“The very existence of Hawaii, Hong Kong, depends not upon what cynical outsiders like to term The Fort. The outsiders are wrong. It’s not The Fort that controls Hawaii. It’s the sanctity of the great trusts. They form the solid backbone of our society. The Fort is only the ribs and the people are the flesh. But the backbone has to be kept strong, and it is up to us judges to be its guardians.
“The trusts control the land and establish the systems of tenure. They control the sugar and the pineapple fields. They continue, where companies rise and fall. They remain productive while the families who profit from them subside into decay. Look at the one you’re entering. It controls millions of dollars in the vital heart of Hawaii, for whom? For a dear old Hawaiian lady and her no-good beachboy son. We judges don’t spend our time worrying about that trust because we’re interested in those two poor Hawaiians. They aren’t worth it. But the idea that Malama Kanakoa and her son Kelly are assured of a square deal from the courts is terribly important.
“What I have to say next, Hong Kong, I don’t want to say sitting down.” The big man rose, adjusted his dark brown suit, and pointed directly at his Chinese visitor. “In the history of our great trusts, there has never been a scandal because some trustee stole money. There have been no defalcations, no illegal conversions, no overtrading for personal commissions, no theft. The trustees have often been accused of being too conservative, but in a trustee that’s not a weakness. It’s a virtue. Hong Kong, so long as we were satisfied to choose our trustees from the missionary families we enjoyed a spotlessly clean record. We’re now branching out, and in a sense we’re taking a risk. If you make one error, I personally will hound you out of the islands. The courts will never rest till you’re behind bars. If you want to do one thing which will set the Orientals in Hawaii back three generations, abuse the Malama Kanakoa Trust.” He sat down, smiled at Hong Kong, and added, “Of course, if you want to prove to our entire society that Orientals are as responsible as the missionaries ever were, you have that opportunity, too.”
Hong Kong wished that his grandmother were alive to guide him at this moment, but he felt that she would have counseled courage, so he said bluntly, “What will you judges say when I recommend that Malama Kanakoa go mostly into some pretty radical investments?”
Judge Harper thought this one over a long time and finally said, “One of the reasons why we judges decided to appoint you to Malama’s trust is that Hoxworth Hale told us about your investing ideas. He said they ought to be looked into, that maybe they were the answer to some of these trusts with vast back-tax structures.”
“Then Hoxworth Hale got me this job?” Hong Kong asked.
“You misunderstand, Hong Kong. I appointed you.”
The Chinese bowed slightly, but could not keep from smiling, and soon Judge Harper joined him. Rising from his desk and putting his arm about Hong Kong’s shoulders, he said, “Let’s put it this way. If you turn out badly, Hoxworth doesn’t suffer the opprobrium. I do. Hong Kong, you are really going to be watched. By me.”
“What do they call these Negroes who are the first to move into a white neighborhood?” Hong Kong laughed. “The blockbusters? Looks as if I’m the trustbuster.”
“The word has an entirely different meaning,” Judge Harper pointed out amiably, but when the able Chinese had gone he had a moment of nostalgic reflection, saying to himself, “He’s probably right. Appointing him was probably the beginning of the end … at least of the safe, comfortable, honest old system we knew.”
Hong Kong drove immediately home and asked the cook, “Where is Judy?” and when he found that she was teaching at the conservatory, he drove there and went in to fetch her. Since the death of Nyuk Tsin, the oldest woman of his family, he had found himself drawing markedly closer to Judy, his youngest girl. He liked women’s habits of thought, and he particularly appreciated Judy’s cool, clean reasoning.
After a few minutes she joined him, a sparkling, winsome Chinese girl of twenty-six, with two braids down her back, a starched pink dress and wide, clever eyes. She bounced into the Buick and asked, “What’s up, Dad?”
“I want you to accompany me to a very important meeting. I’ve just been appointed a trustee for the Malama Kanakoa Trust.”
“Are the judges out of their minds?” Judy chortled.
“The Fort has the ability to see the inevitable,” her father said.
“Where are we going?” Judy asked.
“I want to see Malama. I’d like to find out what her ambitions are, her hopes for the land she owns, and at the same time doesn’t own.”
“Dad! You know Malama won’t have any ideas.”
“That’s what everybody has said for years. But I suppose she’s as bright as you or I, and I’d like to find out.”
He drove toward Diamond Head until he crossed the Ala Wai canal, then turned into the gate at the board fence that surrounded the Swamp. When he drew up to the shingled house, with its spacious porch, Malama thrust open the screen door and appeared with a gigantic smile, her silver hair disheveled and her dress askew. “Hong Kong, the defender of my interests, come in! The judges told me last night!” With widespread arms she welcomed him, and Judy saw with some surprise that her father had had foresight enough to purchase a flower lei for his first visit. Graciously he bestowed it upon the woman who towered over him, then leaned up to give her two kisses while she beamed.
“Come in, my good friends!” she said expansively, adding, with the instinct that marked Hawaiians, “I never thought I should see the day when a distinguished Chinese banker was appointed one of my guardians. It is a happy day for me, Hong Kong. Your people and mine have blended well in the past, and I hope this is a good augury for the future.”
“It’s a new day in Hawaii, Malama,” he replied.
“And is this your lovely daughter?” Malama asked, and when Hong Kong said that it was, she laughed and said, “In the old days I could never tell, when I saw a rich Chinese with a young girl, whether she was his daughter or his number four wife.”
“I feel the same way when I go to a night club in New York,” Hong Kong replied happily, “and see the haole bankers and their companions. We poor Chinese aren’t allowed to get away with plural marriages any longer … only the haoles.”
“I want you to meet my friends,” Malama chuckled. “We gather now and then for some Hawaiian music. This is Mrs. Choy, Mrs. Fukuda, Mrs. Mendonca and Mrs. Rodriques.”
Hong Kong bowed to each of the huge ladies and then returned to Mrs. Choy. “You the pretty girl named after the race horse?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Choy laughed gaily. “My name is Carry-the-Mail. You see, Father won a lot of money on that horse.”
“I know! My grandmother found out that my father had bet a lot of money on Carry-the-Mail, and she gave him hell, but the horse won. So my father and your father probably got drunk together, Mrs. Choy,” Hong Kong said easily, and the women laughed.
“This is my daughter Judy, the musician. She has a job at the conservatory.”
“How wonderful!” Malama cried, shoving a ukulele at the lovely Chinese girl, who slipped easily and without embarrassment into the great frieze of Hawaiian ladies who lined the wall of the chandeliered room. “You won’t know the words, but you can hum.” And the six women began an old Hawaiian song from the days when royalty lived at Lahaina, on Maui. It was true that Judy Kee knew none of the words, but she harmonized well, and once the others stopped singing while she vocalized a verse, and Mrs. Choy cried, “If we could do something about those slant-eyes, we could make her into a good Hawaiian.”
The crowd laughed and Hong Kong asked easily, “What I’d like to find out, Malama, is what are the opinions of a Hawaiian who is placed on a spendthrift trust?” It was like asking the Pope his impressions of Martin Luther, but Hong Kong’s blunt approach often proved best, and this was an occasion when it did, for all the Hawaiian ladies were interested in this question, which affected many of their friends.
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p; “I’ll tell you, Hong Kong,” Malama confessed, as she asked Judy to help her serve tea. “I graduated from Vassar with very good grades, and I was shocked when the court said, ‘You are not competent to handle your own affairs. We will pay three white men huge salaries to do it for you.’ This was insulting, and I tried to fight back, but then I remembered what the sweet haole teachers had taught us at Hewlett Hall. I was Hawaiian. I was different. I was supposed to be incompetent, so I relaxed and found no shame in being judged a spendthrift. I love my friends, I love a guitar well played, I love the Swamp, so I have rather succumbed to the passing of the days. A little friendship, the birds in the Swamp … until I die. I am a spendthrift, so I suppose I deserve to be disciplined by a spendthrift trust.”
Mrs. Fukuda said, “What always infuriates white men, and frugal Japanese like my husband, is the way a woman like Malama gives things to her friends. This they cannot understand. In their pinched and miserable hearts they can’t understand it.”
“What’s money?” Malama asked.
“How much does the spendthrift trust allow you?” Hong Kong asked.
“I don’t blame the trustees,” Malama evaded. “When the courts stepped in I’d worked things around so that I owed the federal government $350,000 in back taxes. Somebody had to do something. So now all I get is $22,000 a year for myself.”
“And all her friends,” Mrs. Mendonca said. “After all, she is an alii nui and she does have some obligations.”
“How do you like the system?” Hong Kong repeated.
“I neither understand it nor like it,” Malama replied.
“Malama,” Hong Kong said bluntly. “I’m going to make some radical investments for you. You’ll have two very lean years, and you’re going to make some kind of deal with the federal government, but if you behave, in three years you’ll be off the spendthrift trust.”
The faces of the five Hawaiian women bloomed like flowers after a providential rain, and Hong Kong could see them envisaging endless parties, good food, new automobiles and trips to Europe, like in the old days, but Hong Kong warned bleakly, “And when you’re off the spendthrift trust, you’ll be under my supervision, and you know a Chinese is ten times tougher than a haole judge.”
The Hawaiians laughed, for this was the truth, and Malama cried, “I hope we can do it, Hong Kong.” She kissed him on both cheeks as she placed over his head the lei he had previously given her. “I am not joking when I say that Hawaiians and Chinese have always been good for one another.”
She was about to cite examples when she was interrupted by the screen door’s banging open suddenly, then slamming shut as someone retreated down the porch. “Kelly!” Malama cried. “Come on in. It’s only Hong Kong.”
The tall beachboy shuffled into the room, barefoot, in his tight knee-length pants and waiter’s jacket that failed to cover his rugged chest. He wore a yachting cap far back on his head, and his black hair was uncombed. “Apternoon, Hong Kong,” he grunted.
“We’ve been talking about plans for the trust,” Malama said graciously as she handed her son a cup of tea. He brushed it aside and plucked a few notes on his mother’s ukulele.
“You da new trustee da kine?” Kelly said.
“Yes,” Hong Kong said with obvious distaste for the pidgin.
“I speak true. You akamai dis trust, you fix heem up, you one damn good pella.” He banged the ukulele and pointed at his mother, adding, “Because dis wahine spend, spend.” He motioned with his uke to Mrs. Fukuda, who began strumming hers, and soon the women were singing, but as they entered into one of their most loved songs Kelly was aware of a Chinese voice, high and lyrical, and while he continued plunking his ukulele, he studied with approval the relaxed manner in which Hong Kong’s daughter sang. Then he paid no more attention to her, but at the end of the song he grabbed a guitar and began a throbbing slack-key solo, to which the other instruments gradually joined in subdued harmonies. Finally, when the slack-key had ended, with its intricate fingerings echoing in the air, Kelly plucked the first few chords of the “Hawaiian Wedding Song,” then threw the guitar to Mrs. Fukuda and rose to begin the majestic male solo. When it came time for the soprano to enter, he pushed his mother into the background, and with his right hand imperiously grabbed Judy and brought her to her feet. At the appropriate moment, he pointed at her, and for the first time in Hawaii an impressed audience heard the Chinese girl soar into the upper reaches of this passionate evocation of the islands. Her voice was like a clear bell in some island church where a true wedding was being performed, and when it came time for Kelly to join her, he did not fool around with falsettos or effects; he projected his handsome baritone until it filled the old room and caused the chandelier to sway. In the final passages Malama and the four big Hawaiian women hummed softly, so that Hong Kong remained the only listener. Against his will, for he did not like his daughter singing Hawaiian songs, he had to applaud, and the four visiting women cheered and Kelly leaped into the other room and returned with a length of tapa, which he twisted about Judy’s waist. He stuck three flowers into her braids and used his right forefinger as if it were a make-up pencil, dabbing it about her eyes.
“She gonna look more Hawaiian than I do,” he cried. Then he pointed in turn at each of his mother’s guests. “Choy!” he cried. “Fukuda, Mendonca, Rodriques, and you, Malama!” He stood back to survey them. “Tomorrow night. Your hair long. Old muumuus. Flowers. Three ukuleles, two guitars. Da Lagoon gonna hear Hawaiian music like nevah bifore.” He bowed to Judy and asked, “Seestah, you sing wit’ me?”
“I will,” she said simply.
Malama was an unusually outspoken woman, for a Hawaiian, and she asked, “Will it be taken with grace if a Chinese girl sings that particular song? It’s so especially Hawaiian.”
“Da kine people better get accustomed,” Kelly snapped, “because dis wahine … a true meadowlark.”
“What do you think, Hong Kong?” Malama asked.
It was apparent from his scowl that he was going to reserve his negative judgment until he got Judy alone, but his daughter said for him, “He’ll be there, and so will I.”
Back in the Buick, Hong Kong stormed: “I don’t want my daughter singing in a night club!”
“But I want to sing,” Judy said firmly.
“People will laugh, Judy. My daughter, singing in a club. You, a Chinese making believe you’re Hawaiian.”
“Dad, for a long time I’ve wanted to sing …”
“But Kelly Kanakoa! A no-good, broken-down Hawaiian!”
“What’s wrong with a Hawaiian?” Judy snapped.
“I didn’t raise a respectable Chinese girl to be messing around with a Hawaiian!”
“You’re messing around, as you call it, with Malama.”
“That’s business, Judy. You’re asking for trouble, girl.”
“You be there tomorrow night, Dad. I want to see at least one friendly face.”
The team of Kelly and Judy created a sensation in more ways than one. To the mainland tourists they were the first pair in the islands who showed any real sense of professional savoir-faire, and the five powerful gray-haired women who accompanied them on that first night were remarkable, for they set off the frail beauty of the girl and the lithe young masculinity of the baritone, so that if only the tourists had to be considered, the team was both an artistic and a financial success. But to the residents of Hawaii it was shocking on two counts. To the Chinese community it was inconceivable that on the very day that Hong Kong’s appointment to the Malama Kanakoa Trust was announced, confirming as it were his respectability in the community, his well-trained daughter should appear in a public night club, her navel showing, singing and doing the hula with a man like Kelly Kanakoa. At least four major Chinese families whose sons had been thinking of marrying the delectable music teacher said flatly, “We will never accept her as a daughter-in-law.” But to the Hawaiian community it was an affront past understanding that an alii family like the Kanakoas would c
hoose as Kelly’s singing partner a pure Chinese girl, and for her to presume to dress like an honest Hawaiian and thus palm herself off to the public was morally outrageous.
So the Chinese boycotted Judy and the Hawaiians boycotted Kelly, but Manny Fineberg of Clarity Records heard them on the second night and signed them up to a profitable contract, but he did stipulate, “On the cover of the album, we got to have a pure Hawaiian girl. Judy can sing like an angel, but she can’t get over them slant-eyes.” As the young singers were driving home that night Judy said, “Kelly, I think that for our next album we ought to form our own company, right here in Hawaii.” And that was the start of Island Records, which Judy Kee ran with an iron hand, seeking out fresh talent to sing famous old songs, so that before long, half the Hawaiian melodies played in America were produced by this clever Chinese girl.
She also devised the costume by which Kelly became famous in the island night clubs. She had a tailor make him skin-tight pants, one leg blue, the other red, with frayed ends reaching below the knee. For a top she found a subdued tapalike fabric from Java and had it made into a tight jacket with long ends that tied at the waist. His hat continued to be a yachting cap, worn on the back of his head, but his shoes were heavy leather sandals which she designed and which he could kick off when he wished to dance. “You must become a visual symbol,” she insisted, and she did the same, with her exotic face framed in flowers and her two braids showing over an island sarong. But the thing that tourists remembered longest was the curious whale’s tooth that Kelly wore on a silver chain about his neck. It became his trademark.
Judy made other changes in Kelly. When he spoke to her, he had to speak English, but when he was on stage she encouraged him to use a wild pidgin, as when in the middle of a performance he would suddenly halt Florsheim’s guitar solo and cry, “Eh you, Florsheim blalah. Las’ night I t’ink. More’n hunnerd years ago de missionary come dis rock and find my gradfadder you gradfadder wearin’ nuttin’, doin’ nuttin’, sleepin’ under de palm tree, drinkin’ okolehau, dey raise hell. Bimeby hunnerd years later you me kanaka we doin’ all de work while de missionary kids sleepin’ under de palm tree, drinkin’ gin, wearin’ almos’ nuttin’, and doin’ nuttin’. Florsheim blalah, wha’ in hell hoppen?”
Hawaii Page 136
