The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  Piet Van Heerden, sitting in the wheelchair with his chin resting on his chest, started to grunt. ‘This is mijn father,’ Anna said to the little Javanese woman and her son. The driver had his back to them and was busy loading the bag and basket onto the three-wheeler and so wasn’t involved in the introduction. Anna had not hitherto mentioned her father’s drinking to Ratih. As their own men do not drink alcohol, to a Muslim woman the effects of alcohol on a man would be scarcely understood. Ratih smiled down at the huge man in the wheelchair and putting her palms together she bowed, greeting him formally and respectfully in the Javanese manner, while Budi said ‘Good morning, sir’ to him in accent-less Dutch.

  Piet Van Heerden looked up, ignoring them both. ‘Anna, waar is mijn Scotch?’ he demanded in a petulant voice. ‘Waar? Waar? I must have it at once!’

  ‘Papa, you cannot drink in public, this is a Muslim country,’ Anna replied firmly. ‘Wait a little longer until we find a place to stay,’ she said, having no idea if they would find such a place or how long it might take.

  ‘Ha! It still belongs to the Netherlands!’ Piet Van Heerden objected. ‘We are in charge here! I can drink anywhere I want to, these monkeys can’t stop me!’

  Ratih, not understanding the language, saw how he was unable to control the shakes. ‘I think he is sick. Is it malaria?’ she asked sympathetically. ‘We must take him to the hospital.’

  ‘He is drunk, which is another type of sickness,’ Anna said quietly to the concerned cook. ‘If we can find somewhere to stay, where he can dry out, he will be all right in a couple of days.’ She knew this to be unlikely, for when Piet Van Heerden finally realised they were trapped in Java he would be much worse, trying desperately to drown his despair with the contents of a bottle.

  ‘But he is not wet!’ Ratih exclaimed, not understanding.

  ‘It is an expression,’ Anna explained. ‘It means if he stops drinking.’

  ‘Anna, we have a house! The sergeant has found one. I think it will be okay,’ Budi said, trying to contain his excitement.

  ‘It was the house for the police lieutenant who was in charge of the Central Town District Station,’ Ratih volunteered. ‘Now he has gone people have not taken it, because it is the house for the polisi. It is not big, only a house for a lieutenant. But we have cleaned it and that lieutenant, his name is Lieutenant Joost de Villiers, his wife she grows potatoes and so they have the money for the boat. He has left some furniture there and Budi has chopped wood for the stove.’

  Anna could scarcely believe her ears. ‘Oh, Ratih, that is wonderful!’ She hugged the little woman and gave her a kiss. ‘Thank you, thank you!’ Then she did the same to Budi, who smiled and rubbed the spot on his cheek with the fingertips of his right hand where her lips had touched him. Anna couldn’t tell whether his expression was one of bemusement or if he seemed pleased. ‘Did you hear that, Papa? We have a house to go to.’

  ‘Scotch!’ Piet Van Heerden yelled out.

  ‘Ja, Papa, soon!’ Anna promised. ‘When we get to this lovely house.’

  Ratih was a cook accustomed to dealing with truck drivers who smoked hashish that, they claimed, kept them awake and relaxed on long trips and so she wasn’t put out by the Dutchman’s sudden outburst. ‘I have cooked for you some food,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow morning Kiki will come over and help you to shop in the markets, she will only start with me to help in the kampong kitchen in the afternoon. She will stay with us, I have a spare mattress in my bedroom.’

  ‘And what will happen when you marry Sergeant Khamdani?’ Anna asked, laughing.

  Ratih giggled. ‘Ahee! In his kampong he has a house bigger than mine, Kiki will have her own space I think.’ It was the second time Ratih had used Kleine Kiki’s name without the Dutch diminutive. This was a smart woman — the Japanese were coming; anything, particularly a Dutch expression, might lead to questions, whereas a cook’s assistant named Kiki in a local Javanese eating house wouldn’t raise the slightest interest.

  ‘Do you hear that, Kiki? I think Mother Ratih is saying it is best we dropped the “kleine” from your name.’

  Kiki nodded. ‘It is alright, Anna,’ she said shyly. ‘I understand.’ Anna knew instinctively that she longed to ask if she could stay with her and still work as Ratih’s apprentice, but was too shy to ask. Much as she would have loved to have Kiki with her, Anna decided not to ask the cook. The sooner Kleine Kiki started her new life the better. There was no point in delaying it with the Japanese perhaps only hours away.

  ‘Scotch!’ Piet Van Heerden demanded, thumping the arm of the wheelchair. He was slowly becoming more sober and with it more irritable and anxious.

  ‘Can we walk to the lieutenant’s house?’ Anna, ignoring him, asked Ratih.

  ‘It is ten minutes along the river. Budi will push your father,’ Ratih said, then called to Til, who nodded and set off, his skinny, muscle-roped legs pedalling furiously. ‘He knows that house for the Lieutenant Joost,’ she said.

  When they arrived Anna wheeled her father into the kitchen, leaving him alone and accompanying Ratih, Budi and Kiki to conduct an inspection of the house. It was a task that didn’t take them long. It had two bedrooms, a kitchen and small pantry, a bathroom and outside toilet, and a balkon ran the length of the front to shade the house from the sun. It was, to all intents and purposes, a very plain little house like hundreds of others, a basic design a builder’s foreman would knock up in his sleep. The house had been stripped of linen and anything the police lieutenant and his wife could conveniently pack, but the furniture remained. There was a large marital bed with mattress in the master bedroom and a single, also with mattress and an old batik cover, in the second smaller one. Anna momentarily regretted discarding the several sets of heavy monogrammed sheets her stepmother had insisted on packing, but then realised that the native market would be filled with discarded linen that she could purchase when she went shopping with Kiki in the morning.

  When they’d returned to the kitchen Anna noted that Ratih had left her two pots, plates, some forks and spoons, tin mugs and a cleaver from her kampong kitchen. She glanced tentatively at her father, and saw that he was still in the wheelchair parked in the centre of the kitchen and had become incoherent with rage. ‘Scotch!’ he finally managed to burst out.

  Budi said, ‘There is one more thing, Anna.’ He pointed to an unobtrusive trapdoor beside the stove and then pulled the heavy bolt and lifted it, using the neatly cut handgrip. Anna felt compelled to move over and look. A set of wooden steps led downwards. ‘See, it is a cellar!’ Budi announced, anxious to show her this architectural aberration in the plain little house. He began to descend the short flight of wooden steps. Anna felt trapped; she knew she must tend to her father but, at the same time, didn’t want to delay Ratih and Budi or to have them witness her humiliation at her father’s cantankerous behaviour. She elected to follow him into the cellar, knowing that she would have the remainder of the day to administer to her furious father, whose drunken behaviour was absorbing almost every moment of her life, and she felt a tiny sting of resentment deep inside her. ‘Soon, Papa,’ she called, trying to stay calm in the presence of the other three and then following Budi down the steps. Ratih and Kiki came too, not wishing to be left alone with the enormous apoplectic Dutchman.

  The cellar could barely contain the four of them, and the ceiling was only just above Anna’s head. A tiny window set directly under the line of the ceiling created by the kitchen floor let in a soft light and could be opened if necessary to let in fresh air. Curiously, a tiny pair of neat canvas curtains hung from either side of the window and below that a shelf had been built to hold equipment so that it could be easily seen in the light coming from the window.

  ‘The cellar, it is for the potatoes. To store in the dark so they don’t start to grow,’ Budi informed Anna in a serious voice, proud that he knew something extraordinary about the mysterious habits of potatoes s
pontaneously sending out shoots if left in the light. ‘They have eyes,’ he said. ‘They grow from the eyes.’

  ‘Lieutenant Joost, his wife, she sold her potatoes to the other Dutch who do not always like to eat only rice,’ Ratih said. Then she added, ‘The sergeant he is getting some potatoes from Lieutenant Joost and I have tried to cook, but I do not like.’

  Anna only half-listened, for above them in the kitchen her father was shouting. He must have managed to rise from the wheelchair and was stamping his feet on the kitchen floor. ‘Scotch! Waar? Waar? You fokin’ little cow!’

  The four of them emerged from the basement to find Piet Van Heerden standing, holding onto the edge of the kitchen table, his huge frame swaying dangerously. ‘Fok off, you black bastards!’ he shouted, pointing unsteadily at Ratih and Budi. Anna, in abject tears, hastily led them to the front door, all the while apologising profusely for her father.

  ‘It is all right, Anna. It is hard for him, he is sick,’ Ratih said, while Budi remained silent, his expression indicating that he was not as easily mollified. Kleine Kiki said a tearful goodbye, her eyes pleading to be asked to stay on to help Anna with Piet Van Heerden. But Anna knew she had to face her father alone. From this moment on he was her sole responsibility. ‘Don’t forget to give Mother Ratih your gifts,’ she called to Kleine Kiki, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Not from me, from you, Kiki!’ She watched as they all turned and waved from the street, then she turned in the direction of the interior where her father was bellowing like an angry bull. ‘Oh, shut up!’ she shouted, knowing he would not hear her but vexed beyond her patience level. Then covering her ears with her hands she yelled, ‘Shut up! Shut up! You horrible, horrible man!’

  She returned to the kitchen, shocked at what she’d just shouted. For the first time in many days she was alone with her father. It was readily apparent he was suffering from a great deal more than a bad hangover, for his entire body trembled. He had become a large, dangerous, incoherent bear that was rapidly getting beyond her control. Anna knew she would have to give him the half-bottle of Scotch, then after that the one remaining bottle. The frustrated giant had located the dishtowel bag and was frantically tearing at the contents, pulling them out onto the kitchen floor. ‘Papa, it is not in there! If you go to the bedroom and lie down I will bring you the bottle,’ Anna said, again close to tears, but determined not to cry.

  ‘The fokin’ Scotch! Waar? Waar? You slut! Waar is mijn bottle?’ he roared furiously. He turned suddenly to face his daughter. ‘Bedroom? You want a bedroom? You whore!’ Then he pointed an accusing finger at Anna. ‘You are not — you are not –’ he stammered, ‘com — ing — to New — Zealand, you hear? Slut! Slut! Whore!’

  Anna walked over to the wheelchair and withdrew the half-full bottle from the canvas bag that hung from the back. She had made no attempt to hide it and it had been within his reach all the while. But in his confused mind, Piet Van Heerden hadn’t remembered this obvious compartment. Anna held up the bottle and started to move towards the main bedroom with her shambling papa following, his bare feet dragging, a trembling arm stretched out in anticipation, smacking his dry lips.

  Anna stopped at the bed. Two large down pillows, without slips, were arranged neatly against the bedhead, a final sad and tidy touch, perhaps from the lieutenant’s wife. ‘Sit!’ she commanded, stepping quickly aside as he lunged at the bottle in her hand. The effort to grab the Scotch bottle caused him to lose his balance and careen sideways, then crash face down onto the bed. ‘Sit, Papa!’ Anna commanded, not knowing where the strength and resolve within her voice was coming from.

  Piet Van Heerden, using his arms against the sagging mattress, somehow managed to push himself up and roll onto his back with his head supported by one of the large pillows. ‘Slut! Scotch!’ he bellowed.

  Anna removed the cork and handed the bottle to him. He grabbed it in both trembling hands and brought it to his mouth, so intent on swallowing that Scotch spilled from his juddering, anxious lips. He started to cough violently, spraying whiskey over the mattress, his bloodshot eyes bulging almost out of their sockets. Anna grabbed him behind his neck and forced him to lean forward, thumping his back while he clung frantically to the bottle. Finally his coughing fit ceased and he lay, his head against the large down pillow, sucking at the whiskey bottle like an infant, reaching for the personal oblivion it would bring him.

  Despite everything, Anna loved her papa, but she was too young to understand what was going on in his mind. His was the tenth generation of his family in this hitherto halcyon land. He was not a Dutchman; his heart and mind and every fibre of his body proclaimed him as indigenous to Java. Now he was being thrown out of the land he loved as if he were a piece of garbage, even worse, a piece of shit, a dog turd.

  Anna despised his weakness. He was the one who had always voiced an opinion on everything, loudly proclaiming right from wrong, the local expert on just about everything, especially regional politics. Yet he had collapsed like a house of cards when resolve truly mattered. A small example of this was that they could have escaped from Java and gone to Australia, as most of the wealthy had done, weeks earlier by flying boat, but his fear of flying had stopped this happening. He could have elected to fly his family to safety, but had been too selfish to contemplate such a solution. His needs were paramount and always had been. Anna now realised that her stepmother had seen the same weakness in him much earlier. The words Kleine Kiki said Katerina had shouted at the old oil jetty prior to her suicide, admonishing her young husband when, so long ago, she’d been determined to take the jump on her horse that had crippled her, must have sprung from only one of a thousand such put-downs she’d endured from him.

  There had been too much unearned importance allotted to him all his life. The Van Heerden prestige had been a frame of reference he’d always worn as if he rightfully belonged to a higher order. His character had been weakened by privilege. When a portion of courage and determination was required he’d always gone missing so that now, when he was forced to face the total destruction of everything he had been brought up to believe in, he was incapable of grasping the prevailing tenor of the times. Now it was Anna’s job to rescue what might still be contained within the epidermis that seemed to have become the outer shell encasing the hollow substance of her father.

  At almost seventeen years of age, Anna could not have described her father’s character or the influences that shaped it. All she knew was that her precious papa, the man she had always tried so hard to please, was falling apart. She had always seen him as her protector, especially against the vicious tongue of her stepmother, but now he was unable to cope with the crisis they all faced, drowning his fear and apprehension in a bottle.

  Having settled her drunken papa, and hoping that half a bottle of Scotch would keep him quiet until the morning, Anna knew not only that they faced an uncertain future, but also that her problems with her father were immediate. She sat at the kitchen table and admitted to herself that she was unlikely to find outside help. Furthermore, if her father desired to drink himself to certain death — as seemed increasingly probable — there were no more supplies of Scotch, brandy or any other alcohol available that she knew of in Tjilatjap. Or, at least, no more that Lo Wok knew about, or the rapacious Chinaman would have procured it and Budi would have alerted her to the fact that the Chinaman was ready to open negotiations, though this time Lo Wok would have the upper hand, knowing that she had little choice but to pay what he asked. She could ask the Chinaman to scrounge around, to see what he could find in Dutch homes that had been appropriated by the Muslim population. After all, open bottles of liquor were not the kind of baggage departing colonials would bother to take with them.

  Ratih had left a pot for boiling water and another containing rice and heavily spiced fish on the table and all Anna had to do was light a fire in the stove, already set, to heat it up. But although she had not eaten all day, she lacked the energy to cook
. She reached for one of the two spoons the cook had left and ate absent-mindedly from the cold pot. Having eaten a few mouthfuls of the richly spiced fish and rice she tried to think what she might do. Rising from the table she gathered up the contents of the dishtowel bag her father had spilled on the floor, including the locked safety deposit box. She placed the box on the table before restoring the remaining contents to the bag.

  She decided to more carefully explore the house and back garden. To her surprise the backyard was extensive and stretched down to the bank of the river. It had been carefully tilled and a crop of potatoes was being grown in the raised rows of soil. Pulling up a plant, she saw that the small white tubers were just beginning to form and were not yet sufficiently mature. She came across a small vegetable patch with a tomato vine with several ripe fruit, six plump cabbages, the outside leaves badly eaten but with the centres well formed, and a patch of mint. She opened the door to the outside dunny which, while dusty with a spider web in one corner, seemed clean enough, although a strong disinfectant down the hole would not go amiss. She made a mental note to add this to her shopping list. At the rear of the house was the only non-functional aspect of the backyard — against the back wall stood several flowering red hibiscus bushes.

  Returning to the inside of the house, Anna sat on a cheap batik-covered couch and attempted to think of some way to solve what was obviously becoming her major preoccupation. She was aware that the Japanese were due to arrive at any moment, but so great had her concern for her father become that she’d pushed this frightening prospect to the back of her mind.

  She had once read a story about a hopeless alcoholic in one of the backwater Pacific ports who had been discovered unconscious under a pier by a native dockworker. The native had carried him to his canoe and taken him to his distant island home. Here the native islander (Anna couldn’t remember his name) tended to the drunk, feeding him and nursing him back to health. During his long rehabilitation the other villagers seemed to pay the white man great obeisance and brought him the best of what they had to eat. After a period when he had endured the shakes and cried out as he experienced the delirium tremens, having been plied with good food, drunk nothing but clean water and received tender care, the once-skinny drunk was restored to shining good health. He declared that he felt wonderful and as healthy as a newborn babe.