The Persimmon Tree (36 page)

‘Stay there, Miss Van Heerden!’ the mate commanded. ‘Don’t move, I’ll get some help.’ Several minutes later he arrived back with two dark-skinned lascars, one of whom relieved Anna of her dishtowel bag, slinging it onto his back and then taking
Kleine
Kiki’s basket as well, while the other took the handles of the wheelchair. ‘Step aside! Step aside!’ the first mate called out as he preceded them, parting the milling throng until they reached the gangplank. ‘They can only take you as far as the dock, then they must come back,’ the first mate instructed.

‘Thank you,
Mijnheer
Van der Westhuisen,’ Anna said, forcing herself to look directly at the ship’s officer. ‘We are very grateful to you.’

‘
Ach!
Now we are all in the same boat,’ he quipped. ‘With the Japs coming any time now, who knows what will happen to us all, hey? Tonight I go ashore as helpless to save my own skin as anyone else.’ He pointed to Piet Van Heerden. ‘Good luck to you all!’

‘And you too, good luck,’ Anna said, thinking she almost meant it.

Smiling, the first mate then said, ‘I suppose a little goodbye kiss would be out of the question?’

Anna stuck out her hand, forcing him to take it. ‘A handshake is all I can manage,’ she said crisply, not smiling. ‘Thank you again for your help.’ With this, she directed
Kleine
Kiki to follow the lascars down the gangplank to the dock below, walking behind her without looking back, her heartbeat steady as a metronome. Anna’s innate sense of power over men was back with her.

Arriving on the dock Anna tipped the lascars a guilder each, then found that she and
Kleine
Kiki were being welcomed ashore by a smiling Ratih and Budi, the latter having taken a day off from Lo Wok’s store. Budi thanked Anna profusely for allowing him to return to school, which he said would take place the next term. When Anna said it was a pity he’d missed the first term he shrugged. ‘I will catch up easily.’

Ratih nodded her head, confident in her son’s ability. ‘In school he was always in first place. He will soon catch up, you will see.’ Then she turned, waving to someone in the distance. ‘I have a
becak
for the bags,’ she announced.

The
becak
driver moved through the throng ringing his bell furiously for people to part. To Anna’s surprise it was the same old man who had taken
Kleine
Kiki and her to the airport. There must have been hundreds of
becaks
in Tjilatjap and she wondered if getting the wise old man who had quoted the prophet’s saying about women and tears was a good omen. Unlike most Javanese, he hadn’t credited the arrival of the Japanese as liberators, but knew there were many more tears in store for the nation’s women. ‘This is my uncle, Til,’ Ratih said. ‘He will help us.’

Anna smiled at the
becak
driver. ‘Ah! It is good, we meet again.’

The old man smiled, immediately recognising Anna. ‘Airport. B-17 letter! Colombo!’ he said, laughing. Then he added, ‘Your tears were very good!’

Anna threw back her head and laughed; the driver had overheard every tear-jerked word between herself and the colonel in the big American automobile. ‘That old one has ears like a jackass!’ Ratih laughed. ‘Some of the stories he brings back to the
kampong
, you wouldn’t believe it, you never heard such stuff before!’

Piet Van Heerden, sitting in the wheelchair with his chin resting on his chest, started to grunt. ‘This is
mijn
father,’ Anna said to the little Javanese woman and her son. The driver had his back to them and was busy loading the bag and basket onto the three-wheeler and so wasn’t involved in the introduction. Anna had not hitherto mentioned her father’s drinking to Ratih. As their own men do not drink alcohol, to a Muslim woman the effects of alcohol on a man would be scarcely understood. Ratih smiled down at the huge man in the wheelchair and putting her palms together she bowed, greeting him formally and respectfully in the Javanese manner, while Budi said ‘Good morning, sir’ to him in accent-less Dutch.

Piet Van Heerden looked up, ignoring them both. ‘Anna,
waar
is
mijn
Scotch
?
’ he demanded in a petulant voice. ‘
Waar? Waar?
I must have it at once!’

‘Papa, you cannot drink in public, this is a Muslim country,’ Anna replied firmly. ‘Wait a little longer until we find a place to stay,’ she said, having no idea if they would find such a place or how long it might take.

‘Ha! It still belongs to the Netherlands!’ Piet Van Heerden objected. ‘We are in charge here! I can drink
anywhere
I want to, these monkeys can’t stop me!’

Ratih, not understanding the language, saw how he was unable to control the shakes. ‘I think he is sick. Is it malaria?’ she asked sympathetically. ‘We must take him to the hospital.’

‘He is drunk, which is another type of sickness,’ Anna said quietly to the concerned cook. ‘If we can find somewhere to stay, where he can dry out, he will be all right in a couple of days.’ She knew this to be unlikely, for when Piet Van Heerden finally realised they were trapped in Java he would be much worse, trying desperately to drown his despair with the contents of a bottle.

‘But he is not wet!’ Ratih exclaimed, not understanding.

‘It is an expression,’ Anna explained. ‘It means if he stops drinking.’

‘Anna, we have a house! The sergeant has found one. I think it will be okay,’ Budi said, trying to contain his excitement.

‘It was the house for the police lieutenant who was in charge of the Central Town District Station,’ Ratih volunteered. ‘Now he has gone people have not taken it, because it is the house for the
polisi.
It is not big, only a house for a lieutenant. But we have cleaned it and that lieutenant, his name is Lieutenant Joost de Villiers, his wife she grows potatoes and so they have the money for the boat. He has left some furniture there and Budi has chopped wood for the stove.’

Anna could scarcely believe her ears. ‘Oh, Ratih, that is wonderful!’ She hugged the little woman and gave her a kiss. ‘Thank you, thank you!’ Then she did the same to Budi, who smiled and rubbed the spot on his cheek with the fingertips of his right hand where her lips had touched him. Anna couldn’t tell whether his expression was one of bemusement or if he seemed pleased. ‘Did you hear that, Papa? We have a house to go to.’

‘Scotch!’ Piet Van Heerden yelled out.

‘
Ja
, Papa, soon!’ Anna promised. ‘When we get to this lovely house.’

Ratih was a cook accustomed to dealing with truck drivers who smoked hashish that, they claimed, kept them awake and relaxed on long trips and so she wasn’t put out by the Dutchman’s sudden outburst. ‘I have cooked for you some food,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow morning Kiki will come over and help you to shop in the markets, she will only start with me to help in the
kampong
kitchen in the afternoon. She will stay with us, I have a spare mattress in my bedroom.’

‘And what will happen when you marry Sergeant Khamdani?’ Anna asked, laughing.

Ratih giggled. ‘
Ahee!
In his
kampong
he has a house bigger than mine, Kiki will have her own space I think.’ It was the second time Ratih had used
Kleine
Kiki’s name without the Dutch diminutive. This was a smart woman — the Japanese were coming; anything, particularly a Dutch expression, might lead to questions, whereas a cook’s assistant named Kiki in a local Javanese eating house wouldn’t raise the slightest interest.

‘Do you hear that, Kiki? I think Mother Ratih is saying it is best we dropped the “
kleine
” from your name.’

Kiki nodded. ‘It is alright, Anna,’ she said shyly. ‘I understand.’ Anna knew instinctively that she longed to ask if she could stay with her and still work as Ratih’s apprentice, but was too shy to ask. Much as she would have loved to have Kiki with her, Anna decided not to ask the cook. The sooner
Kleine
Kiki started her new life the better. There was no point in delaying it with the Japanese perhaps only hours away.

‘Scotch!’ Piet Van Heerden demanded, thumping the arm of the wheelchair. He was slowly becoming more sober and with it more irritable and anxious.

‘Can we walk to the lieutenant’s house?’ Anna, ignoring him, asked Ratih.

‘It is ten minutes along the river. Budi will push your father,’ Ratih said, then called to Til, who nodded and set off, his skinny, muscle-roped legs pedalling furiously. ‘He knows that house for the Lieutenant Joost,’ she said.

When they arrived Anna wheeled her father into the kitchen, leaving him alone and accompanying Ratih, Budi and Kiki to conduct an inspection of the house. It was a task that didn’t take them long. It had two bedrooms, a kitchen and small pantry, a bathroom and outside toilet, and a
balkon
ran the length of the front to shade the house from the sun. It was, to all intents and purposes, a very plain little house like hundreds of others, a basic design a builder’s foreman would knock up in his sleep. The house had been stripped of linen and anything the police lieutenant and his wife could conveniently pack, but the furniture remained. There was a large marital bed with mattress in the master bedroom and a single, also with mattress and an old batik cover, in the second smaller one. Anna momentarily regretted discarding the several sets of heavy monogrammed sheets her stepmother had insisted on packing, but then realised that the native market would be filled with discarded linen that she could purchase when she went shopping with Kiki in the morning.

When they’d returned to the kitchen Anna noted that Ratih had left her two pots, plates, some forks and spoons, tin mugs and a cleaver from her
kampong
kitchen. She glanced tentatively at her father, and saw that he was still in the wheelchair parked in the centre of the kitchen and had become incoherent with rage. ‘Scotch!’ he finally managed to burst out.

Budi said, ‘There is one more thing, Anna.’ He pointed to an unobtrusive trapdoor beside the stove and then pulled the heavy bolt and lifted it, using the neatly cut handgrip. Anna felt compelled to move over and look. A set of wooden steps led downwards. ‘See, it is a cellar!’ Budi announced, anxious to show her this architectural aberration in the plain little house. He began to descend the short flight of wooden steps. Anna felt trapped; she knew she must tend to her father but, at the same time, didn’t want to delay Ratih and Budi or to have them witness her humiliation at her father’s cantankerous behaviour. She elected to follow him into the cellar, knowing that she would have the remainder of the day to administer to her furious father, whose drunken behaviour was absorbing almost every moment of her life, and she felt a tiny sting of resentment deep inside her. ‘Soon, Papa,’ she called, trying to stay calm in the presence of the other three and then following Budi down the steps. Ratih and Kiki came too, not wishing to be left alone with the enormous apoplectic Dutchman.

The cellar could barely contain the four of them, and the ceiling was only just above Anna’s head. A tiny window set directly under the line of the ceiling created by the kitchen floor let in a soft light and could be opened if necessary to let in fresh air. Curiously, a tiny pair of neat canvas curtains hung from either side of the window and below that a shelf had been built to hold equipment so that it could be easily seen in the light coming from the window.

‘The cellar, it is for the potatoes. To store in the dark so they don’t start to grow,’ Budi informed Anna in a serious voice, proud that he knew something extraordinary about the mysterious habits of potatoes spontaneously sending out shoots if left in the light. ‘They have eyes,’ he said. ‘They grow from the eyes.’

‘Lieutenant Joost, his wife, she sold her potatoes to the other Dutch who do not always like to eat only rice,’ Ratih said. Then she added, ‘The sergeant he is getting some potatoes from Lieutenant Joost and I have tried to cook, but I do not like.’

Anna only half-listened, for above them in the kitchen her father was shouting. He must have managed to rise from the wheelchair and was stamping his feet on the kitchen floor. ‘Scotch!
Waar? Waar?
You
fokin’
little cow!’

The four of them emerged from the basement to find Piet Van Heerden standing, holding onto the edge of the kitchen table, his huge frame swaying dangerously. ‘
Fok
off, you black bastards!’ he shouted, pointing unsteadily at Ratih and Budi. Anna, in abject tears, hastily led them to the front door, all the while apologising profusely for her father.

‘It is all right, Anna. It is hard for him, he is sick,’ Ratih said, while Budi remained silent, his expression indicating that he was not as easily mollified.
Kleine
Kiki said a tearful goodbye, her eyes pleading to be asked to stay on to help Anna with Piet Van Heerden. But Anna knew she had to face her father alone. From this moment on he was her sole responsibility. ‘Don’t forget to give Mother Ratih your gifts,’ she called to
Kleine
Kiki, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘
Not
from me, from
you
,
Kiki!’ She watched as they all turned and waved from the street, then she turned in the direction of the interior where her father was bellowing like an angry bull. ‘Oh, shut up!’ she shouted, knowing he would not hear her but vexed beyond her patience level. Then covering her ears with her hands she yelled, ‘Shut up! Shut up! You horrible, horrible man!’