Read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet Online
Authors: David Mitchell
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet
ALSO BY DAVID MITCHELL
Ghostwritten
Number9Dream
Cloud Atlas
Black Swan Green
F
OR
K, H, & N
WITH LOVE
Part One
THE BRIDE FOR WHOM WE DANCE
Chapter One
THE HOUSE OF KAWASEMI THE CONCUBINE, ABOVE NAGASAKI
Chapter Two
CAPTAIN LACY’S CABIN ON THE SHENANDOAH, ANCHORED IN NAGASAKI HARBOR
Chapter Three
ON A SAMPAN MOORED ALONGSIDE THE SHENANDOAH, NAGASAKI HARBOR
Chapter Four
OUTSIDE THE PRIVY BY GARDEN HOUSE ON DEJIMA
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
JACOB’S ROOM IN TALL HOUSE ON DEJIMA
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
THE STATEROOM IN THE CHIEF’S HOUSE ON DEJIMA
Chapter Nine
CLERK DE ZOET’S QUARTERS IN TALL HOUSE
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
THE STATEROOM IN THE CHIEF’S HOUSE ON DEJIMA
Chapter Thirteen
…
Part Two
A MOUNTAIN FASTNESS
Chapter Fourteen
ABOVE THE VILLAGE OF KUROZANE IN KYÔGA DOMAIN
Chapter Fifteen
THE HOUSE OF SISTERS, MOUNT SHIRANUI SHRINE
Chapter Sixteen
THE SHIRANDÔ ACADEMY AT THE ÔTSUKI RESIDENCE IN NAGASAKI
Chapter Seventeen
THE ALTAR ROOM AT THE HOUSE OF SISTERS, MOUNT SHIRANUI SHRINE
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
THE HOUSE OF SISTERS, MOUNT SHIRANUI SHRINE
Chapter Twenty
THE TWO HUNDRED STEPS LEADING TO RYÛGAJI TEMPLE IN NAGASAKI
Chapter Twenty-One
ORITO’S ROOM AT THE HOUSE OF SISTERS
Chapter Twenty-Two
SHUZAI’S ROOM AT HIS DOJO HALL IN NAGASAKI
Chapter Twenty-Three
YAYOI’S ROOM AT THE HOUSE OF SISTERS, MOUNT SHIRANUI SHRINE
Chapter Twenty-Four
OGAWA MIMASAKU’S ROOM AT THE OGAWA RESIDENCE IN NAGASAKI
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE LORD ABBOT’S QUARTERS AT MOUNT SHIRANUI SHRINE
Chapter Twenty-Six
BEHIND THE HARUBAYASHI INN, EAST OF KUROZANE VILLAGE IN KYÔGA DOMAIN
…
Part Three
THE MASTER OF
GO
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
CAPTAIN PENHALIGON’S CABIN ABOARD HMS PHOEBUS, EAST CHINA SEA
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
THE ROOM OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM AT THE MAGISTRACY IN NAGASAKI
Chapter Thirty-One
THE FORECASTLE TAFFRAIL OF HMS PHOEBUS
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
THE HALL OF SIXTY MATS AT THE MAGISTRACY
Chapter Thirty-Four
CAPTAIN PENHALIGON’S BUNK ROOM ABOARD HMS PHOEBUS
Chapter Thirty-Five
THE SEA ROOM IN THE CHIEF’S RESIDENCE ON DEJIMA
Chapter Thirty-Six
THE ROOM OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM AT THE MAGISTRACY
Chapter Thirty-Seven
FROM CAPTAIN PENHALIGON’S CABIN
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
FROM THE VERANDA OF THE ROOM OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM, AT THE MAGISTRACY
…
Part Four
THE RAINY SEASON
Chapter Forty
MOUNT INASA TEMPLE, OVERLOOKING NAGASAKI BAY
…
Part Five
THE LAST PAGES
Chapter Forty-One
QUARTERDECK OF THE PROFETES, NAGASAKI BAY
The port of Batavia on the island of Java was the headquarters of the Dutch East Indies Company
(Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
or VOC in Dutch, literally “United East Indian Company”) and the point of embarkation and return for VOC ships sailing the Nagasaki run. During the Japanese occupation of the Indonesian archipelago during World War II, Batavia was renamed Jakarta.
Throughout the novel, the lunar calendar is used to denote Japanese dates. The lunar calendar could be anything from three to seven weeks “behind” the Gregorian calendar, depending on the year. Thus “the first day of the first month” corresponds not to January 1 but to a varying date between the back end of January and the rear middle of February. Years are referred to by their Japanese era names.
Japanese names are ordered throughout with the family name first.
THE BRIDE FOR WHOM WE DANCE
The eleventh year of the Era of Kansei
1799
THE HOUSE OF KAWASEMI THE CONCUBINE, ABOVE NAGASAKI
The ninth night of the fifth month
“M
ISS KAWASEMI?” ORITO KNEELS ON A STALE AND STICKY FUTON
. “Can you hear me?”
In the rice paddy beyond the garden, a cacophony of frogs detonates.
Orito dabs the concubine’s sweat-drenched face with a damp cloth.
“She’s barely spoken”—the maid holds the lamp—“for hours and hours.…”
“Miss Kawasemi, I’m Aibagawa. I’m a midwife. I want to help.”
Kawasemi’s eyes flicker open. She manages a frail sigh. Her eyes shut.
She is too exhausted
, Orito thinks,
even to fear dying tonight
.
Dr. Maeno whispers through the muslin curtain. “I wanted to examine the child’s presentation myself, but …” The elderly scholar chooses his words with care. “But this is prohibited, it seems.”
“My orders are clear,” states the chamberlain. “No man may touch her.”
Orito lifts the bloodied sheet and finds, as warned, the fetus’s limp arm, up to the shoulder, protruding from Kawasemi’s vagina.
“Have you ever seen such a presentation?” asks Dr. Maeno.
“Yes: in an engraving, from the Dutch text Father was translating.”
“This is what I prayed to hear! The
Observations
of William Smellie?”
“Yes: Dr. Smellie terms it,” Orito uses the Dutch, “‘Prolapse of the Arm.’”
Orito clasps the fetus’s mucus-smeared wrist to search for a pulse.
Maeno now asks her in Dutch, “What are your opinions?”
There is no pulse. “The baby is dead,” Orito answers, in the same language, “and the mother will die soon, if the child is not delivered.” She places her fingertips on Kawasemi’s distended belly and probes the bulge around the inverted navel. “It was a boy.” She kneels between Kawasemi’s parted legs, noting the narrow pelvis, and sniffs the bulging labia: she detects the malty mixture of grumous blood and excrement, but not the stench of a rotted fetus. “He died one or two hours ago.”
Orito asks the maid, “When did the waters break?”
The maid is still mute with astonishment at hearing a foreign language.
“Yesterday morning, during the Hour of the Dragon,” says the stony-voiced housekeeper. “Our lady entered labor soon after.”
“And when was the last time that the baby kicked?”
“The last kick would have been around noon today.”
“Dr. Maeno, would you agree the infant is in”—she uses the Dutch term—“the ‘transverse breech position’?”
“Maybe,” the doctor answers in their code tongue, “but without an examination …”
“The baby is twenty days late, or more. It should have been turned.”
“Baby’s resting,” the maid assures her mistress. “Isn’t that so, Dr. Maeno?”
“What you say”—the honest doctor wavers—“may well be true.”
“My father told me,” Orito says, “Dr. Uragami was overseeing the birth.”
“So he was,” grunts Maeno, “from the comfort of his consulting rooms. After the baby stopped kicking, Uragami ascertained that, for geomantic reasons discernible to men of his genius, the child’s spirit is reluctant to be born. The birth henceforth depends on the mother’s willpower.”
The rogue
, Maeno needs not add,
dares not bruise his reputation by presiding over the stillbirth of such an estimable man’s child
. “Chamberlain Tomine then persuaded the magistrate to summon me. When I saw the arm, I recalled your doctor of Scotland and requested your help.”
“My father and I are both deeply honored by your trust,” says Orito …
… and curse Uragami
, she thinks,
for his lethal reluctance to lose face
.
Abruptly, the frogs stop croaking and, as though a curtain of noise falls away, the sound of Nagasaki can be heard, celebrating the safe arrival of the Dutch ship.
“If the child is dead,” says Maeno in Dutch, “we must remove it now.”
“I agree.” Orito asks the housekeeper for warm water and strips of linen and uncorks a bottle of Leiden salts under the concubine’s nose to win her a few moments’ lucidity. “Miss Kawasemi, we are going to deliver your child in the next few minutes. First, may I feel inside you?”
The concubine is seized by the next contraction and loses her ability to answer.
WARM WATER IS DELIVERED
in two copper pans as the agony subsides. “We should confess,” Dr. Maeno proposes to Orito in Dutch, “the baby is dead. Then amputate the arm to deliver the body.”
“First, I wish to insert my hand to learn whether the body is in a convex lie or concave lie.”
“If you can discover that without cutting the arm”—Maeno means “amputate”—“do so.”
Orito lubricates her right hand with rapeseed oil and addresses the maid: “Fold one linen strip into a thick pad … yes, like so. Be ready to wedge it between your mistress’s teeth; otherwise she might bite off her tongue. Leave spaces at the sides, so she can breathe. Dr. Maeno, my inspection is beginning.”
“You are my eyes and ears, Miss Aibagawa,” says the doctor.
Orito works her fingers between the fetus’s biceps and its mother’s ruptured labia until half her wrist is inside Kawasemi’s vagina. The concubine shivers and groans. “Sorry,” says Orito, “sorry …” Her fingers slide between warm membranes and skin and muscle still wet with amniotic fluid, and the midwife pictures an engraving from that enlightened and barbaric realm, Europe …
If the transverse lie is convex
, recalls Orito,
where the fetus’s spine is arched backward so acutely that its head appears between its shins like a Chinese acrobat, she must amputate the fetus’s arm, dismember its corpse with toothed forceps, and extract it, piece by grisly piece. Dr. Smellie warns that any remnant left in the womb will fester and may kill the mother. If the
transverse lie is concave, however
, Orito has read,
where the fetus’s knees are pressed against its chest, she may saw off the arm, rotate the fetus, insert crotchets into the eye sockets, and extract the whole body, headfirst
. The midwife’s index finger locates the child’s knobbly spine, traces its midriff between its lowest rib and its pelvic bone, and encounters a minute ear; a nostril; a mouth; the umbilical cord; and a prawn-sized penis. “Breech is concave,” Orito reports to Dr. Maeno, “but the cord is around the neck.”