In early 1873 word was sent to Nyuk Tsin that in reward for her help at Kalawao she would be permitted to return to civilization, provided that upon her arrival in Honolulu three doctors would certify that she was free of leprosy. The news excited much discussion among the lepers, but one reaction dominated: although all were sorry to see her go, none begrudged her the right. So in the period between ships this twenty-six-year-old Chinese girl moved about the peninsula of Kalawao. She climbed up to the crater where the volcano which had built the island had once flourished, and she crossed over to the westward side of the peninsula where, in her opinion, the tiny settlement of Kalaupapa offered a much better home for future lepers than the eastern side at Kalawao. But mostly she looked at the towering cliffs that hemmed in the peninsula, and she watched the wild white goats leaping in freedom. To herself she said, "I never expected to leave Kalawao. May those who are left behind find decency."
On the day of Nyuk Tsin's departure from the lazaretto the little Kilauea chugged into position beneath the cliffs; casks and cattle were kicked into the surf; and a longboat came in with its first load of condemned; and although Nyuk Tsin had decided to go out to the ship on the first return trip, she now changed her mind and moved among the quivering newcomers, explaining conditions to them in her broken Hawaiian; and when the last incoming boat arrived, the sailors had to warn her: "Hey, Pake! More better you come, eh?" As she went to the boat she met climbing out of it a small, white-faced man in black priest's clothing. He wore glasses and his eyes were close together. His hair was combed straight forward like a boy's; his trip among the cattle had made him dirty, and his fingernails were filthy. Now, as he stepped ashore at Kalawao he was breathing deeply, as if in a trance, and he stared in horror at what he saw. To the self-appointed governor he said in an ashen voice, "I am Father Damien. I have come to serve you. Where is a house in which I may stay?"
Nyuk Tsin was so surprised to think that a white man would volunteer to help her lepers that she did not find words to cry, "You may have my house!" By the time she thought of this, the sailors were already pulling her into the longboat, and so she left, but as she went she could see the lepers explaining to the priest that in Kalawao there were no houses and that he, like any other newcomer, would have to sleep as best he could on the bare ground under a hau tree.
WHEN NYUK TSIN RETURNED from the lazaretto she was dominated by one desire, to recover her children, and as soon as the Kilauea docked she hurried off, a thin, sparse-haired Chinese widow of twenty-six wearing a blue smock, blue trousers and a conical bamboo hat tied under her chin and reaching out over her closely wound bun in back. She was barefooted, and after an eventful life of eight years in Hawaii, owned exactly what she wore -- not even a toothbrush or a smock more -- plus seven undeveloped acres of boggy land left to her by Dr. Whipple. As she plodded up Nuuanu Valley she did not pause to study the land, but as she went past she did think: "I shall have to start spading it tonight."
She was on her way to the forest home of Kimo and Apikela, and when at last she reached the footpath leading off the highway and into the dense vegetation, she broke into a run, and the wind pulled her basket hat backward, so that it hung by the cord around her neck, and at last she burst into the clearing where her children ought to be, but the family was inside the house, and she got almost to the door before Apikela saw her. The big Hawaiian shouted, "Pake! Pake!" and hurried over to embrace her, lifting her clear off the ground, but even while huge Apikela was holding her, Nyuk Tsin was looking over the woman's shoulder and counting. There were only four boys, from seven years down to four, standing in the shadows, frightened by this intruder.
"Where's the other boy?" Nyuk Tsin finally gasped.
"There's no other boy," Apikela replied.
"Didn't you get the baby from the ship?"
"We heard of no baby."
Nyuk Tsin was tormented by the loss of her child, yet overjoyed to see her other sons, and these dual emotions immobilized her for a moment, and she stood apart in the small grass house looking first at big Apikela, then at drowsy Kimo, and finally at her four hesitant sons. Then she forgot the missing child and moved toward her boys, as if to embrace them, but the two youngest naturally drew back because they did not know her, while the two oldest withdrew because they had heard whispers that their mother was a leper. Nyuk Tsin, sensing this latter fear, hesitated, stopped completely and turned to Apikela, saying, "You have cared well for my babies."
"It was my joy to have them," the huge Hawaiian woman laughed.
"How did you feed them?" Nyuk Tsin asked, feasting her eyes on her robust sons.
"You can always feed children," Kimo assured her. "Sometimes I worked. Sometimes the Pakes gave us a little money."
"Do they have the other child?" Nyuk Tsin asked.
"They never spoke," Apikela replied. Then the big woman noticed how frightened the boys were of their mother, and with a gigantic, embracing sweep of her huge arms she gathered them up as she had often done before. When they were huddled against her warm and ample body, she gave her belly a sudden flick, opened her arms and ejected a tangle of arms and legs at Nyuk Tsin. The scrawny little Chinese woman was engulfed, and then a strange thing happened. It was she who feared the leprosy, and instead of embracing her sons, she withdrew as if she were unclean, and the boys stared silently at their mother while she drew her hands behind her, lest she touch one of them.
"I am afraid," she said humbly, and Apikela withdrew the children.
After a noisy meal during which the boys chattered with Kimo, and Apikela asked a dozen aimless questions about Kalawao, Nyuk Tsin said, "I must go down to look at my land," and she set off for the four-mile jog back down the valley to where the boggy land lay, but again she passed it without stopping, for she was on her way to see the Punti and Hakka families, but none of them knew of her son. Because they were Carthaginian families, they felt obligated to help Mun Ki's widow, so they scraped together a set of garden tools, some seeds, a bag of taro corms and a bamboo carrying-pole with two baskets attached. With these Nyuk Tsin returned to her land, and there she worked till nearly midnight.
The low and boggy section she enclosed in dikes, for there taro would prosper. Furthermore, building the taro bed also drained the intermediate land, uncovering good alluvial soil, which she tilled for Chinese vegetables. This left a smaller, but still adequate high area where vegetables for the haoles could be grown. Thus, from the first night, Nyuk Tsin stumbled upon the system she was to follow for many years: taro for the Hawaiians, Chinese cabbage and peas for the Orientals, lima beans, string beans and Irish potatoes for the haoles. For she knew they all had to eat.
At dawn each day she slung her bamboo pole across her shoulder, hooked on the two baskets, jammed her conical basket hat upon her head, and set out barefooted for her garden. As her vegetables ripened, she loaded her baskets and began her long treks through Honolulu, and no matter how much business she produced at any one house, she was never as concerned with the money as she was to see whether this family happened to have a Chinese boy about four years old. She didn't find her son, but she developed a vegetable business that was becoming profitable.
When night fell, Nyuk Tsin continued working, putting her field in order, and after the stars had come out she would carefully place in her baskets those vegetables which she had not sold. Swinging them onto her shoulder, she would begin her four-mile trek back up the valley to the clearing where her sons were already asleep. There were many days when she never saw them, but as she sat in the night darkness with Kimo and Apikela she talked mostly of their future, and one night, when she had trudged up the valley in a heavy rain, she arrived home cold and wet and she was driven to recall the days in the lazaretto when the leper Palani told them of the world. So she woke her sons and stood before them, muddy and wet, and they rubbed their heavy eyes, trying to understand what she was saying. They could hardly speak Chinese and she was not adept in Hawaiian, but she explained: "Somewhere i
n Honolulu you have a brother, and his name . . ." The boys began to fidget, and she commanded them to stand still, but they could not understand.
"Eh, you kanaka!" Apikela shouted. "Shush! Your auntie speak you! Damned Pakes!" And the boys stood silent.
Slowly Wu Chow's Auntie spoke: "Your father wanted you to share the entire world. He wanted you to study ... to be bright boys. He said, 'Work hard and the world will belong to you.'"
She took her first son by the hand and drew him into the middle of the room, saying, "Asia, you must honor your father by working hard." The sleepy-eyed boy nodded, quite unaware of the commission he had been given.
To each of her sons she repeated this paternal command: "Work hard." And when they stood at attention, she added, "And you must help me find your brother Australia."
"Where is he?" Asia asked.
"I don't know," Wu Chow's Auntie replied, "but we must find him."
When the confused and sleepy boys returned to bed, the little Chinese woman sat for a long time with the two Hawaiians, trying to decide which of her sons promised to be the most intelligent, and this was important, for Nyuk Tsin realized that she would be able to give only one a full-scale education in America and it was essential that the right one be identified early and concentrated upon. Now she asked Kimo, "Which do you think is best?"
"I like Europe," Kimo replied.
"You like him," Nyuk Tsin agreed, "but who is cleverest?"
"America is cleverest," the big man said.
Nyuk Tsin thought so too, but she checked with Apikela. "Do you think America has courage for a fight?" she asked.
"Africa is the most stubborn fighter," Apikela replied.
"But which one would you send to the mainland?"
"America," Apikela replied without hesitation.
By 1875 Nyuk Tsin had saved nearly twenty-five dollars, and if such a rate of income were to continue, she could obviously afford to educate all of her sons, but she knew that there was heavy obligation upon this money, so when it reached the even twenty-five-dollar mark she bundled it up, took her four sons with her, and marched formally down to the Punti store. "I want you to understand what we are doing," she said several times, and when she reached the store, she lined the boys up so that even six-year-old America could follow the transaction that was about to occur.
In those years the Chinese did not use banks, for there were no Chinese establishments, and what Oriental could trust a white man in the handling of money? Wealth was kept hidden until a responsible accumulation was made, and then it was carried, as on this day, to the Punti store or to the Hakka store, and there, in complete confidence, it was handed over to the storekeeper, who, for three per cent of the total, would manage, by ways only he knew, to transmit the balance either to the Low Village, as in the present case, or to the High Village if the recipient were to be a Hakka. Wars came and revolutions. Hawaii prospered or suffered loss. Men died and ships were captured by pirates, but money sent from the Punti store in Honolulu invariably reached the Low Village.
"This money is for the wife of Kee Mun Ki," Nyuk Tsin explained to the storekeeper. When he nodded she said, "A widow in the Low Village. Tell her that as dutiful sons her four boys send the money. And they send as well their filial respect." Again the storekeeper nodded and began to write the letter.
When it was completed, in strange Chinese characters that few in Hawaii could read, Nyuk Tsin proudly handed it to each of the boys and said, "You are sending money to your mother. As long as she lives you must do this. It is the respect you owe her." Gravely the little pigtailed boys in clean suits handled the letter, and each, in his imperfect way, could visualize China, with his mother sitting in a red robe and opening the letter and finding his money inside. When the letter was handed back to the storekeeper for transmitting, Nyuk Tsin stood her boys in line and said, "Remember! As long as your mother lives, this is your duty." And the boys understood. Big Apikela was like a mother in that she sang to them and kissed them; and Wu Chow's Auntie was sometimes like a mother because she brought them food; but their real mother, the one that counted, was in China.
Since the day on which the money was taken to the Punti store was already ruined, Nyuk Tsin decided to explore something that she had heard of with great excitement. She led her four bright-faced boys back up Nuuanu Valley, taking them off into a smaller valley where in a field a large building stood. It belonged to the Church of England, for as soon as the Hawaiian alii discovered the gentle and pliant religion of Episcopalianism with its lovely ceremonies, they contrasted it to the bleak, un-Hawaiian Calvinism of the Congregationalists, and before long most of the alii were Church of England converts. They loved the rich singing, the incense and the robes. One of the first things the English missionaries did was to open the school which Nyuk Tsin now approached, and to the surprise of the islands the Englishmen announced: "In our school we will welcome Chinese boys." The idea of having Orientals in any large numbers in the big, important school at Punahou would in 1875 have been repugnant, and also prohibitively expensive to the Chinese, so the ablest flocked to Iolani, where Nyuk Tsin now brought her sons.
She was met by one of the most unlikely men ever to inhabit Hawaii, Uliassutai Karakoram Blake, a tall, reedy Englishman with fierce mustaches and a completely bald head, even though he was only twenty-eight. His adventurous Shropshire parents had been with a camel caravan heading across Outer Mongolia from the town of his first name to the town of his second when he was prematurely born, "jolted loose ere my time," he liked to explain, "by the rumbling motion of a camel which practically destroyed my sainted mother's pelvic structure." He had grown up speaking Chinese, Russian, Mongolian, French, German and English. He was now also a master of pidgin, a terrifying disciplinarian and a man who loved children. He had long ago learned not to try his Chinese on the Orientals living in Hawaii, for they spoke only Cantonese and Punti, and to him these were alien languages, but when Nyuk Tsin spoke to him in Hakka, it sounded enough like Mandarin for him to respond, and he immediately took a liking to her.
"So you want to enroll these four budding Lao-tses in our school?" he remarked in expansive Mandarin.
"They are not Lao-tses," she corrected. "They're Mun Ki's."
Uliassutai Karakoram Blake, and he demanded of his acquaintances his full name, looked down severely at Nyuk Tsin and asked, "Is there any money at all in the coffers of Mun Ki, y-clept Kee?"
"He's dead," she replied.
Blake swallowed. He liked this practical woman, but nevertheless he tried to smother her with yet a third barrage of words: "Have you any reason to believe that these four orphaned sons of Mun Ki have even the remotest capacity to learn?"
Nyuk Tsin thought a moment and replied, "America can learn. The others aren't too bright."
"Madam," Uliassutai Karakoram cried with a low bow that brought his mustaches almost to the floor, "in my three years at Iolani you are the first mother who has even come close to assessing her children as I do. Frankly, your sons don't look too bright, but with humble heart I welcome Asia, Europe, Africa and America into our school." Very formally he shook the hand of each child, then roared in pidgin, "Mo bettah you lissen me, I knock you plenty, b'lee me." And the boys did believe.
In later years, when Hawaii was civilized and lived by formal accreditations, no teacher who drifted off a whaling boat one afternoon, his head shaved bald, no credentials, with mustaches that reached out four inches, and with a name like Uliassutai Karakoram Blake could have been accepted in the schools. But in 1872, when this outlandish man did just that, Iolani needed teachers, and in Blake they found a man who was to leave on the islands an indelible imprint. When the bishop first stared at the frightening-looking young man and asked, "What are your credentials for teaching?" Blake replied, "Sir, I was bred on camel's milk," and the answer was so ridiculous that he was employed. If Blake had been employed in a first-rate school like Punahou, then one of the finest west of Illinois, it wouldn't have mattered whether h
e was capable or not, for after Punahou his scholars would go on to Yale, and oversights could be corrected. Or if the teachers in the school were inadequate, the parents at home were capable of repairing omissions. But at Iolani the students either got an education from the available teachers, or they got none at all, and it was Blake's unique contribution to Hawaii that with his fierce mustaches and his outrageous insistence upon the niceties of English manners, he educated the Chinese. He made them speak a polished English, cursing them in pidgin when they didn't. He converted them to the Church of England, while he himself remained a Buddhist. He taught them to sail boats in the harbor, contending that no man could be a gentleman who did not own a horse and a boat. Above all, he treated them as if they were not Chinese; he acted as if they were entitled to run banks, or to be elected to the legislature, or to own land. In these years there were many in Hawaii who looked apprehensively into the future and were frightened by what they saw. They did not want Chinese going to college or owning big companies. They were sincerely afraid of Oriental businessmen and intellectuals. They hoped, falsely as it proved, that the Chinese would be perpetually content to work on the plantations without acquiring any higher aspirations, and when they saw their dream proving false, and the Chinese entering all aspects of public life, they sometimes grew panicky and talked of passing ridiculous laws, or of exiling all Chinese, or of preventing them from entering certain occupations. What these frightened men should have done was much simpler: they should have shot Uliassutai Karakoram Blake.
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