Honolulu

by Alan Brennert

  Another time, as I settled in for the night on a spot of open deck in the lee of a smokestack, I heard someone say something in Japanese. I didn't realize I was being addressed until I heard, in English: "Excuse me, is this taken?"

  I looked up. Standing above me was a young Japanese woman in a patterned kimono, her hair done up in a high pompadour, holding one of the cheap cotton blankets we had been issued in steerage. "May I sleep here?" she asked.

  I shrugged, and gratefully she settled in beside me.

  "Thank you," she said. She smiled in a friendly, open way I had never associated with the Japanese. "Are you traveling to Honolulu or San Francisco?"

  I hesitated a moment, then said, "Honolulu."

  "I, too. I'm to meet my new husband there." She drew the thin blanket up to her chin and shivered in the chill damp air. "They say it is paradise," she said, smiling, "but this trip is the opposite, is it not?"

  She was a mere girl, barely older than I, but in her face I saw only the face of those who had abducted my teacher and taken Blossom's home away from her.

  "Excuse me," I said, and abruptly got to my feet.

  Carrying my blanket, I moved to the other side of the deck. The woman looked after me with what might have been hurt-but I did not wish to consider, at that point, the notion that Japanese could feel hurt.

  fter nine days we finally sailed into Honolulu, past the headless sphinx of an old volcano crater unlike anything I had ever seen before, and into the crowded boat harbor. We were all surprised at the size of the city-indeed it was hardly even a city by Korean standards, just a collection of low buildings gathered between green mountains and blue sea. We had imagined that we were moving to a great metropolis, but on first sight it looked more like some tropic backwater. This was to be our first disappointment.

  The Nippon Mara slipped into its berth and its passengers began to disembark. The many hundreds of us who were emigrating were taken to an imposing stone immigration building that stood on some mud flats offshore; we crossed over to it on a long wooden causeway known as "the China walk." I was dismayed to note that there were steel bars in the building's windows, hardly a welcoming sign. Inside, we queued up and prepared for a long wait, but the immigration staff moved at a fairly brisk clip, clearing almost a hundred applicants in the first hour. Finally Sunny and I were "processed." This consisted of a literacy test in Korean-we had been warned of this by Mrs. Kim and so I had coached Sunny in the rudiments of hangul-and then once again we were subjected to physical examinations for diseases like "pink eye," trachoma, and asked for the inevitable stool samples.

  This latter alarmed me, as I recalled how long it had taken for our results to come back in Yokohama, and indeed we were informed that we would have to remain here on Quarantine island until we were cleared to leave. We spent the next two days in cramped quarters, eating mostly Japanese foods, until finally our tests returned negative, our passports were stamped, and we were told by the officials that our husbands-to-be were waiting for us outside.

  Sunny, Beauty, Wise Pearl, Jade Moon, and I crowded at the window to catch a glimpse of them-but none of us was prepared for what we saw. Standing in the yard of the immigration station was a ragtag group of men in worn, threadbare suits and straw hats. All were deeply tanned, nearly as dark as the Hawaiians we had seen strolling along the docks. In Korea, the fairer a man's complexion, the more refined and desirable he was perceived to be. These men had the dark weathered skin of manual laborers-like fruit left out in the sun too long to shrivel and discolor.

  But the tropic sun alone could not account for the wrinkled faces now turning hopefully in our direction. They were all at least twenty years older than we, much older than their pictures had represented them. Wise Pearl's fiance looked to be about forty years old, his eyes obscured behind thick glasses, with thinning hair visible beneath his straw "boater." Sunny's intended appeared even older, perhaps fifty, with graying hair and deep smallpox scars on his face that hadn't shown up on his photograph. Even Jade Moon's husband-to-be, who had looked so rakish posed against his shiny automobile, was considerably darker and older than his portrait.

  `Aigo, "Wise Pearl said softly.

  Jade Moon expressed a somewhat stronger, and more colorful, sentiment than oh my, which caused me to blush.

  But the cruelest joke had been played on the loveliest of us all. Beauty's fiance-barely but sadly identifiable from his photograph-was a wizened old man who appeared to be at least seventy years old. He grinned happily when he saw her at the window, a smile that did not, alas, hold a full comple ment of teeth. Beauty gasped when she recognized him, then clapped her hands to her mouth. "No!" she cried. "There must be some mistake!"

  "Oh Heaven, what have we done?" Sunny moaned.

  Only I was not completely dismayed at the sight of my future husband. True, he was older than the photograph he had sent, but he still appeared no more than thirty-five years old-and though as tanned as the others, he was still a handsome, strapping man. I was relieved, but embarrassed that I alone should have escaped this awful trick that had been played on my friends.

  "What shall we do?" Beauty asked, pale with shock.

  "We all need to stay calm," I suggested.

  "You can stay calm," Sunny said, "your husband isn't a hundred years old!"

  "Mine is two hundred," Beauty said miserably.

  We turned away from the window so that these men, over whose portraits we had once swooned, could not see the unseemly panic in our faces.

  "I can't marry that ugly old man." Sunny's vehemence was startling in someone so usually the optimist.

  "What other choice do we have?" Wise Pearl asked. "The authorities here won't let us into the country unless we marry them. We cannot go back to Korea without return steamer fare, and I gave all my spending money to my family."

  Jade Moon's tone was one of dread. "I could not return to my parents' house after failing as a picture bride. The loss of face would be too great. I think I would rather die."

  Of her fiance Wise Pearl said thoughtfully, "He may not be young or handsome, but I didn't come here just for that. If he can help my family, all well and good. But I'm in America. That is enough. I will marry him."

  Jade Moon stole another look at her intended, then nodded slowly. "Yes," she agreed, "much is forgivable if they are truly as wealthy as we were told."

  Sunny was unconvinced. "Mine looks like he's wearing the same suit he wore when he arrived here, who knows how many years ago," she said with agitation. "Do these look like prosperous men to you?"

  Beauty began to weep. I took her hand in mine consolingly.

  "Consider this," Jade Moon said soberly, in what seemed a sincere attempt to comfort Beauty. "Your groom has one foot in the grave; maybe two. It will, at least, be a short marriage."

  Beauty stared at her, aghast.

  Sunny looked again at her betrothed-at his leathery, pockmarked face so clearly seen in the bright Hawaiian sun-then snapped open her change purse and rummaged around inside it. "How much is steamer fare?"

  "A hundred yen, " Wise Pearl told her.

  Sunny quickly counted up her cash. Her eyes brightened.

  "I almost have enough!" she said joyously. "I need only twenty more yen." She turned to me, imploringly. "Regret ... do you have the money? Oh please, I promise, I'll repay it somehow, can you lend it to me?"

  The thought of entering this strange country without my old friend at my side frightened me, but there was even greater fear in Sunny's eyes.

  "I can't go through with it," she said softly. "Forgive me. I just can't."

  I opened my purse. I had already converted my yen to dollars; I handed ten of them to Sunny, the equivalent of twenty yen. She took it and clasped my hand gratefully. "Thank you, dear friend. I will miss you. I wish you only happiness." She embraced me, then turned and hurried back to the immigration authorities who had just cleared us for entry into Hawai'i, and was soon lost from my sight.

  eauty eventuall
y resigned herself to her fate and we all went out to meet our new husbands. I felt sorry for Sunny's fiance, Mr. Lim, who only slowly came to realize that his bride would not be forthcoming and eventually drifted away like a breeze. But I admit, I only gave him a passing thought; I was too nervous about meeting my own fiance, Mr. Noh. I could not keep my eyes off him as we left the immigration building and entered the yard where the men were waiting. I waited expectantly for him to recognize me, but his gaze just swept past me as he searched the crowd emerging from the station. Finally I approached him, bowed, and identified myself in the proper "high" speech a wife uses to address her husband: "Good day. I am Regret, of the Pak clan of Pojogae."

  He turned and looked at me.

  Because Koreans try not to openly display our feelings, we have developed ways of seeing past the inexpressive facades we present to the world. Using something called nunch'i we interpret nonverbal clues to read a person's inner state. A Westerner studying my fiance's expression would have seen only a look of vague dispassion. But I could detect subtle yet unmistakable signs of surprise and disappointment-the same kind of disappointment my fellow brides felt when they first laid eyes on their men.

  If he knew that I saw this, he did not betray it. He bowed in greeting, and in Korean introduced himself: "I am Righteous Son, of the Noh clan of Pyflngyang. Welcome to Hawai'i." Around us I could hear similar introductions being made between Wise Pearl, Jade Moon, and Beauty and their fiances.

  "Are you hungry?" Mr. Noh asked me.

  Even though I was, I said no, to spare him the trouble. This social ritual obliged him to ask me again, to make sure I wasn't declining out of humility, but before he could we were interrupted by one of two immigration officials who politely inquired whether we brides still wished to marry our husbandsto-be. When we each responded yes-Beauty's voice catching like that of a little girl who could not yet convincingly lie-he announced that the man beside him was a "justice of the peace." He called out the name of Wise Pearl's fiance, Mr. Kam.

  On the spot they were married in a brief civil ceremony. Wise Pearl and her new husband looked traditionally solemn (even when bride and groom were genuinely happy, there were no smiles at Korean weddings). Now the official called out the name of jade Moon's betrothed, Mr. Ha, and they, too, were joined in marriage. Beauty was next, and if I could see the pain in her face, surely her elderly fiance Mr. Yi could, but he showed no indication of it. Finally Mr. Noh's name was called. We stepped forward and were told to join hands. The calloused flesh of my fiance's hand closed around mine, my skin crawling at the hardness of his touch. Then like those before us, he and I were quickly and efficiently wed.

  It all happened so fast that I had forgotten to put my silver pin in my hair. I would do it later when I combed out my hair, exchanging the braids of my maidenhood for the smooth rolled hairstyle of a married woman.

  After the ceremonies we brides walked the customary three feet behind our husbands as we all crossed over the wooden causeway to the harbor's esplanade, the men chatting among themselves in English. They no doubt assumed that none of us knew enough of the language to understand their conversation, or they would never have spoken as they did. Mr. Kam was congratulating Beauty's husband, Mr. Yi, on getting "the pick of the litter." Mr. Ha remarked, "Mine's not bad for seconds, eh?" And then my husband shrugged and said, in a disgruntled tone, "Beggars can't be choosers, I guess," an American expression I did not know but the meaning of which seemed self-evident.

  Everything else was now self-evident, too: Mr. Yi, clearly the wealthiest of the men, obviously had had first choice from among our batch of picture brides. I would later learn, in fact, that he had bribed the marriage broker, who then allowed him to pick the prettiest girl-Beauty-for himself.

  My husband, on the other hand, appeared to be the least affluent, and had to settle for what was left. Me.

  Somewhere I could hear my father laughing.

  All of us save for Wise Pearl-whose husband took her away in a battered old wagon-walked to a nearby Korean inn, the Hai Dong Hotel, located a few blocks north of the harbor on the appropriately named Hotel Street. Mr. Noh and I were given a pleasant room with a bed, table, lamp, and window. We ate a well-prepared dinner of kimchi, noodles in black bean sauce, and fresh vegetables. Throughout this my new husband and I barely exchanged more than half a dozen sentences. Silence during meals was the norm in Korea-the better to appreciate the food-but I suspected my husband's coolness toward me was more than mere custom, and I thought I knew why.

  I had been last choice, yes, but even at that he must have looked at my picture-at this young woman wearing lipstick and kohl, all the artifice with which the matchmaker had prepared me to be photographed-and he must have thought, Well, she's not too bad. And then he saw me in person for the first time at the immigration station and he realized that he'd been fooledeven as he and the other men had fooled us-by a doctored photograph. I did not need nunch i to tell me that he was probably feeling humiliated and angry. Could I blame him?

  I never expected love or even passion that night, but I was to be denied even a trace of tenderness. In our room my husband simply told me to undress, which I did, quite self-consciously. He told me to get into bed, and I obeyed. Then he lay atop me and entered me without so much as a kiss or a soft word. I barely remember the rest of it; certainly I felt no pleasure. Soon afterward he fell asleep. I lay there beside this stranger, trying not to awaken him as tears slipped silently down my cheeks. But even as I tried so hard not to make a sound, I became aware of a muted sobbing not my own-though it could have been mine, imbued as it was with pain and loneliness. The sobs seemed to be coming from the other side of the wall behind our bed, and I remembered now that Beauty and her husband had taken the room next to ours. Through the thin clapboard wall I could hear the sound of Beauty's weeping, in chorus with my own unvoiced grief. And though it would be some time before I learned what the locals called this little inn, I already knew all too well the singular character of a wedding night spent at the Hotel of Sorrows.

  Four

  he next morning Mr. Yi-by all accounts a successful Honolulu drygoods merchant-spirited Beauty away in a new Model T Ford. She looked unmistakably like someone who had spent half the night crying, her eyes still red and swollen with remembered sorrow, but otherwise she maintained the stoic dignity of a woman who understood the meaning of han. I wished her well, wondering whether I would ever see her again. Jade Moon's husband, Mr. Ha-despite the photograph of him posing impressively beside the Whippet automobile-did not seem to own a vehicle of his own, and they accompanied Mr. Noh and me to the nearby railway station. There the four of us were to board the Leahi, a steam locomotive bound for the northern shore of O'ahu. My husband was in a more cheerful mood today, in seeming good spirits as he and Mr. Ha chatted three steps ahead of us on the train platform. As we walked past, but not into, a luxurious mahoganypaneled passenger car, I realized that once again we were traveling steerage. In this case that meant second-class seats in a "combination car"-one that carried a mix of passengers, baggage, and mail. It also served as a smoking car, as I discovered not long into our trip when various prosperous-looking white men wandered in from first class and lit up a form of tobacco I had never encountered before. I was inured to the smell of Grandmother's bamboo pipe, but nothing could have prepared me for the foul gases given off by these fat brown sticks called "cigars."

  I sat by the open window, taking in deep breaths of the fresh sea air as we passed the harbor. Seeing the world-famous flag of stars and stripes flying from the masts of the many battleships at anchor brought home for the first time that I was actually, finally, in America. As we steamed up the leeward coast of O'ahu we saw swaying fields of tall green sugar cane, the occasional water buffalo working a taro patch, and gangs of Chinese kulis plowing rice fields. We skirted groves of algaroba trees and tall coconut palms bending in the wind as if bowing to us as we passed. I found myself unexpectedly captivated by it all. The train slow
ed and stopped at a succession of sleepy little stations with exotic names like 'Aiea, Waipi'o, Leilehua, 'Ewa, Nanakuli. Then the lush green hills and rolling farm fields gave way to black rocky promontories that I first took to be coal, but which, my husband told me, were forged from long-cooled volcanic lava. Such unique natural beauty! Hawai'i was more than living up to Mrs. Kim's description of it as a paradise. I was heartened by what I saw, as I think jade Moon was too, though we seldom spoke during the trip and remained quiet, like good Korean wives.

  After two and a half hours the Leahi finally pulled into a tiny station announcing itself as WAIALUA. Jade Moon and I obediently followed our husbands off the train and out of the station, where a horse-drawn wagon was waiting for us. This was a far cry from Mr. Yi's Model T; its driver was a laborer of some sort, wearing a kind of checkered cotton shirt I would come to know as a palaka. He exchanged greetings with our husbands, who responded warmly, lifted our baggage into the rear of the wagon, then helped us up onto a wooden bench in front. In minutes we were on our way and I worked up the nerve to ask, "Honorable husband, where is it we are going?"

  "Mokuleia Camp," he replied. This meant nothing to me until we crested a small hill. Now we found ourselves looking down at a vast expanse of green-thousands of acres of sugar cane, an army of man-high green stalks marching toward a shoreline of pristine white sand. Irrigation water gushed like rivers down gullies cut in the rich red soil, and in the fields were stooped hundreds of laborers hoeing, cutting, watering, and hauling cane. And as if standing watch above all this, like a lighthouse somehow stranded far from shore, was the tall smokestack of a sugar mill, from which rose a constant plume of sweet brown smoke.

  Jade Moon glanced at me with mounting anxiety as our wagon bounced along a dirt road bordering the cane fields, the wheels kicking up a great cloud of red dust. We passed through the first of many laborers' camps: in one we saw nothing but Japanese faces gazing at us as we rode by; in the next, Portuguese; in the third, a mix of Chinese and Filipino; until we entered a camp that seemed to be shared by both Korean and Spanish workers. The driver reined in the horse and brought us to a stop. As in the other camps, there was one long barracks-like building as well as row upon row of small bungalows, all of which had tidy little front yards and not-so-tidy chicken coops in back. My husband helped me out of the wagon, and again I flinched as his calloused fingers clasped mine.