Silversword

by Phyllis A. Whitney

Our plane turned toward the opposite distances of the city and came down on a portion of airport set aside for smaller craft.

  The palace was in the center of town, and the long taxi ride gave us time to talk. Because we were going back into history, Ailina spoke about the way the monarchy had ended, and especially about the last queen. Liliuokalani’s tragic story would always haunt the palace where she’d reigned for so short a time before Americans took her kingdom away.

  “The Iolani’s a beautiful building,” Ailina said. “There are always those in any city who want to tear down what’s old and build something new and commercial. I’m glad Hawaii has chosen to spend the money and time to restore the palace. It’s a symbol of a day we mustn’t forget. We need pride in what we were, in ourselves, so we can hold up our heads in the present. I want to remember—not to judge—but to appreciate.”

  “Tell me about Queen Liliuokalani,” I said.

  “When her brother, King Kalakaua, died, she inherited the throne and a weakened kingdom. But there were white men in Hawaii who wanted to see the island annexed by the United States—even though President Cleveland wasn’t in favor of this. Power was seized illegally by a powerful few, and Cleveland’s hands were tied unless he wanted to order troops in to shoot other Americans. Those who coveted power brought in a warship and trained its guns on the city. The queen, rather than see the blood of her people flowing in the streets of Honolulu, abdicated. She was imprisoned in house arrest for nine months in the palace on a trumped-up charge of treason to a government that had imposed itself on Hawaii. The real reason was that those who’d seized power were afraid that the people would rally to her aid—as they might very well have done, if she’d been free.”

  These were things I hadn’t known fully about my islands, and I listened, absorbed. The palace would mean more to me now.

  Ailina went on. “The queen was very much loved by Hawaiians, and in those days she hated Americans—with good reason. There was a young princess, her niece, who was being educated in England, and who was next in line for a throne she never occupied. There are those who say that Kaiulani’s young death was because of a broken heart.

  “The annexation came about a few years later, when President McKinley was in office, and it happened peacefully except for one aborted attempt at rebellion. But there are those who will always feel that America stole the islands from their rightful rulers and people. My son is one of those who resurrect old angers and hold on to hatred and resentment.”

  I thought of how much Koma must hate the half of him that was white, because of my father. Our father.

  “Let’s not forget,” Ailina said, “but let’s not go on eating our hearts out because of the past. Just so the old mistakes aren’t made all over again. We’re trying to live together as Americans, but we don’t forget the past, and we are Hawaiian Islanders—all of us.”

  When we left the taxi near the palace grounds, we walked toward the front of the great square building that stood upon its ten acres of land in the center of Honolulu’s business district. The park around was filled with trees and plantings and pleasant walks.

  “Iolani means ‘royal hawk,’” Ailina said. “The last king, Kalakaua, built it to take the place of a smaller, termite-ridden building that was torn down. He’d traveled abroad, and he admired European culture. He wanted this to be a splendid palace where distinguished visitors could be entertained, and celebrations held. Though I guess it wasn’t all that comfortable to live in. The monarchy occupied Iolani for only thirteen years. The last day the Hawaiian flag flew alone over the building was on August 12, 1898. Then it became the capitol of the Territory and no longer a royal palace. It was the state capitol until 1969. Over there is the big new capitol building, and as soon as the legislators moved out, restoration on the palace was begun. Now it’s been brought back as far as possible to its original state.”

  The stone building—a hundred and forty feet by one hundred, Ailina said—was surrounded on two levels by long verandas—Hawaiian lanais. Slim pillars with metal railings and arches ran all the way around, ending on either side of the front tower. Smaller towers rose on each corner, and wide metal steps led up to enormous doors into the central hall. At the top of the front tower the flagstaff flew both the American and the Hawaiian flag—that flag with eight stripes, representing the principal islands, plus the admired Union Jack that had been placed in one corner.

  “Before we go in,” Ailina said, “I want to show you something. The first Kamehameha’s statue stands elsewhere and of course he never saw this palace. But Liliuokalani’s brief reign, as well as her imprisonment, was inside those walls. Here she is.”

  We had stopped before the proud figure of a woman portrayed in bronze. She stood on a circular base, not set too high above her people. She wore the traditional holoku—that long, flowing garment with a yoke at the neck, and a small train behind. Her hair was drawn into a mound on top of her head, and there was strength and nobility in the clearly modeled face. Queen Liliuokalani had been a writer and a musician, and one of her songs would always be sung in Hawaii—“Aloha Oe.”

  Lettering around the base was in Hawaiian, and Ailina translated: “It says: The spirit of Liliuokalani.”

  For me, the most touching thing about the statue was that someone had placed a red ribbon in her open hand.

  “For a while our history was forgotten, put aside,” Ailina went on. “Even our language was almost lost. Of course, this isn’t true anymore, and there is a wave of nostalgia for the past, and a pride, a need to know about ourselves and our history, before that’s lost too. We remember now what was done to the queen, and to us. Though I don’t want to remember with anger—these are different times, and we are different people.”

  Ailina too had a proud bearing. For all her gentleness with me, an air of authority and pride was part of her very carriage.

  “Over there,” she said, “just across from the palace grounds, in Washington Place, which was Liliuokalani’s residence before she became queen. She died in this century—in 1913.

  Near the steps of the palace a sheltered spot offered a place for visitors on tour to wait. It was empty now, and we went to sit down on a bench for a few moments before going in.

  “David’s mother will be waiting for us, so we’ll go inside in a moment. I just want to tell you a little about Helena Reed. For about five years David’s father and mother lived in the Kula area, where the hospital is. His father was a very good doctor, and Helena taught school. They became close friends with Joanna and often visited Manaolana. Helena and Noelle became close, she knew your mother very well. She remembers you when you were little, and she was living in the area at the time when your Grandmother Elizabeth came to visit Ahinahina. She wants to talk to you alone for a little while, so we’ve arranged this visit. I have my own errand, so you can be by yourselves.”

  The uneasiness that I’d put aside edged back. I shouldn’t be apprehensive about David’s mother—she might be one of those I could talk to. I suppose I was beginning to fear learning even more about my parents.

  “Let’s go now,” Ailina said, and we walked toward the steps leading up to the lower front lanai. There we sat down for a moment in order to draw cloth slippers over our shoes. Ailina was recognized and we were permitted to pass.

  The beautiful floors—once carelessly scarred when the palace served as the capitol building, and was used by the military command after Pearl Harbor—had been completely refinished and they gleamed like glass, reflecting our images in glowing, polished wood. We stepped into a great hall that took up most of the central area, and ran straight through, dividing the rooms on either hand. The ceiling was high and distant, and down the big room were niches where valuable vases and statuary had once been displayed—mostly empty now, since only a few such treasures had been recovered.

  “The Throne Room first,” Ailina said. “For me, it’s not just a room.”

  Everywhere koa wood glowed warm and reddish—all han
dsomely restored. Ailina led the way into a long space that occupied most of the side of the building. The splendid pink-and-green carpet, with its motif of ti leaves, had been woven in Boston to copy the original carpet that had worn out long ago. Ailina was full of knowledge of this place, and she spoke of it all with pride. In the center of the room stood a circular velvet seat, again a copy of the original seat designed for this room. Lights burned in many-globed chandeliers, their sparkle caught in hanging crystals.

  But the focus of the room, inevitably, was the dais at the far end, two steps up, and carpeted like the rest. Above it hung the royal canopy, crowned with gilt, though the platform itself stood empty.

  “There should be thrones,” I said. “There should be kahili standards on each side.”

  “That’s one of the things that upsets those who’ve concerned themselves with the restoration. The thrones that belong here are in the Bishop Museum, and the museum won’t give them up to the palace—where many of us think they belong. So the platform stands empty until the dispute is resolved. There are those who feel we should just have copies made, and no one would know the difference. But others feel that the real thrones belong here.”

  Ailina heard emotion in her own voice and smiled at me. “You can tell where I stand—I get carried away. In the face of all the other problems that face Hawaii, I suppose it isn’t sensible to be upset about a pair of old thrones from a kingdom that no longer exists.”

  “Maybe it’s possible to care about both the old and the new.”

  “That’s what I believe, Caroline. Of course, the Bishop is one of the great museums of the world. You must come back when you can spend all day there. So much of Hawaii’s treasure has been carried off to other countries, but they have fine collections of feathered capes, and so many other things. Of course, the jeweled crowns are there, and that is a safer place for them to be seen. Do you see the small door at the back of the platform? That’s where royalty could retire to put on robes for any ceremony.”

  She moved toward the platform and turned around, her movements graceful as she extended her arms. She was a stunning woman, and I thought she couldn’t have been more beautiful when she was young. I could imagine the attraction she had held for my father. But she’d had so much more to grow into than he could have appreciated. Strange that I was finally seeing him more clearly, and with less pain.

  Ailina’s arms seemed to encompass all the space around us. The room was hushed, with the sounds of Honolulu shut away behind lanai doors. She began to speak softly, painting word pictures for me.

  “King Kalakaua and Queen Kapiolani held their coronation in a pavilion outside the palace, so it could be witnessed by everyone. It must have been a glittering affair. Then, not so many years later, when the king died, his body lay here in state, and mourners thronged through this same room where royal receptions had been held.”

  “But the last queen never had a coronation, did she?” I said. “Or poor young Princess Kaiulani.”

  “The princess was American under the law by the time she died in her early twenties of pneumonia. They say that on the night she died in the home her American father had built for her in Waikiki—where a hotel now stands—the peacocks in her garden screamed so loudly they could be heard a long distance away in the city. There might have been a reason for their screaming—some people said—because of all the unusual lights in the middle of the night, and the comings and goings that disturbed the peacocks. But Hawaiians, who understand such matters, know that the peacocks were grieving for the princess who had loved them. There’s another nice touch to that story. The Chinese jasmine that grew in her gardens was the princess’s favorite flower, so it was given the ‘pikake’—a corruption of the word ‘peacock,’ to honor her.

  “And you’re right—there were no more coronations here. What was held in this room was Liliuokalani’s trial. Unjust and bent toward only one outcome—her imprisonment for what they called treasonable acts. Acts people believe she had no part in. Besides—treason to whom? How could there be treason to the United States, which didn’t own the islands, when the real treason was toward the queen, and committed by a handful of white men?”

  “I’ve never understood exactly how the takeover happened.”

  “It was done by fiat, by seizure, by saying, ‘Let it be done.’ A law was passed ignoring the will of the people. A law that allowed only the big landowners to vote. That meant the haole. The Liliuokalani had been appointed by her brother as his heir to the throne. But now a republic was created by eight hundred votes, and the rest of Hawaii was never heard. By trying and imprisoning the queen, they could remove her as a symbol for whom the people might have been willing to shed their blood. By the time she was freed and went to Washington to plead her country’s cause, it was too late, and no one listened. At least, after the annexation took place, the vote was returned to the people, where it’s been ever since.”

  Ailina moved away from where the thrones should have been, and I went with her.

  “There were happier times before all this happened.” Again, her arms embraced the room with their graceful gesture. “This was a room made for balls, and the Royal Hawaiian band played for dancing and parties. King Kalakaua’s own song that he wrote with his bandmaster, Henri Berger, was played as the anthem of the islands—‘Hawaii Ponoi.’”

  The room was peopled for me now because of her words, and the hushed sound of her voice. It wasn’t hard to imagine two thrones on the platform, with ten-foot kahili, their tops of royal yellow feathers moving gently as they were held high on either side of the king and queen. I could hear the whisper of music in my mind, and catch the gleam of jewels women wore to grace their romantic, last-century gowns. Guests from all over the world would have attended. A world long gone—no longer real—yet it had happened. Stirring events had taken place in this room of vanished thrones, and I wanted to count myself one of those Hawaiian Americans who must remember.

  Perhaps Ailina, watching me, understood a little of what she’d made me feel, for she smiled at me warmly as we moved toward a doorway.

  “Not all the haole of that day were for annexation,” she told me. “In fact, many worked against it for more noble reasons than those who overthrew the kingdom might have had. That’s enough for now. I’m glad you can feel it, Caroline. Sometimes feeling is a lot more important than facts. But now we must go and find Helena—I know where she’ll be, but I’ll show you one more room before we go upstairs.”

  The long dining room across the hall had been used for state occasions, and was furnished almost as it had once been, the table set with silver and even the original china in place. Again, there was a beautiful carpet in a pattern of small flowers, as though the room were a meadow—woven, of course, to duplicate the carpet that had once graced this room.

  “One of the worst things that happened as far as the palace was concerned,” Ailina said, “was that when the rooms went into use as offices, an auction was held—callously, with no awareness of what was being done. Too often when we’re living history, we have no sense about the future or of what ought to be preserved. All the palace furnishings, all its fabulous treasures, were sold at auction and scattered across the oceans. When restoration began, appeals were sent out for whatever could be located to be returned to Iolani. A great many people discovered articles in their possession that had come from the palace—many on the mainland. So most of what is shown in these rooms has been returned and was here in King Kalakaua’s time. In rooms where the furnishings are sparse, the recovery hasn’t been complete. Now there are Acquisition funds, and an Acquisition Committee.”

  We moved out into the great hall again, and Ailina went on.

  “It’s taken a great deal of money to do all this. Of course, there are always those who believe it could be better spent. But I don’t agree, and I’m glad our legislature could understand. We need to feed our minds and spirit as well as our bodies. It’s necessary to know where we came from as well as
where we’re going. Hawaiians have needed that sense of self-worth they used to have. That’s important for all of us who belong here, no matter what color our skins.”

  The koa-wood staircase was more than twenty wide steps up to a landing, where the stairs divided into separate flights mounting to the floor above.

  “You can touch the banister,” Ailina said, smiling. “The docents who take the tours through always warn each group that nothing is to be touched, no furniture is for sitting. The one thing in the palace you can place your hand on is the banister of this staircase.”

  The wood felt smooth as silk to my touch as we climbed to the hall above, where the royal suites and guest rooms had been located. Ailina led the way toward a corner room at the far end of the hall, and I caught glimpses of other rooms as we went past. Most were furnished, but this room stood completely empty. No one was here, no picture hung on the walls, no single piece of furniture stood anywhere.

  “This room will never be furnished,” Ailina said. “It’s a room that’s haunted by sadness. This is where Queen Liliuokalani spent her nine months of imprisonment. She wasn’t even allowed to ride out in her carriage because it was safer for those who’d plotted against her to keep her out of sight. For exercise she was only allowed to walk on the lanai outside her room. Yet she kept her dignity through the whole ordeal, and they say she never broke under battering at her trial. What she cared most about were the people of her islands.”

  Even now, I thought, the cruel injustice of what had happened was remembered, and was part of what made Koma angry. It seemed fitting to keep this room empty—a stark reminder.

  “Weighing on the other side,” Ailina said, “there’s something the queen dowager, Liliuokalani’s mother, said, and her words have stayed with me ever since I read them. I think I can quote them exactly: ‘… destiny does not respect mere justice. Events march. The world changes. For myself, I can only pray that God will bring Hawaii a good future. I do not think I ought to tell Him how.’ So perhaps out of all that was cruel and unfair and stupid, even back to the days of the chiefs—some good has evolved for Hawaii, even though we still have to fight against outside forces for what we want to keep. Iolani Palace stands as an important symbol of a great many things that have meaning for Hawaii.”