The Persimmon Tree (61 page)

Her entire previous world was now gone. Anna had never felt more completely abandoned and alone. She was very, very tired; much too exhausted to weep for her father or even for herself.

She set the Japanese alarm clock beside her bed for 7 a.m. and collapsed into bed dry-eyed and almost beyond exhaustion. She wakened, seemingly minutes later, to its cheap clattering ring. It was late summer, but the early-morning tropical sun was still sufficiently hot at this time of the year and she knew she ought not keep her father’s body in the house for long. She must find Til, give him the money he would need, then ask him to take care of the funeral arrangements. Unlike Katerina, her stepmother, Piet Van Heerden would have a burial site and a tombstone, even though there would be no one but herself to weep at his grave — although Anna wasn’t sure she had any tears left.

She didn’t know if there was a
dominee
left in Tjilatjap who could conduct a service and burial, but thought she might persuade one of the padres in the internment camps to conduct the funeral. Perhaps it could be a repayment on behalf of the six hundred Dutch women, old men and young children imprisoned in the concentration camp who, one day each week, experienced ‘Anna’s Day’. This was the name Ratih had given the soup kitchen which she still ran at Anna’s expense. Anna had persuaded the Japanese colonel to allow a hundred people from the camp to come to Ratih’s
kampong
to be fed each day. It meant that each of the six hundred prisoners received a square meal once a week.

The soup kitchen supplemented the miserable diet deliberately imposed on them out of sheer bastardry by the Japanese guards, even though food was plentiful locally and available reasonably cheaply. When Anna had attempted to persuade Konoe Akira to allow Ratih to take over the purchase and the preparation of food for the concentration camp at the same cost to the Japanese, he had refused. ‘It is not official policy to feed prisoners well,’ he had replied, then added, ‘You already indulge them once a week, that is enough.’

Anna, despite feeling tired, felt she needed to walk to get away from the house and breathe fresh air, so she started out to cover the one and a half kilometres to Ratih’s. She found Til having breakfast with Ratih and he readily agreed to take care of the burial arrangements.

‘Anna, I will send Kiki to clean the house afterwards,’ Ratih added.

Anna knew that by the time she arrived home from lunch with the colonel, the body of her father would have been removed to a mortuary, the coffin purchased at a bargain price from a friend of Til, a place in the Dutch cemetery would have been secured and the gravediggers already at work turning the clods and digging down into the subsoil. Moreover the sheets would have been boiled and hung out to dry, the mattress on her father’s bed disinfected and aired, the house would be spotless and Kiki would be beaming, delighted to be allowed back.

At lunch Anna mentioned her father’s death to Konoe Akira, who surprised her by showing concern. ‘Where is he to be buried and when?’ he asked, then, ‘Will you be alone?’

‘Til, my friend the
becak
owner, will also attend,
Konoe-san
,’ Anna replied.

‘Humph!’ He thought for a moment. ‘I will attend,’ he said decisively. ‘Let me know when and where it is to take place.’

Anna was horrified. ‘But
Konoe-san
, you must not be seen with me in public!’ she protested, then for emphasis added, ‘It is against your own rules to be seen fraternising with the local population!’ The thought of the Japanese colonel attending Piet Van Heerden’s funeral was simply too bizarre to contemplate.

‘Ha! We will reveal him as having been our greatest collaborator and bury him with full military honours,’ the Japanese officer announced. ‘It will account for his not having been incarcerated or sent to Burma, and for your freedom from the Nest of the Swallows.’ He smiled. ‘A neat solution and one that will ensure you are not alone,’ he said, pleased with himself.

Ratih, with Kiki and Budi and, of course, Til, insisted on attending the burial despite Anna’s protests that it was not a good idea for them to be seen by the
kempeitai
to be associated with her. The lieutenant also attended, along with the police superintendent and the Mayor of the Squashed Hat and a dozen wearers of the Poached Egg armbands, who represented the local citizenry. The mayor, Onishi Tokuma, wearing full morning dress and his oversized top hat, delivered a hastily composed eulogy to Piet Van Heerden in Javanese. In it he praised the many dangerous exploits (while naming none) performed by the secret agent in the cause of freedom and liberation from the Dutch and named him a man of both conscience and great personal courage, who would always live in the memory of a grateful people.

And so it came about that Piet Van Heerden was given full military honours at his funeral, with a Japanese honour guard in attendance as well as the battalion band playing the Japanese national anthem. The locals henceforth treated Anna with a newfound respect. Furthermore, whereas the women in the concentration camp were forced to bow when a Japanese soldier passed, the soldiers now bowed as Anna passed them. Piet Van Heerden was regarded as a hero finally.

Anna waited until the brouhaha had died down and two months later placed a tombstone on his grave, carved, of course, by Til’s friend, at a special bargain price. On it she had caused to be inscribed:

Pietrus Johannes Van Heerden

1899–1943

Gone to New Zealand

The war continued for another year and a half, and around May 1945, while there were rumours that Germany had surrendered, there was no admission by the Japanese authorities that this was the case. The Japanese high command in Tokyo took great care to keep their troops largely uninformed about the general state of the war in the Pacific region, boasting of the successes while remaining silent about reversals. Japanese propaganda even proclaimed ongoing victories in Java and Sumatra — where there was no action and absolutely no resistance movement. Konoe Akira might have heard one or two rumours, but he would have had no notion that the first defeats for the all-conquering Japanese forces came in May 1942 with the Battle of the Coral Sea, then in June of that same year where, in the Battle of Midway, the Japanese navy lost four aircraft carriers and hundreds of their best and most experienced pilots. From that point on, the Japanese were no longer able to control the Pacific since, despite several tactical successes, their offensive capacity was crippled. In August the Americans landed on Guadalcanal, and the battle against the Australians for the Kokoda Track was reaching its climax. By November the Japanese forces were in retreat. By early 1943 the Japanese were fighting a series of defensive battles on the islands they occupied, Java and Sumatra being the exception. Towards the end of the next year they were under constant attack by air, and the American landings in the Pacific and the Philippines together with that of the Allies in Burma followed in early 1945, leaving the mainland of Japan to face the prospect of invasion.

It must seem improbable, but the command in Java actually knew very little about the true state of the war, and the local people knew even less. One of the first things the Japanese had done when they’d arrived in 1942 was to order that all private radio sets be handed in to the military. It was a severe offence to be in possession of a radio and anyone who was caught with one was accused of being an enemy spy. The punishment for being an enemy collaborator was well known and usually ended with a severed head on a bamboo pole being displayed in the town square.

This ban effectively prevented the locals and the Dutch in the concentration camp from hearing any Allied broadcasts. There was a dawning realisation amongst many of the more thinking locals that the initial promise of their own independence as a nation by the Japanese was very slow in eventuating. Some locals privately admitted to themselves that the Japanese, if anything, were more arbitrary in their authority than ever the Dutch had been, and that the oil reserves in Java, Sumatra and elsewhere in the former Netherlands East Indies were a more immediate priority to the Japanese than the advent of nationalism. Resentment was beginning to percolate among the middle class. If nationhood was ever to come to Java and Sumatra, it seemed increasingly unlikely that it would come about as a recognition of the will of the majority of the people, or as a result of any mandate from the Japanese. There was a growing realisation that their ‘liberator’ had a different agenda; one that was no less self-serving than that of the Dutch. It began to be acknowledged that if ever the Japanese kept their promise of self-government for the Javanese people, it would be because they no longer saw any advantage in maintaining control of the island. As long as the oil reserves lasted, it appeared to be highly unlikely that the Japanese control would be relinquished.

The Japanese war machine was stretched to its limits. Oil was the lifeblood of its Pacific domination; not to control its source was unthinkable. There were would-be leaders among the local population who, having helped to see off the Dutch, were now beginning to speculate that living under Japanese control might well be a case of ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’.

The leader of the Indonesian Nationalist Party was forty-three-year-old Ahmed Sukarno who, at one stage of his life, had been jailed by the Dutch in 1929 as a threat to public order. At the onset of the ‘liberation’ he’d cooperated completely with the Japanese and his party members worked with the Nippon forces, considering it a matter of prestige. But Sukarno now began to realise that the hand he’d shaken in welcome had turned into a fist that threatened to keep him down. He began to see clearly that, for as long as the Japanese were in a situation to win the Pacific War, there was very little prospect of nationhood. In July 1945 Sukarno, who was clandestinely listening to secret Allied broadcasts, sat balanced on a very wobbly fence, waiting to see which way to jump.

Budi graduated from high school and Anna gave Ratih sufficient money for him to attend university whenever that institution reopened. Ratih proved to be a good businesswoman and her restaurant prospered. Kiki became a fully qualified cook and opened a second
kampong
restaurant for Ratih in a different
kampong
where Anna purchased a small house for her. The lieutenant was promoted to captain, and Anna persuaded the colonel to allow an army driving instructor to teach Til to drive. She promised Til that whenever a good motorcar became available — a rare occurrence — she would buy it for him as the first taxi in what would assuredly, if it was the will of Allah, become ‘Til’s Taxi-car Fleet’. As for Anna, life with Konoe Akira changed little, as by her presence and ministrations she continued to attempt to assuage the demons within him.

And then, on a mild tropical winter’s day in early July 1945, Anna’s life with the Japanese colonel came to an abrupt end.

With lunch completed and after going through the usual motions of lighting his cigarette, Konoe Akira leaned back and announced that he would be returning to Japan to take up a post at the Japanese Military Academy. ‘I must do my duty, Second Vase. I am not permitted to disobey this order. As I have been promoted to the rank of Major General it is also a great honour for my family.’ He paused and Anna could see that he was struggling with his emotions. ‘Nevertheless, this is the saddest day of my life.’ It was as close as Konoe Akira had ever come to declaring his love for her.

Anna tried unsuccessfully to control her own emotions. She did not think she was in love with the Japanese colonel in a romantic sense, but she had bonded with him completely. If she had been questioned, she would have readily agreed she cared for him. She knew she would greatly miss him in her life since she was fully aware that, without his presence, her life would change completely. Now she sobbed softly. ‘When? When will you go,
Konoe-san
?’

‘In three days. I will go by boat to Singapore and then fly by military aeroplane to Tokyo.’

‘Has this been our last lunch?’ Anna asked tremulously.

‘Tomorrow, then the final evening as well. You will please wear the yellow kimono in the evening. Alas, it is the dry season and there are no frangipani blossoms. You wore one on the first day that you came for lunch.’ He sighed. ‘Ah, Second Vase, these days with you will be good memories to take with me.’ Konoe Akira rose in the usual way and Anna stood and waited for him. He bowed. ‘Ho!’

Anna bowed formally. ‘I am deeply grateful to you,
Konoe-san
.’

To her surprise he didn’t turn in his usual abrupt manner and limp off, but seemed to hesitate and then with his expression unchanged, pronounced the Javanese words ‘
Mugi-mugi diberkati
[My blessings upon you]’.
Such was her surprise that Anna’s eyebrows shot up and she looked at him open-mouthed. He smiled, almost mischievously, changing back to speaking Japanese. ‘When we have taken lunch tomorrow you will stay a further part of the afternoon. I wish to walk in the garden one last time and I have a small gift for you.’ He looked directly at Anna. ‘Do you remember the second vase I had arranged for the second lunch we had together?’

‘Yes,
Konoe-san
, the one with lots of different-coloured dahlias. I am named for it.’

‘Yes, that is correct. Do you recall what you said when I asked your opinion of my arrangement?’

‘No,
Konoe-san
, it happened three years ago,’ Anna confessed.