Hawaii - James Michener [394]
No one felt this obligation more than Africa. It was through the energies of his four brothers that he had received his legal education at Michigan. To maintain him in law school they had deprived themselves; yet they never complained, for they agreed with Nyuk Tsin that the ablest of the group must be educated, to help protect the rest. And Africa Kee did just that. At present the Kee hui controlled seven businesses, and Africa guided each along the narrow path between conservative prudence and radical recklessness. He financed every new venture and advised when, earlier ones should be liquidated. He selected which real estate to buy, what corner to lease for a store, and which mainland college the Kee grandsons should be sent to. For the present he was the central brain power of a trivial Chinese empire of dirty little shops, grubby efforts to make money and small landholdings. But it was not his intention that the Kee empire should remain small, and whenever he met with his brothers--they in pigtails and Chinese dress; he shorn and in the clothes he had learned to wear at Michigan--he preached one doctrine: "This hui has got to grow." To make it do so, Africa gambled in a manner that would have pleased his father, and the Kees rarely held property for even a week before borrowing heavily on it to buy more property, on which they also borrowed as soon as possible. All the Kee stores bought on credit, but obligations were carefully met as such came due. The hui never had any cash; it always owed debts that would have staggered a haole; and under Africa's calculating guidance it was beginning to prosper.
Nyuk Tsin, pleased with the manner in which he was taking hold of business problems, did not dominate her family, except in three particulars. Every Kee child had to be educated, and during the year 1900 this apparently impecunious Chinese family was preparing to send three grandsons to college in America--doctor, dentist, lawyer --and within the next decade fourteen more Kees would be ready to go. Nyuk Tsin herself went barefooted in order to save money to pay mainland tuitions, and it did not matter to her if her sons' wives were forced to do the same. The sprawling family lived with terrifying frugality in order to pinch off each fugitive penny that might be saved to provide some sparkling grandson with an education.
In this profound resolve Nyuk Tsin was constantly abetted by the wild-eyed Englishman, Uliassutai Karakoram Blake, who enjoyed walking down from the Church of England school to visit with her in Chinese. He said, "I used to curse the Yankee threat to Hawaii, and at one time I wanted to take arms against America, but when annexation took place I shrugged my shoulders and said, 'America's no worse than England. They're both bloody robbers, and if I can stand one I suppose I can stand the other.'"
He encouraged Nyuk Tsin to educate her grandchildren to their maximum capacity. "Have you ever stopped to figure, Wu Chow's Auntie, what it cost you to make Africa a lawyer? And how much you've already got back in return? Well, be assured that in the future the rate of return will be even greater." He was a flamboyant man and his ferocious mustaches flourished in the little Nuuanu room as he spoke of the future: "Science, mathematics, speculation! Who knows where they will lead? But wherever they take us, Wu Chow's Auntie, only the educated man will be able to follow." She always felt better after a talk with Uliassutai Blake; she wished she had gone to school to such a teacher. For his part, the eccentric Englishman found real joy in talking with one of the two people who understood his dynamic interpretation of the world. The other was a thin, hawk-eyed young revolutionary then seeking refuge in Hawaii: Sun Yat Sen. Even better than Nyuk Tsin, he comprehended what his teacher Blake was talking about.
The second particular in which Nyuk Tsin