Hawaii - James Michener [121]
This was Jerusha Hale, for although her two major sicknesses had departed, another had taken their place, and it consisted of a violent desire to vomit each time her husband made her eat a banana. "I don't like the smell of the oil," she protested.
"I don't like it either, my dear," he explained patiently, "but if this is the food of the islands . . ."
"Let's wait till we get to the islands," she begged.
"No, if the Lord providentially sent us these bananas in the manner he did . . ."
"The other women don't have to eat them," she pleaded.
"The other women were not sent them by the direct will of God," he reasoned.
"Reverend Hale," she argued slowly, "I'm sure that when I get off this ship, where I've been sick so much, I'll be able to eat bananas. But here the oil in the skin reminds me . . . Husband, I'm going to be sick."
"No, Mrs. Hale!” he commanded. And twice a day he carefuly peeled a banana, stuck half in his mouth, and said, against his own better judgment, "It's delicious." The other half he forcefully pushed into Jerusha's, watching her intently until she had swallowed it. The procedure was so obviously painful to the sickly girl that Amanda Whipple could not remain in her berth while it was being carried out, but what made it doubly nauseous was that Abner had strung the ripening bananas from the roof of their stateroom, and there they swung, back and forth, through every hour of the passage, and as they ripened they smelled.
At first Jerusha thought: "I'll watch the bunch grow smaller," but it showed no effect of her efforts to diminish it. Instead it grew larger, more aromatic, and swung closer to her face at night. "My dear husband," she pleaded, "indeed I shall be sick!" But he would place his hand firmly over her abdomen until the day's ration was swal-lowed, and he refused to allow her to be sick, and she obeyed.
After one such performance John Whipple asked, "Why do you like bananas so much, Brother Hale?"
"I don't," Abner said. "They make me sick, too."
"Then why do you eat them?"
"Because obviously the Lord intended me to eat them. How did I get them? As a result of having preached a sermon. I would be an ingrate if I did not eat them!"
"Do you believe in omens?" the young scientist asked.
"What do you mean?" Abner inquired.
"Superstitions? Omens?"
"Why do you ask that?"
"I was thinking. Keoki Kanakoa has been telling me about all the omens under which he used to live. When one of their canoes went out to sea, they had an old woman who did nothing but study omens. And if an albatross came, or a shark, that meant something . . . god had sent them . . . you could learn what the god intended . . . if you could read the omen."
"What has that to do with me?" Abner asked.
"It seems to me, Brother Hale, that you're that way with the bananas. They were given to you, so they must have been sent by God. So if they were sent by God, they must be eaten."
"John, you're blaspheming!"
"Blaspheming or not, I'd throw those bananas overboard. They're making everybody sick."
"Overboard!"
"Yes, Reverend Hale," Jerusha interrupted. "Throw them overboard."
"This is intolerable!" Abner cried, storming onto the deck, from which he speedily returned to the stateroom. "If anyone touches those bananasl They were sent by God to instruct us in our new life. You and I, Mrs. Hale, are going to eat every one of those bananas. It is God's will." So as the Thetis crept agonizingly ahead, the bananas danced malodorously in the stateroom.
The brig had now left Tierra del Fuego and was amidst the hundreds of nameless islands that comprised the western half of the passage. The winds veered