The Persimmon Tree Read Free Page B

sit on. I pointed to the stool. ‘Would you like to sit, Anna?’
    She sat, placing the basket she carried on the floor beside her, then adjusted her skirt, pulling it down to partially cover her knees, which she held together while her sandalled feet were splayed just as a small child might sit. Such had been my state of flummox that I hadn’t even noticed the basket she carried until the moment she’d placed it down. I sat on the edge of the iron cot so as not to appear as if I was standing over her. ‘Okay, so tell me, why have you come, Anna?’ I asked dutifully.
    She looked at me seriously. ‘I have cooked a nice dinner and apple strudel, the apple is only from a tin, and you didn’t come, Nicholas. My papa said you would come tonight,’ she added accusingly.
    ‘But… but he only invited me when we were on the boat and… well, he was a bit under the weather, so —’
    ‘Under the weather?’ she interrupted. ‘I do not understand.’
    ‘Sozzled.’
    ‘Sozzled? It means maybe drunk?’
    ‘Well, yeah,’ I replied, nervously wiping my palms down the sides of my khaki shorts.
    ‘ Ja , he is very sad man. He is not always drunk. But now he is going away, after two hundred years. It makes mijn papa very sad and so… ’ She didn’t complete the sentence but shrugged instead, suddenly dropping her lovely eyes and then slowly raising them, looking up at me again, silently pleading with me to forgive her father’s behaviour.
    ‘Yeah… must be pretty hard after all that time, good reason to… yeah,’ I agreed, finding no suitable words with which to continue.
    Anna suddenly brightened. ‘So I have now here dinner!’
    ‘What, here?’
    ‘Of course! I have come on mijn bicycle. It has a basket on the front. It is not so hard.’
    ‘But it’s dangerous! I mean to come out alone at night.’
    Anna laughed, dismissing any thought of danger with a flip of her hand. ‘ Ach , I do not look Dutch, only mijn eyes.’ She lifted the basket to her knees and removed the tea towel covering it to reveal a neatly folded, bright-red chequered square of cloth. ‘There is no table,’ she said, needlessly looking around the tiny room as she unfolded the small tablecloth.
    I pointed to the packing case that acted as a bedside table. It carried my books, a candle stuck in a chipped cup and a smallish wooden box containing my butterfly paraphernalia, the killing jar I used so as not to damage a specimen, and a small metal container of ethyl acetate. ‘Only this, will it do? I can move my stuff.’
    Anna shook her head and pointed to the worn linoleum. ‘No, a picnic! We shall have a picnic,’ she announced, placing the basket on the floor beside her, and without rising from the stool she spread the cloth on the floor at her feet. Thank God for the Dutch — even in these difficult times a maid washed the linoleum every day and the floor was spotless. Anna rose and from the basket produced two plates, cutlery, two freshly ironed damask table napkins and a cruet set with salt, pepper and mustard and a small jar of horseradish.
    Dinner was cold roast beef and still warmish roast potatoes. My unexpected dinner hostess explained that there had also been beans and pumpkin, but she didn’t think I’d like to eat them cold. ‘I am not so good cook,’ she apologised, adding, ‘The cook from always since I was little girl, her name is Rasmina, she has gone back to her kampong near Malang.’
    ‘You could have fooled me — this food is great, you’re a natural,’ I said, meaning it. After that she produced two fresh plates and a large apple strudel, and she once again apologised for using tinned apples. ‘Before the war they are fresh from Australia, but now not, only tins and no more also those. I hope you will like, ja ?’
    After two slices of her delicious strudel and repeated compliments from me on the pie and the picnic, Anna wrapped the remainder of the strudel in the tea towel and placed it on the packing