Hawaii - James Michener [572]
When the ceremony ended, talk resumed and the girl who had brought him his bitter tea said, "American M.P.'s can destroy anything but the tea ceremony. No matter how hard you strike at our souls, you always seem to miss."
The statement irritated Shig and he said, "Not being an M.P., I wouldn't know. For myself, I bring freedom."
"What freedom?" the girl asked angrily.
"Land for the peasants," Shig said, and for a few minutes he was a hero, but then the lights lowered, the single shaft struck the music stand and Shig read: Bruckner, The First Symphony. This was a London recording, and he liked the music.
That night, as they made their way back through the remnant of Shimbashi girls that had caught no men for the evening, but who still hoped, not knowing what might turn up following a late brawl, Shig said, "I'd marry her, Goro. She's marvelous."
"I'm going to," his brother replied.
And in these strange ways the brothers Sakagawa discovered their ancestral homeland and saw how different it was from what their parents remembered, but they also discovered Hawaii, so that one night Goro slammed down his beer at the Dai Ichi Hotel and fumed: "It's insane that we should be here, Shig. We ought to be doing the same jobs at home." And as they worked in Japan, they thought of Hawaii.
IN 1947 the great Kee hui faced memorable excitements, for Nyuk Tsin was one hundred years old and her family initiated a round of entertainments celebrating that fact, climaxed by a massive fourteen-course dinner at Asia's brassy restaurant. The little old matriarch, who now weighed ninety-one pounds, appeared at each celebration dressed in black, her sparse gray hair pulled severely back from her temples. She chatted with her huge family and felt proud of their accomplishments, being particularly pleased when Hong Kong's youngest daughter, Judy, brought a "pianist from the university, where she was studying, to sing a series of songs in Chinese. Nyuk Tsin, watching Judy's animated face, thought: "She could be a girl from the High Village. I wonder what's happening there now?"
One hundred and forty-one great-great-grandchildren attended the festivities, and upon them Nyuk Tsin poured her special love. Whenever one was presented she would ask the child in Hakka, "And what is your name, my dear?" The child's mother would poke her offspring and say in English, "Tell Auntie your name." But if the child replied, "Harry Rodriques," Nyuk Tsin would correct him and insist upon his real name, and the child would reply, "Kee Doh Kong," and by decoding this according to the family poem, Nyuk Tsin understood who was standing before her.
With her own name she also had trouble, for now there was no one alive in the world who knew what it was. Even her remaining sons, now in their agile seventies and eighties, had never known her name, for she had submerged her own personality in this powerful hui of which she was now the head. She was content to rule as Wu Chow's Auntie, the concubine without a name, but when she thought of herself it was invariably as Char Nyuk Tsin, the daughter of a brave peasant who had risen to be a general. She was deeply moved, therefore, when the celebrations were ended and her sons Asia and Europe said to her, "Wu Chow's Auntie, I see no further reason why we should continue to send money to our mother in the Low Village. She must surely be dead by now, and her family has never done anything for us."
"On the other hand," Nyuk Tsin. reasoned, "she may still be alive, just as I am, and if so she would need the money more than ever. After all, she is your mother and you owe her that respect."
Only one misfortune clouded her hundredth birthday: her principal