Hawaii (43 page)
"But you will try to come back?" Jerusha pleaded.
"I will do my best," Whipple swore.
Jerusha Hale and Urania Hewlett then sought out each other and' shook hands solemnly: "When the time comes, we'll help each other." But they knew that they would be separated by miles of mountains and by treacherous seas.
Now the wailing increased, for from the shaded road that led southward to the homes of the alii, Malama's canoe advanced, borne on the shoulders of her men, and she, dressed in blue and red, wept more than any. Descending from her strange palanquin, she moved to each of the departing missionaries and said, "If elsewhere in the islands you find no home, come back to Lahaina, for you are my children." Then she kissed each in turn, and wept anew. But the gravity of the situation was somewhat marred by the fact that as the mission people rowed out to the Thetis they met, swimming back, more than a dozen naked girls, their long black hair trailing in the blue waters; and when they reached shore, each carrying a hand mirror�more precious here than silver in Amsterdam�or some lengths of ribbon or a hammer which they had stolen, Malama greeted them exactly as affectionately as she had the departing Christians.
And then, to the eastward where stout waves broke on the coral reef, thundering shoreward in long undulant swells whose tips were spumed in white, the missionaries witnessed for the first time one of the mysteries of the islands. Tall men and women, graceful as gods, stood on narrow boards and by deftly moving their feet and the gravity of their bodies, directed the boards onto the upper slopes of the breaking waves, until at last they sped with frightening
swiftness over the waters. And when the wave died on the coral beach, somehow the swimmer and his board subsided back into the water, as if each were a part of the Hawaiian sea.
"It's unbelievable!" Dr. Whipple cried. "The momentum creates the balance," he explained.
"Could a white man do that?" Amanda asked.
"Of coursel" her husband replied, excited by the vicarious sense of speed and control created by the deft athletes.
"Could you do it?" Amanda pressed.
"I'm going to do it," John replied, "as soon as we get to Honolulu."
One of the older missionaries frowned at this intelligence, marling it down as one more proof of their doctor's essentially trivial attitude toward life, but his adverse opinion was not reported to his companions, because from a point forward of the Thetis a new board swept into view, and this one bore not a mere swimmer, but a nymph, a nude symbolization of all the pagan islands in the seven seas. She was a tall girl with sun-shot black hair streaming behind her in the wind. She was not grossly fat like her sisters but slim and supple, and as she stood naked on the board her handsome breasts and long firm legs seemed carved of brown marble, yet she was agile, too, for with exquisite skill she moved her knees and adjusted her shoulders so that her skimming board leaped faster than the others, while she rode it with a more secure grace. To the missionaries she was a terrifying vision, the personification of all they had come to conquer. Her nakedness was a challenge, her beauty a danger, her way of life an abomination and her existence an evil.
"Who is she? Dr. Whipple whispered, in hushed amazement at her skill.
"Her name Noelani," proudly explained a Hawaiian who had shipped on whalers and who had mastered the barbarous pidgin of the seaports. "Wahine b'long Malama. Bimeby she gonna be Alii Nui." And as he spoke the wave subsided near the shore; the fleet rider and her board died away from vision and returned to the sea, yet even when the missionaries looked away they could see her provocative presence, the spirit of the pagan island, riding the waves, so that a blasphemous thought came to the mind of John Whipple. He was tempted to express it, but fought it down, knowing that none would understand his meaning, but at last he had to speak and in a whisper he observed to his tiny wife: "Apparently there ate many who can walk upon the waters."
Amanda Whipple, a truly devout woman, heard these strange words and caught their full savor. At first she was afraid to look at her scientifically minded husband, for sometimes his thoughts were difficult to follow, but the implications of this blasphemous conclusion no one could escape, and at last she turned to look at John Whipple, thinking: "One person can never understand another." But instead of censuring the young doctor for his irregular thoughts she looked at him analytically for the first time. Coldly,
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dispassionately, carefully, she looked at this strange cousin who stood beside her in the hot Hawaiian sunlight, and when she was finished studying him, she loved him more than ever.
"I do not like such words, John," she admonished.
"I had to speak them," he replied.
"Do so, always, but only to me," she whispered.
"It will be very difficult to understand these islands," John reflected, and as he and his wife watched the sea, they noticed the nymph Noelani�the Mists of Heaven�paddling her board back out to the deeper ocean where the big waves formed. Kneeling on her polished plank, she bent over so that her breasts almost touched the board. Then, with powerful movements of her long arms, she swept her hands through the water and her conveyance shot through the waves faster than the missionary boat was being rowed. Her course brought her close to the Thetis, and as she passed, she smiled. Then, selecting a proper wave, she quickly maneuvered her board, and finding it properly oriented, rose on one knee. From the missionary boat John Whipple whispered to his wife, "Now she will walk upon the waters." And she did.
When the Thetis sailed, Abner and Jerusha, feeling dismally alone, had an opportunity to inspect the house in which their labors for the next years would be conducted. Its corner posts were stout trees from the mountains, but its sides and roof were of tied grass. The floor was pebbled and covered with pandanus, to be swept by a broom of rushes, but its windows were mere openings across which cloth from China had been hung. It was a squat, formless grass hut with no divisions into rooms. It had no bed, no chairs, no table, no closets, but it did have two considerable assets: at the rear, under a twisting hau tree, it had a spacious lanai�a detached porch� where the life of the mission would be conducted; and it had a front door built in the Dutch fashion so that the bottom half could remain closed, keeping people out, while the top was open, allowing their smiles and their words to enter.
It was into this house that Abner moved the furniture he had brought out from New England: a rickety bed with rope netting for its mattress; rusted trunks to serve as closets; a small kitchen table and two chairs and a rocker. Whatever clothes they might require in years to come they would get only through the charity of Christians in New England, who would forward barrels of cast-off garments to the mission center in Honolulu, and if Jerusha needed a new dress to replace her old one, some friend in Honolulu would pick through the leftovers and say, "This one ought to fit Sister Jerusha," but it never did. If Abner required a new saw with which to build even the minor decencies of living, he had to hope that some Christian somewhere would send him one. If Jerusha needed a cradle for her babies, she could get it only from charity. The Hales had no money, no income, no support other than the communal depository in Honolulu. Even if they were fevered to the point of death they could buy no medicine; they had to trust that Christians
would keep replenished their little box of calomel, ipecac and bicarbonate.
Sometimes Jerusha, recalling either her cool, clean home in Walpole, its closets filled with dresses kept starched by servants, pi the two homes that Captain Rafer Hoxworth had promised her in New Bedford and aboard his ship, understandably felt distressed by the grass hut in which she toiled, but she never allowed her feelings to be discovered by her husband and her letters home were uniformly cheerful. When the days were hottest and her work the hardest she would wait until evening and then write to her mother, or to Charity or Mercy, telling them of her alluring adventures, but with them, even though they were of her own family, she dealt only in superficialities; increasingly it would be to Abner's sister Esther, whom she had never met, that she would pour out the flood of deeper thoughts that swept over her. In one of her earliest letters she wrote:
"My most Cherished Sister in God, Dear Esther. I have been strangely mournful these days, for sometimes the heat is unbearable in Lahaina, whose name I find means Merciless Sun, and no appellation could be more appropriate. Possibly these have been unduly difficult weeks, for Malama has pressed me endlessly to teach her, and although she cannot pay attention to lessons for more than an hour at a time, as soon as her interest flags she calls for her servants to massage her, and as they do, commands me to tell her a story, so I tell her of Mary and Esther and Ruth, but when I first spoke of Ruth's leaving her home to dwell in an alien land, I am afraid that tears fell, and Malama saw this and understood and drove the massaging women away and came to me and rubbed noses with me and said, 'I appreciate that you have come to live with us in a strange land.' Now whenever she wants a story she insists like a child that I tell her again of Ruth, and when I come to the part about the strange land, we both weep. She has never once thanked me for anything I have done for her, considering me only an additional servant, but I have grown to love her, and I have never known a woman to learn so fast.
"For some curious reason I have been impelled, these last few days, to talk with you, for I feel that of all the people I remember in America, your spirit is closest to my own, and I have wanted to tell you two things, my beloved sister in God. First, I thank you daily for having written to me as you did about your brother Abner. Each day that passes I find him a stronger man, a fine servant of God. He is gentle, patient, courageous and extremely wise. Sharing his burdens, in this new land which he is determined to resurrect, is a joy that I had never in America even dimly anticipated. Each day is a new challenge. Each night is a benediction to good work either started or completed. In my letters to you I have never spoken of love, but I think that now I know what love is, and my dearest wish for you is that some day you may find a Christian gentleman as worthy as your gentle brother. His limp is much im—
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proved, but I massage his muscles each night. To be more correct, I used to massage them, but lately a very plump Hawaiian woman who is known to be highly skilled in the lomilomi, the medicinal massage of the islands, insists upon doing the job for me. I can hear her now, a huge motherly woman announcing, 'Me come lomilomi little man.' I tell her repeatedly that she must refer to my partner and guide as 'Makua,' which means Father, but this she will not do.
"The second thought I would share with you is my growing sense of working directly under the will of God. At one time I did not know whether I had a true vocation for mission work or not, but as the weeks go past and as I see the transformation that we are accomplishing in these islands, I am doubly convinced that I have found for myself the one satisfying occupation on earth. I rejoice to see each new dawn, for there is work to do. Ait five o'clock in the morning, when I look out into our yard, I see it filled with patient, handsome brown faces. They are willing to remain there all day in hopes that I will teach them how to sew or talk with them about the Bible. Malama promises me that when she has learned to read and write, I can start to teach her people to do the same, but she will not allow any of them to master the tricks until she has done so. However, she has consented to this. In her afternoon lessons she allows her children and those of the other alii to listen, and I find that her beautiful daughter Noelani is almost as quick as Malama herself. My dear husband has great hopes for Noelani and feels certain that she will be our second Christian convert on the island, Malama of course being first. Darling Esther, can you, in your mind's eye, picture the intense wonder that comes over a pagan face when the clouds of heathenish evil and illiteracy are drawn away so that the pure light of God can shine into the seeking eyes? What I am trying to tell you, dearest sister, is that I find in my work a supreme happiness, and although what I am about to say may seem blasphemy�and I can say it to no other but my own dear sister�in these exciting fruitful days when I read the New Testament I feel that I am reading not about Philemon and the Corinthians but about Jerusha and the Hawaiians. I am one with those who labored for our Master, and I cannot convey even to my dear husband the abounding joy I have discovered in my grass shack and its daily circle of brown faces. Your Sister in God, Jerusha."
While Jerusha was teaching Malama, Abner was free to explore the village, and one day he noticed that all the men and many of the stronger women were absent from Lahaina, and he could not discover why. The alii were present, and in their large grass homes south of the royal taro patch they could be seen, moving about beneath the kou trees or going to the beach in order to ride their surfboards on the cresting waves. It was good to be an alii, for then one's job was merely to eat enormous calabashes of food so as to grow large, and to play at games, so as to be ready if war came.
Year by year the alii grew greater and more skilled in games, waiting for a war that came no more.
But one of the alii was missing, for Kelolo had not been to visit the missionaries for some days. He had sent food and three planks out of which Abner had hacked shelving for rude closets, but he himself had not appeared, and this handicapped Abner, because only Kelolo could say where the church was to be built. Then, when the missionary had reached the height of impatience, he discovered that Kelolo was out at the edge of town, digging a deep, wide pit. Kelolo was not present.to translate when Abner found the excavation, and all Kelolo would say was, "Thetis," measuring the deep pit with his arms extended.