The Persimmon Tree (60 page)

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 and 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.

‘
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 obvious 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.

So Anna decided to talk to Til. ‘Kiki cannot endure any more, Til. My father has become irascible and abuses her constantly, calling her a little brown bitch and a piece of you-know-what whenever she enters his bedroom. You must persuade Ratih to say to Kiki that she cannot manage without her in the restaurant kitchen. If I should tell her I don’t want her to come to the house, she will lose face and think I do not love or trust her.’

Til listened carefully and, for once, didn’t offer one of his Allah or Prophet aphorisms. Instead he said, ‘Anna, you are exhausted and I am much worried for you. Your father and the Japan colonel — it is too much caring for one person.’ He looked at her fondly, as a father might his daughter. ‘How long before your esteemed father will die?’ he asked.

Anna told him about the Japanese doctor’s prognosis and also about the morphine and syringe. How she had refused to let the doctor give her father an overdose and then his suggestion that she do it herself. Til looked at Anna, amazed, then he shrugged and said, ‘But, Anna, you must teach me how I must put in this needle and I will do it for you.’

‘But, Til, that would be murder. You would be guilty of murder!’ Anna cried in alarm.

Til shrugged. ‘The Prophet says, “A wise man will solve three problems with one stroke, but a foolish one will endure all three until they destroy him.” If I do this needle thing, then Kiki will not be required to come, you will gain some rest and your father will end his suffering. How can this be a bad thing to do?’

Anna thanked him but then said, ‘Til, it will not be long before he dies. I will be alright. Please, will you speak to Ratih about Kiki? She will listen to you.’

‘
Ahee!
That one, she only listens to Allah and then not always. Ask the lieutenant, ask Budi — when she has made up her mind she is the mountain that will not come to Mohammed!’ He grinned, then continued, ‘But I will try.’

A week later an exhausted Anna, despite an early
kinbaku
night, returned home shortly after 11.30 p.m. Piet Van Heerden awoke, heard her coming in and called out in a plaintive voice, ‘Anna,
kan jy kom
?’

‘
Ja
, Papa,’ she sighed. ‘I am coming.’

The bedroom stank of urine and Anna had to restrain herself from covering her nose. ‘What is it, Papa? Do you want one of your pain tablets?’ she asked. She had resumed calling him ‘Papa’ instead of the more formal ‘Father’ she’d adopted after reading his last will and testament and after he’d confessed to raping her mother. The resumption of the old familiar term seemed to be a genuine comfort to him, and she saw no point in remaining aloof or showing her disapproval of him in the final days of his life. Now he nodded, and Anna fetched the bottle and a glass of water and gave him a morphine tablet.

Anna then sat in the old chair beside his bed and Piet Van Heerden stretched out a trembling hand to hold her own. His big paw weighed heavy in her tired hands; still holding it, she placed it on her lap. It was such a large hand, yet she knew there was no strength left in it. ‘Anna, am I going to die?’ he croaked in a querulous voice.

It is a question most people avoid answering, or they reply with a socially accepted rejoinder, such as ‘We all have to die at some time, don’t we?’ But now Anna’s answer was forthright. ‘Yes, Papa,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to die!’ he sniffed, close to sobbing. ‘I want to go to New Zealand!’ He was still a young man, in his mid-forties, but looked twenty years older. ‘Please don’t let me die, Anna!’ he begged, as if it was within her power to save him.

‘Papa, you are
very
sick and in great pain; the doctor says you cannot last much longer,’ Anna answered. She did not like herself for being so direct, not knowing if she was doing the right thing. But she felt it was necessary he be given time to come to terms with his imminent death. ‘I can ask the doctor to give you an injection. It will take away the pain and you’ll simply go to sleep.’

He started to cough violently but eventually managed to croak, ‘No! Not that yellow Jap bastard!’ Anna had been right about not letting the military doctor administer the lethal dose of morphine.

She was silent for a while. Then drawing a deep breath she asked fearfully, ‘Would you like me to do it for you, Papa?’

She expected and hoped for a frightened look and then a panic-stricken refusal. Piet Van Heerden was a coward and his fear of dying she knew was almost absolute. But he didn’t react as she had expected, remaining silent for some time. At last he turned to look at Anna, and then slowly nodded his head. Anna saw tears roll from below the thicket of his fiercely tangled eyebrows. ‘
Ja
— please,
lieveling
,
I
don’t think now I will get to New Zealand.’

Although she could never have taken his life without his permission, now the thought of doing so, of having volunteered and received his permission, shocked her. She left the bedroom and sat silently in the kitchen with three morphine ampoules and the syringe on the table in front of her. Finally she gained the courage to fill the stainless-steel syringe, forcing herself to keep her hands steady and to restrain her tears. She returned to the bedroom hoping he might have changed his mind, but he silently held his arm so that she could apply the tourniquet and responded, albeit weakly, when she asked him to attempt to open and close his large fist. She was fearful that her hands would be trembling and she wouldn’t find a vein, even though she had never missed with Konoe Akira. She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.
‘Dank u, skatterbol
,’ he said quietly.

‘I wish you the Sublime Fourth Experience, Papa,’ she said softly as she found the vein and drew up a small amount of blood before pushing the plunger home. Anna waited the short period it took for his breathing to become ragged and cease.