Hawaii by James A. Michener
The Kilauea sounded its whistle. The white goats sprang higher up the cliff sides. And Nyuk Tsin stood with her husband Mun Ki as their son Australia vanished; but all who stood with them watching the ship go, knew that no matter where the child was taken, or to whom, it was better off than it would have been on Kalawao.
IN THE SEVENTH MONTH of their stay on Kalawao, the depredations of Big Saul and his cronies finally threatened the Chinese, because Nyuk Tsin was recovered from her pregnancy. Therefore, the men began to study her, saying among themselves, “A man could have a good time with her, and she’s not diseased at all.”
Accordingly, three of them swooped down one night on the grassy shack and grabbed for Nyuk Tsin. But she and her husband had long ago prepared themselves for this event, and the invaders were met by two fighting Chinese armed with sharply pointed sticks. It was a bitter, silent fight, with doomed Mun Ki rising from his bed of leaves to battle desperately with Big Saul, while Nyuk Tsin, with pointed sticks in her hands, slashed and jabbed at the other two.
Once she was caught around the waist by arms that had only fragmentary hands, and she could smell the foul breath of a leper dragging her to him, but she jabbed backward with her sticks, and he screamed with pain and released her. Now there were two Chinese against two invaders, and like a jungle animal she instinctively ignored her own assailant and sprang for the jugular of Big Saul, the leader, and with great force she jabbed her remaining stick at the side of his head and it must have struck either his ear and gone in there or the soft part of his temple, for it pressed inward … long and sharp and pleasingly. At the same time Mun Ki ripped upward with his sharp stick, and Big Saul gasped.
Clutching his two vital wounds, he staggered away into the night and began shouting, “The Pakes have killed me!” This diverted his unwounded helper, who ran to assist his chief while the third man stumbled in the darkness with three inches of stick protruding from his left eye.
“The Pakes have killed me!” Big Saul bellowed, and he awakened all the community, so that by the time he actually did stagger mortally wounded into a circle of torches, all who could walk were present to witness his gasping, clutching death. Silently they withdrew from the ugly corpse. There were few who had not suffered at the hands of Big Saul, and now that they saw his leprosy-riddled body in the dust, they were content to leave him. His blinded crony slipped away into the night, and silence fell upon the lepers of Kalawao.
For the two Chinese it was a dreadful night. They could not know that the community at large approved the death of Big Saul and the blinding of his bully companion. They could not know, huddling alone together in the dark night, that no one in Kalawao was ignorant of how the huge man had met his death: “He went to rape the Pake girl, and her husband killed him. Good for the Pake.”
Toward morning it began to rain, and the mournful drops, falling upon the leafy roof and creeping across the floor, first in tiny traces and finally in a small river, added to the misery, and Nyuk Tsin whispered to her shivering companion, “We did the right thing, Wu Chow’s Father. The others should have done this years ago.”
“Have we any sticks left?” Mun Ki asked
“I lost both of mine,” his wife confessed.
“I have one left, and there’s another hidden under the leaves. I think that when they come to seize us in the morning, we should fight until we are dead.”
“I think so, too,” Nyuk Tsin replied, and she went to the corner of the miserable hut and from the muddy earth picked up the other weapon. In the lonely silence, not knowing when Big Saul’s men would re-attack, they waited, and Nyuk Tsin said, “I am glad, Wu Chow’s Father, that I came with you. I am humbly honored that tonight you fought to help me.”
“I have forgotten that you are a Hakka,” he replied.
The rain increased, and for a moment the couple thought they heard the noise of lepers assembling to attack them, but it was only the rustle of water down the sides of the cliff, so Nyuk Tsin asked, “Do you forgive me for my ungainly feet?” And her husband replied, “I don’t see them any more.”
They huddled together in the cold, dark night and Mun Ki said, “You must promise, Wu Chow’s Auntie, that if you ever escape from here, you will be sure to send my real wife in China as much money as possible.”
“I promise,” Nyuk Tsin replied.
“And you must enter my boys’ names in the village hall.”
“I will do so.”
“And when you send the news to the hall, you don’t have to mention that you are a Hakka. It would embarrass my wife.”
“I will not say anything to the letter-writer,” Nyuk Tsin promised.
“And you must promise to bury me on the side of a hill.”
“I shall, just as if we were in China.”
“And you must promise to bring my sons to honor my grave.”
“I shall do so,” Nyuk Tsin agreed, and Mun Ki said, “When dawn comes we will die, Wu Chow’s Auntie, and the promises you have made mean nothing, but I feel better.” Through the long, rainy night they waited and when the gray, cold dawn arrived, Mun Ki the gambler said, “Let’s wait for them no longer. Let’s march out to meet them.” And the two Chinese left the foul grass lean-to, each with a jagged, sharp piece of wood in his right hand.
It was with horror that they saw, slumped in the rain-filled path, the dead body of Big Saul, for they knew that this doomed them to retaliation from the others of the gang, but as they cautiously approached the village, their sticks ready for the final fight, they saw with amazement that the Hawaiian lepers did not draw back in enmity, but moved forward in conciliation, and slowly the deadly sticks were lowered and at last the two Chinese stood surrounded by dying men and women who said, “You did a good thing.” And one woman who had been sadly abused by Big Saul and his gang, but who had stubbornly refused to go insane, said quietly, “We are determined that Kalawao shall be a place of law.”
The resurrection of this dreadful lazaretto, where for six years condemned human beings had been thrown upon the beach to die without a single incident of assistance from the society that had rejected them, dated from that morning when the determined woman whose spirit had not been broken by leprosy, or rape, or indignities such as few have known said solemnly, “Kalawao shall be a place of law.”
A rude organization was evolved, consisting of people responsible for parceling out the food, a team to bring water into the village, and informal policemen who were to stop the aimless rape of unprotected women. Girls who arrived on the beach unattached were ordered to pick a man quickly, and to stay with him; and when a young wife argued: “But I am married, and I love my husband,” older women told her sternly, “You have left the world. You are in a waiting station for hell. Pick a man. We warn you.” So some women passed in turn from one dying man to another, but in an orderly fashion and not according to the rule of rape.
Children, banished without their parents, were given to kokuas who took them as their own, and fed them. And one law was paramount: when an old man or an old woman was clearly about to die, he must no longer be left in the open fields; he must have some kind of shelter.
Even when the settlement thus disciplined itself, the government in Honolulu gave little help. Lepers were still thrown upon the beaches to die, and there was no medicine, no lumber, no consolation. But in mid-1871 a Hawaiian who had read many books arrived in the lazaretto, and he launched a more formal government, one of whose first decisions was that the two Chinese must no longer be banished to the foot of the cliff but must be allowed to live among the others. This decision was applauded among the lepers, since it was generally agreed that the coming of limited humanity to Kalawao dated from the night when Mun Ki decided to protect his wife from the rapists, or die. A rude hospital was started, with no doctors but with leper nurses; and women who could read opened a school for children born in the lazaretto. A committee begged the government to send regular supplies of food—five pounds of fresh meat a week for each inmat
There were, of course, still no organized houses in the leper settlement, and over half the afflicted people slept year after year under bushes, with no bedding and only one change of clothing. These naturally died sooner than even the ravages of leprosy would have dictated, and perhaps this was a blessing, but even the most horrible crawling corpses somehow longed for homes of their own, a shack with a grass roof where they could preserve the illusion that they were still human beings.
Therefore, in June, 1871, Nyuk Tsin, after five weeks of living inside the community, but on the bare ground, decided: “Wu Chow’s Father, we are going to build ourselves a house!” Her shattered husband had already begun to lose his toes and fingers and could not be of much help, but she made believe that it was he who was doing the work, and to keep his interest focused on the future, she discussed each step of the building with him. Daily she trudged to a ruined Hawaiian house built a century before and hauled back heavy stones, standing with them in her arms while he decided exactly where they should be placed. In time a wall was built, and the two shivering Chinese had at least some protection from the winds that howled across Kalawao in the stormy season.
Next she sought the ridgepole and the few crossbeams that were essential for the roof, but this was a difficult task, for the government in Honolulu had consistently forgotten to ship the lepers expensive lumber, which had to be imported all the way from Oregon; for although the leaders of the state were practicing Christians and although their consciences bled for the lepers, they instinctively thought: “Those with mai Pake will soon be dead. Why, really, should we waste money on them?” So to get her precious timbers Nyuk Tsin stationed her husband along the shore, where he prayed both for the arrival of driftwood and for the speed to grab it before someone else did. Once he hobbled proudly home with a long piece of timber, and the ridgepole of the roof was slung into place. Now, when the two Chinese lay in their house abuilding, they could look up through the storm and see that promising ridgepole and think: “Soon the rains will be kept away.”
While her husband guarded the shore, Nyuk Tsin taught herself to climb the lower cliffs that hemmed in the leper peninsula, and after a while she became as agile as a goat, leaping from one rock to another in search of small trees that could be used as crossbeams; but goats had roamed these cliffs so long that few trees survived where once forests had stood; but wherever the agile Chinese woman spotted a fugitive she climbed for it, as if she were racing the goats for treasure.
These were days of alternate exhilaration and despair. It was good to see Mun Ki taking an active interest in life, such as it was, and Nyuk Tsin often felt a surge of personal pride when she uprooted a tree high on the cliffs; but in the afternoons when the couple gathered pili grass and braided the panels for their future roof, exasperation would overcome them, and Mun Ki often cried, “We have the grass panels finished, but nowhere can we find the crossbeams on which to tie them.” Those were the days when the missionary advisers to the king, in Honolulu, argued: “We must not waste money on Kalawao.”
One day a whole board, long enough if carefully split to provide crossbeams for an entire roof, washed ashore from some distant wreck, and for a moment Mun Ki thought that he had secured it for himself, but a big man named Palani, whose feet were still sound, rushed down and captured it. So the Chinese continued to sleep under the open roof, with the rain upon them night after night; but they were luckier than many, and they knew it, for they had side walls to protect them from the wind; they had the solid ridgepole of their roof; and they had the pili-grass panels finished and waiting to be slung into position.
More, they had a rude kind of spiritual peace. Mun Ki, sitting on the rocks by the sea, waiting for driftwood, often looked toward the cliff where his sure-footed wife risked her life daily in search of timber, and a change came over him. He was not aware of it, but Nyuk Tsin began to sense that her husband no longer felt inwardly ashamed of her Hakka strength. Once he had even gone so far as to admit grudgingly, “I watched you climbing on the high rocks. I would be afraid to climb there.” This gave her much consolation, but the spiritual repose derived principally from another development. As long as the two Chinese had been total outcasts, even among the lepers, there had been a kind of enforced loyalty between them, for if either fought with the other, there was truly no hope left, so they were bound together by bonds of ultimate despair. But now that they were accepted into the full community, and were recognized for the prudent, loyal people they were, they were free to be ordinary people, husband and wife, and they could argue about how the house should be built, and sometimes Mun Ki, his patience strained by his stubborn Hakka wife, would stomp off in anger, hobbling on his toeless feet to the beach, where he would sit with dying Hawaiian men and confess to them: “No man can understand a woman,” and the suffering men would recount their defeats at the hands of women. Then, when the day was done, he would hobble back to his home and wait for Nyuk Tsin, and when he heard her coming his heart was glad. At one such conciliation he confessed: “If you were not my kokua, I should be dead by now,” and with no pride of either Punti or Hakka he looked at her in the tropical dusk and said, “Dr. Whipple was right. Wherever a man goes he finds a challenge. Today the committee asked me to handle the distribution of food, because they know I am an honest man. In fact,” he admitted proudly, “I am also on the committee itself.”
They suffered one major worry: what had happened to their baby? In questioning the sailors from the Kilauea they discovered nothing. Someone vaguely remembered that the child had been handed to a man on the dock at Honolulu, a Chinese perhaps, but he was not sure. With Dr. Whipple dead there was no way for Nyuk Tsin to send an orderly inquiry, so the two Chinese spent some months of quiet anxiety, which was heightened when an incoming leper said, “I know Kimo and Apikela. They gather maile, but they have only four Pake children.” The parents fretted, but Nyuk Tsin often repeated: “Wherever the boy is, he’s better off than here.”
Mun Ki found escape from his worry through a fortunate discovery. One day while keeping guard at the beach, hoping for another timber, he happened to notice that some of the small black volcanic pebbles that lined the shore resembled the beans used in the game of fan-tan, and he started to gather them, and when he had well over a hundred of matched size he spent a long time searching for a completely flat rock, and although he did not find one, he did stumble across a slab which could be made reasonably smooth by polishing with another stone held flat against the surface. When it was ready he spread upon it the bean-like pebbles and began picking them up in his damaged hands, slamming them back down on the flat rock, and counting them out in fours. In time he became so skilled in estimating his initial grab that he could guess with fair accuracy whether the residue would be one, two, three or four; and after he had done this for some days he called to some Hawaiians and showed them the game. For the first two days he merely tested his wits against theirs, and it was one of the Hawaiians who suggested, “We could play a game with those pebbles,” and Mun Ki replied casually, “Do you think so?”
Since no one had any money, they looked along the beach to find something they could use as counters, and they came upon some hard yellow seeds dropped by a bush that grew inland, and it was obvious that these would make good substitutes for coins, and in this way the historic fan-tan game of the lepers at Kalawao began. When Mun Ki was banker it was uncanny how, using his two stumps of hands, he could grab a number of pebbles, apparently at random, and estimate whether the total was even or odd; and when bets were placed he was able to hide one of the pebbles, catching it between the base of his thumb and the heel of his damaged hand. If most of his adversaries had their yellow buttons on even, he would drop the hidden pebble, make the residue come out odd, and pocket the profits; but if the bets were concentrated on the odd, he w
The game continued for weeks, and more than a dozen men became so excited about it that as soon as the sun was up, they hurried to the beach where the sharp-eyed Pake gambler was willing to stand off their challenges. They played for nothing, only yellow seeds, but they developed agonies of hope over large bets, and in time one of their number, the big excitable man named Palani, the Biblical Paul, began to accumulate most of the buttons. When Mun Ki saw this he was pleased, and on the day when Palani finally cornered the seed-wealth of the lepers his Chinese adversary reported to Nyuk Tsin: “Palani is getting caught, just as we planned. Pray for me.”
In the following days Palani began to lose. If he bet on evens, Mun Ki would drop the hidden pebble in his palm and throw down an odd number, and whenever the Hawaiian decided to risk a lot of seeds and go for a big win on a specific number, say three, it was a simple matter for Mun Ki to make the pebbles come out even, so that they couldn’t possibly yield a three. The residue might be two or four, but never three.