Hawaii

by James Michener

  She was not concerned with these matters, for as a Hakka she was governed by two supreme drives: above all else she wanted an education for her sons, and to attain it she would sacrifice anything; after that she wanted to own some land. To attain either of these goals she required money, and she had been in Honolulu only a few weeks before she started hawking vegetables. Now, without telling the Whipples, she took in the laundry of unmarried Hakka men, but one day Dr. Whipple asked his wife, "Amanda, what's all that blue clothing doing on the back lawn?"

  "We don't have any blue clothing," she replied, and they investigated.

  "No more laundry!” Dr. Whipple ordered, but by that time she had already earned her beginning store of coins.

  She then switched to serving meals on the side to bachelor Chinese, and this proved fairly profitable until Amanda Whipple grew suspicious of the many strange men who were trailing up Nuuanu and slipping through the back garden gate. "John, forgive my evil mind," she said one night, "but do you 'think our maid is ... well ... all these men?"

  "After all, she is only the cook's second wife, and I suppose that if he thinks he can earn a little more money."

  "John! How horrible!"

  They agreed that something must be done and Dr. Whipple appointed himself detective. Some days later he staggered into the sitting room choking with laughter. "Ah, these evil Chinese!" he chuckled. "Amanda, Captain Hoxworth should see what's going on in our back yard. It'd prove every suspicion he ever had."

  "John! What is it?"

  "Mrs. Kee, horrible thought, is serving hot meals. To unmarried men."

  Mrs. Whipple broke into an embarrassed laugh and ended by asking, "Why do our servants try so many ways to make extra money? We pay them good wages."

  "They are determined to educate their children," Dr. Whipple explained.

  "Good for them, but not by running a restaurant on our property." Again Nyuk Tsin was ordered to desist, but again she wound up with more coins than when she started.

  Her big venture came when she discovered that two acres of swampland on the Whipple property could be converted into money. This time she went to Dr. Whipple and in the barbarous pidgin that all Honolulu spoke, conveyed to him the following: “Could I use this swampland?"

  "What for?" he asked.

  "To grow taro."

  "Do you Pakes eat taro?"

  "No. We will make poi."

  "You don't eat poi, do you?"

  "No. We will sell it to the natives."

  Dr. Whipple made some inquiries and found that Nyuk Tsin had a good idea. The Hawaiians were now working for wages in livery stables and mechanics' shops and no longer wanted to waste their time making poi, so that the profession had fallen into the hands of Pakes. The bizarre idea appealed to Whipple and he told Amanda, "I've owned that swampland for years but it took a Pake to show me what to do with it. The more I see these people, the better I like them."

  As the days passed he became increasingly impressed by what Nyuk Tsin could accomplish with land. Whenever she found a few minutes' respite from her long hours as maid, she would hurry down to her taro patch, tie her conical hat under her chin, roll up her blue trousers and plunge barefooted into the soft mud. She built dikes better than most men and constructed ingenious waterways that drained the land so it could be tilled and later flooded for taro. Dr. Whipple, watching her beaver-like industry, thought: "She has a positive affinity for the land." He was not surprised, therefore, when she came up to him one hot day, wiping her muddy hands on a bunch of grass, to ask, "Will you sell me the swamp?"

  "Where would you get the money?" he teased.

  She astounded him by disclosing how much she had already saved. "The rest I will get from selling poi, and year after year I will pay you the money."

  This pleased Whipple, for it was the kind of frugal bargaining his own New England ancestors had probably engaged in when they wanted to send their sons to college; but he had to disappoint her. "This land's too close to our house to sell. But there's some up the valley I might let you have."

  "Can we go see it?" Nyuk Tsin asked. "Now?" Her lust for land was such that she would have walked miles to see a field. For nearly fifty generations her Hakka people had yearned for rich valley lands, and here she stood among the choicest, determined to own some. That day it wasn't convenient for Dr. Whipple to take her up the valley to see the useless swampland he had in mind and later he forgot, but Nyuk Tsin never did.

  Her progress to ownership was deterred by two setbacks. First her husband vetoed the idea of buying land, explaining: "We won't be here long. It would be foolish to buy land that we would have to abandon when we sailed back to China."

  "I want a field," Nyuk Tsin argued in her stubborn Hakka way.

  "No," Mun Ki reasoned, "our plan must be to save every dime we can get and take our wealth back to the Low Village. When we reach there, I'll send you on up to the High Village, because you wouldn't feel at ease among the Punti and my wife wouldn't want you around."

  "What will happen to the boys?" Nyuk Tsin asked.

  "Well, since they're really Punti, with Punti names, they'll stay with their mother." Seeing her shock he added hastily, "Of course, I'll give you a little of the money we've saved and you can buy yourself a piece of land in the Hakka village, and probably we'll see each other from time to time along the road."

  "I would rather have land here," Nyuk Tsin pleaded.

  "Wu Chow's Auntie!" Mun Ki snapped. We're not staying here."

  Her second setback involved poi, for clever as the Chinese were, they could not master the trick of making this island staple. Nyuk Tsin raised the taro beautifully, and Dr. Whipple said he had rarely seen better. She harvested it correctly, removing first the dark green leaves to sell as a spinach-like vegetable. Then she peeled the stalks for cooking like asparagus, the flowers having already been sold to be eaten like cauliflower. This left the big, dark corms for the making of poi. In the raw state they contained bitter crystals of oxide that made them inedible, but when boiled and peeled they were delicious, except that they looked like Roquefort cheese. It was these boiled corms that Nyuk Tsin hauled to her poi board, a six-foot-long trough in which she hammered the taro with a lava-rock pounder, smashing and gradually liquefying the mass until finally a glob of sticky, glutinous paste resulted. This was poi, the world's most remarkable starch: it was alkaline rather than acid; it was more easily digestible than potatoes, more nourishing than rice; an infant of two weeks could eat poi with safety, while an old man whose stomach was riddled with ulcers could enjoy it with relish. Dr. Whipple, who amused his associates by having poi at his meals instead of bread or potatoes, termed it: "The only perfect food."

  Hawaiians loved poi and were relieved when the Pakes took over the grueling work of manufacturing it, but they could not learn to like poi the way Nyuk Tsin and her husband made it. On days when poi was ready to be sold, it was an island custom to hang along the street a small white flag, and when Nyuk Tsin first displayed hers she had many pleased customers, but later they complained that her product lacked quality. Her poi was not the bland, neutral food they craved, and with apologies they inquired if she had been careful to keep her utensils clean, for whereas in ordinary living the Hawaiians were fanatics about cleanliness, in the making of poi they were maniacs. If a fly lighted on a poi bowl, they would throw the contents out, and the damning word was passed along that Pake poi wasn't clean. Worse, it had lumps.

  A further complication developed. The dollar that formed the basic currency of the islands was broken down into three conflicting coin systems: ten American dimes equaled a dollar; so did eight Spanish reals; so did four English shillings. The latter could be chopped in half with a cold chisel to make eight sixpences to the dollar. Since dimes and reals were of about the same size, the Hawaiians tried to convince the Chinese that a dime worth ten cents was just as good as a real worth twelve and a half, whereas for her part Nyuk Tsin tried to collect reals and pay back dimes, so there was con
stant warfare.

  When the Kees made up their fifth batch of poi, the white flag flapped outside for a long time before any customers appeared, but finally a big Hawaiian woman ambled in, dipped her finger into the purplish paste and tried it upon her tongue. With obvious disgust she grumbled, "I'll take three bundles, for half price, in dimes."

  This was too much for Nyuk Tsin. Weighing hardly one third as much as her huge customer, she leaped forward and started shoving the woman back into the roadway, while the big Hawaiian started slapping at her as if she were an irritating fly. A considerable row ensued, which brought Dr. Whipple into the yard with an edict: "No more poi to be sold."

  This embittered Mun Ki, who foresaw the loss of much money, and he condemned his wife for being so stupid as not to know how to make poi; but a worse humiliation was to follow. The Kees now had several gallons of the ugly-looking paste and frugal Nyuk Tsin ordered everyone to eat it instead of rice. As her husband bravely gulped the unpalatable starch he made wry faces and then discovered with dismay that his sons preferred it to rice.

  Banging down his bowl he cried, "This settles it! We're going back to China as soon as our contract ends."

  "Let's sign for five more years," Nyuk Tsin pleaded.

  "No!" Mun Ki stormed. "I will not tolerate the day when my own sons prefer poi to rice. They're no longer Chinese." And he made a motion to throw out the poi, but Nyuk Tsin would not permit this. "All right, Wu Chow's Auntie," he grumbled. "I'll eat the poi, but when it's finished, I'm going back to China." Uncle Chun Fat had undoubtedly made a million dollars in California, but it was obvious that his nephew wasn't going to emulate him in Hawaii.

  However, one good did come from the poi fiasco. Nyuk Tsin, always an experimenter, discovered that if she cut the stalks of her, taro plants into short segments and packed them in heavy brine, with stones loaded on top of the barrel to keep the brew compressed, in time the stalks became pickled. With steamed fish or pork they were delicious, and as a result of her invention she acquired unexpected funds from her taro patch. She sold the flowers as vegetables, the leaves for spinach, and the uncooked roots to the king's poi factory on Fort Street. But the stems she kept for herself, and when they were properly pickled she loaded them into her two baskets and slung her bamboo pole across her shoulder. Barefooted, she went through the town hawking her Chinese sauerkraut. Dr. Whipple, observing her buoyant recovery from defeat, said to her one day, "Mrs. Kee, do you remember that field that I spoke about?"

  Nyuk Tsin's eyes grew bright and Whipple marked how eagerly she awaited his next words, so he said slowly, "I've looked it over, and it isn't worth much, so I'm not going to sell it to you." Nyuk Tsin's face became a study in yellow despair, and Whipple was ashamed of his trick, so he added quickly, "I'm going to give it to you, Mrs. Kee."

  Nyuk Tsin was only twenty-two at the time, but she felt like a very old woman who had lived a long life, hoping for certain things that were only now coming to pass. Her almond-shaped eyes filled with tears and she kept her hands pressed closely to her sides. To herself she thought: "The land could have been mine, rich land in the Fragrant Tree Country," and at this thought a pair of tears rolled down her cheeks. Aloud, she said as a dutiful wife, "Wu Chow's Father tells me I must not bother with land in this country. Soon we shall be returning to China."

  "Too bad," Whipple replied, ready to dismiss the subject as one of no importance.

  But in the mind of the stubborn Hakka woman the land hunger that she had inherited from generations of her forebears welled up strongly. In a kind of dumb panic she stood on the Whipple lawn and watched Dr. Whipple walking away from her, taking with him her only chance of salvation--the promise of land--and in response to a force greater than herself she called, "Dr. Whipple!"

  The elderly scientist turned and recognized the agony through which his serving girl was going. Returning to her he asked gently, "Mrs. Kee, what is it?"

  For a moment she hesitated, and tears splashed down her sun-browned face. Unable to speak, she stared at him and her mouth moved noiselessly. Finally, in a ghostly voice, she whispered her decision: "When Wu Chow's Father returns to China, I shall remain here."

  "Oh, no!" Dr. Whipple interrupted quickly. "A wife must stay with her husband. I wouldn't think of giving you the land on any other terms."

  The shocking probability that she was going to lose her land after all emboldened the little Chinese woman, and she confessed in a whisper: "He is not my husband, Dr. Whipple."

  "I know," he said.

  "He brought me here to sell me to the man you saw that day outside the fence. But he grew to like me a little, so he bought me for himself."

  Dr. Whipple recalled the scene at the immigration shed and he sensed that what Nyuk Tsin was saying was true. But he was a minister at heart, and he now advised his maid: "Men often take women for strange reasons, Mrs. Kee, and later they grow to love them, and have happy families. It is your duty to go back to China with your husband."

  "But when I get there," Nyuk Tsin pleaded, "I will not be allowed to stay with him in the Low Village. He would be ashamed of my big feet."

  "What would you do?" Whipple asked with growing interest.

  "I would have to live up in the Hakka village."

  Dr. Whipple's conscience had often been stung by the inequities he witnessed in life, but he was convinced that obedience to duty was man's salvation. "Then go to the High Village, Mrs. Kee," he said gently. "Take your sons with you and lead a good life. Your gods will support you."

  With cold logic she explained: "But my sons will be kept in the Low Village and I will be banished from them. They would not want it known that I was their mother."

  Dr. Whipple walked away from the Chinese maid, kicked at the grass for some minutes, and returned to ask her several questions: How did she meet Kee? Was it true that he had brought her to Hawaii to sell her? Was it true that if she returned to China she would be banished from both her husband and her sons? Where were her parents? When he heard of her kidnapping and of her bleak future he thought for some time, then said bluntly, "We'd better go look at the land."

  He opened the wicker gate and led the barefooted woman with the basket hat about a mile up the Nuuanu Valley until they came to a low-lying field, an ancient taro patch now fallen into disuse. Much of it consisted of a swamp running down to the banks of the Nuuanu Stream, but as Whipple and his Chinese servant looked at it that day they could visualize it as it might become: the far end would raise fine taro; the dryer land would be good for vegetables; in that corner a woman could have a little house; and in years to come, the city of Honolulu would reach out to encompass the area. It was an interesting piece of land, worth little as it stood; worth a fortune when energy and planning had been applied to it.

  "This is your land, Mrs. Kee." The strange-looking couple shook hands and walked back to the Whipple mansion.

  Nyuk Tsin did not divulge this compact to her husband, nor did she tell him of her intentions to remain in Hawaii when he left, for Mun Ki was a good man. As long as he was with his concubine in a strange land he was both kind and considerate, but as a realist he knew she could share no part of his life when he returned to China, and it never occurred to him that this future fact would in any way influence his present relationship. He loved Nyuk Tsin and treasured her four sons. She was pregnant again and he was happy. He was doing well as a runner for the chi-fa game and had established himself as one of the principal mah-jongg gamblers in Honolulu. He particularly liked the Whipples, who were exacting but just employers, and once he observed to the doctor: "It looks as if my six-year cycle began with my arrival here."

  "What's the cycle?" Whipple asked, for although he was appalled at the callousness shown by Mun Ki in his proposed treatment of Nyuk Tsin when they returned to China, he liked the brash young man and found him interesting.

  "The Chinese say, 'Three years of bad luck, six years of good,'" Mun Ki explained.

  After the cook had passed along to othe
r work, Dr. Whipple stood reflecting on this chance phrase, and it explained much about the Chinese. He observed to Amanda: "We Christians focus on the Old Testament: Seven fat years have got to be followed by seven lean ones. The world balances out. Good luck and bad equate. It summarizes the Jewish-Christian sense of remorseless justice, one for one. But the Chinese envisage a happier world: 'If you can stick out three bad years, six good ones are sure to follow.' That's a much better percentage, and it's why the Chinese I meet are such indefatigable optimists. We Anglo-Saxons brood on the evil that has to follow good. The Pakes know that good always triumphs over evil, six to three."

  One afternoon he entertained an insight that struck him like a vision: "In fifty years my descendants here in Hawaii will be working for the Chinese!” At the time when this thought came to him he was watching Nyuk Tsin rebuilding her waterways after a storm, patiently leading the runaway waters back home to her taro patch, and as he saw the muddy stream bringing richness to her soil, he pounded his fist into his palm and said, "I've been talking about it for nearly fifty years. Now I'm going to do it." He drove down to the J & W offices and summoned all the young Janderses and Whipples and showed them a map of Oahu Island. "Four fifths of it's a desert," he said crisply, reminding them of something they already knew. "It grows nothing but cactus and you can't even raise decent cattle on it. The other fifth over here gets all the water it needs, but the land is so steep you can't farm it, so the water runs out to sea. Boys, I've often talked about building a ditch to trap that water over there," and he pointed to the rainy windward side, "and lead it over here." And he banged his fist down on mile after mile of barren acreage. "This week I'm going to start."