Hawaii - James Michener [331]
A longboat was lowered, with three sailors at the oars, and the police marshal who had accompanied the lepers, ordered the cage opened, and called off names, and saw each afflicted man and woman into the boat. There the government's responsibility ended, for the policeman did not enter the boat himself. He watched it move toward the shore, dump its human cargo on the beach, and return. Then he checked off another complement, and in this way the forty lepers were thrown ashore with no stores of clothing, no money, no food and no medicine.
When the condemned were all ashore, the marshal announced formally to the kokuas: "You are now free to accompany your husbands and wives, but you do so of your own free will. The government has no concern in what you are about to do. Is it your wish to go ashore and live with the lepers?"
The kokuas, staring with horrified fascination at the lazaretto, could barely scrape their tongues with words. "I am willing," an old man rasped, and he climbed down into the boat. "I am willing," a young wife reported, and with trepidation she went down. Finally the marshal asked Nyuk Tsin, "Do you do this thing of your own free will?" and she replied, "I am willing." The longboat set out for shore, and Nyuk Tsin approached the leper settlement at Kalawao.
She was surprised to see, as the green peninsula drew near, that it contained practically no houses, and she asked one of the rowers, in Hawaiian, "Where are the houses?" And he replied, unable to look her in the eyes, "There are no houses."
And there were none ... to speak of. There were a few grass huts, a few remnants of homes left by the Hawaiians who had been expelled five years before, but there were no houses as such, nor any hospital, nor store, nor government building, nor functioning church, nor roads, nor doctors, nor nurses. In panic Nyuk Tsin stared at the inviting natural setting and looked for signs of community life. There were no police, no officials of any kind, no ministers, no mothers with families, no one selling cloth, no one making poi.
The prow of the longboat struck shore, but no one moved. The sailors waited and then one said, as if ashamed to be part of this dismal scene, "This is Kalawao." Appalled by what faced them, the kokuas rose and left the boat. "Aloha," the sailor cried as the boat withdrew for the last time. The Kilauea put back out to sea, and Nyuk Tsin, trying to find Mun Ki among the stranded lepers, cried to no one: "Where is the hospital?"
Her plea was heard by a big, tall Hawaiian man known to the lepers as Kaulo Nui, Big Saul of the Bible. He had no nose and few fingers, but he was still a powerful man, and he came to Nyuk Tsin and shouted in Hawaiian, "Here there is no law. There is nothing but what I command."
The newcomers were as frightened by this state of affairs as was Nyuk Tsin, but Big Saul ignored them, and pointing his mutilated hand at the Chinese couple, said, "You brought the mai Pake! You will live apart."
"Where?" Nyuk Tsin asked boldly.
"Apart," the big man said. Then his eye fell on the young wife Kinau, who still had flowers in her hair, and he moved toward her, announcing: "This woman is for me."
Kinau drew back in horror from the huge, noseless man whose hands were so badly deformed. She shuddered, and Big Saul saw this, so to teach her the required lesson, he grabbed her by the left arm, pulled her to him, and kissed her on the mouth. "You're my woman!" he announced again.
Nyuk Tsin expected to see someone--who, she could not guess-- step forward to knock the big man down, but when none did, the awful fact of Kalawao slowly dawned upon her, as it did upon all the others. Big Saul, holding onto the shuddering Kinau,