The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘And his wife and child?’

  ‘No, only the men, the shopkeepers, the important ones, the triads and the communists, they want their money. Lo Wok sent his wife and the little girl to the mountains last week. He is not important. But the lieutenant says when they have their money they will kill them. Then they will kill all the other Chinese men. The Japanese, they hate the Chinese. Mother says I must ask you.’

  ‘Ask me? Ask me what?’

  ‘Will you hide Lo Wok in your cellar?’ Budi saw the look of hesitation in Anna’s eyes and quickly added, ‘He has saved my mother’s life once. He paid the ambulance and the doctor and hospital when she burst her — her stomach.’ He touched his right side close to his groin.

  ‘Appendix?’

  ‘Yes, otherwise she would die. The doctor said so. The lieutenant says this house, it is in the police compound, the Japan police, the kempeitai, they will not look here,’ Budi urged.

  ‘The mattress down there, it smells awful!’ Anna cried, unable to think, then added, ‘Where is he now?’

  Budi turned to look at the gate. ‘Til, he has him.’

  ‘Here? In his becak?’

  ‘It has a curtain,’ Budi replied. Anna remembered the becak had a curtain that unrolled from the canvas sunhood to offer protection from the rain or privacy if a passenger wished not to be seen. Til called it his ‘brothel curtain’. A rich and important man travelling to see his mistress would draw less attention if he arrived in a becak. Til was known to keep his mouth shut and this method of transporting mistresses or a married lover was a lucrative part of his business.

  Without waiting for Anna to say any more, Budi brought two fingers to his lips and whistled sharply. Moments later Til drove up to the gate with the canvas curtain concealing the top half of Lo Wok. Budi ran to open the gate that was only just wide enough to allow the becak to enter.

  Til, grinning, pedalled up the short garden path to the door. ‘Ratih and our family, we are very grateful, Anna. We know it is asking very much. But a debt of life can only be paid with a debt of life — anything less is not full payment. Ratih says Kiki will bring all the food and maybe, after a while, we can find a way for him to escape to Malaya if he has enough money. The Chinese have fled into the jungle to fight with some British who could not escape when the Japanese came.’

  The curtains parted and Lo Wok’s frightened face appeared. ‘Ahee! Ten thousand thanks, Missy Anna. I must pay! It is your turn now,’ he said, anxiously reaching into his trouser pocket.

  Anna took this to mean that the Chinaman saw that he was in no position to bargain and that she held the advantage and would naturally expect him to pay through the nose for his concealment. Anna shook her head, refusing. ‘I do not want your money, Lo Wok. But if you give Til sufficient to buy you a mattress at the markets you will benefit greatly.’ She grinned. ‘The mattress in the cellar smells like a latrine.’ Then she cautioned, ‘Better come inside, there are always eyes.’ Despite her acquiescence she knew instinctively that she was making a dangerous decision, one that could greatly jeopardise the position of her father and herself.

  Lo Wok stepped quickly from the becak into the sunlight and then as quickly into the comparative shadow of the enclosed verandah, Budi and Til immediately following. Anna then led the way to the kitchen, where Til informed the Chinaman of the price of a mattress if he bought it from his good friend, assuring Lo Wok he would be getting the best possible deal combined with the highest quality. ‘Guarantee one year. The springs so soft like a massage woman.’ Lo Wok peeled off the notes needed from a bundle. Anna saw that it was not very thick and seemed not to contain any notes of a large denomination. The Chinaman added two guilders as a tip. Til thanked him for his generosity, but handed back the two single-guilder notes, protesting that it was unnecessary. ‘Allah smiles when a good turn is returned by men who take pleasure in the act of returning,’ he said in one of his more convoluted observations. Lo Wok looked bemused, as if he had never experienced anyone unnecessarily returning money.

  ‘While you are here do you think we can remove the old mattress from the cellar?’ Anna asked and then turned to Til. ‘It smells pretty bad. Will you take it and throw it away somewhere?’

  Budi opened the trapdoor and she asked him to bring down one of the kitchen chairs while she quickly gathered a packet of candles and a box of matches, a fork and spoon and a towel. She pointed to a basin and jug and asked Lo Wok to bring them down with him. To Til, she indicated a chamber-pot; it was no embarrassment for a Javanese to carry and as common a household object as any other. With the chamber-pot she handed him a dishtowel. They descended the stairs and Lo Wok was introduced to his semi-dark new home. Anna opened the little window to let in fresh air, meanwhile explaining to him that if danger existed, she would bring his food and water to the window. ‘At night, when you light a candle, make sure the curtain is drawn,’ she cautioned.

  ‘It is much better I think if we move the stove over the trapdoor, Anna?’ Budi said. ‘If the Japanese police come they won’t see it. The chimney pipe needs only to be moved a little sideways,’ he explained. Anna thought again that for a boy of thirteen he was remarkably clear-headed and observant.

  Lo Wok immediately agreed that she mustn’t take any chances and he would remain concealed. ‘I stay here, Missy Anna. I will not come out. Maybe you use that window for everything. To put the stove there, that is good idea,’ he added emphatically.

  ‘You will go crazy down here alone, Lo Wok,’ Anna warned.

  Lo Wok shrugged. ‘It is better to be alone in a dark cell than dead in the light. I am grateful.’

  They proceeded to roll up the mattress and, not without some difficulty, got it up the wooden steps. It still carried a pretty powerful scent mixed with the strong smell of disinfectant where Anna had wiped it down, soaking the worst parts. Once upstairs, Til declared, ‘It is a good mattress for a poor person to have, they will clean it. It has many dreams left in it yet.’

  Anna wondered to herself how many more dreams Lo Wok and, for that matter, she and her father, might have before the kempeitai discovered them. They had been left alone by Lieutenant Mori’s pathetic platoon of lethargic cyclists, for many of his soldiers were suffering from various tropical infections contracted over the weeks of moving down the Malayan peninsula and then across to Java. The engineer, Major Masahiro Eiji, was only interested in getting the port facility working properly and had made no effort to find the Dutch refugees and, to the surprise of the locals, had purchased rather than simply demanded all the food he needed for his battalion. But now, if the kempeitai were as Til and Lieutenant Khamdani had described them, and if the raid on the Chinese merchants was any indication, the days of the Dutch waiting for something to happen were over.

  Lo Wok was safely hidden, the stove moved over the trapdoor and Budi and Til had departed when Piet Van Heerden finally emerged from his bedroom carrying the tin box. He grunted a cursory ‘Good morning’, his eyebrows a thicket of concern as he frowned and then sat down at the table while Anna brought him a cup of coffee. He brought the cup to his lips, sipped briefly and then put it down. Anna reached into her shoulder bag that was hanging on the back of a chair and silently handed him the key. He unlocked the tin and withdrew the two little packets containing the diamonds. ‘Here, I don’t want any further nonsense, I want you to have these,’ he said, placing the tiny packets on the table. ‘I can see the wax seals are broken, so you’ve already seen them,’ he added in an attempt to exert his authority.

  ‘I told you, I don’t want them,’ Anna said, not raising her voice.

  Piet Van Heerden brought his fist down hard against the surface of the table. ‘Stupid! Until now I did not take you for a bloody fool!’

  ‘Father, in a few days we may both be dead or interned. The kempeitai are here, they arrived early this morning. They are already rounding up the Chinese merchants and taking the
ir money. The lieutenant says after they have it, they will kill them all.’ Anna pointed to the two envelopes. ‘What do you think they would do to me, to us, if they found those?’

  Her father seemed to take the news of the kempeitai in his stride. ‘Sooner or later they had to come,’ he said. ‘Money is one thing, you can bury it, but you can’t conceal it on your person.’ He paused, looking directly at Anna, then gave a little shrug. ‘Diamonds are quite another.’

  ‘Oh? And why is that?’ Anna asked, not understanding.

  ‘Because God gave a man only one hole and it’s full of you know what, but to a woman he gave two, one at the back and the other at her front, the one at the back is only the next-best pouch.’

  Anna blushed furiously. ‘Father! You don’t mean…? Yes, you do!’

  ‘You must think of a way, it is an excellent hiding place.’ He picked up the two small packets and handed them to her.

  This time Anna didn’t refuse them. ‘Thank you, father,’ she said, accepting, her cheeks still flushed with embarrassment.

  ‘It is a matter of survival,’ Piet Van Heerden said simply.

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ Anna replied softly.

  Her father abruptly changed the subject and said, smiling, ‘The Chinese, hey? They are the first. The merchants, they have all the money. The locals will not object if they are killed. Many of the natives will owe money, now they will have no debt, no interest to pay. The day of retribution has arrived.’ He grinned. ‘About time too, they’re all bloodsuckers!’ Without looking up to see the expression of disapproval on Anna’s face, he reached over and took a wad of notes from the tin. ‘Keep this, but you must only carry sufficient money on you for our needs. In case you are searched,’ he added.

  ‘These notes are five hundred guilders each. Who will cash one?’ Anna sniffed.

  ‘The Chine— Oh — yes, of course,’ he retracted.

  Anna sat down, holding the two small envelopes in her hand. ‘Father, we have another Chinese problem.’

  ‘What? What Chinese problem? If they’re all dead it doesn’t matter. China has millions more.’

  Anna told him about Lo Wok, stressing that he was the Chinese merchant who had supplied the Scotch and the brandy, but not telling him the real reason for offering him shelter — that the Chinaman had saved Ratih’s life when her appendix had burst. Anna knew her racist father would think this unrelated act of kindness was even less reason to place them in jeopardy.

  ‘Are you out of your mind, you stupid girl?’ Piet Van Heerden asked. Then he started to shout, ‘He must go! Out! You hear? Out! Now!’

  ‘No,’ Anna said without raising her voice. She was aware that his concern was probably well-founded. Lo Wok’s presence placed them in a perilous situation. She knew that it was foolish, even weak, to have agreed to hide him in the cellar. The first rule of survival is to avoid unnecessary danger. Her action in concealing him was asking for trouble, even courting disaster. Her first loyalty was to her family and not a Chinaman to whom she owed nothing, who’d filled a whisky bottle with piss. She could tell him to go, throw him onto the street to be killed. She would tell Ratih her father had demanded it. Ratih would understand. Absolute obedience to the head male in the family was the Javanese way. The cook would eventually convince herself that she’d tried to save Lo Wok, that Anna had also tried and that the father was the villain.

  ‘He’s in the cellar? I will personally throw the yellow bastard out! I don’t want a foking Chink in my house, you hear!’ Piet Van Heerden brought his fist down onto the table so hard that coffee spilled from the mug.

  ‘It is not your decision, Father. Nor is it your house.’ Anna felt the strength of her refusal, the heavy lumping of stubbornness within her. The time had arrived to assert herself. ‘He stays. That is the end of it.’

  ‘The end of it! We’ll be the foking end of it, you hear? You’re mad, I knew it! You’re possessed! Abangan! Witch! Heathen! Saving a Chinaman and risking our lives? A white man’s life! A white man’s life for a Chinaman, ferchrissakes! A lying, cheating, rotten, stinking Chink!’

  ‘Father, you may leave my house any time you like, but he’s staying,’ Anna said quietly.

  ‘What? Are you fucking him? Is that it? My daughter is fucking a foking Chink!’

  Anna rose, then placing the two envelopes in front of him said, ‘Here, take these and stick them up your arse. I’m told it makes the next-best pouch!’ She knew she had gone too far and moved beyond her father’s reach, ready to run if she needed to.

  Realising what she’d just said, Piet Van Heerden’s expression suffused with renewed anger, then his face grew apoplectic with rage, his pale blue eyes bulging, his ears scarlet. He was trying to speak, his cheeks puffed out like a toad’s, but no sound would come, strangled by the agitation and fury contained within him. He rose from the table, taking a step towards Anna, his fist drawn back ready to strike her, to break her jaw, cheekbone, nose, destroy her pretty face, her beauty, smash it to pulp.

  Anna knew instinctively that the next few moments were critical to her life. Strength, seemingly from nowhere, rose within her and she stood her ground. It was a feeling well beyond the desire to survive; it was a thing of the will, of muscle and sinew and sharp white teeth. The next few moments would decide the remainder of her life. Her eyes, which never left his, held steady. Despite the knowledge that he might kill her, she was not afraid. She would not run. Nothing in this world would make her run.

  She saw a look of fear, a flicker of uncertainty, enter her father’s eyes, then immediately change to confusion and, as quickly, to defeat. It was as if the heat was sucked out of him and he seemed to grow smaller in front of her eyes. His fist opened and his arm fell to his side, his cheeks returned to normal and he ran his tongue across his lips as if afraid and preparing for what might happen next. Finally he dropped his eyes and took a step backwards, collapsing heavily into the chair, where he sat chin-cupped and silent. Then looking up, he pushed the tin, with the key still in the lock, across the table so it was close to where she stood and followed this with the two envelopes. ‘You must do as you wish, Anna. From now on you are in charge.’ He sighed and looked up at her, his eyes rheumy, close to tears. ‘I am afraid, Anna. I don’t want to die,’ he said in a small voice.

  Anna felt deeply saddened, her sorrow a deep pit plummeting so far within her that it seemed endless. Her past had withered to be insignificant, almost meaningless. Nothing had prepared her for this. She knew that she now controlled him as he had once controlled her. But previously she had thought herself controlled by his happiness, whereas her present control was born out of her sorrow. The sadness she had felt the previous evening, when she’d realised that if he could save his life by betraying her own, he would do so, was not nearly as overpowering as the sadness she was experiencing now. That he believed her contaminated half-caste blood was of a lesser human value than the pure Aryan blood that coursed through his own veins was not difficult to comprehend when viewed against the background of his life. But she had endured a mangled, misunderstood childhood that now amounted to nothing. She had defeated her father. She knew now that henceforth her fate was dependent on her own efforts. She was abandoned by him.

  While she had in every possible sense been in control, in charge, from the moment they’d left Batavia, first as a servant to her father’s drunkenness and then nursing him through his horrific withdrawal, she had hitherto seen herself as a dutiful daughter ministering to a deeply depressed and sick parent. Now she knew there was nothing left, no filial duty and no past or present affection to ameliorate the task of survival that lay ahead. His act of relinquishing control contained no love, no loyalty, no feeling other than his own self-pity and fear of dying.

  If blood may be said to be thicker than water, then Anna knew that the blood she shared with her father had been almost completely diluted. She had known that she had to loo
k after him, care for him as long as they were together. A terrible sadness rose in her as she realised she would not now sacrifice her life for him as she might once have done, that the emotional cord that binds a daughter to her father had been forever cut. Anna was utterly and completely alone, although it never occurred to her to dwell morbidly on her predicament. She had a natural revulsion for her father’s self-pity, unconsciously seeing it as a weakness she found she despised.

  In fact, Anna now accepted that her young years were over and with this knowledge she shook her head with a wry, inward grin. She had a tin box full of money she couldn’t spend, twelve diamonds about to go into hiding in a very private place, a depressed, helpless and fearful giant Dutchman on her hands and a terrified Chinaman locked in her cellar. Outside the bloodthirsty kempeitai ranged everywhere: ruthless killers who would most certainly cut her throat if they were to hear about the money, slit her open if they knew about the diamonds, or summarily execute her for hiding the Chinaman. Other than this, she was now in complete control of everything. That is, if nothing may be said to be everything.

  ‘I will protect you, Father,’ she said. ‘We will try to get through this. One day you will be in New Zealand.’ At these comforting but somewhat futile words, Piet Van Heerden began to cry softly. God! What a weak, gormless, lump of lard he is, Anna thought to herself. She felt a growing sympathy for her dead stepmother. ‘A strong woman may be difficult to endure, but a weak man is beyond tolerating,’ Til had once said to her. But the more prosaic matters of everyday life intruded into her mind and she said, ‘Father, I think you should go to your room and rest. I have several things to do, but first, will you help me to move the stove away from the trapdoor? I have a mattress arriving this afternoon.’

  Together they moved the cast-iron stove; it was no easy task but Piet Van Heerden, despite everything, was still a strong man. ‘I will need you later to help with its return; now go to your room and rest,’ she said brusquely. Her father immediately turned and left the kitchen, going directly to his bedroom like an obedient child.