Gift of the Golden Mountain (47 page)

     "But you wonder?" Kit said quietly.

     May shrugged.

     "Why can't you take time out, fly to Paris, say hello?"

     "Why can't he take time out, fly to Hawaii, say hello?" she came back, an edge of very real anger in her voice.

     "Have you tried to meet in the middle?" Kit wanted to know.

     "Twice. He was in Bangkok last month, but I got held up in Japan. Before that, I missed him in Hong Kong."

     "What was he doing there?" Kit suddenly asked.

     "I'm not sure," May answered. "He is being rather evasive, but I think it probably has something to do with the girl his brother left behind . . . and their child." She paused then. "Maybe
Marie-Claire
will be able to tell me more. She's coming to the islands to scout locations for a documentary film on Vietnam. Hayes says he has given her my number."

Two days before the end of our idyll, Kit got an urgent call. Her presence was needed in Los Angeles for an important vote on one of the boards she served on. They had booked her a seat on the first plane out of Kona. She would have to leave at once.

     "I'll be back for you whenever you're ready," she told me as she quickly threw some clothes into a suitcase, "But I have to be honest," she added, "I hope you will stay through the winter, at least. I think it will be good for you, I know it will be good for May, and I can't imagine that Israel will complain."

     "Do you really think May needs another geriatric?" I asked.

     "You heard Auntie Abigail—age is all in the head," Kit answered, tapping mine playfully.

THAT WINTER I kept a Hawaii journal; I sometimes thought it was the only way to distinguish one day from the next, such was the even rhythm as the waves washed the beaches, depositing a steady necklace of puka shells and cowries along the tide line.

     Such an easy life it is: the sea and the sand and the soft clacking sound the palm fronds make as they are riffled by the trade winds. Israel, wearing nought but a pair of rather long, red and white flowered shorts, busies himself with projects. He is building a series of latticework trellises, and the bougainvillea is already clamoring up. The colors are luminescent—bright red and purple and a delicious peach color, all of which are incandescent against the lava rock.

     Abigail and I spend part of each day together. She is a marvelous storyteller. This island is filled with legends, and I believe she knows them all. The other afternoon I got my camera out and began to photograph her. She is at ease with the camera, it does not bother her one bit, which is unusual in one of her age. (Her age—our age! We are often so vain.) For the first time in a long time, I can hardly wait to get my film developed to see what
I got on her. If it is as good as I think it is, that is, if I did the job I should have done, I think I will attempt a whole series and call it "The Hawaiians."

     They come in so many different colors, the island people who have been here for generations. The other day Abigail introduced me to a blond, blue-eyed woman who traces her Hawaiian ancestry back to the time of Kamehameha, the king who ruled at about the same time that George Washington was rowing around on the Delaware. This woman explained to me that her great-great grandmother was a "Molokai lady" who had married "the Frenchman." She explained her pale coloring this way: "My family always seemed to marry the light-skinned Europeans." Her husband, a delightful man who works for one of the sugar companies, is quite dark, even though his "great-grandfather was a sailing man out of Gloucester, Massachusetts." Somehow, when I talk to Abigail and her friends, the past in this place seems so much more a part of the present than it does in our part of the country. Perhaps that is because a great many Californians came west because they wanted to leave all that behind. Most Hawaiians, at least those I have met, seem happy with their islands and have no wish ever to leave. We have had such fun, May and I, talking about what Phinney's reaction to this place will be. We will have a chance to find out early this summer, when the family is to gather here to celebrate my 80th year on this planet.

It is three weeks now since Kit left. May has been over every weekend. Dr. Obregon came once, just after the new assistant arrived. I think he was worried that May and Tim might be ganging up on him, and he wasn't going to let them out of his sight. His worries must have been quickly quelled; Tim is the mildest young man I think I've ever met, terribly anxious to please. He is skinny and slope-shouldered and wears his head at
a peculiar angle, as if he is always considering something ponderous. He treats Obregon with the kind of respect the doctor clearly expects and needs. May says Tim is the sort of young man who takes direction much better than he is able to give it. All of which is to the good. May is not only relaxing, but filling out a bit on a steady diet of coconut milkshakes.

Karin and Philip and Thea came for the long presidents' weekend, and Karin has stayed on for a few days. May and Karin are at the beach this very moment, I watch them from the lanai. They are sitting at the edge of the water, where the waves can wash up on them, their heads are bent together, the dark and the light, and they talk. Words pour out of them, spilling over and lapping about each other, like some soothing balm. You can almost see them take strength from it. May seems softer, the tension is gone, she is more supple. And Karin, with her old friend at the edge of the ocean, seems quite different from the stylish young woman who arrived in a white linen suit, blue silk shirt with her hair pulled back into a sleek bun.

     They spend their days in the briefest of bikinis, May's body long and sleek, Karin's soft and voluptuous—each wrapping a pareau around when they come in for lunch or dinner. I have never been much interested in photographing the female body until now, watching these two, but could I do it? Could I show, would I be able to capture on film, the love that exists between them, between women, that is not sexual but is sensual . . . full of trust and understanding? I think of my life's great friendships, most of them with women, and wonder why it is so hard to define the kind of exquisite intimacy that does not require sex. And wonder why my Annie, and her generation, in the name of women's liberation feel it necessary to tell us that all touching is sexual, and that denying it only reinforces our inhibitions. I know it is not true. I
watch Karin and May, their heads close together and their words pouring gently over each other, and I am reassured.

And I see too that they are no longer girls, but women. We celebrated May's twenty-ninth birthday while Philip and Thea were here, with a luau on the beach. Clarence's father, Kimo, came early in the morning to make the imu, or pit, for the kalua pig. This is man's work, I am told, fathers and uncles and nephews and sons dig the imu and line it with stones, all the while drinking quantities of beer. A fire of kiawe wood is set, and after several hours, red hot stones are pulled from the imu and placed inside the pig, which has been gutted, dressed, and salted. Ti leaves and banana stumps are piled on top of the fire and the pig, wrapped in chicken wire, is put on top of the moistened bed of greens and topped with more greens, wet burlap bags, and a canvas that covers the whole thing. Dirt is thrown on top of the canvas, and the pig is left to cook all day long. Israel loves the ritual of it. He could hardly wait to get in there and lay the ti leaves and help put the hot stones into the yawning empty pig's cavity. Kimo, clearly the man in charge, says he thinks Israel must have been Hawaiian in an earlier life.

     Clarence and his brothers played music at the luau, and some of the little girls danced the hulas they learn at school, and then some of the older women got up and danced. It is such lovely, graceful dancing—there is nothing in the least torrid about the Hawaiian hula. It is, in fact, almost chaste, the hint of a body swaying inside the long muumuus, the arms and the hands telling the story so elegantly.

     Abigail sat next to me at the luau, and I began to notice the younger women coming to her, one by one. Sometimes they would whisper a few words, more often they would only look at her expectantly. In her own good time she stood, and everyone seemed to be waiting for the moment.

     She moved into the music slowly, beginning with a languid, swaying motion, her hands raised, fingers poised; and then her whole body seemed to merge with the music and the sea sounds and we sat, transfixed. If there is such a thing as timeless beauty, infinite grace, we were witnessing it. When she finished, the little girls gathered around her and she caressed them, and that too was part of the dance.

     After a while, nothing would do but that May and Karin and Thea should dance. Thea needed coaxing, but in the end she did get up and her years of ballet lessons gave her a graceful presence. She is fifteen now, and not yet fully formed. There is still a long, lean child-look about her. Philip was sitting next to me through all of this, and enjoying it immensely. Thea has settled on the grass between her father and Karin, leaning, in turn, between them. And Karin and Philip exchange fond glances; I heard her say to him, "I knew you were going to love it."