father. But his father beat him harder than ever when he became a
missionary pake. Every time he went to the missionary services,
his father beat him. And every time the missionary heard of it he
was harsh in his language to Yap Ten Shin for allowing his father
to beat him. And my father laughed and laughed, for my father was
a very liberal pake, who had changed his customs quicker than most
foreigners. And all the trouble was because Yap Ten Shin had a
loving heart. He loved his honourable father. He loved the God of
Love of the Christian missionary. But in the end, in me, he found
the greatest love of all, which is the love of woman. In me he
forgot his love for his father and his love for the loving Christ.
“And he offered my father six hundred gold, for me–the price was
small because my feet were not small. But I was half kanaka. I
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90
said that I was not a slave-woman, and that I would be sold to no
man. My high-school teacher was a haole old maid who said love of
woman was so beyond price that it must never be sold. Perhaps that
is why she was an old maid. She was not beautiful. She could not
give herself away. My kanaka mother said it was not the kanaka way
to sell their daughters for a money price. They gave their
daughters for love, and she would listen to reason if Yap Ten Shin
provided luaus in quantity and quality. My pake father, as I have
told you, was liberal. He asked me if I wanted Yap Ten Shin for my
husband. And I said yes; and freely, of myself, I went to him. He
it was who was kicked by a horse; but he was a very good husband
before he was kicked by the horse.
“As for you, Ah Kim, you shall always be honourable and lovable for
me, and some day, when it is not necessary for you to take me by
the ear, I shall marry you and come here and be with you always,
and you will be the happiest pake in all Hawaii; for I have had two
husbands, and gone to high school, and am most wise in making a
husband happy. But that will be when your mother has ceased to
beat you. Mrs. Chang Lucy tells me that she beats you very hard.”
“She does,” Ah Kim affirmed. “Behold! He thrust back his loose
sleeves, exposing to the elbow his smooth and cherubic forearms.
They were mantled with black and blue marks that advertised the
weight and number of blows so shielded from his head and face.
“But she has never made me cry,” Ah Kim disclaimed hastily.
“Never, from the time I was a little boy, has she made me cry.”
“So Mrs. Chang Lucy says,” Li Faa observed. “She says that your
honourable mother often complains to her that she has never made
you cry.”
A sibilant warning from one of his clerks was too late. Having
regained the house by way of the back alley, Mrs. Tai Fu emerged
right upon them from out of the living apartments. Never had Ah
Kim seen his mother’s eyes so blazing furious. She ignored Li Faa,
as she screamed at him:
“Now will I make you cry. As never before shall I beat you until
you do cry.”
“Then let us go into the back rooms, honourable mother,” Ah Kim
suggested. “We will close the windows and the doors, and there may
you beat me.”
“No. Here shall you be beaten before all the world and this
shameless woman who would, with her own hand, take you by the ear
and call such sacrilege marriage! Stay, shameless woman.”
“I am going to stay anyway,” said Li Faa. She favoured the clerks
with a truculent stare. “And I’d like to see anything less than
the police put me out of here.”
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
91
“You will never be my daughter-in-law,” Mrs. Tai Fu snapped.
Li Faa nodded her head in agreement.
“But just the same,” she added, “shall your son be my third
husband.”
“You mean when I am dead?” the old mother screamed.
“The sun rises each morning,” Li Faa said enigmatically. “All my
life have I seen it rise–”
“You are forty, and you wear corsets.”
“But I do not dye my hair–that will come later,” Li Faa calmly
retorted. “As to my age, you are right. I shall be forty-one next
Kamehameha Day. For forty years I have seen the sun rise. My
father was an old man. Before he died he told me that he had
observed no difference in the rising of the sun since when he was a
little boy. The world is round. Confucius did not know that, but
you will find it in all the geography books. The world is round.
Ever it turns over on itself, over and over and around and around.
And the times and seasons of weather and life turn with it. What
is, has been before. What has been, will be again. The time of
the breadfruit and the mango ever recurs, and man and woman repeat
themselves. The robins nest, and in the springtime the plovers
come from the north. Every spring is followed by another spring.
The coconut palm rises into the air, ripens its fruit, and departs.
But always are there more coconut palms. This is not all my own
smart talk. Much of it my father told me. Proceed, honourable
Mrs. Tai Fu, and beat your son who is my Third Husband To Be. But
I shall laugh. I warn you I shall laugh.”
Ah Kim dropped down on his knees so as to give his mother every
advantage. And while she rained blows upon him with the bamboo
stick, Li Faa smiled and giggled, and finally burst into laughter.
“Harder, O honourable Mrs. Tai Fu!” Li Faa urged between paroxysms
of mirth.
Mrs. Tai Fu did her best, which was notably weak, until she
observed what made her drop the stick by her side in amazement. Ah
Kim was crying. Down both cheeks great round tears were coursing.
Li Faa was amazed. So were the gaping clerks. Most amazed of all
was Ah Kim, yet he could not help himself; and, although no further
blows fell, he cried steadily on.
“But why did you cry?” Li Faa demanded often of Ah Kim. “It was so
perfectly foolish a thing to do. She was not even hurting you.”
“Wait until we are married,” was Ah Kim’s invariable reply, “and
then, O Moon Lily, will I tell you.”
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
92
Two years later, one afternoon, more like a water-melon seed in
configuration than ever, Ah Kim returned home from a meeting of the
Chinese Protective Association, to find his mother dead on her
couch. Narrower and more unrelenting than ever were the forehead
and the brushed-back hair. But on her face was a withered smile.
The gods had been kind. She had passed without pain.
He telephoned first of all to Li Faa’s number but did not find her
until he called up Mrs. Chang Lucy. The news given, the marriage
was dated ahead with ten times the brevity of the old-line Chinese
custom. And if there be anything analogous to a bridesmaid in a
Chinese wedding, Mrs. Chang Lucy was just that.
“Why,” Li Faa asked Ah Kim when alone with him on their wedding
night, “why did you cry when your mother beat you that day in the
store? You were so foolish. She was not even hurting you.”
“That is why I cried,” answered Ah Kim.
Li Faa looked up at him without understanding.
“I cried,” he explained, “because I suddenly knew that my mother
was nearing her end. There was no weight, no hurt, in her blows.
I cried because I knew SHE NO LONGER HAD STRENGTH ENOUGH TO HURT
ME. That is why I cried, my Flower of Serenity, my Perfect Rest.
That is the only reason why I cried.”
WAIKIKI, HONOLULU.
June 16, 1916.
THE KANAKA SURF
The tourist women, under the hau tree arbour that lines the Moana
hotel beach, gasped when Lee Barton and his wife Ida emerged from
the bath-house. And as the pair walked past them and down to the
sand, they continued to gasp. Not that there was anything about
Lee Barton provocative of gasps. The tourist women were not of the
sort to gasp at sight of a mere man’s swimming-suited body, no
matter with what swelling splendour of line and muscle such body
was invested. Nevertheless, trainers and conditioners of men would
have drawn deep breaths of satisfaction at contemplation of the
physical spectacle of him. But they would not have gasped in the
way the women did, whose gasps were indicative of moral shock.