The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  One day he turned to his native friend, thanking him for his solicitous care and suggesting that it might be time to return to the main island, to the port where his compassionate friend had rescued him. He promised that he would never again touch a drop of grog and that he would somehow find a way to reward him.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said his dark friend, shaking his head, ‘the village people are already rewarded by your presence. Now we plan a great feast in your honour.’

  ‘That is very kind of you,’ the white man replied. ‘But after that, I would be most obliged if you would kindly take me back to the port, to my own people.’

  ‘Ah, I do not think so,’ said his native friend, smiling benignly. ‘I did not bring you back to my island to fatten you up so that you could return to the white man’s world. We have made you nice and plump so we can eat you at our feast!’

  It was a story Anna enjoyed, because the writer had told it so cleverly. It wasn’t until the final sentence that you discovered that the kind and caring native had rescued the white man in order to eat him. But now she recalled the story with the idea that, if she could isolate her father completely, keep him from any possibility of obtaining alcohol, she might be able to bring him back from the brink of almost certain destruction.

  Even though there would be no alcohol available for purchase in the town, she reasoned that those Dutch who had been left behind would almost certainly have whiskey, gin and brandy left over from better times. Piet Van Heerden was a rich man and also possessed the cunning of an alcoholic, so this notion would not escape him. The tin box on the kitchen table would almost certainly contain money and once these desperate colonials with half and full bottles in their cupboards discovered her father’s need they would make the Chinaman’s efforts at bargaining seem like schoolground play.

  Mevrouw Swanepoel and her obedient Hans were by no means unique. Desperate times breed desperate people. Despite her misery Anna smiled inwardly, thinking that if the Jack Sprat duo had got even a sniff of her papa’s need for the dwindling supplies of alcohol, Hans would have found a horse cart and driver and would be knocking on the doors of the stay-behind Dutch clutching a bundle of guilder notes, the money they’d earned from the manufacture of their dishtowel bags, and buying whatever bottle supplies were available. In her mind she could hear him now: ‘One-third, half, full bottle, the best prices offered for your leftover brandy, gin, schnapps and whiskey! Hurry! This offer will not last!’

  Anna waited until she heard her father snoring in the bedroom, then she entered the room and crept to his bedside. The Scotch bottle lay empty beside him on the mattress, and a few dregs had spilled, leaving a small brown stain on the ticking. She removed the bottle, placing it on the floor. Then she lifted his shoulders from the cushion with her right hand and with her left delicately removed from around his neck the chain from which hung the key that she presumed would open the tin box. She allowed his head to sink gently back onto the pillow, where, to her relief, moments later he resumed snoring. She was breathing heavily, not only from holding up his enormous frame with one hand placed in the small of his back, but also from the rush of adrenalin caused by a fear that he might suddenly awaken and discover her theft.

  She returned to the kitchen and inserted the key in the lock on the tin box: she had been correct, it opened with a single turn. Anna lifted the lid, to be confounded by the contents. The box contained five-hundred-guilder notes in six ten-centimetre stacks, each note worth about fifty pounds sterling, more than the average Javanese family earned in a year. Like most of the older Dutch colonial families in the Spice Islands the Van Heerden family had never outwardly boasted of its enormous wealth, and while they had maintained a big house, an out-of-town estate, several copra plantations and godowns along the docks, this had always been done unostentatiously as befitted one of the oldest white dynasties on the island.

  Piet Van Heerden, the only direct descendant of the clan, was no different. Bombastic and superior in nature, he’d nevertheless taken great care to play down the extent of his true wealth. Although not exactly a tightwad, nevertheless, like many rich men, he knew the value of a guilder and was slow to part with his money.

  Anna had never experienced the extremes of great wealth, and thought that perhaps her stepmother, conscious of her husband having spawned a bastard child, had seen to this. She had not been spoiled or given anything more than any of her schoolmates would have taken for granted. Katerina’s personal collection of jewellery, while valuable, didn’t testify to more than the expected indulgences of a woman who was the matriarch of a moderately wealthy family.

  Piet Van Heerden was fond of crying poor and would often tell the story of his eccentric father, Koos Van Heerden. He would relate how, on the brink of the First World War, his father had sold off a good part of his vast estates, his reason being that he believed the Germans would win and, since they were already a colonial power in New Guinea, they would then take over the Netherlands East Indies. So his father had invested the proceeds of the sale in Germany, believing that proof of these investments would stand the Van Heerden family in good stead when the German annexation of the Spice Islands took place.

  The old man’s reasoning had been based on a simple premise and one that was paradoxically influenced by the number of Jews in Germany. Koos Van Heerden reasoned that the bulk of Europe’s wealthy Jews lived in Germany and controlled much of the industrial landscape. They would naturally be financing the impending war with the single motive of making a large profit, particularly in the manufacture of munitions and armaments, which is where he elected to place the bulk of his money. His father’s favourite quote, which in turn amounted to the reasons for his choice, was ‘When you deal with a Gentile you deal with one man’s ambition. When you deal with a Jew you deal with the knowledge of two thousand years of persecution and how to survive and prosper despite the ambition of the Gentile!’ Piet Van Heerden would sometimes use this quote as a cautionary tale, suggesting it was the reason why the family was no longer as wealthy as it ought to be and should be prudent with what money was left. He would end with a quote of his own: ‘Have nothing to do with what you know nothing about.’

  The cash in the tin, if all the notes were of five-hundred-guilder denomination, was a king’s ransom and more. The box also contained her father’s last will and testament as well as a beautiful gold pocket watch attached to a heavy gold fob chain, the cover bearing the Van Heerden coat of arms. She had seen it on one or two occasions and knew it had belonged to her grandfather. With the watch was a seal that had the same crest used, no doubt, for important legal documents. A stick of unused red sealing wax lay beside it. Finally, the box contained two tiny white envelopes each with a waxed seal that spelled ‘Amsterdam’ in relief. She broke the seals to discover that each envelope held six fairly large diamonds.

  Anna then opened and read her father’s will, to discover that in the event of his death neither his wife, Katerina, nor his daughter, Anna, were benefactors. The will assumed the Allies would win the war and the Dutch would return to the Spice Islands. All the property in Java — farms, estate, plantations, godowns and urban investment property — had been bequeathed to various second cousins and distant relations who were now living overseas, some of them never having lived in Java. A thick sheaf of deeds to the numerous properties was attached to the back of the will. He’d also bequeathed various amounts of money to these assorted relatives, some Anna had never heard of. This bequeathed money must be, Anna decided, the money in the deposit box.

  Anna sat, more numbed than sad or even angry. She had never thought of her inheritance and it was not this aspect of the will that overwhelmed her. It was the sudden sense of being worthless as a human. Slow tears ran down her cheeks. Papa’s lieveling, his skatterbol, his precious darling, his love child, in the end had become his bastard daughter to be disowned for her native blood! She had loved her papa and so had tolerated the constant a
buse and insults from her stepmother. As she grew older, she began to understand Katerina’s bitterness at being crippled and unable to have children of her own. But now she thought all the attention her father had lavished on her had been in order to taunt and frustrate his wife. They had been conducting a kind of marital warfare and Anna had been his most effective weapon, his big gun. His occasional admonishments to Katerina in her presence about the way her stepmother treated her were all a part of the hateful game they played, intended to make Anna love him even more for coming to her defence. When she’d informed him of the suicide of his wife, she now realised, his immediate reaction was not simply the stupid outburst of a besotted drunk but revealed a deep and bitter hatred for her stepmother. Had she outlived Piet Van Heerden, her crippled stepmother would have been left helpless with no visible means of support. It was a cruel and heartless gesture, but if you hated someone sufficiently it was also the ultimate revenge. But why had he rejected her? What sort of man was this? Why would he hate his daughter? All she’d ever done was love him. Why then was she also a part of this bitter revenge?

  As Anna sat quietly at the kitchen table she grew angry. Her father had treated her as being of no worth whereas he was, to put it mildly, the weak and worthless one, an alcoholic who, but for her care, would probably soon be dead. Anna told herself she could have her revenge right here and now. She could take the tin box with its contents and simply leave him. She could do it while he was snoring in a drunken sleep. Ratih and the sergeant would help her get away and, in turn, be handsomely rewarded. Or she could put into action her imagined alcohol collection. She’d get Budi or Til to find her a man with a horse-drawn cart, gather all the partially used and full bottles still in the possession of the Dutch stay-behinds and allow her father to drink himself to death. No, she decided, that might take too long! In his comatose state she could smother him with one of the large cushions and declare he had died of a sudden heart attack. There was, after all, no coroner to prove otherwise. She had money, much, much more than she needed to get someone to murder him. The promise of a single five-hundred-guilder note would bring a queue of would-be assassins to the front gate. Or she could get Sergeant Khamdani to report him to the Japanese as a spy; she would testify against him and they’d execute him, maybe chop off his head with a samurai sword in the public square. His great balding head with his ridiculous tangled ginger eyebrows would roll in the dust. The local population would be cheering their own heads off and waving Japanese flags. Or she could buy poison in the market, rat poison, and put it in the last remaining bottle of Scotch, then watch him die in agony — another neat solution!

  By this time Anna’s immediate need for revenge had subsided and she realised that she lacked the resolve and the hatred to harm her father. We love people despite and not because. He must, she decided, be given a chance to explain himself. There may have been a reason, though what it was she couldn’t imagine. She’d always tried to be a dutiful and loving daughter to him.

  However, if he simply detested her, she would need to hear his scorn for her from his own lips. She didn’t want his inheritance. She was going to marry me and we’d live happily ever after, collecting butterflies. She simply wanted to know why he despised her. Moreover, she didn’t want to hear it from the mouth of a snivelling drunkard, but from her papa when he was stone-cold sober and possessed of all the reasoning faculties he must have had when he wrote the will.

  Anna decided she must evolve a plan to sober him up as quickly as possible. The Japanese could well decide to shoot the old and the useless, which would almost certainly include the drunks. Or they might place all the local refugees in camps where she might be separated from her father. Then she would never know the truth or have the opportunity to confront him. She simply couldn’t bear the thought of having to carry his scorn as long as she lived.

  She decided she had no time to lose. She must do as the savage had done with the drunk and create a metaphorical island where there was no alcohol. This was more or less the prevailing situation in Tjilatjap anyway. She couldn’t think what might happen beyond the time when her papa was sufficiently sober to be questioned, other than that they would almost certainly be declared prisoners of war and interned in a prison camp to face an uncertain future and perhaps neither of them would survive. But she knew she couldn’t allow her father to escape and go looking for brandy or whisky, for fear of what might happen to him. This was no time for any Dutch person to be alone on the streets, let alone a helpless, shambling Dutchman looking for alcohol.

  Then, what should have appeared at once obvious but wasn’t occurred to her. The potato cellar was the perfect place to dry him out! She rose from her chair and walked over to the side of the stove to examine the trapdoor. It had a stout iron bolt and was made from the same heavy teak as the floorboards. The wooden steps were too steep for her large father, despite his still enormous strength, to climb and obtain the leverage to force it open once the bolt was shot in place.

  Anna hurried out of the house and into the backyard to locate the whereabouts of the small window, eventually finding it behind a hibiscus bush. It was sufficiently large to accept a chamber-pot, a plate of food or jug of water, and the wide wooden shelf directly under it would enable her to leave these and any other essentials her father might need, and to remove his slops. She could talk to him through the window without placing herself in danger from his anger. She would also need to get the single-bed mattress down the steps, as well as an enamel basin, which she would need to buy, and also towels, a washcloth, a couple of chamber-pots (commonly used in kampong homes) and a blanket. She had learned in Red Cross classes at school that people suffering from trauma needed to be kept warm.

  Anna, after a fair bit of effort, managed to get the mattress from the smaller bedroom down the wooden steps. It took up almost half the dark cellar. She had no idea how long it would take to get her father sufficiently sober to allow him out into the light from the twilight world (both metaphorically and physically) in which she was placing him. She started to weep softly, just thinking about what he was about to go through if she could somehow entice him into the cellar. She knew she wouldn’t dream of incarcerating an animal under such conditions, yet she was planning to treat her papa worse than she would a mongrel dog.

  She started to have doubts about what she was going to do. She was not quite seventeen years old and had no experience in treating someone suffering from alcohol withdrawal. She decided she would attempt to find a Dutch doctor or nurse, one who had been foolish enough or was sufficiently committed to remain behind. She would ask Ratih. But she already suspected such people would be very difficult to find in Tjilatjap. Besides, she told herself, treating an alcoholic would not be high on their list of priorities. She wasn’t even sure if they would know how to go about it, or if there was a cure. She’d never heard of drunks being admitted to hospital or of doctors treating them. In their circle, people always talked about others who had a drinking problem in hushed tones if he was male, usually adding sympathy for his poor wife. If the person with the drinking problem was female, people, in particular other women, loudly proclaimed their scorn for her. She’d never heard of anyone undergoing rehabilitation. All she had to go on was the story of a drunk white man and a cannibal, written by an author whose name she couldn’t remember.

  Anna crept into her father’s bedroom to see that he was still completely out to it. She removed the empty bottle of Scotch and took it through to the kitchen, where she poured half of the last remaining bottle into it, then took the one bottle and placed it beside the bed together with the extra pot Ratih had left. Her father, she knew, would probably sleep until the morning but when he woke he’d use the pot to pee in and then he’d seek immediate oblivion in the half-bottle of Scotch.

  She returned to the kitchen, opened the trapdoor, descended into the cellar and left the other half-bottle of Scotch on the shelf under the window. This was how she planned to
get him into the cellar. Finally she removed the two packets of diamonds and a single wad of five-hundred-guilder notes and placed them in her bag. The denomination of the notes was too large for her to use them without attracting attention, but she took them so that if the tin box was discovered by someone entering the house while she was absent she would not be without considerable funds. She still had a substantial amount from the original money her father had given her with the orders to find a Chinaman.

  She then had second thoughts about leaving the safety deposit box behind and so, covering it with a towel as you might a chamber-pot, she took it to the outside toilet. The dunny contained the usual broad boxed seat stretching the full width to the side walls and standing half a metre or so high, with a hole in the centre over the drop. To the left and right of the seat and directly under it there was a dark space stretching to where either side of the box seat was attached to the wall. She placed the deposit box into the left-hand space and covered it with several old newspapers left there for the usual purpose. Even with the door open it was too dark to see into the cavity that now hid a vast fortune.

  This done, she knew she could safely go to the markets in the morning with Kleine Kiki. If, though it seemed unlikely, her papa woke from the effects of the half-bottle she’d left beside the bed, he would find neither the remaining half-bottle of Scotch nor money to take and leave the house in an attempt to buy alcohol. Back seated in the kitchen, Anna made a list of the things she’d need: cutlery, crockery, plates, cups, sheets, and the items already mentioned, all the immediate paraphernalia required to set up a rudimentary household. It was all beginning to seem rather bizarre. The Japanese might round them up in the next day or two to march them off to a concentration camp, and here she was setting up house as if they’d come to stay.