‘I will switch off the lights and remove my yukata. Then I shall hand it to you so that you may return it to me when it is over.’ He pointed to the cotton bag. ‘Perhaps you would like to arrange them?’
‘That will not be necessary, Konoe-san,’ Anna said softly. ‘With your permission I will first have to explore your whole body with my fingers, you should enjoy the —’
‘You may do as you wish, First Vase,’ he said, cutting her short. Anna realised for the first time that he too was nervous. She was his work of art and he was about to find out whether he had created in her the perfection of the ‘Divine Threefold Experience’, his sole reason for bringing her into his complicated emotional life.
Konoe Akira switched off the light, plunging the entire Japanese house into darkness. Moments later Anna received the gown from him and placed it where she could retrieve it again.
This was the moment, the first time she had ever touched the severe and often frightening Japanese colonel. She could hear the words of Korin, the seventh okami-san, in her head: ‘Anna-san, do not trust your eyes; before you begin, even if it is light, close them, then feel the texture and the tone of the skin, work the whole body with your hands and the tips of your fingers, let the rope find its own path, pull it tight not only with your hands but also with your heart and spirit, respect what you are doing, honour your patron and he will willingly grant you power over him.’
Anna’s hands began to work in the dark, gently massaging and stimulating various parts of his body and discovering its secrets as well as every curve and hollow. Finally, after about twenty minutes, she took up the first length of rope.
She had been trained well and discovered the wrapping was an easier task when performed on a firmer male body. She listened to the pitch of his groans as she moved him into the required asymmetrical position while still accommodating the stiff knee. Sometimes he’d emit a soft moan or sigh of satisfaction as her pliant fingers travelled ahead of the rope, feeling, judging, listening, massaging and finally sensing the agony and ecstasy in his mind.
It took her almost an hour to wrap him before she came to the part the seventh okami-san had called the ‘Exquisite Pain’, the wrapping of the genitals. Anna had only performed this process on the suede imitations and now didn’t know what to expect. From this point on she knew she was on her own. If she failed, then the skill that had preceded this moment would be utterly without merit.
Anna worked slowly, carefully judging exactly the right pressure with her fingers until the Japanese officer’s erection climaxed at the precise moment she delivered the final wrap to send a shock through his body that, mixed with his ejaculation, created the ultimate moments of perfection, the ‘Exquisite Pain’. She allowed the pleasure and the pain to build and build until she had completely drained Konoe Akira’s senses and he lay whimpering like a small child in the dark.
It was then, as if from nowhere, she felt complete power over her uke surge through her body. Anna knew with absolute certainty that she was safe as long as Colonel Konoe Akira remained alive.
She began to unwrap him, massaging the parts where the ropes had tightened. It took Anna almost fifteen minutes to disentangle him and to return the blood flow to parts of his exhausted body. She then placed the makura, a bean-filled pillow, behind his head and the light summer kakebuton, the comfort blanket, over him before squatting in the geisha manner on her heels beside the platform to wait.
The seventh okami-san had told her that sometimes patrons slept an hour, sometimes eight hours, exhausted; their bodies completely drained. But after only fifteen or so minutes Konoe Akira sat up and called for his yukata. Without turning on the light, since his eyes and hers were now adjusted to the dark, he rose from the futon. ‘I will bathe and return soon, First Vase. Please wait in the room you entered when you came.’
It was the first time he had ever couched a request with a casually polite ‘please’ since she’d known him. ‘I am at your service, Konoe-san,’ Anna replied.
‘You are everything I had hoped for, First Vase. Yellow highlighted by white — perfection!’ She could see the outline of his tall body as he bowed. ‘Ho!’ he said, then turned abruptly to cross the room.
Anna bowed in the prescribed manner. ‘I am glad you are pleased, Konoe-san,’ she said to his retreating back. In the dark, even if he had faced her, he would not have seen that she was smiling to herself. Anna Van Heerden was no longer afraid.
The lights suddenly came back on and Anna returned to the tea ceremony room, where she placed the pot and cups back on the tray. She took it through the door Yasuko had knocked on that led to the colonel’s rooms and placed it at the side to take back to the kitchen when she returned upstairs to change into a sarong prior to going home. Then she went back to the first room, where she sat and waited on the guest cushion provided for her.
Anna was not sure how she felt. She knew she had crossed a line where there was no return and gained a power over her captor that would keep her safe. But she felt as if she wanted to go somewhere very quiet to weep. The four-and-a-bit months of her second instruction had almost been a game; now she knew her innocence was gone, lost in the dark to ‘the starlight’. She had been temporarily blessed by the fact that she was no longer in danger, but wondered if she had the right to know what she had come to learn in the second instruction and exploit for the first time tonight. Was it a knowledge that would taint her soul forever?
Konoe Akira, with his hair still wet and combed in the Western manner and wearing a fresh yukata, came through the host door. He carried a flat silver box with slightly rounded edges about twice the size of his cigarette case and again twice the depth. He placed it silently on the table and Anna noted that his name had been inscribed in Japanese on the lid. From his gown he withdrew a highly polished, black persimmon chopstick, the same as the ones she remembered were made from the heartwood of the sacred tree. This too he placed beside the box. Then he opened the elegant silver object and she saw that it contained four glass ampoules and two gleaming stainless-steel syringes.
‘I would like your cooperation, First Vase,’ Konoe Akira said, speaking for the first time.
‘Willingly, Konoe-san, but I have not received instruction in this. With these syringes,’ Anna added lamely.
The Japanese officer smiled. ‘Be thankful for that, but the task does not require training.’ He withdrew a clean white handkerchief from his gown and wrapped it around his left upper arm, binding it once and holding the ends. ‘Place the heartwood where I am about to tie the knot, First Vase,’ he instructed.
Anna moved to his side of the table and taking up the chopstick placed its centre across the first bind, holding it steady while Konoe Akira finally secured it in place with the second tie. She realised that it was a task he could, with a little effort, perform himself; that now he simply desired her involvement. Then he reached out and removed an ampoule and syringe from the box, snapped off the glass top and inserted the syringe, drawing the liquid upwards into the thirsty stainless-steel cylinder. ‘Now twist the heartwood around so that it tightens. I will tell you when to stop.’ Anna did what she was told while Konoe Akira clenched and released his fist. ‘Thank you, that is sufficient.’
Anna had on one previous occasion at the headmistress’s Red Cross lessons seen a demonstration of how to inject a painkiller into the arm. She had imagined at the time that if ever she was required to do so, she would be wearing a snowy white, starched nurse’s uniform and he would be a handsome American airman, shot down and rescued, who was, in appearance, a dead ringer for Errol Flynn. They would naturally fall in love as she nursed him back to health.
Now, dressed in a silk kimono, she was witnessing a senior Japanese officer inject himself to achieve, she suddenly realised, what the seventh okami-san had declared the ‘Sublime Fourth Experience’.
Konoe Akira inserted the needle into a prominent dark-blue vein a
nd Anna winced as he paused to withdraw a tiny amount of blood and then pushed the plunger home. He placed the syringe on the table and almost tenderly rubbed the small drop of blood that appeared when he loosened the tourniquet.
‘First Vase, you must promise me never to do as I have just done. It will spoil your perfection and destroy you,’ he said quietly. He glanced at his watch. ‘It is half-past ten. Your car will be waiting. You must change and go,’ he said.
Anna, venturing to test his will, replied, ‘I will instruct the driver to return to his quarters. I have my friend, Til, the becak owner, waiting for me at the gate, Konoe-san.’
The Japanese colonel rose to his feet with the usual difficulty and bowed. ‘As you wish, First Vase.’ It was a small triumph, but one she would not have dared to attempt previously.
Anna hurried upstairs to change into her sarong and sandals, helped by a sleepy Yasuko, who nevertheless seemed delighted to see her. ‘Anna-san, it went well?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I think so,’ Anna said, still preoccupied, then stopped. ‘Oh, no! I should have taken the tray to the kitchen. I have left it outside the door. Will you forgive me, Yasuko-san?’ This small forgetfulness now served to focus her mind. ‘It is past your bedtime, Yasuko-san; but yes, I think the honourable Konoe-san is pleased with my humble efforts.’ She was learning; the Japan-speak came easily to her lips.
‘To please them, that is our sacred task,’ Yasuko said, happy for Anna.
Anna dismissed the Japanese driver, who woke with a start and automatically brought his hand up to his cap in a salute when she spoke to him from the darkness. Then she ran to the gate to greet the waiting and ever-faithful Til.
‘Ahee! Anna, greetings from all — Ratih, Budi, Kiki and even the lieutenant. How has been the day and now this night?’
Anna impulsively hugged the little Javanese man, his presence so normal, real and comforting. ‘Oh, Til, I have seen too much tonight.’ She climbed into the becak and drew the brothel curtain, knowing she was about to weep.
Til started to pedal. ‘Allah says, “When the eyes have seen too much they must be closed and as we sleep the eyelids will accept the burdens and when we wake the burdens will tumble out and be lost.”’
‘That’s ridiculous, Til! One of your Allah worsts!’ Anna sobbed, laughing at the same time.
‘Ahee! Anna, do not weep. The Prophet says, “God sees every human experience from every angle and each shows the same thing in a different way. It is what is contained in our hearts that lets us see ourselves.”’ And Til pedalled into the night.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘The entrance to the pearl is very resilient
and not easily damaged.
Soon enough your maidenhood will be taken.
You cannot hold on to it forever.
Perhaps it is time to be practical? To face life as it is?’
The seventh okami-san (Korin-san)
The Nest of the Swallows
July 1945
KONOE AKIRA’S DAILY HABITS changed little in the following three years. He had, however, become so dependent on Anna that during the dark hours he seemed unable to be without her until he fell asleep. She was now fluent in Japanese and spoke it in the refined manner of the educated élite; this meant he was able to converse with her readily, adding to the intellectual stimulus and education she had received from 2nd Lieutenant Ando. It was not in the nature of a Japanese man of his background to outwardly show affection to a young female, but Konoe Akira was undoubtedly preoccupied by her presence in his life.
If it could be said that the Japanese colonel was dependent on her, then equally it could be said that Anna had bonded with him. She had come to think of the strange routine as normal. It was almost as if she had become two separate people; by changing into a kimono when she arrived she became another, a different Anna. In fact, in the mind of Konoe Akira she possessed two separate identities: at lunch and during daylight hours he addressed her as Second Vase, while after dark he referred to her as First Vase. And he had never been guilty of a slip of the tongue and mistakenly used one name at an inappropriate time.
While he had never suggested she live in the brewer’s mansion, she was required, with very rare exceptions, to attend lunch daily and again be there at eight o’clock each night, to be present after the colonel had left his study and remain until he was finally able to sleep.
On some nights she would be home by midnight but on others Til, who was now exclusively in the colonel’s employ, would pedal her home at dawn. She confessed to me that she looked forward to those nights when he required her to perform both the ‘Divine Threefold Experience’ and the ‘Sublime Fourth Experience’. While the process was enervating, it meant she would be home by eleven-thirty.
The capacity of humans to adapt to almost any situation and see it as normal is the reason we have found ourselves the dominant creatures on earth. For instance, there were some amongst the emaciated near-skeletons that emerged from the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps in Burma who exhibited mixed feelings at the final Allied victory. Many were thrown into a state of confused apathy tinged with anger and a fear of the unknown. This was because survival had become a routine, a skill acquired by those who were strong enough to survive. They had grown highly reluctant to abandon their way of coping in the daily struggle for food. They had acquired a fierce pride in the fact that they were part of an élite, survivors in a hostile environment. It seems a contradiction that this capacity to adapt and adopt also depends on rigid adherence to routine acts, to maintaining regular habits that we have acquired which we believe keep us alive.
It was no different for Anna. She first learned to adapt and then to adopt, learning the language of her captor, his habits, routines, pleasures and predilections, all in order to survive and to maintain her chastity. These became so familiar to her that she no longer thought of them consciously. She had acquired the art of survival. In her own mind, the key was her virginity. She believed that as long as she could hold onto it, she would be safe. She identified it with Konoe Akira’s obsession with finding perfection as the antidote to the demons that possessed him. As long as the pearl remained intact she would survive, but if the pearl was to be crushed by some turn of fortune, then she would be placed in an alien and dangerous environment, where the control of her destiny would be taken from her own care and placed in the hands of others.
Perhaps one of the more bizarre instances of Anna’s preoccupation with her environment occurred in March 1943 when Piet Van Heerden died of an overdose of morphine.
He had become the size of a beached whale, his legs so swollen he was unable to walk so that he was bedridden. He suffered from shortness of breath, extreme hypertension, renal problems and incontinence. His breath had a peculiar odour not unlike acetone — known as ketonic breath — as well as the distinctive ammonia smell of uraemia. All were the symptoms brought about by what we now know as type 2 diabetes. It was only a question of time before he would die an agonising death caused by kidney failure. The Japanese military doctor gave him no more than a few weeks to live, and told Anna her father would suffer a painful and difficult death. ‘If you wish I will do it now. I will give him an overdose of morphine and he will be released without pain,’ he volunteered.
‘No!’ Anna cried. ‘No, please, no!’ Piet Van Heerden’s greatest fear was that he would die at the hands of the Japanese. The doctor was a member of the Japanese military and although he would be performing an act of mercy, it would still mean that her father met his death at the hands of his mortal enemy.
The doctor, aware of Anna’s connection with Konoe Akira, bowed. ‘As you wish. Perhaps when the time comes you will be sure to administer sufficient morphine?’ He was not a cruel man and issued her with six ampoules and a syringe in order that Piet Van Heerden might die less painfully, unnecessarily demonstrating to her how to insert the needle into the upper arm. It was ob
vious from his expression and tone of voice that he expected her to terminate her father’s life when his pain became unbearable.
Anna could not bring herself to end her father’s life, despite the fact that he was in great pain. She knew that nobody would ever know what she had done; there would be no enquiry into his death. But she was physically exhausted, trying to spend as much time as possible nursing and caring for him while leading her double life at the brewer’s mansion. It was not an imbued sense of morality that prevented her giving the overdose, or even the fact that this was her own father. She had learned how to survive in an environment where life was cheap and taken without conscience. Now, however merciful her action might be, she couldn’t bring herself to adopt the mindset of her Japanese captors.
Ratih, hearing from Til about Anna’s exhausted state, insisted, despite her protests, that Kiki spend most of her time at the house helping Anna care for Piet Van Heerden. Kiki could do the cooking and, if Anna wasn’t present, feed and watch over him, but she lacked the strength to shift his bulk in order to change his wet sheets and she was becoming more and more depressed by Piet Van Heerden’s intemperate behaviour towards her. At five o’clock every day she would leave for the evening shift at the kampong restaurant in tears.
Anna hadn’t discussed the matter of her father’s illness with Konoe Akira, other than when she’d first mentioned it and he’d ordered a military doctor to attend to him. She knew if she did, he would simply instruct the doctor to do what was necessary to terminate his life. She also knew that although she was exhausted, if the doctor was correct the passage of a few more weeks wasn’t going to make a major difference to her health. However, she had become concerned about Kiki, who would burst into spontaneous tears almost every time Anna looked at her. Kiki’s tears were not only causing her to be deeply depressed but also adding to Anna’s considerable burden of care. But she knew if she didn’t allow Kiki to help with her father, this would have an even worse effect on the little cook.
The Persimmon Tree Page 47