The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘It is a good question,’ Til replied. ‘But they are strict Muslims. The Prophet Mohammed says that honour must be repaid with honour. Two men both acting honourably are one man in their thoughts. The Lieutenant Khamdani has known Ahmed Nur-make since he arrested the captain and while he spent time in prison for piracy. They are old friends. It is true he is a thief and a scoundrel, but he is also an honourable thief and a reliable scoundrel, a man to be trusted in such circumstances. But, if the Japanese board the pinisi schooner, it is also true they will throw Lo Wok overboard to the sharks.’ He paused, spreading his hands. ‘That is only natural and the Prophet would understand.’

  Lo Wok had been profuse and tearful in his gratitude. ‘A hundred generations, those who are my progeny, will be in the debt of your progeny. I owe you my life twice over. If I live I will not forget, Anna.’

  Anna smiled at this thought. ‘If we live long enough to have progeny I will remind yours of this debt,’ she said playfully. ‘You must thank Ratih. It is she who saved you, Lo Wok.’

  ‘That is a life for life and I will honour it,’ Lo Wok said seriously. ‘But you gave me my life twice over when you owed me nothing. It was me who pissed in the Scotch bottle!’

  Anna threw back her head and laughed. ‘I hope the gods send you good rice and you are blessed with a son, Lo Wok.’

  And so the little Chinaman disappeared from Anna’s life. For two days he had asked for extra water to bathe and she had supplied it. When, after his departure, she returned to the cellar she discovered that he had used the water to scrub the floor. The cellar was spotless, the mattress leaning against a wall, the kitchen chair now stood close to the window, the clothes Lo Wok had worn prior to changing into the old shirt and sarong had been washed and rinsed and hung damp from the back and the seat of the chair.

  Three days passed and during this time Anna, visiting the markets wearing her stepmother’s second pair of sunglasses, met a Dutch woman who was bargaining fiercely for a tiny portion of offal, a part of a beast that no Dutch woman would have previously known existed. She approached the woman, to be told that many of the Dutch families had run out of money and were close to starving.

  That evening she visited Ratih and offered to buy her a restaurant of her own that would, in addition, act as a soup kitchen for Dutch families on the edge of starvation. ‘Ratih, we will soon be interned, then you will have your own business. In the meantime, if anyone asks, the Dutch who eat here are paying you. Say that it is good business for you to serve them. It must not be known that I am paying for everything, not even by the Dutch. Do you understand? And perhaps you should discuss this with your lieutenant. If there is any danger to you then you must not do it! Promise?’

  For Anna it was a way to use up some of the money in the tin, if only a fraction, her fear being that sooner or later the kempeitai would come calling and it would all be confiscated.

  The following day an excited Ratih arrived to say that the lieutenant had agreed and had issued a licence for a business, but that as the kitchen and eatery where she worked was for sale, it would be cheaper and quicker to use that rather than trying to create a new one, even though she felt confident that the locals would come wherever she cooked because her food was good. ‘I have asked Til also,’ she said, ‘and he says, “Ratih, the stomach is not racist. Your old customers will tolerate the Dutch if the food is good enough.”’

  Within twenty-four hours Ratih became a restaurant owner with no debts, plenty of working capital and Kiki now elevated to rice cook. In return, the poorer Dutch families got the best soup kitchen in Java without ever knowing the name of their benefactor. It soon became apparent that Til had been right — the locals continued their patronage, declaring the food, if anything, even better. In fact, this was correct since Ratih was free to choose the best of everything at the markets, no longer restricted by the previous owner’s noted parsimony.

  Anna, of course, talked to her father. ‘Talked’ was the operative word, as she had no intention of asking his permission but hoped instead for his advice. But the big Dutchman was increasingly depressed, nearly crippled by his own anxiety. He simply grunted, ‘It is finished here for the Dutch anyway. We will all die; maybe starving would be better. Do what you damn well like.’

  Anna had made the first decision that hadn’t been forced upon her by circumstances or a sense of obligation, and it felt very good.

  A week or so after Ratih had assumed control of her own eatery, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, Budi arrived at the house, the face of the thirteen-year-old deeply troubled. ‘What is it, Budi?’ Anna asked, immediately concerned.

  ‘Mother Ratih sent me, Anna. The kempeitai have come to the restaurant and are looking for the tall Javanese girl with the blue eyes who fainted at the beheading in the town square. The Japanese colonel Konoe, he has demanded that you be found and brought to him. The lieutenant thinks they must know — that somebody has told them — that Mother Ratih knows where you are.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘To the Japanese this is the symbol of life,

  a heartwood that will outlast everything man can make,

  a core within that, come what may, cannot be broken

  and represents our inner strength and divine spirit.’

  Konoe Akira

  Colonel, Japanese Imperial Army

  5th Resettlement Battalion, Tjilatjap

  ANNA SAT DOWN AFTER Budi left. They’d talked beneath a tree in the front garden where they had sat cross-legged on the grass, for she’d been anxious that her father would not overhear the details of their conversation.

  ‘Anna, Ratih says you must escape to the mountains. Til has friends there who will hide you and you will be safe. They, the Japanese polisi, will not find you,’ Budi said urgently, deeply concerned that the message entrusted to him be accepted.

  Anna frowned. ‘But you will not be safe! The kempeitai will find you. If Til is caught taking me to the mountains, or even if he is not, there are wagging tongues. They will know, they already know that we are friends. People see that Ratih now owns the kampong restaurant, someone has guessed where the money came from. The Japanese polisi are like dogs, their noses to the ground, only they are sniffing for money. If you fail to find me for them, they will soon persuade you to look harder.’

  ‘Mother Ratih is an honourable woman. My mother will never tell them, even if they torture her!’ Budi protested loyally.

  ‘Not just her. There is Til, you, the lieutenant. This house is in the police compound. How can he tell them he does not know how to find me? He will lose his job and you will all be tortured, beaten.’ Anna sighed. ‘And in the end they will find me anyway.’

  The thirteen-year-old looked totally distraught. ‘We have honour, Anna,’ he insisted. ‘You have done everything for us. I will be educated, the restaurant, Lo Wok. Now we must repay you.’

  ‘With your lives?’ Anna shook her head vigorously. ‘No, I will not have it!’ It was at that moment that the idea first struck her. She would go voluntarily to the Japanese colonel. She would avoid the kempeitai search for her and simply present herself to him at his home.

  ‘Anna, Mother Ratih says Kiki will look after your father, we will honour him as our own. We are Javanese, the kempeitai will not treat us like the Chinese.’

  ‘Ha! What about the heads of the Javanese criminals they have placed on bamboo poles around the town? They will treat you just the same if they think you are aiding the enemy to escape!’ She grabbed Budi by the shoulders. ‘Listen to me, Budi,’ Anna said urgently. ‘Tell Til he must find out where Colonel Konoe lives, his house, not his military headquarters — do you understand?’ Budi nodded. ‘Then Til must come and get me at 11.30 tomorrow morning. Tell him not to be late. No, don’t, he is never late,’ she corrected herself. ‘Send Kiki over at eleven o’clock.’ Anna was amazed at how clearly she saw the situation. Not for the first
time, she’d managed to avoid panic when in a crisis. She didn’t think of it as an inner strength, only that it had happened previously. ‘Does Kiki know that the Japanese polisi are looking for me?’ she now asked.

  ‘No, Anna. We have not told her.’

  ‘But with tongues wagging, surely she will hear?’

  ‘She is in the kitchen, the rice cook. Mother Ratih will not let her serve at tables tonight. But, Anna —?’ Budi questioned.

  Anna cut him short. ‘Do not argue, Budi, there is no time. If the kempeitai come to the restaurant tonight, tell Mother Ratih she must say that she expects to be able to report my whereabouts very soon. Do not resist them. Do not lie to them. Promise me, Budi!’

  A thoroughly disconsolate Budi left shortly afterwards.

  Now back in the house, Anna was suddenly terrified. The idea of the kempeitai finding her, manhandling her, possibly even torturing her, led her imagination to run riot. If they found out about the tin box, that she had a large amount of money, they would come and then treat her as they had the Chinese merchants. She had cautioned Ratih not to disclose where the money had come from to buy the restaurant. But people talk, they see and they speculate. Being a cook in a kampong restaurant isn’t a highly paid profession. After all, every woman can cook. If the lieutenant accepted bribes these would certainly not be sufficient to buy a restaurant. Budi returning to school was another reason for speculation. Anna was known to be a friend of the kampong cook and, moreover, had been seen at the market buying pots and pans, towels, sheets and assorted household goods when the other Dutch were selling everything they possessed so as not to starve. People observed these things, the tall Javanese girl with the slightly lighter skin and the black glass over her eyes.

  Ratih’s sudden change of fortune would have set the kampong tongues wagging and, as Til had recently told her, reporting old enemies to the kempeitai was becoming a local sport. Ratih was a forthright woman. She would have made her fair share of enemies. As Til again had once said to her, envy is a close cousin to malice, and both are dangerous human characteristics. She wasn’t sure whether this had been one of the Prophet’s maxims. Anna had been desperately sorry for the half-starved Dutch woman buying a scrap of offal and for others like her, and had acted impulsively and foolishly to start the soup kitchen. She should have heeded her father’s scorn at the idea.

  Her very first concern was to conceal the whereabouts of the tin box. Hiding it under the outside lavatory seat now seemed downright careless — anyone knowing there was money hidden would find it in minutes. It must be taken off the premises. She would ask Til to hide it and if she was murdered by the kempeitai to use some of it to take care of her father, give Kiki her wedding dowry and her own house, put Budi through university, build Ratih and the lieutenant a new home and buy himself a fleet of taxi cars. In the meantime Kiki would take care of her father until the Japanese decided what to do with the Dutch stay-behinds. Even then, if Til could find a way to buy her father freedom with a bribe, he was to use some of the money for this purpose. Anna was trying to stay calm while preparing for her own death.

  At dinner that night Piet Van Heerden, as he had increasingly been doing, complained about her cooking, pushed his plate away and declared the meal inedible. It was a sentiment that Anna, in her preoccupation, was willing to concede. She had never much liked cooking anyway and though she had once or twice cooked for me in Batavia, it was boy’s food, meat and potatoes with gravy, with the one veg she insisted I must endure.

  ‘Well, you’ll be happy to know Kiki will be here to cook your food tomorrow,’ Anna announced, placing a cup of coffee down in front of him. He hadn’t noticed her preoccupation or anxiety.

  ‘Kiki?’

  ‘Kleine Kiki,’ Anna said, remembering. ‘She is now practically a qualified restaurant cook.’

  ‘Why?’ her father grunted.

  ‘Why what? Why is she coming?’ Anna said. Then taking a deep breath she announced, ‘Father, there is trouble with the kempeitai, they are looking for me.’

  Piet Van Heerden glanced up at his daughter, surprised. His face suddenly clouded. ‘Police? Looking for you? The foking police are looking for you! Why? What have you gone and done?’

  ‘Nothing, Father, it is the Japanese police, they are like hungry dogs, always sniffing around.’

  ‘Dogs sniff where there is a bad smell! What is this about, hey? Tell me, Anna!’

  ‘I can’t say, I think it may be the soup kitchen.’ Anna was reluctant to explain any further. Her father hardly knew Ratih, who hadn’t been to the house since he’d emerged from the cellar.

  ‘I foking told you don’t do it! A few starving Dutch. Who gives a shit. I foking told you, Anna!’ he repeated, stabbing a finger at her. ‘Now look what you’ve done, you’ve endangered my life!’ Anna saw his angry expression change to one of fear as this new thought struck him. ‘They will find me and torture me! They will kill me! It is your fault,’ he whined. Then, ‘Pay them, give them money, lots of money, they can be bribed, all policemen can be bribed.’ He looked desperately at his daughter. ‘Anna, I don’t want to die!’ he wailed.

  ‘Nor do I, Father,’ Anna said softly, aware that the more likely prospect of her own death hadn’t occurred to him.

  ‘Money! There is lots of it in the tin box! Give them some!’ he sobbed.

  ‘Then they will want more. They must not know we have money,’ Anna said. ‘I will hide the box.’

  ‘What about the soup kitchen? Have they found out you paid for that foking stupid idea?’

  ‘It was not a lot of money. Just sufficient to run the soup kitchen from a small restaurant in the kampong.’ Anna didn’t mention that in addition she’d bought the restaurant for Ratih. Her father wouldn’t understand.

  ‘Listen, Father, I have an idea. I will go directly to the colonel.’

  ‘What colonel? Who is this colonel? Is he the police?’

  ‘No, Father. He is in command of everything.’

  ‘He is not the police? You said the police, the kempeitai, want you?’

  Anna could have kicked herself. She hadn’t mentioned the execution of the Chinese to her father or the fainting incident in the square. The beheading of the four Chinese, she reasoned, would have caused him severe panic, even a heart attack. The terrible fear he had of being tortured or of dying in a brutal way now totally absorbed his every thought. Apart from going to the outside toilet, which he did furtively, he never left the house and was afraid to venture beyond the front gate.

  ‘It is better than being picked up by the kempeitai,’ Anna said, trying to recover. Then she had a sudden thought. ‘If I go myself to the colonel, then the kempeitai won’t know where we live and you will be safe. Kleine Kiki will take care of you until I return.’

  Piet Van Heerden grunted, though Anna thought he was somewhat mollified. He rose from the kitchen table. ‘Foking stupid,’ he said, moving through the doorway towards his bedroom. He paused at the bedroom door. ‘Do not tell that Japanese colonel you have a father, you hear?’ he said, entering and closing the door behind him. Then he opened it a moment later. ‘Leave enough money for me for six months,’ he shouted. ‘Also the diamonds — I want them back!’

  Anna, who no longer was afraid of, or even respected, her father, had no intention of returning the diamonds. Besides, she’d already made plans for his survival and welfare. She wrote a list of things for Kiki to do, topmost among them being to check his bed sheets each morning. While her father rose regularly during the night and the chamber-pot was always almost full, every once in a while he’d wet the sheets. He was gaining weight and seemed constantly thirsty, while during the day he made numerous covert trips to the outside lavatory. Anna was not to know that Piet Van Heerden had developed diabetes.

  Kiki arrived as she had been instructed, just before 11 a.m., after Anna had served her late-rising father breakfast. She didn�
�t want a tearful Kiki on her hands and had asked Ratih to tell her that Anna was going into the countryside to look for a possible house where her father would be able to go outside for walks and not be fearful of being caught. She knew Kiki was aware of her father’s paranoia and would immediately understand, and so Kiki arrived at the house unconcerned and cheerful, anticipating the household chores as being a pleasant change from the grinding routine of working as rice cook in Ratih’s kitchen.

  ‘I will clean everything, Anna,’ she promised happily. Entering the kitchen she pointed to the stove. ‘I have brought stoveblack — it will be shining when you return from the country.’

  Anna had previously told her father to say nothing about her visit to confront the colonel. ‘Kleine Kiki is a maid and she will talk. So, please, tell her nothing, Father!’ she’d said to him, speaking sternly for added emphasis. Not that she needed to be concerned. Piet Van Heerden’s fear of being discovered and tortured far exceeded any desire to gossip with a servant.

  Til arrived at precisely 11.30 a.m. Anna, as usual, marvelled at his sense of time, especially as he carried no watch. To most of the population, half an hour here or there wasn’t of great concern; it was tropical time, only the school was bewilderingly strict about its pupils being on time. She’d once queried his punctuality and how he achieved it. ‘Allah gives us all the best watch. Hold your hand to your heart, you will feel the ticking of perfect time. That is how,’ he’d said to her, perfectly straight-faced.

  ‘Til, that is complete bullshit!’ Anna had cried.

  Til laughed and hung his head. ‘I can see the clock on the church tower from most places. I cannot admit this because it is the infidel church, but when I see it, I know how far it is to my destination.’

  ‘Well, I’m just glad Allah isn’t involved for a change,’ Anna replied, laughing.