The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  The Nest of the Swallows, Tjilatjap

  THE THREE MONTHS OF language lessons and lunches passed quickly and Colonel Konoe pronounced himself happy with Anna’s progress in Japanese. In fact, she was glad to be using her mind again and proved to be an outstanding student who took great pleasure in the teaching given to her by a military instructor, 2nd Lieutenant Ando, a shy bespectacled young scholar who had been a junior lecturer in linguistics at Tokyo University before being called up into the army.

  Ando was an unlikely soldier and had become disenchanted with the thankless task of trying to teach Japanese to the Korean conscripts, both male and female. The males did the dirty outside work for the Japanese army, while the females worked in the kitchens or as cleaners in the officers’ accommodation and the brothels. While they had the constitution of a mule the lieutenant felt they also shared the animal’s intelligence; most of them were illiterate slum kids grabbed from the streets of Seoul and Pyongyang or from the impoverished rice paddies in the surrounding countryside.

  Inspired once more, Ando-san delighted in the opportunity and challenge of teaching Anna. It was a case of a diligent teacher and a willing student and the results surpassed even Konoe Akira’s ambitious demands.

  If I make Anna’s achievement seem effortless, that would not be correct. She studied deep into each evening and most nights went to bed exhausted, her head spinning with phrases and the inflections cast upon words in a language where what is said is seldom what is meant.

  Dutch is a Teutonic and often pedantic language. Javanese, when well spoken, is a gentle and sometimes lyrical one. English, borrowed from everywhere and everyone, is perhaps the most difficult. But Japanese was by far the most introverted, subtle and formal language Anna had ever tackled. It is a language where what is left unspoken is often the more meaningful statement.

  Nonetheless, the three months Anna spent with 2nd Lieutenant Ando before Colonel Konoe deemed her ready to enter the second phase of her Japanese initiation were the happiest she’d had since leaving Batavia. The shy lieutenant would continue to teach her for another two years, by which time Anna spoke Japanese with more proficiency than she spoke English.

  The daily lunches over the first three months with Konoe Akira continued and with them a strange bond began to develop between Anna and her captor. The Japanese colonel, while appearing urbane, sophisticated and a patient mentor, nevertheless kept a tight hold on her behaviour. In numerous subtle ways, usually preceded or followed by small acts of kindness, he made sure she understood that without his patronage she was in mortal danger.

  At no stage did he touch her or make any sexual advances; his preoccupation was with her mind combined with physical perfection, and she could only conclude (with immense gratitude) that this meant, given the manner in which he had referred to her chastity, the pearl that nestled in the heart of the oyster was to remain intact.

  Anna’s deep resentment at having been acquired by him gradually began to lessen, and as her knowledge of Japanese increased he delighted in testing her with more difficult precepts, and her naturally competitive nature rose to the challenge these presented.

  During this same period Captain Takahashi, the commander of the kempeitai, had taken with enthusiasm to the task of conscripting young Dutch women for the two designated brothels. Girls from the age of fifteen, chosen for their looks and purity, were set aside to work in the Nest of the Swallows, the officers’ house of pleasure. The older women, mostly in their late twenties or early thirties, usually married, sexually mature and robust, were chosen for the establishment created for the common soldiers and non-commissioned officers.

  Seven okami-san, geishas too old for active service, arrived by ship from Japan to set up the two brothels. Six of them were required to work as keepers of an okiya, the Japanese name for a geisha house, running the establishments and disciplining the comfort women, while the seventh, also a retired geisha, was a woman skilled in every imaginable way of sexually pleasing a male. Her task as the supreme okami-san was to instruct the young Dutch women at the Nest of the Swallows in any sexual proclivity an officer patron might desire.

  Both establishments remained open for sixteen hours every day and each comfort woman was required to work an eight-hour shift under the supervision of an okami-san.

  While enforced prostitution is degrading, humiliating and psychologically deeply damaging, in many respects the more experienced women in the enlisted men’s brothel were somewhat better off than the young inexperienced girls in the Nest of the Swallows. The older women were required to service thirty patrons a day and while this may seem physically inhuman, it was a carefully calculated figure. Most young soldiers arrive at a brothel with their testosterone at a very high level and their anticipation of things to come even higher. What has been imagined prior to sexual congress is much more important than the actual act of penetration. The cladding of a condom and the entrance to the tunnel of bliss were simply the final physical acts in the mental drama. Most experienced prostitutes, if they are being honest, do not feel unduly sexually abused by the quick and explosive orgasm of an over-excited young male. Thirty soldier customers a day was blatant and systemised rape, but the number and conduct of the customers was nevertheless carefully supervised. No self-respecting okami-san would dream of over-utilising her charges. This may have had little to do with her feeling any compassion since it was, quite simply, bad for business and the okami-san would be punished as a result.

  Every once in a while Konoe Akira would make an oblique reference to the Nest of the Swallows, so that Anna was constantly aware that the captive relationship she had with the Japanese officer was a very privileged one. Also, his occasional veiled remarks were a reminder that her required presence for tutorials and lunch was a situation much to be preferred to the alternative choice of work under the overall supervision of the kempeitai and the dreaded executioner, Captain Takahashi.

  Anna was also subtly reminded that the demands of Japanese officers were often peculiar and specific, and that virginity and the innocence of a neophyte was a much sought-after prize, particularly when the carefully inculcated skills of the seventh okami-san were added to their regime. In addition, the more sophisticated officer patrons seldom suffered from the spontaneous combustion of the young soldiers, and often required more complex gratification. While Anna couldn’t begin to imagine what any of their sexual proclivities might be, she was nevertheless inordinately grateful to Konoe Akira for rescuing her from being recruited to the Nest of the Swallows.

  Colonel Konoe would also ameliorate this underlying threat by rewarding Anna with small specific acts of kindness. As an example, Til lamented to her one morning that the tyres of his becak were worn down to the lining and were close to the point where they could no longer be mended, and the inner tubes had so many puncture patches that they too would soon be worthless. Since tyres or inner tubes couldn’t be purchased, even on the black market, he explained that he would soon be unable to fetch her or, for that matter, earn a living. Anna had spoken to the colonel, who had seen to it that the little becak owner received six sets of new bicycle tyres and inner tubes and instructed that he was simply to go to the ordnance depot when he required more.

  Kindness of a larger nature was shown in his command that a military doctor was to pay a visit to Piet Van Heerden twice a week to monitor his condition. The doctor had been unable to diagnose Anna’s father’s sickness — not surprising, as the medical profession at the time was unaware of the type 2 diabetes that caused his constant thirst and frequent need to urinate. The doctor probed at the discolouration of skin that Anna had first noticed at the back of her father’s neck and which soon spread to his elbows, knees, knuckles and armpits, but could draw no medical conclusions. His patient also suffered from high blood pressure and hypertension, while at the same time he gained weight and became hugely obese without any increase in appetite. There was very little the Japanes
e doctor could do to help Piet Van Heerden and so he supplied him with a bottle of tablets, while cautioning that they were only to be taken when he felt particularly ill, as they would invariably lead to acute constipation. Anna came to call them his ‘magic pills’ as they quickly calmed her father. Unbeknown to her the prescribed tablets were pure morphine and Piet Van Heerden soon became addicted, as well as adding constipation to his list of woes.

  As an aside, Java at the time was awash with heroin and amphetamines, the latter a Japanese invention while the former came from Japanese-occupied China. The Japanese military used them to subdue the more recalcitrant elements in a local society or to encourage collaborators, while at the same time a great many of the senior Japanese officers were addicted to a combination of the two drugs. When injected together they produced a sense of euphoria and a heightened since of awareness — the perfect fix.

  Soldiers coming down the Malayan peninsula where they were forced to endure long marches through difficult conditions were issued with amphetamine-infused cigarettes to keep them awake and alert. At the conclusion of the war one warehouse in Japan was found to contain 18 000 kilograms of amphetamine crystal. While it has never been officially confirmed, it is claimed that large amounts of heroin were found throughout the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.

  In August 1942 all Dutch men from fourteen years onwards were finally rounded up and placed in concentration camps; the youngest boys and the old men, the sick and disabled were to remain in Java, while the able-bodied were sent to Burma to work in the Japanese labour camps, where many died of starvation, dysentery, malaria and ill treatment. Piet Van Heerden was given a dispensation by the Japanese commander and was permitted to remain with Anna.

  And so, with these and similar acts of kindness combined with occasional threats, Anna began to lose her fear of Konoe Akira. She had always been subject to patriarchy and so was accustomed to the dominance of a male in her daily life. With her increasing fluency in the Japanese language, taken with the fact that he’d never touched her or made a direct reference to a personal sexual need, it wasn’t too difficult to regard the Japanese officer as being the father figure Anna would have hoped for, rather than the pathetic, incontinent and increasingly obese, fearful and self-absorbed one to whom she returned home each afternoon.

  However, if these first months could be regarded as the halcyon days of Anna’s benign captivity, they were to end all too abruptly. Exactly to the day when the three months Konoe Akira designated for her initial language lessons had passed, Yasuko served eel once more. As on the previous occasion, a small container of sake was placed in front of the colonel.

  At the conclusion of the lunch, Konoe Akira, first lighting a cigarette, leaned back in his chair. He now only spoke to her in Japanese.

  ‘You have done well, Second Vase, and I am pleased with you. Now the time has come for the next part of your journey to become an artist and, at the same time, your own canvas. I am pleased with how you have advanced with the first learning. You have been quick to progress with the Japanese language. This afternoon you will not go home but retire to your room upstairs, where you will receive a visitor, a woman, who will begin your second instruction.’

  Anna smiled. ‘What is it to be, Konoe-san?’ she asked.

  ‘A second instruction only an okami-san can teach,’ he replied, looking unsmilingly at her.

  Anna laughed. ‘You have said yourself that I would never make a geisha, Konoe-san.’

  He got up from his chair in the usual awkward manner while Anna rose to return the customary bow that signified his departure.

  She had grown accustomed to wearing a kimono, knowing how to prevent the silk from creasing when she sat, and she now adopted the wide-elbowed, fingertipped, reclining-thumb posture bow that Yasuko had taught her without having to think about it. She was wearing the prettiest of the four kimonos she possessed. This had come about when, having completed her language lessons with 2nd Lieutenant Ando, she had gone to her room upstairs to change for lunch only to discover Yasuko standing at the door holding the garment she was now wearing. ‘Today this one, Anna-san,’ she’d laughed. ‘We are having eel and the honourable Konoe-san will drink sake.’

  Now, to Anna’s surprise, Colonel Konoe addressed her while standing and without bowing. ‘I will see you tomorrow at lunch, but from now on you will be here in the afternoon as well. You will go home at five o’clock.’

  ‘As you wish, Konoe-san,’ Anna said quietly. ‘I will do my best to learn this second instruction.’

  ‘Yes, it would be best if you did, Second Vase.’ He paused and, looking directly at her, said, ‘It is why you are here.’ He bowed, ‘Ho!’; then, without waiting for Anna to return this gesture, Konoe Akira turned on his heels and limped away.

  Anna bowed to his stiff neck and rigid, retreating back. She was suddenly very afraid.

  She waited until she heard the sound of his car departing and made her way into the kitchen to find Yasuko. The mama-san was making rice noodles and greeted her with a serious expression. ‘Anna-san, there is a visitor for you, she is waiting in your room,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Konoe-san has informed me of her presence. Who is she, Yasuko-san? The colonel just said a woman was coming to instruct me but did not explain any further.’

  The housekeeper looked unhappily at Anna, then down at her feet. ‘She is okami-san,’ she said in a soft voice.

  The title wasn’t new to Anna; the okami-san were the seven women who had been sent from Japan to Java and, on more than one occasion, if only obliquely and with a twinge of threat in his voice, Konoe Akira had referred to them.

  Anna’s immediate fear was that her second instruction was going to take place in the Nest of the Swallows and the okami-san had been summoned to accompany her there. But then she realised it didn’t make sense. If this was what Konoe Akira intended, then why had he gone to the extent of tutoring her in Japanese or required her constant attendance at lunch, where his satisfaction at her progress in the Japanese language was readily apparent? Why would she be permitted to go home at five o’clock if all along she’d been intended for the officers’ whorehouse?

  Anna, somewhat calmer in her thoughts, now asked, ‘Has she, the okami-san, come to fetch me? To take me somewhere, Yasuko-san?’

  The housekeeper had been instructed over the past three months to only speak to Anna in Japanese. But now, in case the okami-san came downstairs and was within earshot, she changed to Javanese.

  ‘Fetch you? No, no, Anna-san, the colonel-san told me she is here to instruct you. That she will come every day and I must see that she leaves the house at five minutes to five o’clock.’ She smiled and attempted to adopt a confident tone. ‘Anna-san, these okami-san, they are old women who are trained in formal manners. It is possible that the honourable Konoe-san wants you to learn their ways. The okami-san are the only ones who can do this in Tjilatjap. I myself cannot do this. I am a humble housewife who cooks and whose hands are raw from washing dishes and scrubbing floors. I have not been taught the noble art of keeping a man well satisfied with my presence.’

  ‘But he has said himself that I could never be a geisha. Not even a beginner, a maiko.’

  Yasuko shrugged. ‘It is perhaps to learn just a few of their traditions? For example, they may show you the manner in which to serve tea. The honourable colonel-san is from a very old and famous family who are accustomed to different ways to show one’s respect and humility; the geisha, they know these ways.’

  The housekeeper’s reassurances were comforting to Anna but she nonetheless felt a sense of foreboding as she mounted the stairs. Her room was large and comfortably furnished in the Dutch manner and had formerly been the principal bedroom. It had now been converted to include two easy chairs and a low table. The two chairs, in a room she had believed was exclusively her own, had always disconcerted her. She had been promised complete priva
cy and this had hitherto been strictly adhered to, with Yasuko being the only one entering to attend to her kimonos, hadajuban slips and tabi socks. Anna could only conclude that as the chairs were matching, the Japanese sense of order had designated that they be kept together, twins in the art of excessive upholstery. Now as she entered her room she saw that one of the chairs was occupied by a Japanese woman whom she took to be about fifty years old. She wore a yukata, a lightweight cotton, black kimono; on her feet were cloth-covered zori, and outside footwear with soles of lacquered wood worn without the white tabi socks, lest these be splashed in muddy puddles.

  Tabi always reminded Anna of the white socks she’d worn to school with shoes that strapped across her instep secured by a single bright black button. Then little schoolgirls had worn regulation twin plaits, each plait tied with a fresh ribbon every morning: white for Monday, green for Tuesday, blue for Wednesday, yellow for Thursday and pink for Friday. Tabi were not essential to wear with geta sandals, particularly in the summer heat, Yasuko had informed her. Anna on one occasion appeared without them at lunch, only to witness Konoe Akira’s temper flare.

  ‘Where are your tabi?’ he’d barked, pointing to her ankles.

  Anna had dropped her eyes. ‘I am informed they are not necessary in this hot weather, Konoe-san.’

  ‘Informed? Who informed you?’ he’d asked in a peremptory tone.

  Anna wasn’t going to implicate Yasuko. ‘Perhaps I wasn’t informed, Konoe-san.’ She’d looked up at him. ‘It was my own decision.’

  Konoe Akira was not fooled for a moment. ‘Do not ever accept advice from that ignorant peasant in the kitchen! She was born here! She is not a proper Japanese! It is I who will decide what is Japanese custom and what is not! No one else! Do you understand, Second Vase?’

  ‘Yes, Konoe-san.’

  ‘You will never do this again!’ Suddenly consumed with anger he had reached over and grabbed the butterfly ashtray and dashed it to the stone floor, smashing it at his feet. ‘Never!’