Come Dance With Me

34 Christabel Alderton

27 January 2003. Rudy’s house was in Hamakua Poko, on high ground overlooking a gulch. It was surrounded by trees except on the side that looked towards the sea. I was expecting something recognisably Hawaiian but this was a very modern structure with solar panels on the roof, a lot of glass and a cantilevered deck. ‘Built it myself,’ said Rudy. ‘Koa wood. This wood has Hawaiian soul, it’s the mother and father wood. They used to make sailing canoes from it. I stand on that deck and look out to sea where it’s full of sport-fishermen and yachts now and I see the ghosts of those canoes with the crab-claw sails. Out they go over the horizon into never-never. All gone with the mana that was in them. You don’t have to say anything.’

‘Never-never,’ said Django. He liked the sound of it.

Rudy named the trees for me but only a few of the names stuck in my memory: banana, mango, breadfruit, macadamia nut and tamarind. There were flowers everywhere, some of them plumeria, like the leis we’d been given. There was a tree that stood apart from the others; there were beautiful purple blossoms on it. I admit that I cry easily and I don’t always know why.

‘Why are you crying?’ said Rudy.

‘No reason,’ I said. ‘It’s just the purple. What is this tree?’

‘Jacaranda. It’s Esperanzas tree.’

‘Who’s Esperanza?’

‘Our daughter. She’s buried here.’

‘How old was she?’

‘She was stillborn.’

‘What’s stillborn?’ said Django.

‘Born dead,’ said Rudy.

Django didn’t say anything for a few moments, then, ‘Did God look away?’

Oh dear, I thought. I’d been hoping he’d inherit my atheism.

‘Yes,’ said Rudy. ‘He looked away.’

‘Why?’ said Django.

‘Because He’s crazy,’ said Rudy.

Again there was a little quiet space. Then Django said, ‘But He made the world.’

‘That proves it,’ said Rudy. He took us to the greenhouse which was close by, set among trees. It was big and professional-looking.

‘Did you build this too?’ said Django.

‘Yes. Keiko designed it and I built it.’ He opened the door and we walked into a whole bright world of flowers and their fragrances. Keiko had been working, and she took off her gloves as she came to meet us. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt but when she smiled it was like a silk fan opening with a Japanese court lady from another century painted on it. She picked up two leis with yellow flowers and hung them round our necks. ‘Aloha,’ she said, and did the honi greeting with Django and me. ‘These are your second greeting on your first visit. These kuala-mani plumeria are saying that you are twice welcome in our house.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘This is for you.’ I gave her a pair of very delicate enamelled violet-flower earrings from the thirties with a matching necklace. She put them on straightaway and I’d made the right choice.

‘I’ve never had violets before,’ she said, and kissed me.

‘This is for you,’ said Django to Rudy, and gave him one of the more complex Swiss army knives.

‘Mahalo’ said Rudy to Django. ‘I keep this with me always and think of you.’

‘Plumeria,’ said Django as he looked down at his lei.

‘There are twenty-five different kinds of plumeria,’ said Keiko. It’s the most popular flower for leis. We don’t grow them in here but they’re all over the place outside. And as you see, we have a few other things as well. This rose here is lokelani, it’s the official flower of this island. In other places it’s called a damask rose.’ It was a juicy-looking rose with a lovely pink colour and a smell that made you feel like waltzing. ‘Yes,’ said Keiko when she saw my feet moving, ‘it dances.’ She showed us orchids, heliconia, hibiscus, jasmines, gardenias and many more with names I don’t remember. I’m good with songs but not with trees and flowers.

Rudy had been busy in the kitchen while we were doing the greenhouse tour. We’d be having lunch in the large room with sliding glass doors that opened on to the deck. It was a bright room and it was made brighter by the flowers in it. The doors were open and a pleasant breeze stirred them and their fragrances. When Django saw the table he said to Rudy, ‘You made this too.’

‘Right,’ said Rudi. Although the table was flat it tapered to a point at both ends and the benches on either side were attached to it like outriggers on a canoe.

‘Koa?’ said Django.

‘What else?’ said Rudy.

In a corner of the room stood a screen, the kind you see women changing behind in films. All three panels were completely covered with pressed flowers under clear plastic. They were like beautiful ghosts caught in mid-flight; their ghost-colours are with me still, flower-thoughts and flower-memories. I recognised plumeria, jacaranda, hibiscus, lokelani and one or two more but when I asked Keiko for the names of the others she shook her head. ‘Don’t think names,’ she said, ‘just think flowers.’ I was going to ask if I could take a picture of the screen but then I decided not to. At home I have stacks of photographs of things I wanted to remember but when I try to recall those scenes and people what my mind gives me are the photos. Now, with no photo and no list of names I see that screen with its ghosts and I hear Django saying to Keiko, ‘What’s behind it?’

‘Ancestors,’ she said, and folded back a panel to show him the little shrine with its framed photographs of people with serious faces.

‘Dead?’ said Django.

‘Yes.’

He put his hands together and bowed as he’d seen it done in films and Keiko closed the screen and kissed him.

While Rudy was charcoal-grilling some of the thirty-five-pound fish he’d caught early that morning (ono was its name) we had sashimi with two kinds of dip, breadfruit chips and breadfruit fritters, and Steinlager beer. For Django there was fresh limeade and lemonade. Rudy seasoned the fish with black pepper, garlic butter and fresh-squeezed lime and it made me feel that everything I’d eaten before today hadn’t been real food. Django liked it too.

‘He eats like a grown-up,’ said Keiko.

‘Better than some,’ I said. ‘New things are no problem for him.’

By the time Rudy laid out a big platter of fruit Django’s eyes were closing. ‘Crocodile?’ he said.

‘I’d have to send out for that,’ said Rudy.

I took Crocodile out of my bag and gave it to Django and he was asleep before his head hit the pillow for his afternoon nap in one of the guest rooms.

‘That’s one hell of a kid you got there,’ said Rudy.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘If he was on the shelf in a kid store he’s probably the one I’d take home.’

‘Is he like his father?’ said Keiko. ‘I ask because he seems to have more in him than most kids.’

‘More what?’ I said.

‘Soul?’

Whenever I thought of Adam I could see him clearly, his face in the rosy lamplight and I could hear ‘Nuages’. And then what he said when I asked for his address and phone number. ‘When Django grows up I don’t think he’ll cheat on his wife or anybody else,’ I said. Not an appropriate response but that’s what came out of my mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Keiko. ‘I ought not to have intruded into your past.’

‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘My past itself is the intruder. I tell myself not to look back but it’s always in front of me.’

‘We know something about that,’ said Rudy. ‘The only thing is to keep busy. Keiko runs our lei business and I do guiding, carpentry, anything that comes along.’

‘Plus koko and no uke,’ said Keiko.

‘We got to repossess our country,’ said Rudy. ‘Hawaii can’t go on being just a tourist attraction full of Uncle Toms handing out leis and doing the hula and luaus. We’re not part of the United States, we have a culture and a history of our own. We come from a people who made big double canoes with crab-claw sails for voyaging thousands of miles. With their hands they carved the canoes and wove the sails and took their chances on the open sea. They didn’t know what was over the horizon and they had no compass and no maps to show the way to the new islands they were looking for.’

‘Where did they come from?’ I said.

‘First from Samoa to the Marquesas, then the Marquesas to here,’ said Rudy.

‘Why couldn’t they stay where they were?’

‘Because they wanted to see what was over the horizon,’ said Rudy. ‘I think Django’ll do the same when he’s grown.’

‘How did they find Hawaii?’ I asked.

‘They watched waves and currents, wind and stars,’ said Rudy. ‘They watched birds and they scanned the sky for the loom of islands that were out of sight and they found them. They found Hawaii and made it our home but after the whites took over there was a time when even our language was banned, along with the hula, not the pretty one for tourists but the real one that told our history. We’re better than the people who took this country from us.’

‘Take it easy,’ said Keiko. ‘You’re among friends. You don’t have to be the big kahuna with us.’

‘OK,’ said Rudy. ‘I’m taking it easy.’

Probably nobody has an easy life, I thought. We sat there looking out at the sky getting dark over the sea. When it was time to go Keiko gave me a corked bottle full of some muddy liquid. ‘Drink about half a cup of this before you go to bed,’ she said. ‘I made it for you fresh. It will give you a good night’s sleep.’

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘It’s kava, made from the roots of the pepper plant.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll try it.’

As we went down the Kuihelani Highway to the coast and than back to Lahaina the road kept coming towards us in the headlights and everything felt like noplace.

‘Maybe there are whales out there in the dark,’ said Django.

That night, long after Django had been put to bed, I stood on the veranda and looked up at the sky. There was a heavy overcast; I couldn’t see the moon and I couldn’t see the Plough and home wasn’t where I was.