“Would you go, Rosie?”
“For a man like that? I would go in a minute. Ana, this isn’t just about your heart. It’s about saving a life. However selfish you have been, there’s something magnificent in you lurking just below the waterline. Something that finally needs to come up for air. I’m very proud of you.”
———
SHE WOKE AT FIVE, PLACED HER LUGGAGE AT THE DOOR, AND WHEN the cab arrived, she went downstairs. Outside, she saw Lopaka paying off the cabbie, sending him away.
“Wait! What are you doing?”
Seeing Gena get out of their car, Ana stepped back. “Don’t try to stop me, Gena. Don’t.”
She called out to the cab disappearing round the corner as Lopaka carefully picked up her bags.
“Don’t touch them,” Ana cried.
Gena moved forward with her arms out. “Ana. It’s okay. We want to drive you to the airport.”
She watched Gena take Lopaka’s crutch, watched him struggle into the seat behind the steering wheel. Then reluctantly, Ana slid into the backseat. Once they were moving in traffic, Gena turned round and took Ana’s hand.
“We sat outside your place all night. Afraid we’d miss you. Ana. We’re here to kōkua. We love Niki, too. I only wish we could go with you.”
“Who told you I was going? Rosie?”
“She called us hysterical when it finally sank in. You are doing the right thing. It’s just … we’re concerned for you.”
Ana glanced up at Lopaka. In early-morning light, his black, curly hair hung oily and disheveled, his big, ‘upepe nose and forehead appeared gray like granite. He looked exhausted and mean.
At Honolulu Airport they checked her luggage and followed her through security to her gate. People wearing name tags, EASTERN TOURS, seemed to be gathered in a group. Two Chinese American couples, a Hawaiian couple, three women young enough to be students, assorted other locals.
She glanced at her itinerary. “I guess I’m with them.”
Gena moved close. “What happens when you get to Los Angeles?”
“Two-hour layover, then straight to New York City.” She checked her itinerary again. “Then it says we switch to Finnair.”
“Finland? Are you sure?”
Ana nodded. “In Helsinki we switch again to … Aeroflot. A one-hour flight, then we land in St. Petersburg. Eight days there, then an overnight train to Moscow.”
Gena seemed to panic. “Ana. Do you have any idea what you’re getting into? You don’t need to do this.”
“Yes. I do.”
“But, what will you do when you get to Moscow?”
“Go to his address. Go to where his friends are.”
Gena left them for a while, and Lopaka sat down beside Ana. Since they picked her up, he had not said a word. There was nothing she wanted him to say. Everything between them had been said.
Now she recalled the scene in front of her building as they piled her luggage into the trunk of the car. The practiced harmony with which Gena had taken Lopaka’s arm crutch as he slid behind the steering wheel, her silent, concentrated overseeing as he settled in, dragging his damaged leg in after him. She recalled how, on cue, they had nodded to each other, tacit acknowledgment that he was comfortable, before Gena handed him the keys and closed the door. And the way she quickly opened the back door, placed the crutch strategically on the seat so as not to obstruct his vision in the rearview. Then she had guided Ana into the car.
It had taken only three or four minutes, but in those minutes, she had witnessed a timeless ritual: two people so attuned in rhythms, thoughts, habits, that they moved together automatically with no need for words, or touch. They had seemed then like dancers, each step fluid and assured, each recognizing that they could not perform this human dance alone. It was the first time she had seen evidence of their deep, maturing love.
Gena returned with a thick carnation lei, placing it carefully round Ana’s shoulders.
She whispered in her ear. “I’m so damned proud of you. Please, be careful!”
Ana placed her hands on Gena’s cheeks, her face still dark and beautiful, but softer now. Life was slowly erasing all the harshness.
“Take care of him,” she said.
Hearing the boarding call, she moved to stand in line. They stood beside her as the line slowly advanced, and she suddenly thought her heart would burst. Her face began to tremble. She felt her legs begin to go. It was then that Lopaka reached out and took her arm, holding it steady and firmly until she felt his strength flow into her. Then, very gently, he pulled her from the line so they stood in a private space.
He lifted her chin and spoke softly as their eyes held. “I ever tell you I carried your letters all through ’Nam? I knew them by heart, they saved my life. I have them still. Ana, remember Aunty Emma. She had real mana, the gift of healing, and when she died she passed it to you in the Ritual of Hō …”
Even as he said it, he blew softly in her face.
“Do you understand? You were meant to rescue, and to heal. Take that mana with you. It is very powerful. It will keep you safe.”
He took her in his big, bronzed arms, and held her tight against his chest. He pressed his lips against her head.
“I am so proud of you. You who I have loved in ways we never spoke of. And I will always love you. Always.”
His words gave her the strength to go. She turned back once and waved, then moved down the pleated passageway.
HA ‘I A‘O
To Give Advice
SHE WOULD REMEMBER EVERY DETAIL OF THE TAKEOFF, WATCHING her island and her coast diminish. In those hours she saw for the first time the immensity of what encompassed her small world. At Los Angeles Airport, she hung close to her group as they pushed through darting, feinting crowds.
Then someone touched her arm. “Ana.”
Dreamlike, she turned to her mother’s voice. “Rosie called me. I flew down from San Francisco.”
Ana opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Silently, her mother moved along with Ana’s group until they found their gate.
“You’ve got almost two hours. Come and sit down.”
Ana held back, confused. “You’re not going to talk me out of this.”
“No. I’m going to try and help you. You won’t find your friend alone, in Moscow.”
In a trance, she followed her mother to a café along the concourse. For a moment they sat watching a man out on the tarmac semaphoring with batons. A huge plane looming, responding to his movements. Then gradually, the crowds, the din, fell back. She turned to her mother whose lips were moving, languorous and full.
She was wearing a smart khaki suit, sheer stockings, and high heels. Her hair was now tinted, a show of vanity and vulnerability that made her seem less formidable. She leaned forward so Ana smelled that same haunting perfume. And she realized that somewhere in the long-lost years she had forgiven the perfume with which her mother’s letters came.
Anahola was discussing Russia, the conditions there.
“Yes. You’re safe on a tour, it’s not Communist Russia anymore. But, understand, you’re not going to a resort. Conditions are appalling for the average Russian. They’ll try to hide this from you, show you only tourist sights. There is a man named Eric Dancer. I’ve already given him the names of your hotels. Hopefully, he will set wheels in motion. His father, Hubert, was a physicist, my husband’s best friend.”
Ana had no idea what she was talking about. It occurred to her that her mother was fighting hysteria.
“Eric is in and out of Russia. Imports, exports. And … sometimes he helps people get out.”
“You mean he works for our government.”
Anahola shook her head “Let’s say he’s an … entrepreneur. He does favors, people pay him back. He will contact you, Ana. Trust him. Yeltsin’s government is collapsing, they’re tightening emigration. Unless your friend has contacts, Eric is his only hope of getting out.”
She dabbed her lips with a napkin, tryin
g to sound calm. “This Niki sounds like an honorable man. You’ll probably be saving his life. But to go off to Russia … all alone! My God, you’ve never been out of the islands.”
Ana stared at her. “Neither had you.”
They fell silent, wishing they could rewrite all the angry words they had exchanged, the looks that had rejected an intimacy so longed for.
“I thought of going with you, but I know you don’t want my interference. Mine, least of all. Actually, I’ve wanted to go back since Max died …”
Ana let her chatter on, it seemed to calm her somewhat.
“… Rosie told me about Niki’s film. Ana, he doesn’t need the testimony of Russian physicists. People know they’re dying from contamination. They’re dying in every country, that’s how my husband died. His film needs to end with a message that’s the opposite of despair.”
She hesitated, as if about to ask a favor. “I was thinking … maybe Niki could shoot footage at this research clinic in Honolulu that I help fund. It’s called the Hope Institute, where children damaged from radiation are fighting to survive. They bring them there from all over the world. I would help him in any way I can.”
Ana listened, trying to grasp the deeper implications of what was said.
“I’m not offering to do this just for you. I’d be doing it for these children, and for my husband, Max. For once, please try to rise above your resentment toward me and see the larger picture.”
While she talked, Ana studied her mother’s face. Lips a bit thinner. Tiny time-lines fanned the corners of her eyes, but she was still lovely. Ana wondered if her child would favor her.
She checked her watch and stood. “It’s time to go.”
Then she sat down again. “I have to tell you something. I found my father’s grave. It made me feel more … real.”
Anahola looked down at her lap. “I should have married him when you were born. But then, my own parents never married. Obviously, I was their mistake.”
Ana slowly shook her head. “It seems we’ve both gotten a lot of mileage out of that word childhood.”
They walked the concourse in silence, not noticing how people stared because they were so striking, so similar, except for Ana’s lighter skin. At her gate, she saw the tour group had swollen now to almost twenty people.
Her mother suddenly took her aside. “Let me meet you there. Please.”
Ana gently pulled away. “I’ll be okay. You and I … we’ll always have our history. But seeing you reminded me how strong I am.”
She stepped across the chasm of unsaid things and took her daughter in her arms.
“Ana. You have no idea how strong you are. Yet, in some way … I don’t feel you’re saving this man’s life. He’s saving yours.”
PART FOUR
E PULE I KĒIA MANAWA
Now Is the Time for Prayer
PIKELOPOLO
The City of Peter
MOONLIGHT LAY ACROSS HER FOREHEAD LIKE A HAND. IT MADE the passing landscape bone. The train took a slow, languid curve and she saw her reflection in the window like a remnant of her soul. She leaned her head there, as the Red Arrow to Moscow ratcheted softly through the night, its long, low oboe chords sounding deeply wounded.
The compartment was stifling, suffused with a rich, crotchlike odor. The walls glimmered yellow, like soft human skin. Slumbering in their bunks were three virtual strangers from the tour. Ana took her pulse, thinking how close to the outer world her blood was circulating. But she no longer knew what world she was in, having left all borders behind.
She had entered timelessness over New York City, night making it a living jewel. At Kennedy Airport, she had dozed upright until dawn when they boarded Finnair for Helsinki. People began to look distinctly different, long-boned Scandinavians, and others whose bodies had a hefty, rural magnetism. They spoke in Balkan and Slavic tongues, rather guttural and harsh, and wore strange amalgamated clothes that looked as if they’d been assembled by committees. They moved with the lethargy of centuries.
In Helsinki, a tension had settled on the crowd as they lined up at Aeroflot for the hour flight to St. Petersburg. Even the small group from Honolulu grew alert. As their plane approached the “Venice of the North,” Ana saw how St. Petersburg spilled across the banks and islets of the Neva River Delta and into the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea.
“A city of islands,” her neighbor said. “Eight hundred bridges lace it together.”
Niki had said that, too. It was just a collection of islands. She held on to that; it made the city less frightening.
Now she sighed and stretched her arms, then half sat up and leaned her head against the window, peering out again. Great robber forests of fir and pine, deserted little huts bent sideways. Moonlight gave it all a talcumed beauty, a seeming endlessness. They passed little villages where people stood beside the tracks waving lanterns and small torches that, through grimy windows, flickered blue.
Ana waved back, then dozed again, her mind drifting over the week since her arrival in St. Petersburg. Immigration and Customs a blur, her group had huddled close like goslings following their Russian tour guide to a bus, where the driver sat cursing in the dirt, replacing a tire slashed by the “taxi mafia” looking for customers.
The guide had introduced herself as Zora, a small, energetic brunette with blue eyes reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics. Yet there was a tightness in her smile, fatigue in her sloping posture, suggesting that youth had already flown, that her energy came from her will to endure. With childlike candor she tried to divert the group’s attention, describing the city’s excellent restaurants, its grand cathedrals, and Peter itself as “most beautiful city in world.” For hours passengers sulked, their breath stirring up the stagnant time inside the bus, until finally they departed.
The outskirts of Peter had rushed at them—medieval ruins of peasant huts dotting miles of concrete high-rises resembling penal institutions. Crows roamed the skies like bandits, swooping down on fresh roadkills. And in gray fields, babushki in fearsome tapestries of rags swung picks at the earth, then paused and blew their noses in their hands. When they looked up Ana saw eyes red and raw, wrinkles deep as saber cuts. Children with dirty faces ran beside the bus, offering bouquets of broken buttercups. Others just ran, holding out their empty hands.
They moved into a city layered in grime—bridges, boulevards, even cars stuck in traffic. It was summer, yet everything looked entombed in a dream of granite and mold. An overriding quality of despair, decay. Then their bus turned a corner and through the shimmer of linden trees, Ana was confronted with the haunting echo of Russia’s past. Gold-domed cathedrals of a size that made people seem antlike. Forty-foot monuments of bronze and marble. A landscape of grandeur frozen in time. With a soft lurching of brakes, they came to a standstill in front of a huge, pistachio-colored wedding cake.
“Mariinsky Theatre,” Zora announced. “Famous for Kirov Ballet … Pavlova, Nijinski. You are fortunate to be seeing a performance there this week, where you will see nine hundred pounds of gold in gilded interior walls and façades!”
Ana’s lips parted in wonder as they passed cupola’ed and onion-domed jewels, great baroque and neoclassical palaces still magnificently intact, hints of crimson, blues, and yellows rinsing through the grime. In pearly, northern light, each palace had an eerie, otherworldly beauty.
“Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace … Stroganov Palace … Menshikov Palace … Each set in splendid, private park.”
A sense of melancholy majesty and attending death formed a strange alloy in her head. Fairy-tale palaces and their vast pollarded acreage set midst crumbling decay and poverty gave this dreamlike city a disturbing hybrid quality. Like a deadly poisonous yet alluringly beautiful, fading orchid.
At the end of the main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt, they crossed the Neva River to their hotel. Halfway there, the driver stopped and they looked back across the river at the jewel of St. Petersburg. The Hermitage Museum, which melted into
the magnificent Winter Palace. Fronting the river, the Hermitage and Winter Palace were perfectly reflected in its waters—a graceful baroque edifice of soft chartreuse greens. Punctuated by white Doric columns topped with allegorical bronzed statues and window surrounds of gold, it seemed to extend for miles.
From the front of the bus Zora spoke. “You are feeling awe, no? In monumental scale, in architectural beauty, in quality and encyclopedic display of culture and art, Hermitage is rivaled in world only by Louvre and British Museum. But we have something more …”
She threw up her hands in a gesture of wonder so that her breasts stood out.
“Hermitage was also Imperial Residence! Winter Palace for Peter the Great. Later Catherine the Great. Alexander II was dying here of assassin’s wounds. Russian history is walking these corridors. You will be feeling emotional charge of Imperial past when you are entering it tomorrow. Only several rooms to take all day.”
Ana stared. As in a dream, she saw them.
… There is the nurse with the strange, uneven features, outrunning the bombs, bringing them bread and candles … And there is the carpenter with bad feet, building crates in the catacombs to hide priceless paintings …
• • •
She imagined the nurse and carpenter meeting.
… The two of them making forays to the haunted galleries upstairs, hammering plywood over shell holes, sweeping out piles of shattered glass … They stand before an empty wall, imagining the portrait that had hung there. The Return of the Prodigal Son. The nurse traces with her finger the Rembrandt’s shadow on the wall …
Ana shook herself, suspecting that this was how she would experience the city—borne to her through the memories of Niki. She would find him by listening to the cellos of the past.
THE HOTEL OKHTINSKAYA WAS NONDESCRIPT AND HUGE. ARMED guards were posted at the entrance and scattered round the lobby—big, scarred men with the restless gaze of wildlife that had not tamed their focus down to meet the human eye. They took her passport, gave her an entry pass and key. At the desk, she asked if there were any messages for her. The receptionist stared at her, then shook her head. On her floor, in a kiosk that sold magazines and vodka, two husky women sat knitting.
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