The Pacific Triangle Part 3

We rolled rapidly down into the valley past miles and miles of pineapple fields. Then we came, as it were, to the land's end. Nothing sheer now before us, nothing precipitate. A bit of freshness, of coolness, and an imperceptible tapering off. The sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SAGE IN A CHINA SHOP AT HONOLULU]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THERE ARE ONLY A FEW CHINESE WOMEN IN HAWAII]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHOA! LET'S HAVE OUR PICTURE TAKEN We don't know whether we're Hawaiian, Chinese or American, but who cares. Giddap!]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FEMININE PROPRIETY Oriental and Occidental versions]

Here at Kaneohe dwelt Arthur Mackaye, brother of the poet, whose name was vaguely known to me. He was slender, bearded, loosely clad, with open collar but not without consciousness and conventionality,--a conventionality in accordance with prescribed notions of freedom.

Refreshing, cool as the atmosphere roundabout, distinct from the tropical lusciousness which is the general state of both men and nature in and about Honolulu, the personality of this lone man--this man who had flung everything aside--was a fit complement to the experience of Manoa Valley and the Pali.

He conducted a small sight-seeing expedition on his own. The proprietor of a number of gla.s.s-bottomed launches, he took me over the quiet waters of the reefs. Throwing a black cloth over my head to shield me from the brilliant sky, I gazed down into the still world within the coral reefs.

There lay unimaginable peace. What the Pali affords in panorama, the bay at Kaneohe offers in concentrated form. Pink-and-white forests twenty to forty feet deep, with immense cavities and ledges of delicate coral, fringe the sh.o.r.e. Fish of exquisite color move in and out of these giant chambers, as much at home in one as in another. Droll, sleepy sponges, like lumps of porous mud, lie flat against the reefs, waiting for something edible to come their way. Long green sea-worms extend and contract like the tentacles of an octopus in an insatiable search for food.

An unusual silence hangs over the memory of that trip. I cannot recall that the unexpected companion I picked up in Honolulu said anything; the lonely one who furnished the gla.s.s-bottomed boat certainly said nothing; the fish and sponges emphasized the tone of silence a.s.sociated with the experience. But the Pali shrieked; it was the one imposing element that defied stillness. And below it is Honolulu, where silence is not to be found.

4

For the Honolulu spirit is averse to silence. Honolulu is the most talkative city in the world. The people seem to talk with their eyes, with their gait, with their postures. Night and day there stirs the confusion of people attending to one another's wants. One is in a ceaseless whirl of extraverted emotions. One cannot get away from it.

The man who could be lonely in Honolulu would have to have his ears closed with cement. If New York were as talkative as Honolulu, not all of America's Main Streets together would drown it out.

For Honolulu teems with good-fellowship. It is the religion of Honolulu to have a good time, and every one feels impelled before G.o.d and Patria to live up to its precepts. Everybody not only has a good time but talks having a good time. Not that there are no undercurrents of jealousy and gossip. By no means. The stranger is let into these with the same gusto that swirls him into pleasurable activities. It is a busy, whirligig world. Even the Y.M.C.A. spirit prevails without restraint. I had found the building of the a.s.sociation very convenient, and stopped there. That put the stamp of goodness on me, but it did not exclude me from being drawn into a roisterous crowd that danced and drank and dissipated dollars, and heaved a sigh of relief that I did not preach to it. Its members were glad that I was just "stopping" at the Y. They didn't see how I could do it, but that was my affair. If I still managed to be a good fellow,--well, I belonged to Honolulu.

Charmian London had given me a note of introduction to a friend, Wright, of the "Bulletin." Wright was a bachelor and had a little bungalow across from the Waikiki Hotel on the beach. There we met one evening. It had every indication of the touch of a woman's hand. It was neatly furnished, cozy, restful. Two nonchalant young men came in, but after a delightful meal hurried away to some party. Wright and I were left. What should we do? Something must be done.

He ordered a touring-car. We whirled along under the open sky with a most disporting moon, and it seemed a pity we had none with us over whom to romanticize. Quietly, as though we were on a moving stage, the world slipped by,--palms, rice-fields ashimmer with silver light. Through luxuriant avenues, we pa.s.sed up the road toward the Pali. Somewhere half-way we stopped. The Country Club. A few introductions, a moment's stay, and off we went again, this time to avoid the dance that was to take place there. Slipping along under the moonlight, we made our way back to Waikiki beach, dismissed the car, and took a table at Heinie's which is now, I understand, no more.

But we had only jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. Others, bored with the club dance, had come to Heinie's for more fling than dancing afforded. The hall was not crowded, so we were soon noticed. Mr. Wright was known.

"They want us to come over," he said. "Just excuse me a moment."

Presently he returned. I had been specifically invited over with him. I accepted the invitation. Then, till there were no more minutes left of that day, we indulged in one continuous pa.s.sing of wits and wets. Before half the evening was over, I was one of the crowd in genuine Honolulu fashion, and nothing was too personal for expression.

But one there was in the group to whom all her indulgences were obviously strange, though she seemed well practised. She was a romantic soul, and sought to counteract the teasing of the others. Her deprecation of whisky and soda was almost like poor Satan's hatred of h.e.l.l. She vibrated to romantic memories like a cello G string. When she learned that I was westward bound, she fairly moaned with regret.

"China!--oh, dear, beloved China! I would give anything in the world to get back there!" she exclaimed, and whatever notions I had of the Orient became exalted a thousandfold. But my own conviction is that she missed the cheap servants which Honolulu lacks. In other words, there were still not enough leisure and Bubbling Well Roads in Honolulu, nor the international atmosphere that is Shanghai's. But that is mere conjecture, and she was a romantic soul, and good to look at.

But there were two others in the crowd who did not, in their hilarious spirits, whirl into my ken until some time afterward. Their speed was that of the comet's, and what was a plodding little planet like myself to do trying to move into their orbit? They were not native daughters of Honolulu; most of their lives they had spent in California, which in the light of Hawaii is a raw, chill land. There they carried on the drab existence of trying to earn a living,--just work and no play. But evidently they had never given up hope. They were tall, thin, fair, and jolly. They invested. They won. It was only two thousand dollars. They earned as much every year, no doubt, but it came to them in instalments.

Now they had a real roll. _Bang_ went the job! American industry, all that depended on their being stable, honest producers, the smoothness of organization, was banished from their minds. Let the country go to the dogs; they were heading for Honolulu for a good time. And when they got there they did not find the cupboard bare, nor excommunication for being jobless.

For as long as two thousand dollars will last where money flows freely (and there are plenty of men ready to help stretch it with generous entertainment) these two escaped toilers from the American deep ran the gamut of Honolulu's conviviality. Night after night they whispered amorous compliments in the ears of the favorite dancers; day after day they flitted from party to party. I had met them just as their two thousand dollars were drawing to a close, but the only thing one could hear was regret that they could not possibly be extended. Honolulu was richer by two thousand; they were poorer to the extent of perpetual restlessness and rebellion against the necessity of holding down a job.

Yet the "Primer" published by the Promotion Committee tells us that Hawaii is "not a paradise for the jobless." These folk had no jobs, yet they certainly felt and acted and spoke as though they were in Paradise.

Witness the arrivals and departures of steamers. The crowds gather as for a fete or a carnival. Bands play, serpentines stream over the ship's side, and turn its dull color into a careless rainbow. Hawaiian women sell leis, necklaces of the most luscious flowers whose scent is enough to empa.s.sion the most pa.s.sionless. But as to jobs,--why, even the longsh.o.r.emen seem to be celebrating and the steamer moves as by spirit-power.

Visit Waikiki beach, and every day it is littered with people who enjoy the afternoon hours on the tireless breakers. Go to the hotels, and hardly an hour finds them deserted. The motor-cars are constantly carrying men and women about as though there was nothing in the wide world to do. Even those who are unlucky enough to have jobs attend to them in a leisurely sort of way. Yet these jobless people hold up their hands in warning to possible immigrants that there is no room for them, that "Hawaii is not a paradise for the jobless."

5

Who, then, does the work of the island? It is obvious that it is being done. There isn't another island in the whole Pacific so modernized, so thoroughly equipped, so American in every detail, so progressive and well-to-do. It is the most sublimated of the sublime South Seas. One wonders how white men could have remained so energetic in the tropics, but one is not long left uninformed. Honolulu is an example of a most ideal combination of peoples, the inventive, progressive, constructive white man with the energetic, persistent, plodding Oriental. Without the one or the other, Honolulu would not be what it is; both have contributed to the welfare of the islands in ways immeasurable.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find the Oriental elements as much in evidence as the Occidental. One hardly knows where one begins and the other ends. As s.p.a.cious and individualized as are the European sections, so the Asiatic are a perfect jumble of details. The buildings are drab, the streets are littered, the smells are insinuating, the sounds excruciating.

A most painful noise upon an upper balcony of an overhanging Chinese building made me come to with a sudden clapping of my hands against my ears. As noise goes, it was perfect,--without theme or harmony. It could not have been more uncontrolled. What consolation was it that in China there was more of it! Grat.i.tude awakened in me for the limitations a wise joss had placed upon the capacities of the individual. Yet men are never satisfied. These Chinese weren't, and combined their energies.

What one man couldn't accomplish, several could at least approach. So we had a band. I should certainly never have thought it possible, myself.

However, they were trying to achieve something. It was neither gay nor mournful; nor was it sentimental. What purpose could it possibly have served? Surely they had no racial regrets or aspirations, they who played it! The bird sings to his mate, but what mate would listen to such tin-canning and howling, and not die?

To me there was something charming in this shamelessness of the Chinese, something childlike and nave. I had never realized the meaning of that little rhyme,

I would not give the weakest of my song For all the boasted strength of all the strong If but the million weak ones of the world Would realize their number and their wrong.

The thought is almost terrifying when applied to the teeming hordes of the world, whether of Asia, Europe, or the South Seas. If sheer numbers are any justification of supremacy, G.o.d had better take His old world back and reshape it nearer something rational. One becomes conscious of this welling up of the world in Hawaii. Not that the Chinese and the j.a.panese haven't the same right to life and to its fulfilment in accordance with latent instinct and ability, with all its special racial traits and customs, but one doesn't just exactly see how numbers have anything to do with it. Yet here are the Chinese and j.a.panese slowly, quietly, persistently out-distancing the white by a process of doubling in numbers, where mentality and ingenuity would doubtless fail.

One hears much about the progress of the Orient. That is, white folk talk much about the way in which the East is taking to Western ways, and call that progress. One would not expect that sort of progress to proceed with any great velocity in the East itself, but it is only necessary to observe the ingrowing tendencies of life in Hawaii, however superficially, to see how foolishly optimistic is the expectation of such progress. For even in Hawaii, where everything has had to be built afresh, where everybody is an alien--with very few exceptions--and where the dominant element is European, the East is still the East, and the West the West. There is a slight overlapping, but not enough to make one lose one's way,--to make a white man walk into a Chinese restaurant and not know it. The fastidious white man whose curiosity gets the better of him, moves about the Chinese and j.a.panese districts fully conscious of his own shortcomings. He is less able to feel at home there than the Oriental on the main street; but why doesn't the Oriental build for himself a main street?

I was abroad early one Sunday morning, headed for the Chinese section.

Lost in thought, I went along, gazing on the ground. Had Charlie Chaplin's feet suddenly come into my range of vision I should not have been more surprised than I was when two tiny shoes, hardly bigger than those of a large-sized doll, and with some of that stiff, automatic movement of the _species mechanicus_, dissipated my reflections. I raised my eyes slowly, as when waking, up, up, up,--hem of skirt, knees, waist-line, flat bosom, narrow shoulders, sallow face, and slit eyes! A Chinese woman! She was as big as a fourteen-year-old girl, but her feet were a third of their due proportion. How many thousands of years of natural selection went into the making of those little feet?

Yet she was a rare enough exception to astound my abstracted mind. About her strolled hundreds of others of her race, who would have given much of life to possess those two little feet.

Differences abound in Hawaii. The Chinese is no twin brother of the j.a.panese. In fact, there is probably as much relationship between the Hawaiian and the j.a.panese as there is between these two "Oriental"

races. The major part of the j.a.panese being Malay and the Polynesian Hawaiians having at least lived with the Malays some hundreds of years ago and infused some of their Caucasic ingredients into them, there is more of "home-coming" when "j.a.p" meets "Poly," than when he meets "c.h.i.n.k." But notwithstanding proximity and propinquity, over which diplomatic letter-writers labor hard, when the Chinese and the j.a.panese and the Hawaiian come together, the Hawaiian "vanishes like dewdrops by the roadside," the Chinese jogs along, and the j.a.panese runs motor-cars and raises children. The j.a.panese obtrudes himself much more upon the life of the community than the other two races, but with no more relinquishment of his own ways. He drives the cars and he drives white men to more activity than they really enjoy. And the Hawaiian sells necklaces of luscious flowers under the shaded porticoes of the buildings along the waterfront.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MILES AWAY ROSE THE FUMES OF KILAUEA During the day they were ashen and at night like rose dawn]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LARGEST CAULDRON OF MOLTEN ROCK ON EARTH Eight hundred feet below it seethed]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RIVER OF ROCK POURING OUT INTO THE SEA Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHIRLING EDDIES OF LAVA UNDERMINING FROZEN LAVA PROJECTIONS Photo, Otto C. Gilmore]

Aside from the adoption of our trousers and coat and hat, and a few other unimportant aspects of our civilization, the observer on the streets of Honolulu sees no mingling of races. The only outward sign of this mixing is the Salvation Army. There, large as life, with the usual circular crowd about them, stood these soldiers of misfortune, praising the Lord in English. A row of unlimited Oriental offspring upon the curb; a few grown-ups on the walk; a converted j.a.panese who looked as though his Shinto father had disowned him; a self-conscious white boy who confessed to having been converted just recently; two indifferent-looking soldiers; a distrustful-looking leader and a hopeless-visaged white woman. Twenty feet away, a saloon. I wonder what the Salvation Army is going to do now that that object of attraction is no more.

As far as Honolulu was concerned, it seemed to me that barter and trade were more intoxicating to the majority than was drink. The world everywhere about seemed a-litter with boxes and bales and shops and indulgences. How much of all the things exchanged, how many of the things for which these people toil endlessly, are worth while or essential, or even truly satisfying? The dingy stores, their only worth their damp coolness; the huddling and the innocent dirt; the inextricable mesh of little things to be done,--only the Chinese sage who posed for my camera in front of his wee stock of yarns was able to tell their value to life. His long, thin, pointed beard, his lack of vanity in accepting my interest in him, his genial smile and fatherly disinterestedness symbolized more than anything I saw in Honolulu the virtue and endurance of race. Beside the eager, grasping j.a.panese and the rolling, expanding white men, he looked like the overtowering palm-tree that seems to grow out of the monkey-pod in the park.

6

To a creature from another world, hovering over us in the unseen ether, watching us move about beneath the sea of air which is life to us, Honolulu would seem like a little gla.s.s aquarium. The human beings move about as though on the best of terms with one another. Some look more gorgeous than others, but from outward appearances they are as innocent of ill intentions against one another as the aquatic creatures for which Hawaii is famous, out in the cool, moist aquarium at Waikiki.

Kihikihi, the Hawaiians call one of them, and his friends the white folk have christened him Moorish Idol. I don't know what Kihikihi means, but as to his being an idol, I can't accept that for a moment, except in so far as he deserves to be idolized. For about him there is no more of that static, woodeny thing which idols generally are than there is about Pavlowa. Yet he is only a fish, and not so very large at that. He is moon-shaped, but rainbow-hued. He is perhaps three-quarters of an inch across the shoulders, but six inches up and down, and perhaps eight from nose to the ends of his two tails. And so he looks like a three-quarter moon. Soft, vertical bands of black, white, and egg-yellow run into one another on both sides, and a long white plume trails downward in a semicircle. He is the last word in form, translucent harmony of color and of motion. He moves about with rhythmic dignity and grace. At times his eyes bulge with an eagerness and self-importance as though the world depended on him for its security. Though he is constantly searching for food, he does not seem avaricious; and while he admits his importance, he is not proud.

Kihikihi has a rival in Nainai, who has been given an alias,--Surgeon Fish, light brown with an orange band on his sides. Nainai is heavier than Kihikihi, more plump. His color, too, is heavier and therefore seems more restrained. It is richer and hence stimulates envy and desire.

Lauwiliwili Unkunukuoeoe has no aliases, thank you, but he has a snout on which his Hawaiian name could be stamped in fourteen-point type and still leave room for half a dozen aliases. Only a water-creature could possess such a t.i.tle as this and keep from dragging it in the mud.

Knowing that he would be called by that appellation in life, his Creator must have compensated him with plenty of snout.