The Persimmon Tree (33 page)

‘What about the beaches near the estuary? When the boat came in I saw a long beach close by, a body could wash onto the beach,’ Anna said, anxious that the Water Police be made to understand that she wanted a thorough search.

‘I will tell them,’ the sergeant promised. ‘But now we have another problem. But only a
maybe
problem.’

‘No more money!’ Ratih cried. ‘Twenty-five guilders! They are robbers!’

Sergeant Khamdani ignored her. ‘If we find the body there is no coroner. He is Dr Van Tool and he left on the twenty-sixth, on the last boat.’

‘What does that mean?’ Anna asked.

‘This is a Dutch woman, she cannot be officially dead, you understand. You must have a coroner’s investigation, a verdict, then a certificate. Death by drowning, death by misadventure, death by violent means, murder, manslaughter, suicide,’ he ticked them all off on his fingers. ‘Only sickness when there is a doctor who can verify and write a certificate. Otherwise she is not dead until the coroner says so.’ He paused and shrugged his shoulders. ‘And we have no coroner!’

‘Nonsense, Ajun! If you find this woman and she is floating in the river and you fish her out, you can see she is dead. Even some places the crabs have eaten her. Anyone can see! If I cook a chicken I can see if it is dead. I don’t need a certificate to say this chicken is dead! What is this certificate? You are
Pak Polisi
! You can say she is dead. What is this nonsense? Who will argue?’ Ratih declared with vehemence.

‘It is the law,’ the police sergeant shrugged. ‘The law will argue. The law
must
have a certificate. You can’t have people going around, even the police, saying so-and-so is dead. “Dead” is official. A doctor or the coroner must say it, put on a stamp, “Deceased”, no more argument!’

‘What if she is not found — the body?’ Anna asked.

‘Magistrate,’ the sergeant said.

‘Oh my, what is this now? Magistrate? He must now say she is dead if they can’t find the body?’ Ratih said scornfully.

‘If we have a witness, a reliable witness, he can give a certificate.’ The police sergeant glanced over at
Kleine
Kiki. ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

‘Just thirteen, sir.’

The sergeant shook his head. ‘No good. Thirteen is not a reliable witness.’

‘So if we find her, she is not dead, even if she
is
dead, unless the coroner says she is dead and gives a certificate? If someone sees her dying, but isn’t old enough to officially see her dying, then she is not dead and the magistrate will
not
give us a certificate? Is that right?’ Budi asked. Anna grinned to herself — the boy wasn’t stupid by any measure.

Sergeant Khamdani sighed. ‘I know it is difficult, that is why we have to go to the police academy. Even then, it takes time. But after a while you understand how it all makes sense. A police enquiry is a serious matter and we must have rules of conduct.’

‘And if there is no reliable witness who saw the person who is dead actually die, then the person is not officially dead. If this not-officially-dead person is not found, what then?’ Anna asked.

The police sergeant smiled. ‘This is precisely what I have been trying to say all along. That is easy! Missing persons! Dead, maybe, but not officially, no reliable witness, that is a correct definition for a missing person.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of goodwill. ‘I can issue a Missing Person’s Certificate, easy. That is now a police matter and I am the police.’

Anna realised that it would be far better, all things considered, if her stepmother was never found. But she also knew it would prey on her father’s conscience forever. Even in a drunken haze he’d insisted on a tombstone. Besides, in a funny way, you are not dead in the heart and mind until there is a place where your bones or ashes reside, until the
dominee
, the minister,
has said the proper words and people have departed from the grave site with long faces and serious expressions. Commonsense, which is what the police sergeant was subtly advising, indicated that she should save the twenty-five guilders and allow him to give her a Missing Person’s Certificate.

‘How far away is the police launch? Can we walk?’ Anna asked.

‘
Ja
,
we can walk, it is only ten minutes,’ Sergeant Khamdani replied.

‘It is just after one o’clock. May I buy you all lunch?’ Anna smiled and turned to Ratih. ‘The Dutch half will pay.’

At two o’clock precisely Anna and the sergeant arrived at the docks to find the police launch waiting. Budi had returned to Lo Wok and his mother had left for the markets to prepare for the evening meal at the
kampong
. Anna sent
Kleine
Kiki back to the ship with the wheelchair and shopping, with instructions to remove the washing from
Mevrouw
Swanepoel’s portion of the ship’s railing. She gave her a one-guilder coin in case the fat frump and Jack Sprat had already arrived back on board.

The sergeant in charge of the launch asked her, ‘When did the body fall into the river?’ A curious way of putting it, Anna thought, although it avoided talking about her stepmother in the first person.

‘Yesterday, about five in the evening, maybe half-past five, no later.’
Kleine
Kiki did not possess a watch.

He thought for a moment, then drew Sergeant Khamdani aside and they chatted for a while, the land police sergeant frequently nodding to the other. Eventually he came over to Anna. ‘It is not worthwhile searching this area by the docks. Last night the tide would have taken the body down the river, perhaps already out to sea. But it is possible that it landed on the mudflats downriver by the two recent wrecks. That is where we will go first.’

‘And after that?’ Anna asked.

Sergeant Khamdani addressed the other water police sergeant who answered directly, ‘There is no “after that”.’

‘Can’t we search the river?’ Anna asked.

The policeman shook his head. ‘The body will be there or nowhere else. The bodies are always there, if they have not already floated out to sea.’ He made it sound as if the bodies as a group made up their own minds where they wanted to go. ‘We never find them washed up on a beach, they never go there,’ he concluded.

The launch took off downriver and against the tide. The water policeman explained that the incoming tide would cover the mudflats and the narrow draught of the boat meant they could get right up to the mangroves. ‘There are special places to look, places they like to hide.’ Again he made it sound as if the bodies, like elephants going to die, had a predestination, but cunning as they might be at hiding, he wasn’t all that easily fooled.

However, despite nearly two hours of searching in all the special places, the certain-to-find places, Katerina, as usual, was contrary and difficult and refused to be found. It was nearly five in the afternoon when they landed back at the docks in Tjilatjap.

Sergeant Khamdani seemed delighted with the result. ‘Now I can give you your very own Certificate of Missing Persons. If you like I can also put on it “Presumed dead”. The police can say that because it isn’t a worry to the magistrate or the coroner, because there is no certainty, you understand?’

‘Yes, thank you, Sergeant,’ Anna replied. She couldn’t fault him. He’d done all he could. It was a paradox: all the people who had been pleasant to her were Javanese and all the unpleasant ones had been Dutch.

Anna had one more task to complete before returning to the ship and so made her way to the
kampong
where Ratih cooked. She found her with a cleaver, standing at an enormous wooden chopping block and cutting chickens into bits to fry. Ratih looked up as she approached. ‘I have no coroner’s certificate, but they are dead,’ she laughed, pointing to the chicken pieces.

‘Ratih, can you give me a moment? It’s about Budi.’

‘Budi? He has misbehaved?’

‘On the contrary, he is a fine boy; you should be proud.’

‘What do you think, Anna, must I marry that
Pak Polisi
? The boy needs a father.’

Anna laughed. ‘He seems very nice, very honest.’

‘For a policeman, yes.’ She sniffed. ‘Budi’s father was a good-for-nothing. I sent him back to his
kampong
in Sumatra. Those people do not know how to work! They scratch their bums and want to be paid for the effort!’

Anna laughed. ‘There are Dutch like that also.’ She paused, her expression suddenly serious. ‘Ratih, Budi tells me he has left school?’

Ratih shook her head. ‘I am on my own. We cannot afford high school.’

‘What does it cost?’ Anna asked, knowing that one year of high school would entitle a Javanese boy to be apprenticed as a junior clerk.

‘Ten guilders a year, but then also with the Chinaman he earns thirty cents a week, that is another fifteen guilders, that is less than you paid those good-for-nothing water
polisi
!
It is a crime!’

‘Ratih, I don’t know what will happen to me, but if I get to Australia I will pay for Budi’s education. You must let me know your address. I will give you the money for one year at high school now. Will you promise to send him back to school?’

Ratih brought her hands up to cover her face and was silent for some time, then teary-eyed she said, ‘I promise, Anna.’ Then she added, ‘I think both halves are good, the Dutch and the Javanese.’ Anna peeled off twenty-five guilders from her father’s pile, now considerably smaller than it had been on the previous afternoon. Anna offered the money in both hands and it was accepted in the same way. ‘I think you have made up my mind, Anna. I will marry that
Pak Polisi
.’

Anna laughed. ‘You must feed him less, Ratih. You know what they say about a fat policeman!’

‘I will remember, Anna. Maybe I will tell him that the fried chicken he likes to eat must first have a certificate from the magistrate, hey?’

Anna thought, with a mother like Ratih, Budi couldn’t help but be intelligent.

Leaving Ratih and returning to the
Witvogel
, she found everything in chaos. People were running around on deck like headless chickens and there was panic everywhere. The captain had, only half an hour before, announced that he regretted the ship could not be repaired, that for the benefit of the men on board, it was a big-end bearing failure and crankshaft seizure involving the Duxford engine. The 600 passengers and crew were stranded in Tjilatjap. With the Japanese thought to be no more than a few days away — and, some said, possibly a few hours — there could be no escape from Java. He had advised that the ship’s crew would be on duty for only another twenty-four hours, then the ship would no longer be serviced and thereafter everyone would have to take care of themselves as the company had no further responsibility for their welfare. They must arrange to hire porters from the town to move their baggage at their own cost. There were lots of out-of-work dockworkers available, he’d added helpfully. Finally, he regretted the inconvenience.

Anna made her way back to the cabin to find the de Klerk women already packing while the bank clerk sat on the end of the bunk, slumped forward with his elbows resting on his knees, staring into space like a stunned mullet. Her father was snoring in the bottom bunk, oblivious to the goings-on, while
Kleine
Kiki sat in the top bunk with his laundry neatly folded on her lap. ‘What will we do, Anna?’ she cried anxiously as Anna entered. The de Klerk women looked up expectantly as if they too hoped for an answer.

‘I don’t know,’ Anna said. All she could think was that she must find a way to send me a letter to tell me she was not coming to Australia. ‘I must write a letter,’ she said softly, hoping the three women didn’t hear. But their ears were long since tuned to a level above her father’s snoring and the bank clerk’s wife laughed. ‘Yesterday we tried already to send a postcard to the Netherlands; there is no aeroplane going to Batavia and the railway is finished, the Japanese have the trains. There are no letters going out.’ All three women smiled, pleased that they could share this further bad news with Anna.

‘How is your stepmother?’ one of the maiden sisters asked.

‘They have asked me already,’
Kleine
Kiki said quickly. ‘I said she was sick and you had taken her ashore.’

The de Klerk sister pointed to the wheelchair. ‘Then why is that here?’

‘She does not need it at the moment,’ Anna replied. ‘
Kleine
Kiki brought it back on my instructions.’ It was, Anna thought, at least the technical truth; her stepmother certainly had no need of any further earthly transport. She didn’t like the way she was becoming accustomed to fibbing almost at the drop of a hat.

‘Good riddance!’ the second de Klerk maiden sister sniffed, looking down at Piet Van Heerden on the opposite bunk. ‘His drunken snoring is enough without her shouting.’

‘Is that all?’ Anna asked pointedly. Then she added, ‘As a matter of fact she is very ill and may die. Now, do you have any more questions?’

This failed to get a sympathetic reaction from the three women other than a despairing sigh from the other spinster sister and with it, ‘We may all soon be dead.’