Hawaii - James Michener [436]
When he was gone the elders of the family considered the many ideas he had proposed, and Nyuk Tsin said, "That strange man is right. Hong Kong's mother does look too modem, as if she were forcing her way upon the haoles. It will be too easy to reject her. This time we really must send someone else. How about Europe's wife? She's Hawaiian."
"No!" Africa cried. "He is my son, and he will report to Punahou with his own mother, and if they reject us again, let it be so."
"This time, then, I will go along," Nyuk Tsin announced. "I will be barefooted and I will represent the old ways."
"No!" Africa protested again. "My wife, who will dress as she pleases, will take my son to Punahou and seek admission. I will tolerate no subterfuges."
"Africa," the old matriarch said softly, "the school has shown that it will accept one or two Chinese. Now it is terribly important that one of our boys be chosen. Please, this time allow me to arrange things."
"I have business on the Big Island," Africa said solemnly. "I shall go there and bear no part of this humiliation." He left the room and the clan breathed more easily, for he was a stubborn man.
"Now, when the Lums got their son into Punahou," Nyuk Tsin counseled, "the boy's mother wore a very plain dress, and her hair straight back, and she kept her eyes on the floor. I am therefore going to say flatly that Hong Kong's mother cannot go this time."
"I will go with my husband to the Big Island," Africa's wife announced, and she too left the plotters.
After much discussion, and after carefully studying the devices by which earlier Chinese families had managed to get sons into Punahou, the Kees hit upon an involved strategy. Barefoot Nyuk Tsin would go in smock and pants to give the proper coolie touch. Europe's wife would go as a pure-blooded Hawaiian to show that the Kees respected local traditions. And Australia's wife, the pretty Ching girl, would go in a very modest western-style dress to prove that the family knew how to eat with a knife and fork. The boy Hong Kong, who had an intellectual ability four levels higher than anyone then studying at Punahou, would tag along in a carefully selected suit that bespoke both the ability to pay tuition and a quiet gentility not common among newly rich Chinese families.
It was a hot day when the four Kees drove up to Punahou in a rented carriage, it having been decided that this was slightly more propitious than walking, and in the interview the three women played their roles to perfection, but Hong Kong squinted slightly and thought just a little too long before answering questions, brilliant though his replies were, and in due time the family got the news: "We regret that this year, due to overcrowded conditions, we can find no place for your son, whose marks and general deportment seemed otherwise acceptable."
The letter was delivered to Africa in his law offices, and he sat for a long time pondering it. At first he was consumed with rage at the humiliation his family had willingly undergone, and then he spent about an hour shoving the formal letter about his desk into this position and that. Finally he summoned his son and waited until the boy came in breathless from play along the river. In even, un-impassioned tones he said, "Hong Kong, you will not go back to school any more."
"I thought you said I was to go to Michigan."
"No. What you require to learn, son, you can learn right here. Tonight you will start reading this book on Hawaiian land systems. When you're through I'll give you your examination . . . sitting in that chair. Are those your schoolbooks?"
"Yes."
"You'll never need them again." Slowly Africa Kee, who