Hawaii - James Michener [341]
"We have the ridgepole," Mun Ki replied glumly. "And we're going to lose it."
"Our ridgepole?" his wife shouted.
"Nyuk Tsin, be quiet," he pleaded.
"What have you been doing?" she shouted again, pushing him against the wall. "Did you gamble away our timber?"
"We still have a chance," he assured her, and then he explained how while he was leading big dumb Palani into a trap, the wily Hawaiian had really been leading him into one.
"Oh, husband!" Nyuk Tsin cried, and she began to weep, but he comforted her, and all night the two Chinese tried to figure out what their chances were, now that Palani had insisted that they play the game honestly.
As dawn broke, the sleepless Mun Ki was figuring with a stick in the wet sand and suddenly he looked up toward his wife with a beatific smile upon his thick, leprous lips. "Our good luck is beginning today," he assured her, and his sweating over the ridgepole ceased. "Three years ago we started the taro patch, and that was the beginning of our bad luck. We lost our money, got sick, were tricked by the Chinese doctor, and had to leave home. But the three years are over. Now our good-luck cycle is beginning, Nyuk Tsin!" he cried triumphantly. "We have six years of good luck ahead of us. Today I'll win Palani's ridgepole and tonight we'll sleep under our own roof!"
In an ecstasy of hope he led Nyuk Tsin down to the fan-tan rock, where Palani and his Hawaiians were waiting. The pebbles were on the flat surface, and beside them stood a metal cup with a handle. After some discussion it was agreed that the game should be played in this way: Palani would scoop a cupful of pebbles, and the umpire Keoki, closely watched by Nyuk Tsin, would count them out in fours until the residue was known. Mun Ki, in the meantime, would bet on odd or even and would also stipulate a specific number. Thus, if he nominated even and four, and if the pebbles left a residue of four, he would win two points for his even guess and four points for having guessed the exact number. On the other hand, if he wished to hedge his bets, he could nominate even and three, which would still yield him four points if three came up. Then he would scoop up the pebbles, and Palani would name his bets, and the first man to win one hundred points would win the other's roof.
Palani, content that he now had the Chinese in an honest game, was satisfied that he would win, but Mun Ki, joyous in the start of his six-year cycle of good luck, was positive that he would triumph. He watched the big Hawaiian scoop the pebbles, hold them aloft, and wait for his guess. "Odd and three," Mun Ki cried, and the pebbles were deposited before the umpire. Eagerly the circle of faces closed in for the count.
It was a ghoulish crowd that watched the battle for the ridgepoles. Some men had no hands and some lacked feet. The lips of some had fallen away and there were many noses missing. From the group arose the unmistakable stench of the leper, and brown skins were often marked with huge sickly-white areas. Hair had fallen out and sometimes eyes. These were the caricatures of men, those cursed by a malevolent nature so remorseless that few in the world who were not lepers could imagine. These fan-tan players were indeed the walking corpses, the crawling souls so foul that sound men, seeing them, could only shudder. They were the dead, the bodies thrown onto the beach at Kalawao, the forgotten, the abominated.
But now in the bright sunlight they laughed merrily, and if the judge had inadequate fingers with which to count in fours, he was allowed to keep his job because he was known as a trustworthy man. "Odd and one, he cried. "Two points to the Pake." The crowd cheered.
When it came time for Mun Ki to scoop up the pebbles a difficulty presented itself. Although he had been able to play the game with his stumps, he did not have enough fingers to grasp the handle of the cup, so after two trial attempts he appealed to the crowd, and his request was granted: he passed the cup to Nyuk Tsin, and she scooped the pebbles.