The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Two thousand feet, that pretty damn low, ain’t it?’ Kevin asked, concerned. ‘They seen us good, they said so wit der wings.’

  ‘Ah, the Catalinas are strange birds, with only a top speed of ninety knots, they’re sitting ducks for any fighter plane or anti-aircraft. I’ve spoken to the crews who occasionally used to fly into Rabaul. Bloody deathtraps they are, made of canvas with no self-sealing fuel tanks, so if they cop a machine-gun bullet in a tank they’re history. They’ve got two machine-guns on board but seldom get to fire them in anger except perhaps at targets like us. On the other hand, we might carry a machine-gun and putting a couple of dozen bullets into their tanks wouldn’t be that difficult. If we were the enemy it wouldn’t be us who were the sitting ducks. That’s why they’re staying well clear. But they’re ideal for reconnaissance and coastal guardwork as they can stay in the air for up to twenty-eight hours. They know we’re here so their job is done. I’ll take down the flag for now but remind me to hoist it again around daylight tomorrow, will you?’

  Sitting on deck eating the usual gourmet meal from the paddy and the sea via the cannery, I couldn’t help wondering if this would be our final evening meal together on board Madam Butterfly. I guessed I’d give rice and tinned mackerel a miss for a while. I was anxious to hear the remainder of the little bloke’s story and knowing this might well be our last night together I started right out, hoping to somehow skirt around the subject of his mother.

  ‘So, Kevin, you’re out of Pontiac, you don’t want to go to college and nobody seems too keen to give a reformatory kid a job. How’d you survive?’

  ‘Spottin’ pins.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Tenpins?’ Kevin could see from my expression that I didn’t understand. ‘Bowlin’ alley, players knock down the pins, you gotta collect ’em and stan’ dem up again. End o’ the day, twelve hours, you can’t lift yer arms and your back’s broke, ten cents an hour so you got yourself a buck twenty. If you don’t work fast and the customers complain you keepin’ them waitin’, they don’t get their money-worth, that the end of you. There are plenty of kids outside, dey willin’ to fight you for that shit job.’ He looked up. ‘But that don’t last too long, my big mouth soon seen to that and yours truly is back on the streets where there ain’t no jobs for a kid who bin to reform school, ain’t no jobs anyhow comin’ out of that Depression, ain’t no welfare, ain’t no jobs, ain’t no hope. Ain’t nothin’ for it, I gotta turn back to crime to make me a crust, ’cos I’m starving, man.’

  ‘What, back to toilet windows?’

  Kevin grinned. ‘Nah, numbers racket. That the funny thing, man, the wops gimme the chance, one of the wop kids from Pontiac who is out and he see me in the street. “Hey, Judgie, how ya doin’, man?” he ask me. In the reformatory Irish kids don’t talk to wops and visa-versa. I can bullshit, give him some good rap, but what the hell, I’m broke and I’m hungry and he the first friendly voice I heard in a while. “I’m on the bones, buddy,” I tell him. He gives me his hand. “Mario… Mario Parissi.” We shake hands, I never done that with a wop before. “You et?” he asks. I shake my head. He don’t know I ain’t eaten for two days. “Come. You eat pizza?”’

  Kevin glanced at me and laughed. ‘Everybody in the world got a best meal. You know, the best dey ever had. For me that day in the Italian quarter, Maxwell Street Market at Mario Parissi’s uncle Franco’s Pizza and Ice-Cream Parlour that the best, the number one, all-time, big league, home run, best. Peperoni, mozzarella cheese, smoked ham, salami, cabanossi, other things I don’t even know you can get before, all sittin’ bubblin’ in this melted cheese that got a brown crust on top. I ate me that whole giant-size pizza. Man, I died and gone to heaven!’

  ‘Sounds great, I’ve never eaten pizza. I’ve only seen them in films in the cinema.’

  ‘Whatcha mean? You ain’t got no wops in Australia?’

  ‘Sure, in Sydney and Melbourne, and we had an Italian guy at school in Brisbane, good swimmer. Some Italian engineers I once met building a road through the jungle in New Britain, but no pizza parlours that I know of.’

  ‘First chance you get, take my advice, Nick, Italian sausage, the hot chilli one, that the main ingredient you want to get. Remember now!’

  ‘Yeah, okay, Italian sausage, the hot chilli one.’

  ‘It called peperoni, don’t forget, peperoni!’

  I nodded, wondering how long it might be before I had to remember the peperoni. A pizza parlour springing up in Rabaul seemed improbable. With the imminent Japanese invasion a sushi bar was more likely. It had been a fair while since I had eaten Japanese, although occasionally my father would make tempura prawns and vegetables. He couldn’t boil an egg but someone, somewhere in his Japanese past, had shown him how to make a tempura batter and very occasionally he’d exercise this single culinary skill and cook up a batch of prawns and vegies if the bishop was visiting. That is, if he could find a light cooking oil, which was pretty seldom. Most island cooking was done in coconut milk, pork fat or lard, and what passed for cooking oil, when available, had roughly the consistency of something you’d find in a diesel engine sump.

  Without further prompting the little bloke continued. ‘That’s how I got into the numbers racket. Mario tells his uncle Franco how I am the top brain in the reformatory and how wit the Hammer-man we run cigarettes in the kids’ jail, but we don’t interfere wit the wogs. He don’t say nothin’ about the fight in the washroom. He say I reliable and trustworthy and I am organised and ain’t no dog and I also a Catholic. His uncle say he’ll talk to his brother Bruno, that if I can’t be a wog then a Mick’s the next best thing. Uncle Franco’s brother Bruno is connected to someone who’s connected to someone who’s connected to someone that is a lieutenant in the Frank Nitti mafia family.’ Kevin paused, then explained, ‘Frank Nitti he take over when Al Capone got his indictment, but he ain’t no big talker like Capone, he don’t rock the boat, everythin’ is connections. So now I’m workin’ for the mafia six times removed sellin’ numbers tickets on the street, nickels and quarters, and I’m gettin’ me a percentage. It ain’t big but I’m making enough for a dosshouse and I can eat. But mostly it’s pizza and sometimes Mrs Franco she say, “Come, boy, tonight you gonna eat pasta.”’ Kevin looked up. ‘You know what is pasta, Nick?’

  ‘Like noodles?’ Then remembering I’d read the word somewhere, ‘Spaghetti, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah and lots more, linguini marinara, lasagne, spaghetti con le vongole, gnocchi alla burro, fettuccine al burro,’ Kevin reeled them off, ticking each dish off on his ‘love’ fingers, then his ‘hate’ ones. ‘Wog food, buddy, it the best! I’m also learnin’ dat wogs, like niggers, they ain’t all bad. Mario is a good guy and soon all the other wogs runnin’ numbers, they accept me and I’m hangin’ out wit dem. I’ve got previous and they respect that. Maybe Mario told them, but they know about the washroom and the cigarettes. Some of the Hammer-man, it musta rubbed off on me, ’cos they think I don’t take no shit. I’m doin’ okay and I’m givin’ Mario’s cousin, Nico, who is a stonemason apprentice, fifty cents a week for the tombstone he’s carvin’ for my mother’s grave. He’s gonna carve me an angel wit wings for only five dollars more than one o’ them square headstones. The inscription it read:

  ‘Mary O’Rourke

  1898–1935

  Now only blue skies.

  Life’s stormy weather

  gone forever!

  R.I.P.’

  ‘That’s very nice,’ I said. ‘Did you compose it yourself?’

  ‘Nah, dey the words on this embroid’ry picture in Father Geraghty’s office. One of the nuns, she done it for him when his mother died in Ireland. It’s also got a red rose wit leaves an’ thorns in the corner of the picture, but Mario’s cousin said he ain’t learned yet how to do a rose in granite, he still learnin’ to do the thorns on a Christ head.’

  Carving a rose sounds a lot le
ss complicated than carving an angel and I couldn’t help wondering what the little bloke got for his money. ‘Good job was it, the angel?’

  ‘Yep, considerin’ the wings.’

  ‘Wings?’

  ‘He couldn’t get a piece a stone big ’nough so the angel’s wings they can’t spread out, so dey folded an’ the angel arms dey ain’t nowhere and he tell me dey suppose to be hid unner the wings so you don’t see dem and he ain’t learned to do feet yet.’

  I couldn’t contain myself and I started to laugh. Kevin started laughing as well and soon we were rolling around, hugging ourselves. ‘The face, the angel… is it pretty?’ I asked finally, still giggling.

  ‘He ain’t done faces yet. It more like an owl. It got a beak and two holes, no mouth. He ain’t done faces yet. I got me an owl angel!’ Kevin roared.

  ‘But the wings, they’re nice… folded, but nice… I take it he’s done wings?’

  Kevin thought for a moment. ‘One wing, it okay, but the udder, it like the angel, she got a hunchback on the one side wit some feathers hangin’ down.’ Kevin started to laugh again. ‘I got myself a hunchback owl angel wit no arms and the feet they ain’t come out the rock yet!’

  ‘All for an extra five bucks?’

  ‘Nah, I don’t pay him the five spot.’ Kevin grinned. ‘I give him some free advice ’bout what he can go do to his sister.’ The little bloke pushed his forefinger into the soft flesh of his pug’s nose and made a small circular motion, then grinned. ‘Dat’s when I find out dat apprentice wog Nico, he can do noses real good.’

  I thought to myself that a battered and broken angel was probably a very good symbol for Sweet Mary O’Rourke, the little bloke’s mother. I patted him on the back. ‘Mate, it was a lovely thing to do for your mother. Sorry about your hooter… Jeez, I must say, he did a damn good job.’

  ‘Nah, he only the secon’ time, the first happen at Angel when I ten years old, dis big kid, he sixteen, he want me to suck him off, but I won’t do it, so he whack me an’ break my nose, dat the first time. Then the third is when we, Mario and my wog buddies, do dat cigarette van heist.’

  ‘What’s it with you and cigarettes, Kev?’

  ‘Fags! It like stealin’ money, Nick. You don’t have no trouble wit unloadin’ them, everybody in the world smokes and everybody want cheap fags and don’t ask no questions. We sellin’ numbers so it’s easy to carry two cartons wit you. Sell a numbers ticket then you ask, “Want cigarettes, ma’am, sir?” Nobody gonna say no dey don’t buy hot. Der some folk who dey never bought der fags no udder way.’

  ‘You said a cigarette van. I take it this was rather more than a few cartons through the toilet window?’

  ‘Hey, dis one professional. We got us a wog kid on the inside who work for the wholesaler. The vans dey loaded at night an’ den dey locked in behin’ dis big security fence. The guard he like to have him some shut-eye two, three in the morning in a shed where he got a bed. Dey don’t have no dogs. So we cut the gate chain wit bolt cutters and we tie up the guard and we take ourself a van.

  ‘We laughin’, we rich, maybe a thousand cartons in dat van and we away and goin’ down this highway tunnel when we burst us a tyre. There ain’t no spare, it four o’clock in the mornin’ an’ we ain’t goin’ nowhere, man. It time to kick the dust, get outa der. But first we push the van into the side ’mergency tunnel so maybe nobody don’t see it ’til the mornin’. Den we vamoose.

  ‘We bin walkin’ a while when this patrol car pulls up, the lights are flashin’, the siren goin’ and it stop and two cops get out. We heared it comin’ and Mario says, “Judgie, if da cops, dey Irish, you talk, if dey wops, I talk.” He turn to the udder four guys, “Allayas shurrup!”

  ‘Both cops are Irish. One look and you can tell. They got der gut spillin’ over der belt and one of dem hitch his trousers up before he speaks and everythin’ upfront it wobbles. But he don’t speak to me but to the other cop. “Fuckin’ wops,” he says, shakin’ his head like he just opened a garbage can and come across a bag o’ vermin. Mario looks at me and gimme the nod I must talk.

  ‘“Mornin’, officer, we got ourself a predicament, thank gawd you’ve come,” I say.

  ‘“Sonny boy, you got yourself a predicament orright, you in the middle of a goddamn traffic tunnel!’ the trouser-hitch cop says.

  ‘“Yessir, officer, we from outa town, Pontiac, junior baseball team, Hawks, Illinois State Junior semi-finals, we got ourself lost and we don’t know dis tunnel it only for traffic.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Den suddenly it too late, we don’t know iffen we near the end or we shoulda turned back. We scared, officer! We shittin’ ourself!” I say and give him a bug-eyed look.

  ‘The second cop he looks at me, then he looks down at his boots, then back at me. “Dat van,” his head nods towards where we come from, “dat cigarette van back dere, you know summin’ about that?”

  ‘“Van? We ain’t seen no van,” I say, lookin’ him in the eye, then lookin’ at the others who is noddin’ they don’t see no van.

  ‘“Yeah, yeah,” he points to my ’cheater. “Zip!” I pull down the zip o’ my windcheater and he see there ain’t nuttin’ hidden dere. He looks at Mario. “Zip!” then to all o’ us, “Zip!” Now there’s cartons of Lucky, Camel, Chesterfield, Winston, every bran’ you can name fallin’ down, clatterin’ on the road. It’s now near five in the mornin’ and the tunnel traffic is buildin’, zoom… zoom… zooooom, early trucks and some autos buildin’ the noise in the tunnel.

  ‘“Temptation!” I spread my hands and give him a sheepish grin. “All dem cigarettes in dat broken-down van. We only hoomen, officer,” I try to explain.

  ‘Wham! Hitch-trousers, he hit me on the nose. “Wops ain’t hoomen!” he says. “Dey greasy filth!”

  ‘“I ain’t no wop, I’m Irish,” I say. I got my head bowed and the blood it drippin’ from my nose like a leakin’ faucet.

  ‘Whack! Uppercut. He hits me again on the nose, what bones ain’t broke before dey broke now. “Irish consortin’ with wops, dat ain’t natural, that disgustin’, sonny boy!”

  ‘“I ain’t took no cigarettes,” I say, pleadin’, snot and blood sniffin’, trying to save my own ass, then ashamed I said it, the whiny Angel Guardian child comin’ out in me. What you made to do as a kid always comes back when you scared.

  ‘“Irish consortin’ with wops and also stoopid!” he says and hits me one more time, now I only got mash left, bloody mash, bitsa bone.’

  Kevin looked up at me and grinned, his hooter spread across the centre of his face. ‘Our fingerprints dey all over dat cigarette van where we pushed it into the safety tunnel, there ain’t no pleadin’ petty theft, a few cartons took outa temptation. The judge he gonna throw the book. That when he offer me the military, or else. “Join up or Joliet,” he says. Joliet, dat the state prison and where, witout Joe Popkin to protect me, I ain’t got no protection and I’m gonna be someone’s butt-bitch.’

  ‘So you chose the navy?’

  ‘Yeah, I ain’t much for marchin’, I done ’nough marchin’ at Angel and den Pontiac, swingin’ yer arms, knobbly knees touchin’.’

  Two hours at the helm and two hours below sounds difficult, but at sea it’s the ideal watch, even at night. At dawn the next day when my time was almost up I saw what I took to be Rottnest Island. We’d made it. It wasn’t something you said with an exclamation mark. No dancing on the deck. Luck had played a huge part. I suppose a bit of seamanship had helped as well, but mostly the sailing part, anyway, was due to Madam Butterfly. A yacht is essentially a woman — you really know very little about her until you mutually experience a crisis and that’s when you witness her hidden depths. What’s more, you can never tell by just looking, measuring, checking the design; it’s something that happens beyond the theory, beyond the maths. I suppose you call it character. Men carry it like a badge, cultivate it, flaunt it, call it names — l
eadership, guts, steadfastness, will, drive, bravery, commonsense, charisma — we wear it like a bright uniform, pin medals to it to attract other men and the admiration and adulation of women. But women never think about it; it’s simply there when the crisis comes or it ain’t, bright tears or shining steel, rock or shifting sands. Boats are like that.

  But, of course, at the time I knew a great deal more about boats than I did about women and probably wasn’t capable of such an analogy. I hadn’t even undergone the apprenticeship of a mother. My experience of the female gender had been limited to the starched and veiled, over-powdered, un-lipsticked school matron or the pre-lunch or afternoon-gin-and-tonic-lubricated expat wives at the Rabaul Country Club in white tennis dresses. Except perhaps for the mixed Easter services in the Anglican church, where the native women sang with a full heart and the white women stared, thin-lipped and hostile, mouthing the hymns, both sets of female worshippers uncomfortable and diminished in the presence of the other. I was no expert on women, that was for sure. Anna was separated in my mind as someone unique, a loveliness born of a mixture of white and dark in unknown proportions, a secret of genetic pigments and therefore not to be compared or included; mine alone.

  I went over to the hatchway and called down to Kevin, ‘Wakey, wakey, mate, this is the moment, we’ve made it. Rottnest Island! Next stop Fremantle! Bacon and eggs, easy over!’ I had learned the expression from American movies. All his life in institutions had made the little bloke an instant waker-upperer and he leapt from his bunk and hurried on deck, standing in the nuddy, feet apart, shielding his eyes from the rising sun as he examined the dark shape of the island.

  ‘Dey got folk dere?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, probably.’ I turned to him. ‘Get your strides on and bring up the flag, we should see a naval launch heading our way pretty soon.’