The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  Gasping and weeping at the same time she helped him to sit up, the crusted shit covering her hands. ‘You are going to be well again, Papa,’ she said, squatting down in front of him.

  Piet Van Heerden could barely whisper, but Anna heard him plainly enough. ‘I am going to kill you, abangan, she devil!’ He raised his hands and tried to grab her around the neck, but the effort was so slow that she easily enough moved away, jumping to her feet. He was too weak to hold his hands up and they fell limply on his lap. Anna realised that her giant papa would have lacked the strength to throttle her.

  Over the three days of his acute withdrawal she had escaped the house whenever she had a reasonable excuse, buying more tin mugs, managing to find a large tin of disinfectant, getting his khaki shorts and singlets from the seamstress. She had also learned that the local Muslim clerics were enforcing their order that all alcohol found in appropriated infidel houses be destroyed immediately and the same had occurred to the three liquor shops in town. The Dutch stay-behinds were also ordered to get rid of any alcohol they had in their homes. Tjilatjap was as dry as the Sahara Desert and even the production of beer had ceased. Whatever stocks had existed had been poured down the sewerage system in one grand day of decontamination. It was to cause a hundred-metre island of foam where the sewage emptied out into the river.

  On the day after the arrival of the Japanese, Budi had arrived at the house to say that the Dutch had surrendered and every citizen was to attend the official ceremony in the town square, despite the Mayor of the Crushed Hat’s directions to stay away. They hurried along with the rest of the townspeople to where Ratih, Kiki and the sergeant waited to meet them. Once again Til, who had gone ahead, had somehow contrived to find them space close to the front where they could witness the proceedings. Here they officially heard the news that the Dutch had surrendered to the Japanese.

  Now, as they watched, a somewhat refreshed liberator hauled down the Japanese flag and once again hoisted the Dutch one to the jeers of the population, and then Lieutenant Mori read a long speech in Japanese that sounded as if it was not dissimilar to the one of the previous day. It was followed by his first edict. In the light of the usual behaviour of an invading army, it was a curious one. Translated by the Mayor of the Crushed Hat, Lieutenant Mori began reading from a book of instructions: ‘Edict Number One. In the name of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and in harmony with the goodwill of the Japanese Imperial Army, fraternisation between Javanese women and Japanese soldiers is strictly forbidden. All such incidents must be reported. If a soldier of the Japanese Imperial Army has raped or sexually abused a local woman, even a prostitute, he will be severely punished and in some cases may be executed. If the woman is proved to be the provocateur, she will be summarily shot.’

  After all this, the Dutch flag was unceremoniously hauled down and thrown into the crowd, where it was set alight to much cheering. Then, in a re-enactment of the day before, the Japanese flag was hoisted accompanied by many cries of banzai and shouts of loyalty to the Emperor. The people happily waved their little paper flags and cheered as they had done previously. Anna learned later from Kiki that there had been a great deal of feasting that night to celebrate the official freedom from the Dutch and she and Ratih had been up until dawn cooking for happy people who wanted to be with others to celebrate.

  If these excursions away from home seemed callous under the circumstances, Anna believed that she would go mad from her father’s despairing cries — cries of horror, abuse, fear, torment and sobbing that seemed to never cease. She herself could cry no more and as much as anything it was panic and despair and a sense of her own survival that drove her from the house. Throughout this long and traumatic vigil, when she often felt her father must surely die and she would be proclaimed his murderer, she told herself she must persevere, convincing herself that he would die anyway or be killed. For one so young it was an astonishingly brave decision and now, miraculously, it appeared to have worked. The worst was over.

  Anna returned to the kitchen, leaving the trapdoor open, knowing her father was too weak to climb the wooden steps, though preferring that he should do so. It would be a lot easier to clean him in the bathroom than in the stinking little cellar. She took a basin and a large jug of hot water back down with her, as well as his new clothes, underpants and a pair of scissors. She cut the shit-stained singlet from him and commenced to wash his face, neck, arms and torso. She returned to the kitchen for more hot water, then cut away his trousers, leaving him wearing only his underpants, which were brown with dried excrement. ‘I must cut off your underpants, Papa. I will try not to look.’

  ‘No, let me turn my back,’ he moaned. He turned slowly, like an old man does, uncertain of his balance. She cut the garment at the back, pulling it where the shit had caused it to stick to the skin and hair on his bum. Then she cleaned his backside, rinsed the cloth and handed it to him. ‘Clean only your private parts, then cup them with your hands,’ Anna instructed, by now well past any sensitivities. Piet Van Heerden did as he was told, then turned, his huge hands cupping himself between the legs while Anna cleaned the inside of his thighs. She could only wipe him down rather than use soap as she intended to do when he was sufficiently strong to climb the steps and get to the bathroom. He still smelled to high heaven. She returned with another jug of hot water and washed his hair, making him somewhat less smelly. Then she made him step into the legs of his fresh underpants before hauling them up to his thighs, whereupon he turned his back on her and adjusted them properly.

  She cleaned the stained mattress as best she could, wiping disinfectant over the surface, turning it over and covering it with a fresh sheet. When her father was lying down again she commenced to scrub the floor and shit-covered walls, constantly gagging during the whole process, her hands stinging and red raw from the strong disinfectant. The task took most of the afternoon and she made countless trips up the stairs to the kitchen for hot water.

  Almost too tired to walk, Anna fed her father a bowl of broth, or at least all he could manage to keep down. ‘Drink water, Papa, all you can, and tomorrow you can come upstairs.’

  ‘What about the Japanese?’ he asked, surprisingly remembering her invented story.

  ‘They are not always around. Now that you are better, we will be careful and hide you if they come near.’

  ‘Where are our soldiers?’

  ‘The Netherlands has surrendered, Papa. The Japanese are in charge now.’

  ‘Oh?’ he said, looking bewildered. ‘The Queen? She has surrendered to those yellow bastards?’ There was no vehemence behind this statement, rather it sounded like a man declaring he had been abandoned and there was little point in carrying on.

  ‘No, Papa. She is in London. It happened some days ago in Batavia. I think it was her generals who didn’t want to fight, who surrendered. There was a ceremony here in the town square, and they burnt the Dutch flag.’ If there had ever been any fight in her father, Anna decided it was now gone.

  ‘Monkeys!’ he replied.

  ‘Papa, you must be very careful and never leave the house. You understand, never!’ Anna cautioned, hoping this would strike fear into her father’s breast.

  Leaving Piet Van Heerden in the cellar, she climbed the steps and left the trapdoor open. Then, remembering his earlier threat to kill her, she thought better of it and, returning, closed it and shot the bolt. Anna drank a little of the broth, too weary to even sob. Then, utterly exhausted, she collapsed on the bumpy settee and then, moments before she fell into a troubled sleep, she remembered it was her seventeenth birthday.

  The following morning Piet Van Heerden was still too weak to negotiate the steps but by late that afternoon, with rice and chicken in his belly and with a great deal of help from Anna, he finally made it into the kitchen, although once there he lay on the floor panting for half an hour. He still smelled atrocious but finally, by sundown, she managed to get him under
the shower, where he was sufficiently recovered to refuse her help to soap him down, waiting until she had left and closed the door before he undressed.

  It was two weeks before Piet Van Heerden had regained most of his strength and, knowing nothing about alcoholism, Anna thought him cured, not knowing that alcoholics are never cured. In fact, as there was no alcohol available he was eventually effectively restored to health and with good food and plenty of rest would soon be in better shape than he had been in several years. While Anna cooked some of the meals for herself and her father, most arrived via Kiki and as a result of the generosity of Ratih. There was rice, of course, and stir-fried vegetables, dried salted fish, spiced chicken, tofu, krupuk (fish and shrimp crackers), and most of the cooked ingredients were flavoured with sambal sauce. Piet Van Heerden was accustomed to Javanese food and enjoyed it, so his strength was quickly restored.

  During this period a battalion of Japanese troops arrived by ship under the command of Major Masahiro Eiji, who took over the control of the town. Again, despite the fears of the Dutch stay-behinds, this was done in a surprisingly low-key manner. Major Masahiro Eiji was an engineer and set his troops to the task of fully restoring the harbour facilities and getting the dredges going again. Tjilatjap was the only port on the southern side of the island and the nearest to New Guinea, the Solomons and then Australia, and so was of vital importance to the Japanese.

  As a consequence, things continued much the same as previously, the Dutch keeping to themselves and out of the way, only venturing out when forced to buy food or other necessities. The locals carried on with their lives as always, but now this was done under the incompetent administration of their Japanese mayor and his abysmal town committee. Much to his own surprise, Sergeant Khamdani was elevated to the rank of lieutenant and officially placed in charge of the central town precinct, one of the few decisions by the jumped-up Japanese tailor and his town-hall cronies that the people living in the nearby kampongs agreed was both intelligent and merited. The downside to this, although not of great consequence, was that he had to wear the Broken Egg armband.

  As Til, who was always ready to supply a quote, explained, ‘It is not what is around a man’s arm but what is in his head that matters.’ Budi had pointed out that when he’d alluded to the Broken Egg committee he’d said that when you cracked the shell all you found was a mess. Til, not to be beaten by the boy’s smart-alec logic, replied, ‘Ah, yes! It takes experience to break an egg and cook it properly, whereupon it becomes a useful dish. The sergeant has this experience, while the Broken Eggs appointed by the Japanese tailor lack it, and so they end up in a dreadful mess and he is a useful dish.’ Til was indeed a man for all reasons!

  Anna waited a month after her father’s recovery. She had long since retrieved the tin box from the outside toilet and replaced the envelopes that contained the diamonds in anticipation that he might ask her for the box. Strangely, he hadn’t requested the return of the key. Finally, one night when they were sitting at the kitchen table after the evening meal, she confronted him. She had earlier taken the will from the box and now had it beside her.

  ‘Papa, you have suffered a great deal because of what I did to you in the cellar. Do you still wish to kill me?’

  Piet Van Heerden was taken aback by his daughter’s direct question. ‘Anna! Lieveling! You are my most precious daughter. Why, your papa loves you! I was in a bad state, and sometimes we say things we don’t mean! Of course I do not want to kill you!’

  ‘You said it first, then you tried to throttle me!’ Anna accused, without raising her voice, her eyes downcast.

  ‘Skatterbol! You are my life!’

  ‘I did it to save your life, Papa. You were drinking yourself to death. I did it because I loved you!’ Anna was close to tears.

  ‘Aag, it was the withdrawal! I cannot tell you the stress, the suffering, the terrible hallucinations. Lice crawled all over my body, thick as a blanket, devils tormented me, snakes buried their fangs in my neck and deadly spiders, tarantulas, bit me. I was not myself, Anna. What I said was not me, it was someone else, you must understand.’

  ‘Then you do not resent what I did?’

  Piet Van Heerden thought for a moment before replying. ‘Then, yes, of course. Now, no! You are right, I was trying to kill myself at the bottom of a bottle. You saved my life, lieveling. Whatever happens with the Japanese, even if we are parted, I will always know I was loved and that you cared for me.’ Anna’s father smiled. ‘What more can a father ask of a loving daughter, eh?’

  Anna switched tack. ‘Papa, why did you stay with my stepmother when you hated her so?’

  ‘Hated her? No, you have me wrong, she was often a spiteful woman, but she suffered a great deal, it was my duty to look after her. I couldn’t leave her, I am not that kind of man.’

  ‘When I told you of her suicide you said you were glad to be rid of her.’

  ‘Anna, lieveling! It was a drunk talking! You mustn’t take any notice, a drunk says things…’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘So, if she had lived you would always have looked after her?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘And if you had died from drinking and she had lived?’

  Piet Van Heerden spread his hands wide. ‘It is a husband’s duty,’ he said simply. ‘She would have been well off.’ He paused, then added, ‘You also, lieveling. Everything is provided for.’

  Anna produced the will from behind her back. ‘This is your will, Father.’ It was the first time in her life she hadn’t addressed him as ‘Papa’. ‘Your last will and testament, it was made a month before we left Batavia.’

  Anna saw a look of sudden fear cross her father’s eyes and then he was silent. After a few moments he rose and began to pace and Anna got ready to run if he should turn on her suddenly. As a precaution she had selected the chair closest to the kitchen door. While she was cautious, watching him closely, strangely she wasn’t afraid; instinctively she knew she was his match. He was weak and she was strong. While he might have harmed her when he was drunk, when sober her father lacked the guts to kill her. Finally he sat down again, placing his elbows on the table, his hands cupping his chin. Then after a while he began to sob. Anna remained silent, offering him no sympathy. She didn’t want his inheritance. She merely waited for an explanation. She had always loved him and had never done anything to harm him and had always tried hard to please him and to make him proud of her. Now she wanted to know why he appeared to hate her so. She sensed that her father was waiting for her sympathy, for some word of forgiveness. She had always calmed him, always taken his side. Now she could no longer do so.

  Finally Piet Van Heerden looked up, his eyes glazed with self-pity. ‘I — you will have seen that I am very small, a very big man with a very small pee-pee. If I had gone with a white girl before I was married she would have laughed.’ He looked up. ‘I raped her and she ruined my life,’ he said finally.

  ‘Who? Who did you rape? My stepmother? Katerina?’ Anna tried to conceal her shock.

  Her father shook his head slowly, looking down so that all Anna could see was the ginger and grey tangle of his eyebrows. ‘No, Katerina was a virgin when we married. I did not tell her. When she saw it she laughed. “Your slang is only a fat little worm!” she cried.’

  ‘Then who?’ Anna asked again.

  ‘Your mother — I raped your mother.’ He let go another pitiful sob.

  ‘You raped my mother?’ Anna said, not quite believing her own ears.

  ‘I was young. Besotted. I couldn’t have her. I was the white man!’ he protested. Anna didn’t respond at first and they were both silent with her father sniffing, his head down.

  After a while he looked up and Anna said, ‘And I was the result.’

  Piet Van Heerden nodded. ‘I paid for it very dearly.’

  ‘Because you were saddled with me?’ Anna asked quietly.

  ‘No
, no, no!’ he said hastily. ‘It was not like that.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘They abducted me.’ He sniffed again.

  ‘They?’

  ‘Your mother’s people — the alurwaris!’

  ‘That was her — my mother’s name, Alurwaris?’

  ‘No, that is the name of the kinship group. They are animists before they are Muslims.’

  ‘And they harmed you?’

  Piet Van Heerden looked directly at Anna and then broke down sobbing, gulping for air. ‘They, the alurwaris, called in the medicine men, the abangan. They — they — cut off my balls!’ He now commenced to wail in earnest.

  Anna was too shocked to react and simply sat silently, completely stunned. When in the cellar he’d threatened to kill her he’d used that word ‘abangan’. After a few moments she began to collect her thoughts. Her father’s castration explained a great deal she would address in her mind later. The past weeks had been enormously harrowing, but they had also taught her to face up to some of the more unpleasant aspects of life.

  She had coped with Katerina’s suicide, her father’s drunken behaviour and the horror of his withdrawal, the unexpected role of being a refugee with an uncertain future. Then had come the knowledge that she was not loved by her father, that, but for me (if I was still alive), there was nobody who cared about her and that under her present circumstances she was completely alone. Now Anna held back her tears, believing she deserved, indeed must have, a full explanation from her distraught and broken father.

  She allowed him to continue to sob, resisting the temptation to go to him, to comfort and forgive him. She must, she told herself, hear the full story of her mother, who had always been a shadowy figure, cruelly alluded to often by her stepmother in terms that suggested she had been a prostitute, but never openly discussed. Anna had been strictly forbidden at an early age to ask about her, and so in her thoughts her mother was as insubstantial as if she were a ghost. There had always been a hollow part, a place that needed to be filled, an incomplete half of her that needed to know who it was that had given her the gift of life. Now she was determined to find out, to have the full story. And so Anna waited until her father’s self-pitying sobs grew less frequent, then she handed him a dishtowel to dry his tears.