The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  The wedding reception at the Bellevue Hotel lasted until breakfast the following morning, with half the male guests and several of the females snoring in a drunken sleep under the tables. Every room was booked out plus those in all the surrounding hotels. The little bloke, who’d never had a family of his own, was now a member of a family of two hundred and fifty-six, if one included the great-aunties and uncles who were too old to travel to the wedding. Most of them seemed to be good Catholics who, judging from the size of their families, didn’t believe in contraception.

  The only blight on the joyous occasion was a pre-wedding hitch when Joe Popkin was, in effect, apprehended at the airport under the White Australia Policy. It was good enough for him as an American to be stationed here during the war, but now, barely nine months after, he was back to being a nigger and not allowed to come into Australia without a return ticket and an endorsement from someone who was prepared to guarantee his return to the States.

  If there was one thing that made me dead ashamed of my country, it was this heinous policy. I received a call from the airport, where they referred to Joe as ‘American Negro, Popkin’ and asked me to come out and vouch for him. Some war, hey? We’d just fought against tyranny and supposedly for the values of freedom and justice, and I was on my way out to Brisbane airport as a character witness for a man whose only crime was the colour of his skin! It made me want to puke. When I apologised to him, Joe said, ‘Nevah yoh min’, Nick. Dey bin doin’ dis to Negro folks since I is a piccaninny.’ I sensed he’d chosen the last word deliberately as it was often used when referring to black children.

  Even Marg Hamilton couldn’t get a permit for Joe to remain in Australia but, fortuitously, he was needed in Rabaul to run the salvage operation. Joe was a natural leader who didn’t tolerate bullshit; at six feet four inches he also possessed a fairly impressive presence, though he seldom needed to exert it. He soon became loved amongst the men who worked for us.

  I’d been over to Rabaul, flying in a Catalina, prior to Joe’s arrival to take over and I’d appointed ex-Sergeant Ellison as foreman and his wantoks from my group as nucleus labour. When Joe arrived he continued the tradition and the Tolai formed the basis of what was to become a very large labour force.

  Having a dark-skinned bloke in charge seemed to make the men happy. I never heard Joe shout, but he would sometimes bodily pick up a worker, grabbing him by the shirtfront and lifting him with one hand to the level of his face and then telling him, nose to nose, in pidgin (which he’d picked up rapidly), to get on with it. I don’t think Joe ever fired a man. On the other hand, with Ellison as recruitment officer it was probably never necessary, for Ellison could detect a real shirker at three paces.

  The greatest bonus of all was what the Japanese left behind at Rabaul. We began collecting the thousands of tons of munitions needed to sustain a large garrison. I began to realise that the waste inherent in war was simply astonishing and, in our case, to the victor went the spoils. I’d often wince when equipment that would have cost a fortune was broken up and turned into scrap metal. Magnificent precision rangefinders, fuse-setting machines, radio equipment that in the earlier days would have caused Belgiovani to have an orgasm on the spot, generators, switchboards, entire aircraft, artillery parts: all were chopped into easy-to-handle pieces. Equipment that was the best the world could produce was reduced to junk by sweating kanakas, some of whom had never heard a radio broadcast.

  By November, Bren Gun was pregnant with child number ninety-two in her family’s fecund pipeline. You’d have thought it was the first child in the next generation of what appeared to me to be the most sexually active family in Australia. The birth date was expected to be two weeks after the arrival in Rabaul of the first ship the little bloke had chartered. I had arranged to fly back to Brisbane to be there to hold the little bloke’s hand. Eight thousand tons of ready-to-use non-ferrous metal was waiting to be loaded and I’d booked a phone call to Kevin to tell him when the task was completed. The line was crackling and pinging, but when he answered I shouted, ‘Kevin, we just loaded —’

  ‘Nick, where are yoh, buddy? Come quick, da fuckin’ baby is premature! Bren Gun, she in da hospital and they ain’t lettin’ me come in. Can yoh get here, buddy?’ he implored. ‘Please, yoh always know what ter do!’

  ‘Kevin, I’m in Rabaul!’ I shouted.

  ‘What’s dat? I cain’t hear yoh, buddy, dis cockamamie phone! Come quick, da Marta Hospital, Brisbane. Take a taxi! I be waitin’ outside!’

  Kevin and Bren Gun’s baby, although two weeks premature, proved to be a healthy girl who was none the worse for her early arrival. When I managed to get a call through the next day he said, ‘Yoh wouldn’t believe it, Nick. She just like my mom. Da spittin’ image. I swear, buddy, it like a goddamn thro’ back.’

  ‘I hope not,’ I laughed. ‘Congratulations to you both. Well done!’

  I could almost hear Kevin’s pride swelling over the telephone. ‘It weren’t nuttin’ I couldn’t handle, buddy. Yoh tell Joe we was gonna call it Joe Nicholas Judge,’ he cackled happily. ‘But it turn out to be a liddle gorl. Now we gonna call her Nicola Josephine Judge. Yoh like dat, buddy?’

  Every day in business, once you’re organised and get into the swing of things, is pretty much the same. Each salvage dump presented us with one or two new logistical problems, but nothing we couldn’t resolve. Our teams might be dismantling a wreck on the beach or in a shallow bay, disarming an ammunition dump, cutting, crushing, loading — and all this in places the departed armies had long since forgotten.

  Of the bigger, well-known dumps, other jackals who’d begun to realise the potential were beginning to prowl. Peter McVitty’s perspicacious handling of major contracts kept us gainfully employed. We didn’t get everything going, but he saw to it that we got the cream. In return we did the hard yards, smaller and more difficult dumps, clearing wrecks in deep bays that nobody wanted to know about. There were even places where the local colonial administration, fearing an ammunition dump might explode spontaneously, were pathetically grateful that Canberra had organised someone to make the area safe. In fact, usually the dumps were fairly safe anyway. Under Joe’s guidance we became the most skilful, quickest and most economical outfit in the island by a country mile and, after a short time, Peter McVitty was almost acting with a clear conscience when he pushed a contract our way.

  We were working around the clock, seven days a week, until the local bishop, the Right Reverend John Duncan, interfered and insisted that if we kept employing mission boys amongst our labour force we must give them Sunday off. The Seventh Day Adventists tried for Saturday as well, but Joe gave them a generous sum of money to build eight schoolhouses in villages and told them to shove it or there’d be no more donations. And so, having arranged things so there were no taxes to pay, we became very rich by immediate post-war standards.

  Janine de Sax remained in charge of our affairs, but the man with the crocodile smile, fat, unctuous Stan McVitty, was now all over us like a bad rash, sycophantic to the point of making you want to throw up. If it hadn’t been for his brother Peter in Canberra I feel sure the little bloke would have taken out a contract on him. ‘Dat cocksucker ain’t to be trusted,’ he’d declare after every meeting.

  ‘Keep the crocodile smiling, mate, we need his brother,’ I’d always reply.

  ‘One day — one day,’ the little bloke would say in a threatening tone, though what he meant by that, Joe and I had no idea.

  During all this time I hadn’t given up on finding Anna. Every three months I placed an advertisement in the personal columns of Amsterdam’s Algemeen Dagblat and de Volkskrant, London’s The Times, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, the Manchester Guardian, America’s New York Times and L.A. Times, as well as, from time to time, in various other newspapers throughout Europe. The message never changed:

  Interested party wishes to know

  the whereabouts of Anna Van
H.

  of Tjilatjap 1942–45 over matter to

  great advantage. Write: Nicholas,

  P.O. Box 68, Port Vila, New Hebrides.

  I suppose over the next five years I must have spent a veritable fortune running the ad without success; several confidence tricksters contacted me and said they knew how to find her but needed a sum of money, hinting that the process was a tricky one. Checking them out by using a local private detective wasn’t difficult. Anna had simply disappeared. Either that or she was dead, or, as I’d previously thought, she didn’t wish me to find her. In 1949 the United Nations Commission for Refugees was established and Peter McVitty got its staff on the job; they even checked the marriage certificates of all the Dutch refugees in case Anna had married, but again without success.

  But then, at last there came a break. It came out of the blue from the ever-discreet Janine de Sax, who was aware of our antipathy — in particular, Kevin’s — to Stan McVitty, but had never once reacted when the little bloke had given us all the pleasure of his singular opinion concerning the unctuous lawyer.

  I had built a house close to the water on a small bay in Port Vila, in order to satisfy the residential requirements needed to maintain our tax-free status. I was spending a lot of my time in the islands and decided to make the house a fairly grand affair, with wide verandahs looking over the bay. It offered a sheltered mooring and after a trip to Australia I took the opportunity of sailing Madam Butterfly back to her new home. I also wanted a place I could keep my butterfly collection, which had by now become, I suppose, a major world collection. The house I named simply ‘Beautiful Bay’.

  From time to time Janine, who was having marriage problems, would come to stay with her two little girls. I adored Chloe and Jessica, who sometimes came along if a business matter arose during school holidays. Janine and I had become good friends; nothing more than that, just really good mates.

  The little bloke couldn’t believe I wasn’t sleeping with her and constantly urged me to marry her. ‘Buddy, you’re stuppin’ her. Why not slip on da gold ring, make it legal, den we got ourselves a lawyer in da family and no more fuckin’ crocodile.’

  In fact, I was doing no such thing. Our relationship was a purely platonic one. She was an attractive woman, but she was married — even if unhappily — and besides, was the company’s lawyer. I didn’t lead a celibate life — in the islands that’s like asking it not to rain — and I was never immune to the charms of a beautiful woman.

  Then one night I received a crackling phone call at Beautiful Bay. ‘Nick, I’d like to come up.’ It was Janine.

  ‘Of course, you know you’re always welcome,’ I assured her, adding, ‘Bring the kids.’

  ‘No, Nick, it’s not business. I’ll pay my own way.’

  ‘Janine, don’t be bloody silly, put it on the tab.’

  ‘No, Nick. That would be indiscreet.’ After a few minutes when I’d managed to verify the time and date of her plane through the static, she hung up. I thought her visit must have something to do with her marriage and was gratified that she’d think to confide in me. Janine was the most discreet person I’d ever known — except for my father, who only spoke about personal matters to God.

  Janine arrived on the afternoon plane from Brisbane two days later. She’d taken the opportunity to see Kevin before flying to Port Vila. Driving back to Beautiful Bay from the airport when she mentioned she’d seen the little bloke, I naturally said, ‘We’ll pay for your trip, Janine.’

  ‘Nick, I can’t accept, it wouldn’t be right.’

  I knew better than to ask any further, knowing she would pick her time and place to talk.

  Port Vila is outside the malaria belt and we dined on the verandah, watching a full moon coming up over the bay. After a pleasant meal and while waiting for the maid to bring in the coffee and the brandy decanter, Janine finally said, ‘Nick, I’ve come across something that may be of interest. Our company is involved with police corruption in Melbourne. As you know it’s endemic; there can’t be a top-flight law firm in Collins Street that isn’t representing a corrupt police officer of one sort or another. Most of the accused cops are involved with the SP bookmakers, brothels or pub owners selling sly grog after the six o’clock swill. I sometimes wonder if there’s a straight policeman in Victoria! You may not know this, but the police control the cocaine trade, and heroin and amphetamines are as easy to buy in the lower end of Spring Street as lollies. Stan McVitty will occasionally get his hands dirty, but the crime work is usually handled by the other two senior partners. As you know, I work with Stan, and several days ago he was with a notorious property developer client and wanted me to send over a file that he kept in his personal safe. He told me where to find the key behind a legal book.’ She glanced up. ‘There are literally hundreds of these case law books in the firm and all he would have to do is to place the key behind a different one when he returned, write the title in a note to himself and stick it in his wallet. Nobody except him could find it. Anyway, this must have been a pretty urgent matter, so he told me the title of the book and the file he wanted.’

  Janine paused, then continued. ‘I suppose I’m as inquisitive as the next lawyer, but it isn’t my style to go sniffing about.’ She laughed. ‘It’s probably why I’m not a criminal lawyer. But looking for the contract Stan wanted I came across one called “Madam Butterfly Pty Ltd”. I don’t know why I was curious.’ She pointed to Madam Butterfly in the moonlight at its mooring on the bay. ‘Most probably because you’d told me about the boat and why you’d named it. Anyway, I pulled at the tape and opened it. It wasn’t too involved and quite short. The company articles established that it operated mainly in the entertainment and property industry. I wasn’t all that interested, but it was a nice title for that kind of business; Madam Butterfly, the Puccini opera, seemed fairly apt. But reading other documents in the file I realised the company was operating a brothel — or brothels — at the top end of the trade. The address of the property was at the upper end, that’s the expensive end, of Spring Street. Then I looked at the shareholders; one of them was the wife of a police superintendent with a ten per cent holding, another was Stan McVitty with fifty-one per cent, and the third was a woman named Anna Til, who had the remainder.’

  ‘Anna Til? It doesn’t mean too much, Janine,’ I said, perhaps a little dismissively. ‘As for the Madam Butterfly — as you said, it’s a good name for a brothel,’ I laughed. ‘Come to think of it, a bloody wonderful name, in fact.’

  ‘Nick, there’s more to it. I made a note of the address and retied the file, found the one Stan McVitty wanted and sent it off with one of the firm’s messengers. As you know, most legal firms have several private detectives on their books, usually retired police officers who were formerly attached to the CIB or the vice squad. We use them mostly in divorce cases, getting photographs of errant husbands in bed with the wrong partner. It’s a profitable part of every law firm’s business. I also handle divorce and have got to know one of our “privates”, as we call them.’ Janine grinned. ‘This one is named — appropriately for an ex-police officer in the vice squad — Rusty Weatherall.’ She pronounced it ‘weather all’. ‘Anyway, Mr Weatherall was in for a briefing concerning a Toorak client who suspected her husband had found a girlfriend. I asked him, quite casually, whether he knew about a brothel named Madam Butterfly in Spring Street. He laughed. “Oh yes,” he said. “Very classy. Not exactly a brothel; they deal in kinbaku.”’

  Janine cast me a quizzical look, then continued. ‘I’d never heard the term. “Kinbaku?” I asked Weatherall.

  ‘“Japanese bondage, sexual torture, a sort of Asian twist on what we used to call bondage and discipline,” he explained. “Very bloody popular among the silvertails, the judges, lawyers, you know — the high end of town. Why are you asking?” His left eyebrow shot up and he nodded his head towards Stan McVitty’s office. “Bit close to home isn’t it?” Well
, I ignored his implication. “What more do you know about it, Mr Weatherall?” I asked.

  ‘“Not much, its very discreet; whoever’s protecting the operators is fairly high up in the force. It’s never been raided, never appeared in the papers, not even in the Truth. It’s run by this woman, Eurasian, tall, an absolute cracker to look at — she’s got these amazing violet eyes. They say she’s as cold as a nun’s tit.”

  ‘“Spare me the intimate details, Mr Weatherall,” I told him. Then I asked, “Do you know her name?”

  ‘“Yeah, Anna — Anna Til.”’

  It was the repetition of the name that sparked recognition. I looked open-mouthed at Janine. I admit I was trembling. ‘I need a stiff brandy,’ I exclaimed. It had suddenly clicked and I could have backhanded myself at my sheer stupidity. Of course. Anna would have lost her papers, or had them confiscated. Coming out of Java as a refugee she could have been anyone she wanted to be. She’d decided to take the name of her old confidant, the becak driver, and use it as her own surname as a tribute to her murdered friend. Hence, Anna Til.

  I arrived in Melbourne three days later, booking into the Hotel Windsor on Spring Street, opposite Parliament House. I’d arrived in the late afternoon and although the room was comfortable, I confess I endured a near sleepless night. So much was tumbling on the endless conveyor belt that ran through my head.

  It had been five years since the end of the war, nearly nine years since I’d watched Anna’s tearful farewell as the Witvogel pulled away from the shore. I was twenty-six, nearly twenty-seven years old, and about the only thing that resembled the previous Nick — or Nicholas, as she’d insisted on calling me — was that I remained a passionate butterfly collector.

  My war had certainly had its occasional hairy moments, but from what I’d heard from Ratih and Kiki, these paled into insignificance compared to hers. Did I have any right to interfere? Renew our teenage relationship? Wasn’t I presuming far too much? ‘Cold as a nun’s tit’ kept reverberating through my head.