Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  “You will never be a member of the church, Malama,” Abner warned. “And when you die, you will suffer hellfire forever.”

  “Tell me about hellfire again, Makua Hale,” Malama begged, for she desired to know exactly how much risk she was taking, and when Abner repeated his awful description of souls in eternal torment, Malama shivered and began asking specific questions while tears crept into her big eyes.

  “You are sure that Kamehameha the king is in such fire.”

  “I am positive.”

  “Makua Hale, once a Catholic ship kapena came to Lahaina and spoke to me about God. Are Catholics in the fire too?”

  “They are in the fire forever,” Abner said with absolute conviction.

  “And the same ship kapena told me about the people in India who have not heard of your god.”

  “Malama, don’t speak of him as my God. He is God. He is the only God.”

  “But when the people of India die, do they go into the fire, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that the only people who escape are those who join your church?”

  “Yes.”

  Triumphantly, she turned to Kelolo and said, “You see how terrible the fire is. If you keep that platform out there, hanging onto old gods the way you do, you will live in everlasting fire.”

  “Ah, no!” Kelolo resisted stubbornly. “My gods will care for me. They will never let me burn, for they will take me to their heaven, where I will live beside Kane’s water of life.”

  “He is a foolish man!” Malama reflected sadly. “He’s going to burn and he doesn’t know it.”

  “But, Malama,” Abner pointed out, “if you continue to live with Kelolo in such horrible sin, you also will live in everlasting fire.”

  “Oh, no!” the big woman corrected. “I believe in God. I love Jesus Christ. I am not going to live in fire at all. I will keep Kelolo with me only until I begin to feel sick. We have agreed that before I die I will send him far away, and then I shall be saved.”

  Then Abner played his trump card. Pointing his finger at her, he boldly faced her and warned: “But it is your minister alone who can let you enter the church. Have you thought of that?”

  Malama pondered this unexpected news and studied her tormentor. He was a foot shorter than she, less than half her age, and weighed about a third as much. Cautiously she probed: “And it will be you who judges whether I have been a good woman or not.”

  “I will be the judge,” Abner assured her.

  “And if I haven’t been …”

  “You will not be accepted into the church.”

  Malama reviewed this impasse for some time, looking first at Abner and then at Kelolo, until finally she asked briskly, “But maybe you won’t be here at the time, Makua Hale. Maybe there will be some other minister.”

  “I will be here,” Abner said firmly.

  Malama studied this gloomy prospect, sighed in resignation, and then changed the subject abruptly. “Tell me, Makua Hale, what things must I do if I am to be a good Alii Nui for my people?”

  And Abner launched into the work which would have great political consequence in Hawaii. At first only Malama and Kelolo attended his daily instruction, but gradually the lesser alii reported, and when King Liholiho or his regent-mother Kaahumanu were in residence, they too appeared, questioning, rejecting, pondering.

  Constantly, Abner reiterated a few simple ideas. “There must be no slaves,” he said.

  “There are slaves in America,” the alii countered.

  “It is wrong in America, and it is wrong here. There must be no slaves.”

  “There are slaves in England,” his listeners insisted.

  “And in both America and England good men fight against slavery. Good men should do the same here.” When his moral arguments bore no fruit, he resorted to exhortation, crying, “I was afloat on the ocean on my way to Hawaii, and we passed a ship at sundown, and it was a slave ship, and we could hear the chains clashing in the dismal holds. How would you like it, King Liholiho, if your hands were chained to a beam, and your back was cut with lashes, and the sweat poured down your face and blinded your eyes? How would you like that, King Liholiho?”

  “I would not like it,” the king replied.

  “And the alii should see to it that no more babies are killed,” Abner thundered.

  Malama interrupted. “How should we greet captains from foreign warships when they come ashore at Lahaina?”

  “All civilized nations,” Abner explained, using a phrase that was especially cherished by the missionaries, “conduct formal relations with other civilized nations. The captain of a warship is the personal representative of the king of the nation whose flag he flies. When he comes ashore, you should fire a small cannon, and you should have four alii dressed in fine robes, wearing pants and shoes, and they should present themselves to the captain and say …”

  There was no problem on which Abner was unprepared to give specific advice. This puny boy from the bleak farm at Marlboro, Massachusetts, had not in his youth foreseen that every book he read would one day be of value to him. He could recall whole passages about medical care in London, or the banking system in Antwerp. But most of all he remembered the studies he had conducted regarding the manner in which Calvin and Beza had governed Geneva, and it often seemed prophetic to him that each problem encountered by John Calvin in Switzerland now had to be faced by Abner Hale in Lahaina.

  On money: “You should coin your own island money, and protect it against counterfeiters.”

  On wealth: “Money is not wealth, but the things you make and grow are. It is supreme folly for you to allow individual chiefs to trade away your precious sandalwood. And for any man to grub up the very roots of young trees is insane. The greatest wealth you have is your ability to service the whaling ships as they come into Lahaina and Honolulu. If the alii were wise, they would establish port dues for such ships and also tax each merchant who supplies the whalers.”

  On education: “The surest way to improve the people is to teach them to read.”

  On an army: “Every government needs a police force of some kind. I grant that if you had had a respectable army in Lahaina the whaling sailors would not have dared to riot. But I am afraid a large army such as you propose is ridiculous. You cannot fight France or Russia or America. You are too small. Do not waste your money on an army. But get a good police force. Build a jail.”

  On the good alii: “He is courageous. He protects the weak. He is honest with government money. He listens to advice. He dresses neatly and wears pants. He has only one wife. He does not get drunk. He helps his people as well as himself. He believes in God.”

  On Hawaii’s greatest need: “Teach the people to read.”

  But often when he returned to the mission he would cry dejectedly, “Jerusha, I truly believe they didn’t understand a word I said. We work and work and there is no improvement.” Jerusha did not share his apprehensions, for in her school it was obvious that she was accomplishing miracles. She taught her women to sew, to cook better and to raise their own babies. “You must not give your children away!” she insisted. “It is against God’s law.” She was pleased when they nodded, but her greatest joy was young Iliki, who had once run off to the whalers but who could now recite the Psalms.

  In teaching boys and men Keoki was indefatigable. He was both a devout Christian and a skilled instructor, so that his school was one of the best in the island group, but where he excelled was in his daily sermons, for he had the innate oratorical gift of the Hawaiian and exercised it in robust imagery and appropriate incident. So realistic was his description of the Flood that his listeners watched the sea out of the corners of their eyes, expecting engulfing waves to sweep in from Lahaina Roads.

  But in long-range importance the most effective school was Abner’s, where the alii studied, and his choice pupil was Malama’s daughter, Noelani, whom he had rescued from the sailors. The girl was, by birth, entitled to be the next alii nui, for he
r blood strain was impeccable. Her parents were full brother and sister, each noble in his own right, so that she inherited the glory of numberless generations of Hawaiian greatness. She was clever and industrious, an ornament in any society. In a report to Honolulu, Abner said of her, “She is almost as good a student as her mother. She can read and write, speak English and do the easier sums. And I feel certain that she is dedicated to the way of God and will be one of our first full members of the church.” When he told the girl this, she was radiant.

  Teaching Malama was more difficult. The great alii was stubborn to a point of obstinacy. She required everything to be proved and she had that irritating quality which teachers deplore: she remembered what the instructor had said the day before, for after each visit she recalled the steps of his reasoning, so that when he reappeared she was able to present him with his own contradictions. Few classes in the history of education were more stubbornly hilarious than those which occurred when Abner tutored Malama alone. She would lie prone on her enormous belly, her round moonlike face propped on her hands, demanding, “Teach me the way to attain grace.”

  “I cannot do that,” Abner invariably replied. “You have got to learn it for yourself.”

  What made the lessons difficult was not Malama’s intellectual intransigence, which was pronounced, but her insistence upon answering all questions in broken English, which she quickly identified as God’s chosen language, since the Bible was written in English, and since those who were dear to God conveyed their thoughts in that language. She was determined to learn English.

  Abner, on his part, was equally insistent that the lessons be held in Hawaiian, for he saw that if he was to make progress in Christianizing the islands, he would have to speak in the native tongue. It was true that many of the Honolulu alii knew English, but it was not only to the alii that he intended speaking. Therefore, whenever Malama asked him a question in broken English, he replied in worse Hawaiian, and the lesson staggered on. For example, when he inveighed against eating dog, the conversation went like this:

  “Dog good kau kau. You no like for what?” Malama asked.

  “Poki pilau, pilau,” Abner explained contemptuously.

  “Pig every time sleep mud. You s’pose dog he make like that?”

  “Kela mea, kela mea eat pua’a. Pua’a good. Poki bad.”

  If each had used his own natural tongue, conversation would have been simple, for each now understood the other’s spoken language. But Malama stubbornly insisted that she be the first on Maui to speak English, while Abner was equally determined to preach his first sermon in the new church in flowing Hawaiian.

  What irritated him most was that whenever he succeeded in backing big Malama into a logical corner, so that her next statement would have to be a confession of defeat, she would call for her maids to lomilomi her, and while they pounded her stomach, moving her enormous meals about, she would smile sweetly and say, “Go on! Go on!”

  “So if civilized nations don’t eat dogs, neither should Hawaiians,” Abner would argue, and Malama would call sweetly for her maids to brush his face with feathers: “Kokua dis one man face. Fly too many on it, poor t’ing.” And while Abner fought with the infuriating feathers his argument would die away.

  But the two antagonists respected each other. Malama knew that the little missionary was fighting for no less than her entire soul. He would be content with no substitute, and he was an honest man whom she could trust. She also knew him to be a brave man who was willing to face any adversary, and she sensed that through her he intended to capture all of Maui. “That would not be a bad thing,” she thought to herself. “Of all the white men who have come to Lahaina”—and she recalled the whalers, the traders, the military—“he is the only one who has brought more than he took away. After all, what is it he is trying to get me to do?” she reflected. “He wants me to stop sending the men into the forests for sandalwood. He wants me to build better fish ponds and to grow more taro. He wants me to protect the girls from the sailors, and to stop baby girls from being buried alive. Everything Makua Hale tells me is a good thing.” Then she would pause and think of her kapu husband, Kelolo. “But I will not give up Kelolo until just before I am going to die.” And so the warfare between Malama and Abner continued, but if a morning passed when duties kept him from the grass palace, Malama was uneasy, for her arguments with Abner were the best part of her day. She sensed that he was telling her the truth, and he was the first man who had ever done so.

  When the time came for Jerusha’s baby to be born she was faced by unwelcome news from Dr. Whipple: “I have been detained on Hawaii, where three mission wives are expecting babies, and it will be totally impossible for me to come to Lahaina. I am sure that Brother Abner will be able to handle the delivery capably, but nevertheless I beg your forgiveness. I am sorry.” She grew afraid.

  At one point she even went so far as to suggest: “Perhaps we should ask one of the local women to help us.” But Abner was adamant and quoted Jeremiah: “ ‘Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen,’ ” and he pointed out how unlikely it was that a heathen woman, steeped in idols and vice, would know how to deliver a Christian baby, and Jerusha agreed. But this time stubborn little Abner had so memorized Deland’s Midwifery, and Jerusha was finally so content to rely on him, that her boy was born without difficulty, and when Abner held the child for the first time he rather stolidly congratulated himself on having done such a good job of doctoring, but when the time came to place the boy in Jerusha’s left arm and apply the infant’s mouth to his wife’s breast, the floods of emotion that he had so long imprisoned within his tight heart burst loose, and he fell onto the earth beside the bed and confessed, “My dearest companion, I love you more than I will ever be able to explain. I love you, Jerusha.” And she, hearing these words of comfort in an alien land, the words she had so longed for, fed her child and was content.

  “We will call the boy Micah,” he announced at last.

  “I had thought some sweeter name, perhaps David,” she suggested.

  “We will call him Micah,” Abner replied.

  “Is he strong?” she asked weakly.

  “Strong in the goodness of the Lord,” Abner assured her, and within two weeks she was teaching her classes again, a slim, radiant missionary woman sweating in a heavy woolen dress.

  For one of the peculiarities of the missionaries was that they insisted upon living in tropical Hawaii exactly as if they were back home in bleak New England. They wore the same heavy clothing, did the same amount of tiring work, ate the same heavy meals whenever they could be obtained. In a land rich with Polynesian fruits, their greatest joy was to obtain from some passing ship a bag of dried apples, so that they could enjoy once more a thick, sweet apple pie. Wild cattle roamed the hills, but the missionaries preferred salt pork. There was an abundance of fish in the shallows, but they clung desperately to dried beef shipped out from Boston. Breadfruit they rarely touched, and coconuts were heathenish. In all his years on Maui, Abner Hale would never once do any of God’s official work unless costumed in underwear, heavy woolen pants, long shirt, stock, vest, heavy claw-hammer coat and, if the meeting were outside, his big beaver hat. Jerusha dressed comparably.

  But what was impossible to comprehend was the fact that each year, on the first of October, when the Hawaiian summer was hottest, mission families regularly climbed into heavy woolen underwear. They had followed this custom in Boston. They would follow it here. Nor did they ever find relief by swimming in the cool lagoon, for Bartholomew Parr’s London Medical Dictionary specifically warned them: “NATATIO. Swimming is a laborious exercise, and should not be continued to exhaust the strength. It is not natural to man as to quadrupeds, for the motions of the latter in swimming are the same as in walking.”

  All these conventions resulted in one of the most serious breaches between the Hawaiians and the missionaries. The former, who loved to bathe and who rarely did even twenty minutes’ work without sluicing themselve
s afterwards, found the missionaries not only dirty people but actually offensive in smell. Sometimes Malama, irritated by their sweaty odors, tried to suggest that Abner and Jerusha might like to swim on the fine kapu beach of the alii, but Abner rejected the invitation as if it had come from the devil.

  So all the accumulated wisdom of the islanders was ignored by the mission families. Perspiring in unbelievably heavy clothing, eschewing the healthful foods that surrounded them, they stubbornly toiled and grew faint and lost their health and died. But in doing so, they converted a nation.

  IN 1823, when the building of the church was two thirds completed, Kelolo approached Abner one evening with his final plea. “We can still change the entrance,” he argued. “Then the evil spirits will be sure to keep away.”

  “God keeps evil from His churches,” Abner replied coldly.

  “Will you come with me to the grounds?” Kelolo begged.

  “Everything has been arranged,” Abner snapped.

  “I want to show you a simple way …” Kelolo began.

  “No!” Abner cried.

  “Please,” the tall chief insisted. “There is something you must know.”

  Against his better judgment, Abner threw down his pen and grudgingly walked in the night air to the church grounds, where a group of elderly men sat on their haunches, studying his church. “What are they doing?” Abner asked.

  “They are my praying kahunas,” Kelolo explained.

  “No!” Abner protested, drawing back. “I do not want to argue with kahunas about a church of the Lord.”