Come Dance With Me

  I did.

  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 mad
e 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.

  35

  Elias Newman

  30 January 2003. Soon I’d be in Honolulu where I’d get a flight to Maui. Now that I knew about Django’s death I was very uneasy about this ‘rememberance day’ that Christabel had said was the purpose of her trip. Such a strange woman — so full of life and so preoccupied with death.

  I can never get used to the passage of the self through time and space and the passage of time and space through the self. The years in me surged up like acid reflux to mingle with the travel hours I was trying to digest while the miles lay like a lump in my stomach and half-forgotten songs spun in my head: ‘The stars shine above you,/ Yet linger awhile;/ They whisper “I love you,”/ So linger awhile …’ Along with ‘The Spanish Cavalier’, ‘Juanita’, ‘Herr Oluf’ and other greatest hits.

  So what was all this about, this late-blooming love? Why not slide gently and smoothly into old age without all this aggravation? ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said to myself. ‘It happened and you don’t have a choice. And this kind of aggravation is what makes you not dead. Be thankful for it.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’m thankful.’ I leant forward in my seat and cursed the slowness of the plane.

  36

  Jimmy Wicks

  29 January 2003. When you think of it, making songs and performing them is a strange thing to do. Sometimes when I’m watching other bands on TV I turn off the sound and there are these guys working up a sweat and jumping around and moving their mouths and they look pretty stupid. This evening I was standing outside The Anchor & Hope looking at the river and watching a cabin cruiser, Blue Guitar, go by when a train went over the bridge. Did I hear the boat and the train? I wasn’t sure. Was the sound turned off just for a moment?

  37

  Christabel Alderton

  30 January 2003. Still doing my remembering of 1993. It’s like a hair shirt. On the morning of our second full day on Maui, Django and I had an early breakfast at the Pioneer Inn and got ready to be picked up by Rudy. The weather was cool and cloudy and I didn’t particularly feel like watching for whales although that was the whole purpose of the trip. I’d have been quite happy to have a second breakfast somewhere on Front Street and linger over coffee. I’d drunk the kava before going to bed. It was bitter and it made my mouth and throat numb after a couple of minutes but then the warmth of it spread through me and I was off into a deep sleep. I had bad dreams that I couldn’t remember and I woke up with a heavy head and a bad taste in my mouth and here was Rudy. ‘Have a good night?’ he said.

  ‘The kava helped me sleep all right,’ I said. ‘Now I’d like to wake up. I’ve got what feels like a hangover.’

  ‘You have to be eighteen to order kava in a kava bar,’ said Rudy. ‘You can feel it the next morning if you’re not as strong as you might be.’

  ‘Now you tell me.’

  ‘Whales today?’ said Rudy. Lucille was panting and growling and ready to roll.

  ‘Is there a place with a good view of the action and not too many other tourists?’ I said.

  ‘We could go up the coast and around to Kahakuloa Head,’ said Rudy. ‘There are good lookouts along the cliffs and it’s a nice drive.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘let’s do that.’ And off we went, with the sea to our left looking cold and heavy.

  ‘Kahakuloa Head,’ said Django. He liked the sound of it. ‘Has it got a face?’

  ‘No,’ said Rudy. ‘It isn’t that kind of a head. It’s just a great big rock sticking up out of the water.’

  ‘Kahakuloa Head,’ said Django again. ‘No face. No eyes.’

  ‘Here’s Kaanapali,’ said Rudy. He stopped Lucille and pulled over to the side. ‘See the train?’ He pointed to the right where a Disneyland kind of old-fashioned steam train was huffing and puffing, all red and black and brass.

  ‘Hooeee!’ echoed Django as it blew its whistle.

  ‘A-N-A-K-A,’ he said, reading off the gold letters on the side of the red cab.

  ‘Anaka must be the name of the engine,’ I said. LK & P RR were the gold letters on the black tender. Django couldn’t do anything with the ampersand.

  ‘That’s what used to be the old sugar train, the Lahaina-Kaanapali and Pacific Railroad,’ said Rudy. ‘Look down there to your left at that black rock that juts out into the water.’ We looked. There was a white bird with black markings and long black tail streamers wheeling over it.

  ‘It’s sacred, that rock,’ said Rudy. ‘Kekaa is its name. That’s where Maui souls used to jump off into the spirit world.’

  ‘That bird down there, is it a soul?’ said Django.

  ‘That’s a tropic-bird,’ said Rudy. ‘Maybe it’s a soul, I don’t know.’

  ‘You said they used to jump off there,’ said Django. ‘Don’t they do it any more?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rudy. ‘Maybe they do.’

  ‘Some of them must come from far away,’ said Django. ‘So they have to fly there?’

  ‘OK,’ said Rudy. ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘So why do they need to jump off a rock?’ said Django. ‘Why don’t they just fly straight into the spirit world?’

  ‘You got me there,’ said Rudy.

  ‘Maybe the black rock is a door to the spirit world,’ said Django. ‘That’s why they have to come there.’

  ‘That’s the best explanation I’ve heard so far,’ said Rudy.

  Ten years ago and I remember every word. We went up along the coast through Kapalua. ‘This is where they grow golf, hotels and pineapples,’ said Rudy.

  ‘What’s golf?’ said Django.

  ‘People hitting a little white ball with fancy clubs,’ said Rudy.

  ‘How can they grow golf and hotels?’ said Django.

  ‘They plant money and the golf and the hotels spring up,’ said Rudy.

>   ‘Where do they get the money?’ said Django.

  ‘From tourists,’ said Rudy.

  ‘Like me and Mum?’ said Django.

  Rudy looked at me and wiped imaginary sweat from his brow.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ I said to him. ‘You started it with your smartass remarks.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rudy to Django. ‘Like you and your mom.’

  ‘We don’t hit any little white balls,’ said Django.

  ‘OK,’ said Rudy. ‘My mistake. Sorry.’

  The road took us along high cliffs. Far down below, the surf crashed on the rocks. We rounded the top of West Maui and drove a couple of miles, then Rudy pulled over and we got out of the car. Even seeing someone in a film standing on top of a tall building makes me tingle from the feet upwards; I wished we were watching for whales from a boat and I held on to Django’s hand. ‘There’s Kahakuloa Head,’ said Rudy. It was a huge rough rock less than a mile away, grey and ugly and it began to grow larger in my eyes the way things do when you approach over water. Then it froze like a photograph and I froze too: I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. My hand was empty. I looked around for Django, heard him say, ‘Another door’, saw the blur of his T-shirt, then he wasn’t there. A humpback whale surged up out of the water off Kahakuloa Head and fell back with a sound like a thunderclap and a tower of spray.

  Again and again I live that moment and wonder what happened. Rudy said Django got too close to the edge and slipped. How could I have let go of his hand? Death is such a big thing and he was such a small person.

  ‘Right,’ I said to myself, ‘that’s it for 1993 and our tenth-anniversary trip down Memory Lane. Now if we can return to 30 January, 2003 …’

  This time I’d made my own arrangements. I hired a car at Kahului, drove to the Pioneer Inn, and checked myself in. I didn’t want to see Rudy Ka’uhane. I was still full of anger, more at myself than at him. I couldn’t help thinking that he ought not to have taken us to Kahakuloa but I was brought up against the fact that I’d made the decision not to go out on a boat.