Hawaii - James Michener [318]
"You do?" Mun Ki pleaded with animal ferocity. "You can cure these sores?"
"Of course!" The doctor smiled reassuringly. "I have several patients, and not one has had to surrender himself to the white doctors." But Nyuk Tsin was studying the man carefully, and she knew that he was lying. She therefore said, openly, "Wu Chow's Father, this man has no cure. Right now we should turn ourselves hi to the white doctors." Her husband caught the phrase, "turn ourselves in," and his wife's implied promise that she would share the illness with him was more than he could at that moment bear, and he began to weep.
"Come," Nyuk said bravely. "We will go now and talk with Dr. Whipple."
But the Iwilei doctor, fearing to lose a patient who seemed to have money and a good job, protested, in rapid Punti: "Are you, a respectable Punti gentleman, going to give up a chance of escape simply because a stupid Hakka wife thinks she knows more about the mai Pake than I do? Sir, have you thought of what it means if you report to the white doctors?" And he began conjuring up evil pictures: "The police coming to capture you? The little boat at the pier? The cage on deck? The journey to the island? Sir, your wife is pregnant now. Suppose it is a son. Why, you'll never see your own son. Have you thought about that? And all the time I have a certain cure right here."
Of course Mun Ki had thought of these extremities, and now to hear his fears paraded openly had an appalling effect upon him, and he collapsed against the doctor's table, mumbling, "Is it really the mai Pake?"
"It is the mai Pake," the doctor repeated coldly. "The Chinese sickness. You have it; and in another month unless you cure yourself with my herbs, your face will begin to grow big, and your eyes will have a film upon them, and your hands and feet will begin to fall away. Look even now, you poor man!" And he grabbed Mun Ki's index finger and pierced it with a dirty needle, and Mun Ki could feel no pain. "You have the mai Pake, my friend," the quack doctor repeated, and as he saw his patient quivering with fear, he added, "The disease that the white doctors call leprosy."
"You are sure?"
"Any white doctor will see that you have leprosy, and you know what they ,will do then? The cage on the little boat."
"But can you cure me?" Mun Ki pleaded in terror.
"I have cured many patients of the mai Pake," the herbalist replied.
"No, Wu Chow's Father," Nyuk Tsin pleaded, knowing in her heart that this doctor was a fraud, but the herbalist realized that only a little additional pressure was required to make Mun Ki one of his most profitable patients, so he interrupted forcefully: "Be silent, stupid woman. Would you deprive your husband of his only chance of salvation?"
This challenge was too reasonable for Nyuk Tsin to combat, so she retired to a comer and thought: "My poor, foolish husband. He will waste his money with this evil man, and in the end we shall have to run away to the hills anyway."
So Mun Ki, in the silence, made his decision. "I will try your cures," he said, and the quick-witted doctor replied, "It will take a little time, but trust in me and you will be cured. How much money did you bring with you?" Mun Ki, in panic, opened his purse and showed the doctor his meager store of dimes and shillings and reals, and the doctor said happily, "Well, this will more than pay for the first bundles of herbs, so you see it isn't going to cost much, after all." But when Nyuk Tsin started to draw back some of the reals, the doctor prudently slipped his hand over the coins and suggested: "I'll give you more herbs so you won't have to come all the way back to Iwilei so soon."
"The herbs will cure me?" Mun Ki pleaded.
"Without fear," the doctor reassured him, and with their cloth-wrapped bundle of herbs Mun Ki and his wife left the medical man and walked home.
But now they were a different couple, for the unspoken fears that had haunted them when they journeyed to Iwilei had become