Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  “I’m glad I shall not live to see it,” Noelani said wearily as the Chinese servants began bringing in the food.

  When the Hoxworths dined with the Whipples the thing that impressed Nyuk Tsin was the extraordinary gentleness with which Captain Rafer cared for his wife. Throughout the Chinese community he was the favorite haole, for although he had abused the coolies on their voyage to Hawaii, and cursed them for leaving the plantations, in other respects he had proved a just friend. The man whose face he had kicked in got a good job, and the one whose ankle was broken when he was pitched into the hold was given money to import a wife into the islands. Whenever an H & H ship arrived with a cargo of special food for the Chinese, Captain Hoxworth was there to supervise the unloading, for he loved the smell of faraway places, and he was a familiar visitor to both the Punti and the Hakka stores. He slapped women on the backside and joked with men. If he happened to be carrying a bottle of whiskey, which he often was, he would knock off the cork, take a swig, wipe the bottle with his wrist, pass it to the Chinese, and then take another swig when it returned to him. He had a free and easy way that the Chinese appreciated and a capacity for suddenly imposing his will upon them which they respected. In private he railed against the Chinese peril; in public he treated them decently.

  It was his obvious love for his Hawaiian wife which impressed them most, and the tall, rugged old captain with his white sideburns never looked more appealing than when he was gently helping Noelani into her carriage for a visit to some friend’s for dinner. At such times he hurried before her to the carriage carrying her cashmere blanket, which he fixed on the rear seat. Then he waited and held out his strong right arm for her to lean on as she climbed painfully into the conveyance. Next he tucked the blanket about her feet and then adjusted her stole over her shoulders. Then he walked sedately in front of the horses—never around the rear of the carriage—and patted them on the flanks and on the noses. Then he came back to the rear door of the carriage and climbed in beside his tall Hawaiian wife. Giving his English driver a signal, he would sit back with her and nod to the evening strollers while his horses pranced through the dusty streets. Apart from the king, Captain Hoxworth was the most dignified and memorable man in Hawaii, and he knew it.

  November nights can be cold in Hawaii, for then the days are short and the sun is low in the heavens, and as November, 1869, progressed, it became obvious to all that Noelani must soon be confined permanently to bed in her last lingering illness, for Dr. Whipple said, “I can’t find what’s wrong, but obviously she ought to stop going out so much.” To this, Captain Hoxworth replied, “Noelani’s not an ordinary woman. She is the Alii Nui of these islands and she will continue to ride with me as long as her strength permits, for she thinks it proper to move about among her people.”

  The nights grew colder and Captain Hoxworth wrapped his wife in more shawls. Once, when she seemed extremely weak and bordering on collapse, he asked her, “Would you prefer, my dear, to stay at home this night?”

  “No,” she said. “Why should I?”

  So he helped her into the carriage and they drove not directly down Beretania but by way of King Street and Nuuanu and he pointed out various sights to her, as if she were a tourist seeing Honolulu for the first time. “That’s where we’re building the new H & H receiving warehouses,” he explained, “and I propose buying land here for our office building. Over there’s where the Chinese are opening a store for vegetables and meat.”

  He kept his sensitive finger on the pulse of Honolulu as it throbbed toward new life, but at the same time he kept close to his wife as she spent her last energies. At dinner that night, at the Hewletts’, he altered the seating arrangements so that he could stay near her, and when she faltered he said calmly, “This may be the last time Lady Noelani will dine with friends.” But she had rallied, and as December came she told her husband that she enjoyed more than anything else her evening drives with him, so on the eighth night in December he had the carriage roll up to take her to the Whipples’ for dinner, but when Nyuk Tsin saw her enter the dining room, like a tall, shrunken brown ghost, she gasped.

  At dinner that evening Captain Hoxworth shocked everyone but Noelani by saying a terrible thing: “When Noelani’s mother, the great Alii Nui of Maui lay dying, her husband used to creep in to see her on his hands and knees, bringing her maile from the hills. I think it a shame and lacking in dignity to see a sweet Hawaiian lady with no maile chains about her, so I have asked some of my men to fetch us maile from the hills, and I should like to bring it to my Alii Nui.”

  He went to the door and whistled loudly for his coachman, and the Englishman ran up with maile chains and Captain Hoxworth placed the fragrant vines about his wife’s shoulders. Then he took a chair far from her and said slowly, “The first time I saw Noelani must have been in 1820, when she was a girl. And I saw her on a surfboard, standing up with not a stitch of clothes on, riding toward the shore like a goddess. And do you know when I saw her next? In 1833. I walked out to her home, knocked on the door, and the first words I ever said to her were, ‘Noelani, I’ve come to find me a wife.’ And do you know what her first words to me were? ‘Captain Hoxworth, I will go with you to the ship.’ So we went aboard the Carthaginian, and she never left.” He smiled at his wife and said, “Looking at the way people get engaged and married today, I’d say they had very little romance in their bones.” He winked at her and then looked at the guests.

  “To you young men who aren’t married, I’ve only one bit of advice. Hang around the shore till you see a beautiful Hawaiian girl surfing in, completely naked. Marry that one, and you’ll never regret it.”

  He took the sick woman home that night, and she never appeared on the streets of Honolulu again. Her death was a strange passing, a mysterious disappearance. No doctor could explain why she was dying, but it was obvious that she intended to do so. Like the poetic race of which she was the noblest part, she drifted casually away, and in late December she announced: “I will die in early January.” The sad news spread through the Hawaiian community, so that all during the festivities of that season big women appeared at the Hoxworth door, barefooted and with flowers, explaining: “We have come to grieve with our sister.” For hours they would sit about her bed, saying nothing, and at dusk, like ponderous, doomed creatures, they would slip away, leaving their flowers behind. Before Noelani died she summoned her son-in-law, dark-bearded Micah Hale of the Privy Council, and she directed him: “Look after Hawaii, Micah. Give the king good advice.”

  “Each time, before I counsel with him, I pray that God will direct me in the right way,” he assured her.

  “I don’t want you merely to be pious,” she said. “I want you to be right.”

  “It is only through prayer that I can discern the right,” he countered.

  “Are you as determined as ever to take Hawaii into the Union?” she asked.

  “I will see it happen,” he insisted.

  Noelani began to weep and said, “It will be a sad day for the Hawaiians. On your day of triumph, Micah, be gentle and understanding with your wife. Malama will support you, of course, but on the day you exterminate the Hawaiian kingdom, she will also hate you.”

  Austere Micah Hale wanted to be lenient at this moment, the last during which he would see his powerful mother-in-law, but like a prophet from the Old Testament he was forced to add, “In the affairs of nations there is a destiny, Noelani, and it cannot be avoided.”

  She replied, “In the affairs of races there is a destiny, too, and ours has not been a happy one.” He bowed and started to leave, but she called him to her bedside and said, “I should like to pray with you, Micah.” He kneeled and she intoned: “God, survey the actions of this headstrong young man with the beard. Inspire him with gentleness as well as rectitude.”

  At her funeral in the old Makiki burial grounds Captain Hoxworth caused excitement by refusing to leave her grave. He remained there for several hours, not weeping or carrying on, but standi
ng beside the grave and looking down across Honolulu toward the ships and out to Diamond Head. At Waikiki the surf was rolling in, and he could see the little figures of men riding upon the waves, and the skies were blue with cloud racks piled upon the horizon, and below lay the sea, the restless, turbulent sea upon which his life had been led.

  “How wonderful it’s been,” he thought. “I wouldn’t change a day of it. Even now, somewhere out there, the sperm whales are breeding, and I’m part of them. Go to it, whales! Soon enough somebody like me’ll come along and stick a harpoon in you. Have fun while you can!”

  Captain Hoxworth had never taken great pleasure in his children, allowing them to develop as they would, but now with Noelani gone he suddenly transformed himself into the benevolent old head of the family, and it became his habit to convene his son and his three daughters with their families and to sit benignly at the head of his table, dispensing oharm and affection. He spoke of the old days in the South Pacific and of his adventures in China. It was his opinion that a man had to wait until he was dead to know the meaning of God, unless he happened to have known the sea in his youth.

  “To sail before the mast when you’re thirteen, to know the abuse of wind and foul captains, to find the spiritual solace that arises from the fo’c’s’l, and then to drive yourself inch by inch to the captaincy and then the ownership of the vessel, these are the ultimate tests of a man. It’s in such contests with fate that a man comes to know exactly how he stands with God. And don’t you forget it, you young men who came to your positions the easy way,” and he looked sharply at his son Bromley and his sons-in-law: Janders, Whipple, Hale.

  He had already spotted Micah as by far the ablest of the group, and at his family dinners, to which the younger men willingly came, he talked more and more to Micah. “Any enterprise of moment is like commanding a ship, Micah. There are plots against the captain, and he’s got to put them down ruthlessly. You may not like to kick a man in the face, I never did, but it may be the only way you can maintain control of your ship. And that’s what’s important. Control.”

  It was his opinion that the next decade would produce a series of fundamental crises which would determine the future of Hawaii, and, more important, the future of the powerful firms that sought to control the business enterprise of Hawaii. “Disregard the dear, fat, old kings. They are of no consequence whatever and should be kept around to amuse the people. The important thing is Hoxworth & Hale and Janders & Whipple and Hewlett’s. Keep them on the right track, and the kings’ll have to follow suit.”

  When he talked thus he was disturbed to find that Micah Hale did not agree with him. “We must settle this problem of the foolish kings,” Hale insisted. “It is infuriating to see them wasting the substance of this kingdom, and I am more determined than ever to do something about it.”

  “Micah!” Captain Hoxworth reproved. “You be content with making H & H the most powerful company in the Pacific, and the kings’ll take care of themselves. Remember what I say. Hell, son, you’ll be the real king, the one that matters.”

  “It is not the destiny of Americans that they should live under kings,” Micah repeated stubbornly.

  “I’ll tell you what the destiny of America is,” Hoxworth boomed, thrusting his handsome, white-haired head forward among his children. “If Hawaii prospers and makes money, America will suddenly discover that we’re part of its destiny. But if you allow the firms to fool around and squander our inheritance, America won’t give a damn for us.”

  In these discussions with Micah the wiry old captain tended to ignore his ineffective son, Bromley, and when Micah argued against him on the matter of Hawaii’s civil government, falsely holding it to be of more importance than the profitable governance of H & H and the other big companies, Hoxworth noticed that among his listeners one quick intelligence matched his own, and without ever directing himself purposely and obviously at this attentive listener, be began tailoring his comments so that Bromley’s thirteen-year-old boy, Whip, could understand, and he was gratified to see how soon this wiry, quick boy with the sharp eyes caught on.

  “I have always held,” he said, speaking ostensibly to the boy’s uncle, Ed Janders, who had married Iliki—it was curious the way in which Captain Hoxworth named his own children after women he had loved: Jerusha, Bromley, Iliki; but his wife had understood—“I’ve held that a man’s life should begin at thirteen. He should go to sea, or engage in great enterprises. His mind should already have grappled with the idea of God, and he should have read half the fine books he will read in his entire lifetime. Any single minute lost after you’re thirteen is an hour irretrievably gone.” It was interesting to the old captain that Iliki’s husband didn’t understand a word he was saying, but his grandson Whip Hoxworth understood it all.

  The captain therefore formed the habit of taking the high-spirited boy with him as he rode about Honolulu, and that year the community became accustomed to seeing handsome Captain Hoxworth parading the streets with his alert grandson, introducing him formally to his business associates and explaining shipping customs to the boy. One day the minister asked, “Captain, isn’t the boy attending school any more?” And Hoxworth replied, “What I’m teaching him he can’t get in school.”

  He took his grandson down to the wharves to see the H & H ships come in from Java and China, and he made the boy stay down in the fo’c’s’l for entire days while he went about other work, saying, “If you’ve got a good imagination, and I think you have, you can construct what it must have been like to sail before the mast.” He also said, “There is one thrill of the sea that every man must discover for himself, the arrival at some strange port after a long voyage. Whip, remember this. Travel about the world. See the forbidden cities and dive into them.”

  He said this while standing ’tween decks in a converted whaler, and in the half-darkness he added, “Whip, the two greatest things in life are sailing into a strange port and thinking, ‘I can make this city mine,’ and sailing into the harbor of a strange woman and saying, ‘I can make this woman mine.’ Whip, when I’m dead I don’t want you to remember me as I was in church or as I looked sitting at the big table at night. I want you to remember me as I was.”

  He left his gig at the wharves and walked westward from the bustling docks until he and his grandson came to a section of evil-smelling little houses strung along a network of alleys. “This is Iwilei,” Captain Hoxworth explained. “Rat Alley, Iwilei, and down here I’m king.” But if his words were true, he was a king incognito, for no one in the alleys of Iwilei spoke to him. A few Chinese who had made money that week gambling, a few sailors, a few minor men from the smaller businesses of Honolulu ambled past, intent upon their business, and the first thing young Whip Hoxworth noticed was that in Iwilei even men who knew each other did not speak, as if by magic a man was invisible because he wished to be so.

  “This is where I often come,” the old captain explained, and he led his grandson into a dark and inconspicuous shack, the inside of which was well lighted and tastefully decorated. A Chinese who imported his girls from Macao, ran the place; he nodded deferentially to Hoxworth, who said, “I want to see all the girls.”

  A truly motley crew lined up in bathrobes and slips: a Spaniard from Valparaiso with no high combs in her hair; an Italian girl from Naples who had shipped into Honolulu on a whaler; an Irish girl from Dublin who knew Captain Hoxworth and who gave him a kiss—young Whip liked her and she smiled at him; two Chinese girls and one Javanese, who seemed forbidding and aloof. “Who’s the youngest girl here?” Captain Hoxworth asked.

  “This China girl,” the curator of masterpieces replied.

  “Can she speak English?”

  “No. She don’t have to.”

  “Today she have to,” Hoxworth replied. “You go out and find me the youngest girl you can, but she’s got to speak English. I want her to explain things to my boy here.” When the proprietor left to scurry about among the sinks of Iwilei, the Chinese and Javanese
girls retired, but the others who could speak English gathered about the captain and his charge, admiring the young man.

  “How old is he?” the pleasant Irish girl asked.

  “Thirteen,” Hoxworth replied, putting his virile arm about the questioner. “And at thirteen it’s high time a man gets to know what delicious things women are. How old were you, Noreen, when you discovered the fun in men?”

  “I was thirteen,” the happy Irish girl replied.

  “And you, Constanza?”

  “I was twelve, in back of the cathedral in Naples.”

  “I was fourteen myself,” Hoxworth apologized. “And it happened in your home city, Raquella, and that’s why I’ve always treasured Valparaiso. I had shipped on a whaler … well, you wouldn’t be interested, but I spied on the sailors to see where they were going with such determination, and I marched in after them and said, ‘Me, too!’ And everybody roared with laughter as I plunked down my shillings, but thereafter they treated me with more respect. And, Whip, they’ll treat you with more respect, too. Not because they’ll know you were here. That’s got to be kept a secret. But because you’ll know something the others don’t know. And this knowledge is what makes some men men, while the lack of it keeps other men boys … all their lives. I’m afraid that your uncles and your father are boys. Goddamnit, I want you to be a man.”

  The brothel keeper returned with a Chinese girl of uncertain age, but she seemed younger than the rest. She wore a black silk smock covering white pajama pants. She was barefooted and had her hair in a long braid, so that she looked completely alien to the boy who was intended to be her guest. He looked at her with frank curiosity, and when she saw his confused yet eager face, she smiled and took a step toward him. “I like to show him things,” she said.

  Young Whip was momentarily afraid, and although he did not draw back, neither did he step valiantly forward, so his grandfather benignly put his left arm about the little Chinese girl and his right about his grandson. “Remember what I said about ships sailing into strange ports? Anybody can be brave enough to love a girl of his own color, but to be a man, Whip, you’ve got to stare right into the eyes of the brown girls and yellow and whatever you meet up with, and say, ‘You’re a woman and you’re mine.’ Because what a man’s got to discover is that there’s no gain in loving a particular woman. It’s the idea of woman that you’re after. Now you be real sweet with this pretty little Chinese girl. Because she can teach you the first steps in this grand discovery.”