Hawaii - James Michener [434]
"Will Hong Kong's mother tell us how her son is doing in school?" the matriarch began.
Mrs. Africa Kee, the older of the striking Ching girls, said, "His marks have been excellent. His behavior has been spirited but has brought no reprimand. I am proud of my son's accomplishment and feel that he merits the interest the family is taking in him."
"Does Hong Kong think he can do the work at Punahou ... if he is accepted?" Nyuk Tsin asked.
The boy was embarrassed by the attention focused on him, but he yearned to get into Punahou, so he bore the indignity. Hunching up one shoulder he said, "If the Lum boy can do the work, I can do the work."
At the mention of the Lum boy, the Kees grew bitter. For a dozen years they had been trying to get one of their sons into Punahou, Hawaii's source of excellence, but for one reason or another they had never succeeded, even though they were a fairly wealthy family and could boast of Africa as a leading professional man. Yet the Lums, who really did not amount to much except that their father was a dentist and a man who loved to speak in public, had maneuvered one of their boys into the cherished haven.
Nyuk Tsin said, "I think that this time we really have a good chance. I have asked a dear old friend to counsel with us as to what we must do to get Hong Kong accepted." She gave a signal and a grandson ran out to bring back a tall, bald Englishman with outrageous white mustaches and a flamboyant energy that projected him into the hot room, where he kissed Nyuk Tsin and cried in flowery Chinese: "Ah ha! We plot against the white people! Strike the tocsin! China shall rise!"
It was Uliassutai Karakoram Blake, the mad schoolteacher and the trusted friend of all Chinese. He was older and stouter but no more subdued, and now he locked his hands behind his neck, rocking to and fro as if he were going to fall over. "Beloved and prolific Kees," he said, "let us face the truth. There are good schools and there are great schools, and every family is entitled to send his ablest sons to the greatest. Iolani, where I slave for a pittance, is a good school. Punahou is a great school. It lends authority and glamour and caste. England is built on such foundations and so is Hawaii. Let a man use a wrong knife, and he is condemned to the Liberal Party for life."
"What's he talking about?" one of Australia's boys whispered.
"I'm talking about you!" Uliassutai Karakoram Blake shouted in English, flailing his arms out and thrusting his head a few inches from the face of the startled young Chinese. "Stand up!” Awkwardly the boy rose and Blake pointed at him as if he were an exhibit.
"Behold the scion of the Kee hui," he said in erudite Chinese. "He has done well at Iolani School, but he has not yet been accepted at Punahou. He is therefore limited to a perpetual secondary acceptance in Honolulu. He cannot associate with the men who rule the city. He cannot learn to speak with their inflections. He lacks their peculiar polish. And he must remain the rest of his life a Chinese peasant. Sit down!"
Blake turned his back on the boy and said to the elders, "The compassionate Buddha knows that at Iolani I have given you Chinese the salt of my blood and the convolutions of my brain, and I have raised you from ignorance into light, and the compassionate Buddha also knows that I wish I had done half as well with my light as you wonderful people have done with yours. If I had, I wouldn't now be toiling out the evening years of my life as an underpaid schoolmaster. Africa, how much did you earn