"My husband, hidden in the ravine, is the one," Nyuk Tsin replied in Hawaiian.
The big woman began to rock back and forth on her unsteady chair, lamenting, "Auwe, auwe! It is so terrible, the mai Pake.' Then she looked at the Chinese and said, "For three days the police have been here every day, searching for you."
"Could you please let us have some food?" Nyuk Tsin begged.
"Of course!" the big woman cried. "We don't have much. Kimo!" she called unexpectedly, and from the lowly grass house a big, fat, lazy Hawaiian man appeared, with no shirt and a pair of almost disintegrating sailor's pants held up by a length of rope. He was not shaved or washed and apparently he had slept in his pants for several months, but he had a huge, amiable, grinning face.
"What is it, Apikela?" he asked, using her Biblical name Abigail.
"The mai Pake is hiding in the ravine," Apikela explained. "He hasn't eaten for four days."
"We better get him some food!" Kimo, the Biblical James, replied. And he hurried back into the grass house and soon reappeared with a ti leaf full of poi, some baked breadfruit and a few chunks of coconut. "No rice," he joked.
"I'll take it to the sick man," Nyuk Tsin replied.
"I'll go with you," Kimo volunteered.
"It isn't necessary," Nyuk Tsin protested, for she did not want to involve these kind people with the police.
"How are you going to carry him back here?" Kimo demanded.
Nyuk Tsin could scarcely believe the words she was hearing. Without looking at Kimo she asked softly, "Then I can hide him here ... for a few days?"
"Of course!" Apikela laughed, rocking back and forth. "Those damned police!"
"It's a terrible thing to catch sick men and send them to a lonely island," Kimo agreed. "If a man's going to die, let him die with his friends. He's soon gone, and nobody is poorer." He wrapped up the food and said, "Show me where the poor fellow is."
But now Apikela rose and said, "No, Kimo, I'll go. If police are on the road it will be better if I am the one they question. Because I can claim I'm on my way to work, and if they come here it will look less suspicious if you are asleep in the house as usual."
Kimo considered this logic for a moment and agreed with his shrewd wife that things would give a better appearance if the day's routine were not broken, so he went back to bed; fat Apikela marched slowly down the path; and Nyuk Tsin kept up with her by creeping through the rain forest, and the two women had progressed only a little way when Apikela stopped, motioned to the Chinese and said, "It would seem more reasonable if I had two chains of maile about my neck. Go back and ask Kimo for them." And when the huge woman had placed the spicy maile leaves about her shoulders, the procession resumed.
Her strategy was a good one, for when she reached the highway, with Nyuk Tsin cowering behind in the forest, police came by on horses and asked, "Have you seen the mai Pake Chinese?"
"No," she replied blandly.
"What are you doing abroad so early, Apikela?"
"Gathering maile vines, as usual," she said.
They saw the vines and believed. "If you see the Chinese in your clearing, come out to the road and report them."
"I will," the gigantic woman agreed, and slowly she moved on down the road.
Now Nyuk Tsin ran ahead, and it was fortunate that she did so, for when she reached the spot where she had left her husband, she saw that Mun Ki had disappeared, and she experienced a moment of despair, but she was soon able to pick up his tracks through the muddy leaves and she guessed that he was headed toward the highway, to give himself up. In panic Nyuk Tsin followed his trail and saw him just as he was about to climb an embankment and cry to passing strangers. Leaping ahead, she dashed up behind him and caught his legs, grappling with him and dragging him back down into the forest. "I have brought you food," she gasped.
"Where?" he asked, sure that his wife's empty hands proved the hoax.
"There!" Nyuk Tsin replied, and through the trees that edged the highway she pointed to the figure of a huge woman, rolling and wheezing along in a tentlike brown dress made of Boston fabric. She wore maile chains about her neck and an unconcerned, happy smile upon her enormous brown face.
"Who's that?" Mun Ki whispered.
"Apikela," his wife replied, and darted out to haul the Hawaiian maile-gatherer into the forest. The big woman looked at the leper's sad condition and tears came into her eyes. Handing Nyuk Tsin the bundle of food, she gathered the scrawny Chinese to her capacious bosom and whispered, "We will take care of you."
For nearly a month Apikela and her slothful husband Kimo sequestered the Chinese, sharing with them their meager supplies of food. Because there were now four to feed, Apikela had to go each day into the forest to gather maile, which her husband prepared for market by skillfully slitting the bark, cutting out the pithy core, and leaving a fragrant supple vine that could be woven into leis. Periodically he lugged the maile into Honolulu, peddling it among the flower merchants. With the money thus gained he would shoot a few games of pool, buy some breadfruit, a little pork and some rice. Since Hawaiians rarely ate rice, this purchase occasioned comment, which Kimo rebuffed by observing, "I'm switching to rice so I'll be smart, like a Pake."
Once when big, lazy Kimo ambled home with rice, Nyuk Tsin bit her lip and asked, "Why do you do this for us, Kimo?" And Apikela interrupted, saying, "When we were children going to the church we were often told of how Jesus loved the lepers, and it was a test of all good men how they treated those who were sick. And no leper ever came to Jesus without receiving aid, and no leper will come to the house of Kimo and Apikela to be turned away."
"How much longer can we hide here?" Nyuk Tsin asked.
"Until the man dies," Apikela said resolutely.
And they lived like this for another week, and then a spy in the Honolulu store put two and two together, reasoning: "Kimo never before sold such amounts of maile. And he never bought rice, either. It is Kimo who is hiding the mai Pake Chinese!" And this man hurried to the police and told them, "I am certain that Kimo and Apikela, in the clearing up toward the Pali, are hiding the mai Pake." So the spy got a good reward for his ability to think cleverly, and that afternoon the police crept in upon the clearing. When they charged out, Nyuk Tsin grabbed a frail stick and tried desperately to fight them off, and big Apikela tried to wrestle with them, and Kimo shouted, "Who was the evil man who betrayed us?" But weak and shivering Mun Ki walked out of the little near-collapsing grass shack and gave himself up. The police were so pleased with having taken the fugitives that they started immediately to hustle them away, but Nyuk Tsin cried in Hawaiian, "Let us at least thank these good people," but she was not allowed this courtesy, and as she was dragged down the path and onto the highway she looked back and saw the two enormous Hawaiians weeping as their friends were hauled into final custody.
When Dr. Whipple heard that his Chinese servants had been captured, he hurried to the leper station, where the afflicted were assembled for shipment to their outcast island, and sought out Nyuk Tsin and her husband. "I wish you had escaped," he told them in Hawaiian. "I am sorry to see you here."
"Have you taken the children to their homes?" Nyuk Tsin asked.
"Are you determined to be a kokua?" Whipple countered.
"Yes."
"You're free to leave here, if you wish. Until the boat sails." He drove her to his home and showed her the four children, fat and happy in American clothes. She started to laugh and said, "They don't look like Chinese." She gathered them up and said that she would walk with them to their new homes, but Dr. Whipple piled them into his carriage, and they started forth on their unpleasant mission. At the first house, a Punti's, she delivered a son and said, "Bring him up to be a good man." The Punti replied, "It will be difficult, but we'll try."
At the second house, a Hakka's, she said, "Teach him to speak all the languages," and the Hakka grudgingly took the child. At the third, another Punti's, she begged: "Bring him up to honor his father." And at the last
house, another Hakka's, she warned again: "Teach him to speak all the languages." Then she asked the doctor to drive her to the Hewlett home, and there she found the cook and his wife and spoke of the child that was not yet born, and she said to the Punti, "You are to keep this child as your own. Give it your name. Teach it to revere you as its just parents."
"When will the child get here?" the people asked.
"As soon as a ship leaves from the leper island," Nyuk Tsin replied, and the intended parents shivered with apprehension.
On the way back to the quarantine station, Dr. Whipple drove a short distance up Nuuanu Valley to the land which he had given Nyuk Tsin. Placing stones at the corners of a seven-acre field, he assured her, "Mrs. Kee, I have entered this plot at the land court and paid taxes on it. When your husband dies, because he can't live much longer, you come back here and start a little garden and get your children back with you."
From the carriage Nyuk Tsin looked at the wet land, and it seemed impossibly beautiful to her. "I will remember this land," she said in Hawaiian.
But when Dr. Whipple started to turn the horses around, he saw coming toward him two huge Hawaiians, and when they detected Nyuk Tsin in the carriage, they cried, "Pake, Pake! We have come for the children!"
They ran as fast as their enormous bulk permitted and caught hold of their friend's hands. "Surely you will let us keep the children for you," they pleaded.
"You have such a small house," Nyuk Tsin protested.
"It's big enough for children!" Apikela cried expansively, opening her arms like swinging gates. "Please, Pake wahine! You'll let us have the children?"
Nyuk Tsin spent some time considering this strange request, and she wished that Mun Ki were present to help her, but she was sure he would approve her conclusion: "The Punti and the Hakka families might grow weary of our children, even though we are all from the Carthaginian. But Apikela and Kimo will love them forever." So Nyuk Tsin spoke for her family: "We will give the children to you." And she asked Dr. Whipple to drive back to the houses where the children were and she explained to the Chinese: "It will be better this way because Apikela and Kimo will be able to keep all the children together. But I hope, for my husband's sake, that you will give them some money from time to time."
"Money? For keeping children?" fat Apikela asked in astonishment, and Nyuk Tsin thought how strange it was that Chinese families with good jobs always found it difficult to accept one strange child, but Hawaiians who had nothing could invariably find space for one child, or three, or five. She last saw her boys heading back up the Pali, one baby in Apikela's arms, one in Kimo's, and the two older boys trudging happily behind.
When the time came for the panel of doctors to certify that Mun Ki was indeed a leper, and therefore subject to banishment for life without right of appeal, they reported: "Aggravated case of leprosy. Lesions both external and internal. Banishment to Kalawao imperative." The papers were signed. The three doctors left, and Whipple said to the condemned man, "Mun Ki, wherever a human being goes, there is a challenge. Be the best man you can, and your gods will look with favor upon you. And may my God in His heaven protect you. Good-bye." Bowed with the grief that comes upon all men who watch the swinging changes of life, Dr. John Whipple went home.
Two days later forty condemned lepers were assembled and marched through the streets of Honolulu toward the pier where the leper ship, Kihuea, waited. As the ghostly men and women walked, the citizens of the city drew back in horror, for some hobbled along on feet that had no toes and other stared vacantly ahead from horrible faces that had no cheeks and whose lips and noses had fallen away. In silence the doomed lepers approached the Kilauea, a small, snout-nosed little craft of four hundred tons with a grimy smokestack and filthy decks. Forward, some cattle had been tethered for the short, rough haul to the leper colony, and as the ship rocked slowly these beasts lowed mournfully. When the lepers appeared, a gangplank was lowered and nauseated policemen herded the doomed men and women aboard; but when the final moment came when the lepers were to be cut off forever from their families, a monstrous wailing began.
"Auwe, auwe!” howled women whose husbands were being dragged away.
"Farewell, my son!" an old man shouted, his face bathed in tears.
"We shall meet in heaven, by the cool waters!" wept a sister whose brother was being shoved onto the ugly ship, this unimpressive ferry to hell.
"Auwe, auwe!" mourned the multitude of watchers as they watched the stricken ones slowly climb the gangplank, overcome by terror and shaking.
In a sense, the lamentation of those on shore was traditional and formalized; but the sounds that now emitted from the decks of the Kilauea were not, for the hopeless lepers lined the railings of the ship and cried back their piteous farewells. Condemned women waved with hands that bore no fingers. Men cried good-bye from faces that had no recognizable features. Some of the lepers were too far progressed in the disease to be able to stand by themselves, and they wailed without purpose, adding their cries to the general lament.
But occasionally, among the forty victims, one would appear whose countenance or character aroused in all an instinctive outburst of sorrow. The first such harrowing case was that of a bright little girl about ten years old who had left the pier with not a member of her family present to bid her farewell. On her face beginning sores were visible as she hurried up the gangplank, and it was obvious to all that she would soon be completely ravaged by the disease, but in wonder and confusion she stepped onto the gently swaying deck of the Kilauea, not able to comprehend the awful step she was taking.
Out of compassion an older woman, also condemned to exile, leaned down to comfort the girl, but when the child saw the awful chinless face coming toward her, she screamed, not realizing that soon she would look the same.
The next case was that of a man well known for his swimming prowess, a big, handsome fellow with broad chest and strong arms. Many came to see him leave for the island from which no leper had ever returned, and as he stood at the head of the gangplank, turning back to wave his hands at his friends, showing them fingers with the first joints already eaten away, the misery of his condition infected everyone and cries of "Auwe, auwe!" sounded. This communion of sorrow affected him, and he hid his face, whereupon the weeping increased.
But the third case was entirely different, so dreadful that it occasioned no public display of sorrow. It was that of a very lovely young wife, with flowers in her hair, on whose body no one could identify the fatal marks. Her feet were clean and her fingers, too. There was no infection on her face, but her eyes were glassy, so the well-informed crowd knew that here was one in whom the sickness lay accumulating its strength inside, ready to erupt generally in one massive sore. The death of this girl would be horrible, a total disintegration, and those who watched her walking slowly and with grace up the gangplank kept their sorrow to themselves.
But she was not to depart in peace, for her husband broke from the crowd of watchers and tried to dash up the gangplank after her, shouting, "Kinau, Kinau, I will be your kokua." Guards restrained him, and his wife Kinau, named after one of Hawaii's most able queens, looked back down the gangplank and with visible compassion cried, "You may not join me, Kealaikahiki." And with considerable dignity she stepped onto the Kilauea and ordered the guards to drag her husband away. Impassively, she watched him go, and if she heard his frantic cries, She did not indicate the fact, and he disappeared from the dock altogether, crying, "Kinau! Kinau! I shall be your kokua."
When the doomed Hawaiians were all aboard, the police produced the Chinese Kee Mun Ki, and since the disease from which he suffered was known as the mai Pake, the crowd somehow understood that he personally was the cause of this day's tragedy, and they mumbled strongly against him. Alone, looking neither right nor left, he passed through the hostile groups until at last he stood at the gangplank, and then two huge Hawaiians hurried forward to bid him good-bye. They were Kimo and his wife Apikela, and without fear they embraced th
e leper, kissed him on the cheeks, and bade him farewell. With some relief, the thin, shivering Chinese man walked up the gangplank. He had hoped, on this last journey, that Dr. Whipple would be present to bid him good-bye, but the doctor could no longer suffer the sight of people whom he had helped condemn taking their last farewells. Among the group sailing that day were more than twenty upon whose investigating boards he had sat, and he could not bear to see them go, partly at his command. On days when the Kilauea sailed, he stayed home and prayed.
When Mun Ki was safely aboard, the captain shouted, "Open the cage!" And two sailors went aft to a wicker cage that had been built on the deck of the leper ship, and they swung back on its hinges a latticed gate, and when it was open, other sailors, careful not to touch the lepers, growled, "All right! All right! Get in!"
The cage was not large, nor was the door high, and one by one the condemned people stooped, crawled in, and found their places. The wicker gate was lashed shut, whereupon the captain called down reassuringly, "There will be a man stationed by you at all times. If we start to sink, he'll cut open the gate."
While this encagement of the lepers was under way, two other sailors had appeared with buckets of soapy water and now proceeded to wash down the handrails of the gangplank, after which normal passengers were allowed to board, and when they had hurried below to escape the smell of the forty caged lepers the captain shouted, "All right! Kokuas aboard!"
Hawaii Page 71