Hawaii

by James Michener

  IT WOULD NOT be fair, however, to say that during these appalling first years no one cared. Brave Christian ministers from other islands sometimes visited Kalawao to solemnize marriages of dying people who did not wish to live their last days in sin. Catholic priests and Mormon disciples occasionally made the rough crossing to the lazaretto, and their arrivals were remembered long after they had left. Dr. Whipple had come, at the age of seventy, to see what the settlement needed, and he reported: "Everything." At one point a group of religious lepers had actually started a church, and leafing through their treasured Bible had come upon that glowing passage of hope in which the Apostle John reported: "And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents: . . . He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam. ... He ... washed, and came seeing." The lepers called their church--it had no building, for Honolulu could spare no lumber--Siloama, and it kept their hope alive, for every leper was convinced that somewhere in the world there must be a pool of Siloam, or a medicine, or an unguent that would cure him.

  Because Nyuk Tsin was pregnant, she escaped the attentions of Big Saul and his ruthless gang, but as her birth time approached she forgot him and suffered apprehensions of a different nature. For one thing, the lack of water troubled her, and she wondered what her husband would do when the baby came, for he had only one small receptacle for water and no fire at which to heat it. Mun Ki promised: "I'll ask some of the Hawaiian women to help, and they'll have buckets." But Big Saul would permit no one to go near the Chinese shed, and on the final day Nyuk Tsin gave birth to her fifth son under conditions that would not have been permitted had she been an animal: no water, no clean clothes waiting for the child, no food to speed the mother's milk, no bed for the infant except the cold ground; there was not even clean straw upon which the mother could lie. Nevertheless, she produced a ruddy-faced, slant-eyed little fellow; and then her great worries began.

  No one knew at that time how the contagion of leprosy operated, for it was a fact that many kokuas like Nyuk Tsin lived in the lazaretto for years in the most intimate contact with lepers without ever acquiring the mai Pake, so mere contact could not be the explanation; but she had learned that if children below the age of eight stayed very long in contact with leprosy, they were sure to catch it; so she nursed her infant as best she could and prayed for the arrival of the next Kilauea. While she waited, she did many things to make her son prematurely strong. She exposed him daily to the winds so that he would know them; she fed him constantly to build health; she slapped him vigorously to make him resist shock; but at night she cuddled him warmly between her sallow breasts, and she loved him desperately.

  When the Kilauea finally arrived, she was filled with excitement and a determination to act carefully. Therefore, as soon as the first longboat arrived with its cargo of lepers she went down to the landing and called to one of the rowers, "My baby is to go back on your ship," and she made as if to enter the longboat with the child, but the sailors of the Kilauea were perilously afraid that some day the Kalawao lepers might try to capture their ship and escape, and Nyuk Tsin's motion seemed as if it could be the beginning of such an attempt, so the sailor swiftly knocked her down with an oar and shouted to his mates, "Push off! Push off!" But when they were safely at sea, Nyuk Tsin, protecting her son, struggled back to her feet and called again, "It is my baby who is to go back on your ship."

  "We'll ask the captain," shouted back one of the sailors, and on the next trip he yelled, "Where's the Pake with the baby?" and Nyuk Tsin almost stumbled she ran so fast to give her reply, but she was near tears when the sailor shoved the baby back and said, "Captain wants to know where the baby goes." Nyuk Tsin eagerly explained: "He goes to Dr. Whipple, in the big house."

  "Doc Whipple died last month," the sailor growled, and prepared to shove off.

  Nyuk Tsin was staggered by this news and sought frantically for an alternative. "Give the baby to Kimo and Apikela, the maile gatherers," she cried eagerly.

  "Where in hell's that?" the sailor asked, and they rowed back to the ship. On the next trip they advised the agonized Chinese woman that they thought they'd better not take the child, because they had no idea what to do with it when they got to Honolulu, and since there was no wet nurse aboard on this trip, the baby would have no food for a full day. Nyuk Tsin tried to explain that the captain could give the child to any Chinese, and as for food, she had made little bags filled with poi which he could suck. But the longboat pulled away, and in complete panic Nyuk Tsin saw the Kilauea prepare to steam off, so without knowing what she was attempting she walked out into the surf, with her child in her arms, and she started vainly to attempt swimming to the departing ship, but as soon as she was in the water the fine Hawaiian swimmer who had shared the leper cage with Mun Ki saw her plight, and leaped in beside her, grasped the infant in his left arm and started swimming strongly toward the ship. The captain saw him coming and halted the engine for a moment until the powerful brown man caught hold of a rope and with a heave pulled himself up and threw the child into the arms of a waiting sailor. Then, with the same movement, he dropped back into the sea and started a long, easy stroke which carried him back to the leper settlement. The Kilauea sounded its whistle. The white goats sprang higher up the cliff sides. And Nyuk Tsin stood with her husband Mun Ki as their son Australia vanished; but all who stood with them watching the ship go, knew that no matter where the child was taken, or to whom, it was better off than it would have been on Kalawao.

  IN THE SEVENTH MONTH of their stay on Kalawao, the depredations of Big Saul and his cronies finally threatened the Chinese, because Nyuk' Tsin was recovered from her pregnancy. Therefore, the men began to study her, saying among themselves, "A man could have a good time with her, and she's not diseased at all."

  Accordingly, three of them swooped down one night on the grassy shack and grabbed for Nyuk Tsin. But she and her husband had long ago prepared themselves for this event, and the invaders were met by two fighting Chinese armed with sharply pointed sticks. It was a bitter, silent fight, with doomed Mun Ki rising from his bed of leaves to battle desperately with Big Saul, while Nyuk Tsin, with pointed sticks in her hands, slashed and jabbed at the other two.

  Once she was caught around the waist by arms that had only fragmentary hands, and she could smell the foul breath of a leper dragging her to him, but she jabbed backward with her sticks, and he screamed with pain and released her. Now there were two Chinese against two invaders, and like a jungle animal she instinctively ignored her own assailant and sprang for the jugular of Big Saul, the leader, and with great force she jabbed her remaining stick at the side of his head and it must have struck either his ear and gone in there or the soft part of his temple, for it pressed inward . . . long and sharp and pleasingly. At the same time Mun Ki ripped upward with his sharp stick, and Big Saul gasped.

  Clutching his two vital wounds, he staggered away into the night and began shouting, "The Pakes have killed me!" This diverted his unwounded helper, who ran to assist his chief while the third man stumbled in the darkness with three inches of stick protruding from his left eye.

  "The Pakes have killed me!" Big Saul bellowed, and he awakened all the community, so that by the time he actually did stagger mortally wounded into a circle of torches, all who could walk were present to witness his gasping, clutching death. Silently they withdrew from the ugly corpse. There were few who had not suffered at the hands of Big Saul, and now that they saw his leprosy-riddled body in the dust, they were content to leave him. His blinded crony slipped away into the night, and silence fell upon the lepers of Kalawao.

  For the two Chinese it was a dreadful night. They could not know that the community at large approved the death of Big Saul and the blinding of his b
ully companion. They could not know, huddling alone together in the dark night, that no one in Kalawao was ignorant of how the huge man had met his death: "He went to rape the Pake girl, and her husband killed him. Good for the Pake."

  Toward morning it began to rain, and the mournful drops, falling upon the leafy roof and creeping across the floor, first in tiny traces and finally in a small river, added to the misery, and Nyuk Tsin whispered to her shivering companion, "We did the right thing, Wu Chow's Father. The others should have done this years ago."

  "Have we any sticks left?" Mun Ki asked.

  "I lost both of mine," his wife confessed.

  "I have one left, and there's another hidden under the leaves. I think that when they come to seize us in the morning, we should fight until we are dead."

  "I think so, too," Nyuk Tsin replied, and she went to the corner of the miserable hut and from the muddy earth picked up the other weapon. In the lonely silence, not knowing when Big Saul's men would re-attack, they waited, and Nyuk Tsin said, "I am glad, Wu Chow's Father, that I came with you. I am humbly honored that tonight you fought to help me."

  "I have forgotten that you are a Hakka," he replied.

  The rain increased, and for a moment the couple thought they heard the noise of lepers assembling to attack them, but it was only the rustle of water down the sides of the cliff, so Nyuk Tsin asked, "Do you forgive me for my ungainly feet?" And her husband replied, "I don't see them any more."

  They huddled together in the cold, dark night and Mun Ki said, "You must promise, Wu Chow's Auntie, that if you ever escape from here, you will be sure to send my real wife in China as much money as possible."

  "I promise," Nyuk Tsin replied.

  "And you must enter my boys' names in the village hall."

  "I will do so."

  "And when you send the news to the hall, you don't have to mention that you are a Hakka. It would embarrass my wife."

  "I will not say anything to the letter-writer," Nyuk Tsin promised.

  "And you must promise to bury me on the side of a hill."

  "I shall, just as if we were in China."

  "And you must promise to bring my sons to honor my grave."

  "I shall do so," Nyuk Tsin agreed, and Mun Ki said, "When dawn comes we will die, Wu Chow's Auntie, and the promises you have made mean nothing, but I feel better." Through the long, rainy night they waited and when the gray, cold dawn arrived, Mun Ki the gambler said, "Let's wait for them no longer. Let's march out to meet them." And the two Chinese left the foul grass lean-to, each with a jagged, sharp piece of wood in his right hand.

  It was with horror that they saw, slumped in the rain-filled path, the dead body of Big Saul, for they knew that this doomed them to retaliation from the others of the gang, but as they cautiously approached the village, their sticks ready for the final fight, they saw with amazement that the Hawaiian lepers did not draw back in enmity, but moved forward in conciliation, and slowly the deadly sticks were lowered and at last the two Chinese stood surrounded by dying men and women who said, "You did a good thing." And one woman who had been sadly abused by Big Saul and his gang, but who had stubbornly refused to go insane, said quietly, "We are determined that Kalawao shall be a place of law."

  The resurrection of this dreadful lazaretto, where for six years condemned human beings had been thrown upon the beach to die without a single incident of assistance from the society that had rejected them, dated from that morning when the determined woman whose spirit had not been broken by leprosy, or rape, or indignities such as few have known said solemnly, "Kalawao shall be a place of law."

  A rude organization was evolved, consisting of people responsible for parceling out the food, a team to bring water into the village, and informal policemen who were to stop the aimless rape of unprotected women. Girls who arrived on the beach unattached were ordered to pick a man quickly, and to stay with him; and when a young wife argued: "But I am married, and I love my husband," older women told her sternly, "You have left the world. You are in a waiting station for hell. Pick a man. We warn you." So some women passed in turn from one dying man to another, but in an orderly fashion and not according to the rule of rape.

  Children, banished without their parents, were given to kokuas who took them as their own, and fed them. And one law was paramount: when an old man or an old woman was clearly about to die, he must no longer be left in the open fields; he must have some kind of shelter.

  Even when the settlement thus disciplined itself, the government in Honolulu gave little help. Lepers were still thrown upon the beaches to die, and there was no medicine, no lumber, no consolation. But in mid-1871 a Hawaiian who had read many books arrived in the lazaretto, and he launched a more formal government, one of whose first decisions was that the two Chinese must no longer be banished to the foot of the cliff but must be allowed to live among the others. This decision was applauded among the lepers, since it was generally agreed that the coming of limited humanity to Kalawao dated from the night when Mun Ki decided to protect his wife from the rapists, or die. A rude hospital was started, with no doctors but with leper nurses; and women who could read opened a school for children born in the lazaretto. A committee begged the government to send regular supplies of food--five pounds of fresh meat a week for each inmate plus twenty pounds of vegetables or poi--and sometimes it arrived. Gardens were started and a water supply, and the women insisted: "Kalawao shall be a place of law."

  There were, of course, still no organized houses in the leper settlement, and over half the afflicted people slept year after year under bushes, with no bedding and only one change of clothing. These naturally died sooner than even the ravages of leprosy would have dictated, and perhaps this was a blessing, but even the most horrible crawling corpses somehow longed for homes of their own, a shack with a grass roof where they could preserve the illusion that they were still human beings.

  Therefore, in June, 1871, Nyuk Tsin, after five weeks of living inside the community, but on the bare ground, decided: "Wu Chow's Father, we are going to build ourselves a house!" Her shattered husband had already begun to lose his toes and fingers and could not be of much help, but she made believe that it was he who was doing the work, and to keep his interest focused on the future, she discussed each step of the building with him. Daily she trudged, to a ruined Hawaiian house built a century before and hauled back heavy stones, standing with them in her arms while he decided exactly where they should be placed. In time a wall was built, and the two shivering Chinese had at least some protection from the winds that howled across Kalawao in the stormy season.

  Next she sought the ridgepole and the few crossbeams that were essential for the roof, but this was a difficult task, for the government in Honolulu had consistently forgotten to ship the lepers expensive lumber, which had to be imported all the way from Oregon; for although the leaders of the state were practicing Christians and although their consciences bled for the lepers, they instinctively thought: "Those with mai Pake will soon be dead. Why, really, should we waste money on them?" So to get her precious timbers Nyuk Tsin stationed her husband along the shore, where he prayed both for the arrival of driftwood and for the speed to grab it before someone else did. Once he hobbled proudly home with a long piece of timber, and the ridgepole of the roof was slung into place. Now, when the two Chinese lay in their house abuilding, they could look up through the storm and see that promising ridgepole and think: "Soon the rains will be -kept away."

  While her husband guarded the shore, Nyuk Tsin taught herself to climb the lower cliffs that hemmed in the leper peninsula, and after a while she became as agile as a goat, leaping from one rock to another in search of small trees that could be used as crossbeams; but goats had roamed these cliffs so long that few trees survived where once forests had stood; but wherever the agile Chinese woman spotted a fugitive she climbed for it, as if she were racing the goats for treasure.

  These were days of alternate exhilaration and despair. It was good
to see Mun Ki taking an active interest in life, such as it was, and Nyuk Tsin often felt a surge of personal pride when she uprooted a tree high on the cliffs; but in the afternoons when the couple gathered pili grass and braided the panels for their future roof, exasperation would overcome them, and Mun Ki often cried, "We have the grass panels finished but nowhere can we find the crossbeams on which to tie them." Those were the days when the missionary advisers to the king, in Honolulu, argued: "We must not waste money on Kalawao."

  One day a whole board, long enough if carefully split to provide crossbeams for an entire roof, washed ashore from some distant wreck, and for a moment Mun Ki thought that he had secured it for himself, but a big man named Palani, whose feet were still sound, rushed down and captured it. So the Chinese continued to sleep under the open roof, with the rain upon them night after night; but they were luckier than many, and they knew it, for they had side walls to protect them from the wind; they had the solid ridgepole of their roof; and they had the pili-grass panels finished and waiting to be slung into position.