Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  “We are now passing the royal taro patch,” Keoki explained. “This little stream brings us our water. This field is a choice location, because it has so many fine trees, and this is where Malama says we are to build your house.”

  The bearers carried the Alii Nui to the four corners of the proposed dwelling, and at each she dropped a stone, whereupon servants began immediately to lay out a grass house, but before they had accomplished much, Malama grandly indicated that the procession must now move to her palace.

  “This is the main road,” Malama pointed out. “Toward the sea are the fine lands where the alii live. Toward the mountains are lands for the people. In this great park lives the king when he is in residence.”

  “What are all those little grass buildings … like dog houses?” Abner asked.

  When his question was interpreted, Malama laughed vigorously and said, “Those are the people’s houses!”

  “They don’t look big enough to live in,” Abner argued.

  “The common people don’t live in them … not like the alii in their big house,” Malama explained. “They keep their tapa in them … sleep in them if it rains.”

  “Where do they live the rest of the time?” Abner asked.

  Spreading her huge arms grandiloquently to embrace the entire countryside, Malama replied, “They live under the trees, beside the rivers, in the valleys.” And before Abner could reflect on this, the canoe came to a spacious and beautiful park, set off by a wall of coral blocks three feet high, inside of which stretched an extensive garden of flowers and fruit trees, interspersed with a dozen grass houses and one large pavilion looking out over the sea. It was to this building that Malama and the Hales were carried, and as the huge woman climbed out of the canoe, she announced: “This is my palace. You will always be welcome here.”

  She led the way into a cool spacious room outlined by woven grass walls, handsome wooden pillars and a narrow doorway which permitted a view of the sea. The floor was made of fine white pebbles covered by pandanus matting, upon which Malama with a gasp of relief threw herself, propping her big chin on her hands and stating firmly, “Now teach me to write!”

  Jerusha, who could not even recall how she herself had been taught, sixteen remote years ago, stammered, “I am sorry, Malama, but we need pens and papers …”

  Her protests were silenced by a voice as soft as polished bronze. “You will teach me to write,” Malama commanded with terrifying majesty.

  “Yes, Malama.” Jerusha trembled. Looking about the room, she happened to see some long sticks with which Malama’s women had been beating intricate designs onto tapa and beside them several small calabashes of dark dye. Taking one of the sticks and a length of tapa, she smeared out the word MALAMA. As the giant woman studied it, Jerusha explained, “That is your name.”

  When Keoki translated this, Malama rose and inspected the word from varying angles, repeating it proudly to herself. Grabbing the stick rudely, she splashed it in the dye and started to trace the cryptic symbols, sensing fully the magic they contained. With remarkable skill she reproduced the word exactly. “Malama!” she repeated a dozen times. Then she drew the word again and again. Suddenly she stopped and asked Keoki, “If I sent this word to Boston, would people there know that it was my word, Malama?”

  “You could send it anywhere in the world and people would know that it was your word,” her son assured her.

  “I am learning to write!” the huge woman exulted. “Soon I shall send letters to all the world. The only difference between white men who rule everything and us Hawaiians is that white men can write. Now I shall write, too, and I will understand everything.”

  This error was too profound for Abner to tolerate, and he interjected, “I warned you once, Malama, that a woman can learn to write words, but they are nothing. Malama, I warn you again! Unless you learn the Commandments of the Lord, you have learned nothing.”

  The walls of the grass house were thick, and not much light entered the area where Malama stood with her length of stick, and in the shadows she seemed like the gigantic summary of all Hawaiians: powerful, resolute, courageous. Once on Hawaii in the days of her husband Kamehameha’s war she had strangled a man much larger than the puny, sallow-faced individual who stood before her, and she was constrained now to brush him aside as her servants brushed away the flies, but she was impressed by his dogged insistence and by the power of his voice. More important, she suspected that he was right; the mere trick of writing was too easy; there must be additional hidden magic that enforced it; and she was about to listen to the little man with the limp, when he pointed his finger at her and shouted, “Malama, do not learn merely the outlines of the words. Learn also what they mean!” His manner was insufferable, and with a sweep of her immense right arm, thicker than his entire body, she knocked him off his feet. Returning to the tapa she wrote furiously, splashing her name across it.

  “I can write my name!” she exulted, but even as she did so, Abner’s persuasive words plagued her, and abruptly she threw down the stick and went to where he lay sprawled on the tapa. Kneeling beside him, she studied his face for a long time, then said softly, “I think you speak the truth, Makua Hale. Wait, Makua Hale. When I have learned to write, then I will come to you.” Then she ignored him and in her silky voice commanded Jerusha: “Now teach me to write.”

  The lesson continued for three hours, until Jerusha grew faint and would have stopped. “No!” Malama commanded. “I have not much time to waste. Teach me to write!”

  “I am growing dizzy in the heat,” Jerusha protested.

  “Fan her!” Malama ordered, and when the young woman indicated that she must halt, Malama pleaded: “Hale Wahine, while we waste time, men who can read and write are stealing our islands. I cannot wait. Please.”

  “Malama,” Jerusha said weakly, “I am going to have a baby.”

  When Keoki explained the meaning of these words to Malama, the great Alii Nui underwent a transformation. Thrusting Abner from the large room, she ordered her servants to carry Jerusha to an area where more than fifty of the finest tapas had been piled to make a day bed. When the slim girl had been placed on the pile, Malama swiftly felt for her stomach and judged, “Not for many months,” but without Keoki in the room she could not explain this conclusion to the white woman. She could see, however, that Jerusha was exhausted and she blamed herself for what had been a lack of consideration. Calling for water, she ordered Jerusha’s white face bathed, and then lifted her in her arms, a mere child against her own huge bulk. Rocking back and forth, she nursed the tired mission woman to sleep, then placed her once more gently on the tapas. Rising quietly, she tiptoed to where Abner waited and asked in a whisper, “Can you also teach me to write?”

  “Yes,” Abner said.

  “Teach me!” she commanded, and she kneeled beside the little New England missionary as he began logically, “To write my language requires twenty-six different letters, but you are fortunate, because to write your language requires only thirteen.”

  “Tell him to teach me the twenty-six!” she commanded Keoki.

  “But to write Hawaiian you need only thirteen,” Abner explained.

  “Teach me the twenty-six!” she said softly. “It is to your countrymen that I wish to write.”

  “A, B, C,” Abner began, continuing with the lesson until he, too, felt faint.

  WHEN THE TIME CAME for the Thetis to depart, almost the entire population of Lahaina appeared to bid the ship farewell, and the foreshore was dark with naked bronzed bodies following each movement of the departing missionaries. At last the twenty who would go to other locations assembled at the small stone pier to sing their sweet blend of mournfulness and hope, “Blest be the tie that binds,” and as their dedicated voices rose in unison, the watching Hawaiians could detect not only an inviting melody but a spirit of the new god of whom Abner Hale and their own Keoki Kanakoa had already begun to preach. When the hymn spoke of tears, the eyes obliged, and soon the vast congreg
ation, led by the missionaries, was weeping.

  In one respect the sorrow was not formal but real. When Abner and Jerusha watched John Whipple prepare to sail they could not mask their apprehension, for he was the only doctor in the islands, and with him absent, Jerusha knew that when her term of pregnancy was ended, the success of her childbirth would depend upon how well her youthful husband had mastered his book lessons. Whipple, sensing this concern, promised, “Sister Jerusha, I shall do everything possible to return to Maui to help you. But remember that on the other end of the island Brother Abraham and Sister Urania will be living, and since her time does not coincide with yours, perhaps you shall be able to visit by canoe and help each other.”

  “But you will try to come back?” Jerusha pleaded.

  “I will do my best,” Whipple swore.

  Jerusha Hale and Urania Hewlett then sought out each other and shook hands solemnly: “When the time comes, we’ll help each other.” But they knew that they would be separated by miles of mountains and by treacherous seas.

  Now the wailing increased, for from the shaded road that led southward to the homes of the alii, Malama’s canoe advanced, borne on the shoulders of her men, and she, dressed in blue and red, wept more than any. Descending from her strange palanquin, she moved to each of the departing missionaries and said, “If elsewhere in the islands you find no home, come back to Lahaina, for you are my children.” Then she kissed each in turn, and wept anew. But the gravity of the situation was somewhat marred by the fact that as the mission people rowed out to the Thetis they met, swimming back, more than a dozen naked girls, their long black hair trailing in the blue waters; and when they reached shore, each carrying a hand mirror—more precious here than silver in Amsterdam—or some lengths of ribbon or a hammer which they had stolen, Malama greeted them exactly as affectionately as she had the departing Christians.

  And then, to the eastward where stout waves broke on the coral reef, thundering shoreward in long, undulant swells whose tips were spumed in white, the missionaries witnessed for the first time one of the mysteries of the islands. Tall men and women, graceful as gods, stood on narrow boards and by deftly moving their feet and the gravity of their bodies, directed the boards onto the upper slopes of the breaking waves, until at last they sped with frightening swiftness over the waters. And when the wave died on the coral beach, somehow the swimmer and his board subsided back into the water, as if each were a part of the Hawaiian sea.

  “It’s unbelievable!” Dr. Whipple cried. “The momentum creates the balance,” he explained.

  “Could a white man do that?” Amanda asked.

  “Of course!” her husband replied, excited by the vicarious sense of speed and control created by the deft athletes.

  “Could you do it?” Amanda pressed.

  “I’m going to do it,” John replied, “as soon as we get to Honolulu.”

  One of the older missionaries frowned at this intelligence, marking it down as one more proof of their doctor’s essentially trivial attitude toward life, but his adverse opinion was not reported to his companions, because from a point forward of the Thetis a new board swept into view, and this one bore not a mere swimmer, but a nymph, a nude symbolization of all the pagan islands in the seven seas. She was a tall girl with sun-shot black hair streaming behind her in the wind. She was not grossly fat like her sisters but slim and supple, and as she stood naked on the board her handsome breasts and long firm legs seemed carved of brown marble, yet she was agile, too, for with exquisite skill she moved her knees and adjusted her shoulders so that her skimming board leaped faster than the others, while she rode it with a more secure grace. To the missionaries she was a terrifying vision, the personification of all they had come to conquer. Her nakedness was a challenge, her beauty a danger, her way of life an abomination and her existence an evil.

  “Who is she?” Dr. Whipple whispered, in hushed amazement at her skill.

  “Her name Noelani,” proudly explained a Hawaiian who had shipped on whalers and who had mastered the barbarous pidgin of the seaports. “Wahine b’long Malama. Bimeby she gonna be Alii Nui.” And as he spoke the wave subsided near the shore; the fleet rider and her board died away from vision and returned to the sea, yet even when the missionaries looked away they could see her provocative presence, the spirit of the pagan island, riding the waves, so that a blasphemous thought came to the mind of John Whipple. He was tempted to express it, but fought it down, knowing that none would understand his meaning, but at last he had to speak and in a whisper he observed to his tiny wife: “Apparently there are many who can walk upon the waters.”

  Amanda Whipple, a truly devout woman, heard these strange words and caught their full savor. At first she was afraid to look at her scientifically minded husband, for sometimes his thoughts were difficult to follow, but the implications of this blasphemous conclusion no one could escape, and at last she turned to look at John Whipple, thinking: “One person can never understand another.” But instead of censuring the young doctor for his irregular thoughts she looked at him analytically for the first time. Coldly, dispassionately, carefully, she looked at this strange cousin who stood beside her in the hot Hawaiian sunlight, and when she was finished studying him, she loved him more than ever.

  “I do not like such words, John,” she admonished.

  “I had to speak them,” he replied.

  “Do so, always, but only to me,” she whispered.

  “It will be very difficult to understand these islands,” John reflected, and as he and his wife watched the sea, they noticed the nymph Noelani—the Mists of Heaven—paddling her board back out to the deeper ocean where the big waves formed. Kneeling on her polished plank, she bent over so that her breasts almost touched the board. Then, with powerful movements of her long arms, she swept her hands through the water and her conveyance shot through the waves faster than the missionary boat was being rowed. Her course brought her close to the Thetis, and as she passed, she smiled. Then, selecting a proper wave, she quickly maneuvered her board, and finding it properly oriented, rose on one knee. From the missionary boat John Whipple whispered to his wife, “Now she will walk upon the waters.” And she did.

  When the Thetis sailed, Abner and Jerusha, feeling dismally alone, had an opportunity to inspect the house in which their labors for the next years would be conducted. Its corner posts were stout trees from the mountains, but its sides and roof were of tied grass. The floor was pebbled and covered with pandanus, to be swept by a broom of rushes, but its windows were mere openings across which cloth from China had been hung. It was a squat, formless grass hut with no divisions into rooms. It had no bed, no chairs, no table, no closets, but it did have two considerable assets: at the rear, under a twisting hau tree, it had a spacious lanai—a detached porch—where the life of the mission would be conducted; and it had a front door built in the Dutch fashion so that the bottom half could remain closed, keeping people out, while the top was open, allowing their smiles and their words to enter.

  It was into this house that Abner moved the furniture he had brought out from New England: a rickety bed with rope netting for its mattress; rusted trunks to serve as closets; a small kitchen table and two chairs and a rocker. Whatever clothes they might require in years to come they would get only through the charity of Christians in New England, who would forward barrels of cast-off garments to the mission center in Honolulu, and if Jerusha needed a new dress to replace her old one, some friend in Honolulu would pick through the leftovers and say, “This one ought to fit Sister Jerusha,” but it never did. If Abner required a new saw with which to build even the minor decencies of living, he had to hope that some Christian somewhere would send him one. If Jerusha needed a cradle for her babies, she could get it only from charity. The Hales had no money, no income, no support other than the communal depository in Honolulu. Even if they were fevered to the point of death they could buy no medicine; they had to trust that Christians would keep replenished their little box
of calomel, ipecac and bicarbonate.

  Sometimes Jerusha, recalling either her cool, clean home in Walpole, its closets filled with dresses kept starched by servants, or the two homes that Captain Rafer Hoxworth had promised her in New Bedford and aboard his ship, understandably felt distressed by the grass hut in which she toiled, but she never allowed her feelings to be discovered by her husband and her letters home were uniformly cheerful. When the days were hottest and her work the hardest she would wait until evening and then write to her mother, or to Charity or Mercy, telling them of her alluring adventures, but with them, even though they were of her own family, she dealt only in superficialities; increasingly it would be to Abner’s sister Esther, whom she had never met, that she would pour out the flood of deeper thoughts that swept over her. In one of her earliest letters, she wrote:

  “My most Cherished Sister in God, Dear Esther. I have been strangely mournful these days, for sometimes the heat is unbearable in Lahaina, whose name I find means Merciless Sun, and no appellation could be more appropriate. Possibly these have been unduly difficult weeks, for Malama has pressed me endlessly to teach her, and although she cannot pay attention to lessons for more than an hour at a time, as soon as her interest flags she calls for her servants to massage her, and as they do, commands me to tell her a story, so I tell her of Mary and Esther and Ruth, but when I first spoke of Ruth’s leaving her home to dwell in an alien land, I am afraid that tears fell, and Malama saw this and understood and drove the massaging women away and came to me and rubbed noses with me and said, ‘I appreciate that you have come to live with us in a strange land.’ Now whenever she wants a story she insists like a child that I tell her again of Ruth, and when I come to the part about the strange land, we both weep. She has never once thanked me for anything I have done for her, considering me only an additional servant, but I have grown to love her, and I have never known a woman to learn so fast.