“The same sound,” he said, “as a coconut broken open so one can dig out the meat.” Still he refused to believe that the country that produced so many of Europe’s artists and scientists in the nineteenth century would sink into barbarism. “I was wrong,” he told the class. “I left my country of birth by way of humiliating disguises—do not ever ask me about this—and worked cleaning ship hulls. Your islands attracted me because of their reputation for racial tolerance, where people of all origins can live without facing torture or death camps.” He assured his students that despite Nazism, his loyalty to what he called “classic German culture” remained firm. Their good test scores showed that they understood the difference. He was proud of them.
Maile had to adjust her view of German history as more than just a progression of musicians and poets. Among themselves the students decided that their professor had a haole viewpoint. He didn’t understand that for them World War II meant first of all Pearl Harbor and the Japanese-American battalions that had fought in Italy. After that, war meant Korea, and now Vietnam and the monthly newspaper announcements of aircraft carriers arriving and departing. What the German government had done over twenty years ago should be tucked away into history books.
Each morning Maile rose, ate a breakfast papaya over the kitchen sink, rushed off to classes, a brown bag lunch, more classes, then dashed home to change into a sarong and get down to Waikiki. Afterwards she went back to the university to spend hours in the library, and at nine-fifteen she bolted outside to catch the last bus to Papakōlea. Each night she collapsed into bed, got up forcing herself to think in Standard English, and hurried off across Honolulu. Each month Auntie Lani collected the clan’s ninety-three dollars and paid it herself in cash at the registrar’s office. When the annual fee rose to one thousand eighty-two dollars, she scolded family members who complained.
Maile’s exhausting, exhilarating routine continued for four years: Schiller, Brahms, the Salem witch trials, Michelangelo’s David, the Inquisition, a small role in a campus production of Mother Courage. The tiny Hawaiian Studies department was run by intimidating haole professors, and she took no classes from them. Men of all races pursued her, although each lost interest when he discovered she came from that neighborhood full of big families in small houses and rusted cars always being repaired. University students were on their way up in life and didn’t want anything dragging them back down. One part-Hawaiian law student didn’t care where Maile lived. He visited the house, and pleased Makua and delighted the aunties. After a clan fishing trip, followed by a luau for a new baby, he and Maile made plans to marry the next month. Uncles vied to provide the pig, the bucket of fresh octopus for grilling, the ‘opihi shellfish collected off wave-lashed rocks. One night amidst the excitement of preparations, she told her future husband that she could not have children. He embraced her in silent sympathy. A week later he exited her life with the smooth finality of a mistake erased from a page, there and then gone.
AFTER GRADUATION MAILE continued to sing in Waikiki and at weddings and funerals. She continued to hoard extra money for no purpose she could name. As much as she loved the old Hawaiian songs, years ago she had reached the end of an entertainer’s repertoire, and now faced decades of repetition. She haunted a listening booth at the downtown library, putting on the earphones to hear opera recordings made in New York or Vienna, the melodies feeding a hunger to see live performances that were hopelessly out of reach. By the age of twenty-three, she was becalmed in music, although it was all around her.
Annually massed choirs from churches and schools presented a condensed version of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, eight hundred voices in a stadium where wrestling matches took place on Thursday nights. A children’s ballet school staged scenes from the Nutcracker Suite on the flat roof of the Sears store, watched by an audience in the parking lot. The Honolulu Symphony only performed instrumental works. Except for The Magic Flute, she had never seen an opera. In other ways, though, life was changing. Overnight plane flights from the West Coast replaced travel by ship. Magazines from the mainland now arrived only a month out of date. Television sets were common, the shows just one week delayed, and color TV was promised by the end of 1965.
One afternoon Maile arrived as usual at the Moana Hotel half an hour before sundown. Danny O’Doyle stood at the front desk talking intently with several floor managers. In the Banyan Courtyard, waitresses and busboys huddled in conversation. The entire staff was on alert to be particularly courteous to new guests from Argentina, whose journey to Japan had been delayed by typhoons farther north. The group occupied the most expensive suite, a lady and six men sharing two rooms with only four beds. Señora Zoila Mar y Sol spoke half a dozen languages. On the hotel register her profession was listed as “soprano.”
Over the following days a constant stream of requests came from the Grand Suite: white truffles, Fleur de Rocailles perfume, Blood of the Bull wine. One evening Maile waited after her performance to watch Señora enter the dining room. The lady wore a chiffon gown the color of sea foam, styled to show off her movie star’s lush figure. Tiny diamond suns glittered in her black chignon. Eyes painted like an Egyptian queen’s. The men followed her to an orchid-filled table, seated her, then pulled out their chairs in unison to sit down, minor displays of perfection noticed by staff and guests alike. Some frightened housemaids were certain that Señora was the goddess Pele in a new form, eager to curse anyone who displeased her. At times Maile almost believed this herself, but kept seeing a woman of flesh and blood, able to live as she pleased because she was a soprano, not an ordinary singer.
After four days of continuing delay, Señora demanded a high, wide space for work; her voice had to remain in top condition. The hotel manager decided that the outdoor stage was the only possibility. Danny O’Doyle hated classical music and gladly let Maile make the arrangements. She arrived in midafternoon and directed workmen to roll a grand piano into the Banyan Courtyard. Tourists were politely escorted to other lounges. A busboy set pots of orchids around the small stage. Maile stood at one end of the bar, ready to shoo away onlookers; the distinguished guest needed to rehearse, not give a free concert.
At exactly three o’clock Señora appeared on a stairway above the courtyard. Her hair was heaped into an elaborate geisha style, and she wore a pale blue kimono tied with a broad gold sash that glinted in the sunlight. She descended like a gliding bird, followed by six men in tuxedos. Maile felt a rush of embarrassment for them—so overdressed— but she had to admit they looked fantastic.
Señora swept up onto the little stage and faced the ocean with the expression of a goddess surveying the elements. The pianist seated himself as the others arranged themselves behind her. She regarded the calm waves rolling onto shore, then glanced at the tenor. He came forward, the pianist rolled a chord, and the two singers joined in a sudden burst of tones: “Pre-go, pre-go . . .”
Maile heard only glorious sound, as solid as a wall but also wonderfully flexible. Soprano and tenor melodies twined around each other and meet briefly in powerful, sensual harmonies. Hotel guests peered from balconies. Waitresses gathered on an adjacent terrace. Maile furiously put a finger to her lips, and waved everybody away.
The singers broke off for a discussion in Spanish. Just as abruptly they started singing again, another explosion of music that wiped out the soft sigh of the ocean, the light rustling of palm fronds overhead. To Maile the voices seemed enormous, no comparison to any church soloist or entertainer she had ever heard. And attitude! Both singers had a fascinating arrogance, as if saying, I am yours, but do not come too close or you will regret it.
At the end of the duet, Señora motioned with a dip of her kimono sleeve. The men filed off the stage to form an audience. She tipped up her chin, the accompanist responded with a light chord, and on a high, whispered note she sang, “Un— bel di . . .” The phrase had such drawn-out purity that Maile’s spirits trembled with emotion. She knew the melody from a library record, and felt an ov
erwhelming desire to spread her own mana into the air, to be transformed into Madame Butterfly, to express her unshakable belief in love, to have such power that listeners believed an Italian story of Japan. Señora’s voice conveyed beauty, hope, death. Butterfly described the ship that would never appear, the lover’s gentle greeting that would never be spoken, the life that would be cut short. She concluded in defiance, “I’a spet— to!”
Spontaneous applause erupted from side lounges; Maile was overcome by inspiration. She stepped in front of the stage and frantically recalled Messiah rehearsals, the most impressive music she knew. “Rejoice,” she sang boldly, “re-joice,” completing the first phrase with all the fancy notes inserted, “re-joi—ce great-ly!”
Señora stared down at her, frowning. In a daze Maile edged back around the orchids. Danny O’Doyle rushed out of a lounge with a drink in hand, face flushed, teeth bared in a scowl. Señora flipped her fingers in his direction, a motion of such authority that he stopped at the edge of the courtyard. She continued to look at Maile, now seeming intrigued rather than insulted. In English she said, “You appear to be a native. Sing me something ancient.”
Maile was stunned by the language switch, the invitation. Ancient Hawaiians didn’t have melodies, she wanted to say, and considered other excuses, but knew that she had a chance, one. She concentrated on a hula chant, the loudest, strongest sound she could make. Sucking in a huge breath, she focused mind, body, and spirits, and let go with “E— uli-uli kai,” dragging out each tone in the shivery style of a kahuna calling up the god of the deep blue sea. “E—uli-uli!”
Señora stood with eyebrows raised, unable to conceal surprise. “Your voice is unusual,” she said. “You show some promise.” She smiled.
A sign of approval, Maile felt, a precious instant of contact that could lead to greater things. “I’ve been singing for years,” she exclaimed. “Everyone knows me in Waikiki! I can give you my records. I can sing arias.”
The smile faded. Señora slipped her hands into her kimono sleeves. “The words ‘unusual’ and ‘promise’ imply deserved recognition,” she said. “That was given to me at about your age. I shall provide you with the name of my first teacher. However.” She paused, coldly deliberate. “Do not pursue me with gifts or further requests.”
The pianist wrote on a visiting card and handed it to Maile. Señora glided away in a rustle of silk. The men followed her across the courtyard to a private elevator, and one after another they disappeared inside.
Danny O’Doyle stalked up to Maile and tossed his drink into the orchids. “Damn it,” he growled, “badgering guests is against policy, and you’re my singer, so I look bad. You’re fined a hundred bucks. Those people complain, you fork over a month’s salary.”
Maile glanced at the card, feeling cheated, fobbed off with a distraction while the grand group made their escape. Still, under the printed name was written another name, and an address in New York: Señora’s first teacher. For ten years the unnamed Polynesian Princess of the Airwaves had given her family all the extras in life, a used truck, fishing reels, medicine, new underwear for brothers and sisters and aunties and uncles. Maile had sewed, ironed, and cooked, washed dishes, babies, and laundry. Had graduated from the university but still lived at home in a room shared with two teenagers.
She held up the card, saying, “I’m going to New York. To study real music.”
Danny O’Doyle shook his head, looking confused, then disbelieving. As she walked off he told her to hold on a minute, wait, just wait, let’s talk this over, but she continued across the courtyard, waving to the waitresses and blowing kisses to the busboys.
AT THE PAPAKŌLEA house, the aunties pinned plumeria into their hair before leaving for Waikiki. Relatives of all ages were in the bedrooms, the kitchen, napping, preparing dinner, doing homework. Maile burst in and announced, “It’s my turn now!” She showed each family member, even bewildered little children, a name printed on a small white card. To each she said, “I’m gone mainland.”
“E, Makua,” Auntie Lani called into the backyard.
He put down a blowtorch and pipe he was welding to come inside. No one could believe Maile had quit the job she’d held since the age of fourteen. She struggled to put into words her bright fit of freedom, a soprano who offered ravishing glimpses of the world of opera, who had cast a spell and given her a key. “How come?” they kept asking. “Fo wat?”
“Told Mr. O’Doyle I’m gone,” she repeated. “Pau. ‘At’s it. The End, like in movies.” She beamed with the assurance of having found the nameless goal that had eluded her for so many years.
The aunties passed out cigarettes and sat down. Makua paced, fending off relatives who pestered him with solutions: Maile-girl could teach school, she could tell Mr. O’Doyle sorry and go back to his show. A toddler waddled in from a back room, his fists full of green paper tubes that stuck out between his fingers. Nobody noticed the little boy until an older sister bent to cuddle him. In a tone of wonder the girl said, “Baby’s got money. Look how much.”
A trail of tightly rolled cylinders led to a bedroom and a termiteeaten dresser where two other boys were playing with a claw hammer. They had pulled a slat off the bottom drawer, jammed shut for years, as far as anyone knew. The front panel sagged, and five- and ten- and twenty-dollar bills spilled onto the floor. A dozen people crammed into the room to stare. Maile had to force herself to join them, to stare as well, and finally admit her secret. When she tried to leave, they made her stay. Men split the drawer, shook out the contents, swept the hoard into a dustpan, and emptied it again and again into the family calabash.
Makua shouted for someone to start the rice pot for dinner. Auntie Lani sent her sisters off to Waikiki, then she sat with him to smooth the bills and count them into piles: three thousand eight hundred ninety-six dollars. He brought in a tire iron and laid it on the stacks of bills to flatten them. Maile stood alone on the lanai, burning with stubbornness and fear that once again music had brought her trouble, this time the worst and most shameful of all. For the rest of her life and after she was dead, the clan would talk about the hidden money until it became the one thing that defined her. She remembered sitting up on the roof years ago, watching the stars, and went into the backyard to look for the ladder. It lay half-buried under fallen banana leaves, the rungs damp and rotted.
MOST OF THE money went to pay for roof repair, a month-long job that included replacing rotted beams. Makua put aside six hundred dollars in a paper sack. He asked Auntie Lani how much two years of study in New York would cost, what Maile claimed she needed. Neither had any idea, so they guessed it must be about equal to the saved sum. The next afternoon he took the paper sack downtown, returned with two more Kalākaua coins, and gave them to his daughter to add to the coin in the leather pouch that she had received after Ma’s death.
“For in case,” he told her. Nobody else need know.
That evening at dinner and afterwards on the phone, Makua spread the word that the clan had nine months to raise three thousand dollars. Jade refused outright, saying that Maile had betrayed them. Hermann laughed off the accusation. “Little sister works hard how many years,” he said, “now we just get busy, pay back, e nei?” Other relatives pleaded illness or only sullenly agreed to help. Auntie Lani organized a Christmas bake sale that raised eighty-two dollars. During January, brothers, uncles, and nephews put together a truck from the parts of four others and sold it to add nine hundred dollars. A repairable fishing boat in Waimānalo brought in eight hundred dollars more. Some grumbled that Maile should stay home, stick to what she knew. Nah, others said, she can make the New York career, like that fellow from Kauai, Johnny Pineapple and his Polynesians, fifteen years in a fancy hotel up there.
Makua and Auntie Lani drove the clan as if managing a construction project. Ship and train tickets were bought. Maile was given a stack of travelers’ checks, which none of them had heard of before, better than taking cash and running the risk of being robbed. O
n the first Tuesday in May 1966, everyone in the clan who could get off work went down to the dock.
They came out of ancient obligation, still not understanding why their girl would get on a ship full of haole passengers and go so far to learn something she could already do: sing. Elders from Wai‘anae wore freshly ironed clothes and lauhala hats with fine feather bands. Adult cousins wore hotel uniforms or union T-shirts and dungarees. Jade wore her brocade hostess gown, ready for the early dinner shift, and scolded her little girls for getting their dresses wrinkled. Hermann carried his second son on his shoulders while an older boy stood between his legs. His wife held their youngest, offered to Maile last year, a gift she had declined with thanks although by then without tears.
From above came a blast on the ship’s horn. Auntie Lani wept and exclaimed, “Two whole years!” The Voices, uncles, and siblings pressed in with embraces and kisses for each lei they gave Maile: a rope of purple orchids, a fluffy string of yellow plumeria, five strands of pīkake, lushly fragrant in the late afternoon heat. More strings of flowers were heaped around her shoulders, rising to her chin, her nose. Jade and others stood back. “Stay here!” Auntie Lani cried. “Get married ar-ready, plenny good husbands around!” Maile glanced away to kill the topic, brought up so often that no one took it seriously anymore.
Tourists streamed toward the ship, conversing tipsily, still dressed in aloha shirts, white trousers, sarongs and sandals, as if their clothes could stave off returning to the continent. At the foot of the gangway the Island Kings Trio vamped into “Keep Your Eyes on the Hands.” A line of barefoot women with waist-length black hair, red tops, and green ti-leaf skirts swayed out of a warehouse toward the edge of the pier, easing through officers, luggage, porters, crates of watercress and fruit. Stevedores shoved steamer trunks onto a plank stretching into the hold of the ship. The crowd of onlookers gazed up at its white sides, at the braided rope hawsers hung with streamers, at waiters on deck circulating with trays of cocktails.
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