The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  Despite myself, I grinned. Things were pretty desperate, but we were still riding the storm. ‘No, mate, that’s only tomorrow or the next day. Can’t talk now,’ I yelled. Picking up the mooring rope, I passed both ends into the cockpit. Turning to return up the hatchway, I shouted, ‘Hang in there, mate! I promise I’ll let you know when we’re dead!’

  ‘I ain’t no hero,’ he cried, arms outstretched in supplication. ‘I ain’t no fuckin’ hero, Nick!’

  I decided he deserved better. ‘Kevin, we’re in a spot of bother, mate. Stay where you are, but lash yourself to your bunk as things could get a bit tricky.’

  Once in the cockpit I joined the ends of the rope with a sheet bend, then passed them through the stern fairlead and took them around the heavy bronze mooring post in the starboard quarter the six-year-old Kevin had used that first time to climb aboard Madam Butterfly. I began to feed the doubled length of three-inch manila out into the churning ocean. My hope was that the drag of 300 feet of rope in the water would stabilise Madam Butterfly and slow her headlong rush down the force of the waves.

  The drag proved tremendous, two turns around the mooring post barely sufficient to hold the rope in place. Securing the two ends of the rope to a cleat, I immediately felt the effect of the restraining rope on the tiller. Madam Butterfly was riding easier, no longer attempting to turn up into the wind. Heaving to was simply out of the question in this fierce weather, so I decided that the only thing left was for me to take in the remaining sail area.

  This was a bloody sight easier said than done. Tying on a lifeline by using a double bowline, I lashed the tiller amidships and struggled forward. Dropping the small staysail, I wrestled with it and while it is not a big sail, in the howling gale it was like wrestling an angry boa constrictor. I finally secured it and stuffed it down the fore hatch. That, despite taxing my immediate strength, was the easy part. Now for the deep-reefed mainsail. I rested a couple of minutes and thought briefly of hauling Kevin up on deck to help me, but decided this was no task for someone who was asking for help from the Mother of God. A sudden slap from the sail was likely to send him on his way to heaven and into the comforting arms of the Virgin.

  Dropping the gaff unleashed pandemonium. The deck was heaving and bucking like a rodeo horse and I was the cowboy on its back. As well, the wildly flogging sail was bent on hurling me into the sea. Desperately securing the gaff at the tack and clew, I began working my way along the sail, tying it down with a series of hitches. When I’d finally subdued it, my fingers were bleeding and I was utterly exhausted, but, miraculously, I’d done what should have taken the two of us. It’s not always easy being a big bloke but sometimes it’s useful having a tad more strength.

  My final task was to secure the bundled sail, gaff and boom to the deck, lashing it to the boom gallows midships. I returned to the cockpit having played my last card. I’d endured an hour of abject terror because I hadn’t taken in all sail hours earlier. At sea there are always new lessons; that is, if you live to learn them.

  Dawn brought more bad news. Huge dark seas grey as a whale’s back marched behind us, driving Madam Butterfly remorselessly forward. The wind was still shrieking through the rigging and the low clouds racing above me seemed to be touching the tops of the monstrous waves. The eerie dawn light was just sufficient to tell me I’d done all I could and that, from now on, we were in the lap of the gods and the boatbuilders who had constructed the gaff-rigged cutter the Dutchman had boasted could go anywhere and sail any kind of sea.

  There is a certain point you reach when the forces of nature simply overwhelm every possible endeavour and numb resignation sets in. I was exhausted, but even with all the will in the world, there was nothing more I could do. I lashed myself in place in the cockpit, hoping the little bloke had taken my advice and done the same. I was now a part of the boat and we would live or die together. So much for stubbornness as a virtue; this time I had truly come unstuck.

  I stayed lashed to the tiller for the next thirty-six hours, no going down below to check on the little bloke and, of course, it was much too rough to cook. Under normal conditions there would have been sea biscuits to take the edge off our hunger but these were not available in Batavia towards the end and it was not the sort of grocery item that would have come out of Anna’s depleted pantry. We’d have to do with water. I was worried about re-dressing Kevin’s head wound, although I only had two bandages and both were soaked. Last time I’d looked it had been coming along nicely and was healing at the edges, the wound clean with no suppuration. Regular applications of iodine had worked, although without stitches he was going to have to wear a nasty scar for the rest of his life. That is, if there was going to be much more time left to live.

  If I told you that I lived and died through several lifetimes in those thirty-six hours at the helm I wouldn’t be exaggerating. Nobody brags about getting through a storm like this one. Every ocean-going sailor worth his salt knows survival has only partly to do with skill or knowledge. There is only so much you can do. On several occasions during the next two days and nights I was prepared to crawl down the hatchway to announce to the little bloke that we were now officially dead. I’d never been in anything as fierce at sea and trust that I never shall again. Many a large ocean-going merchantman or similar has simply disappeared without trace in a storm of this magnitude. But somehow, perhaps with the help of Kevin’s Virgin Mother, we kept afloat, a tiny bobbing cork in the vast watery and angry firmament.

  Dawn on the third day revealed that the crests of the waves were not being blown off by the wind, although I was not prepared to speculate that it had started to abate. I was so bleary-eyed for lack of sleep, and my eyes were stinging constantly from the effect of the salt spray, that I wasn’t sure I hadn’t manufactured the lessening of the storm from a sense of sheer weariness.

  By mid-morning there was no mistaking it. The wind had dropped to around twenty-five knots. The seas remained huge but not as steep, while the tumbling, breaking crests, so dangerous for a small boat, were rounding out. Our headlong dash to the south, a decision perhaps I can take credit for, meant that the storm had turned east towards the Australian coastline. Had we decided to sail to Broome we would have been caught in the centre of the storm, instead of being brushed by its southern edge. I was under no illusions; if we’d taken the shorter route we would not have survived.

  I was simply too exhausted to raise sail and left Madam Butterfly to run trailing warps as if still within the storm. My weary body told me to wait until the wind had moderated further and the seas abated, but at least I could lash the tiller and leave the cockpit for a while. Then I could have a bit of a kip; that is, if the little bloke was in any condition to take over even for only a couple of precious hours. I’d been up for sixty hours. Fear can keep you awake and alert when under normal circumstances you’d be dead on your feet, the complete zombie. It is coming down, the process of returning to normal, that can be the horror trip.

  In my mind I begged the little bloke to be in a reasonable frame of mind. On the other hand, if he’d been whimpering and ‘Mother Marying’ for three days he’d be in no condition to help. I reckoned Madam Butterfly was just about sailing steady enough for him to manage the tiller. It wasn’t entirely his fault. Any storm in a small boat that’s mildly severe, let alone a near-cyclone, will scare the bejesus out of a novice aboard. He will, if he was still with us, have learned that big-boat sailors of the type that go to sea for Uncle Sam live in a very different world.

  I tried to summon the energy to attempt to stand and then to leave the cockpit and to drag my stiff, sore and exhausted body down the hatch to cook a meal for both of us. I decided if he hadn’t died of fright in the meantime, Kevin could have the whole bloody bottle of sweet soy sauce if he was in a condition to do a two-hour watch. Just two hours, it wasn’t asking for much. Frankly, I was on my last legs.

  I stood painfully and turned towards the hatc
h. It was my time to hallucinate. The little bloke had his head protruding from it, his expression as tentative as a bunny emerging from a burrow knowing the local fox is out and about. His face lit up. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! You ain’t dead. You still there!’

  I attempted a grin. ‘I can’t be sure.’

  ‘Say, buddy, ya wanna cup a java?’

  I nodded and sat down again, suddenly too exhausted and pathetically grateful to move. Five minutes later I held a mug of steaming, heavily sugared black coffee in my trembling hands. That was the moment I knew we were going to make it. The little bloke cooked a meal and I ate silently, too tired to ask him about his own ordeal below deck. For once he seemed to sense this wasn’t the moment to yak and he kept quiet.

  After eating and drinking another cup of coffee, I felt sufficiently strong with his help to hoist the staysail and then, shaking out the reefs, the mainsail. The warps took another half-hour to haul out of the water and stow. By five o’clock the wind was below twenty knots and the sky clearing, as if the storm had sucked all the moisture from the air. Madam Butterfly was sailing well, seeming no worse off than before the storm, though I knew there’d be a host of minor repairs once we had the time to inspect and attend to them.

  The little bloke had never done a night watch so I said to him, ‘Mate, think you can take the tiller until eight, until moonrise?’

  ‘What about jiggery-poo?’ he asked.

  ‘Unless we hit a whale, it’s all plain sailing from now on.’

  ‘Whale? You ain’t said nuthin’ ’bout a whale!’

  ‘It’s okay, by this time of the year they’ve usually migrated well beyond these parts.’

  The sun was setting in a blaze of gold when Kevin took the tiller and I took to my bunk. I woke to his touch at dawn. ‘Sorry, boss, I can’t stay awake no more,’ he said, apologising. He’d allowed me to sleep for a miraculous twelve hours.

  I made breakfast and coffee for both of us and went on deck to see that he’d lashed the tiller in place, keeping Madam Butterfly on course. Something for the better has happened to the little bloke during the storm, I thought to myself. Maybe he’d never make a sailor, but he might yet turn out to be a useful deckhand.

  The sun was rising to a beautiful day with moderate seas and a stiff breeze, perfect sailing conditions. I had no way of knowing what our speed had been during the storm, but making an educated guess based on my dead reckoning we’d covered 1200 nautical miles in the thirteen days we’d been at sea. The storm had really pushed us along. This would mean we would be abeam off Exmouth Gulf and about 150 miles, a little over a day’s sailing, from the Australian coastline. Which, in terms of having escaped the Japs, was one thing; but landing on a harsh and uninhabited coast was quite another. We had a lot of sailing yet to do if we hoped to get to a friendly coast and back to people who didn’t want to kill us, although I was fairly confident that we were now beyond the range of land-based Japanese aircraft.

  Kevin came on deck about midafternoon carrying the usual brew. It was a glorious afternoon and we sat down to talk, the first opportunity to have a bit of a yak since the advent of the storm.

  ‘Here, Kev, let me take the bandage off. Let’s see if there’s any storm damage.’

  ‘It’s the only place that don’t feel broke,’ he said, rubbing the tops of his arms.

  ‘Well, storms don’t get much worse and you remain alive to tell the tale.’

  ‘Alive? We still alive? You sure now, Nick?’ Kevin shook his head. ‘I’m a Catholic —’ he started to explain.

  ‘Yeah, I noticed,’ I interrupted. ‘You seem to have a particular fondness for the Virgin Mary.’

  Kevin looked at me sternly. ‘She the Holy Mother! When the shit hit the fan, that where you gotta go, man!’

  ‘Well, it seemed to work. The first time I went below decks you weren’t in great shape. But I must say, you seem to have survived quite well.’

  ‘That because I’m dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Yeah, when we die we cross this river, it’s called Styx, the River Styx, it’s the way to purgatory. You know what is purgatory, Nick?’

  ‘Sure, it’s a sort of halfway house where you Catholics earn your way to heaven, sort of,’ I said, not entirely certain my answer would please him.

  ‘Yeah, somethin’ like that. Anyhow, while we bin in that storm, when I’m shittin’ myself and praying and sobbing and asking Mother Mary to get me outa this place, the Holy Mother, she appear right there in front of me and she say to me, “Sonny boy, you outa here! You dead. You are one dead Irishman!”’ Kevin looked up at me and shrugged. ‘So that official, see? Ain’t nobody gonna contradik the Holy Mother. When she say you dead, you dead… ain’t no resurrection gonna happen, man.’

  ‘So, what then?’ I asked, staring at the recently dead Kevin.

  ‘Well, I reckon if I’m dead, then this the boat that’s takin’ me across the river.’

  ‘The Styx?’

  ‘Yeah, ain’t no point in worryin’ no more. Ain’t nobody drowned in the river Styx ’cos they dead already.’

  ‘So, from then on… you were okay?’

  ‘Well, I got myself some shut-eye ’cos I’m dead but I’m also exhausted from prayin’ and blubbin’ and snottin’ like a kid.’ He glanced up at me and then, not for the first time, explained, ‘I want you to know I ain’t no fuckin’ hero, you hear, Nick?’ He shrugged, continuing, ‘So, then I wake up. Hey, we must be close to the udder side! I think. We ain’t rollin’ and jumpin’ like before. So I come up and I seen you sittin’ there by the tiller. Hey, whaddya know! Nick don’t tell me he is also Catholic. We both dead, I thinks. But, iffen he ain’t, I mean ain’t a Catholic, then we ain’t on the River Styx and I ain’t dead. So, to be sure, I ask if ya wanna cup a java? That when I’m sure, for sure, we ain’t dead no more. They ain’t got no coffee in purgatory.’

  ‘Welcome back to the land of the living,’ I laughed, while wondering how long concussion lasted and if the hallucinations were back. But I must say, back from the dead a second time, he seemed a different person and happily agreed to change the watch schedule so that I wasn’t always on night watch. We’d do two hours on and two hours off, adopting a normal sailing procedure. I reckoned, with a bit of luck and a following wind, we had about two, maybe three days to go before we sighted land.

  The following two days proved to be picture-book sailing, blue skies with only an occasional billowing mass of white cumulus on the horizon. It was during this time that Kevin began to tell me his story. We were sitting on deck having lunch, same old rice, same old fish, but without Kevin’s gravy. Despite the four meals we’d missed in the storm it had finally run out. I should also add that, with the exception of curry, the little bloke had never complained about the monotonous diet and seemed to consume all his meals with evident relish, providing they contained no tinned carrot.

  ‘I ain’t never again gonna think, “Fish! It gotta be Friday,”’ he said, looking down into his bowl of rice and tinned mackerel.

  ‘Sorry, mate, it’s not exactly cordon bleu.’

  ‘Whazat? Gordon blur?’ he asked, at once curious. The little bloke may have lacked a bit of polish but he was sharp as a tack and curious, not afraid to ask or to appear ignorant — not a bad start in anybody’s book.

  ‘Cordon bleu, it means “blue ribbon” in French. You know, high-class chow. Supposedly the best there is,’ I explained.

  ‘Haddock? You tasted it? Tastes like a whore’s pussy. We kids could smell it in the air when we woke up. “Pussy! It’s Friday!” everybody shouts.’

  Hoping, while eating my rice and mackerel, to avoid any further analogy describing Friday’s haddock in Kevin’s family, I asked, ‘Come from a strict Catholic family, did you?’

  He sniffed. ‘Nah, no family. Not no more. The big strike in ’21, we was kicked out of our place in Canary
ville. That’s like being kicked out o’ hell, three floors up, cold water in the winter it freeze in the faucet pipes. Hot water is in the kettle boiled on a coal stove. There ain’t no other place for the working Irish to go on the South Side, them two rooms in Canaryville, it the end of the fuckin’ line. Nobody is working no more, ’cept the niggers.’

  All this came in a rush, almost as if he was reciting it. ‘What did your father do?’ I asked.

  ‘Meatworks on the South Side, from 39th to 47th and from Halsted Avenue to Ashland Avenue, just the one square mile. The smell it was like the sewage plant broke down, only all the time, but people said that smell meant work.’ Kevin chuckled, recalling. ‘They’d say they used everything in the animal except the squeal and they was working on that.

  ‘Fifty thousand people worked there and they was all treated like dog shit. Irish, Poles, Germans, Lithuanians, Bohemians. The Irish lived east, in Canaryville, east of the stockyards. I gotta tell you I ain’t never heard a canary singing in Canaryville. The Poles lived west, back o’ the yards, they worked on the killing floors. The Lithuanians, north, in Bridgeport. The others, I don’t rightly remember, we never mixed. The niggers, beyond Wentworth Avenue, it was called Bronzeville, they done the dirty work on the killing floors, the Poles done the skinning, cutting and slicing.

  ‘Me daddy worked in the stockyards, me mother cleaned the guts of the slaughtered animals for sausage skins. With the strike they both got the pink slip.’

  ‘The strike? What was it over?’ I asked.

  ‘We, the workers, we was getting thirty cents an hour and they wanted two cents increase. Two lousy cents an hour! Armour & Co, they the bastards, they the biggest — they can slaughter 1200 hogs in an hour. They say to the union, “No rise, no union, no say, go away!” That’s the slogan.’

  ‘So everyone came out?’

  ‘Only the whites, not the niggers, they stayed. They bin comin’ up from the South, they the baddest off, but now they bringin’ in more and more to break the strike. Before, everyone kept to themselves, we did our job in the stockyards and they did theirs on the killin’ floor. It was a peaceable arrangement. No problems. But after the niggers blacklegged us and took our jobs there wasn’t nuthin’ we could do; they had us over a barrel. My father, he took no more interest. He vamoosed. California, someone says later.’