The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  Anna had screamed, then sobbed, ‘Oh! Oh, why did you do that?’ The butterfly ashtray had always been her talisman, like the Clipper butterfly I’d given her in Batavia. In her mind, it was yet another connection to me, a constant reminder at lunch each day of our love. After the colonel’s departure when lunch was completed she would push the ash and two cigarettes butts aside and touch the glass butterfly and say silently to herself, ‘I love you, Nicholas.’ Now it lay smashed in six pieces, although strangely it had not shattered in the manner of glass. Unbeknown to Anna it had been made of crystal. One of the largest pieces was about twenty centimetres long, tapered to a point and she observed it contained the thorax of the glass butterfly.

  Anna witnessed how the Japanese colonel had winced a moment after he’d dashed the butterfly ashtray to the floor. She knew instantly that he was conscious of having destroyed something beautiful and this increased his fury. ‘You will not go about this house like a whore! You will always dress correctly!’ he’d stormed.

  ‘I am not a whore! I will do as you wish, Konoe-san,’ Anna had cried, chastened but at the same time defiant. ‘It is only a matter of cotton socks!’

  The Japanese colonel had appeared to be momentarily taken aback. It had been some time since Anna had defied him. ‘You will also modify the tone of your voice,’ he’d said coldly. ‘You may count yourself fortunate that you are not a whore! Now, return to your room at once and put on tabi. You are not correctly dressed!’

  On her way back to her room she’d met a frightened Yasuko. ‘I should not have told you about the wearing of the tabi! Now he will beat me, Anna-san!’ she had cried, wringing her hands in despair.

  ‘No, he won’t. He has destroyed the butterfly ashtray — his tantrum is over. He has destroyed something beautiful and he will now be sad.’ Anna had placed her hand on the mama-san’s shoulder. ‘Yasuko-san, do not throw the pieces away; it has broken neatly and I wish you to save them. Pick them up carefully, every little bit, and wrap them in a cloth for me to take home.’

  The incident of the tabi and the ashtray had occurred a week prior to the arrival of her new tutor, or okami-san, of the second instruction. Anna had taken the six pieces of crystal home, wrapped in a soft cloth, and had carefully fitted them together. Except for the almost invisible break-lines the butterfly ashtray appeared to be intact. She kept it beside her bed along with the box containing the Clipper specimen I had given her and kissed the box and touched the crystal butterfly last thing every night while pronouncing her love for the butterfly collector she was beginning to despair of ever seeing again.

  Now as Anna entered her room, the elderly okami-san struggled to get out of the large armchair, her legs too short to reach the carpet. Even by Asian standards she was diminutive, and Anna towered over her. Anna was at once hesitant, not sure of the protocol involved. It was her room and the tiny Japanese woman had been summoned to the house; was she therefore the one to bow second? She decided on the universal custom of respecting age and bowed correctly and low. ‘Welcome, I am Anna,’ she said softly, her eyes downcast.

  The Japanese woman bowed in turn and, in the tradition of saying one thing and meaning quite another, replied, ‘I am okami-san, my name is Korin, it means little bell.’ She bowed again. ‘I thank you for inviting me into your home and into this beautiful room. I will do all I can to pay tribute to the warm and gracious welcome you have shown me and I am humbled and greatly privileged to undertake the task you have given me.’

  It was pure ‘Japan-speak’, a term Anna had coined and which frequently sent 2nd Lieutenant Ando into gales of laughter whenever she used it to complain about an obscure sentence that contained at least three possible meanings. Anna was aware that the okami-san knew she had not personally invited her, either into the house or into the privacy of her bedroom, and the okami-san also understood that Anna possibly had no knowledge why she had come, but only that she was to become a daily visitor.

  The Japanese woman had previously occupied the chair Anna usually sat in and now Anna bade her be seated and sat down in the second chair. Anna told herself she was becoming too Japanese, she saw the new ownership of her usual chair as a sign that the little okami-san would attempt to be the assertive one in their relationship. She made up her mind that this would not happen. ‘Are you okami-san at the okiya, Korin-san?’ she asked, trying to make the question about the Nest of the Swallows sound like a casual and unimportant enquiry.

  The woman smiled. ‘No, I am not one of the okami-san who are responsible for running the okiya, Anna-san. I am the seventh geisha, the seventh okami-san.’

  Despite the fact that Anna had fleetingly thought she might be subjected to some undesirable geisha instruction in the Nest of the Swallows, she had gratefully latched onto Yasuko’s reassurances that it would be a matter of teaching her formal manners. She had expected one of the other okami-san and not the seventh, who she knew was responsible for training the young Dutch girls in the various ways of sexually gratifying the Japanese officers.

  Even though she and Konoe Akira had grown much closer and to some degree had bonded, she still saw herself in terms of her Dutch and Javanese background. If her heart was Javanese her mindset was decidedly Dutch. While she was required within the Japanese colonel’s home to accommodate her captor in the behavioural mannerisms he demanded, her practical Dutch upbringing saw this simply as necessary to his male ego. After all, she’d spent her childhood trying to please her father. Anna regarded Konoe Akira no differently.

  Anna now realised she had mistakenly convinced herself that she was doing everything she could to please her captor in return for retaining her chastity. When she thought of the Dutch girls her age who worked in the Nest of the Swallows she was more than a little grateful to him and aware that pleasing him by, among other things, learning Japanese and never appearing without tabi was a very small price to pay for the right to retain her maidenhood. However, with the knowledge that the tiny woman seated in the big cushioned armchair in front of her was the seventh okami-san, Anna began to visibly tremble.

  ‘What will you… what are you going… what will you teach me, Korin-san?’ Anna asked in a hesitant voice.

  The Japanese geisha smiled. ‘All my life I have been a geisha, a woman who is trained to please a man. It is a task men see as requiring dedication, service, ceremony and submission, but if you listen properly and hear the silent weeping and the muted cry, the unspoken fear in a man’s head, then you can also become powerful.’ She paused. ‘It is a power that cannot be taken away from you because it is his submission and not yours that he ultimately requires. What I will teach you, Anna-san, is how to gain ultimate power over a Japanese man of noble lineage.’

  ‘But Korin-san, the colonel, Konoe-san, has all the power in Tjilatjap!’ Anna protested. ‘He has only to snap his fingers and I would be dead — or anyone else if he wishes. He has a savage temper; once I didn’t wear tabi when I appeared for lunch and I thought he would kill me! His anger was so fierce that he threw a precious and very beautiful ashtray to the floor and smashed it. How can I gain power over such an intemperate man?’

  ‘Ah, he will not beat you. He is of noble lineage, he will always be dangerous, he is samurai, but he will not damage perfection. The ashtray, perhaps it was a small perfection spoilt in a moment of temper? But it was also one that was expendable. But not you — in his mind you are not expendable, Anna-san. A man such as Colonel Konoe-san would not have done what he has for you unless he is besotted. He will not mark you or place an angry hand upon you. Already you have the beginnings of power over him.’

  Anna was genuinely confused. ‘But Korin-san, I do not wish to have power over Konoe-san. I only wish to be safe and to maintain my chastity.’

  The okami-san frowned. ‘Ah, your chastity? That is always complicated. But the one cannot be separated from the other. If the pearl is broken the oyster is no longer valuable, and you are no l
onger safe. You may retain your beauty, but it will no longer be perfection. These matters in a Japanese nobleman’s mind are always difficult to understand, and are marked with contradictions. They worship their mothers, who are the great butterflies, but they wish at the same time to keep the chrysalis intact.’

  ‘But I am not a geisha! I have received no training in hearing the silent weeping or the muted cry and I know nothing about pleasing a man in that way.’

  Korin-san laughed. ‘There are ways to please a man and to keep the pearl intact. This is the power I speak of. In the Nest of the Swallows, the young Dutch girls must learn quickly; they have many patrons — customers,’ she corrected herself. ‘It is not a nice word, “customers”, but not every Japanese officer is a man of a refined nature and he will accept the inept ministrations that are all the young girls are capable of learning quickly. Mostly the things I teach them are not esoteric and lack purity. I must instruct in an hour what should take a week, and in a week what should take a month to refine.’ She spread her hands and gave a small shrug. ‘But what can I do? I am an old woman and fortunate to be given this task in the okiya.’

  ‘But I do not wish to learn these ways of pleasing officers!’ Anna cried in an anguished voice. ‘Has Konoe-san instructed you to teach them to me?’

  The Japanese woman looked at Anna, horrified. ‘It is not in his nature, Anna-san! He is a highly civilised man and has told me of his esoteric desires and ambitions for you. For me it is perhaps the last opportunity I shall get to teach the noble art of kinbaku. My hands are not as supple as they once were and they often pain me when I work with the rope, but I have been given the privilege one last time of showing a beautiful woman the true path to power over a civilised and complex man.’ She paused and looked directly at Anna. ‘If you learn it well, then the pearl will gain great lustre and you will be safe.’

  ‘You mean he will not wish to, does not want to… seduce me?’ Anna could barely complete the sentence.

  The seventh okami-san smiled. ‘Ah, that is up to you, Anna-san. If you do not please him in this art, then he will crush the pearl. The honourable Konoe Akira is a man of unlimited power and his power over life and death requires as its counterbalance an equal arbitrary and capricious submission by him. He has chosen you and only you to know this secret, to assuage his guilt. I have been granted the time I need to teach you how this must be done. The honourable Colonel Konoe-san requires that you be perfectly trained. If you are diligent and allow me to instruct you in the true art of kinbaku, then you will be safe. To keep the pearl growing in lustre within the oyster will become his obsession; in his mind, a sacred task.’

  ‘What is this kinbaku, Korin-san?’

  ‘It is a wrapping with ropes.’

  ‘I do not understand, Korin-san. A wrapping? Ropes tie, they do not wrap. Who does this wrapping?’

  ‘You do, Anna-san. Tomorrow I will bring the hemp ropes and we will commence instruction. You will begin to learn to understand the rope, to feel it, as if it were a living thing.’

  Anna had never heard of bondage and sadomasochism and while she had tried to imagine what the girls in the Nest of the Swallows were required to do to please the officer customers, she had never thought of anything involving rope or the submission of the male. She had long since recognised the guilt and shame Konoe Akira felt, but thought it was the result of his failure to live up to the expectations of his illustrious family due to the injury to his knee. She had assumed that he saw his appointment to the passive backblocks of Java and Tjilatjap, rather than being in command of a fighting regiment within the Imperial Army, as his ultimate punishment.

  ‘I must learn to wrap rope around Konoe-san? But why?’ Anna asked, still mystified.

  ‘It is to bring him to submission, to punish him, to assuage his guilt,’ the seventh okami-san explained. ‘To a man such as the honourable Konoe-san pain is a cleansing process. This is your power over him, to bring him temporary forgiveness and, for a short time, relief from his terrible feelings of guilt and unworthiness.’

  ‘Pain? I do not wish to bring him pain!’ Anna cried, distressed.

  The seventh okami-san sat silent for a few moments. ‘You are not a geisha, you do not understand. It is his choice, his requirement and it is your privilege to serve his needs.’

  ‘But I cannot! I will refuse!’ Anna cried in distress.

  The diminutive Japanese woman was silent for longer this time. ‘There can be no refusal. This is why he chose you in the first instance, Anna-san. He believes you have been sent to him. When you fainted at the executions of the Chinese, it was his fate, his destiny, that wished to point you out to him. This is why the pearl remains safely embedded in the oyster and you are not with the others in the Nest of the Swallows.’

  ‘I would rather die!’ Anna cried out, jumping to her feet.

  ‘Then that is certainly what will happen to you, Anna-san,’ Korin-san said calmly. ‘My advice to you is to take your own life. The alternative is unimaginable.’

  Anna sat down again and started to sob but the seventh okami-san offered her no comfort; the tiny woman simply waited patiently for nearly an hour, when at last there was a tap on the door, followed by Yasuko informing them that it was almost five minutes to five and it was time for the okami-san to leave.

  Korin-san rose from the chair. ‘I will come again tomorrow, Anna-san. If you are not here I will know that I have failed and I will make the preparations necessary for my own death.’

  Anna, despite her tears, looked up, startled. ‘Why?’ she cried. ‘You have done nothing wrong!’

  The seventh okami-san spoke softly. ‘It will be because I have destroyed what is perfect. It will be because I have failed in my duty to convince you. In the mind of the honourable Konoe-san I will be no longer worthy of my vocation and will have added immeasurably to his guilt.’ She paused. ‘He will expect me to commit hara-kari or he will cause that kempeitai brute, Captain Takahashi, to torture and then to kill me.’ The tiny woman sighed. ‘It is correct that the honourable colonel-san should do so. I am old and unworthy and I will have lost my power.’ She bowed to Anna and silently left the room, closing the door behind her.

  Anna sat stunned for some time before slowly regathering her thoughts. Was the tiny woman’s explanation of the consequences of her refusal simply bluff, a case of practised Japanese melodrama, a carefully composed and rehearsed passage brought into play in the event that Anna refused to comply with the colonel’s wishes? Korin-san might have heard it all before at the Nest of the Swallows, where a recalcitrant Dutch teenager, or perhaps several such, threatened to take their lives rather than submit to a particularly repulsive demand by a Japanese officer.

  But Anna quickly dismissed this thought. She had witnessed Konoe Akira’s rage over inconsequential matters — the chicken, her tabi socks. There were other instances of uncontrollable rage related to her by 2nd Lieutenant Ando that had become legendary among the officers and had resulted often enough in someone’s death. Her refusal, her suicide, would not be without consequence and his anger would know no limits.

  She knew that he regarded her as a piece of art, the Second Vase, and had worked hard to try to achieve his own idea of perfection. She was, as he had so often explained, the creator and the canvas, the surface on which his every desire and fantasy appeared. If he thought her suicide was caused by the seventh okami-san’s inability to persuade her to create this work of art, she didn’t have the slightest doubt that he would kill her himself or hand her over to the kempeitai to cause her an even more painful end.

  Besides, there was another factor working here that, when Anna was relating this story to me, caused her tremendous grief. Although the only way she could refuse to comply with his wishes was to take her own life, she had already bonded almost completely with her captor, Colonel Konoe.

  This effect, where the victim comes to completely identi
fy with her captor so that she takes on his cause, has always been known. History is redolent with such instances of victims and villains bonding.

  At the very moment the departing seventh okami-san closed the bedroom door, Anna knew that she would accede to Konoe Akira’s wishes. She would not have been aware of her psychiatric condition at the time. Later the memory of her compliance and cooperation became the cause of an abiding secret shame. Anna was aware not only that her accedence was given in order to save her own life, but also that she did not know how to, or even whether she wished to, refuse him. Having made the decision to learn kinbaku, she knew she would take the task seriously and absorb all she could from the instruction received from the retired geisha. The second vase was about to be rearranged. The vibrantly coloured blossoms would soon be displayed in an entirely different interpretation of perfection.

  In the four months that followed Anna became an exponent of bondage and various levels of sadomasochism. The learning process was careful and detailed and the wrapping of the hemp rope needed to be done with perfection. As intimate parts of the human body are involved and no knots are used, the smallest mistake could cause the entire effect to come undone and the heightened sensuality and exquisite pain to the submissive male to be alleviated.

  She was to learn that the purpose of kinbaku is not simply restraint and severe bondage, but the wrapping must be done so as to bring pressure, strain and pain on the genitals without bruising or harming them. The ideal is to heighten the discomfort by the enforced asymmetrical position of the uke, the bound one. This contorted and strange posture when combined with genital pain emphasises the experience. It is with its climax of pain and total submission that the feelings of guilt are assuaged. To the uke this is tantamount to perfection, a total expiation in a guiltless, perfect and unchanging world. It signifies his absolute submission to the artistry of the dominatrix, who must in every possible way be perfect, her looks and postures a part of her art, so that the sum of the whole — submission, pain and beauty — becomes the ‘Divine Threefold Experience’. The seventh okami-san instructed Anna, ‘There is with some uke the “Sublime Fourth Experience”. It is one of gratification and it is performed by himself without your help. You will sometimes be required to be present, but do not need to learn to perform it.’