Hawaii

by James Michener

  The American again extended his hand graciously and said, "I am Dr. John Whipple. I would like to hire about three hundred men for the sugar fields."

  Uncle Chun Fat looked at the slim, gray-haired American in the expensive suit and instinctively recognized him as a big boss. "How much you offer to pay that one?" he asked, indicating with contempt the Cantonese.

  "I'm afraid that's none of your business," Dr. Whipple replied. "But what did you have in mind?"

  Chun Fat did some fast calculating. In the Kee family alone there were more than one hundred and forty able-bodied men. "Boss, I get you all men two dollars each man."

  Now John Whipple did his own calculating. The Cantonese merchant whom he had brought with him could speak English, and had helped in that regard, but he had no sense of how to enlist labor. It was pretty obvious that this wily fellow from California knew what was required. But two dollars a head? "I'll give you one dollar and a half a head," he proposed.

  Uncle Chun Fat studied that for some time, then replied slowly, "Who gonna argue with women? Who speak everything right?" He enumerated a long list of tasks he could be counted on to perform.

  "Two dollars," he said firmly.

  "One-seventy-five," Whipple countered.

  "Boss," Uncle Chun Fat smiled sweetly, "I top man here. Unless I speak, they no go."

  "Two dollars," Dr. Whipple surrendered. Instantly Uncle Chun Fat thrust his hand out and grabbed Whipple's, shouting to his people in Punti, "When you shake hands like this, by god, you believe what you say! I'm warning you, everyone of you!"

  He was appalled, however, by Dr. Whipple's one stipulation: "Sir, I do not agree to this bargain unless half the men you send are Hakka."

  Chun Fat looked at the stranger blankly. Finally, he repeated dully, "Hakka?"

  "Yes, you know. Hakka. Up there."

  "How in the world did he know about the Hakka?" Chun Fat thought despairingly. "Did that foul Cantonese . . ." To Dr. Whipple he said, "Why you want Hakka? No good Hakka."

  Dr. Whipple looked him sternly in the eye, and his forty years of trading for J & W fortified his judgment. "We have heard," he said slowly, "that Hakka are fine workmen. We know that the Punti are clever, for we have many in Hawaii. But Hakka can work. Shall we go up to that village?"

  Uncle Chun Fat faced a desperate impasse. He could see as clearly as he could see his hand those lush valleys of the Fragrant Tree Land. Good heavens, a hard-working Chinese set loose there could make a million dollars if he were clever! And think of the advantage to the Low Village to have three hundred Kees working there and sending money back home regularly. Uncle Chun Fat could be sure of getting not less than fifteen cents out of every incoming dollar. It would be a calamity, a disaster worse than a flood, for the Kees to miss such an opportunity. But this stern, straight man had mentioned the Hakka . . .

  "Dr. Whipple," Uncle Chun Fat began cautiously, "maybe Hakka work well but too much fight."

  "I will go to the village alone," Dr. Whipple said sternly.

  "How you talk with Hakka?" Chun Fat asked slyly.

  Dr. Whipple smiled superiorly at the wily negotiator and said simply, "My friend from Canton will do the translating."

  "But he no speak Hakka," Uncle Chun Fat said evenly, smiling back at his visitor.

  With no evidence of frustration Whipple asked, "Do you speak Hakka?"

  "Only one man speak Hakka. My boy Kee Mun Ki. In army he learn few words."

  "I suppose you want two dollars for each Hakka, too?" Whipple suggested hesitantly.

  "Yes, because speak Hakka very difficult."

  "Let's go," Whipple said with a resigned shrug of his shoulders, and then from the manner in which Chun Fat hesitated he realized with amazement that no one from the Low Village had ever climbed to the High Village. "You've never been up there?" he asked.

  "Hakka up there," Chun Fat shuddered.

  When Dr. Whipple saw how difficult it was proving to be to reach Hakka country, he was momentarily inclined to forget the matter and was about to surrender and allow Chun Fat to supply only Punti, but then his scientific interest asserted itself and he reflected: "I came here to initiate an experiment to see who would best satisfy our labor needs on the plantations, Punti or Hakka, and I'm not going to be bluffed out of that study now." So he said firmly, "If you can't lead the way, I will." And for all his sixty-six years he was as spry as the Chinese, and after a sturdy climb the travelers came at last to the gateway of the walled village, and as they entered and saw the frugal U-shaped homes and the brooding, worm-eaten pole in the central square, on which perched the skull of Char the rebel, Whipple looked about him as if he had come upon familiar terrain and thought: "The climb was worth it. This feels like a New England village. I'm home again, in China." The feeling was intensified when strong, sullen and suspicious Hakka began cautiously gathering about him, and he could see in their conservative faces portraits in yellow of his own ancestors. Motioning to Kee Mun Ki to interpret, he said, "I have come to take one hundred and fifty of you to the sugar fields of the Fragrant Tree Country." There was much subdued discussion of this, heightened by Uncle Chun Fat, who officiously passed among the Hakka his sandalwood box, with the assurance: "Where you're going smells like this."

  In the end one hundred and thirty Hakka were conscripted for the Whipple plantations, with promises of twenty more to be gathered from other mountain villages, and as the deal was being formalized with much cautious nodding, Whipple happened to notice that these upland women did not bind their feet, and he pointed to one woman and asked Uncle Chun Fat, "Why are their feet normal?" And the Californian replied, "They Hakka. Not got good sense." And Whipple asked, "Would women be allowed to come to the Fragrant Tree Country?" And Chun Fat replied, "Maybe Hakka women. Not proper Punti women." At the moment Whipple said no more about it, but he thought to himself: "Some day we'll need many Chinese women in Hawaii. Be a good idea to bring these Hakka in. They look strong and intelligent."

  WHEN DR. WHIPPLE and his Cantonese guide had returned to Hong Kong, there to wait in Whipple's ship for the arrival of the three hundred plantation hands, Uncle Chun Fat engaged in a flurry of action. He assembled his extensive family in the open area before the newly painted ancestral hall, and on its steps he had an imposing chair placed, in which he sat, wearing his satin skullcap, expensive gown and brocaded shoes. To his right, but a little behind him, sat his legal wife, a woman of fifty, while to his left and farther behind sat the two attractive unofficial wives to which he, as a wealthy man, was entitled. The meeting got right down to business, with Uncle Chun Fat informing his four hundred-odd relatives: "This is an opportunity that may never come again. Think of it!" and he leaned back so that the Kees could see him in his days of lassitude. "A young man goes to the Fragrant Tree Country, works a dozen years, sends his money home to the Low Village, where his wife is bringing up fine sons, and after a while he returns a very wealthy man and takes two or three young wives. He is happy. His wife is happy because she no longer has to work. The young wives are happy because they have a rich man. And," he said dramatically, pointing casually behind him with his thumb, "he can build a respectable ancestral hall in honor of his distinguished family."

  He allowed this recipe for earthly happiness to mature in the minds of his listeners and then said, "I am distressed that Dr. Whipple would not take his entire shipload from our village, for we could have supplied him, but even so our opportunity is historic. I am going to point to the strongest young men, and you are the ones who will start for Hong Kong ... in three weeks."

  Uncle Chun Fat rose, passed through the crowd, and arbitrarily nominated eighty-six Kees to volunteer for the journey. Some did not want to go, but they were powerless, for wasn't Chun Fat the richest man in the world? Who could argue with such a man? When this job was done their Uncle Chun Fat asked, "We now have remaining sixty-four places for the Low Village. Who should fill them?" And there was public discussion of this important point until the gambler
Kee Mun Ki, who was proving to be a rather clever young man, pointed out: "Why not take the men who are about to marry girls from our family?" But Uncle Chun Fat rejected this, for it would take money from the village, and made an even wiser proposal, which the family recognized at once as a sound course of action: "We will send everyone who owes us substantial sums of money. And their wages will come to us." In this way the list was completed. Of the one hundred and fifty Punti who were sent, one hundred and ten did not want to go.

  Following the nominations, there was a moment of relaxation during which Uncle Chun Fat studied his vast family with care, and when the mood was right he coughed twice, and the crowd dutifully lapsed into silence to hear what tie great man had to say. Chun Fat, looking thoughtfully over the heads of the gathering, said slowly, knowing that what he was about to propose would come as a surprise to his clan, "I want everyone who, for the honor of his family, has volunteered to go to the Fragrant Tree Country to get married before he leaves this village."

  A blizzard of excitement struck the Kee family, and many young men who had been forced by Uncle Chun Fat to accept exile to the sugar fields now indicated that they did not propose further to wreck their lives by hastily taking a wife. Grandly, aloofly, Uncle Chun Fat allowed the storm to rage, and when it had reached a climax, he coughed again, and somehow the quiet cough of a rich man is louder than the braying of six paupers, and the great family grew silent. "For example, in my brother's family I have decided that his son Kee Mun Ki should marry at once, and I have consequently been in contact with . . ." And here he paused dramatically to allow the family to savor his next words, and no one listened with more apprehension than the young gambler Mun Ki, for no one had told him he was about to marry. "I have been consulting with the Kung family of the next village and they have agreed to betroth their daughter Summer Bird to my nephew. Negotiations are already under way to celebrate this marriage, and, Mun Ki, I must congratulate you."

  The young gambler gave a silly grin, accompanied by the required show of joy, for he recognized that Uncle Chun Fat had done a good thing for him. The Kungs of the next village, though not so rich as the Kees of this, were nevertheless a distinguished family, the principal difference being that their leader had gone not to California but only to Canton and had returned not with more than forty thousand dollars but with six. Nevertheless, it was a match that all in the Low Village approved, even though no one had yet seen the intended bride.

  "So I insist that every young man marry," Chun Fat concluded. "Families can start sending out messengers at once to find likely girls, and I think it would be proper if celebrations were combined, so as to save money." Now that the marriages were agreed upon, and the families realized that they must actually set out to find wives for their departing sons, a new storm of agitation swept over the Kees, and again Uncle Chun Fat waited grandly in his satin skullcap until it had pretty well run its course. Then, with the grandeur of the ancestral hall looming behind him as if to fortify his edicts, he coughed quietly and gave the young men certain assurances. "You young travelers, like Mun Ki, must not think that because you are required to marry here in the Low Village that you may not also take wives in the new land. Oh no, indeed! There is only one reason why you must get married here, and establish your home here, with your legal wife waiting patiently for your return. If you do these things, then no matter where you go, you will always think of this village as your permanent home. You will yearn for the day when, like me, you stride up these sacred steps," and sweeping his expensive gown about him, he marched into the ancestral hall, from which he cried with real passion, "and you will bow humbly before the tablets of your ancestors. For your home is here." Gravely he bowed before the memorials of the ancients whose energies had built this village, and in deeply moving syllables he said, "When the white men abused me in California, I remembered this pavilion with my family tablets, and I gained strength to endure their abuse. When the snows were unbearable in Nevada, I remembered this ancestral hall, and they became endurable. Marry a girl from this valley, as I did thirty years ago. Leave her here with your home, and no matter where you go, you will come back." Then, adding a more immediately practical note, he reminded them: "And you will always send money back to this village."

  Grandly, he left the ancestral tablets and returned to his chair, from which he reasoned directly: "But we know that it is always better when a Chinese man has some woman with him, so it would be wise if, when you get to the Fragrant Tree Country, you took a wife there too. And the reason I say this is that while I was in America I noticed again and again that the Chinese men who made the most money were those with women. You might think it ought to be the other way around, but as long as I had no woman I did rather poorly . . . gambling . . . bad houses . . . and I may as well confess it, I got drunk every night for almost a year. Well, anyway, I found this Mexican woman and pretty soon I had her washing for the miners and cooking their food. And consider this, you Kees who are departing for a strange country. Even though I had to pay much money for her food, for she ate like a pig, and even though she was always wanting a new dress, it was only because of her that I saved any money. Therefore, it seems to me that if a bright young man like my nephew Mun Ki were to marry the Kung girl here, and then also find a strong wife for himself in the Fragrant Tree Country ... but be sure to get one who can work . . . well," and Uncle Chun Fat coughed modestly, hiding his lips with his silken-sleeved hand, "it would not surprise me at all if he were to return to this village a much richer man than I am."

  With a new flush of modesty he dropped his eyes and allowed this dazzling prospect to capture his family. Not for a summer's moment did he believe that Mun Ki or anyone else would come close to his record of more than forty thousand dollars, but from the corner of his eye he saw with assurance that some of the young men were instinctively looking out across the fields and planning where, among the hills, they would build their cemeteries when they returned with staggering riches. But from the rear of the family came a nagging question: "When Mun Ki returns a wealthy man, does he bring his strange wife back to this village?"

  "Certainly not," Uncle Chun Fat said evenly.

  "What does he do with her?"

  "He leaves her where he found her."

  A buzz of admiration swept over the crowd, for the solution was both right and simple. The Low Village would be contaminated if it had to accept wives with strange customs, and while the elders were congratulating Chun Fat on his perspicacity, he quieted them and told the sprawling family: "The other wives will be able to care for themselves. When I left California I had three wives. A Mexican in San Francisco and two Indians in different parts of the mountains. They had helped me, so I helped them. I gave each one a thousand dollars." The crowd gasped at Chun Fat's compassion, and he concluded: "Because the important thing in a man's life is to return home to his village, to find his patient wife waiting, and in his old age to acquire two or three beautiful young girls of good family." Behind him his three wives smiled gently as he said, "Believe me, under those circumstances a man's joy is great."

  When the young gambler Mun Ki accepted the betrothal his uncle had arranged for him, Chun Fat sent the Kungs in the next village not the customary thousand cakes--"Your daughter is worth one thousand pieces of gold, but please accept these poor cakes"--but two thousand and forty-three, the idea being that the number really could have been as large as he wished. Each cake was the size of a plate: soft sponge cakes, cakes stuffed with chopped nuts and sugar, hard flat cakes, cakes lined with rich mince, and others decorated with expensive sweetmeats. He also sent sixty-nine pigs, four chickens with red feathers, and four large baked fish. Then, to prove his munificence, he added forty-seven pieces of gold, each wrapped in red paper. The procession that carried these things to the Kungs was a quarter of a mile in length.

  From two of the ceremonial pigs the bride's family cut off the heads and tails, wrapped them in silk and returned them to the Kees, indicating that the la
rgesse had been both humbly and impressively received by the bride's family. But on her own account she sent three gifts to the groom: an embroidered red cloth which he would use as a belt, a wallet for the worldly wealth which she would help him earn, and two pairs of pants.

  It was obviously going to be a tremendous wedding, and it dwarfed the thirty-one others that were proceeding at the same time. Two weeks before the Kees were scheduled to depart for the ship waiting at Hong Kong, the ceremony took place amid all the grandeur the two Lowland villages could provide, and when the days of celebration ended, young Kee Mun Ki brought his bride home and tried mightily to impregnate her before the time for sailing, but he failed.

  On the morning when Uncle Chun Fat assembled his hundred and fifty Punti for the three-day hike to Canton, where they would board a river steamer for Hong Kong and the American ship, he saw before him a rather bleary-eyed, sexually exhausted group of men. "A good march along the river will toughen them up," he reassured himself, because he realized that if he could deliver his volunteers in good condition, he had a right to expect that subsequently Dr. Whipple would commission him to conscript many more, all at two dollars a head. He therefore moved among his troops encouraging them to spruce up, but when he came to his nephew Kee Mun Ki, he scarcely recognized him. The young gambler had been drunk for two weeks, hardly out of bed for ten days, and looked as if he might collapse during the first hundred yards of the march to Canton. Realizing that he had to depend upon this youth for transmitting orders to the Hakka, Uncle Chun Fat started slapping him back and forth across the cheeks, and slowly the young man's eyes began to focus. "I'll be all right," the gambler mumbled. "In Macao once I was drunk for three weeks. But not with a fine wife like the Kung girl." And Chun Fat saw with pleasure that when his nephew's services were really required, the brash young gambler would be ready. "You'll do well in the Fragrant Tree Country," Chun Fat reassured the young man. "I expect to," the young husband replied. It was just a little insulting, the way in which he spoke to his uncle on a man-to-man basis, as if they were equals.