Slowly Palani’s pile diminished, but Mun Ki knew from the past that the cultivation of a sucker demanded patience and skill, so on some days Palani triumphed; but over the long haul he lost, and the afternoon came when Mun Ki ruthlessly drove him down to a mere handful of seeds. Excitement among the lepers was great as the fan-tan game progressed, and many were standing about when the Chinese finally broke his adversary completely, whereupon the Hawaiian spectators started joshing the loser, which was what Mun Ki wanted. When the joking was at its height, the Chinese said casually, “Palani, why don’t we play this way. You have the ridgepole for your house, and I have one for mine. It’s ridiculous for neither of us to have a complete roof, so I’ll play for your ridgepole against mine.”
There was an excited hush about the flat rock, and Mun Ki prayed that the Hawaiian would rise to the challenge, but when the big man did so he added a stipulation which left the Chinese stunned. To begin with, Palani said simply, “All right, I’ll play for the timber … tomorrow,” and Mun Ki tried to mask his joy, but then the big man added, “And tomorrow we won’t pick up pebbles by hand. We’ll scoop them up in a cup. And you won’t count them, Mun Ki. Keoki over there will count them.”
“Don’t you trust me?” Mun Ki pleaded.
The big Hawaiian stared at the little gambler and said, “We’ll scoop them up in a cup.” And he marched off with his friends.
Mun Ki sat alone for a long time glumly staring at the pebbles on the fan-tan rock. Carefully he recapitulated each incident in his relationship with Palani: “It all goes back to that day when I saw the big timber first. But he had good feet, so he dashed out and got it for himself. I must have shown my temper. So all along he’s known what I’ve been planning. Letting him win and then making him lose. That evil man! All the time I was teasing him, he was really playing with me, letting me make him win and then letting me make him lose. So that while I thought I was trapping him into gambling for his roof, he was trapping me into gambling for mine. These damned Hawaiians.”
Distraught, he hobbled home, looked up at his precious ridgepole and threw himself upon his wife’s mercy. “Tomorrow we may lose our roof,” he said solemnly.
“We have no roof … yet,” Nyuk Tsin replied.
“We have the ridgepole,” Mun Ki replied glumly. “And we’re going to lose it.”
“Our ridgepole?” his wife shouted.
“Nyuk Tsin, be quiet!” he pleaded.
“What have you been doing?” she shouted again, pushing him against the wall. “Did you gamble away our timber?”
“We still have a chance,” he assured her, and then he explained how while he was leading big dumb Palani into a trap, the wily Hawaiian had really been leading him into one.
“Oh, husband!” Nyuk Tsin cried, and she began to weep, but he comforted her, and all night the two Chinese tried to figure out what their chances were, now that Palani had insisted that they play the game honestly.
As dawn broke, the sleepless Mun Ki was figuring with a stick in the wet sand and suddenly he looked up toward his wife with a beatific smile upon his thick, leprous lips. “Our good luck is beginning today,” he assured her, and his sweating over the ridepole ceased. “Three years ago we started the taro patch, and that was the beginning of our bad luck. We lost our money, got sick, were tricked by the Chinese doctor, and had to leave home. But the three years are over. Now our good-luck cycle is beginning, Nyuk Tsin!” he cried triumphantly. “We have six years of good luck ahead of us. Today I’ll win Palani’s ridgepole and tonight we’ll sleep under our own roof!”
In an ecstasy of hope he led Nyuk Tsin down to the fan-tan rock, where Palani and his Hawaiians were waiting. The pebbles were on the flat surface, and beside them stood a metal cup with a handle. After some discussion it was agreed that the game should be played in this way: Palani would scoop a cupful of pebbles, and the umpire Keoki, closely watched by Nyuk Tsin, would count them out in fours until the residue was known. Mun Ki, in the meantime, would bet on odd or even and would also stipulate a specific number. Thus, if he nominated even and four, and if the pebbles left a residue of four, he would win two points for his even guess and four points for having guessed the exact number. On the other hand, if he wished to hedge his bets, he could nominate even and three, which would still yield him four points if three came up. Then he would scoop up the pebbles, and Palani would name his bets, and the first man to win one hundred points would win the other’s roof.
Palani, content that he now had the Chinese in an honest game, was satisfied that he would win, but Mun Ki, joyous in the start of his six-year cycle of good luck, was positive that he would triumph. He watched the big Hawaiian scoop the pebbles, hold them aloft, and wait for his guess. “Odd and three,” Mun Ki cried, and the pebbles were deposited before the umpire. Eagerly the circle of faces closed in for the count.
It was a ghoulish crowd that watched the battle for the ridgepoles. Some men had no hands and some lacked feet. The lips of some had fallen away and there were many noses missing. From the group arose the unmistakable stench of the leper, and brown skins were often marked with huge sickly-white areas. Hair had fallen out and sometimes eyes. These were the caricatures of men, those cursed by a malevolent nature so remorseless that few in the world who were not lepers could imagine. These fan-tan players were indeed the walking corpses, the crawling souls so foul that sound men, seeing them, could only shudder. They were the dead, the bodies thrown onto the beach at Kalawao, the forgotten, the abominated.
But now in the bright sunlight they laughed merrily, and if the judge had inadequate fingers with which to count in fours, he was allowed to keep his job because he was known as a trustworthy man. “Odd and one,” he cried. “Two points to the Pake.” The crowd cheered.
When it came time for Mun Ki to scoop the pebbles a difficulty presented itself. Although he had been able to play the game with his stumps, he did not have enough fingers to grasp the handle of the cup, so after two trial attempts he appealed to the crowd, and his request was granted: he passed the cup to Nyuk Tsin, and she scooped the pebbles. “Odd and three,” Palani cried.
When the judge had counted, he announced: “Even.”
“It’s our lucky year!” Mun Ki shouted joyfully, and then he stopped to explain how a Chinese has three bad years followed by six good ones. “The good ones started last night!” he chuckled, and on Palani’s next scoop he scored six points, for he bet on even and two, and that’s how the pebbles fell.
At the midway mark Mun Ki was leading by a score of fifty to thirty-nine, and it was indeed uncanny how he picked up points. “It’s our lucky year!” he exulted, and as the sun grew hot it became apparent that Palani was bound to lose his roof. Nevertheless, he played his numbers stolidly to the end, and when the Chinese gambler had fairly won, one hundred to eighty-three, the big Hawaiian jumped up, stretched and said, “I myself will carry the timber to your house!” And the Hawaiians formed a procession, those who could walk, and when they got Palani’s driftwood to the stone walls which Nyuk Tsin had built, they cut it into lengths for crossbeams, and men who were agile leaped onto the top of the walls, lashed the beams in place and began tying down the pili grass that others passed to them. By midafternoon the roof was done, and Mun Ki, appraising it proudly, explained to all: “This is really my lucky year.”
But Nyuk Tsin saw the disappointment in big Palani’s misshapen face, and without consulting her husband she went to the man and said, “In our new house there is room for another,” and she took Palani by the hand and led him inside. The crowd cheered her generosity and then watched Mun Ki to see what he would do, but he cried, “This is the beginning of my six lucky years.”
Taking the dying man Palani into their home was one of the best things Nyuk Tsin ever did, for he had been a sailor and he was a great liar; during a storm he would sit in the dark hut and tell the Pakes of distant lands, and it seemed wonderful to Nyuk Tsin that one man could have had so many experiences. “A
sia, Africa, America!” he cried. “They’re all fine lands to see.” And as he talked, Mun Ki and his wife began to visualize the distant continents and to appreciate what a surpassing treasure their sons were going to inherit. One night Mun Ki said, “When you go back to the boys, Wu Chow’s Auntie, make them learn to read. They should know about the things that Palani has been telling us.” Once he actually said, “I am glad I came to the Fragrant Tree Country. A man should have great adventures.”
Palani’s fo’c’s’l yarns also awakened Nyuk Tsin’s imagination, and she saw how much better it was to live closely with her neighbors rather than apart as she had had to do as a Hakka wife, and sometimes at night, when rain fell over their roof, the three strange companions found a positive joy in sitting together, and this was the beginning of Nyuk Tsin’s remarkable service to Kalawao. When big Palani died she helped bury him and then brought into her roofed house a man and wife, and when they died she buried them. She became known as the “Pake Kokua,” and whenever a new ferryload of lepers was dumped ashore on the terrible and inhospitable beaches of Kalawao, she went among them and showed them how to obtain at least some comfort during the first weeks when they had to sleep in the open. She taught them to build houses, as she had done, and day after day she climbed the cliffs seeking out short timbers for others. Her most particular contribution was this: when the ferry threw ashore some young girl she would keep the girl in her house for a week or so, and there the girl was safe, as if she had come upon one of the ancient and holy sanctuaries maintained by the Hawaiians before the white man came, and during these days of grace Nyuk Tsin would bring to the girl a chain of possible husbands and would say sternly, “You have come here to die, Liliha. Do so in dignity.” And many marriages, if they could be called such, were both arranged and consummated in Nyuk Tsin’s house, and word seeped back to Honolulu about the Pake Kokua.
For his part, Mun Ki reveled in his time of good luck. He kept his fan-tan game running and was delighted one day to find that the leper ferry had brought him a Cantonese man, near death, who had managed to hide out in Iwilei for two years before the quack herbalist turned him in, and who was as good a gambler as he. They would play fan-tan by the hour, with Mun Ki insisting, “Pick up the pebbles in the cup, please.”
And then the leprosy, which had been accumulating in enormous reserves throughout his body, burst forth horribly in many places and he could not leave the stone house Nyuk Tsin had built for him. She could provide him with no medicine, neither for his awful sores nor for the pneumonia that attacked him. She could get him no choice food … just salt beef and poi. There were no blankets to ease the hard earthen bed. But there was Nyuk Tsin’s patient care, and as the ghastly days progressed, with death extremely tardy, she sat with her husband and attended to his last instructions.
“You are obligated to send money to my wife,” he reminded her.
“And when the boys are married, send word to the village. Try any ventures you wish, for these are my lucky years.”
As death approached, he became unusually gentle, a poor wasted shadow of a man, a ghost, and he told the self-appointed governor of the settlement, “The fan-tan game belongs to you.” At the very end he said to Nyuk Tsin, “I love you. You are my real wife.” And he died.
She scratched his grave into the sandy soil, choosing the side of a hill as she had promised, where the winds did not blow and where, if there was no tree, there was at least a ledge of rock upon which his spirit could rest on its journeys from and to the grave.
Nyuk Tsin now turned her house into a hospital, and no longer were stumps of human beings seen abandoned in open fields. She cared for them until they died, and there were sometimes five or six days in a row when she never saw a whole living person. She cared for those who were beyond the memory of God, and there was no human being so foul in his final disintegration but that she could tend him. In Honolulu the government could find no way to send medicine to the abandoned, nor bandages nor even scalpels to cut away lost members, but Nyuk Tsin devised tricks of her own, and many Hawaiians blessed her as the Pake Kokua. If anyone had asked her: “Pake, why do you work so hard for the Hawaiian lepers?” she would have replied: “Because Kimo and Apikela took me in.”
In these days she formed one habit. As each dusk came she sat apart and took off all her clothes. Starting with her face she would feel for signs of leprosy, and then her breasts, and then her flanks. She studied each hand with care and then inspected her legs. Finally she lifted her big feet and looked at each toe in turn, and when she was satisfied that for another day she was free of leprosy, she dressed and went to bed. She had to perform this inspection at dusk, for the government in Honolulu could not find the funds to provide the lepers with lamps and oil, so that when night fell, the utter blackness of hell descended upon the lazaretto, and ugliness rode the night. But Nyuk Tsin, even though she was now an unattached woman, was left alone, and she slept in peace, for she knew that so far she was not leprous.
In early 1873 word was sent to Nyuk Tsin that in reward for her help at Kalawao she would be permitted to return to civilization, provided that upon her arrival in Honolulu three doctors would certify that she was free of leprosy. The news excited much discussion among the lepers, but one reaction dominated: although all were sorry to see her go, none begrudged her the right. So in the period between ships this twenty-six-year-old Chinese girl moved about the peninsula of Kalawao. She climbed up to the crater where the volcano which had built the island had once flourished, and she crossed over to the westward side of the peninsula where, in her opinion, the tiny settlement at Kalaupapa offered a much better home for future lepers than the eastern side at Kalawao. But mostly she looked at the towering cliffs that hemmed in the peninsula, and she watched the wild white goats leaping in freedom. To herself she said, “I never expected to leave Kalawao. May those who are left behind find decency.”
On the day of Nyuk Tsin’s departure from the lazaretto the little Kilauea chugged into position beneath the cliffs; casks and cattle were kicked into the surf; and a longboat came in with its first load of condemned; and although Nyuk Tsin had decided to go out to the ship on the first return trip, she now changed her mind and moved among the quivering newcomers, explaining conditions to them in her broken Hawaiian; and when the last incoming boat arrived, the sailors had to warn her: “Hey, Pake! More better you come, eh?” As she went to the boat she met climbing out of it a small, white-faced man in black priest’s clothing. He wore glasses and his eyes were close together. His hair was combed straight forward like a boy’s; his trip among the cattle had made him dirty, and his fingernails were filthy. Now, as he stepped ashore at Kalawao he was breathing deeply, as if in a trance, and he stared in horror at what he saw. To the self-appointed governor he said in an ashen voice, “I am Father Damien. I have come to serve you. Where is a house in which I may stay?”
Nyuk Tsin was so surprised to think that a white man would volunteer to help her lepers that she did not find words to cry, “You may have my house!” By the time she thought of this, the sailors were already pulling her into the longboat, and so she left, but as she went she could see the lepers explaining to the priest that in Kalawao there were no houses and that he, like any other newcomer, would have to sleep as best he could on the bare ground under a hau tree.
WHEN NYUK TSIN RETURNED from the lazaretto she was dominated by one desire, to recover her children, and as soon as the Kilauea docked she hurried off, a thin, sparse-haired Chinese widow of twenty-six wearing a blue smock, blue trousers and a conical bamboo hat tied under her chin and reaching out over her closely wound bun in back. She was barefooted, and after an eventful life of eight years in Hawaii, owned exactly what she wore—not even a toothbrush or a smock more—plus seven undeveloped acres of boggy land left to her by Dr. Whipple. As she plodded up Nuuanu Valley she did not pause to study the land, but as she went past she did think: “I shall have to start spading it tonight.”
She was on
her way to the forest home of Kimo and Apikela, and when at last she reached the footpath leading off the highway and into the dense vegetation, she broke into a run, and the wind pulled her basket hat backward, so that it hung by the cord around her neck, and at last she burst into the clearing where her children ought to be, but the family was inside the house, and she got almost to the door before Apikela saw her. The big Hawaiian shouted, “Pake! Pake!” and hurried over to embrace her, lifting her clear off the ground, but even while huge Apikela was holding her, Nyuk Tsin was looking over the woman’s shoulder and counting. There were only four boys, from seven years down to four, standing in the shadows, frightened by this intruder.
“Where’s the other boy?” Nyuk Tsin finally gasped.
“There’s no other boy,” Apikela replied.
“Didn’t you get the baby from the ship?”
“We heard of no baby.”
Nyuk Tsin was tormented by the loss of her child, yet overjoyed to see her other sons, and these dual emotions immobilized her for a moment, and she stood apart in the small grass house looking first at big Apikela, then at drowsy Kimo, and finally at her four hesitant sons. Then she forgot the missing child and moved toward her boys, as if to embrace them, but the two youngest naturally drew back because they did not know her, while the two oldest withdrew because they had heard whispers that their mother was a leper. Nyuk Tsin, sensing this latter fear, hesitated, stopped completely and turned to Apikela, saying, “You have cared well for my babies.”
“It was my joy to have them,” the huge Hawaiian woman laughed.
“How did you feed them?” Nyuk Tsin asked, feasting her eyes on her robust sons.
“You can always feed children,” Kimo assured her. “Sometimes I worked. Sometimes the Pakes gave us a little money.”
Hawaii Page 76
