Hawaii - James Michener [289]
The Kee funds were further augmented by some shrewd enterprise on the husband's part, for each day as soon as breakfast was finished, he hurried down to Nuuanu Street, to Chinatown, where nondescript shacks huddled together in ugly profusion and where white men rarely went. His destination was a particularly disreputable hovel in which sat an elderly Chinese with wispy beard and a brush and book in which he entered bets as they were offered. Behind him, on the wall, hung a luridly colored sketch of a man, with twenty-eight parts of his body indicated: nose, ankle, knee, elbow . . . The game which had captured Mun Ki's whole imagination consisted of placing a bet as to which of these words would appear in the sealed capsule that stood under a glass on the table before the game's operator. Most of the Chinese in Hawaii played the game, at odds of thirty to one, which gave the player an advantage, except that if there were too many winners the prize was proportionately lowered; the bank never lost. Nevertheless, the odds were enticing, and each day upon rising, families would inquire of one another: "Did you dream of an elbow last night?" Careful attention was also paid to any sudden pain, or to an accident involving any part of the body. But mostly it was dreams that brought good fortune, and it was uncanny how the dreams of Mun Ki kept pointing the way to the lucky word.
"You were again with the winning word?" the game's manager asked sourly.
"Today it's bound to be chin," Mun Ki assured him. "I woke last night with my chin itching furiously, and I can read through the glass and see the word written on the paper."
"How much are you betting?"
"Two dimes."
The proprietor's face betrayed his displeasure as he brushed the entry into his book. "You're a clever man, Mun Ki," he grumbled. "Why don't you join me in this business?"
"I'm a cook," Mun Ki replied. "It's better to win from you than work for you."
"What I have in mind," the older gambler proposed, "is for you to collect bets at the far end of town and bring them in here by ten each morning."
"Then, I couldn't bet for myself, could I?" Mun Ki asked.
"No, then you'd be part of the game."
From one of the towers along the waterfront a clock struck eleven, people crowded in from the alleys of Chinatown, the excitement grew intense, and the proprietor ceremoniously lifted away the glass to uncover the capsule. To prevent the quick substitution of a word on which no one had bet that day--a trick that had often been tried in the past--a man was selected at random, and under the most careful scrutiny he opened the capsule and shouted: "Chin!" Mun Ki leaped with joy and cried, "I had two dimes bet, because I woke with a definite itch on my chin." He explained to everyone the precise minute at which he had wakened and his thoughts at that propitious moment. With his two dimes and his dream he had won two months' normal wages.
He was about to leave the gambling shack when the old proprietor caught his arm and said, "You ought to join me. Today you made, a lot of money, but I make it every day."
"You do?" Mun Ki asked.
"Every day. If too many win, I cut the prize. I send hundreds of dollars back to China."
"Could I?" the young gambler asked.
"Easily. If you worked with me."
It was in this way that the cookhouse of the missionary home at Nuuanu and Beretania became one of the principal outposts of the chi-fa word game. Mun Ki kept on hand a supply of gaudy posters which showed twenty-eight parts of the human body