The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  Anna was dog-tired and collapsed on the lumpy couch, to be woken seemingly moments later by Kiki’s knocking on the front door and to find that the sun was up. It was almost 5 o’clock. She let Kiki inside and then went to check on the condition of her father. He had done as she’d supposed he would, pissed in the pot and reached for the bottle. He was once again comatose on the bed.

  She hurried to the bathroom, where she’d earlier placed the towels and flannel she’d brought from the boat, filled the washbasin and undressed quickly, calling to Kiki to find a sarong and top and fresh undies in the dishtowel bag for her to wear. Anna washed as best she could, combed her hair and changed into native dress. Her final act was to wear a pair of Katerina’s sunglasses to hide her blue eyes. Although tall for a Javanese, she knew she could, as she so often had in Batavia when wearing sunglasses, pass for a native in the street.

  Outside the front gate Anna was surprised to find Til waiting. Kiki explained that Mother Ratih had insisted he come along to help carry their purchases in his becak. The old man now also insisted he pedal them to the markets. ‘I must make sure you are safe,’ he said. ‘There is a rumour that today the Japanese will come.’ Then from a canvas bag slung across his neck and under his left arm he withdrew two small Japanese flags, each attached to a piece of split bamboo.

  Anna’s heart skipped a beat and she instinctively drew back. ‘Mother Ratih says we must carry these. It is safer,’ Kiki explained.

  ‘It is — er — difficult for me,’ Anna stammered.

  ‘In the lion’s den it is best to roar like a lion,’ Til quoted, smiling.

  They crossed the main town square and Anna remembered the two American pilots. She thought of her letter to me, wondering where I was on the Indian Ocean with Madam Butterfly and saying a silent little prayer that I’d make it safely across to Australia.

  The native market was in uproar when they arrived, long queues of locals waited to buy for three cents a small Japanese flag. The Japanese, when they came, were to be given a tumultuous welcome by the population of Tjilatjap. It was, after all, the liberation for which they had waited three hundred years.

  While Anna didn’t feel inclined to bargain with the sharp-eyed market women and men, Kiki and Til insisted. ‘It will seem strange to them and they will remember,’ Til cautioned quietly.

  The native market was flooded with the household goods and linen discarded by the fleeing Dutch. With the Japanese possibly arriving that very day, Anna couldn’t help wondering whether what she was doing was pointless. Moreover, the bargaining process added to their time and she was anxious to return home in case her father woke and wandered off into the neighbourhood, begging the Dutch stay-at-homes for alcohol.

  Til and Kiki carried her purchases to the shop of a friend of Til, a man who sold pots and pans and cutlery, and who had personally done very well from what Anna had bought there with the minimum of bargaining. He promised to store their goods, as it was going to take the little becak rider several trips, pushing his skinny, rotating legs, to deliver everything to the house.

  It was still just after nine o’clock when people started jabbering excitedly in the market. Til left to see what the fuss was about and returned shortly to say that the banks were not opening and that people were being denied access to their accounts. ‘For us, maybe it is not so bad, the street people they do not trust the bank. But for the Dutch who must stay, maybe it is very bad.’

  Anna could not have put it into words at the time, but she knew that Til, with his way of looking at every side of a question and not making hasty judgments, was a rare exception. Ratih had also shown a similar propensity to be fair-minded and non-judgmental. But Anna knew them to be very much in the minority. The Japanese invasion had begun in a climate ripe for revenge and after their propaganda machine had completed its work, the Javanese people were clamouring for retribution. The vast majority of the common people would have relished the fact that the Dutch who remained behind would be stripped of their bank accounts and most would have agreed that, in the first place, the money had been earned with the blood, sweat and tears of the Javanese people. Any money remaining, they would have maintained, should be returned to the people whom the Dutch had exploited for three hundred years. In fact, all the bank deposits were lost since their Japanese liberators ‘liberated’ the funds by transferring them to Japan.

  They continued to shop, this time for food of the kind her father might be persuaded to eat, although Anna wasn’t sure what this might be, mostly opting for ingredients with which she could make various soups, knowing they were nutritious and easy to digest. They were just about to depart the market when a roar, like an approaching wave, rose in the crowded marketplace. Anna would later tell me that it was unlike any sound she’d heard before and she didn’t have to be told that the Japanese had arrived. People were beginning to run to the nearest entrance to the town square. In their haste the mob knocked over several of the open-air stalls where the owners had already departed. The crowd was yelling, laughing and shouting joyously as it surged towards the town square or to the main road that led into Tjilatjap.

  ‘What happens now?’ Anna asked, when the bulk of the mob had passed. She was standing with her back to a wall next to a frightened Kiki, but there was no sign of Til. Moments later he emerged from his friend’s pots-and-pans shop. ‘I have put my becak in my friend’s shop. Come, we must go to the town square!’ he said urgently.

  Anna baulked at this suggestion. ‘Why can’t we just remain here, Til? You go, Kiki and I will remain.’

  Til looked at her, then down at his sandalled feet, shaking his head slowly, then he pointed to three old toothless crones seated at the counters of separate market shops. ‘They cannot go because they are too old, but they are not too old to remember who remained behind when the Japanese came.’

  Anna still hesitated, and said reasonably, ‘Tush! They will not remember us.’

  ‘Aha, you do not notice how people look at you.’ Til held his hands up indicating a gap between them of approximately fifteen centimetres. ‘You are the tallest Javanese woman in the markets. They will remember it was the tall one with the black-glass eyes.’ His expression grew suddenly resolute, like an impatient father who had suffered enough nonsense from a child. ‘We must go and you must wave your flag at the soldiers.’ He looked sternly at them both. ‘And we will smile and cheer. Come!’ he demanded, moving ahead, his skinny brown legs bandy from years of pedalling.

  Led by Til, they arrived at the town square to see it was packed to capacity though there were no Japanese soldiers to be seen. Even if there had been, from where the three of them stood at the rear, they would have been obscured by the crowd. At the centre of the square stood a massively tall flagpole that could be seen from most parts of the town. In fact, it was about the only thing they could see in the square, apart from the bronze head and shoulders of a statue of the Dutch Governor-General, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, which made Anna automatically recite in her head ‘1617 to 1629’. To her surprise the Netherlands flag still flew from the flagpole; catching a breeze from the river, it showed the full splendour of the red, white and blue tricolour.

  Anna was not to know it, but this was to be the last flutter of the flag in the colony that had added so much wealth and history to the Netherlands. At that very moment the Dutch Government was suing for peace with the Japanese and would surrender the next day. The Government administration in Batavia had ordered its troops to remain calm and stay in their barracks to be meekly taken as prisoners of war. Later it would be claimed that the Dutch soldiers lay in their barracks reading magazines while those Allies who had been sent to help them, Australian, British and American, fought for their lives in an attempt to escape to freedom and so live to fight another day.

  And then in the distance a sound of cheering reached the people in the square. It was coming from the main street that led into the town square and suddenly a
buzz of excitement arose from the people who stood around her. The cheering grew louder and while the three of them couldn’t see, it was obvious the Japanese soldiers were close. People around them started to move backwards and Til said, ‘Put your backs together,’ and then he quickly added his own so that they stood solidly as the people moved backwards. Despite the noise of the crowd, Anna could hear the throb of a motorcycle engine and the explosion of a weapon being fired intermittently. Then an American Harley-Davidson motorcycle with sidecar suddenly emerged about twenty metres from where they stood. It was being driven by a Japanese sergeant and seated in the sidecar was a Japanese officer who held a pistol that he was firing into the air to warn the mob to part and to allow passage for a small and ragged band of Japanese soldiers on bicycles. There were no more than thirty bicycle riders following, some riding, others pushing their bicycles because of flat tyres. Their uniforms were ragged and dirty and in all they were no more than a single ragtag platoon. They appeared to be half-starved and looked exhausted, barely aware of the cheering, ecstatic crowd frantically waving Japanese flags.

  The motorcycle was coming directly towards Anna. The lieutenant in the sidecar fired yet another shot into the air and then cleared the chamber of his pistol, a spent casing landed at Anna’s feet where she quickly covered it with the sole of her sandal, then bent and recovered it, placing it into her shoulder bag. It was an almost unconscious gesture and in the excitement of the moment she would forget it was there until she found it some days later when rummaging through the bag. The officer’s captured American motorcycle passed within a metre of where she stood, and because she was taller than the people around her she was able to look directly at the officer seated in the sidecar.

  ‘Smile!’ Til hissed beside her. ‘Wave your flag!’

  The officer, in appearance, seemed no less weary than his troops. His uniform was almost as ragged. He wore a fixed expression, neither fierce nor passive, not even determined. For a triumphant conqueror he simply looked war-weary and uninterested in putting on any sort of show for the locals. He appeared to be looking directly at Anna as she attempted to smile and wave her flag, although his expression remained unchanged as he passed. The throb of the Harley and the oily smell of its exhaust fumes filled the air around her.

  She felt Til take her hand. ‘Come!’ he said as soon as the weary soldiers had passed. He held Kiki’s hand as well and they merged behind the ragged group of soldier cyclists to finally arrive at the flagpole at the centre of the square, where the motorcyclist halted and switched off the engine. The Japanese soldiers, to the command of the sergeant who had climbed from the motorcycle, formed into three ragged, unsmiling, in fact expressionless lines, holding up their bicycles.

  Quite how he had achieved it Anna couldn’t imagine, but the redoubtable Til had brought them to the very front row of cheering Javanese people, to witness the Japanese takeover of the town of Tjilatjap.

  The flagpole was set into a wide, raised stone plinth with six steps leading up to it. Standing on the top was a very small, slightly bandy, middle-aged man dressed in an immaculately fitting dark suit and around his right biceps was a white band with a round red orb at its centre. He wore a white shirt with a high, celluloid, detachable Eton collar and red tie; the toecaps of his shoes shone in the noonday sun, the top part of his shoes being concealed by a pair of white spats. To crown it all, on his head he wore a black silk top hat.

  ‘Who is that?’ Anna asked, surprised.

  ‘He is the Japanese tailor, Onishi Tokuma. He has lived in Tjilatjap already twenty years,’ the becak owner answered. Then he added gratuitously, ‘The Dutch, always for them, he makes their wedding suit. He is the number-one for tailoring!’

  ‘Ah! I see. He is to be the official translator?’

  ‘I think now he will be the boss of this town!’ Til observed with a wry grin.

  The Japanese lieutenant climbed wearily from the sidecar and then, making a conscious effort, straightened his uniform and adjusted his cap. Then reaching down into the sidecar he withdrew what appeared to be a canvas-covered writing pad and a folded Japanese flag. The flag he gave to the sergeant. Then he mounted the steps, nodded briefly in the direction of Onishi Tokuma and, without shaking his hand, stood several paces from him. Opening the canvas folder, he cleared his throat and, head bowed, commenced to read in Japanese in a low mumble that Anna could barely hear. It was only a short passage and when he had finished he handed the folder to the town’s number-one tailor, who bowed so deeply that his top hat fell from his head and rolled a metre or so from where he was standing. The tailor accepted the folder and, ignoring the accident with his top hat, which he left lying on the plinth, he opened the folder and studied it briefly. Then, taking a deep anticipatory breath and filled with self-importance and pride, he launched into a magniloquent and loudly proclaimed translation of the Japanese announcement into Javanese.

  ‘To the people of Tjilatjap the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy bids you welcome! We come as liberators to join you in glorious coexistence with the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere! You have all seen how the forces of the European colonial oppressors have been made to bow down to the Imperial Armed Forces of Nippon. For the peaceful transition from your unworthy oppressors to your humble liberators we require that you obey all orders without question! There can be no disobedience!’ Here he was forced to pause as the crowd pressing around the plinth cheered wildly and those who were packed into the square beyond, unable to hear him, responded in turn to the cheering they heard coming from the flagpole. When silence had finally been restored the tailor-turned-translator continued: ‘The Japanese Imperial Army under the local command of Lieutenant Mori will be in charge and I will be your new mayor!’ He paused to let this important information sink in. Then he looked skywards and pointed, shaking his finger accusingly at the Dutch flag still fluttering from the effect of the breeze blowing from the river. ‘We will now forever lower the flag of your hated oppressors and raise the glorious flag of Japan in the name of our sacred Majesty, the God King, the Emperor Hirohito!’ He made a lopsided attempt at standing to attention. ‘Banzai!’ he shouted so fiercely that a fine spray of spittle issued from his mouth.

  Lieutenant Mori, somewhat taken aback by this unexpected solitary hail to the Emperor, drew to desultory attention and then, turning to the sergeant, indicated that the Dutch flag be lowered. For the first time everyone in the square and beyond could see what was happening and a tremendous roar rose as ten thousand or more tiny Japanese flags were raised and waved above each individual head, like a myriad red-and-white striped butterflies.

  The roar increased to an even greater crescendo when the flag carrying the emblem of the rising sun was seen to slowly move up the post and suddenly, to the watching people, three hundred years of oppression ended. The Japanese flag reached its zenith, catching the same river breeze that remained impervious to the change in the colour of bunting it caused to flutter against a cloudless sky.

  The Japanese sergeant tied the hoisting rope to its cleat, then turned smartly and called the thirty weary cyclists to attention. Lieutenant Mori, himself at attention, then raised his arm. ‘Long live His Imperial Majesty!’ ‘Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!’ the soldiers all called out in unison. The crowd around the flagpole started to yell ‘Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!’ until the entire population gathered in the square and streets beyond were shouting the traditional hail to the Keeper of the Chrysanthemum Throne, His Majesty, the Emperor Hirohito, henceforth to be their glorious leader as well.

  Anna even had a brief though silent laugh when the sergeant, at the conclusion of the flag-raising ceremony, turned to salute his officer and in the process took a smart step backwards and, raising his right boot, brought it down to a resounding stamp, stepping squarely on the mayoral top hat and crushing it beyond repair. The newly appointed titular head of the non-existent town council had already lost his crown.

 
‘Now he has no hat to conceal his empty head,’ Til said quietly.

  The Japanese Imperial Army, in all its ragged, hungry, weary, two-wheeled and punctured-tyre glory, had arrived in Tjilatjap.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Allah created sleep so we can lay down our sadness for a little while each night,

  otherwise we humans would find the burden of sorrow we carry too heavy to bear.’

  Til

  Becak driver, Tjilatjap

  THE SMALL, RAGGED TROOP of weary Japanese soldiers moved to set up a temporary camp in an open area that was sandwiched between the town square and the river, where they asked that they be brought food and drinking water, these requests being their only attempt to assert themselves. They had come the breadth of the island, a six-day ordeal through jungle and mosquito-infested swamps, bypassing the scattered, ineffectual resistance that they encountered. They had arrived in Tjilatjap hungry and suffering from total exhaustion. The Japanese lines had been stretched almost beyond endurance and these soldiers had been pushed too hard for weeks; they needed rest above anything else and in their present condition weren’t the least bit interested in playing the role of triumphant conqueror.

  However, as if by some sort of osmosis, various Javanese functionaries, petty clerks and general factotums to the Dutch administration, and including some of the more self-important townsfolk, suddenly appeared everywhere wearing the white armband with the blood-red dot emblazoned upon it. Ratih was to name them ‘Broken Eggs’, Til’s explanation being that when you cracked the egg’s outside shell the contents within were messy and usually rotten. The expression soon caught on, for although they followed the letter of the law as laid down by the Japanese Imperial Forces, the local population appeared to be quite willing to be scornful of the shortcomings of these opportunists who, for the most part, proved alarmingly incompetent and officious, the officiousness usually applied in liberal helpings to cover up ignorance.