the drubbing you gave him last September, no?’

Gerritszoon unscrews his eyes. ‘Yer f’ckin’ yer, yer… f’ckin’ f’ckin’ yer…’

‘Peace on Earth,’ Marinus puts his finger on the patient’s lips, badly blotched with cold sores. ‘Goodwill to all Men.’

Chief van Cleef’s Dining Room is noisy with six or eight conversations in Japanese and Dutch; silver cutlery clinks on the best tableware; and though it is not yet evening, the candelabra are lighting a battlefield of goat bones, fish spines, breadcrusts, crab claws, lobster shells, blancmange gobbets and holly leaves and berries, fallen from the ceiling. The panels between the Dining Room and the Bay Room are removed, affording Uzaemon a view all the way to the distant mouth of open sea: the waters are slate-blue, and the mountains half erased by the cold drizzle turning last night’s snow to slush.

The Chief’s Malay servants finish one song on flute and violin, and begin another. Uzaemon remembers it from last year’s banquet. It is understood by the ranked interpreters that ‘Dutch New Year’ on the Twenty-fifth Day of December coincides with the birth of Jesus Christ, but this is never acknowledged in case an ambitious spy one day accuses them of endorsing Christian worship. Christmas, Uzaemon has noticed, affects the Dutch in strange ways. They can become intolerably homesick, even abusive, merry and maudlin, often all at once. By the time Arie Grote brings up the plum pudding, Chief van Cleef, Deputy Fischer, Ouwehand, Baert and the youth Oost are somewhere between quite drunk and very drunk. Only the soberer Marinus, de Zoet and Twomey converse with any of the Japanese banqueters.

‘Ogawa-san?’ Goto Shinpachi looks concerned. ‘Are you ill?’

‘No, no… I’m sorry. Goto-san asked me a question?’

‘It was a remark about the beauty of the music.’

‘I’d rather listen,’ declares Interpreter Sekita, ‘to butchered hogs.’

‘Or a man having his stone cut out,’ says Arashiyama, ‘eh, Ogawa?’

‘Your description murdered my appetite.’ Sekita stuffs another devilled egg into his mouth, whole. ‘These eggs really are very good.’

‘I’d trust Chinese herbs,’ says Nishi, the monkey-faced scion of a rival dynasty of Nagasaki interpreters, ‘before I’d trust a Dutch knife.’

‘My cousin trusted Chinese herbs,’ says Arashiyama, ‘for his stone -’

Deputy Fischer laughs his galloping laugh as he bangs on the table.

‘- and died in a way that would truly murder your appetite.’

Chief van Cleef’s current Dejima wife, wearing a snow-patterned kimono and jangling bracelets, slides open the door and bows demurely to the room. Several conversations fall away and the better-mannered diners stop themselves ogling. She whispers something in van Cleef’s ear that makes his face light up; he whispers back and slaps her buttocks like a farmer slapping an ox. Feigning coquettish anger, she returns to van Cleef’s private chamber.

Uzaemon suspects van Cleef contrived the scene to show off his possession.

‘More’s the pity,’ croons Sekita, ‘she’s not on the menu.’

If de Zoet had had his way, thinks Uzaemon, Orito would be a Dejima wife, too…

Cupido the slave distributes a bottle to each of the two dozen diners.

… giving herself to one man, Uzaemon bites, instead of being given to many.

‘I was afraid,’ says Sekita, ‘they’d be forgoing this pleasant custom.’

That’s your guilt talking, Uzaemon thinks. But what if my guilt is right?

The Malay servant Philander follows, uncorking each bottle.

Van Cleef stands and chimes a spoon on a glass until he has the table’s attention. ‘Those of you who honoured the Dutch New Year Banquet under Chiefs Hemmij and Snitker shall know of the Hydra-headed Toast…’

Arashiyama whispers to Uzaemon, ‘What’s a hydra?’

Uzaemon knows but shrugs, unwilling to lose more of van Cleef’s sentences.

‘We make a toast, one by one,’ says Goto Shinpachi, ‘and -’

‘- and get drunker and drunker,’ belches Sekita, ‘minute by minute.’

‘… whereby our joint desires,’ van Cleef sways, ‘forge a – a – brighter future.’

As the custom dictates, each diner fills his neighbour’s glass.

‘And so, gentlemen,’ Van Cleef raises his glass, ‘to the Nineteenth Century!’

The room echoes the toast, despite its irrelevance to the Japanese calendar.

Uzaemon notices how unwell he is feeling.

‘I give you friendship,’ Deputy Fischer says, ‘betwixt Europe and the East!’

How often, wonders Uzaemon, am I doomed to hear these same hollow words?

Interpreter Kobayashi looks at Uzaemon. ‘To soon recovery of very dear friends, Ogawa Mimasaku and Gerritszoon-san.’ So Uzaemon must stand and bow to Kobayashi the Elder, knowing that he is manoeuvring at the Interpreters’ Guild to have his son promoted over Uzaemon’s head to Second Rank when Ogawa the Elder accepts the inevitable and retires from his coveted post.

Dr Marinus’s turn is next: ‘To the seekers of truth.’

For the benefit of the inspectors, Interpreter Yoshio proposes in Japanese, ‘To health of our wise, beloved Magistrate.’ Yoshio also has a son in the Third Rank with high hopes for the upcoming vacancies. To the Dutch, he says, ‘To our rulers.’

This is the game one must play, thinks Uzaemon, to rise at the Guild.

Jacob de Zoet swirls his wine. ‘To all our loved ones, near or far.’

The Dutchman happens to catch Uzaemon’s eye, and they both avert their gaze whilst the toast is chorused. The interpreter is still turning his napkin ring moodily when Goto clears his throat. ‘Ogawa-san?’

Uzaemon looks up to find the entire company looking at him.

‘Pardon, gentlemen, the wine stole my tongue.’

Goblin laughter sloshes around the room. The diners’ faces swell and recede. Lips do not correspond to blurred words. Uzaemon wonders, as consciousness drains away, Am I dying?

The steps of Higashizaka Street are slippery with frozen slush and strewn with bones, rags, decayed leaves and excrement. Uzaemon and bow-legged Yohei climb past a chestnut stall. The smell makes the interpreter’s stomach threaten rebellion. Unaware of the approaching samurai, a beggar up ahead is pissing against a wall. Lean dogs, kites and crows squabble over the street’s mean pickings.

From a doorway comes a funerary mantra and tendril of incense.

Shuzai is expecting me for sword practice, Uzaemon remembers…

A heavily pregnant girl at a crossroads is selling pig-fat candles.

… but to pass out twice in one day would start unhelpful rumours.

Uzaemon bids Yohei buy ten candles: the girl has cataracts in both eyes.

The candle-seller thanks her customer. Master and servant continue climbing.

Through a window, a man shouts, ‘I curse the day I married you!’

‘Samurai-sama?’ a lipless fortune-teller calls out from a half-open door. ‘Someone in the World Above needs your deliverance, Samurai-sama.’