Hawaii (97 page)

There were, of course, still no organized houses in the leper settlement, and over half the afflicted people slept year after year under bushes, with no bedding and only one change of clothing. These naturally died sooner than even the ravages of leprosy would have dictated, and perhaps this was a blessing, but even the most horrible crawling corpses somehow longed for homes of their own, a shack with a grass roof where they could preserve the illusion that they were still human beings.

Therefore, in June, 1871, Nyuk Tsin, after five weeks of living inside the community, but on the bare ground, decided: "Wu Chow's Father, we are going to build ourselves a house!" Her shattered husband had already begun to lose his toes and fingers and could not be of much help, but she made believe that it was he who was doing the work, and to keep his interest focused on the future, she discussed each step of the building with him. Daily she trudged, to a ruined Hawaiian house built a century before and hauled back heavy stones, standing with them in her arms while he decided exactly where they should be placed. In time a wall was built, and the two shivering Chinese had at least some protection from the winds that howled across Kalawao in the stormy season.

Next she sought the ridgepole and the few crossbeams that were essential for the roof, but this was a difficult task, for the government in Honolulu had consistently forgotten to ship the lepers expensive lumber, which had to be imported all the way from Oregon; for although the leaders of the state were practicing Christians and although their consciences bled for the lepers, they instinctively thought: "Those with mai Pake will soon be dead. Why, really, should we waste money on them?" So to get her precious timbers Nyuk Tsin stationed her husband along the shore, where he prayed both for the arrival of driftwood and for the speed to grab it before someone else did. Once he hobbled proudly home with a long piece of timber, and the ridgepole of the roof was slung into place. Now, when the two Chinese lay in their house abuilding, they could look up through the storm and see that promising ridgepole and think: "Soon the rains will be -kept away."

While her husband guarded the shore, Nyuk Tsin taught herself to climb the lower cliffs that hemmed in the leper peninsula, and after a while she became as agile as a goat, leaping from one rock to another in search of small trees that could be used as crossbeams; but goats had roamed these cliffs so long that few trees survived where once forests had stood; but wherever the agile Chinese woman spotted a fugitive she climbed for it, as if she were racing the goats for treasure.

These were days of alternate exhilaration and despair. It was good to see Mun Ki taking an active interest in life, such as it was, and Nyuk Tsin often felt a surge of personal pride when she uprooted

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a tree high on the cliffs; but in the afternoons when the couple gathered pili grass and braided the panels for their future roof, exasperation would overcome them, and Mun Ki often cried, "We have the grass panels finished but nowhere can we find the crossbeams on which to tie them." Those were the days when the missionary advisers to the king, in Honolulu, argued: "We must not waste money on Kalawao."

One day a whole board, long enough if carefully split to provide crossbeams for an entire roof, washed ashore from some distant wreck, and for a moment Mun Ki thought that he had secured it for himself, but a big man named Palani, whose feet were still sound, rushed down and captured it. So the Chinese continued to sleep under the open roof, with the rain upon them night after night; but they were luckier than many, and they knew it, for they had side walls to protect thefn from the wind; they had the solid ridgepole of their roof; and they had the pili-grass panels finished and waiting to be slung into position.

More, they had a rude kind of spiritual peace. Mun Ki, sitting on the rocks by the sea, waiting for driftwood, often looked toward the cliff where his sure-footed wife risked her life daily in search of timber, and a change came over him. He was not aware of it, but Nyuk Tsin began to sense that her husband no longer felt inwardly ashamed of her Hakka strength. Once he had even gone so far as to admit grudgingly, "I watched you climbing on the high rocks. I would be afraid to climb there." This gave her much consolation, but the spiritual repose derived principally from another development. As long as the two Chinese had been total outcasts, even among the lepers, there had been a kind of enforced loyalty between them, for if either fought with the other, there was truly no hope left, so they were bound together by bonds of ultimate despair. But now that they were accepted into the full community, and were recognized for the prudent, loyal people they were, they were proved to be ordinary people, husband and wife, and they could argue about how the house should be built, and sometimes Mun Ki, his patience strained by his stubborn Hakka wife, would stomp off in anger, hobbling on his toeless feet to the beach, where he would sit with dying Hawaiian men and confess to them: "No man can understand a woman," and the suffering men would recount their defeats at the hands of women. Then, when the day was done, he would hobble back to his home and wait for Nyuk Tsin, and when he heard her coming his heart was glad. At one such conciliation he confessed: "If you were not my kokua, I should be dead by now," and with no pride of either Punti or Hakka he looked at her in the tropical dusk and said, "Dr. Whipple was right. Wherever a man goes he finds a challenge. Today the committee asked me to handle the distribution of food, because they know I am an honest man. In fact," he admitted proudly, "I am also on the committee itself."

They suffered one major worry: what had happened to their baby? In questioning the sailors from the Kilauea they discovered nothing.

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Someone vaguely remembered that the child had been handed to a man on the dock at Honolulu, a Chinese perhaps, but he was not sure. With Dr. Whipple dead there was no way for Nyuk Tsin to send an orderly inquiry, so the two Chinese spent some months of quiet anxiety, which was heightened when an incoming leper said, "I know Kimo and Apikela. They gather maile, but they have only four Pake children." The parents fretted, but Nyuk Tsin often repeated: "Wherever the boy is, he's better off than here."

Mun Ki found escape from his worry through a fortunate discovery. One day while keeping guard at the beach, hoping for another timber, he happened to notice that some of the small black volcanic pebbles that lined the shore resembled the beans used in the game of fan-tan, and he started to gather them, and when he had well over a hundred of matched size he spent a long time searching for a completely flat rock, and although he did not find one, he did stumble across a slab which could be made reasonably smooth by polishing with another stone held flat against the surface. When it was ready he spread upon it the beanlike pebbles and began picking them up in his damaged hands, slamming them back down on the flat rock, and counting them out in fours. In time he became so skilled in estimating his intial grab that he could guess with fair accuracy whether the residue would be one, two, three or four; and after he had done this for some days he called to some Hawaiians and showed them the game. For the first two days he merely tested his wits against theirs, and it was one of the Hawaiians who suggested, "We could pky a game with those pebbles," and Mun Ki replied casually, "Do you think so?"

Since no one had any money, they looked along the beach to find something they could use as counters, and they came upon some hard yellow seeds dropped by a bush that grew inland, and it was obvious that these would make good substitutes for coins, and in this way the historic fan-tan game of the lepers at Kalawao began. When Muni Ki was banker it was uncanny how, using his two stumps of hands, he could grab a number of pebbles, apparently at random, and estimate whether the total was even or odd; and when bets were placed he was able to hide one of the pebbles, catching it between the base of his thumb and the heel of his damaged hand. If most of his adversaries had their yellow buttons on even, he would drop the hidden pebble, make the residue come out odd, and pocket the profits; but if the bets were concentrated on the odd, he would retain the palmed counter and win again.

The game continued for weeks, and more than a dozen men became so excited about it that as soon as the sun was up, they hurried to the beach where the sharp-eyed Pake gambler was willing to stand off their challenges. They played for nothing, only yellow seeds, but they developed agonies of hope over large bets, and in time one of their number, the big excitable man named Palani, the Biblical Paul, began to accumulate most of the buttons.

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When Mun Ki saw this he was pleased, and on the day when Palani finally cornered the seed-wealth of the lepers his Chinese adversary reported to Nyuk Tsin: "Palani is getting caught, just as we planned. Pray for me."

In the following days Palani began to lose. If he bet on evens, Mun Ki would drop the hidden pebble in his palm and throw down an odd number, and whenever the Hawaiian decided to risk a lot of seeds and go for a big win on a specific number, say three, it was a simple matter for Mun Ki to make the pebbles come out even, so that they couldn't possibly yield a three. The residue might be two or four, but never three.

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 ridgepole 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 fanjtan 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.