Moloka'i (23 page)

With a start Rachel realized that the voice, the music, was coming out of that enormous metal flower!

As Rachel and the others approached, the man on the porch opened his eyes, gave them a friendly smile, motioned them closer as the song concluded.

“E muoio disperato!

E non ho amato—”

The voice soared to impossible heights, at once tremulous and strong, finishing with a flourish:

“—mai tanto la vita!”

The cylinder stopped rotating and the
haole
—amiable looking, bald but with a fringe of white beard—turned to greet his guests.
“Aloha.”

“Aloha,”
Rachel said. Then, with a wondering glance at the machine: “What is that?”

“A gramophone,” he replied, with a slight Irish accent. “You’ve never seen one?”

“I have,” Hina said, bored. “Victrola?”

“Columbia, actually. The horn’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

“How’d that voice get inside the box?” Francine asked.

“Ah, well,” the man said, pleased for the opportunity to show off, “it’s not in the box, it’s on this cylinder. It’s called a recording. Different sounds become different grooves on the disc, you see, and this stylus”—he pointed to a kind of needle—“turns them back into sound.”

Francine eyed him dubiously.

“Who was singing?” Rachel asked.

“Ah, that was Caruso! The greatest tenor in the world.”

Rachel eyed the wax cylinder on the gramophone. “Was this . . . ‘recording’ . . . made in Italy?”

The man nodded. “Milan, I believe.” He cranked the phonograph, and in moments the same voice, with precisely the same inflections, again floated out of the horn.

Rachel marveled at it. Here she was in Hawai'i, listening to a voice that had first stirred the air of Milan, Italy, on the other side of the world. Part of that distant place had been engraved onto the cylinder spinning in front of her, to be conjured up again anywhere, anytime. And not just a place to be conjured, but etchings of a past time brought to life again, at will. When this man Caruso died this recording would live on, the sound of his voice continuing to stir the air long after.

“Who cares, a gramophone!” Hina shouted. “We got a party to go to!”

Hina prodded the girls back to their wagon, Caruso’s
canto di addio
bidding them sweet farewell.

Downtown Kaunakakai was a single street no more than three blocks long; it looked more like a plantation camp than a town. All of its businesses—including the biggest, Chang Tung’s general store—were closed, with the exception of a saloon owned, Hina said, by Rudolph Meyer’s son Otto. That was boisterously open, but Luka drove past it and down a side street to a little cottage. Inside and out there were people laughing, talking, drinking. Guitar music drifted out through the open door.

Thrilled to be topside, pleased with their own daring and wickedness, the Bishop girls mingled with the other guests. Soon Emily was asked to dance and Hina was laughing with old friends. Rachel accepted her first beer ever; she took a swallow, started to blanch but turned it into a smile. Louisa seemed not to share Rachel’s distaste, downing three Schlitzes in rapid succession. Cecelia disappeared with a boy early on.

Only the usually gregarious Francine shied from joining in the fun. Rachel noticed that she was hiding her disfigured left hand; nearly fingerless now, it never came out of her dress pocket. Rachel joined her and they listened to the guitarist singing and playing Hawaiian tunes. She was surprised to see that he strummed the strings not with his fingers but with a kind of steel bar; the result was music unlike anything Rachel had ever heard, the chords sounding almost crystalline. Someone passed a calabash of
poi
around the room and Rachel was about to dip into it when she stopped, realizing the risk to which she would be exposing the other guests. She passed the calabash on; a minute later she was disturbed to see tipsy Louisa scoop some
poi
from the bowl with two fingers, eat it, then take some more. Rachel tried to get Louisa’s attention but it was no use—her mind seemed to be somewhere between Moloka'i and the moon.

A tall, good-looking young man came up and invited Rachel to dance. She knew how—the nuns had taught her—but she had never danced with a boy before and she felt her cheeks growing hot with embarrassment as he led her onto the makeshift dance floor.

He took Rachel’s left hand in his and slipped his other hand around her waist. “I’m Tom Akamu,” he said.

“Rachel Kalama.” Her skin tingled where he was touching it; she found it difficult to look at him without blushing.

“I don’t see you here before,” he said. “You local?”

She shook her head. “From Honolulu. I’m . . . visiting.” Technically it was true.

“You pretty tall for a
wahine
. I like that. Not many girls I can almost look in the eye, you know?”

They danced and talked about nothing in particular—how Tom was born in H
lawa Valley and now worked for the Moloka'i Ranch—and Rachel spoke about her family as though she had just left them for a pleasure trip and would be seeing them in only a week’s time, as though the last nine years in Kalaupapa had never happened. She liked the pretense; she liked the comforting sensation of normality she felt in this boy’s arms. Ever so gently he drew her closer, leaving no air between them. With more ease than she had expected she leaned her head against his shoulder, liking the feel of his chest rising and falling as they danced to the sweet strains of “Hali'alaulani.”

“I am your new love to be kissed

My flower, my lei, my love for you

Is unforgettable
. . .”

Tom leaned in to her, his breath grazing her cheek. Rachel tipped her face up to meet his and his lips brushed hers. What began as the lightest of touches quickly became more urgent. Rachel’s whole body thrilled at the sudden, unexpected intimacy: a man she barely knew was kissing her, wanted her, and she found to her delight that she wanted him as well. She thought neither of her past nor her future; for a moment she was gloriously normal, a girl like any other in the arms of a boy who desired her.

But as she reveled in the normalcy of her passion a voice within reminded her why she found it so exciting.

you dirty leper

She broke away from him, a reflex. Tom looked at her with confusion. “Something wrong?” he asked.

He stepped toward her and she shrank back.

“I—I’m sorry,” she said. “I . . . can’t.”

She couldn’t bear the hurt and disappointment in his eyes. She turned and ran away, away from the sweet music and sweeter temptation—and past a knowing Francine.

Rachel bolted out of the house, into the balmy night. She ran through the front yard and onto the dusty path on which Luka’s wagon sat, the horse gnawing at its bit. Tears blurred her vision as rain had that long-ago day at Bishop Home; after a few blocks she saw the backs of the buildings along Main Street, and rounded the corner.

She hurried past the raucous laughter and loud music of the saloon, only slowing when she was safely past it. She paused in front of Chang Tung’s closed store and found herself peering into its window. Much of what she saw in it was familiar, but it was the unfamiliar which drew her attention: a cherry-red sign showing a regal woman in an ivory gown, carrying a feathered fan, promoting something called
Coca-Cola (Delicious· Refreshing · At Soda Fountains · 5¢
). A bottle whose yellow label identified it tersely and mysteriously as
Bayer Aspirin.
A hand-lettered sign announcing,
Now taking orders for new “Gillette Safety Razor.”
A handful of magazines stood propped up, covers fading in the sun: one showed a young couple riding in a shiny new carriage gliding horseless down a country road, giving Rachel her first glimpse of an “automobile.” Another magazine had fallen over and its back cover, upside down in the window, entreated Rachel to
Take a KODAK with you
—a “folding” camera a fraction of the size of the bulky tripod cameras she had seen in Honolulu as a child.

It was like gazing into the future, except the future had already happened.

“Rachel. You okay?”

Rachel turned to find Francine at her side.

“Yeah,” Rachel lied, “sure.”

They were silent a moment as they took in the contents of the store window, and then Francine said, “This maybe wasn’t such a good idea.”

Rachel took Francine’s gnarled hand in hers, cupped her fingers around it, and nodded.

T

he party looked to go on all night but Hina began gathering the girls together around one A.M. This was still cutting it a little close. The wagon ride to Kala'e would take a couple of hours, the descent down the
pali
another two; they’d be lucky to get back before dawn.

Cecelia very nearly had to be pried, like a flapjack off the griddle, from the arms of a deliciously naked young man behind the house; and Louisa, having passed out long ago, was mercifully pliant as Rachel and Emily poured her into the wagon, though halfway across the island she woke with a start and began vomiting over the side.

When Luka stopped the wagon on the outskirts of Kala'e and the Meyer estate, the girls got out and all stood there silently a moment, the same thought passing through all their minds. Emily was the one to vocalize it:

“Why the hell we going back?”

Rachel’s heart was racing, out of excitement or fear, she wasn’t sure which.

“Yeah,” Cecelia said thoughtfully, “good question.”

Hina pointed out that there were parts of East Moloka'i so remote a person could live there for years without being found.

“Same thing on Ni'ihau or Kaua'i,” Cecelia said. “We could hide there forever before anyone finds us!”

Rachel breathed in the air sweet with freedom and adventure. She wanted to keep breathing it, wanted it more than anything else on earth. But now the unease she’d felt in Kaunakakai assumed a shape she could recognize.

“You’re not free,” she found herself saying, “if you’re in hiding.”

Hina sneered. “Says who?”

Rachel said, “I won’t spend my life running and hiding like some criminal.”

Hina laughed shortly. “We’re already criminals.”

Rachel replied with a vehemence that startled even herself.

“No, we’re not!” she snapped. “They can arrest us. They can send us here, make us prisoners. But they can’t make us criminals!

“I want to leave Kalaupapa as much as anybody,” she told them. “But when I do it’ll be because I’m cured—discharged! That’s the only way
I’ll
ever be free.”

Before she could think twice about it, she turned and started walking down the road to Kala'e.

Francine fell in step behind her. One by one the other girls followed.

The guard was still there at the summit—seemed to be waiting rather eagerly, in fact—and once again they disrobed and changed back into their burgundy uniforms, waving a cheery goodbye to him as they headed toward the trail. He waved and called out, “Come back anytime!”

Descending the
pali
was a hundred times worse than climbing it. The dark of the trail beneath their feet blended with the darkness of the sky and the ground far below—every time Rachel took a step she worried that she was stepping into space. Francine stumbled once and Louisa needed to be supported for part of the way, but at long last they could glimpse the black sickle of 'Awahua Beach in the moonlight; in minutes they were back on solid ground. They hurried to Bishop Home, stealing across the convent’s back lawn, tiptoeing toward their dormitory.

And as they rounded a corner, they suddenly found themselves facing Mother Marianne—older but no less intimidating—holding a lantern and equally surprised to see them there, in their dirt-encrusted uniforms, at five in the morning.

Louisa threw up again.

Hina grasped at something, anything, to say. “Ah . . . we were just . . . just—”

She stopped, not having the vaguest idea what they were “just” doing. Mother stared, clearly amazed and relieved to see them . . . and after a long moment, she let out a weary sigh.

“I don’t want to know,” she said, much to the girls’ astonishment. “I really don’t.” She took in their dirty faces and filthy uniforms. “For heaven’s sake get yourselves cleaned up. Go wash your clothes in the stream, no one’s going to do it for you. And we won’t speak of this again. Is that understood?”

The girls nodded. Louisa still looked queasy. “Child,” Mother said, “if you’re going to retch, by all means do so. The bushes are right over there.”

Louisa headed for the shrubbery and did as she was told. The others gratefully ran for the dormitory, but as Rachel passed her Mother called out, “Rachel?”