Hawaii

by James Michener

  "I've tried that. So has Micah. The old man simply won't listen to any proposal which requires his leaving Maui. If you raise the question, he says stubbornly, 'My church is here, and my graves are here.' And that's that."

  "Whose graves?" Brom Hoxworth asked.

  "My mother's grave, and your grandmother's," the intense younger Hale explained. "He plays gardener for them, and insists now and then upon preaching in the old stone church that he built. But I'm sure the minister would be delighted to see him get out of Maui."

  One of the Whipple boys spoke: "Looking at the whole thing frankly, the fact that he's left alone on Maui reflects on all of us, really. It looks as if we had cut the old man off ... didn't want him, because he's sort of wandering in his mind. Now, I know that's not the truth. I happen to know definitely that my father invited Reverend Hale to live with him, and your mother, Brom, did the same, and of course we all know that both Micah and David asked him to live with them. So our skirts are clean, as it were, but even so we get a good deal of opprobrium for allowing him to stay in that filthy little house of his."

  "And now if he's going to start meddling with the Chinese," young Hoxworth pointed out, "he's really got to be cleaned out."

  The group therefore proposed that Dr. Whipple be dispatched once more to Lahaina to reason with Abner, and with some reluctance the trim, white-haired leader of Janders & Whipple climbed aboard the Kilauea and ploughed his way through the rough channel to Maui. He had barely started down the pier when he saw his rickety old friend pecking his way among the crowd and accosting one of the sailors from the ferry.

  "Did you happen to hear any news of a little girl named Iliki?" he asked querulously.

  "No, sir," the patient sailor replied, for he was asked this question at each arrival of the Kilauea.

  Sadly the old man shook his head, turned and started for his home, but Dr. Whipple called, "Abner!" and the lame missionary stopped, turned about in the sunlight and studied his visitor. At first he could not quite understand who the thin, erect man in the black suit was, and then his mind cleared momentarily.

  "John," he said softly, still refusing to accord the apostate his former title of Brother.

  "I've come over to talk with you," Whipple explained patiently.

  "You've come over to reprimand me for smashing the heathen temple," Abner replied contentiously. "Don't waste your words. If the bloody sacrificial rocks of the Hawaiians were evil and worthy to be destroyed, the gaudy red and gold temples of Buddha merit the same treatment."

  "Let's walk along to our offices," Whipple suggested.

  "We used to talk here, John, and this is still good enough for me." He sat down on a coconut log, under the kou trees, where he could see the roads. "Not many whalers come here any more," he mused. "But do you see that skeleton of a ship on the reef over there? The Thetis. How long ago we shipped on that rare vessel, John! You and Amanda, I and Jerusha. Later, you know, it was Malama's ship. Now it rusts on the rocks, like you and me."

  "That's what I wanted to see you about, Abner," Dr. Whipple said quietly. "All of your friends, and I in particular, want you to leave Lahaina and come over to Honolulu to live with us. You are rusting on the reef, Brother Abner, and we want to take you home."

  "I could never leave Lahaina," the old man said stubbornly. "Jerusha is here, and so is Malama, and I couldn't leave them. My church is here and all of the people I have brought to God. I see the Thetis every day . . ." and with mention of the old ship that had brought him to his triumphs and his troubles his mind grew dim, and he added pathetically, as if he were aware that he was losing the thread of his argument, "And I expect Iliki to come back soon, and I should not like to be absent on that day." He looked up in childish victory at his old friend, as if this line of reasoning were irrefutable.

  Dr. Whipple, who had seen a good deal of the death of minds and men, showed no irritation with his old friend's obstinacy. "Abner," he reasoned patiently, "the younger men who run the plantations are most determined that you not be allowed to disrupt their good relationships with the Chinese."

  "Those pigtailed heathens worship idols, John. I tell you I have seen it with my own eyes!"

  "The Chinese are rather difficult to handle at best, Brother Abner," John quietly agreed, "but when you smash their temples, wholly extraneous problems are introduced."

  "John, you and I labored for many years to erase the evils of heathenism from these islands, and in our old age we certainly can't sit idly by and see our victory snatched from us."

  "Brother Abner," the doctor rationalized, "the Chinese problem is different from what we faced with the Hawaiians."

  Abner's mind cleared and he stared coldly at his old friend. "Different?" he asked.

  Dr. Whipple noticed that Hale's eyes had lost their film, and he thought to make the most of these moments of lucidity, so he spoke rapidly: "The Chinese religion is an old and distinguished form of worship. Buddha and Confucius both existed long before the birth of Christ, and the systems of ethics which they evolved have dignity. They must not be confused with the raw, pagan rituals that we found here on Hawaii when we arrived. Furthermore, the Hawaiians were steeped in ignorance and required leadership to the light, but the Chinese had a flowering civilization while Massachusetts was still a wilderness, so they do not need the same kind of spiritual instruction that we had to give the Hawaiians. But what disturbs the younger men most, including your sons Micah and David, who commissioned me to come here to talk with you, is that the Hawaiians were never really a part of our society. They lived on the outskirts, as it were, but the Chinese we need. Our whole economy depends upon harmonious relations with them, and anything which runs the risk of driving them from the plantations cannot be tolerated." He had ended his comments with a threat which he had not intended when he started, but there it was.

  Abner missed the threat, for halfway through his friend's monologue he had clearly caught its central theme, and now he drew back appalled at the ravages which years and success can effect in a man who had originally launched his career in honor and dignity. The lame little missionary studied his visitor with contempt, and pity, and said finally, with the sorrow of Jeremiah and Ezekiel in his voice, "Dear John, I am ashamed to see the day when wealth and concern for a sugar plantation could force you to come to Maui and tell me, 'It was all right to destroy the gods of the Hawaiians, because they didn't work in OUR fields, but we need the Chinese to make money for us, so their heathen gods we must honor." I am ashamed to witness such corruption in the soul of a good man, John, and I now think you had better get back on the boat and go home."

  Dr. Whipple was stunned by the turn the conversation had taken, and he again resorted to threats: "Your sons say that if you don't . . ."

  With some dignity old Abner Hale rose to his unsteady feet and dismissed his visitor: "I was not afraid of the whaling captains, nor of their rioting sailors, and I am not afraid of my own sons. There is good in the world, John, and there is evil. There is God in the universe, and there are heathen idols, and I have never been confused as to whose side in the great Armageddon I fight upon. An idol is an idol, and if a Christian is tempted to make money from an idol, then that idol above all others ought to be destroyed, for as Ezekiel commanded: 'Thus saith the Lord God, Repent, and turn yourselves from your idols; and turn away your faces from all your abominations.' I wish to talk with you no further upon these matters, John, but when you have left I will pray that before you die you will recover once more the sweet, clean soul you brought to these islands . . . but lost somewhere among the sugar fields."

  The little missionary turned his back on his old friend and limped off to his small and dirty shack. When Dr. Whipple tried to overtake him and reason with him, saying, "Abner, you must come to Honolulu with me," the missionary brushed him away and would not speak, and when Whipple followed him right to the door of the filthy hovel in which he was spending his last days, Abner slammed that door against him and Whipple could hear hi
m kneeling against a chair and praying for the corrupted soul of his one-time roommate on the Thetis.

  Dr. Whipple returned to Honolulu and issued instructions to his managers on Maui that they must assume responsibility for keeping Abner Hale away from the Buddhist temples, for it was imperative that the Chinese be protected from any additional disturbances. The Hale boys sent regular funds to Lahaina, in care of the plantation managers, so that their father could be insured good food and medical care. Twice a year they begged the weak old man to come to Honolulu and live with them, and twice a year he refused.

  It was in 1868 that Nyuk Tsin and the Chinese community throughout Hawaii finally realized how strange and barbarous the white man's society really was, for word came into Honolulu that the ancient father of the Hales had died alone, ignored and untended on the island of Maui. The news was difficult to believe, and Nyuk Tsin gathered her Hakka friends at the Hakka store, while Mun Ki sat on his haunches in the Punti store trying to get the appalling news into focus. In both stores this was the news:

  "You say the father of all these famous and rich people was allowed to die in poverty?"

  "Yes. I was there, and I saw them find his old worn-out body in the cemetery."

  "What was he doing there, this old man?"

  "He had gone to care for his wife's grave, and then he was doing the same for the grave of some Hawaiian lady. It looked as if he had died late in the afternoon, falling over the Hawaiian grave, and he was there all night."

  "You say he lived in a pitiful little house?"

  "So small and dirty you wouldn't believe it."

  "And here his children have such big houses. Have you seen the houses of his children?"

  "No. Are they good and fine?"

  "Li Lum Fong works for his son Micah, and he says Micah's house is one of the best in Honolulu. The old man's first daughter is married to Hewlett, and they have much wealth. His second daughter is wed to one of the Whipples, and they have a big house, and his second son also married a Whipple, so he is very rich."

  "Have his children grandchildren among whom the old man could have lived?"

  "The families have two grandchildren, and five, and five, and six."

  "And he died alone?"

  "He died alone, caring for the graves, but no one cared for him."

  When this was said, this harsh summary of the white man's fundamental unconcern for human values and respect for one's ancestors, the Chinese in the various stores sat glum, bewildered. Some of them, reminded of their longing to see some ancestral hall in a remote Chinese village, would rock back and forth on their haunches, trying vainly to comprehend a family with four big houses and eighteen grandchildren who had allowed an old man to die alone and untended. How could the families be indifferent to the bad luck attendant upon such an untended death? In such discussions the Chinese often wanted to speak, to say, "How I long to see my father in the High Village!" but no words came, and they returned to their gloomy discussion of Abner Hale's death.

  "Wasn't he the old man who knocked down the Chinese temples?"

  "Yes. I saw him once running in with a club. He limped, but when he was knocking down temples he was extremely vigorous, and the plantation managers had to put a guard on him, every day, and if the little old man started for a temple the guard would shout, 'Here he comes again!' and white men would run out and capture him and take him home."

  "You would think, under those circumstances, that it would be the Chinese who wanted to see him dead, and yet it is we who are mourning him, and his own family cares nothing about his death."

  But in the big houses there was profound, silent grief. A Mormon missionary told Micah Hale: "On the last day your father met the ferry and inquired after the girl Iliki. He then picked some flowers and I met him on the road leading to the church graveyard. He shook his stick at me and cried, 'You are an abomination. You should be driven from the islands.' If I had had my thoughts about me, I should have followed him then, for he seemed weak and faltering, but so often we do not do that which we should, and I passed him by, keeping away from his stick. He certainly went on to the church and tried to get the pastor to allow him to preach again on Sunday, but as you know, he wandered so much that preaching was hopeless, and the minister put him off. That was the last anyone saw of him. He was found fallen across the grave of an alii nui of Maui, a woman, I believe, that he himself had brought into the church.

  "That night I had a clear premonition that I had done an un-Christian thing in passing your father by, and once I started to see if he had gotten home correctly, but I failed to do so, but on my morning walk I stopped by his house to wish him well, and he was gone. I hurried out to the cemetery, expecting to find him fallen along the way, but as I explained, he had died at the grave.

  "Mr. Hale, I'll not mince words. There were, as you are well aware, harsh comments made concerning your father's death alone in Lahaina, but I know and all like me know how hard you tried to make his last days easier. He was an obstinate man and would permit no kindness. I suffered from his sharp tongue, so I know. I want to reassure you that the true facts are known, and only the fools of the city condemn you."

  As I have said, there was profound grief in the four Hale houses, for the children could remember how their father had cared for them, and loved them, and taught them, and changed their sheets when they had fevers and sacrificed his life for them, that they might be worthy children. They could see him, a father of terrible wrath, keeping them tightly confined to the small, walled-in garden; and they remembered his dreadful lamentations when Reverend Eliphalet Thorn took them away from his care. From that day on, each of the four Hale children had tried vainly to return to his father the love he had spent on them, but he would not accept it. He rejected his oldest son Micah for having married a part-Hawaiian. He scorned David for refusing to become a minister. He despised Lucy for having married young Hewlett, who although he was pure white was nevertheless half-brother to half-castes. And he ignored Esther, his baby, for having married a Whipple who had publicly made fun of missionaries. The sorrow of his four children was deep.

  But they were also New Englanders, and when the Honolulu community whisperingly condemned them for having abandoned their poor old dim-witted father, allowing him to die in a filthy shack in distant Lahaina, the Hales felt it imperative that they appear in public. They accepted the scorn and walked proudly as if there were no whispers following them. When aggravating hostesses tempted them with invitations, to see how they were bearing up, they accepted, and they moved normally in Honolulu society, grimly bearing the charges made against them. It was their duty.

  But the Chinese servants, seeing this, were more perplexed than ever, and in the stores they added to the whispers: "Li Lum Fong told me that last night Micah Hale and Mrs. Hewlett and Mrs. Whipple all went to a party. Now please tell me, please explain how a family that allows their poor old father to die in poverty, untended, can be so shameless as to appear in public, drinking alcohol and laughing? Even before the first year of mourning has ended."

  "You will never understand these heartless people," the Chinese agreed.

  WHEN MUN KI'S SON Asia started growing into a bow-legged, chubby-faced little toddler, he was promptly joined by the Continent of Europe and later Africa, who rioted around the kitchen floor as their parents prepared meals for the Whipples; and with the coming of these children a curious transformation occurred in the relationship between Mun Ki and his wife. Many centuries earlier Confucius had pointed out that the harmonious existence of husband and wife was most difficult to sustain: "Between the two let there be respect."

  It was common, therefore, in Chinese families for a husband never to hand his wife anything, for to do so seemed to imply: "I wish to give you this. You must take it." Instead, he placed the object near his wife and she picked it up at her own time. Some ignored this particular convention, but there was another that all observed. As the scholar at the Punti store had explained to Dr. Whipple, a r
espectful husband never spoke his wife's name, neither in public nor at home. As soon as a girl married she became simply Mun Ki's wife; that was her profession and her personality. But when children arrived, special care was taken to hide her name from them, and there was scarcely a Chinese growing up in Hawaii who knew his mother's name. It was never spoken.

  In Mun Ki's case the problem was further complicated by the fact that this Hakka girl was not properly a wife at all, but merely a concubine, and she must never be called Mother; to do so would be offensive. It is true that she had borne the three sons, but their real mother was the official Kung wife who had remained dutifully behind in the Low Village. By Chinese custom this first wife would be the legal mother of any children Mun Ki might have, anywhere in the world.

  So the scrawny Hakka girl became Wu Chow's Auntie--the Auntie of the Five Continents--and by this name she was known throughout the city. She considered herself fortunate, because in many families concubines like her were known contemptuously as "That One" or more simply "She," but Mun Ki was not willing to give her those names, for he was impressed by the Punti scholar's prediction that his Hakka wife was going to bear many sons and that they would share the continents. So whenever the tricky little gambler addressed his wife as Wu Chow's Auntie, he felt a. special love for her.

  Not one of her children or many grandchildren would ever know her name, nor would they think of her as Mother, for as Mun Ki sternly reminded the boys: "Your mother lives in China." And the boys became convinced that in the Low Village their mother waited for them, and it was to her they owed their devotion. In time a photographer traveled out from Canton, and in some villages he was stoned as a sorcerer attempting to steal men's spirits with his magic, but in the Low Village, Uncle Chun Fat, who had been in California, said to his nephew's pretty wife, "Get your picture taken and send it to the Fragrant Tree Country." She did, and the Kee boys grew up with this brown-tinted picture of a regal-looking, well-dressed Punti woman staring down at them from the wall; and this photograph evoked in them a sterner sense of filial responsibility than Nyuk Tsin ever did.