Hawaii

by James Michener

  Now came a moment of intense excitement, for down from the hills marched the contingent of Hakka, thin men, dressed in rude, tough clothing, their pigtails long and their faces tanned. Two months before, the arrival of such a group would have signified war; now it occasioned only mutual disgust. Defiantly, the Hakka marched up to where the Punti stood, and against his own prejudices Uncle Chun Fat thought: "They'll do well in the new country." Because he was making two dollars a head on the Hakka, and hoped to make more in the future, he wanted to go up to them and bow in greeting, but he realized that this might be interpreted as Punti subservience and would never be forgiven by his family, so he glared at them as custom required. For a long moment the two groups stood staring insolently at each other. During nearly a thousand years they had lived side by side without ever speaking; they had met only in death and violence; there had been only one marriage. Now, with their inherited hatreds, they were going to travel in a small ship to a small island.

  Mun Ki broke the spell. Pulling himself together, he stepped forward and said to a man named Char, leader of the Hakka, "We will start to Canton now. Some of your men look tired already."

  Char studied the young Punti to see if this was intended as an insult, and replied evenly, "No wonder they look tired. They've been drunk for two weeks . . . like you."

  "I got married," Mun Ki explained.

  "So did they," the Hakka Char said, and the antagonists smiled.

  The contingents started forward, but as they did, the Punti looked for the last time at their Low Village and its bright red ancestral hall. This was their home, the soil of their heart, the abiding place of their ancestors. Their wives were here. Many had sons whose names were already on the tablets in the pavilion. The graves where the ghosts of their forefathers walked at night were in this land, and to leave the Golden Valley even for a few years was punishment almost beyond the bearing. "I will come back soon!" Mun Ki called, not to his wife, nor to his domineering uncle, nor to any living person. "I will come back!" he called to his ancestors.

  It took three days to reach Canton, the Punti moving together in one group, the Hakka in another, and during this vigorous exercise Kee Mun Ki whipped himself back into his customary lean condition. His eyes cleared and his wits sharpened, and as he entered the great city, seeking out Dr. Whipple to deliver the workers, he wondered if he could slip away for a few hours for some intense gambling with the British sailors at the quay, but unfortunately Dr. Whipple had a river boat waiting and herded his charges directly aboard. When they were assembled he spoke to them in quiet English, and his interpreter explained: "The American has discovered that if he tries to take you men out of China by way of Hong Kong, where his ship is visible in the bay, the government will execute every one of you. For daring to leave China. So we are sailing to Macao, where it will be possible to depart without being killed."

  Quickly Mun Ki moved up to the interpreter and said, "In Macao I must see my old employer and bid him farewell. Please tell the American."

  There was some discussion and the interpreter said, "All right. But the others must stay overnight inside a compound until the ship arrives from Hong Kong."

  Mun Ki congratulated himself and began daydreaming of the great fortune he would make on his last hours at the gambling tables, when the interpreter returned and dashed his fantasies by announcing: "The American remembers that you are the only one who can speak with the Hakka, so you will not be allowed to leave the compound."

  Mun Ki tried to appeal this unfair decision, but the interpreter, after discussing the protest with Whipple, said bluntly, "You will stay inside the compound."

  When the coastline of Macao appeared, with its low white Portuguese buildings shining in the sunlight, and its military guard loafing about in European uniforms, the Punti and Hakka workers lined the river boat to study the strange port: a foreign city nestling on the coast of China, a city with one European for every two hundred Chinese, a curious, lawless enclave that was neither China nor Portugal but the worst of each. But to Mun Ki, well versed in the evil ways of Macao, it was a pragmatist's paradise. He saw the tiled roofs of the Brothel of Spring Nights and thought tenderly of some of the girls he had helped to bring there, strong, happy girls who enjoyed their work. Farther on he saw the gambling halls, where he had known both success and failure, and as the river boat drew closer to the shore, so his excitement mounted, until at last he moved swiftly among the Punti, whispering, "Lend me your money! I am going to the gambling halls and I will return with two for one." Some were suspicious of their brash cousin; others respected him for his daring, and in time he had a considerable number of coins. "I'll see you tomorrow," he whispered. "Say nothing to the fool from Canton."

  So when the river boat touched the quay, and there was much jostling among the Chinese and calls back and forth between the Portuguese officials, Mun Ki slipped deftly away, disappeared into the piles of merchandise stacked along the quay, and hurried up a back alley to the Brothel of Spring Nights. "You must have celebrated the festival of Ching Ming as never before," the brothel keeper observed icily.

  "I got married," Mun Ki explained.

  "Ah, that's very good!" the keeper expounded. "Every man should have a loyal and patient wife. I count the beginning of my happiness from the day I married and began having a large family."

  "I am also leaving China for the Fragrant Tree Country," Mun Ki said honestly. "I've come to get my things."

  "You're leaving me!" the proprietor stormed. "After I've spent all this time and money training . . ." Suddenly he stopped ranting and asked, "Did you say the Fragrant Tree Country?"

  "Yes. Sugar fields."

  "Now that's really strange!" the brothel keeper cried, tapping his knee with his forefinger. "I have some rather important work that requires doing in that country. Yes." He went to a file of papers and sorted out one from a Punti who had gone to the Fragrant Tree land some years before, and this man, remembering how well the Brothel of Spring Nights had been run in Macao, had written to the proprietor asking for certain assistance. Holding the letter between his teeth, Mun Ki's superior studied the young gambler and then asked, "Would you be willing to execute a rather difficult commission for me?"

  "Do I get paid?" Uncle Chun Fat's nephew asked bluntly.

  "You do."

  "I'll do it."

  "I thought you would."

  "What's the job?"

  "I've got a girl tied up in the little room. Been planning to ship her to Manila. We can't use her here, as you'll see. Will you deliver her to my friend in the Fragrant Tree Country?"

  "I will. Which room?"

  "The one where the Russian girl used to be."

  Mun Ki forgot his gambling for a moment, walked down a narrow hall, and kicked open the familiar door. Inside, the blinds were drawn, and in the darkness, on the floor, lay a trussed-up girl, knees lashed to chin, almost unconscious from hunger and lack of water. With his foot Mun Ki rolled her over and saw that she was dressed in a cheap blue cotton smock and trousers; her big feet proved that she was a Hakka. In disgust Mun Ki slammed the door and returned to his employer.

  "Who wants a Hakka?" he demanded.

  "Nobody," the brothel keeper agreed. "I paid some of General Wang's soldiers to kidnap half a dozen girls, and they brought back this one. I was going to send her to Manila. Over there they don't know the difference."

  "How much for me if I take her to the Fragrant Tree Country?" Mun Ki asked.

  "Twenty Mexican dollars," the proprietor replied.

  "Paid now? I'd like to double it in the gambling rooms."

  "Half paid now," the canny brothel keeper agreed.

  He gave Mun Ki the ten Mexican dollars, and the young man was about to dash over to the gambling, but the proprietor suggested, "Maybe you better feed her. She's been tied up for two days. The soldiers seem to have treated her rather badly before they turned her in, and I was afraid she might run away after I had paid for her."

  "Did you
give much?" Mun Ki inquired.

  "For a Hakka? That I couldn't use?"

  The young gambler returned to the room, yelled for a maid to bring him some hot tea and rice, and then parted the curtains. He saw at his feet a young Hakka woman of about eighteen. Even when her face healed she would probably not be a pretty woman, and the manner in which she was gagged and trussed did not permit any estimate of her general appearance. Therefore, more in a spirit of investigation than humanity Mun Ki kneeled down and started to untie the merciless ropes. As he loosened one after the other, he could hear the girl groaning with relief, but he noticed that even so her limbs did not automatically stretch out toward their normal position, for they had been constricted so long that some of their muscles had gone into spasm. Again motivated by investigation, he started gently to unfold her hands and pull her arms down along her body. He pushed her shoulders back and could hear joints creaking in protest. She groaned deeply and fainted, but then the maid brought the tray, and he applied tea to her lips and gradually she regained consciousness and began to drink. She was so desperate for liquids that even Mun Ki was impressed, and he sent for more tea. As its warmth circulated through her body, the girl began to return to an awareness of where she was, and she looked in terror at the man who held her, but the manner in which he started to feed her the rice, waiting until she had chewed each grain lovingly, lest someone steal it from her . . . this made her think that perhaps he might not be like the others who had captured her that night before the Ching Ming festival. The things they had done in the three weeks they had dragged her and their other captives through the countryside she had already forgotten, for they were too terrible to remember. Instinctively she felt that this man would not treat her so.

  Char Nyuk Tsin was the first Hakka the young gambler had ever touched, and it was with instinctive loathing that he now did so, and yet it was a strange fact that her response to his kindness moved him and made him want to be kinder yet. He held her shoulders in his left arm and fed her warm rice with his right, and when the maid brought in some cabbage broth, he gave her the spoon and encouraged her to eat, but her wrists were so swollen from the ropes that she could not do so. He therefore started to massage them, and gradually blood circulated to her fingers and she could hold the spoon, but she could not operate her shoulders. So he massaged her back and neck, and instinctively his hand slipped forward over her shoulders and he felt her hard little breasts. Almost against his will there came a moment of awakening, and he felt memories of his soft young wife from the Kung village come flooding over him, and he lifted away Nyuk Tsin's smock and caressed her body, and then he slipped off her trousers, and when her knees and ankles remained in their rigid, muscle-locked condition, he gently massaged them until they relaxed, and he saw with increasing pleasure how slim and beautiful this girl's body was. Reminded of his bride, he quickly slid out of his clothes and threw them against the door, saying to the Hakka girl as he did so, "I will not hurt you."

  When he had been with her for some time the proprietor came back to the little room to advise him on how to deliver the girl to the brothel keeper in Honolulu, but when he pushed open the door a little way and saw what the young people were up to, he advised in Punti, "Use her as you wish, but tie her up again when you're through."

  The voice of the boss awakened Mun Ki to his responsibilities, and with real fright he grabbed at his pants to see if while he had been engaged with the girl some clever man had stolen his gambling money in the way that he, Mun Ki, had sometimes picked the pockets of preoccupied customers in the Brothel of Spring Nights. His money was secure, so he quickly dressed and said to the naked girl, "I must go to the gambling. Put your clothes on."

  And as he waited for her to do so, he picked up the cords, and when she turned to face him she saw the cruel, biting cords and tears came into her eyes and she pleaded with Mun Ki and took his hands and promised, "I will not run away."

  He held the ropes and studied her, and something in the manner in which she looked at him convinced him that she would not flee; so, still grasping the ropes, he led her to his room in a hovel in back of the brothel, where he sat her upon the floor. Dangling the ropes before her terrified face he seemed to ask: "Am I required to use these?" and she looked at him as if to promise: "You do not need the cords." Against his better judgment, he started to leave, but to do so with the girl unbound was obviously ridiculous, so he decided upon a sensible solution. With one end of a fairly long rope he tied the Hakka girl's left wrist; the other he attached about his own waist, and when this was done he said, "Come."

  When he passed the desk of the brother the proprietor saw what he was doing, and said, "A good idea." Then the man asked professionally, "Will she make a good girl for my friend?"

  "Yes," Mun Ki assured him, and he led his captive to his favorite gambling hall. But when they were in the street he stopped and asked her, "What is your name?" and she answered, "Char Nyuk Tsin," and he replied, "Perfect Jade! That's a good name." To himself he thought: "In a brothel it's a very good name. A man can remember it when he comes back the next time."

  The gamblers were playing fan-tan, in which from a large pile of snowy-white ivory buttons the dealer withdrew a handful, whereupon the crowd bet as to whether the number to be left over at the end was one, two, three, or none. Or, if the gamblers wished, they could bet simply on whether the ivory buttons would turn out to have been odd or even. When the bets were placed, the amazingly deft dealer started to pull his buttons away from the pile in lots of four, and it was striking how skilled the players were in discerning, while the pile of burtons still contained fifty or sixty, what the number left over at the end was bound to be.

  Using his own and other Punti money, Mun Ki had a satisfactory run at fan-tan, and he felt that perhaps the fact that he had been kind to the Hakka girl had brought him good luck, so he took his earnings to the mah-jongg room, where the clattering ivory tiles evoked their perpetual fascination. When at the beginning of each game the players built their wall, it was customary for them to slam the tiles down with maximum force, creating an echo that accentuated the natural excitement of the game, and likewise, when a player scored a coup and exposed his pieces he slammed them onto the noisy table. Mah-jongg as played in Macao was a wild, exhilarating game, and now Mun Ki decided to test his luck at a table where real gamblers played for high stakes. Placing Nyuk Tsin behind him, and twitching the cord now and then to be sure she was still tied, he joined three waiting men. Two had long, wispy beards and costly gowns. The other was more like Mun Ki, a young, aggressive gambler. At first one of the older men protested, "I do not wish to play in a room where there is a woman," but Mun Ki carefully explained, "I am taking her to a brothel in the Fragrant Tree Country and am responsible for her." This the men understood; in fact, the man who had protested thought: "Probably he will have his mind on the girl and will lose more quickly."

  But Mun Ki had not entered the game to lose. Mah-jongg, unlike fan-tan, did not depend so much on luck as on the skill with which one played the pieces luck sent him; and the young gambler, thinking that this might be his last day in a big mah-jongg contest, breathed deeply as he used both hands to help mix the 144 tiles at the start of the game. With loud energy he banged the pieces down to make the wall and then watched carefully as he rolled his dice to help determine where that wall should be broached to begin the gambling. With intense excitement he grabbed his tiles in turn and remembered Nyuk Tsin only when he leaned forward to reach the tiles and felt her rope tugging at his waist. When his tiles were arranged--and he had long since learned to keep them in haphazard formations from which his clever opponents could deduce nothing--he was ready to play, but the bearded man who had originally protested against Nyuk Tsin, said, "She has got to sit on the floor where she can't spy." So before the game began in earnest, the Hakka girl sat on the floor, but this was not entirely satisfactory to Mun Ki, who was afraid that she might slip away, so he forced her to sit under the table, against hi
s feet, and there she remained for the long hours during which the four players slammed down their tiles with great force.

  From her position under the table Nyuk Tsin noticed that she could detect when Mun Ki was attempting some daring coup, holding back tiles in hopes of building them into some fantastic combination that would win him much money, for then his ankles became tense, the little bones stood out and his feet began to sweat. At such times she prayed for his success, and she must have been attuned to some powerful god of good fortune, for her man won. At dusk he tugged on the rope and said, "We'll go home." But as they returned to the dusty streets of Macao, hawkers swarmed about them, attracted by the rumor: "The young fellow from the brothel was a big winner." They brought flowers and bits of cloth and steaming kettles of food, and Mun Ki found real pleasure in playing the role of a generous winner. Fingering the torn cotton fabric of his girl's smock he said, "This one needs a new dress, believe me." And with grandiloquent gestures that all could admire, he announced: "We will have four lengths of that!" He was even more generous when it came to food, and hungry Nyuk Tsin had black eggs, dried fish, noodles and crystallized ginger. As they lounged beneath a dentist's sign he announced to the crowd: "I am really a very lucky gambler. I can see what's in the other man's mind."

  As the night wore on, he drew the cord tighter to him, so that Nyuk Tsin could not stray, and he bought bits of food for worthless characters he had long known in the Portuguese city. When the civil guard passed by, he nodded to them, and when one asked, "Why do you have the girl tied up?" he replied in the patois of the port city, "I am delivering her to a brothel in the Fragrant Tree Country."

  The police nodded approvingly, and then one stopped. "Are you sailing on that American ship in the bay?"