The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel by David Mitchell Page B

enter a few whole mirrors as "smashed", wholly in error . . .'
    'Is this a thinly veiled invitation,' Jacob yawns, 'to commit fraud?'
    'May wild dogs chew my head off first! Now, I've arranged a meetin' for us. You ,' Grote glances at Weh, 'can make yerself scarce: a gent's comin' what'd take offence at your shit-brown hide.'
    'Weh is going nowhere,' counters Jacob. 'And who is this "gent"?'
    Grote hears something and peers out. 'Oh, bloody oath, they're early .' He points to a wall of crates and orders Weh, 'Hide behind there! Mr de Z., dispense with yer sentiments regardin' our sable brethren 'cause piles an' piles an' piles o' money is at stake.'
    The slave youth looks at Jacob; Jacob, reluctantly, nods; Weh obeys.
    'I am here, eh, to play the go-between twixt you , and . . .'
    Interpreter Yonekizu and Constable Kosugi appear at the door.
    Ignoring Jacob altogether, both men usher in a familiar stranger.
    Four young, lithe and dangerous-looking personal guards appear first.
    Next enters their master: an older man who walks as if treading on water.
    He wears a sky-blue cape and his head is shaven, though a sword-hilt shows from his waist sash.
    His is the only face in the warehouse not sheathed in sweat.
    From what flickering dream , wonders Jacob, do I know your face?
    'Lord Abbot Enomoto of the Domain of Kyoga,' announces Grote. 'My associate, Mr de Zoet.'
    Jacob bows: the Abbot's lips curl, tighten into a half-smile of recognition.
    He turns to Yonekizu and speaks: his burnished voice is uninterruptible.
    'Abbot,' translates Yonekizu, 'says he believed you and he share affinity, on first time he see you at Magistracy. Today he know his belief was correct.'
    Abbot Enomoto asks Yonekizu to teach him the Dutch word 'affinity'.
    Jacob now identifies his visitor: he was the man sitting close to Magistrate Shiroyama in the Hall of Sixty Mats.
    The Abbot has Yonekizu repeat Jacob's name three times over.
    ' Da-zu-to ,' echoes the Abbot, and checks with Jacob: 'I say correct?'
    'Your Grace,' the clerk says, 'speaks my name very well.'
    'The Abbot,' Yonekizu adds, 'translated Antoine Lavoisier into Japanese.'
    Jacob is duly impressed. 'Might Your Grace know Marinus?'
    The Abbot has Yonekizu translate his reply: 'Abbot meet Dr Marinus at Shirando Academy often. He has much respect for Dutch scholar, he say. But Abbot also have many duties, so cannot devote all life to chemical arts . . .'
    Jacob considers the power his visitor must wield to waltz into Dejima on a day turned upside down by the earthquake, and mingle with foreigners free from the usual phalanx of spies and Shogunal guards. Enomoto runs his thumb along the crates, as if divining their contents. He encounters the sleeping Hanzaburo and makes a motion in the air above the boy, like a genuflection. Hanzaburo mouths groggy syllables, wakes, sees the Abbot, yelps and rolls on to the floor. He flees from the warehouse like a frog from a water-snake.
    'Young mans,' Enomoto says in Dutch, 'hurry, hurry, hurry . . .'
    The world outside, framed by the Eik's double-doors, dims.
    The Abbot handles an undamaged mirror. 'This is quicksilver?'
    'Silver oxide, Your Grace,' replies Jacob. 'Of Italian manufacture.'
    'Silver is more truth,' remarks the Abbot, 'than copper mirrors of Japan. But truth is easy to break.' He angles the mirror so as to capture Jacob's reflection, and puts a question to Yonekizu in Japanese. Yonekizu says, 'His Grace ask, "At Holland also, do dead people lack reflection?" '
    Jacob recalls his grandmother saying as much. 'Old women believe so, sir, yes.'
    The Abbot understands and is pleased with the answer.
    'There is a tribe at the Cape of Good Hope,' Jacob ventures, 'called the Basutos who credit a crocodile may kill a man by snapping his reflection in the water. Another tribe, the Zulus, avoid dark pools lest a ghost seize the reflection and devour the observer's soul.'
    Yonekizu gives a careful translation, and explains Enomoto's reply. 'The Abbot says