The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Why, Father? Why did they castrate you? Because you raped her — raped my mother?’ Anna’s tone suggested that a white man raping a native woman was a terrible crime, but that castration was an extraordinary consequence and punishment.

  Piet Van Heerden wiped his eyes and blew his nose into the corner of the dishtowel. ‘She was highborn,’ he replied.

  ‘I don’t understand. Highborn? What does that mean?’

  ‘From a good family, an old family, one with property and water rights, a woman in such a family would have an arranged marriage with a man of the same social standing and must have the permission from the male guardian, who will arrange the slametan, the marriage feast.’ Piet Van Heerden paused, then explained. ‘I violated this custom and brought great shame on her family and loss of face to her formal guardian. He called on the kinship group, the alurwaris.’

  ‘But why didn’t you marry her?’ Anna asked ingenuously.

  Her father pulled back, alarmed at the thought. ‘Impossible!’ Then he added quickly, ‘I was already married to Katerina six months.’

  Anna recognised that his vehemence at the suggestion that he marry her mother had nothing to do with the rejoinder that he was already married to her stepmother. ‘So what happened to her?’

  Piet Van Heerden shrugged. ‘If she married me or not, she would have been disgraced.’

  ‘But it was not her fault!’ Anna protested.

  ‘They are not like us,’ he replied simply. ‘They are primitives.’

  ‘Primitives! You raped her! Who is the primitive here?’ It was the first time in her life that Anna had shouted at her father, showing her disgust, not only at his morality but also at the white supremacist she’d always known him to be.

  Piet Van Heerden looked suddenly bemused, taken by surprise at his daughter’s unexpected reaction. ‘What about my disgrace? Do you know what they did to me? Let me tell you, my girl!’ he shouted. ‘Are you ready? Now you just listen to me, you hear?’ He banged his fist down on the kitchen table. ‘They overpowered me at the copra plantation we had at that time near Malang and they abducted me. Blindfolded me and took me away, strapped to a wooden stretcher. These people, the abangan, they are like witchdoctors.

  ‘They took me to a large clearing in the jungle and removed my blindfold and then they tied me to a wooden frame with my arms and legs spread out to form an X. There was a fire in the centre of the clearance but it had burned down to the hot coals. In the middle were two flat stones and on the stones, so the curved blade was over the fire, they had placed a kris!’

  Anna’s father was becoming increasingly angry, verging on incoherent, as if he was relating the incident for the first time aloud, but had nevertheless rehearsed it silently in his head a thousand times, so that now the words that had lain dormant for so long rushed to get out, stumbling over each other in a stuttered delivery. ‘Then these animals, a-a-a, these abangan, went through a-a-a barong performance, a d-d-dance where they go into some kind of trance and allow the spirits of their ancestors to e-e-e-enter their bodies!’

  Her father paused to gain control of himself, his entire body now shaking with rage and humiliation. But when he resumed his voice was steady, cold, precise. ‘Then one of these evil devils took a length of fine coir cord and tied it around the top of my scrotum, pulling it tight and knotting it so that my testicles hung in their sac from the corded flesh. The pain, it was unbearable, and I screamed and sobbed and pleaded, thinking I would die of this dreadful agony. They let me suffer, blubbing, begging, crying, for what must have been an hour until I was ready to pass out.’ Piet Van Heerden looked directly at Anna and, imitating the lifting of an object and slicing with it through the air, said, ‘Then they took up the red-hot blade and cut off my balls!’, his hand once again making a slicing motion. Piet Van Heerden brought his arms onto the table and placed his head between them and started to weep afresh.

  Anna, despite her feeling of revulsion and shock, rose quickly and went to him, putting her arm across his huge back and her head against his shoulder. ‘Oh, Papa! Oh, Papa!’ she repeated, unable to think of anything else to say.

  After some time her father lifted his head from the table. ‘Sit!’ he instructed, pointing to a chair. ‘There is more!’ His anger had returned.

  ‘Father, there is no need,’ Anna protested.

  ‘No, there is!’ he insisted. ‘You must know. You must know.’ He pointed to the document lying on the table. ‘You must know why your name is not on that piece of paper.’

  ‘And Katerina’s?’

  ‘Later. I will tell you later about her,’ he said with a dismissive wave of his hand, interested only in continuing the story. ‘They took me back to the plantation, like before, blindfolded and tied to the wooden stretcher. They left me near the house, the place where we threw out the garbage.’ He paused to let the relevance sink in. ‘Rasmina, the cook, she found me there!’

  Anna now remembered that Rasmina came from a kampong near Malang. Maybe she knew her mother? Or knew how to find her? ‘Father, you could have bled to death,’ she now said.

  ‘Yes, maybe, but the red-hot blade, it cauterised me. Those evil bastards knew what they were doing.’

  ‘Did you call, did Katerina call the police and the doctor?’

  ‘No, not the police, the doctor, yes, old Dr Dupree. He was indebted to our family, a loan from my father once when he got into a gambling debt. He knew to keep his mouth shut. He said where they tied me high up, I must keep the cord. If he took it off I could bleed to death.’

  ‘So nobody knew? Just Katerina and the doctor — and Rasmina?’

  ‘The cook? No, they had replaced my trousers. But your stepmother never forgave me.’ He shrugged. ‘She wanted a child, of course. We were trying, hoping for a son to carry the family name. Every generation there has always been a son or sons,’ he added gratuitously. ‘She’d blamed me and said it was because I was too small, it couldn’t go deep enough!’

  ‘Why didn’t she leave you, get a divorce?’ Anna asked. ‘She had every right.’

  ‘Ja, perhaps, but she was from a poor family. I could give her everything she wanted and she wanted lots, that I can assure you. Then just two months later came the horseback accident that put her in the wheelchair. Now it was me who could never leave her! She had the power over me now, over the Van Heerden name, she could disgrace me, our good name from two hundred years, never a single blemish. She could bring us down whenever she liked. She never let me forget it, I can tell you! Never! Every day, every possible moment! That woman was nothing but malice!’ He pointed to the will. ‘That is why she is not in that.’ He grinned maliciously. ‘It was my only revenge.’

  ‘You said you would explain why my name is also missing,’ Anna said softly. Then she added, ‘I don’t want your money, I just wanted…’ She didn’t complete the sentence.

  ‘As if I had not suffered enough, for six months we were trying to have a child but nothing and she was blaming me because of what I told you. If we had had a child it would have all been different. An heir, that is all I hoped for, but nothing, no male child, nothing! When this happened, when they cut me, all hope was lost.’

  Anna, described by her father as ‘nothing’, winced inwardly, maintaining a brave face. ‘Was my stepmother barren?’

  ‘Who knows, sometimes it just takes a long time when someone is a virgin. But then, at that time we both thought it was me, I was too small. It turned out it wasn’t. But this made things worse because one day in a cardboard box you were left at the back door. Rasmina, coming from the servants’ quarters early in the morning to make our coffee, heard you crying. Around your neck was hanging a small leather bag.’ Piet Van Heerden parted his thumb and forefinger, denoting the size of the bag. ‘Inside was you know what, like two walnuts. You looked Javanese, brown skin, black hair, but your eyes were blue. Six months I tried with your stepmoth
er, once with that other one and look what happened!’

  ‘Father!’ Anna cried out. ‘She is not “that other one”, she was my mother, she had a name!’

  ‘Ja, I’m sorry, if she had one then I have forgotten it.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Rena, I think it was. Ja, Rena.’ Anna’s father, still consumed with self-pity, seemed oblivious to Anna’s pain. ‘She was beautiful, very beautiful, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, but she cursed me. That woman with her abangan devils and spirits cursed me.’ He looked directly at Anna. ‘You are taller and you have blue eyes, but otherwise you are the same woman.’ He choked back a sob. ‘Every time I look at you, every day, for sixteen years, I see that bag hanging around your neck, I see my stolen manhood!’ He pointed at her accusingly. ‘Your abangan spirits have stolen my manhood!’ Anna was too astounded to answer, even to think of a reply. ‘That is why your name is not on that will. Those devils, the abangan, they have put the spirit, the spirit of your dead mother’s soul, into you! I cannot allow you to be a part of my family, to be a Van Heerden. You are possessed!’

  What Anna heard above all else were the words ‘dead mother’. ‘My mother is dead? How do you know this?’

  ‘Rasmina told me. She died in childbirth, you were too big.’ He smiled, triumphant. ‘What they did to me, I could have bled to death. But there is some justice. Now it was she who did.’

  ‘You said Rasmina didn’t know, that you wore trousers?’

  ‘Acht, I lied, she found out, she belongs to the same alurwaris, the same kinship, but distant, you understand. Don’t worry, she has been well paid to keep quiet. She has a nice house in her kampong, the best one, better even than the headman’s.’

  The implications of her father’s accusations were just beginning to sink in. Anna was finding it too much to absorb all at once. ‘I have the evil spirit of my mother within me? I am a she-devil? Is that what you think, Father?’

  Piet Van Heerden tried to adopt a disarming tone, but instead it came out as overweening. ‘No, lieveling! Not any more. Trust me, your papa loves you now. You are my loving daughter.’ He spread his hands. ‘You have proved yourself worthy to carry my name. I have decided.’ He pointed to the will. ‘You will inherit everything.’

  Anna was astonished at her father’s arrogance. She wanted to cry but knew she mustn’t; that she must remain dry-eyed or he would think he had won her over. But quite suddenly she could contain her fury no longer. ‘You can stick your money up your fat arse! I don’t want it! I don’t want you, I don’t want you to be my father, you cruel, wicked bastard!’ She had no idea where these words came from. She hadn’t even thought to use such language previously to anyone, not even to Van der Westhuisen, the first mate on the Witvogel. ‘Fuckwit!’ she spat. ‘Dirty, rotten shit! Arsehole!’ It was then that she finally started to wail.

  If Piet Van Heerden was shocked at Anna’s vituperative language he concealed it well and didn’t react other than to say, ‘Shush, Anna, you don’t mean it! It has been hard for you. But now that we are together and I am not drinking we must be partners, father and daughter. What I have told you is water under the bridge. We do not know what the Japanese will do. But I don’t think it will be good for us in the end. We must be together, plan together. You have seen what is in the tin box, the money, lots of money and the diamonds, six in each packet, did you find them? They are good cuts, Amsterdam diamonds, worth a lot of money. Diamonds are easy to hide.’ He paused. ‘Stop crying, this is important. The money can buy our escape. Our lives may depend on it!’

  ‘Who gives a shit!’ Anna spat, but she stopped sobbing and started to hiccup.

  Piet Van Heerden rose from the table and went to the pantry, where he filled a mug with water and returned, handing it to her. ‘Here, drink — hold your nose, head back.’ Anna, despite her anguish, did as she was told and her hiccuping ceased. ‘See how well we work together? There are always hiccups, but if we work together they can be overcome,’ he joked. For a moment he sounded like his old self. ‘The diamonds, they are yours. Your inheritance,’ he said smugly. ‘What is past is past.’

  ‘I do not want your diamonds,’ she said, sniffing, addressing him neither as ‘Father’ nor as ‘Papa’.

  Piet Van Heerden made light of her rejection, cackling, seemingly amused. ‘When a gentleman gives a lady diamonds she is foolish not to accept, because when he has left her for another woman, she can always cash them in.’ Anna wondered at his duplicity, his chameleon-like ability to change: one moment a snivelling, sobbing, self-pitying wreck, the next a conceited shit, and now, as if nothing had happened, making little jokes, her old papa again, the man she once loved but now realised she had never truly known, a man who had found her repugnant, believing her to be evil and possessed.

  ‘You used me against my stepmother. You didn’t love me; I was a weapon, a way to get back at her. Pretending to love me, you hated me all the while.’

  ‘Anna! Anna!’ he protested. ‘We often say things we don’t always mean. I admit, sometimes, yes, I used you. She was a harridan. She never let up. A witch. Day and night, I never went to bed that she didn’t wish me evil. Her last words to me before she slept every night, they never changed: “Where is my child, you fat, disgusting eunuch?” You were all I could use to taunt her. But skatterbol, your papa loves you now. She is dead. We have each other. That is goed!’ He reached out to touch her shoulder but she pulled away from him. ‘You must have the diamonds, I insist,’ he said.

  Anna rose unsteadily, gripping the edge of the table. ‘Go to hell! I am going to bed,’ she said, fighting back her need to cry again.

  Piet Van Heerden smiled and spread his hands in a gesture of reconciliation. ‘Anna! Anna! Lieveling! That is no way to speak. Come now, will you not kiss your papa goodnight?’

  Anna did not reply but instead turned and walked away. She wanted to have a shower, to wash away the hurt, the pain, from her soul. To gasp under a cold shower, use a hard scrubbing brush on her skin, to wash her hair, her dark-as-a-raven’s hair, the hair her mother had given her. Her mother, who had died in a pool of blood, the child she had conceived from the giant who had raped her forcing, tearing, ripping her open. Anna was utterly exhausted, but knew she would not be able to sleep, the sorrow in her was too intense.

  She had purchased a mattress at the markets that morning from another of Til’s merchant friends. It would replace the one she had taken down to the cellar. Til had delivered it in a great roll tied with coir rope that he had somehow balanced high on his becak. ‘Ratih’s sergeant, who is now a lieutenant, has told her the kempeitai are coming,’ Til warned her. ‘Anna, they are not good. They are the Japanese soldier police, very fierce, very cruel. You must not let your father go out on the street and you must not forget to wear your black glass eyes when you go to the markets.’ Then smiling, Til had added, pointing to the mattress, ‘Allah created sleep so we can lay down our sadness for a little while each night, otherwise we humans would find the burden of sorrow we carry too heavy to bear.’ He pushed at the mattress with his long bony fingers, laughing. ‘You can enjoy it, this mattress, Anna. It is number-one. First class. Guarantee one year. It has little springs in it for soft dreams.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘But the cleansing of your society is not yet complete.

  In the community of Asian people there lurks a mutual enemy

  who has robbed you and exploited you! An enemy who does not belong

  in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, who is like an army of fleas on a dog’s back,

  sucking its blood while contributing nothing but disease.

  I speak, of course, of the loathsome Chinese,

  who have forced you into onerous debt and demanded crippling interest

  so that you are enslaved to them!’

  Konoe Akira

  Colonel, Japanese Imperial Army, 5th Resettlement Battalian, Tjilatjap,
1942

  ANNA, DESPITE THINKING SHE could not sleep, nevertheless slept the sleep of the dead, too exhausted to remain awake. It is, perhaps, the gift of being seventeen years old, when the body and the brain decide that enough is enough, that despite everything, they will cooperate to shut down for a few healing hours. Young soldiers in the trenches in France during the First World War were said to be able to sleep through a bombardment, their exhaustion masking the fear and quelling the rush of adrenalin brought on by the shells exploding around them.

  Anna wakened with a start to an urgent thumping and knocking. Glancing at her wristwatch she saw it was some time after nine, well past the time she usually rose. Bleary-eyed, she made her way to the front door, on the way passing her father’s bedroom, where he continued to snore. After his withdrawal he now slept until a later hour, seldom rising before 10 a.m., another way to cope with depression. She opened the door to find Budi standing on the doorstep.

  ‘Budi? What is it? Has something happened?’ she asked, observing the worried face of the thirteen-year-old.

  ‘Anna, there are two boats, a Japanese destroyer and a troopship. They came up the river very early this morning. They brought a battalion of Japanese soldiers and a detachment of kempeitai. At five o’clock this morning the band from the battalion played when they came ashore. The lieutenant says from now on the kempeitai will take charge and already they are rounding up all the Chinese merchants.’

  ‘Lo Wok?’

  ‘They have not yet found him. He is hiding in our kampong with my mother. But we cannot keep him, the others will soon inform the kempeitai.’