The Persimmon Tree (56 page)

Now, to Anna’s surprise, Colonel Konoe addressed her while standing and without bowing. ‘I will see you tomorrow at lunch, but from now on you will be here in the afternoon as well. You will go home at five o’clock.’

‘As you wish,
Konoe-san
,’ Anna said quietly. ‘I will do my best to learn this second instruction.’

‘Yes, it would be best if you did, Second Vase.’ He paused and, looking directly at her, said, ‘It is why you are here.’ He bowed, ‘Ho!’; then, without waiting for Anna to return this gesture, Konoe Akira turned on his heels and limped away.

Anna bowed to his stiff neck and rigid, retreating back. She was suddenly very afraid.

She waited until she heard the sound of his car departing and made her way into the kitchen to find Yasuko. The
mama-san
was making rice noodles and greeted her with a serious expression. ‘
Anna-san
, there is a visitor for you, she is waiting in your room,’ she said.

‘Yes, thank you,
Konoe-san
has informed me of her presence. Who is she,
Yasuko-san
? The colonel just said a woman was coming to instruct me but did not explain any further.’

The housekeeper looked unhappily at Anna, then down at her feet. ‘She is
okami-san
,’ she said in a soft voice.

The title wasn’t new to Anna; the
okami-san
were the seven women who had been sent from Japan to Java and, on more than one occasion, if only obliquely and with a twinge of threat in his voice, Konoe Akira had referred to them.

Anna’s immediate fear was that her second instruction was going to take place in the Nest of the Swallows and the
okami-san
had been summoned to accompany her there. But then she realised it didn’t make sense. If this was what Konoe Akira intended, then why had he gone to the extent of tutoring her in Japanese or required her constant attendance at lunch, where his satisfaction at her progress in the Japanese language was readily apparent? Why would she be permitted to go home at five o’clock if all along she’d been intended for the officers’ whorehouse?

Anna, somewhat calmer in her thoughts, now asked, ‘Has she, the
okami-san
, come to fetch me? To take me somewhere,
Yasuko-san
?’

The housekeeper had been instructed over the past three months to only speak to Anna in Japanese. But now, in case the
okami-san
came downstairs and was within earshot, she changed to Javanese.

‘Fetch you? No, no,
Anna-san
, the
colonel-san
told me she is here to
instruct
you. That she will come every day and I must see that she leaves the house at five minutes to five o’clock.’ She smiled and attempted to adopt a confident tone. ‘
Anna-san
, these
okami-san
,
they are old women who are trained in formal manners. It is possible that the honourable
Konoe-san
wants you to learn their ways. The
okami-san
are the only ones who can do this in Tjilatjap. I myself cannot do this. I am a humble housewife who cooks and whose hands are raw from washing dishes and scrubbing floors. I have not been taught the noble art of keeping a man well satisfied with my presence.’

‘But he has said himself that I could never be a geisha. Not even a beginner, a
maiko
.’

Yasuko shrugged. ‘It is perhaps to learn just a few of their traditions? For example, they may show you the manner in which to serve tea. The honourable
colonel-san
is from a very old and famous family who are accustomed to different ways to show one’s respect and humility; the geisha, they know these ways.’

The housekeeper’s reassurances were comforting to Anna but she nonetheless felt a sense of foreboding as she mounted the stairs. Her room was large and comfortably furnished in the Dutch manner and had formerly been the principal bedroom. It had now been converted to include two easy chairs and a low table. The two chairs, in a room she had believed was exclusively her own, had always disconcerted her. She had been promised complete privacy and this had hitherto been strictly adhered to, with Yasuko being the only one entering to attend to her kimonos,
hadajuban
slips and
tabi
socks. Anna could only conclude that as the chairs were matching, the Japanese sense of order had designated that they be kept together, twins in the art of excessive upholstery. Now as she entered her room she saw that one of the chairs was occupied by a Japanese woman whom she took to be about fifty years old. She wore a
yukata
, a lightweight cotton, black kimono; on her feet were cloth-covered
zori
, and outside footwear with soles of lacquered wood worn without the white
tabi
socks, lest these be splashed in muddy puddles.

Tabi
always reminded Anna of the white socks she’d worn to school with shoes that strapped across her instep secured by a single bright black button. Then little schoolgirls had worn regulation twin plaits, each plait tied with a fresh ribbon every morning: white for Monday, green for Tuesday, blue for Wednesday, yellow for Thursday and pink for Friday.
Tabi
were not essential to wear with
geta
sandals, particularly in the summer heat, Yasuko had informed her. Anna on one occasion appeared without them at lunch, only to witness Konoe Akira’s temper flare.

‘Where are your
tabi
?’ he’d barked, pointing to her ankles.

Anna had dropped her eyes. ‘I am informed they are not necessary in this hot weather,
Konoe-san
.’

‘Informed? Who informed you?’ he’d asked in a peremptory tone.

Anna wasn’t going to implicate Yasuko. ‘Perhaps I wasn’t informed,
Konoe-san
.’ She’d looked up at him. ‘It was my own decision.’

Konoe Akira was not fooled for a moment. ‘Do not ever accept advice from that ignorant peasant in the kitchen! She was born here! She is not a proper Japanese! It is I who will decide what is Japanese custom and what is not! No one else! Do you understand, Second Vase?’

‘Yes,
Konoe-san
.’

‘You will
never
do this again!’ Suddenly consumed with anger he had reached over and grabbed the butterfly ashtray and dashed it to the stone floor, smashing it at his feet. ‘Never!’

Anna had screamed, then sobbed, ‘Oh! Oh, why did you do that?’ The butterfly ashtray had always been her talisman, like the Clipper butterfly I’d given her in Batavia. In her mind, it was yet another connection to me, a constant reminder at lunch each day of our love. After the colonel’s departure when lunch was completed she would push the ash and two cigarettes butts aside and touch the glass butterfly and say silently to herself, ‘I love you, Nicholas.’ Now it lay smashed in six pieces, although strangely it had not shattered in the manner of glass. Unbeknown to Anna it had been made of crystal. One of the largest pieces was about twenty centimetres long, tapered to a point and she observed it contained the thorax of the glass butterfly.

Anna witnessed how the Japanese colonel had winced a moment after he’d dashed the butterfly ashtray to the floor. She knew instantly that he was conscious of having destroyed something beautiful and this increased his fury. ‘You will not go about this house like a whore! You will always dress correctly!’ he’d stormed.

‘I am
not
a whore! I will do as you wish,
Konoe-san
,’ Anna had cried, chastened but at the same time defiant. ‘It is only a matter of cotton socks!’

The Japanese colonel had appeared to be momentarily taken aback. It had been some time since Anna had defied him. ‘You will also modify the tone of your voice,’ he’d said coldly. ‘You may count yourself fortunate that you are not a whore! Now, return to your room at once and put on
tabi.
You are not correctly dressed!’

On her way back to her room she’d met a frightened Yasuko. ‘I should not have told you about the wearing of the
tabi
! Now he will beat me,
Anna-san
!’ she had cried, wringing her hands in despair.

‘No, he won’t. He has destroyed the butterfly ashtray — his tantrum is over. He has destroyed something beautiful and he will now be sad.’ Anna had placed her hand on the
mama-san
’s shoulder. ‘
Yasuko-san
, do not throw the pieces away; it has broken neatly and I wish you to save them. Pick them up carefully, every little bit, and wrap them in a cloth for me to take home.’

The incident of the
tabi
and the ashtray had occurred a week prior to the arrival of her new tutor, or
okami-san
,
of the second instruction. Anna had taken the six pieces of crystal home, wrapped in a soft cloth, and had carefully fitted them together. Except for the almost invisible break-lines the butterfly ashtray appeared to be intact. She kept it beside her bed along with the box containing the Clipper specimen I had given her and kissed the box and touched the crystal butterfly last thing every night while pronouncing her love for the butterfly collector she was beginning to despair of ever seeing again.

Now as Anna entered her room, the elderly
okami-san
struggled to get out of the large armchair, her legs too short to reach the carpet. Even by Asian standards she was diminutive, and Anna towered over her. Anna was at once hesitant, not sure of the protocol involved. It was her room and the tiny Japanese woman had been summoned to the house; was she therefore the one to bow second? She decided on the universal custom of respecting age and bowed correctly and low. ‘Welcome, I am Anna,’ she said softly, her eyes downcast.

The Japanese woman bowed in turn and, in the tradition of saying one thing and meaning quite another, replied, ‘I am
okami-san
, my name is Korin, it means little bell.’ She bowed again. ‘I thank you for inviting me into your home and into this beautiful room. I will do all I can to pay tribute to the warm and gracious welcome you have shown me and I am humbled and greatly privileged to undertake the task you have given me.’

It was pure ‘Japan-speak’, a term Anna had coined and which frequently sent 2nd Lieutenant Ando into gales of laughter whenever she used it to complain about an obscure sentence that contained at least three possible meanings. Anna was aware that the
okami-san
knew she had not personally invited her, either into the house or into the privacy of her bedroom, and the
okami-san
also understood that Anna possibly had no knowledge why she had come, but only that she was to become a daily visitor.

The Japanese woman had previously occupied the chair Anna usually sat in and now Anna bade her be seated and sat down in the second chair. Anna told herself she was becoming too Japanese, she saw the new ownership of her usual chair as a sign that the little
okami-san
would attempt to be the assertive one in their relationship. She made up her mind that this would not happen. ‘Are you
okami-san
at the
okiya
,
Korin-san
?’ she asked, trying to make the question about the Nest of the Swallows sound like a casual and unimportant enquiry.

The woman smiled. ‘No, I am not one of the
okami-san
who are responsible for running the
okiya
,
Anna-san
. I am the seventh geisha, the seventh
okami-san
.’

Despite the fact that Anna had fleetingly thought she might be subjected to some undesirable geisha instruction in the Nest of the Swallows, she had gratefully latched onto Yasuko’s reassurances that it would be a matter of teaching her formal manners. She had expected one of the other
okami-san
and not the seventh, who she knew was responsible for training the young Dutch girls in the various ways of sexually gratifying the Japanese officers.

Even though she and Konoe Akira had grown much closer and to some degree had bonded, she still saw herself in terms of her Dutch and Javanese background. If her heart was Javanese her mindset was decidedly Dutch. While she was required within the Japanese colonel’s home to accommodate her captor in the behavioural mannerisms he demanded, her practical Dutch upbringing saw this simply as necessary to his male ego. After all, she’d spent her childhood trying to please her father. Anna regarded Konoe Akira no differently.

Anna now realised she had mistakenly convinced herself that she was doing everything she could to please her captor in return for retaining her chastity. When she thought of the Dutch girls her age who worked in the Nest of the Swallows she was more than a little grateful to him and aware that pleasing him by, among other things, learning Japanese and never appearing without
tabi
was a very small price to pay for the right to retain her maidenhood. However, with the knowledge that the tiny woman seated in the big cushioned armchair in front of her was the seventh
okami-san
,
Anna began to visibly tremble.