Addressing them was a Miss Mercy Goddard, M.D., who had practiced medicine for eighteen years in London and Switzerland. She had birthed babies, removed “unseemly growths,” whole stomachs, had amputated arms and legs, and never lost a patient. Newly arrived in Honolulu, she was setting up an underground practice strictly for females, making herself available to “fix” women exhausted by birthing too many children, six or more. When warranted, she could surgically discontinue a pregnancy, rather than have women resort to “mad vegetation,” a local poisonous root inducing miscarriage and often killing the mother.
She would teach birth-control methods, and was available to tend all kinds of “mysterious” female illnesses. If anyone was interested, she was also available to instruct women on how to satisfy themselves sexually, if their husbands could not. As she pronounced the word “masturbation,” two women stood and fainted. But no one left. They sat there for five hours, barraging the doctor with questions. She asked for volunteers, assistants. Each meeting attracted more women.
Within weeks Dr. Goddard had volunteer crews disguised in drab mu‘umu‘u, carrying carpetbags of food and medicine, sweeping the streets for prostitutes riddled with disease or carrying unwanted babies. Soon, curious Hawaiian midwives turned up to see what this haole could teach them. Young women came wanting to study medicine, women who would eventually break the mold and demand more licensing of female physicians in the islands. They called themselves the Bustle Club, telling fathers and husbands they met weekly to sew, catch up on new fashions. One day, when Dr. Goddard asked for donations for medical supplies, a woman’s medical library, a printing press, Kelonikoa donated one of her precious black pearls.
In December 1854, King Kamehameha III expired and within hours his successor, Alexander Liholiho, was proclaimed Kamehameha IV. While regiments marched and cannons saluted his accession to the throne, women in the Bustle Club stood and cheered. A mother of seven had just announced her first “climax,” a result of following Dr. Goddard’s instructions on masturbation. More and more women made their way through back streets to the doctor’s bungalow.
Two years after his accession, Kamehameha IV married Emma, a favorite of the people, but their lives were stalked by tragedy. Their only son died when he was four, and in 1863, the twenty-nine-year-old king followed his son to the grave. Dowager Queen Emma, only twenty-seven, managed her grief by devoting herself to her people. With the accession of a new king, she founded Queen Emma Hospital, offering the poor free medical care. Women of the Bustle Club joined her and the future Queen Lili‘uokalani in going door to door, soliciting more monies for the hospital. In time, Dowager Queen Emma consulted Dr. Goddard on various ailments, and now and then, she sat in on tamer meetings of the Bustle Club.
The United States Civil War and discovery of oil in Pennsylvania sounded the death knell for New England’s whaling industry, as the need for sperm oil declined. Ships were converted by the Union government into merchantmen, while others were sunk in large numbers by Confederate raiders. The Bustle Club, faithful to the Union, wrapped bandages for soldiers thousands of miles away, and found homes for families whose husbands returned to the mainland to fight. Kelonikoa comforted Mathys on nights when guilt left his empty eye socket throbbing. His brothers at home were marching for the Union, while he led the high life on a distant tropic island.
“This is your home now,” she said. “Your allegiance is to your family, and the king.”
While he slept in her arms, she lay awake, thinking, trying to sort it out. The American South was fighting for slavery, the North for equality, yet her Yankee husband had more in common with the Confederacy than the Union. Mathys was now heavily invested in the new economy, King Sugar, that depended on contract labor which imposed slave conditions on Chinese “coolies.” He and his friends had purchased two trading vessels, rumored to be notorious “Blackbirders,” ships cruising the Pacific, kidnapping natives to work on white men’s sugar plantations until they dropped dead of disease or exhaustion.
The Civil War confirmed the Hawaiians’ belief that most Americans, even those fighting for the Union, were prejudiced. They slept with native women, even married them, but could not accept that the mind of a black or brown human being was equal, even superior, to theirs. Half-caste children were considered blessed with the superiority of white blood, cursed with the native half. The government of the islands slid slowly into chaos, Americans wanting annexation, Hawaiians wanting autonomy. Fistfights broke out on the floor of the legislature. Conspiracies, attempted assassinations. Haole wore loaded pistols, while natives sharpened spears and knives, shouting ancient warrior chants in the streets. Warships with cannons aimed, sat in Honolulu Harbor, sent by the U.S. government.
One day a lovely young half-caste appeared at the door of the Bay Horse. Mathys looked up, curious; ladies were forbidden in his saloon. Then he recognized his daughter.
“Father, it’s almost time.”
That night, after sixteen hours of labor, the midwife chanting, gently stroking her stomach with kukui nut oil, Kelonikoa delivered her seventh child, a girl named Emma with her mother’s dark hair, slanted eyes, golden skin, the same beautiful, oval face. That evening while his wife slept after drinking six cups of a mixture of seven teas that slowed her bleeding, Mathys called his children before him, for he had lost track and wasn’t sure he could name them all. He lined them up and bade them each step out in turn.
In 1860 a law had been passed requiring Hawaiians to give their children two names, and to call them by their Christian name first. Thus, Mathys called out to his children.
“Daniel Punahele (Favorite) sixteen . . . Sophie Leihulu (Beloved Child) fifteen . . . George Iwa (Man of War Bird) thirteen . . . Olivia Mālama (Caring) eleven . . . James Kahiki (Tahiti) nine . . . Eliza Mapuana (Windblown Fragrance) four . . .” The oldest three were at Punahou, the missionary school, preparing them for college on the mainland. The other three had tutors. Now there was little Emma. What would her Hawaiian name be?
When Kelonikoa was strong enough, as with each previous child, she would place the infant’s placenta between her teeth and swim out to the reef beyond which kūpuna kāne and kūpuna wāhine and all ‘aumākua presided. She would release the placenta, letting waves carry it out into the elements, its blood flowing into that of its ancestors, their mana flowing into the newborn child so it would be fearless and strong. She would float inside the reef, perhaps for hours, until waves blew her back a sound, a Polynesian name.
Sometimes at night, Mathys studied his wife in sleep. Passion had cooled through the years, their children coming further and further apart. Some years he missed the steamer to Maui, and she went on their annual pilgrimage alone, keeping the vow they had made on their wedding night. Yet while she was gone, he suffered. Dashing Mathys Coenradtsen, with his mysterious wealth, his mysterious past. A glance from him, and women paused, married as well as maidens, his wild blond mane and black eye patch giving him a notorious, magnetic, piratical air.
Yet he had not touched another woman, never consciously desired it. If occasionally he was unfaithful in his dreams, it was only with the wenches of the streets, caterwauling whores who made love in alleys bent over fish-head barrels. It was really rollicking youth he missed, what he had never had. Yet, over the years he had watched his wife grow from a wild young woman into a beautiful, gracious hostess, hair upswept, emeralds at her throat, dark golden skin radiant in gowns of satin and brocade. The great pride she instilled in him made up for a youth never known.
She had transformed their house from that first simple structure into an estate surrounded by royal palms, expansive lawns where peacocks preened among lemon and loquat trees, where mynahs flitted in palms and bamboo groves, and lush, tropical blossoms—plumeria, orchids, pīkake—formed a rich living tapestry of colors and perfumes. Carp shot their colors across a pond, gardeners pruned bushes surrounding a teahouse of precious sandalwood and teak. Chambermaids, servants, tutors and governesse
s drifted down scented corridors in starched linens. Mathys’s study and library were filled with massive mahogany, carved ebony, heavy teak on Persian rugs. Pier glasses reflected other rooms of more delicate woods—monkeypod, koa, bamboo.
His wife could set a table for thirty with porcelain, crystal and silver. Two Filipino cooks were trained and lectured on wine. Kelonikoa even chose fabrics for his suits from fine Cantonese tailors, leather for his boots and evening pumps. He listened, awed, to her now-perfect English, her passing French, a growing knowledge of music and books. She had ascended to a higher caste, propelled by royal genes, while he remained a tradesman, keeper of a saloon.
Royalty dined at their house, diplomats, and merchant princes. Men of every race were drawn to her, to a haunting sadness which spoke straight to the heart and heightened her beauty, making her maddeningly desirable. Mathys was courteous but alert as guests doted upon his wife. He studied the glistening eyeteeth of a Peruvian whose cuffs smelled of vetiver, and a Spaniard with beaked nose and hooded cape, reminiscent of a falcon dreaming of prey while at rest on the wrist of a nobleman.
Is it her beauty, Mathys wondered, or her elusiveness?
Sometimes, to test her humor, he brought home characters, adventurers, so dinners had a circus atmosphere: dwarf twins of a Canton tea lord who only spoke in unison, a Marquesa with somersaulting chinchillas on a leash, a German beer baron in tattersall vests, diamonds winking in his teeth. One night, a Mexican coin dealer with a sliding toupee asked if Polynesians really ate dog. Insulted, aghast, Kelonikoa merely smiled. The next time the man came to dinner, she served roasted chihuahuas. When she identified what he had eaten, he rushed outside, squatted and vomitted on the lawn while a peacock ran off with his toupee. She and Mathys sat up past midnight, rocking with laughter.
But there were nights without laughter. When he boasted to guests of the enormous success of his saloon, Kelonikoa fell silent. A large percentage of native Hawaiians were being killed by alcohol. Kamehameha III had died of it, and possibly the reigning king, Kamehameha V, would, too. Polynesians had no tolerance for liquor, became easily addicted, and some of Mathys’s steadiest customers were natives. She never said a word, watched silently as Mathys hired men to manage his livery stables and caulking business, bankers to oversee his sugar interests, while he held court at the Bay Horse Saloon. The more he retreated into that world, the more she broadened hers.
By 1870, Calvinists had been nudged over by Catholics, Mormons and the more sophisticated Episcopalians. Still, the missionaries had left their mark. Hawaiian children were forbidden their Mother Tongue. In school and church they were taught about Jesus, a haole child, while Hawaiian gods and ancestors were forgotten. Some natives had abandoned old religion, dress and customs completely. In her heart, Kelonikoa understood the Great Mahele, or land division, of 1848, officially separating Hawaiians from their land, had been the true death knell of the people. Perhaps that was the moment the islands had become an American colony. She saw the cultural cleavage in her two oldest sons, great strapping young men, almost ready for college.
Golden-skinned, handsome, the oldest, Daniel Punahele, behaved like a real haole, swaggering round in riding boots, six-gun on his hip. Highly intelligent, he showed signs of leadership, but also of becoming a menacing bully. George Iwa, second son, lived like a kanaka in bare feet, eating poi with his fingers, talking mostly Pidgin. Sometimes his breath smelled sour, like addicts in Chinatown alleys. Their mixed blood confused them; sometimes they went off arm-in-arm, joking in Pidgin, sometimes they hated each other, both lost in the cracks between dying Hawaiians and the worst of oppressive haole.
America’s Civil War had also disrupted sugar plantations of the South, allowing Hawaiian sugar to enter America in large quantities. There was controversy about whether the United States should give Hawaiian sugar duty-free access in return for a fifty-year lease of Pearl Harbor. Too many nations—France, Russia, Great Britain—had in the past tried to monopolize Hawai‘i’s ports. Now, Pearl Harbor, largest protected natural anchorage in the Pacific, was viewed by the United States as of strategic military value.
This was the dinner topic one night when Mathys entertained officers of a Russian ship. The captain was blond and broad like Mathys, with similar features, but infinitely more polished, and multilingual. When Kelonikoa entered the room in emeralds and a gown of pale chablis, twenty-odd guests, including the Russian, turned to her in silence. She was now a full-blown woman in her forties, tall, immensely beautiful. And she was kind, attentive to the women, haole and high-caste Hawaiians, encouraging them in their thoughts on sugar, Pearl Harbor, annexation. To her, the Russian guests seemed zoological curiosities, cold, overly formal. But as the night wore on, she fell under a kind of spell.
The Russian captain on her right spoke softly, as though not to alarm her, not disturb her beauty, reflecting on his life, his mixed Russian-Mongolian heritage. As a young man, he had run away from St. Petersburg University, choosing a life at sea. Voyaging round the world, he had lassoed man-size komodo lizards in the islands south of Siam, outrun a tiger in Ceylon, hunted wildebeest from the backs of African elephants. Thinking his ship was doomed in a storm off Iceland, he had turned religious, memorizing great chunks of the Buddhist Scriptures. He survived, learned other languages, other customs. Then, stuck in ice for twelve months in the Arctic, he had dreamed of geography closer to home, racing woolly Bactrians across the Gobi, or a simple pleasure like eating a peach in St. Peter’s Square.
His name was Rostov Anadyr, a virile man of fifty, Mathys’s age, but hearing him through conversation swirling about the dinner table, Mathys felt much older, and very dull. When pheasants were carried in bathed in brandy, served in a wreath of blue flames, Anadyr spoke of food and wines of other latitudes, the fabulous dining customs of ancient Rome and Greece. His diction, his manners were impeccable, making Mathys feel like a stevedore, as Anadyr discussed with a viscount the polar knowledge of Inuits, the compositions of Bach compared to the new sounds of Brahms.
It was the Czar’s birthday and at midnight, from Punchbowl Crater in the hills, the Honolulu Rifles and Cavalry fired a salute to Alexander of Russia. As guests stood and toasted, Anadyr turned to Kelonikoa, bowed and took her hand.
“Your beauty leaves me an invalid.”
Later they stood on the lānai watching fireworks honoring the Czar. The air was cool and people moved indoors so that Kelonikoa and the Russian were left alone in moonlight. Only once did their eyes meet when, for a moment he could not look away from her perfect face, the fine shape of her head, as if God had given her a extra turn on the lathe. And, in that met glance, an intimation of the future, that they would be fixed forever in each other’s minds, that the life they imagined for a moment, might actually exist, elsewhere, on another plane.
Finally, he dropped his eyes. “Forgive me. I’ve never felt so . . . desperate.”
He came to dinner once again before his ship left Hawai‘i. An entertaining group—droll Englishmen and their spirited wives, the French consul, an Australian heiress with half a million acres and a million head of sheep. Kelonikoa was subdued, Anadyr looked tragic. Finding themselves alone again on the lānai, she pointed out blue fluttering eyes on fan-tailed peacocks strutting the grounds, and beyond them, pale tombstones of her children. Dew turned the lawn an orient of pearls, and the captain made a sobbing noise.
“I would lay down my life for those children.” They stood silent, and after a while he gently took her hand.
“Please accept this, for we shan’t meet again.”
It was a tiny book with gold covers, maybe three inches high. Each page was a delicate almost-transparent length of jade thin as eyelids, attached to which was a silk parchment leaf embossed with miniature gold characters. The diary of an Empress from the Ming Dynasty, almost five hundred years old. Here and there were golden ghosts of the Empress’s fingerprints. Kelonikoa stared, afraid to imagine the value of the thing.
“Thi
s is volume one,” Rostov whispered. “There is a companion volume, which I shall carry with me, always.”
On the back of the gold cover, a tiny inscription. “Vol. I. For Kelonikoa. From Rostov Anadyr. 1873.”
“What do you suppose she wrote?” she asked, turning the delicate jade pages.
“Perhaps she mourned a forbidden love, and so we hold her secrets. Perhaps she wrote that life is really lived through dreams and intuitions, not fate and circumstance.”
Behind them in the drawing room, voices rose angrily.
“Annexation, yes. Statehood for Hawai‘i? Never!”
“. . . but Hawaiians are clever. They should be able to vote as well as the next man . . .”
“Vote? For the president of the United States? Mon Dieu! We all know how ignorant these niggers are.”
Chairs were knocked over, a woman screamed. Mathys wrapped a linen napkin round his bleeding fist. Rostov entered the room, helped the Frenchman to his feet, and knocked him down again. Late that night Kelonikoa stood waving as he departed, her figure defined by light from the open door. He closed his eyes, and carried that image all the way back to St. Petersburg.
For weeks Mathys was inconsolable, having seen in the Russian a remarkable resemblance to himself, yet a vastly superior version. After lunch, when drawn bamboo blinds gave a filtered look to things, he lay in his study brooding on his shortcomings. Gifted only with Dutch prudence, an eye for profit, he knew he would never be more than he was. In the company of real entrepreneurs, visionary men who saw Hawai‘i’s future, men revolutionizing sugar trade, consolidating shipping lines, designing railroads, Mathys was still only a merchant, a petitioner at the gate. He thought of the great Dutch patroons of his youth, Van Rensselaers, Van Burens, the Vanderbilts, and he thought of his family, stoop-work tillers of the earth.
Shark Dialogues Page 7