Free The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell Page B

cargo aboard the doomed
Octavia
, many would be returning to Batavia poorer men than when they left.
    “Who
was
that bizarre female,” Van Cleef asks, squeezing a lemon into a Venetian glass, “in Warehouse Doorn?”
    “Miss Aibagawa,” says Goto, “is daughter of doctor and scholar.”
    Aibagawa
. Jacob handles each syllable in turn.
Ai-ba-ga-wa
 …
    “The magistrate give permission,” says Iwase, “to study under Dutch doctor.”
    And I called her a “whore’s helper,”
remembers Jacob, and winces.
    “What a bizarre Locusta,” says Fischer, “to be at ease in a surgery.”
    “The fairer sex,” objects Jacob, “can show as much resilience as the uglier one.”
    “Mr. de Zoet
must
publish,” the Prussian picks his nose, “his dazzling epigrams.”
    “Miss Aibagawa,” states Ogawa, “is a midwife. She is used to blood.”
    “But I understood,” says Vorstenbosch, “a woman was forbidden to set foot on Dejima, without she be a courtesan, her maid, or one of the old crones at the guild.”
    “It
is
forbidden,” affirms Yonekizu indignantly. “No precedent. Never.”
    “Miss Aibagawa,” Ogawa speaks up, “work hard as midwife, both for rich customers and poor persons who cannot pay. Recently, she deliver Magistrate Shiroyama’s son. Birth was hard, and other doctor renounce,but she persevere and succeed. Magistrate Shiroyama was joyful. He gives Miss Aibagawa one wish for reward. Wish is, study under Dr. Marinus on Dejima. So, magistrate kept promise.”
    “Woman study in hospital,” declares Yonekizu, “is not good thing.”
    “Yet she held the blood basin steady,” says Con Twomey, “spoke good Dutch with Dr. Marinus, and chased an ape while her male classmates looked seasick.”
    I would ask a dozen questions
, Jacob thinks,
if I dared: a dozen dozen
.
    “Doesn’t a girl,” asks Ouwehand,
“arouse
the boys in troublesome places?”
    “Not with that slice of bacon”—Fischer swirls his gin—“stuck to her face.”
    “Ungallant words, Mr. Fischer,” says Jacob. “They shame you.”
    “One cannot pretend it isn’t there, De Zoet! We’d call her a ‘tapping cane’ in
my
town because, of course, only a blind man would touch her.”
    Jacob imagines smashing the Prussian’s jaw with the Delft jug.
    A candle collapses; wax slides down the candlestick; the dribble hardens.
    “I am sure,” says Ogawa, “Miss Aibagawa one day make joyful marriage.”
    “What’s the one sure cure for love?” asks Grote.
“Marriage
is, is what.”
    A moth careers into a candle flame; it drops to the table, flapping.
    “Poor Icarus.” Ouwehand crushes it with his tankard. “Won’t you ever learn?”
    NIGHT INSECTS TRILL, tick, bore, ring; drill, prick, saw, sting.
    Hanzaburo snores in the cubbyhole outside Jacob’s door.
    Jacob lies awake, clad in a sheet, under a tent of netting.
    Ai
, mouth opens;
ba
, lips meet;
ga
, tongue’s root;
wa
, lips.
    Involuntarily, he reenacts today’s scene over and over.
    He cringes at the boorish figure he cut and vainly edits the script.
    He opens the fan she left in Warehouse Doorn. He fans himself.
    The paper is white. The handle and struts are made of paulownia wood.
    A watchman smacks his wooden clappers to mark the Japanese hour.
    The yeasty moon is caged in his half-Japanese half-Dutch window …
    … Glass panes melt moonlight; paper panes filter it, to dust.
    Daybreak must be near. The 1796 ledgers are waiting for him.
    It is dear Anna whom I love
, Jacob recites,
and I whom Anna loves
.
    Beneath his glaze of sweat, he sweats. His bed linen is sodden.
    Miss Aibagawa is as untouchable as a woman in a picture
 …
    Jacob imagines he can hear a harpsichord.
    … spied through a keyhole in a cottage happened upon, once
 …
    The notes are spidery and starlit and spun from glass.
    Jacob
can
hear a harpsichord: it is the doctor, in his attic.
    Night silence and a freak of conductivity permit Jacob this privilege: Marinus rejects all requests to