Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  When he had been with her for some time the proprietor came back to the little room to advise him on how to deliver the girl to the brothel keeper in Honolulu, but when he pushed open the door a little way and saw what the young people were up to, he advised in Punti, “Use her as you wish, but tie her up again when you’re through.”

  The voice of the boss awakened Mun Ki to his responsibilities, and with real fright he grabbed at his pants to see if while he had been engaged with the girl some clever man had stolen his gambling money in the way that he, Mun Ki, had sometimes picked the pockets of preoccupied customers in the Brothel of Spring Nights. His money was secure, so he quickly dressed and said to the naked girl, “I must go to the gambling. Put your clothes on.”

  And as he waited for her to do so, he picked up the cords, and when she turned to face him she saw the cruel, biting cords and tears came into her eyes and she pleaded with Mun Ki and took his hands and promised, “I will not run away.”

  He held the ropes and studied her, and something in the manner in which she looked at him convinced him that she would not flee; so, still grasping the ropes, he led her to his room in a hovel in back of the brothel, where he sat her upon the floor. Dangling the ropes before her terrified face he seemed to ask: “Am I required to use these?” and she looked at him as if to promise: “You do not need the cords.” Against his better judgment, he started to leave, but to do so with the girl unbound was obviously ridiculous, so he decided upon a sensible solution. With one end of a fairly long rope he tied the Hakka girl’s left wrist; the other end he attached about his own waist, and when this was done he said, “Come.”

  When he passed the desk of the brothel the proprietor saw what he was doing, and said, “A good idea.” Then the man asked professionally, “Will she make a good girl for my friend?”

  “Yes,” Mun Ki assured him, and he led his captive to his favorite gambling hall. But when they were in the street he stopped and asked her, “What is your name?” and she answered, “Char Nyuk Tsin,” and he replied, “Perfect Jade! That’s a good name.” To himself he thought: “In a brothel it’s a very good name. A man can remember it when he comes back the next time.”

  The gamblers were playing fan-tan, in which from a large pile of snowy-white ivory buttons the dealer withdrew a handful, whereupon the crowd bet as to whether the number to be left over at the end was one, two, three, or none. Or, if the gamblers wished, they could bet simply on whether the ivory buttons would turn out to have been odd or even. When the bets were placed, the amazingly deft dealer started to pull his buttons away from the pile in lots of four, and it was striking how skilled the players were in discerning, while the pile of buttons still contained fifty or sixty, what the number left over at the end was bound to be.

  Using his own and other Punti money, Mun Ki had a satisfactory run at fan-tan, and he felt that perhaps the fact that he had been kind to the Hakka girl had brought him good luck, so he took his earnings to the mah-jongg room, where the clattering ivory tiles evoked their perpetual fascination. When at the beginning of each game the players built their wall, it was customary for them to slam the tiles down with maximum force, creating an echo that accentuated the natural excitement of the game, and likewise, when a player scored a coup and exposed his pieces he slammed them onto the noisy table. Mah-jongg as played in Macao was a wild, exhilarating game, and now Mun Ki decided to test his luck at a table where real gamblers played for high stakes. Placing Nyuk Tsin behind him, and twitching the cord now and then to be sure she was still tied, he joined three waiting men. Two had long, wispy beards and costly gowns. The other was more like Mun Ki, a young, aggressive gambler. At first one of the older men protested, “I do not wish to play in a room where there is a woman,” but Mun Ki carefully explained, “I am taking her to a brothel in the Fragrant Tree Country and am responsible for her.” This the men understood; in fact, the man who had protested thought: “Probably he will have his mind on the girl and will lose more quickly.”

  But Mun Ki had not entered the game to lose. Mah-jongg, unlike fan-tan, did not depend so much on luck as on the skill with which one played the pieces luck sent him; and the young gambler, thinking that this might be his last day in a big mah-jongg contest, breathed deeply as he used both hands to help mix the 144 tiles at the start of the game. With loud energy he banged his pieces down to make the wall and then watched carefully as he rolled his dice to help determine where that wall should be broached to begin the gambling. With intense excitement he grabbed his tiles in turn and remembered Nyuk Tsin only when he leaned forward to reach the tiles and felt her rope tugging at his waist. When his tiles were arranged—and he had long since learned to keep them in haphazard formations from which his clever opponents could deduce nothing—he was ready to play, but the bearded man who had originally protested against Nyuk Tsin, said, “She has got to sit on the floor where she can’t spy.” So before the game began in earnest, the Hakka girl sat on the floor, but this was not entirely satisfactory to Mun Ki, who was afraid that she might slip away, so he forced her to sit under the table, against his feet, and there she remained for the long hours during which the four players slammed down their tiles with great force.

  From her position under the table Nyuk Tsin noticed that she could detect when Mun Ki was attempting some daring coup, holding back tiles in hopes of building them into some fantastic combination that would win him much money, for then his ankles became tense, the little bones stood out and his feet began to sweat. At such times she prayed for his success, and she must have been attuned to some powerful god of good fortune, for her man won. At dusk he tugged on the rope and said, “We’ll go home.” But as they returned to the dusty streets of Macao, hawkers swarmed about them, attracted by the rumor: “The young fellow from the brothel was a big winner.” They brought flowers and bits of cloth and steaming kettles of food, and Mun Ki found real pleasure in playing the role of a generous winner. Fingering the torn cotton fabric of his girl’s smock he said, “This one needs a new dress, believe me.” And with grandiloquent gestures that all could admire, he announced: “We will have four lengths of that!” He was even more generous when it came to food, and hungry Nyuk Tsin had black eggs, dried fish, noodles and crystallized ginger. As they lounged beneath a dentist’s sign he announced to the crowd: “I am really a very lucky gambler. I can see what’s in the other man’s mind.”

  As the night wore on, he drew the cord tighter to him, so that Nyuk Tsin could not stray, and he bought bits of food for worthless characters he had long known in the Portuguese city. When the civil guard passed by, he nodded to them, and when one asked, “Why do you have the girl tied up?” he replied in the patois of the port city, “I am delivering her to a brothel in the Fragrant Tree Country.”

  The police nodded approvingly, and then one stopped. “Are you sailing on that American ship in the bay?”

  “I suppose so,” Mun Ki replied.

  Instantly the policeman grew confidential, and whispered, “I’d better warn you, then. The American who bought you in the village came to us today to have you arrested. You’d better hide.”

  “I’m reporting in the morning,” Mun Ki assured him. “But thanks.” And he gave the policeman a coin.

  “Thank you, Mun Ki!” the official bowed. “That’s a nice girl you’re taking with you.”

  “She’s only a Hakka, but she brings luck,” Mun Ki replied.

  Finally he led his captive back to the Brothel of Spring Nights, where he showed his former boss how he had multiplied the ten Mexican dollars eight times. “This girl brings luck,” he said.

  “Are you going to tie her up again in the little room?” the proprietor asked.

  “She’ll sleep with me tonight,” Mun Ki explained.

  “All right,” the prudent businessman replied, “but remember what you learned here about breaking girls in. Feed them and beat them.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” Mun Ki assured him. “Were the police here for
me?”

  “Of course,” his boss replied. “Your ship’s sailing tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Tugging the cord, he led Nyuk Tsin down the narrow hallway, out the back door of the brothel and on to the hovel where he slept. Locking the door, he untied the rope from his waist, but fastened it even more securely about Nyuk Tsin’s wrist. She explained that she needed to attend to her bodily functions, so he opened the door and allowed her to go outside while he lounged in the doorway, testing the rope now and then to be sure that she was still secured. When she returned he said, “Now we must pack for the journey.”

  He had provided a wooden tub into which he jammed his accumulated treasures: a teapot, five bamboo cups, two good rice bowls, a metal pot, a porcelain tea set with a small copper strainer, a bamboo tray for steaming vegetables and a large knife. The incense burner, the kitchen god and the ancestral tablet which proved who he was were tucked into place, followed by his extra clothes and a pair of good sandals. Over this tub he now tied securely a piece of canvas stolen from a Dutch ship.

  In a wicker basket Nyuk Tsin packed the food for the trip: soy vinegar, pickled cabbage, spices, dried fish, seeds to chew on and several chunks of flattened duck. The implements for cooking also went into the basket: chopsticks, a charcoal stove, one old cup and two old rice bowls.

  The little room now contained only a bed and a poem. The former would be rolled up in the morning; the latter, which explained the manner in which the names of one Kee generation followed another, was contained in a red-lined book in which the genealogy was kept, and as the most precious of Kee Mun Ki’s possessions, it would be the last to leave and would be carried by Mun Ki himself.

  Surveying the quarters in which he had lived with reasonable happiness, and from which he had moved out to become a skilled gambler, Mun Ki sighed. Then, seeing Nyuk Tsin standing forlorn in the middle of the dimly lit room, he said, “You may undress now,” and when she untied her wrist and dropped away her clothes, and when he saw that the cord marks were disappearing from her body, he smiled and indicated that she could sleep with him. Since she had expected to be tied up again and thrown onto the floor, she came to him gratefully and was not afraid when he began quietly to enjoy her. He was the first man who had ever touched her with what could even remotely be termed affection, and she found herself reciprocating. They had a vigorous passage of love and Mun Ki thought: “In some way she’s better than my Kung wife.” When they were through he remembered to reach for the cord to tie her to him, but when he took her wrists she pleaded: “It is not necessary.” He was tempted to believe her, but he knew that if she ran away he would not only look the fool but would also be required to refund the ten Mexican dollars plus whatever his boss had paid the kidnapers, so he lashed her wrists to his; but he did allow her to sleep beside him.

  In the morning, when they were dressed, he finally threw away the rope, for he thought: “If I report to Dr. Whipple leading this girl by a rope, he will hardly believe my story that I am married to her,” and on his ability so to convince the American depended the success of this voyage. But when the rope fell in the dust of the little room, Nyuk Tsin stooped down and retrieved it for tying her basket of food. When they left the room, Nyuk Tsin carried the tub and the heavy basket. Mun Ki carried the feather-light bedroll and the genealogy book, but after he had stepped into the filthy yard behind the brothel, Nyuk Tsin called to him and pointed to the wall above where the bed had stood and where a sign now hung that she could not read. Mun Ki whistled at his forgetfulness and recovered the omen of special good fortune: “May This Bed Yield a Hundred Sons!” Tucking it under his arm, he led his woman to the waiting ship.

  At the quay Dr. Whipple stood ready to berate the only man he had who could converse with the Hakka, and as soon as Mun Ki appeared, the Cantonese interpreter started shouting at him, but he ignored the man and marched contritely up to the American. Bowing his head in feigned apologies he said softly, “I am a thousand times humble, sir, for having run away.” Then, producing the overburdened Nyuk Tsin, he said simply, “I had to find my good wife.”

  “Your wife!” the interpreter stormed. “No women are allowed on this …”

  Dr. Whipple, noticing the girl’s big feet, asked, “Isn’t she a Hakka?”

  “Yes,” Mun Ki replied, and the American scientist, remembering how he had once idly considered the desirability of importing some Hakka women to Hawaii, asked, “Do you wish to take her with you?”

  When this was interpreted, Mun Ki piously nodded and explained: “I could not bear to leave her behind.”

  “I’m willing to try it,” Whipple announced. Then he warned Mun Ki: “But when she gets to Hawaii, she’s got to work.”

  “She’ll work,” Mun Ki assured him.

  At this moment the hundred and fifty Hakka men saw Char Nyuk Tsin for the first time since her abduction on the Eve of Ching Ming, and they began to cry to her, and Mun Ki knew that if they explained who she was, his fanciful story would be exploded, but he also realized that no one on the quay but he could understand what they were saying, so he nudged Nyuk Tsin and told her, “Speak to them.” Pushing her toward the Hakka, he followed behind and cried to the men, “This girl is my wife.” And the Hakka saw about his waist a red marriage belt and they began to wonder what had happened. “Are you indeed married to the Punti?” they shouted. Mun Ki jabbed his girl in the back and whispered, “Tell them you are.” So Nyuk Tsin informed her countrymen, none of whom had ever befriended her after her parents’ death, “He is my husband.” And the Hakka looked at her in scorn and would have no more to do with her, for their parents had often warned them about what had happened to the disgraceful Hakka girl who had married a Punti man in 1693.

  This problem settled, quick-thinking Mun Ki now faced one far more serious, for Dr. Whipple was calling, through his interpreter, for the married couple to join him, but when Mun Ki and Nyuk Tsin started to do so, they had to pass through the Punti contingent, and these men were even more outraged at Mun Ki than the Hakka had been. They, too, had been well drilled in the evil that had befallen the Punti man who had dared to marry a Hakka girl back in 1693, and they drew away from Mun Ki as if he were unclean, but as he passed each group he muttered to those from whom he had borrowed: “Last night. Big winnings. Lots of money for you.” And this softened their anger.

  When he reached Dr. Whipple, the American said, “We will have to ask the captain of the ship if he will accept another passenger. And if he says yes, you will have to pay passage money for your wife.”

  He therefore sent a sailor in search of the captain, and in a moment a towering American loomed among the Chinese, a man in his seventies, with stout muscles and a sea cap jammed on the back of his head. He had fierce, dynamic eyes and looked at the men about to board his ship as if he hated each one of them with deep, personal anger. Brushing them away as he strode through their groups, he came up to Whipple and asked, “What is it, John?”

  “Captain Hoxworth,” the trim, gray-haired scientist began, “I find one man who wants to bring his wife along.”

  “You willing to pay five dollars’ passage money?” Hoxworth asked.

  “Yes. I’ll get it from the man.”

  “Then it’s simple,” the captain growled. “She can come.”

  Dr. Whipple conveyed this news to Mun Ki, who grinned happily, explaining to the interpreter, “A man would not like to leave his wife in Macao.” Dr. Whipple was impressed by this sentiment and asked Captain Hoxworth, “Where will the couple sleep?”

  “In the hold!” Hoxworth snapped with some surprise that the question should have been asked. “Where the hell do you suppose they would sleep?”

  “I thought,” Whipple began, “that with her the only woman, and three hundred men …”

  “In the hold!” Hoxworth shouted. Then, addressing the Chinese, who could not possibly understand him, he roared, “Because when this ship sails I don’t want to see one goddamned Chinee
anywhere but locked up in the hold. I’m warning you.”

  “Rafer,” Dr. Whipple began again. “In the case of this couple, couldn’t they stay with …”

  Captain Hoxworth turned quickly, pointed his long forefinger at his missionary friend, and snapped: “They’ll stay in the hold. How do I know this rascal isn’t a pirate? How do you know he’s married? There’ll be no pigtailed Chinee anywhere on this ship except locked up below.”

  Reluctantly Dr. Whipple explained to Mun Ki that if he insisted upon bringing his wife along, she would have to share the hold along with two hundred and ninety-nine other men, but to his confusion Mun Ki evidenced no surprise and Captain Hoxworth observed: “It’s nothing to them. They live like animals.”

  The moment had now arrived when the Chinese were to board the Carthaginian as it lay alongside the Macao quay, and Portuguese officers, in brilliant uniforms, took their places at the gangplank, checking off numbers rather than the names. The Cantonese interpreter said farewell, and the three hundred Chinese men and their one woman were left alone in two hostile groups, Hakka and Punti, with no one who could converse with the Americans who ran the ship and with only one man, Mun Ki, who could make himself understood to both contingents. However, their thoughts were diverted from their plight by the natural excitement involved in climbing aboard the schooner from whose mast flew the blue H & H flag. When the first Chinese stood at the top of the gangplank and saw before him the great open ocean, he hesitated in natural apprehension, which was increased when a sailor grabbed his pitiful store of belongings to stow them aft. The Punti started after his precious bundle, but he was halted by Captain Hoxworth, who grabbed him by the pigtail, spun him around and with a forceful kick sent him stumbling across the deck. “Get down into the hold, you stupid Chinee!” Hoxworth roared, and when the uncomprehending Punti stood in bewilderment, the captain kicked him again. The Chinese staggered backward toward the open hold, missed the ladder and plunged headfirst fourteen feet into the dark interior of the ship.