Hawaii - James Michener [321]
"Number Two Camp," Nyuk Tsin replied, but when the cautious, probing doctor handed her the herbs and started to pick up her family's last coins, she could no longer tolerate him, and she swept the coins back into her own hand and grabbed a blue jar and knocked the top off and shoved the jagged glass into the doctor's face, and when the glass cut him and his own quackery entered his eyes, causing them to pain, she threw the money in his face and whispered in a hushed, hate-choked voice: "Did you think you fooled me? I know you are reporting secretly to the police. You pig, you pig!" In uncontrollable fury she smashed half a dozen pots of herbs to the floor, kicked them about with her bare feet, and then grabbed the broken blue jar to assault the doctor again, but he fled whimpering to the rear of his office, so she hurried away down a side alley, but she paused long enough to peer back at the doctor's shack, and when that man's cries had continued for a moment, the two spies hurried up and went inside to rescue their conspirator, while Nyuk Tsin returned, by a devious path, to Dr. Whipple's. When she reached home, she did not immediately go inside the gate, but walked on, stopping now and then to see if she were being followed. Then she went empty-handed to her husband and said, "The doctor was a spy. He was going to report us tonight, because his helpers were there, waiting."
"What did you do?" Mun Ki asked.
"I hope I cut his eye out," Nyuk Tsin replied.
That night she matured her second plan, for when the evening meal was over, she left the Whipple grounds and moved quietly about the Chinese community, going to families which had come to Hawaii with her in the hold of the Carthaginian, for all such men were brothers, and she said to each, "Will you take into your home one of the sons of your brother Mun Ki?"
Almost invariably the Chinese would listen, say nothing, look at Nyuk Tsin, and finally ask, "Is it the mai Pake?" and without fear, for she knew that no Carthaginian man would betray his brother, she always replied honestly, "It is." Then the man would ask, "And are you going to be his kokua?" And when Nyuk Tsin replied, "I am," the man said either, "I will take one of your children," or, "I can't take a child myself, but let us see Ching Gar Foo, because I am sure he'll take one." But she noticed that they shuddered when they came near her.
By midnight Nyuk Tsin had disposed of her four sons and her household goods and had made arrangements with a cook for one of the Hewlett families that when her unborn child arrived, Nyuk Tsin would return it to Honolulu by ship from the leper island to be cared for by that cook. She was therefore in a relieved if not hopeful mood when she returned to tell her husband that his sons would be cared for, but when she reached the Whipple grounds she saw an unaccustomed light in her quarters, and she started running toward where Mun Ki was supposed to be sleeping, but when she burst into the little wooden shack she saw Dr. Whipple standing beside the bed with a lamp in his right hand.
The American doctor and the Chinese woman looked at each other in silent respect, and she saw that tears were running down the white-haired man's face. He lifted Mun Ki's hand and pointed to the lesions, and Nyuk Tsin, following the course that Dr. Whipple's finger took across the doomed hand, had to look away. "It's leprosy," the doctor said. Then he held the lamp before his maid's face and asked, "Did you know?"
"Yes," she said.
"I understand," he replied. Then, putting the lamp down he started to question her, but she asked, "Did bad men whisper you?"
"No," Whipple replied. "It occurred to me that I hadn't seen Mun Ki for some time and I recalled his itching legs. I was in bed, Mrs. Kee, and it suddenly came to me: 'Mun Ki has leprosy,' so I came out here, and I was right."
"Morning come next day he go away?"
"Yes," Dr. Whipple said matter-of-factly, but the terror of his words overtook him and he said in a shaking voice, "Mrs. Kee, let us all pray." And he kneeled in the little