The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  Her most ardent wish was that our romance should continue when the Witvogel arrived in Broome. But this too depended on so much: my arrival, her arrival, my joining the army. And then there was her father, who was not necessarily willing to settle in Australia, where there were no servants and where the lifestyle he’d taken for granted since childhood did not exist. ‘New Zealand,’ he’d declared. ‘The Maori, they are servants to the white people. We will sit out the war in New Zealand. Ja, then we’ll return to Java, to our rightful home.’ It hadn’t occurred to him that the Japanese might win the war, and when this was suggested he would loudly proclaim, ‘They lost it at Pearl Harbor when they were stupid enough to attack the Americans.’

  Anna could recall that he’d been drinking excessively for nearly a year. He’d always been a big drinker, most of the men in the families they knew were very active with their elbows, but he’d always been affable, a happy drunk, a big man who prided himself on his capacity to drink beer and brandy and be the last man still standing at the end of the evening. But in the last year, first with the uncertainty and then the certainty of invasion, and the loss of everything he and his family had stood for throughout ten generations, she’d witnessed him slowly come apart. He’d grown morose, moody, resentful and, above all else, self-pitying and unable to hold his alcohol as he had once done.

  He’d come on board already somewhat drunk, retired immediately to their overcrowded cabin and opened a bottle of brandy from the case he’d brought with him, refusing to come on deck with her to farewell me or even his homeland. He’d merely paused at the top of the gangplank when they’d boarded and turned to look down at the wharf. ‘We gave them everything and look at the bastards shouting at us. Underneath they’re still savages,’ he’d said of the small contingent of Javanese people who were openly jeering as they boarded the Witvogel. ‘They were primitives when we Dutch arrived here, headhunters! It wouldn’t surprise me if they go back to their old habits now that we’ve left. So much for three hundred years of teaching them decency and clean living.’

  Anna, though more Dutch than Javanese in her upbringing, wondered what her mother might have said to this, when at the age of fifteen she’d had the privilege of being seduced by the big Dutchman who’d accepted that, as a native, she was fair game for his every carnal desire.

  Anna had often speculated whether she would have been allowed to stay within the family had Katerina, her stepmother, not been barren and a cripple and if there had been ‘pure blood’ children in the family. She loved Piet Van Heerden, who had never made her feel like a half-caste, chiding his bitter-tongued wife whenever he heard her disparaging her. But right from the beginning, as early as she could remember, she’d had to sing for her supper. Be his little darling. His skatterbol, meaning ‘ball of fluff’. Her status in the family depended on his love and protection.

  She could remember as a five-year-old, when her back was turned, her stepmother crossing the polished wooden floors silently in her wheelchair and taking vicious delight in slapping her across the head with the flat of her hand, while yelling out, ‘Bastard! Whore’s child!’ Her only refuge had been her papa, and as she’d grown older, she’d seen to it that more and more he depended on her love and reassurance. She had finally reached the stage when she could actually influence him, or perhaps a better way of putting it was that she could talk him into doing what she wanted.

  Anna was only sixteen and thought of herself as no different to other girls of her age, but nevertheless sensed that she possessed an almost instinctive knowledge of males. She’d always felt beholden to her father’s moods and was, she admitted, over-anxious to please him and to anticipate his needs. It hadn’t been difficult, we men are simple creatures, and she had come to know that the males who cast furtive looks at her, even when she was a young child, were seeking something from her, though at the time she did not know what this might be.

  It had come as an enormous surprise to her that she felt so wonderfully free and loved when we were together; no longer vulnerable, not finding it necessary to manipulate my affections. I was, after all, a big, clumsy butterfly collector who asked nothing more of her than that she be herself, the nicest and prettiest girl I had ever seen. I appeared to love her without any complication or demands, though she was perfectly aware of my desire for her and she’d secretly laughed at the thought of the ‘accident’ that had caused me to hurry to the outside washroom. She claimed our love showed through the way I looked at her, as if I couldn’t believe my own good fortune — which was perfectly true.

  She’d blossomed, grown into womanhood, earlier than the other girls at school, those whose parents were both Dutch. At first she was ashamed, thinking this an indictment of her Javanese blood. Her stepmother had voiced this once when she’d said accusingly after her periods had arrived, ‘It’s disgusting, you natives are on heat at the age of twelve!’ But she’d soon noted the sly, hungry looks of the teenage boys belonging to family friends and the brothers of her schoolmates. Even older men, those of her father’s adult male friends, when they’d consumed too much brandy, dared to attempt to grope her if they found themselves suddenly left alone with her.

  Anna had been a survivor all her life and so she hadn’t reported the wayward hands of her father’s male friends, knowing that Piet Van Heerden would respond violently. He was a big man with a violent temper and saw her as exclusively his personal property. Moreover, with her father on the warpath over her, Anna knew this would infuriate her viciously resentful and jealous stepmother, who would find a way to punish or taunt her.

  The notion that she had a power over men, she secretly admitted to herself, was exhilarating. She was careful to hide this from her father and his friends; it was the first time in her life that she was not dependent on the goodwill of the male gender. It made her feel in control; she understood instinctively that she possessed a special kind of attraction that males lusted after and which amounted to a female’s power over the opposite sex.

  Though careful not to be thought of as a flirt, she was aware that her lithe body had a way of moving naturally that produced a hungry look in men’s eyes. Anna countered this by averting her eyes when men looked at her and was careful never to flirt, but she didn’t attempt to change the way she walked or moved. She’d seen tall Dutch girls round their shoulders and keep their heads bowed in an attempt to appear shorter, pretty girls who lost their femininity attempting to hide their stature. She determined to always hold her head high, chin forward, open her shoulders and allow her body to maintain its naturally feline movements.

  I had once remarked that her every move, her every gesture, appeared elegant. I recalled saying, ‘You seem to perform a beautifully articulated mime simply by moving, Anna.’ Whereas her stepmother had stabbed an angry finger at her when she was just thirteen and sneered, ‘Swartz! You move like a black woman. Show some modesty, you little slut!’

  Now, standing forlornly at the ship’s rails, desperately trying to locate me among the smudge of people lining the docks and thinking me perhaps lost to her forever, she deeply regretted choosing her unravelling family and their voyage to safety in a grog-fumed cabin filled with snoring adults, where eight people were expected to share just four bunks.

  She and the maid, Kleine Kiki, would have to sleep on the floor or perhaps on the deck. No, she realised that was impossible; the deck space had been chalked into squares that were now rapidly filling with desperate, quarrelling families who were aggressively policing their chalk lines. Their cabin also needed to accommodate Katerina’s wheelchair, their trunk and the baggage of the four strangers who shared the cabin. The baggage hold had been turned into people space and, despite paying the full fare three months in advance, they had been refused stowage for their on-board trunk.

  When Piet Van Heerden had pointed out that they’d paid for two cabins that included below-deck trunk stowage, the first mate had laughed. ‘Count yourself lucky, sir.
You have a cabin with only four extra people; we’re selling single chalked squares in the hold to large families for more than you paid for both cabins.’ He then suggested they might like to return to shore, where he was sure the owners would engage to fully refund their money.

  ‘What about my refund for the money I paid for the second cabin?’ Piet Van Heerden, already half-inebriated, asked belligerently.

  The first mate delicately scratched the side of his nose with his forefinger, looking down in order to hide his grin. ‘Ah, we have no authority to refund bookings. You’ll have to write to the owners in Amsterdam, sir,’ he replied.

  ‘I ought to smash your teeth in!’ Anna’s papa had yelled at the man.

  ‘That would be a big mistake, sir,’ came the first mate’s sanguine reply. ‘Just say the word. It would give me enormous pleasure to escort a drunk and his family back to shore.’

  ‘Come, Papa,’ Anna cried, grabbing him by the arm. She shot an angry look at the first mate and then said, as if to her father, ‘Papa, you know how it is — some men are born bastards, while others become bastards when they’re given a little power.’

  And so it had all started badly, and in addition she’d broken down in front of me, clasping her Clipper butterfly in its box to her chest as she said a tearful farewell. She’d been determined to remain dry-eyed and brave, but suddenly she didn’t feel in the least powerful or in control of her womanhood. Instead, the farewell, saying goodbye to me, filled her with uncertainty and even dread. She was back to being the little girl afraid of the future, who wanted too much to be loved.

  As the Witvogel passed the two wrecks at the entrance to Tanjong Priok harbour she thought of Madam Butterfly, its sails catching the breeze and the sound of the wind in the rigging, of being alone with me on the open ocean and watching the flying fish jumping ahead of the bow, two young lovers attempting to escape the pain of their suddenly topsy-turvy, brutal and unpredictable world.

  She told herself she’d stayed out of loyalty to her father who needed her, although more and more Katerina despised her and all Piet Van Heerden needed was the oblivion of a brandy bottle. So what if I had taken her virginity? She told herself she’d rather I performed the ultimate introduction to her womanhood than anyone else in the world. A lovely compliment and one I would always treasure.

  As they left the surrounds of Batavia and passed out into the open sea, Anna started once more to weep. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see a fat woman with an incipient moustache. The angry-looking woman was wearing a floral dress printed with pink rosebuds and forget-me-nots that stretched over her enormous bosom, her mammaries using up so much of the fabric that the front hemline rose twenty-five centimetres above the back to reveal her fat, pink, dimpled knees. She appeared to be in her mid-forties. ‘Excuse me, but you’re standing in our square.’ She pointed to the chalkline on the deck. ‘Mijn husband works hard and he paid good money for this space. You cannot stay here. Can’t you see they’ve marked corridors for people to walk?’

  The next two days at sea proved to be difficult ones for Anna; she slept hardly at all. Piet Van Heerden was perpetually drunk, Katerina more shrewish than ever, so that Kleine Kiki, also lacking sleep, was constantly in tears. The four other passengers — a bank clerk appropriately named de Klerk, his wife and his two thin-lipped, disapproving maiden sisters — were immediately hostile. Not that she blamed them, for her papa and stepmother were behaving appallingly. Her father was shouting out drunkenly, shaking his fist, angry at nobody in particular, and her stepmother was yelling at him to behave himself and then, in turn, taking her vexation out on Kleine Kiki.

  But there was worse, much worse, to come. Thirty hours after leaving Tanjong Priok, when about one hundred and fifty nautical miles out at sea, the passengers heard a deep knocking sound coming from below and reverberating through the ship. The Witvogel suddenly stopped and was soon wallowing helplessly in the swell, the heat on board the impossibly overcrowded ship soon becoming unbearable.

  At noon the captain announced over the ship’s loudspeaker that they’d developed engine trouble and the ship’s engineers were trying to rectify the problem. For the next three hours they heard constant hammering and eventually the shaft began to turn. Then to everyone’s dismay the ship began to turn in a wide arc to the north-east. The captain came on the loudspeaker once again and announced that they were returning to Java, to the port of Tjilatjap, where repairs would take place. He left the worst for last — that the ship’s speed, normally around eight knots, was severely reduced and it would take several days to get back to the coast and sail upriver to the port. He assured the passengers that the Japanese had not yet invaded and that hopefully the Witvogel would be on its way again and well out to sea before they did arrive.

  It was also my birthday, and Anna told me how she had searched the ship for an empty corner and finally found it in one of the women’s lavatories that was closed for repairs. She sat on the toilet seat and cried her heart out. ‘Oh, Nicholas, I missed you so much! You were somewhere out there, close. I could feel it in my heart!’ she told me, tears running down her cheeks when she was recounting her story. She was stuck on a broken-down ship that was wallowing in the tropical heat, knowing I couldn’t be very far away, having left Batavia only a day earlier.

  Finally she’d left the disused toilet and made her way on deck, where she found a chalked corridor that led to half a metre or so of railing that didn’t trespass onto someone’s square. Looking across the horizon towards where she thought the Sunda Strait might be, she shouted at the horizon, ‘Happy birthday, Nicholas! I love you!’, not caring about the startled looks of passengers in the adjacent squares.

  And so began what Anna thought at the time were the worst four days of her life. At first the intruders, as she thought of the four members of the de Klerk family, made sly remarks amongst themselves about the drunken Piet Van Heerden. But seeing how pathetic and helpless he’d become, they were soon bawling insults openly at him. This, in turn, caused her stepmother to bare her teeth and scream back at them like a fishwife. The cabin had become a battleground. Every waking hour, internecine warfare raged between the two families, with the fetid air often blue with invective.

  There was no space to move in the cabin and Anna spent most of her time standing or seated in the passageway, out of earshot of the caterwauling women and the self-important and hectoring bank clerk. He was a small man with black wavy hair that glistened with pomade; combed backward from his brow and flattened over his skull, it more closely resembled a nasty-looking toupee than it did his own God-given hair. Anna instinctively knew de Klerk was the kind of snivelling rodent who would slink away and hide rather than face up to a confrontation.

  Not that Piet Van Heerden was interested in putting him in his place. After the incident with the first mate, and realising their fate was no longer in his hands, he’d taken seriously to the brandy bottle and lay all day in the top bunk in an alcohol-induced stupor. On several occasions, too drunk to go to the toilet or to ask for the brandy bottle he’d taken to using, he’d ended up pissing while still wearing his pants, groping at his fly to remove his penis and sending an arc of piss splashing against the cabin ceiling directly above him for it to return in a shower over his bunk, face, chest and already-stained trousers. This to the outraged howls from the de Klerks and silent disgust of Anna, who found herself forced to try to clean him up, though she avoided touching his penis, which he’d tucked back into his trousers, leaving a wet stain at the front. Despite all her efforts, the sharp tang of urine was soon added to the smell of stale grog, sweat and vomit in the overcrowded cabin.

  The communal toilets were soon blocked and the ship below-decks smelled of seasickness and shit. They had to queue for two hours to receive a single small meal a day from the ship’s kitchen. This consisted mostly of a handful of rice, tinned vegetables and a few stingy bits of pink bully beef coated in watery,
grey gravy.

  The water in the cabin had been cut off and Anna had to wait for an hour to clean her teeth in the women’s communal bathroom, where the tap handles for the showers had been removed and she was obliged to share a basin of water with Kleine Kiki. Having washed as best they might, the little maid would return to the cabin with a wet towel to dutifully wipe her mistress down. Anna did the same for her drunken, mumbling and often pathetically weeping father.

  The journey to the coast took four days and nights of sweltering heat. The ship’s fans were no longer working, adding to the misery on board. It was rumoured that three elderly passengers had died of heat exhaustion.

  When at last the Witvogel reached the mouth of the long, winding river that led to the port of Tjilatjap, some eleven kilometres inland, the despondent mood on board changed despite the fear of the sudden appearance of the Japanese. At least the passengers would be able to go ashore. They speculated that they’d be able to purchase food to bring back on board, as well as have a good wash, a general clean-up and get their laundry done.

  In the shared cabin there was a general mood of renewed hope for the first time since they had left Batavia. The de Klerks, pusillanimous male and three females, and the Van Heerdens, drunken and self-pitying male and three females, ceased their bickering for the duration of the journey upriver. The three de Klerk women commenced brushing, rouging, powdering and lipsticking, a process that took all their attention as they primped and tarted themselves up for the visit ashore.

  Katerina, with the help of Anna and Kleine Kiki, attempted to do the same. Anna even dug up a chocolate-brown linen suit from the trunk for her stepmother to wear. To this she added white gloves and a small brown straw hat sporting the grandiose tail feather of a golden pheasant. Finally, standing back — or as far back as she could in the crowded cabin — she pronounced her stepmother the prettiest of all the women. Which, it should be said, was not a major achievement and earned sour looks from the three other adult women.