The Immigrants (32 page)

“Thanks,” Dan said. He was wise enough not to ask what a luau was.

After he had left, Kamilee grinned and said, “Secre tary my ass.”

“Whatever she is, she’s a beauty.”

May Ling was on the verandah. She had found Ste venson, Jack London, and Mark Twain in the Noel li brary, and now she was gleaning what she could find on Hawaii.

“We’re both of us invited to a looway, looie, or some thing that they’re holding in our honor tonight.”

“
Your
honor, my love.”

“What in hell is it?”

“Luau. It’s a feast. It began with the old Hawaiians, who worshiped their Gods and celebrated important things with food.

Overeating. Very sensible, I think. In the olden days, they only allowed men to take part in the proceedings. Men cooked the food, and no woman was allowed to touch it. Taboo. The women feasted separately. But then one day in eighteen something or other, the king sashayed over to the women’s feast—I’m sure the food was better there—and that put an end to the separateness.”

“How on earth do you know all that?”

“It’s an old Chinese trick, knowing about things. And, Danny, while you were meeting with the big muckamucks, I went into the kitchen for a pot of tea. They have four cooks in the kitchen—would you believe it? Four cooks and five helpers, nine servants just in the kitchen, and one of them is an old Chinese gentleman from Shanghai, and when he found out that I speak Shanghainese, he practically wept, because it seems that all the Chinese in this place, or almost all anyway, are Cantonese, and the poor dear has to speak Pidgin—”

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“Take a breath.” He picked her up and kissed her.

“No. Put me down and listen, because this is interest ing. This whole luau thing revolves around roast pig. Do you remember when I read you Lamb’s “Disserta tion on Roast Pig”? I kept thinking about it. They were dressing five enormous pigs there in the kitchen, not to mention fifty other mysterious things they were prepar ing and a great basin of mush they call poi, which tastes just hideous but it’s a great favorite with the Hawaiians and also with the
haoles
—”

“What are
haoles
?”

“You and me. No, just you. White folk who live here. Anyway, you’ll never believe how they cook the pigs. That’s why I thought of Charles Lamb. They dig a big hole in the ground. It’s called an
imu
. Then they fill it with rocks and burn a fire on it. The fire has been burning for hours now, and the rocks become red hot. Then they rub the pigs all over with salt and stuff them with hot rocks and put them in wire baskets and lay them on more hot rocks, and then cover the whole thing with leaves and dirt—can you imagine?— and this dear old Chinese cook invited us to come and watch. They begin the cooking in about fifteen minutes, so can we please go and watch, Danny, please?”

“Sure we can go.”

“Why are you laughing at me?”

“Because I love you.”

May Ling’s gown was a gift from her father, a black sheath of heavy Chinese silk, embroidered in gold thread with a twisting, descending line of royal dragons. She had gathered her hair at the top of her head, holding it in place with two gold combs Dan had given her, a great black pile that sat like a basalt crown. The gown

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was slit from knee to ankle. She wore black stockings, and satin slippers embroidered with the same dragon motif. She came out of her bedroom, stood in front of Dan, and asked him whether he approved.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “Why don’t you ever dress like that for me?”

“Why don’t you take me to more luaus? On the other hand, this may be inappropriate for a secretary, and perhaps I should go back and let down my hair and change into a simple black cotton.”

“Like hell. Come here.”

“Gently. Don’t ruin my hair.”

Cocktails were being served on the large verandah that covered the whole side of the Noel house that faced away from the sea.

The verandah was thirty feet deep, covered with a thatched roof on bamboo posts, and lit brightly with Japanese lanterns. If Prohibition intended to implement itself in Hawaii, there was no evidence of it here. Champagne flowed like water, and two long bars for the dispensing of hard liquor and various fruit punches were set up on either end of the verandah. At least a hundred men and women in evening dress were already assembled when Dan and May Ling made their entrance from within the bungalow.

Dan noticed with appreciation how conversation stopped and how men and women alike turned to stare at May Ling as they entered. Indeed, they made a strik ing couple, Dan in his white evening jacket, towering over most of the people, his curly black hair just touched with gray at the temples, and, at his side, the slender, exquisite Chinese woman, her face seemingly carved from ivory, the gold thread dragons on her gown glittering in the lantern light, as if they were alive. If Christopher Noel and his cousin had only given her a passing glance when they first met, they made up for it now, and Dan found himself in a circle of admiring men who had eyes only for May Ling and tight-lipped women who had

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suddenly become conscious of their weight. There were endless introductions that neither of them could remember, and then May Ling was borne away, Ralph Noel on one side of her and Jerry Kamilee on the other.

Waiters were circulating with trays of hors d’oeuvres which Kamilee called pupu, urging May Ling to try the cho cho and the dim sum, saying, “You’ve never tasted food like this before.”

“But I have.” She smiled. “Those dumplings you call dim sum are Chinese, you know.”

“So they are. Of course. But I forget that you are Chinese.”

“A beautiful woman has no nationality,” Ralph Noel said.

“You see,” Kamilee told her, “there is something we taught the
haoles
—to rid themselves of their racism. Well, tried to teach them at any rate. They’re slow learners. But you know, Miss—what does one say?”

“It would be so confusing. I’ll try to explain. In China, the family name comes first, but in America many families reverse it in the American way. My fam ily name is Wo, which means nest.

But my given name is May Ling. Oh, it’s so complicated. Call me May Ling.”

“But Dan introduced you as May Ling,” Noel said. “I surely thought it was Miss Ling.”

“Just May Ling. No Miss.”

“Ah, then, May Ling,” Kamilee said, “I was point ing out that this is not the mainland. There is no place on earth where a Chinese can live with as much right and equality as here.”

“But there is one place.”

“Where?”

“China,” May Ling said gently.

“Touché,” said Noel. “Enough of such talk. Have some of these.”

“Oh, won ton.”

“We have no secrets from you.”

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“But so many,” May Ling assured him. “This is the loveliest, strangest place I have ever been. The only place. I was born in San Francisco. This is the first time I have ever been away.”

“What a shame! And who keeps you prisoner? That ugly brute you work for?”

“That ugly brute is a handsome and kind and good man.”

“Is he now? And do you know that he spent most of today trying to talk us out of a million dollars and the best waterfront land on Oahu?”

“Then you must give it to him,” she said primly.

They burst into laughter and now the group around her increased.

When it was time for the luau, Dan had to work his way through a crowd to reach her.

Seated next to her at one of the tables on the lawn, the air full of the smell of roasting pork, a great platter of roasted pork in front of them, so tender that it was crumbling, flanked with sweet potatoes and little bun dles of meat in green
ti
leaves, Dan leaned over to her and whispered, “Do you know what Ralph Noel asked me?”

“No.”

“Could he take you to dinner in Honolulu tomor row?”

“And what did you tell him?”

“To ask you. It’s your affair.”

“And if I go with him?”

“I’ll break every bone in your sweet body.”

“Would you?” she replied, trying to keep herself from remembering all the nights he had spent with his wife, away from her.

“Well, I’ll not have my bones bro ken by some ugly brute.”

“Ugly brute?”

“Some people think of you that way,” she said, smil ing sweetly.

On the third day, Noel’s lawyers drew up a letter of understanding that would guarantee Dan a million dol lars of initial investment plus thirty-one acres of the best land on Waikiki Beach—the

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beginning of the process that would turn lovely Waikiki Beach into a sprawling vacation slumland. But that lay in the distant future, and Dan’s cables to Mark Levy and to Thomas Seldon spoke only of his immediate triumph.

Dan rented a small sloop, and with May Ling set out to sail among the islands. For eight days, they lived on the boat, built fires on sandy, isolated beaches, cooked the fish they caught, wandered in paradise, watched sunsets of indescribable beauty, and swam naked in the warm tropical water. The world disappeared, and never for a moment did they regret its passing. Sprawled on his stomach on the hot sand, watching May Ling, her body as slender and lithe as the first time he had looked at her nakedness, he ac-knowledged himself as the most fortunate man on earth. Jean faded from his conscious ness, and the memory of how easily he melted at the sight of her immaculate beauty became simple testi mony of his own childishness. It was over, and on the way back, running before an easy wind in sight of Oahu, he said to May Ling, “It’s over, you know.”

“I know, Danny,” she agreed sadly.

“I don’t mean this. I mean my marriage. When we return, I’ll ask Jean for a divorce.”

“Danny, I don’t want to talk about that.”

“I’ve made up my mind. If I can’t be with you like this, my whole life makes no sense at all.”

“Danny, you know what they say in the Islands—that there is no mainland, that it’s all a dream and an illusion. But this is our dream, Danny, and next week we go back to the mainland, which does exist. I don’t want to talk about this here. I want to talk about it when we’re back on Willow Street with Joey, when I’m scrubbing the kitchen.”

In Honolulu, a letter from Jean awaited him, and May Ling watched him anxiously as he read it. “She’s gone to England,” he

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told her incredulously. “Can you imagine? She just picked up both kids and took off for England.”

“I thought she hated ships.”

“Only ships that I’m on, I suppose.”

And please, God, let her remain there
, May Ling said to herself.

Lord James Brixton was twenty-three years old, a for mer captain in the Queen’s Own Lancers, a newly ap pointed director of Vincent Cumberland’s tea com pany—in which he had invested a substantial sum of money—six feet in height, blue-eyed, blond with hair that swept down over one side of his head, pink-cheeked, handsome, an excellent, horseman and totally ingenuous. He met Jean at dinner at her uncle’s house, took her to the races the following day, the theater the evening after that, and then at a late supper at Simpson’s informed her that he was totally and completely in love with her.

“You dear, foolish boy,” Jean replied. “I’m old enough to be your mother.”

“Hardly, even if you came from that barbarous state of yours called Kentucky, where I hear they bed down at age eleven. I’m twenty-three, soon to be twenty-four. You are thirty-one.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I made inquiries.”

“Which is hardly polite.”

“I have no intentions toward politeness,” Lord Brixton informed her. “All is fair in love and war, and you are the most beautiful and the brightest lady I have ever known. So in the words of a famous but rather stupid general in the late war, I attack and attack and attack.”

“I am a married woman with two children.”

“And a husband indifferent enough to allow you to come six thousand miles without him.”

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“He doesn’t allow me. I do as I please.”

The next day it was a cricket match, and a week later Jean was a guest for the weekend at his country place. Her Aunt Janice was troubled about the propriety of the matter, but Cumberland assured his wife that Jean would be adequately chaperoned, not to mention the fact that she was an adult woman who knew precisely what she was about. Cumberland himself was delighted with anything that would make Brixton even more ami able toward the company.

Two weeks after that, a week before their scheduled return to America, Jean missed her period. In a strange country, at her wits’

end, she confided in Wendy Jones, who found her a doctor with no connection to either Brixton or her family. She was informed by the doctor that she was most likely pregnant. A subsequent visit confirmed his diagnosis. Her reaction was to tell the be wildered Lord Brixton that she never wanted to see him again, an explosion of anger that brought him pleading to her aunt’s home, only to be turned away by a woman as cold as ice. But most of Jean’s anger was directed at herself, at her own stupidity. She would have to remain in England, find a doctor who would perform an abor tion, go through the whole wretched, nasty business. And for what? For an idiotic British boy who had the audacity to propose that she leave her husband and come to live in this wretched cold country where it rained eternally.

And there was only Wendy Jones to lean on—assuring her that it would all come out very well indeed. As for Wendy Jones—well for a poor girl who had al ways lived with the specter of poverty and unemploy ment, it was a welcome thing indeed. She and her mis tress had something in common now, a bit of knowledge that was an excellent guarantee of continuing employ ment.

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When Jake and Clair Levy entered his office, Stephan Cassala’s face was wreathed in smiles. He kissed Clair and had to hold back from hugging Jake. “You both look wonderful,” he said. “It’s been so long. Why don’t we ever get together?”