The Persimmon Tree (44 page)

‘
But the cleansing of your society is not yet complete.

In the community of Asian people there lurks a mutual enemy

who has robbed you and exploited you! An enemy who does not belong

in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, who is like an army of fleas on a dog’s back,

sucking its blood while contributing nothing but disease.

I speak, of course, of the loathsome Chinese,

who have forced you into onerous debt and demanded crippling interest

so that you are enslaved to them!
’

Konoe Akira

Colonel, Japanese Imperial Army, 5th Resettlement Battalian, Tjilatjap, 1942

ANNA, DESPITE THINKING SHE
could not sleep, nevertheless slept the sleep of the dead, too exhausted to remain awake. It is, perhaps, the gift of being seventeen years old, when the body and the brain decide that enough is enough, that despite everything, they will cooperate to shut down for a few healing hours. Young soldiers in the trenches in France during the First World War were said to be able to sleep through a bombardment, their exhaustion masking the fear and quelling the rush of adrenalin brought on by the shells exploding around them.

Anna wakened with a start to an urgent thumping and knocking. Glancing at her wristwatch she saw it was some time after nine, well past the time she usually rose. Bleary-eyed, she made her way to the front door, on the way passing her father’s bedroom, where he continued to snore. After his withdrawal he now slept until a later hour, seldom rising before 10 a.m., another way to cope with depression. She opened the door to find Budi standing on the doorstep.

‘Budi? What is it? Has something happened?’ she asked, observing the worried face of the thirteen-year-old.

‘Anna, there are two boats, a Japanese destroyer and a troopship. They came up the river very early this morning. They brought a battalion of Japanese soldiers and a detachment of
kempeitai.
At five o’clock this morning the band from the battalion played when they came ashore. The
lieutenant says
from now on the
kempeitai
will take charge and already they are rounding up all the Chinese merchants.’

‘Lo Wok?’

‘They have not yet found him. He is hiding in our
kampong
with my mother. But we cannot keep him, the others will soon inform the
kempeitai
.’

‘And his wife and child?’

‘No, only the men, the shopkeepers, the important ones, the triads and the communists, they want their money. Lo Wok sent his wife and the little girl to the mountains last week. He is not important. But the lieutenant says when they have their money they will kill them. Then they will kill all the other Chinese men. The Japanese, they hate the Chinese. Mother says I must ask you.’

‘Ask me? Ask me what?’

‘Will you hide Lo Wok in your cellar?’ Budi saw the look of hesitation in Anna’s eyes and quickly added, ‘He has saved my mother’s life once. He paid the ambulance and the doctor and hospital when she burst her — her stomach.’ He touched his right side close to his groin.

‘Appendix?’

‘Yes, otherwise she would die. The doctor said so. The lieutenant says this house, it is in the police compound, the Japan police, the
kempeitai
, they will not look here,’ Budi urged.

‘The mattress down there, it smells awful!’ Anna cried, unable to think, then added, ‘Where is he now?’

Budi turned to look at the gate. ‘Til, he has him.’

‘Here? In his
becak
?’

‘It has a curtain,’ Budi replied. Anna remembered the
becak
had a curtain that unrolled from the canvas sunhood to offer protection from the rain or privacy if a passenger wished not to be seen. Til called it his ‘brothel curtain’. A rich and important man travelling to see his mistress would draw less attention if he arrived in a
becak
. Til was known to keep his mouth shut and this method of transporting mistresses or a married lover was a lucrative part of his business.

Without waiting for Anna to say any more, Budi brought two fingers to his lips and whistled sharply. Moments later Til drove up to the gate with the canvas curtain concealing the top half of Lo Wok. Budi ran to open the gate that was only just wide enough to allow the
becak
to enter.

Til, grinning, pedalled up the short garden path to the door. ‘Ratih and our family, we are very grateful, Anna. We know it is asking very much. But a debt of life can only be paid with a debt of life — anything less is not full payment. Ratih says Kiki will bring all the food and maybe, after a while, we can find a way for him to escape to Malaya if he has enough money. The Chinese have fled into the jungle to fight with some British who could not escape when the Japanese came.’

The curtains parted and Lo Wok’s frightened face appeared. ‘
Ahee!
Ten thousand thanks, Missy Anna. I must pay! It is your turn now,’ he said, anxiously reaching into his trouser pocket.

Anna took this to mean that the Chinaman saw that he was in no position to bargain and that she held the advantage and would naturally expect him to pay through the nose for his concealment. Anna shook her head, refusing. ‘I do not want your money, Lo Wok. But if you give Til sufficient to buy you a mattress at the markets you will benefit greatly.’ She grinned. ‘The mattress in the cellar smells like a latrine.’ Then she cautioned, ‘Better come inside, there are always eyes.’ Despite her acquiescence she knew instinctively that she was making a dangerous decision, one that could greatly jeopardise the position of her father and herself.

Lo Wok stepped quickly from the
becak
into the sunlight and then as quickly into the comparative shadow of the enclosed verandah, Budi and Til immediately following. Anna then led the way to the kitchen, where Til informed the Chinaman of the price of a mattress if he bought it from his good friend, assuring Lo Wok he would be getting the best possible deal combined with the highest quality. ‘Guarantee one year. The springs so soft like a massage woman.’ Lo Wok peeled off the notes needed from a bundle. Anna saw that it was not very thick and seemed not to contain any notes of a large denomination. The Chinaman added two guilders as a tip. Til thanked him for his generosity, but handed back the two single-guilder notes, protesting that it was unnecessary. ‘Allah smiles when a good turn is returned by men who take pleasure in the act of returning,’ he said in one of his more convoluted observations. Lo Wok looked bemused, as if he had never experienced anyone unnecessarily returning money.

‘While you are here do you think we can remove the old mattress from the cellar?’ Anna asked and then turned to Til. ‘It smells pretty bad. Will you take it and throw it away somewhere?’

Budi opened the trapdoor and she asked him to bring down one of the kitchen chairs while she quickly gathered a packet of candles and a box of matches, a fork and spoon and a towel. She pointed to a basin and jug and asked Lo Wok to bring them down with him. To Til, she indicated a chamber-pot; it was no embarrassment for a Javanese to carry and as common a household object as any other. With the chamber-pot she handed him a dishtowel. They descended the stairs and Lo Wok was introduced to his semi-dark new home. Anna opened the little window to let in fresh air, meanwhile explaining to him that if danger existed, she would bring his food and water to the window. ‘At night, when you light a candle, make sure the curtain is drawn,’ she cautioned.

‘It is much better I think if we move the stove over the trapdoor, Anna?’ Budi said. ‘If the Japanese police come they won’t see it. The chimney pipe needs only to be moved a little sideways,’ he explained. Anna thought again that for a boy of thirteen he was remarkably clear-headed and observant.

Lo Wok immediately agreed that she mustn’t take any chances and he would remain concealed. ‘I stay here, Missy Anna. I will not come out. Maybe you use that window for everything. To put the stove there, that is
good
idea,’ he added emphatically.

‘You will go crazy down here alone, Lo Wok,’ Anna warned.

Lo Wok shrugged. ‘It is better to be alone in a dark cell than dead in the light. I am grateful.’

They proceeded to roll up the mattress and, not without some difficulty, got it up the wooden steps. It still carried a pretty powerful scent mixed with the strong smell of disinfectant where Anna had wiped it down, soaking the worst parts. Once upstairs, Til declared, ‘It is a good mattress for a poor person to have, they will clean it. It has many dreams left in it yet.’

Anna wondered to herself how many more dreams Lo Wok and, for that matter, she and her father, might have before the
kempeitai
discovered them. They had been left alone by Lieutenant Mori’s pathetic platoon of lethargic cyclists, for many of his soldiers were suffering from various tropical infections contracted over the weeks of moving down the Malayan peninsula and then across to Java. The engineer, Major Masahiro Eiji, was only interested in getting the port facility working properly and had made no effort to find the Dutch refugees and, to the surprise of the locals, had purchased rather than simply demanded all the food he needed for his battalion. But now, if the
kempeitai
were as Til and Lieutenant Khamdani had described them, and if the raid on the Chinese merchants was any indication, the days of the Dutch waiting for something to happen were over.

Lo Wok was safely hidden, the stove moved over the trapdoor and Budi and Til had departed when Piet Van Heerden finally emerged from his bedroom carrying the tin box. He grunted a cursory ‘Good morning’, his eyebrows a thicket of concern as he frowned and then sat down at the table while Anna brought him a cup of coffee. He brought the cup to his lips, sipped briefly and then put it down. Anna reached into her shoulder bag that was hanging on the back of a chair and silently handed him the key. He unlocked the tin and withdrew the two little packets containing the diamonds. ‘Here, I don’t want any further nonsense, I want you to have these,’ he said, placing the tiny packets on the table. ‘I can see the wax seals are broken, so you’ve already seen them,’ he added in an attempt to exert his authority.

‘I told you, I don’t want them,’ Anna said, not raising her voice.

Piet Van Heerden brought his fist down hard against the surface of the table. ‘Stupid! Until now I did not take you for a bloody fool!’

‘Father, in a few days we may both be dead or interned. The
kempeitai
are here, they arrived early this morning. They are already rounding up the Chinese merchants and taking their money. The lieutenant says after they have it, they will kill them all.’ Anna pointed to the two envelopes. ‘What do you think they would do to me, to us, if they found those?’

Her father seemed to take the news of the
kempeitai
in his stride. ‘Sooner or later they had to come,’ he said. ‘Money is one thing, you can bury it, but you can’t conceal it on your person.’ He paused, looking directly at Anna, then gave a little shrug. ‘Diamonds are quite another.’

‘Oh? And why is that?’ Anna asked, not understanding.

‘Because God gave a man only one hole and it’s full of you know what, but to a woman he gave two, one at the back and the other at her front, the one at the back is only the next-best pouch.’

Anna blushed furiously. ‘Father! You don’t mean…? Yes, you do!’

‘You must think of a way, it is an excellent hiding place.’ He picked up the two small packets and handed them to her.

This time Anna didn’t refuse them. ‘Thank you, father,’ she said, accepting, her cheeks still flushed with embarrassment.

‘It is a matter of survival,’ Piet Van Heerden said simply.

‘Yes, I understand,’ Anna replied softly.

Her father abruptly changed the subject and said, smiling, ‘The Chinese, hey? They are the first. The merchants, they have all the money. The locals will not object if they are killed. Many of the natives will owe money, now they will have no debt, no interest to pay. The day of retribution has arrived.’ He grinned. ‘About time too, they’re all bloodsuckers!’ Without looking up to see the expression of disapproval on Anna’s face, he reached over and took a wad of notes from the tin. ‘Keep this, but you must only carry sufficient money on you for our needs. In case you are searched,’ he added.

‘These notes are five hundred guilders each. Who will cash one?’ Anna sniffed.

‘The Chine— Oh — yes, of course,’ he retracted.

Anna sat down, holding the two small envelopes in her hand. ‘Father, we have another Chinese problem.’

‘What? What Chinese problem? If they’re all dead it doesn’t matter. China has millions more.’

Anna told him about Lo Wok, stressing that he was the Chinese merchant who had supplied the Scotch and the brandy, but not telling him the real reason for offering him shelter — that the Chinaman had saved Ratih’s life when her appendix had burst. Anna knew her racist father would think this unrelated act of kindness was even less reason to place them in jeopardy.

‘Are you out of your mind, you stupid girl?’ Piet Van Heerden asked. Then he started to shout, ‘He must go! Out! You hear? Out! Now!’