Giving the curious pair his benediction, he pushed them gently toward the darkened hallway that led to the private rooms, and as they disappeared, hand in hand, he grabbed the Irish girl and cried, “Goddamn, Noreen, it’s exciting! Imagine! The first time!”
The Chinese girl led Whip to a stall and showed him the furnishings. “Pretty, you think?”
“It’s real nice,” he stammered, holding tighter to her warm hand.
She pushed him away from her, turned to face him and said, “It’s possible have much fun with a woman. You see?” And slowly she pulled her smock over her head, and when she had tossed the rustling silk onto a chair she smiled at Whip, placed her small brown hands under her breasts and moved her shoulders sideways in a slow rotary motion. “These made for men,” she explained, and without further instruction young Whip moved forward, pulled her hands away and replaced them with his own. Instinctively he lifted the small breasts to his lips, and as he was doing so the girl slipped off her trousers. It would have pleased Captain Hoxworth could he have witnessed how little instruction his grandson really required.
But in other matters the boy needed substantial guidance. He was a wild-willed lad with only an average record at school, and his grandfather surprised him by insisting that he read long and difficult books like Pendennis and Jane Eyre, while the students at Punahou were struggling with Oliver Twist and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Captain Hoxworth also drilled his grandson on the necessity for showing a profit on anything one went into in the line of business, and his business principles were simple: “If you sell something, never give samples away. Make the bastards pay. And keep an eye on the help or they’ll steal the company right out from under you.”
There was one lesson, however, which the ramrod-straight old captain impressed upon his tough-minded grandson above all others: “Living seventy years is a tremendous adventure. You’re thirteen now. You’ve probably only got fifty-seven Christmases left. Enjoy each one as if you would never see another, for by God the day soon comes when you won’t. You’ve only got about two and a half thousand more Saturday nights remaining. Get yourself a girl and enjoy her. Never take a girl lightly. You may never sleep with another. Or she may be the one you’ll always remember as the best of the lot. But goddamnit, Whip, don’t be a weak old man before your time. Don’t be like your father and your uncles. God, Whip, you can’t even imagine what Hawaii’s going to be like in twenty years, or fifty. Maybe nobody’ll be growing sugar. Maybe they won’t need ships any more. Maybe this whole city and the hills behind will be part of China. But be courageous about guessing. Be on top of the wheel as it turns, not dragging along at the bottom.”
At this moment in his grandfather’s harangue young Whip made the old man extremely happy. The idea that Hawaii might one day be part of China did not entirely impress young Whip, but the mention of that country reminded him of Iwilei and he said, boldly, “I’d like to see that Chinese girl again.”
“So would I!” the old man roared, and he hitched his horse and led his grandson down into Rat Alley, but when they got to the Macao man’s place, the Chinese girl could not be found, so Whip smiled as before at the Irish lass, who was heavier than he was, but his grandfather roared, “No, by God! Noreen’s mine.” And he rustled up Raquella from Valparaiso, and the Spanish girl was so pleased with the idea of being with a bright-eyed young boy that when she had him alone she tore at him like a tigress, and he fought with her, tearing a red welt across her back until with a tempestuous sigh of joy she pulled him onto the floor and taught him things no boy in Honolulu and few men knew.
And it was strange, but when he left Iwilei that day he was not thinking of women, but of strange ports, and the insatiable fighting of the world, and of ships—his ships—traveling to all parts of the globe to bring home strange people and stranger produce. “I don’t want to go back to Punahou,” he announced that evening at his grandfather’s big table.
“What do you want to do?” asked his proper father, whose main job in life was hiding the fact that he was half-Hawaiian.
“I want to go to sea,” young Whip replied.
“That you shall!” his grandfather promised, but this was a promise that was most difficult to keep, and for a while it seemed as if the stuffy uncles, who did not know the wild, free girls of Iwilei, would triumph.
“The boy has got to finish Punahou and go to Yale,” Bromley Hoxworth insisted.
“To hell with Yale,” Captain Hoxworth shouted. “Yale never did good for any man who wasn’t already formed by his own experiences. Your son is a different breed, Bromley. He’s for the sea.”
“He’s got to get an education to prepare him for his later responsibilities with H & H,” Bromley insisted.
“Listen to me, you blind, blind men!” Hoxworth stormed. “That is exactly my purpose in sending him to sea. So that he can obtain the education in the world that he will require if he is going to run your companies well. It is for your sakes that I want him to sail before the mast. Because there has got to be somebody in this timorous outfit who has developed courage and a free new way of looking at things.” He slumped back in his chair and said, “I’m growing tired of arguments.”
The uncles supported Bromley, bearded Micah proving especially effective with his contention that a new day had arisen in Hawaii, one that required the exercise of prudence and conservative management. “It is our job to hold onto our position and consolidate our good fortune while we ponder what can be done about bringing these islands into the American orbit. Caution, hard work and intellectual capacity are what we require. Bromley’s right. The place to acquire those virtues is at Yale.”
“Colossal horse manure!” Captain Hoxworth responded from his slumped position at the head of the table. “The abilities you’re referring to, Micah, can always be bought for fifteen hundred Mexican dollars a year, and do you know why they can be bought as cheaply as that? Because your goddamned Yale College can always be depended upon to turn out exactly that kind of man in bigger supply than the market can possibly absorb. But a man of daring, schooled at sea and in commerce and in knockdown fights …” He rose from the table and left in disgust. “Such men don’t come cheap. Nobody turns them out in large quantities.”
The uncles kept young Whip sequestered from his grandfather, lest the stubborn old man ship the boy on one of the many H & H cargo carriers about to sail from Honolulu. To balk what they suspected was the old captain’s plan, they prepared to ship Whipple back to New England, where in rather quieter quarters he could prepare himself for Yale; but one March morning in 1870 Captain Hoxworth ferreted out where his grandson was being kept, and he drove there hurriedly in his gig and told the boy: “Hurry, Whip, we’ve got only a few minutes.”
“For what?”
“You’re shipping to Suez.”
The stalwart young fellow, now almost fourteen and tall for his age, smiled at his erect old grandfather and said, “I have no clothes here.”
“Come as you are. You’ll appreciate clothes more if you have to work for them.”
They drove rapidly to the docks, where Whip automatically headed for a large H & H ship which seemed ready to put out to sea, whereupon his grandfather caught his arm, wheeled him about in the sunlight, and asked scornfully, “Good God, Whip! Do you think I’d ship you on one of my own boats? There’s what you ride in, son!” And he pointed to a three-masted weather-beaten old whaler from Salem, Massachusetts.
The years had not been good to this ship, for she had entered the whaling trade after its peak had been reached, and without ever finding her logical place among the wandering ships of the world, she had stumbled from one occupation to another. Three times she had changed her rigging and now sailed as a barkentine, bound for a speculative run to Manila for an overload of mahogany which the Khedive of Egypt required for a palace he was building. She had already waited at the pier half an hour beyond her announced time of departure, but since she had consistently missed the master schedule
by which the oceans of the world operate, this was no new experience. Nevertheless, her captain chafed and he was not in a good humor when Rafer Hoxworth hurried up with his grandson.
“This is the boy I told you of,” Hoxworth said.
“Looks strong,” the surly captain snarled. “Get below.”
“I’d like a minute with him,” Hoxworth said.
“You can have six,” the captain agreed.
Quickly Rafer Hoxworth swung himself down into the fo’c’s’l, grabbed his grandson by the arms and said hurriedly, “Once you leave this harbor, Whipple, that evil-tempered man topside has the absolute power of life and death over you. His word is law, and he’s no puny Yale professor. He’s a tough, cruel man, and you’ll get no sympathy from either him or me if you play the coward.
“Now, Whip, if you get into a fight, and you will, remember one thing. Fight to kill. There’s no other rule. And when you’ve got a man fairly licked and on the deck, always kick him in the face so that when he gets up he can’t contend that he almost had you down. Bruise him, scar him, mutilate him so that he can never forget who’s boss. And when you’ve done this, help him up and be generous.
“Whip, you’ve tasted Chinese girls and Spaniards. There are a thousand more to sample. Try ’em all. That’s the one thing you’ll do in life that you’ll never regret. Whip, I want you to come home a man.”
As the fleeting seconds passed, the youth wished vainly that he could prolong this moment endlessly, for he felt deeply attached to this wild old grandfather of his, but the last question he asked was so surprising both to himself and to his grandfather that Rafer Hoxworth fell back a few steps: “Grandfather, if you liked the girls at Iwilei so much, how did you feel about Noelani? I can’t get this straight.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Rafer said, “When Noelani’s mother died she weighed close to four hundred pounds. Your great-grandmother. And every day her husband crawled into her presence on his hands and knees, bringing her maile chains. That’s a good thing for a man to do.”
“But how can you love a lot of girls and one woman, too? At the same time?”
“You ever study the skies at night, Whip? All the lovely little stars? You could reach up and pinch each one on the points. And then in the east the moon rises, enormous and perfect. And that’s something else, entirely different.”
He shook his grandson’s hand and scrambled topside, waved to the surly captain, and leaped down onto the dock. The old whaler creaked and groaned as her ropes were loosened. A fresh wind came down off the mountains in back of Honolulu, and a voyage was commenced.
When it was discovered what Hoxworth had done with his grandson, the entire community was outraged. Bromley Hoxworth and his brothers-in-law talked for a while of dispatching one of the H & H ships to intercept the dirty old whaler and take the boy off, but Hoxworth pointed out: “He signed papers, and if you know the captain of that ship, the only way that boy will ever get off is either to die at sea and be buried feet-first under a scrap of canvas, or serve his time properly like a man.”
Later, Honolulu softened toward the resolute old captain and the citizenry began to speak of him with amused affection, recognizing him for what he was: the leading resident of the islands. If he entered a bank, he was treated with deference. In church he was bowed to by the pastors, and at the library, which he had always supported with generous gifts, he was accepted as the patron saint of learning. The Chinese of Honolulu referred to him as “that courtly, sweet old man.”
He died in June, 1870, full of years and public acclaim. At his deathbed were Hales and Whipples and Janderses and Hoxworths—the leaders of Hawaii—but the surviving mortal on whom his thoughts rested was his grandson Whip, happily bedded down in a Manila brothel with an agile little Cochinese lately imported from Saigon.
ON THE AFTERNOON of Captain Rafer Hoxworth’s funeral, Dr. John Whipple, then seventy-one years old but spare and well preserved, returned from the cemetery to his home, where he found the pregnant Nyuk Tsin waiting for him, and he supposed that finally she had surrendered her prejudices and had come to ask his medical advice upon her condition, but that was not the case. She said, “Mun Ki him sore leg, you help,” and she requested a medicine to stop the itching that had arisen from her husband’s work in the taro patch. Dr. Whipple was acquainted with this curious irritation that sometimes resulted from the immersion of one’s legs in a taro bog, so he handed Nyuk Tsin a small jar of unguent, but as he did so he had the clear thought: “I’m getting careless as I grow older. I really ought to see the man’s leg for myself.” Months later he was to chide himself for this oversight, but in the days immediately following he did not.
Nyuk Tsin applied the unguent to her husband’s itching leg, and as she had predicted, within a few days the irritation disappeared, and he
proceeded with his work as cook. On the fourth day Dr. Whipple happened to remember about the salve he had prescribed, and asked casually, “Leg, how he come?” And Mun Ki assured him, “Good too much.”
But some time later the cook again experienced strange sensations in his right leg and the beginnings of the same in his left, and once more it was apparent to him that American doctors understood very little about the human body, so this time he tonicked himself with Chinese herbs—at night so that none could watch except his wife, who brewed them—and this time the medicine was effective, and the irritation left for good. Mun Ki was pleased, and vowed that thereafter he would fool no more with Dr. Whipple.
But in July he noticed a new sore on the big toe of his right foot, and this one did not respond to normal Chinese medication. When he pointed this out to his wife, Nyuk Tsin argued: “Try the white doctor’s unguent,” and although Mun Ki knew this to be folly, he allowed his wife to smear it upon the toe, and to Mun Ki’s confusion, the sore healed perfectly, and he was perplexed. “You watch!” he warned his wife. “This white man’s medicine cures nothing. Next week the sore will be there again.”
And to his personal gratification, he was right. The sore reappeared, and worse than before. He therefore drank more Chinese herbs and to a certain extent the sore improved, but now a dreadful itching occurred, and before long it passed over to his left foot as well. Then, to his dismay, a very small lesion opened on his left forefinger, and nothing either drove it away or subdued it, and he hid this fact from Dr. Whipple but he could not hide it from his wife.
Nyuk Tsin could never remember, in later years, just how the horrible, unspoken word first passed between herself and her husband, but she could remember the growing dread that filled their days—still with no words spoken and with life proceeding casually between them—until one morning, when she heard her husband scratching his legs, she went to him boldly, took him by the hands and said, “Wu Chow’s Father, I must go to see the Chinese doctor.” He dropped his eyes away from hers, sat staring at the floor and finally agreed: “You had better see him.”
After the noonday meal was served, Nyuk Tsin slipped out through the garden gate and hurried downtown to the Chinese temple, where after much bowing she lighted incense before the compassionate picture of Lu Tsu, to whose wisdom she confided these facts: “Wu Chow’s Father has an itching that will not go away, and his finger is sore. We are afraid, Lu Tsu, and hope that you who know all medicines will aid us.” She prayed for a long time, then sought out the priest, a shaven-headed man with a kindly face and a bamboo holder containing nearly a hundred numbered slivers of wood. Carefully he moved the bamboo in an arc, repeating old prayers of proved efficiency, and gradually one of the sticks worked itself loose from the others, and it was number forty-one, a number which contained elements of hope. On a small piece of paper the priest wrote “Forty-one” and for a dime he gave it to Nyuk Tsin.
She took her prescription across the river to a dirty little drug shop in Rat Alley, and when she handed it to the herb doctor he said, “Ah, forty-one is a very good medicine. You’re lucky today.” Behind him he had row after row o
f boxes containing precious herbs, and from box forty-one he measured out a spoonful and said, “You must brew a strong tea and drink it with a prayer. Is it for pregnancy?”
“No,” the honest woman replied, “it’s for Wu Chow’s Father.”
The doctor’s expression did not change, but he thought quickly: “Aha! Another one who is afraid to come in person!” To Nyuk Tsin he said casually, “This is a fine medicine for itching legs.”
“I’m glad,” Nyuk Tsin said, not noticing that it was not she who had introduced the subject of itching legs.
Then, as she was about to leave, the doctor said in an offhand manner, “I’m sure this will cure your man, but if it doesn’t, remember! I know all the medicines. Remember.” And as soon as Nyuk Tsin had gone, the doctor ran into another alley and cried, “Look Sing! Look Sing! Follow that one.”
“Which one?” the loafer asked.
“The Hakka woman, with the big feet.” But Nyuk Tsin was hurrying home by a different route, and that day the spy did not overtake her. When he reported his failure to the herbalist the latter shrugged his shoulders and said, “She’ll be back.”
Medicine forty-one was completely ineffective and the growing agony in Nyuk Tsin’s mind could not be put to rest. “Wu Chow’s Father,” she implored, “you must come with me to the Chinese doctor.”
Hawaii Page 70
