The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Ah, then you must approve of such as me? I am yellow highlighted by white.’ Anna held her breath, thinking she had gone too far. She smiled, though it was more an attempt at a quizzical grin, her beautiful violet eyes held wide.

  Konoe Akira brought the cigarette to his lips, inhaled and then exhaled, and carefully placed it so that it balanced on the lip of the butterfly ashtray. ‘Not only a beautiful woman but also a clever one,’ he observed, bringing his hands together in a small token clap. But then he added, ‘You should be careful, you play dangerously, young woman’.

  Anna was becoming confused, unable to define the Japanese officer in her mind. He was rapidly becoming an enigma. Was he a potentially cold-eyed killer and racist who liked to arrange flowers and sought in them perfection? Or a sophisticated, urbane, almost likeable cultured and aesthetic man? Or both? Could one person be both? She supposed this was possible, but knew she was out of her depth and also that she should remain silent. But his racial antipathy and singular scorn and dismissal of someone of mixed blood burned within her. She had always seen herself as different, but never as lesser, never as inferior.

  She pointed at the vase. ‘Sir, you have chosen yellow as perfection, but the dahlia has many colours: pink, red, orange, magenta and, of course, yellow and white. Yet every colour is still a dahlia, still perfection. Is it not the same with the human race? We are still all dahlias but is it not our differences that are interesting?’ she added.

  At that moment the housekeeper came through the door carrying a tray. She placed it down on a small wicker side table and carefully removed the vase, the teapot and untouched cup of tea that was before Anna. Then, using both hands, she placed a small, exquisite yellow porcelain bowl in front of Anna and another in front of the Japanese officer. Then came a larger rice dish, a chicken dish and one containing tempura vegetables. This dish was also of the same, almost opaque, porcelain, only this time it was white. The mama-san set down each dish in a tiny silent ceremony. Then she laid a pair of beautifully proportioned, highly burnished black chopsticks beside Anna, carefully separating them so they were slightly apart but still somehow together; a tiny aesthetic touch, two lovers temporarily separated after making love. She did the same with those she placed in front of the colonel. Her final touches were to add a white porcelain rice spoon beside the rice and a pale green pot containing tea accompanied by two small yellow porcelain oriental cups. She had, in just a few moments, created a setting which, while simple, when reflected in the polished glass surface of the table, was exquisite. In its own way it replicated the vase of dahlias, the yellow and white of the blossoms and finally the pale leaf-green of the teapot. Anna thought it near to being faultless.

  Konoe Akira picked up a chopstick and balanced it in his hand. ‘In the heartwood of the sacred persimmon tree is ebony, the hardest, most beautiful of all woods. It is created by nature and will last longer than the katana, the layered and folded steel of the everlasting samurai sword.’ He dipped and lifted his palm in the air as if weighing the chopstick. ‘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.’ He paused, looking at Anna, his expression serious. ‘Perhaps at another time you will permit me to recite the soldier’s poem about the persimmon tree by the most venerable Taneda Santoka, haiku master. He was the last Japanese priest–poet. He passed away just two years ago. I will try to translate it into English.’ He placed the chopstick down and indicated the food. ‘You are permitted to eat. Please, some chicken?’ He indicated the small squares of chicken on skewer sticks.

  Immediately as the mama-san had placed the chicken dish down, Anna’s acute sense of smell picked up a sharp sourness to the sauce. It was not the tartness of a freshly squeezed lemon. Instead an altogether different astringency assailed her nostrils. It was sharp, perhaps too sharp for her taste, although she could detect the smell of the soy sauce that had been added to render it less sour. She had decided to start with the tempura; the light batter and the vegetable oil used for frying smelled simply wonderful. She wondered if the whiteness of the rice was meant to highlight the gold of the tempura, but left this observation unremarked. But now that the colonel had suggested she start with the chicken she felt compelled to obey him.

  ‘Thank you, Colonel-san,’ she said, borrowing the respectful nomenclature from the mayor’s wife as a change from her constantly repeated ‘sir’. She added a little rice to her bowl and then removed the chicken from the small wooden skewer with her chopstick, allowing it to fall into the rice. Then she picked up a single square of chicken and popped it into her mouth. It tasted horrible. At home she would have covered her mouth with a napkin and left the table to hurry somewhere private to spit it out. Now she swallowed it bravely, adding rice in an attempt to ameliorate the taste.

  In the meantime the colonel had helped himself to the rice and vegetable tempura, silent as he attended to the food in front of him. Anna waited for him to reach for a chicken skewer. If he ate it with equanimity then she would accept that what pleased the Japanese palate was chicken that had been allowed to go slightly off. He poured himself green tea from the pot, the steam rising from the small tea bowl, and then took another piece of the tempura. Finally he reached for the chicken, removed the pieces from the skewer into his bowl and brought a single piece to his mouth. Anna observed his face contort and twist in dismay. Without ceremony he spat the contents of his mouth into his rice bowl, repeating the spitting process several times to remove the last of the contaminated chicken on his lips. ‘Mama-san!’ he yelled in a furious voice.

  The Japanese housekeeper must have been standing attentively just beyond the door for she appeared almost immediately. Konoe Akira lifted the dish containing four more skewers and emptied the contents over her feet. His rebuke was in Japanese so that Anna could only observe her dismay and with it her changing facial expressions. At first she brought both hands up to her face, then she began to sob, stooping to brush some of the mess from her slippers. The Japanese colonel proceeded to empty the bowl of rice over her head, followed by what was left of the tempura. Now she cowered at his feet, gabbling words of apology, attempting to scrape together the debris on the floor with her hands. Then he reached over, took up the teapot and poured the hot green tea over her neck and back, scalding her. His face had grown apoplectic with rage as he continued to rebuke the hapless, howling woman in Japanese.

  Anna jumped to her feet, the act of pouring the hot tea finally too much. ‘Stop, you cruel bastard!’ she screamed. ‘Stop at once! Let her alone, you piece of crippled shit!’ Anna knew instantly with these final five words she had lost her life, the sight of the blood-splashed jackboots, her own blood, flashing through her mind.

  The Japanese colonel stopped abruptly and with a dismissive hand told the distraught and injured woman to leave. But by this time Anna was kneeling by her side, trying to comfort the crouched and weeping mama-san, at the same time attempting to lift her to her feet. The Japanese officer rose from the chair and Anna, with her arms around the cowering housekeeper, glared up at him. ‘Fuck off, you bastard!’ she spat.

  Konoe Akira stood over her and broke into a broad smile, then brought his hands together and clapped softly. ‘I knew it! I knew it the moment I saw you in the town square where you fainted. I knew you were the one. You will be perfect!’ He brought his heels together and jerked his head forward in the same semblance of a bow as previously, followed with a similar grunt of ‘Ho!’ Then, not as an invitation or as a request, but as a clearly issued order, he demanded, ‘Tomorrow at twelve o’clock you will be present for lunch. A thousand apologies, the food, it will be better than today. We will talk about dahlias and differences. I will tell the kempeitai I have found you. My staff sergeant will now drive you home.’

  Anna was, to say the least, surprised at his sudden and complete change of t
emper and his reaction to her vulgar language. She had deeply insulted him and yet seemingly he had been delighted. ‘Thank you, that is unnecessary. I have a becak waiting,’ she said quietly.

  ‘As you wish.’ With this Colonel Konoe turned. His back rigid, chin slightly jutted, he walked towards the door leading to the interior of the house, despite his pronounced limp every inch an officer of the Japanese Imperial Army.

  Til was waiting outside the gate and looked overjoyed to see her. ‘Anna, are you okay? You have rice on your shoes!’

  Anna grinned, then burst into sudden tears, then grinned again through tear-brightened eyes. ‘Til, I am here and still in one piece!’ she joked.

  ‘Allah be praised!’ he said, helping Anna into the becak. ‘Let us be gone, too many soldiers turned into gardeners or maybe the other way around. This place, it does not feel right, Anna.’

  ‘Til, I am starving and I have a sour taste in my mouth; take me to Ratih’s restaurant. I need fried rice and chicken, her special recipe.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘Konoe-san, my face is brown and I do not wish it to be white

  or my cheeks to be stained with blush and

  my lips the colour of fresh cow’s liver.

  My hair falls naturally to my shoulders,

  I do not want to lift it to the sky or to decorate it with chopsticks.’

  Anna Van Heerden

  ANNA RETURNED HOME TOTALLY confused. As well, she was disconcerted that she was immediately forced to fib to Kiki, telling her she had been unsuccessful at finding a place out of town and requesting her to return the following day at the same time. Anna spoke to Kiki in the kitchen and failed to notice the polished and gleaming black stove. Later she made a mental note to apologise to her in the morning. The house was spotlessly clean and the laundry done. What the little rice cook had managed to do in less than four hours was remarkable; she’d even prepared their dinner — a stew she knew to be one of her father’s favourites.

  Piet Van Heerden was his usual depressed self. Anna had managed to find a box of books in Dutch at the markets, but apart from lifting them out and sniffing at each rather than opening them, he’d returned them to the box where they remained untouched. She knew that by asserting her independence she had reduced him to someone of no consequence in her life, nevertheless she was unrepentant. If he asked again for the diamonds she would openly refuse to return them. They had been a gift and she had accepted them reluctantly, but now they were hers. If she had broken his spirit, then perhaps it had been too fragile in the first place. Anna resolved that there was little or nothing she could do to solve his morbidity or allay his fear of dying.

  ‘She cooks better than you. Lunch was a decent meal for a change,’ her father growled, not looking up.

  ‘That’s good. She has cooked your dinner, your favourite, meat stew with potatoes from the garden.’

  ‘Humph! It is not much to look forward to,’ he said self-pityingly.

  ‘And you’ll be glad to hear she’ll be back tomorrow,’ Anna said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘I have to return to see that Japanese colonel.’

  Piet Van Heerden was silent, seemingly not responding to this news. When eventually he spoke he asked, ‘Did he take money?’

  ‘No, I didn’t offer him any.’

  ‘Did he fuck you?’

  ‘No!’ Anna cried, shocked but at the same time indignant. ‘He did not!’

  The Dutchman rose from his chair, his rheumy blue eyes meeting hers directly. ‘Then he will tomorrow,’ he said in a flat, disinterested voice. Turning, he shuffled from the kitchen, his bladder alerting him to go to the lavatory.

  Anna heard the screen door bang. Once again she felt completely alone and in her mind’s eye she saw the wash of blood that had given her life while it had taken her mother’s. Colonel Konoe was wrong. It was the white that had been stronger than the brown. She thought of the beautiful opaque butterfly etched into the base of his ashtray. What had happened to her? She was no longer the sweet sixteen-year-old who had fallen in love with a big bear of a boy who collected butterflies. She didn’t really know who she was. What had she become? What would happen to her? The last thing she had done before going to sleep each night since leaving Batavia was to kiss the glass lid of the box containing the Clipper butterfly and to wish me goodnight. ‘I love you, Nicholas’ were the final words she would utter before falling asleep. It was a love that remained innocent and pure. Now she had been reduced to using words, invective that except for one previous occasion had never crossed her lips, and even as silent, unspoken adjectives had never entered her head. Where had they come from? Was there a small dark room in the mind that contained foul language and was jerked open to release ugly words when under duress?

  The Japanese officer clearly wanted her for something, some task, but what? He’d laughed when she had insulted him, even seeming pleased when she’d lost her temper. It was as if her foul language was connected with the task he had in mind. His mistress? Surely not. But this was the only thing that seemed plausible. This notion appalled Anna and she knew she would resist him. She knew nothing about making love, nothing about pleasing a man in that way. In fact, she knew very little about employing foul language for effect, if that was what he wanted. The sum of her experience of an aroused man was the hardness, the sudden swelling she’d felt when I’d pressed against her thighs while kissing her. But she didn’t know if she would have the courage to resist him and, by doing so, risk her own death and the possible torture that might occur before she was killed. She was terribly afraid but also knew she must never let him see her fear. She had observed how the kempeitai depended on fear as their strongest weapon. It seemed to be the Japanese way and there was no reason, despite his notion and desire for perfection, to think of Konoe Akira as being any different.

  Anna had seen his reaction over the chicken pieces and the brutality he had shown to the mayor’s wife. Had he possessed a dagger or pistol at the time, she felt certain that at the height of his fury he would have used it on the housekeeper. He had also warned Anna on one occasion that she was courting danger when there had only been a little clever repartee between them, a metaphor concerning flowers. It was said without threat, but now she wasn’t so sure that the warning had been lighthearted.

  How would he react when she refused to share his couch, to make love to him? If she told him she was a virgin, would this whet his appetite or would it restrain him? Would he take pride in peeling open the petals or leave the bud to open naturally? This was no simple man to be disarmed and turned away in a playful face-saving way, his pride intact. He was an enigma. Anna had never known a male like him — instantly brought to destructive fury, an east wind howling and out of control, then as quickly calm again. An urbane aesthete, a lover of beauty but anxious to tame it, control it, bring it to his own idea of perfection. Anna saw that there was tension in everything he did. The vase of dahlias was a perfect example of an attempt to restrain the underlying fury that roared within him. She was frightened, and it was a fear beyond anything she had previously faced for this was a fear where she was no longer in control. Is that what he would do with her? Pluck each leaf so as not to damage the slender stem, present the blossom rearranged precisely each morning in a polished clear-glass bowl? Manipulate, snip, reduce, so that she would become the white, the non-colour, to highlight the glorious yellow of his alter ego?

  Kiki arrived the following morning and Anna praised her warmly for the black burnished stove so that she beamed with pleasure. Til arrived precisely on time, again far from happy. ‘That place, it is dangerous, Anna. I have been to the mosque and asked Allah to watch over you. You must be very careful.’

  She thanked him and they set off, Anna telling him that the deal with the tin box remained the same as the previous day.

  ‘I have found a place to hide it that nobody can ever find except me,’ he boasted gently.
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  ‘And if a motorcar hits you today and you go to paradise and are given your allotment of seventy-two virgins, what then?’ Anna asked, smiling.

  Til stopped his becak in mid-pedal, shocked that he hadn’t thought of such a possibility. ‘Ahee! Anna, I did not think of this,’ he admitted, shamefaced.

  ‘The virgins or the box?’ Anna joked.

  Til, for once, had no answer to the dilemma of the tin box and wrung his hands. ‘The Prophet says only one person can know a secret; if there are two, it is no longer a secret, it may as well be in all the newspapers.’

  ‘There were newspapers when the Prophet said that?’ Anna asked, still joking with the little becak owner.

  ‘What must I do?’ Til asked, frowning.

  ‘You must write a letter to Budi, then seal it and place it among your most private possessions. In it you must tell him the whereabouts, but don’t tell him it is the tin or what it contains, just that you have left him something useful and where to find it.’ It was the only idea Anna could think of at that moment.

  Til remained silent; he’d dismounted and now looked down at the surface of the road, rubbing his big toe sideways, making circles in the dust. ‘Anna, I do not know how to write a letter,’ he said slowly.

  Illiteracy was not unusual in Javanese men of Til’s age. Anna said quickly, ‘Turn back — there are shops not far from here, we can buy paper and a pencil and an envelope. Come, Til, quick, I mustn’t be late!’ Her haste and hubbub were more to cover the shamefaced admission of the wisest man she had ever known than because of the prospect that she might be late for the Japanese colonel. She had allowed more than sufficient time to reach the brewer’s mansion.

  Til’s skinny brown legs quite possibly broke the world speed record for a becak with passenger. Arriving outside the first general merchant they came across, Anna handed Til some loose change to buy the writing materials. Using the broad saddle of the becak she wrote the letter, carefully describing the exact location of Budi’s so-called inheritance, which turned out to be a small cave behind a permanently flowing waterfall that Til was certain only he knew about. He’d buried the tin box in the cave and then covered the spot with a rock. Anna handed the sheet of paper to Til, who folded it carefully and placed it in the envelope on which Anna had written in capital letters ‘BUDI’. ‘I will guard this letter with my life, I swear it, Anna. Ahee! One day, when I have the time, I will learn to write and to read the Koran.’