Hawaii by James A. Michener
“What do you mean?” he gasped, rising and walking with agitation to the door.
“You are fighting the kahunas, and Kelolo, and Keoki and Noelani, and even Dr. Whipple. In church you speak without benevolence. You act as if you hated Lahaina and all that was in it. You’ve even withdrawn from your children, so that Micah told me, ‘Father hasn’t taught me Hebrew for two months.’ ”
“I have been sorely tried,” Abner confessed.
“I appreciate the shocks you’ve suffered,” Jerusha said tenderly, pulling her tense little husband into one of the whaling chairs. “But if, as I think, we are here engaged in a tremendous battle between the old gods and the new …” She saw that this phraseology hurt Abner, so she quickly modified it. “What I mean is, between heathenish ways and the way of the Lord, then we ought to fight with our subtlest resources. When the old seems about to reconquer the islands, we ought to combat it with …”
“I’ve warned them all!” Abner shouted, rising from his chair and striding about the earthen floor. “I told Kelolo …”
“What I meant was,” Jerusha said gently, rising to be with her agitated husband, “that in these crucial times you ought to be calmer than usual, quieter, and more forceful. You’ve told me how you pointed at the evil three, Keoki, Noelani and Kelolo, and told them in turn. ‘God will destroy you!’ But you haven’t told me or shown me how with Christ’s gentle love you have tried to guide the people in these confusing times. I’ve watched you become increasingly bitter, and, Abner, it must stop. It is you who are destroying the good you have accomplished.”
“I feel as if I had achieved nothing,” he said from the depths of his spiritual humiliation.
Jerusha caught her husband’s passing hand and imprisoned him, turning his pinched face to hers. “My dearest husband,” she said formally, “if I were to recount your accomplishments in Lahaina it would take the rest of my life. Look at that little girl in the sunlight. If you had not been here, she would have been sacrificed.”
“When I see her,” Abner said with racking pain in his heart, “I can see only little Iliki, that sweetest of all children, being passed from one whaling ship to another.”
The words were so unexpected, for Abner had not spoken of Iliki for some time, that Jerusha, recalling her dearest pupil, felt bitter tears welling into her eyes, but she fought them back and said, “If in losing Iliki we impressed the islanders … and, Abner, they were impressed!” She stopped and blew her nose, concluding her remarks with a firm command: “My dearest counselor, you are to smile. You are to preach about great and lofty subjects. You are to win these people to the Lord with bonds of charity so profound that the islands will be God’s forever. You … must … preach … love.”
With this master theme drummed into his ears by Jerusha, week after week, Abner Hale launched into the series of sermons which completed the winning of Lahaina, for as he spoke of the good life and the effect of God’s love upon mankind, he found that whereas he had believed that the islanders had turned away from the Lord, following the example of Kelolo and his children, exactly the contrary was the case; for the common people sensed that in Kelolo’s reversion to the old ways there was no real hope for them; and Abner’s thoughtful, quiet words of consolation found their way into many hearts that had rejected his earlier ranting.
He preached a doctrine which was new to him … “The Holy Word of God as Interpreted by Jerusha Bromley, Modified by the Mysteries Encountered in an Alien Land.” He continued to hammer forcefully at man’s inescapable sin, but his major emphasis was now upon the consoling intercession of Jesus Christ. And what held his listeners doubly was his return to the tactic he had used as a very young man when preaching to the whalers on the Falklands: he addressed himself exactly to those problems which were perplexing his congregation, so that when he spoke of Christ’s compassion he said bluntly, “Jesus Christ will understand the confusions faced by His beloved son, Keoki Kanakoa, and Jesus will find it possible to love His erring servant, even as you and I should love him.”
These words, when they reached Keoki in the grass palace, shattered him and drove him to the seashore, where he walked for hours, pondering the nature of Christ, as he recalled Him from the early, secure days in the mission school at Cornwall, in distant Connecticut. Then Jesus was perceptible reality, and the eroding loss of this concept agonized Keoki.
When it was known that Noelani was approaching her time of delivery and that her child must be born before the next Sabbath, Abner took public cognizance of this fact, and instead of ranting against the circumstances in which the child had been conceived, he spoke for more than an hour and a half on the particular love Christ has for little children, and he recalled his own emotions at the birth of his two sons and two daughters, of his love for the child Iliki, who was now lost—for as he receded from the facts of Iliki’s disappearance, she became younger and younger in his memory—and of the joy that all Lahaina must feel that their beloved Alii Nui was about to have a child. Since Hawaiians loved nothing more than children, with whom they were gentle and understanding, the two thousand worshipers sniffled quietly during the last fifteen minutes of the sermon, so that without quite knowing how he had accomplished the strategy, Abner found that his words of compassion had quite won Lahaina away from Kelolo and his kahunas, whereas his earlier ranting had been driving the Hawaiians back to the old gods. It was with confusion, therefore, that Lahaina awaited the birth of its next Alii Nui: as loyal Hawaiians they rejoiced that their noble line was to be continued; as Christians they knew that an evil thing had been done by Kelolo and his children.
Noelani bore twins, and Dr. Whipple, after he left the grass palace, reported to his waiting wife, “We must prepare ourselves for an ugly moment, Amanda. The boy was a handsome child, but the girl was deformed. I suppose they will abandon her before morning.” And when it was whispered through the town that Keoki Kanakoa, with his own hands, had taken his malformed daughter, and had placed her at the edge of the tide for the shark-god Mano, a wave of revulsion swept through the town.
On Sunday the Lahaina church was jammed with nearly three thousand people, as in the old days, but on the way to service Jerusha said quietly to her husband, “Remember, my beloved husband, God has spoken on this subject. You are not required to.” And on the instant Abner threw away the text on which he was prepared to thunder, Luke 23, verse 34: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” and spoke instead from those majestic words of Ecclesiastes which had been much in his mind of late: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down.… All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.… The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.… There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come.”
He spoke of the permanence of Maui, of how the whales came back each year to play in the roads, and of how the sunset moved majestically through the months from the volcano of Lanai to the tip of Molokai. He referred to the whistling wind that could blow down churches and of the dead past when Kamehameha himself had trod these roads in mighty conquest. “The earth abideth forever,” he cried in soft Hawaiian, and Jerusha, listening to the inspired flow of images, knew that the hatred he had recently held for Lahaina was now discharged, for he passed on from the physical world that endures to the human society which occupies the world. “With all its imperfections it endures,” Abner confessed; but promptly he went on to his permanent vision of Geneva as it had been ruled by Calvin and Beza, and by suggesting many unspoken comparisons, he led his huge congregation to the truth he himself was seeking: some forms of human behavior are better than others; and at this point he returned to an idea which had, through the years, become a passion with him: that a society
“What did he say about the baby?” Keoki asked nervously, fingering his maile leaves in the old grass palace as his spies reported to him.
“Nothing,” the men replied.
“Did he rave about our sin?” the agitated young man pressed.
“No. He spoke of how beautiful Maui is.” There was a pause and the men explained, “He did not speak either of you or of Noelani. But at one point I thought he intended saying that if you ever want to return to the church, he will forgive you.”
The effect of these words upon Keoki was startling, for he began to tremble as if someone were shaking him, and after a while he retired with his confusions to a corner of his room, placing himself formally upon a pile of tapa, as if he were already dead, and saying, “Go away.” As his friends departed they whispered among themselves, “Do you think he has decided to die?”
The question was seriously discussed, for the Hawaiians knew that Keoki was tormented by doubts arising from two religions in conflict, and that whereas he had reverted with apparent willingness to Kelolo’s native gods, he had not easily cleansed himself of Abner’s God, and the incompatible deities warred in his heart. They also knew, as Hawaiians, that if Keoki ever decided to die, he would do so. They had watched their fathers and uncles announce, “I am going to die,” and they had died. Therefore, when one young man repeated his question: “Do you think Keoki has decided to die?” the group pondered it seriously, and this was their consensus: “We think he knows that he cannot survive with two gods fighting for his heart.”
ACTUALLY, the question was of no importance, for Lahaina was about to be visited by a pestilence known as the scourge of the Pacific. On earlier trips to Hawaii this dreadful plague had wiped out more than half the population, and now it stood poised in the fo’c’s’l of a whaler resting in Lahaina Roads, prepared to strike once more with demonic force, killing, laying waste, destroying an already doomed population. It was the worst disease of the Pacific: measles.
This time it started innocently by jumping from the diseased whaler and into the mission home, where immunities built up during a hundred generations in England and Massachusetts confined the disease to a trivial childhood sickness. Jerusha, inspecting her son Micah’s chest one morning, found the customary red rash. “Have you a sore throat?” she asked, and when Micah said yes, she informed Abner, “I’m afraid our son has the measles.”
Abner groaned and said, “I suppose Lucy and David and Esther are bound to catch it in turn,” and he took down his medical books to see what he should do for the worrisome fever. Medication was simple and the routine not burdensome, so he said, “We’ll plan for three weeks of keeping the children indoors.” But it occurred to him that it might be prudent to see if John Whipple had any medicine for reducing the fever more quickly, and so he stopped casually by J & W’s to report, “Worse luck! Micah seems to have the measles and I suppose …”
Whipple dropped his pen and cried, “Did you say measles?”
“Well, spots on his chest.”
“Oh, my God!” Whipple mumbled, grabbing his bag and rushing to the mission house. With trembling fingers he inspected the sick boy and Jerusha saw that the doctor was perspiring.
“Are measles so dangerous?” she asked with apprehension.
“Not for him,” Whipple replied. He then led the parents into the front room and asked in a whisper, “Have you been in contact with any Hawaiians since Micah became ill?”
“No,” Abner reflected. “I walked down to your store.”
“Thank God,” Whipple gasped, washing his hands carefully. “Abner, we have only a slight chance of keeping this dreadful disease away from the Hawaiians, but I want your entire family to stay in this house for three weeks. See nobody.”
Jerusha challenged him directly: “Brother John, is it indeed the measles?”
“It is,” he replied, “and I would to God it were anything else. We had better prepare ourselves, for there may be sad days ahead.” Then, awed by the gravity of the threat, he asked impulsively, “Abner, would you please say a prayer for all of us … for Lahaina? Keep the pestilence from this town.” And they knelt while Abner prayed.
But men from the infected whaler had moved freely through the community, and on the next morning Dr. Whipple happened to look out of his door to see a native man, naked, digging himself a shallow grave beside the ocean, where cool water could seep in and fill the sandy rectangle. Rushing to the reef, Whipple called, “Kekuana, what are you doing?” And the Hawaiian, shivering fearfully, replied, “I am burning to death and the water will cool me.” At this Dr. Whipple said sternly, “Go back to your home, Kekuana, and wrap yourself in tapa. Sweat this illness out or you will surely die.” But the man argued, “You do not know how terrible the burning fire is,” and he sank himself in the salt water and within the day he died.
Now all along the beach Hawaiians, spotted with measles, dug themselves holes in the cool wet sand, and in spite of anything Dr. Whipple could tell them, crawled into the comforting waters and died. The cool irrigation ditches and taro patches were filled with corpses. Through the miserable huts of the town the pestilence swept like fire, burning its victims with racking fevers that could not be endured. Dr. Whipple organized his wife, the Hales and the Janderses into a medical team that worked for three weeks, arguing, consoling and burying. Once Abner cried in frustration, “John, why do these stubborn people insist upon plunging into the surf when they know it kills them?” And Whipple replied in exhaustion, “We are misled because we call the fever measles. In these unprotected people it is something much worse. Abner, you have never known such a fever.”
Nevertheless the little missionary pleaded with his patients, “If you go into the water, you will die.”
“I want to die, Makua Hale,” they replied.
Jerusha and Amanda saved many lives by forcing their way into huts where they took away babies without even asking, for they knew that if the fevered infants continued their piteous moaning their parents would carry them to the sea. By wrapping the children in blankets and dosing them with syrup of squill, thus encouraging the fever to erupt through skin sores, as it should, the women rescued the children, but with adults neither logic nor force could keep them from the sea, and throughout Lahaina one Hawaiian in three perished.
In time the measles reached even Malama’s walled-in compound, where it struck Keoki, who welcomed it, and his baby son Kelolo. Here the Hales found the shivering Kanakoa family, and Jerusha said promptly, “I will take the little boy home with me.” And there must have been a great devil near Abner’s heart, for when his wife had the dying child in her arms he stopped her and asked, “Would it not be better if that child of sin …?”
Jerusha looked steadily at her husband and said, “I will take the boy. This is what we have been preaching about in the new laws—All the children.” And she carried the whimpering child and placed him among her own.
When she was gone, Abner found that Keoki had escaped to the seashore where he dug a shallow grave into which salt water seeped, and before Abner could overtake him he had plunged in, finding relief at last. Abner, limping along the reef, came upon him and cried, “Keoki, if you do that you will surely die.”
“I shall die,” the tall alii shivered.
Compassionately, Abner pleaded, “Come back, and I will wrap you in blankets.”
“I shall die,” Keoki insisted.
“There is no evil that God cannot forgive,” Abner assured the quaking man.
“Your God no longer exists,” Keoki mumbled from his cold grave. “I shall die and renew my life in the waters of Kane.”
Abner was horrified by these words, and pleaded, “Keoki, even in death do not use such blasphemy against the God who loves you.”
“Your god brings us only pestilence,” the shivering man replied.
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“It’s too late now. You never wanted me in your church,” and the fever-racked alii splashed his face with water.
“Keoki!” Abner pleaded. “You are dying. Pray with me for your immortal soul.”
“Kane will protect me,” the stricken young man insisted.
“Oh, no! No!” Abner cried, but he felt a strong hand take his arm and pull him from the grave.
It was one-eyed Kelolo, who said, “You must leave my son alone with his god.”
“No!” Abner shouted passionately. “Keoki, will you pray with me?”
“I am beginning a dark journey,” the sick man replied feebly. “I have told Kane of my coming. No other prayers are necessary.”
The incoming tide brought fresh and colder waters into the grave, and at that moment Abner leaped into the shallow pit and grasped his old friend by the hands. “Keoki, do not die in darkness. My dearest brother …” But the alii drew away from Abner and hid his parched face with his forearms.
“Take him away,” the young man cried hoarsely. “I will die with my own god.” And Kelolo dragged Abner from the grave.
When the pestilence was ended, Abner and Jerusha brought the baby Kelolo, now healthy and smiling, back to the palace, where Noelani took the child and studied it dispassionately. “This one will be the last of the alii,” she predicted sadly. “But it may be better that way. Another pestilence and we will all be gone.”
Quietly, Abner said, “Noelani, you are aware that Jerusha and I love you above all others. You are precious to God. Will you return to His church?”
The tall, gracious young woman listened attentively to these contrite words and for herself was inclined to accept them, for she had never taken the kahunas seriously, but when she thought of her dead brother her resolve was hardened, and she replied with bitterness, “If you had shown Keoki half the charity you now show me he would not be dead.” And it was coldly apparent that she would never return to the church … at least not to Abner Hale’s church.