Hawaii - James Michener [337]
They huddled together in the cold, dark night and Mun Ki said, "You must promise, Wu Chow's Auntie, that if you ever escape from here, you will be sure to send my real wife in China as much money as possible."
"I promise," Nyuk Tsin replied.
"And you must enter my boys' names in the village hall."
"I will do so."
"And when you send the news to the hall, you don't have to mention that you are a Hakka. It would embarrass my wife."
"I will not say anything to the letter-writer," Nyuk Tsin promised.
"And you must promise to bury me on the side of a hill."
"I shall, just as if we were in China."
"And you must promise to bring my sons to honor my grave."
"I shall do so," Nyuk Tsin agreed, and Mun Ki said, "When dawn comes we will die, Wu Chow's Auntie, and the promises you have made mean nothing, but I feel better." Through the long, rainy night they waited and when the gray, cold dawn arrived, Mun Ki the gambler said, "Let's wait for them no longer. Let's march out to meet them." And the two Chinese left the foul grass lean-to, each with a jagged, sharp piece of wood in his right hand.
It was with horror that they saw, slumped in the rain-filled path, the dead body of Big Saul, for they knew that this doomed them to retaliation from the others of the gang, but as they cautiously approached the village, their sticks ready for the final fight, they saw with amazement that the Hawaiian lepers did not draw back in enmity, but moved forward in conciliation, and slowly the deadly sticks were lowered and at last the two Chinese stood surrounded by dying men and women who said, "You did a good thing." And one woman who had been sadly abused by Big Saul and his gang, but who had stubbornly refused to go insane, said quietly, "We are determined that Kalawao shall be a place of law."
The resurrection of this dreadful lazaretto, where for six years condemned human beings had been thrown upon the beach to die without a single incident of assistance from the society that had rejected them, dated from that morning when the determined woman whose spirit had not been broken by leprosy, or rape, or indignities such as few have known said solemnly, "Kalawao shall be a place of law."
A rude organization was evolved, consisting of people responsible for parceling out the food, a team to bring water into the village, and informal policemen who were to stop the aimless rape of unprotected women. Girls who arrived on the beach unattached were ordered to pick a man quickly, and to stay with him; and when a young wife argued: "But I am married, and I love my husband," older women told her sternly, "You have left the world. You are in a waiting station for hell. Pick a man. We warn you." So some women passed in turn from one dying man to another, but in an orderly fashion and not according to the rule of rape.
Children, banished without their parents, were given to kokuas who took them as their own, and fed them. And one law was paramount: when an old man or an old woman was clearly about to die, he must no longer be left in the open fields; he must have some kind of shelter.
Even when the settlement thus disciplined itself, the government in Honolulu gave little help. Lepers were still thrown upon the beaches to die, and there was no medicine, no lumber, no consolation. But in mid-1871 a Hawaiian who had read many books arrived in the lazaretto, and he launched a more formal government, one of whose first decisions was that the two Chinese must no longer be banished to the foot of the cliff but must be allowed to live among the others. This decision was applauded among the lepers, since it was generally agreed that the coming of limited humanity to Kalawao dated from the night when Mun Ki decided to protect his wife from the rapists, or die. A rude hospital was started, with no doctors but with leper nurses; and women who could read opened a school for children born in the lazaretto. A committee