Hawaii (41 page)

"Aloha! Aloha! Aloha!" she said repeatedly in a low, soft voice, her expressive eyes sweeping the row of black-frocked missionaries in their claw-hammer coats. But her wannest greeting was for the skinny yet attractive young women who stood sedately in the rear. It would have taken almost four Amanda Whipples to equal the bulk of this giant woman as she lay in the canvas sling. "Aloha! Aloha!" she kept crying in her musical voice as she swung over the women.

"For the love of God!" Janders shouted. "Take it easy now. Gently! Gently!" As the ropes were eased over the capstans, the canvas sling slowly dropped toward the deck. Instantly, Captain Janders, Kelolo and Keoki rushed forward to intercept the sling, lest the Alii Nui be bruised in landing, but her bulk was so ponderous that in spite of their efforts to hold the sling off the deck, it pressed its way resolutely down, forcing the men to their knees and finally to a sprawling position. Undisturbed, the noble woman rolled over on the canvas, found her footing, and rose to majestic height, her bundles of tapa making her seem even larger than she was. Quietly, she passed down the line of missionaries, greeting each with her musical "Aloha! Aloha!" But when she came to the storm-tossed women, whose voyage she could imagine and whose underweight she instantly perceived, she could not restrain herself and broke into tears. Gathering little Amanda Whipple to her great bosom she wept for some moments, then rubbed noses with her as if she were a daughter. Moving to each of the women in turn, she continued her weeping and smothered them in her boundless love.

"Aloha! Aloha!" she repeated. Then, facing the women and ignoring their husbands as she did her own, she spoke softly, and when her son interpreted the words, they said: "My adorable little children, you must think of me always as your mother. Before, the white men have sent us only sailors and shopkeepers and troublemakers. Never

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any women. But now you come, so we know that the intentions of the Americans must at last be good."

Malama, the Alii Nui, the most sacred, mana-filled human being on Maui, waited grandly while this greeting was being delivered, and when the missionary wives acknowledged it, she moved down the line again, rubbing noses with each of the women and repeating, "You are my daughter."

Then, overcome both by the emotion and the exertions of getting aboard the Thetis, Malama, her great moon-face sublime in new-found comfort, slowly unfastened the tapas that bound her great bulk. Handing the ends to her servants, she ordered them to walk away from her, while she unwound like a top until she stood completely naked except for a hair necklace from which dangled a single majestic whale's tooth. Scratching herself in gasping relief, she indicated that she would lie down, and chose the canvas sling as a likely place, but when she stretched out on her stomach the missionaries were appalled to see tattooed along the full length of her left ham the purple letters: "Tamehameha King Died 1819."

"Did the Russians do that, too?" Captain Janders asked.

"They must have," Keoki replied. He asked his mother about the memento, and she twisted her head to study it. Tears came into her eyes and Keoki explained. "She was the nineteenth wife of Kamehameha the Great."

Jerusha gasped, "Why she was no better than a concubine!"

"In many ways," Keoki continued, "Malama was the favorite of the king's last years. Of course, since she was the Alii Nui, she was entitled to other husbands as well."

"You mean she was married to your father ... at the same time?" Abner asked suspiciously.

"Of course!" Keoki explained. "Kamehameha himself consented, because my father was her younger brother, and their marriage was essential."

"Throw some water on that woman!" Captain Janders shouted, for one of the misisonary wives, overcome by Malama's nudity and marital complications, had fainted.

Keoki, sensing the reasons, went to his mother and whispered that she ought to cover herself, for Americans hated the sight of the human body, and the great sprawling woman assented. "Tell them," she said enthusiastically, "that henceforth I shall dress like them." But before Keoki could do this she quietly asked Captain Janders if he could provide her with some fire, and when a brazier was fetched she fed into its flames the tapas she had been wearing. When they were consumed she announced grandly: "Now I shall dress as the new women do."

"Who will make your dress?" Abner asked.

Imperiously, Malama pointed to Jerusha and Amanda and said, "You andjou."

"Tell her you'd be happy to," Abner hastily whispered, and the two missionary women bowed and said, "We will make your dress,

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Malama, but we have not so much cloth, because you are a very big woman.

"Don't make her angry," Abner warned, but Malama's quick intelligence had caught the burden of Jerusha's meaning, and she laughed.

"In all your little dresses," she cried, indicating the mission women with a sweep of her mighty arm, "there is not enough cloth for my dress." And she signaled her servants to fetch bundles from the canoe, and before the startled eyes of the mission women, length after length of the choicest Chinese fabric was unrolled. Settling finally on a brilliant red and a handsome blue, she pointed to the housedress worn by Amanda Whipple and announced quietly, "When I return to shore, I shall be dressed like that."

Having given the command, she went to sleep, her naked bulk protected from flies by servants who swept her constantly with leathered wands. When she woke, Captain Janders inquired if she 'would like some ship's food, but she refused haughtily and ordered her servants to lift great calabashes of food from the canoe, so that while the mission wives perspired over the tentlike dress they were building, she reclined and feasted on gigantic portions of roast pig, breadfruit, baked dog, fish and three quarts of purple poi. Midway in the meal her attendants hammered her stomach in ancient massage rituals so that she could consume more, and during these interruptions she grunted happily as the food was manipulated into more comfortable positions inside her cavernous belly.

Keoki explained proudly, "The Alii Nui has to eat huge meals, five or six times a day, so that the common people will see from a dis-?tance that she is a great woman."

Into the evening the missionary women sewed while their husbands prayed that Malama would receive them well and allow them to lodge a mission at Lahaina; but the seamen of the Thetis prayed no less devoutly that soon both the missionaries and the fat woman would leave so that the girls waiting anxiously on shore could swim out to the brig and take up their accustomed work.

At ten the next morning the enormous red and blue dress was finished, and Malama accepted it without even bothering to thank the mission women, for she lived in a world in which all but she were servants. Like an awning protecting a New England store, the great dress was lowered into position over her dark head, while her streams of black hair were pulled outside and allowed to flow down her back. The buttons were fastened; adjustments were made at the waist, and the great Alii Nui jumped up and down several times to fit herself into the strange new uniform. Then she smiled broadly and said to her son, "Now I am a Christian woman!"

To the missionaries she said, "We have waited long for you to help us. We know that there is a better way of living, and we seek instruction from you. In Honolulu the first missionaries are already teaching our people to read and write. In Maui I shall be your first

pupil." She counted on her fingers and announced firmly: "In one moon, mark this, Keoki, I will write my name and send it to Honolulu . . . with a message."

It was a moment of profound decision, and all aboard the Thetis save one were impressed with the gravity of this powerful woman's determination; but Abner Hale perceived that Malama's decision, while notable in that an illiterate heathen of her own will sought instruction, was nevertheless a step in the wrong direction, so he oved before her and said quietly, "Malama, we do not bring you only the alphabet. We have not come here merely to teach you how to write your name. We bring you the word of God, and unless you accept this, nothing that you will ever write will be of significance."

When the words were translated to Malama her enormous moon face betrayed no emotion. Forcefully she said, "We have our own gods. It is the words, the writing that we need."

"Writing without God is useless," Abner stubbornly reiterated, his little blond head coming scarcely to Malama's throat.

"We have been told," Malama answered with equal firmness, "that writing helps the entire world, but the white man's God helps the white man."

"You have been told wrong," Abner insisted, thrusting his stubborn little face upward.

To everyone's surprise Malama did not reply to this but moved to face the women, asking, "Which one is the wife of this little man?"

"I am," Jerusha said proudly.

Malama was pleased, for she had observed how capably Jerusha managed the work of making the big dress, and she announced: "For the first moon, this one shall teach me how to read and write, and for the next, this one," indicating Abner, "shall teach me the new religion. If I find that these two new learnings are of equal importance, after two moons I shall advise you'."

Nodding to the assembly, she went gravely to the canvas commanding her servants to unbutton her dress and remove it. Then she ordered Jerusha to show her how to fold it, and in massive naked-ness lay down crosswise upon the canvas, her feet dangling aft, her arms forward, with her chin resting upon the rope edging. The capstans groaned. The sailors hefted the ropes and swung them over the eaves, and Captain Janders shouted, "For Christ's sake, things are going well. Don't drop her now!"

Inch by inch the precious burden was lowered into the canoe un-til finally the Alii Nui was rolled off the canvas and helped into an upright position. Clutching the new dress to her cheek she cried in full voice, "You may now come ashore!" And as the ship's boats were lowered to convey the misisonaries to their new homes, they fell in line behind Malama's canoe, with its two standard-bearers fore and aft, its eager servants brushing away the flies, and with tall, naked Malama holding the dress close to her.

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Prior to Malama's arbitrary choice of the Hales as her mentors, there had been some uncertainty as to which missionaries should be assigned to Maui and which to the other islands, but now it was apparent that the first choice, at least, had been made, and as the boats neared shore, Abner studied the intriguing settlement to which he was now committed. He saw one of the fairest villages in the Pacific, ancient Lahaina, capital of Hawaii, its shore marked by a fine coral strand upon which long waves broke in unceasing thunder, their tall crests breaking forward in dazzling whiteness. Where the surf finally ended, naked children played, their teeth gleaming in the sunlight.

Now for the first time Abner saw a coconut palm, the wonder of the tropics, bending into the wind on a slim resilient trunk and maintaining, no one knew how, its precarious foothold on the shore. Behind the palms were orderly fields reaching away to the hills, so that all of Lahaina looked like one vast, rich, flowering garden.

"Those darker trees are breadfruit," Keoki explained. "They feed us, but it's the stubby ones with the big heads that I used to miss in Boston . . . the kou trees with their wonderful shade for a hot land."

Jerusha joined them and said, "Seeing the gardens and the flowers, I think I am at last in Hawaii."

And Keoki replied proudly, "The garden you are looking at is my home. There where the little stream runs into the sea."

Abner and Jerusha tried to peer beneath the branches of the kou trees that lined the land he spoke of, but they could see little. "Are those grass houses?" Abner queried.

"Yes," Keoki explained. "Our compound holds nine or ten little houses. How beautiful it seems from the sea."

"What's the stone platform?" Abner asked.

"Where the gods rested," Keoki said simply.

In horror Abner stared at the impressive pile of rocks. He could see blood dripping from them and heathen rites. He mumbled a short prayer to himself, "God protect us from the evil of heathen ways," then asked in a whisper, "Is that where the sacrifices . . ."

"There?" Keoki laughed. "No, that's just for the family gods."

The boy's laugh infuriated Abner. It seemed strange to him that as long as Keoki remained in New England, lecturing to church audiences about the horrors of Hawaii, he had sound ideas regarding religion, but as soon as he approached his evil homeland, the edge of his conviction was blunted. "Keoki," Abner said solemnly, "all heathen idols are an abomination to the Lord."

Keoki wanted to cry, "But those aren't idols . . . not gods like Kane and Kanaloa," but as a well-trained Hawaiian he knew that he should not argue with a teacher, so he contented himself with saying quietly, "Those are the friendly little personal gods of my family. For example, sometimes the goddess Pele conies to talk with my father . . ." With some embarrassment he realized how strange this

must sound, so he did not go on to explain that sharks also sometimes came along the shore to talk with Malama. "I don't think

Reverend Hale would understand," he thought sadly to himself.

To hear a young man who hoped some day to become an ordained minister speak in defense or heathen practices was unbearable

to Abner, and he turned away in silence, but this act seemed coward—

ice to him, so he returned to the young Hawaiian and said bluntly

"We shall have to remove the stone platform. In this world there is

room either for God or for heathen idols. There cannot be room

for both."

"You are right!" Keoki agreed heartily. "We have come to root

out these old evils. But I am afraid that Kelolo will not permit us

to remove the platform."

"Why not?" Abner asked coldly.

"Because he built it."