Hawaii - James Michener [305]
Dr. Whipple walked away from the Chinese maid, kicked at the grass for some minutes, and returned to ask her several questions: How did she meet Kee? Was it true that he had brought her to Hawaii to sell her? Was it true that if she returned to China she would be banished from both her husband and her sons? Where were her parents? When he heard of her kidnapping and of her bleak future he thought for some time, then said bluntly, "We'd better go look at the land."
He opened the wicker gate and led the barefooted woman with the basket hat about a mile up the Nuuanu Valley until they came to a low-lying field, an ancient taro patch now fallen into disuse. Much of it consisted of a swamp running down to the banks of the Nuuanu Stream, but as Whipple and his Chinese servant looked at it that day they could visualize it as it might become: the far end would raise fine taro; the dryer land would be good for vegetables; in that corner a woman could have a little house; and in years to come, the city of Honolulu would reach out to encompass the area. It was an interesting piece of land, worth little as it stood; worth a fortune when energy and planning had been applied to it.
"This is your land, Mrs. Kee." The strange-looking couple shook hands and walked back to the Whipple mansion.
Nyuk Tsin did not divulge this compact to her husband, nor did she tell him of her intentions to remain in Hawaii when he left, for Mun Ki was a good man. As long as he was with his concubine in a strange land he was both kind and considerate, but as a realist he knew she could share no part of his life when he returned to China, and it never occurred to him that this future fact would in any way influence his present relationship. He loved Nyuk Tsin and treasured her four sons. She was pregnant again and he was happy. He was doing well as a runner for the chi-fa game and had established himself as one of the principal mah-jongg gamblers in Honolulu. He particularly liked the Whipples, who were exacting but just employers, and once he observed to the doctor: "It looks as if my six-year cycle began with my arrival here."
"What's the cycle?" Whipple asked, for although he was appalled at the callousness shown by Mun Ki in his proposed treatment of Nyuk Tsin when they returned to China, he liked the brash young man and found him interesting.
"The Chinese say, 'Three years of bad luck, six years of good,'" Mun Ki explained.
After the cook had passed along to other work, Dr. Whipple stood reflecting on this chance phrase, and it explained much about the Chinese. He observed to Amanda: "We Christians focus on the Old Testament: Seven fat years have got to be followed by seven lean ones. The world balances out. Good luck and bad equate. It summarizes the Jewish-Christian sense of remorseless justice, one for one. But the Chinese envisage a happier world: 'If you can stick out three bad years, six good ones are sure to follow.' That's a much better percentage, and it's why the Chinese I meet are such indefatigable optimists. We Anglo-Saxons brood on the evil that has to follow good. The Pakes know that good always triumphs over evil, six to three."
One afternoon he entertained an insight that struck him like a vision: "In fifty years my descendants here in Hawaii will be working for the Chinese!” At the time when this thought came to him he was watching Nyuk Tsin rebuilding her waterways after a storm, patiently leading the runaway waters back home to her taro patch, and as he saw the muddy stream bringing richness to her soil, he pounded his fist into his palm and said, "I've been talking about it for nearly fifty years. Now I'm going to do it." He drove down to the J & W offices and summoned all the young Janderses and Whipples and showed them a map of Oahu Island. "Four fifths of it's a desert," he said crisply, reminding them of something they already knew. "It grows nothing but cactus and you can't even raise decent cattle on it. The other fifth over here gets all the water it needs, but the land is so steep you