CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE ROOM OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM AT THE MAGISTRACY
Hour of the ox on the third day of the ninth month
“GOOD AFTERNOON, MAGISTRATE.” DE ZOET KNEELS, BOWS, AND with a nod acknowledges Interpreter Iwase, Chamberlain Tomine, and the two scribes in the corner.
“Good afternoon, Acting Chief,” replies the magistrate. “Iwase shall join us.”
“I will need his talents. Your injury is better, Iwase-san?”
“It was a crack, not a fracture.” Iwase pats his torso. “Thank you.”
De Zoet notices the go table, where the game with Enomoto waits.
The magistrate asks, “Is this game known in Holland?”
“No. Interpreter Ogawa taught me the”—he consults with Iwase—“the ‘rudiments’ during my first weeks on Dejima. We intended to continue playing after the trading season … but unfortunate events occurred ….”
Doves trill, a peaceful sound on this frightened afternoon.
A gardener rakes the white stones by the bronze pond.
“It is irregular,” Shiroyama says, turning to business, “to hold council in this room, but when every adviser, sage, and geomancer in Nagasaki is crowded into the Hall of Sixty Mats, it becomes the Hall of Six Mats and Six Hundred Voices. One cannot think.”
“Deputy Fischer will be delighted with his audience.”
Shiroyama notes De Zoet’s courteous distancing. “First, then”—he nods at his scribes to begin—“the warship’s name, Fîbasu. No interpreter knows the word.”
“Phoebus is not a Dutch word but a Greek name, Your Honor. Phoebus was the sun god. His son was Phaeton.” De Zoet helps the scribes with the strange word. “Phaeton boasted about his famous father, but his friends said, ‘Your mother just claims your father is the sun god, because she has no real husband.’ This made Phaeton unhappy, so his father promised to help his son prove that he was indeed a son of heaven. Phaeton asked, ‘Let me drive the chariot of the sun across the sky.’”
De Zoet pauses for the benefit of the scribes.
“Phoebus tried to change his son’s mind. ‘The horses are wild,’ he said, ‘and the chariot flies too high. Ask for something else.’ But, no, Phaeton insisted, and so Phoebus had to agree: a promise is a promise, even in a myth—especially in a myth. So the following dawn, up, up, up the chariot climbed, from the east, driven by the young man. Too late, he regretted his stubbornness. The horses were wild. First, the chariot drove too high, too far, so all the rivers and waterfalls of earth turned to ice. So Phaeton drove closer to earth, but too low, and burned Africa, and burned black the skins of the Ethiopians, and set alight the cities of the ancient world. So in the end the god Zeus, the king of heaven, had to act.”
“Scribes: stop.” Shiroyama asks, “This Zeus is not a Christian?”
“A Greek, Your Honor,” says Iwase, “akin to Ame-no-Minaka-nushi.”
The magistrate indicates that De Zoet may continue.
“Zeus shot lightning at the chariot of the sun. The chariot exploded, and Phaeton fell to earth. He drowned in the River Eridanos. Phaeton’s sisters, the Heliades, wept so much they became trees—in Dutch we call them ‘poplars,’ but I do not know whether they grow in Japan. When the sisters were trees, the Heliades wept”—De Zoet consults with Iwase—“amber. This is the origin of amber and the end of the story. Forgive my poor Japanese.”
“Do you believe there is any truth in this story?”
“There is no truth at all in the story, Your Honor.”
“So the English name their warships after falsehoods?”
“The truth of a myth, Your Honor, is not its words but its patterns.”
Shiroyama stores the remark away and turns to the pressing matter. “This morning, Deputy Fischer delivered letters from the English captain. They bring greetings, in Dutch, from the English King George. The letter claims that the Dutch Company is bankrupt, that Holland no longer exists, and that a British governor-general now sits in Batavia. The letter ends with a warning that the French, Russian, and Chinese are planning an invasion of our islands. King George refers to Japan as ‘the Great Britain of the Pacific Ocean’ and urges us to sign a treaty of amity and commerce. Please tell me your thoughts.”
Drained by his myth-telling, De Zoet directs his answer to Iwase in Dutch.
“Chief de Zoet,” Iwase translates, “believes the English wanted to intimidate his countrymen.”
“How do his countrymen regard the English proposal?”
This question De Zoet answers directly: “We are at war, Your Honor. The English break promises very easily. None of us wishes to cooperate with them, except one”—his gaze strays to the passageway leading to the Hall of Sixty Mats—“who is now in the pay of the English.”
“Is it not your duty,” Shiroyama asks de Zoet, “to obey Fischer?”
Kawasemi’s kitten skitters after a dragonfly across the veranda.
A servant looks at his master who shakes his head: Let it play …
De Zoet considers his answer. “One man has several duties, and …”
Struggling, he enlists Iwase’s help. “Mr. de Zoet says, Your Honor, that his third duty is to obey his superior officers. His second duty is to protect his flag. But his first duty is to obey his conscience, because God—the god he believes in—gave him his conscience.”
Foreign honor, thinks Shiroyama, and orders the scribes to omit the remark. “Is Deputy Fischer aware of your opposition?”
A maple leaf, fiery and fingered, is blown to the magistrate’s side.
“Deputy Fischer sees what he wishes to see, Your Honor.”
“And has Chief van Cleef communicated any instructions to you?”
“We have heard nothing. We draw the obvious conclusions.”
Shiroyama compares the veins in the leaf to the veins in his hands. “If we wished to prevent the frigate escaping Nagasaki Bay, what strategies would you propose?”
De Zoet is surprised by the question but gives a considered answer to Iwase. “Chief de Zoet proposes two strategies: deception and force. Deception would involve embarking upon protracted negotiations for a false treaty. The merit of this plan is lack of bloodshed. Its demerits are that the English will want to work quickly, to avoid the North Pacific winter, and that they have seen the stratagem in India and Sumatra.”
“Force, then,” says Shiroyama. “How may one capture a frigate without a frigate?”
De Zoet asks, “How many soldiers does Your Honor have?”
The magistrate first tells the scribes to stop writing. Then he tells them to leave. “One hundred,” he confides to De Zoet. “Tomorrow, four hundred; soon, a thousand.”
De Zoet nods. “How many boats?”
“Eight guard boats,” says Tomine, “used for harbor and coastal duty.”
De Zoet next asks whether the magistrate could requisition the fishing boats and cargo ships in the harbor and around the bay.
“The shogun’s representative,” says Shiroyama, “can requisition anything.”
De Zoet delivers a verdict to Iwase, who translates: “It is the acting chief’s opinion that while a thousand well-trained samurai would easily subdue the enemy on land or aboard the frigate, the problems of transport are insuperable. The frigate’s cannonry would demolish a flotilla before the swordsmen could come close enough to board. The Phoebus’s marines, moreover, are armed with the newest”—Iwase uses the Dutch word “rifles”—“but with three times the power, and much faster to reload.”
Shiroyama’s fingers have dismembered the maple leaf. “So there is no hope of detaining the ship by force?”
“The ship cannot be captured,” says De Zoet, “but the bay may be shut.”
Shiroyama glances at Iwase, assuming the Dutchman has made a mistake with his Japanese, but De Zoet speaks to his interpreter at some length. His hands mime at various points a chain, a wall, and a bow and arrow. Iwase verifies a few terms and turns to the magistrate. “Your Honor, the acting chief proposes the erection of what the Dutch call a ‘pontoon bridge’: a bridge made of boats bound together. Two hundred, he thinks, would suffice. The boats should be requisitioned from villages outside the bay, rowed or sailed to the narrowest point of the bay’s mouth, and fastened, from shore to shore, to make a floating wall.”
Shiroyama pictures the scene. “What stops the warship cutting through?”
The acting chief understands and speaks to Iwase in Dutch. “De Zoet-sama says, Your Honor, that to ram through the pontoon bridge, the warship would need to lower her sails. Sailcloth is woven from hemp, and often oiled to make it rainproof. Especially in a season of warm weather, like the present one, oiled hemp is combustible.”
“Fire arrows, yes,” Shiroyama realizes. “We can hide archers in the boats …”
De Zoet looks uncertain. “Your Honor, if the Phoebus is burned …”
Shiroyama recalls the myth: “Like the chariot of the sun!”
If such a plan succeeds, he thinks, the lack of guards shall be forgotten.
“Many sailors,” de Zoet is saying, “in the Phoebus are not English.”
This victory, Shiroyama foresees, could win me a seat on the Council of Elders.
De Zoet is anxious. “The captives must be allowed to surrender with honor.”
“Surrender with honor.” Shiroyama frowns. “We are in Japan, Acting Chief.”