Hawaii - James Michener [287]
On the day of their arrival Dr. Whipple piled their luggage into his dray and then led his two servants on foot leisurely up Nuuanu Street toward his home, and although he could not speak Chinese, he explained the structure of the city to the young couple. "The first street we cross is Queen, Queen, Queen." He stopped and drew a little map in the dust and made them repeat the name of the cross street. At first they failed to understand what he was doing, so deftly he drew a ship and pointed back to the Carthaginian, and immediately they caught on, for it was Dr. Whipple's conviction that any man not an imbecile could be taught almost anything.
"Merchant, King, Hotel," he explained. Then he left big Nuuanu Street and took a detour to the comer of Merchant and Fort to show his Chinese the J & W store. "This is where I work," he said, and his servants were impressed, the more so when he picked up several bolts of dark cloth and handed them to Nyuk Tsin.
Finally, he came to the broad east-west street named in honor of Great Britain, Beretania, and when he had taught the Chinese how to say that important name, he showed them that they stood on the corner of Nuuanu and Beretania. They understood, and then he pointed to a substantial picket fence that surrounded a large property on the ocean-western corner, and when he had reviewed with them just where this stood, he opened the gate and said, "This will be your home."
They smiled, three people with three different languages, and the Chinese looked in awe at the Whipple homestead. Set amid three acres of land, it was built on coral blocks and consisted of a large one-story wooden building completely surrounded by a very wide porch. All interior rooms were thus dark and cool and were accessible to the veranda. The coral base of the house was masked by luxuriant croton plants, recently brought to Hawaii by the captain of an H & H ship, and these produced large varicolored leaves, iridescent in rain or sunlight, so that the sprawling house nestled in tropic beauty.
Dr. Whipple called, and from the front door his wife appeared, a small, white-haired New England woman wearing an apron. She hurried across the porch and onto the lawn, extending her hands to the Chinese. "This is my wife," Dr. Whipple explained formally, "and this is the cook Mun Ki and the maid Mrs. Kee." Everyone bowed and Mrs. Whipple said, "I should like to show you to your new home," and she demonstrated how the Whipple dining room stood at the rear of the big wooden house, and how there was a covered runway from it to an outside kitchen, where all the food was cooked, and another runway leading off to a small wooden house, and this was to be theirs. She pushed open the door and showed them a compact, clean room, which she herself had dusted that morning. Leading off from it was another, and while they stood there conversing they knew not how, the dray arrived with their luggage and stores of food, utensils and bedding.
"These are for you," Mrs. Whipple said warmly, taking Nyuk Tsin's hand and leading her to the boxes. That afternoon one of the Hewlett women asked, "Amanda, how will your Chinese learn to cook if they can't understand a word you say?"
"They'll learn," Amanda replied forcefully, for she shared her husband's New England conviction that human beings had brains; so for the first four weeks of their employment, the Kees went to school. Little Amanda Whipple was up at five, teaching Mun Ki how to cook American style, and she was impressed both with his clever mind and his fearful stubbornness. For example, on each Friday during the past four decades it had been Amanda's ritual to make the family yeast, and for the first two Fridays, Mun Ki studied to see how she performed this basic function in American cookery. He watched