Hawaii - James Michener [262]
"I don't understand what you are saying," Kee Mun Ki interrupted.
"You will in a moment," his uncle replied. "First, the Americans are convinced that all Chinese are very stupid, so you must seem to be stupid. Second, they are also convinced that we are very clever. So you must seem to be clever."
"How can a man be stupid and clever at the same time?" the young pimp pleaded.
"I didn't say you were to be stupid and clever. I said you had to seem to be."
"How is that possible?" the handsome young gambler inquired.
"I left America with forty-one thousand dollars in gold because I discovered the answer," Uncle Chun Fat gloated.
"For example?" the student pressed.
"Take the gold fields," the Californian began. "For two years they watched me travel from camp to camp, observing everything. But they thought: 'He's a stupid Chinaman and he don't see anything.' And I will confess I did my best to look stupid. When I had learned as much as possible, I went into San Francisco . . . Mun Ki, when you do go to America, be sure to go to San Francisco. What a marvelous city! So much happening!"
"Where did the clever part come, Uncle? the young man interrupted.
Chun Fat liked the boy's attention to detail, and continued: "In San Francisco I went to all the newcomers and told them, 'I can tell you which land to buy,' and they always said to one another, "These Chinese are very clever. If anybody knows where the good land is, they do.' And I got rich."
"Stupid and clever," the young man mused. "That's difficult."
"Not necessarily," his uncle corrected. "You see, the Americans want to believe, so you don't have to work too hard. It's difficult only when you want to convince the same man, on the same day or even at the same instant, that you are both stupid and clever. Like on the railroad gang."
"What happened there?" Mun Ki inquired.
His uncle began to laugh heartily and said, "There was this big American boss. When you go to America, Mun Ki, never try to be the boss, not even if they ask you to, which they won't, because you can always make more money by not being the boss. Well, anyway, if I wanted to run the restaurant for the gang, at my own prices, I had to get permission from this big American, and I simply could do nothing with him until on a certain day when he cried in desperation, 'You stupid goddamned Chinaman!' And then I knew things would pretty soon be going my way, because if you can get the boss to yell at you, 'You stupid goddamned Chinaman,' everything is going to be all right."
Uncle Chun Fat never finished this particular narrative because he was reminded that the household must rise next morning at cockcrow in order to pay proper respect to the dead; and as the village lay sleeping beside the river, with the ghosts of its ancestors ready to assume their positions for the day of celebration, an old watchman who had long performed this ceremony gathered his gong and beater and waited till the third hour of the night. Then, as the first cock crowed, the old man went out into the dark streets and began beating his gong.
"Ching Ming!" he called to the living and the dead alike. Walking down the winding road that led to the ancestral hall, he continued to beat his gong, and he saw with pleasure lights coming on in the low houses; a young attendant hastened to light torches at the hall, and before the first shimmering darts of sunrise began to sweep in from the east, the Low Village was awake, and Mun Ki's ineffective father took his position of superiority at the ancestral hall, but it was brash Uncle Chun Fat who hurried busily about, telling the Kees what he wanted them to do.
Kee Mun Ki, from the brothel in Macao, left his home and walked