The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (39 page)

I wiped the sweat from my horse. Then, with a
final affectionate slap on her hindquarters, I set her galloping across the paddock. I watched the mare wistfully for a while, savoring my last sight of her, kicking up her heels and whinnying with the sheer delight of being free. I hoped I would soon feel the same way.

I skulked back to the lodge, keeping an eye out for Jack, but it was barely dawn, and no one was around. Except Maluhia.

She was on the veranda outside the kitchen. She was crouched in a fetal ball with her knees hunched under her chin. She stared at me dully with blank golden eyes, and I noted with shock her swollen mouth and bruised face.

“Maluhia,” I gasped, sinking to my knees beside her. “What happened?” But even then I knew. I had observed Jack often enough sitting at the table, sipping whiskey with his father, coveting her supple body, the firm upward thrust of her breasts under the sarong. Jack had gone to her room, and Maluhia had rejected his advances. When she screamed, he’d beaten her into silence and submission.

This time I knew I would kill him. Livid with rage, I stalked toward his room, but Maluhia cried out. “He is not worth it, Johnny,” she sobbed. “After all, I am only a bought woman. What else can I expect?”

But my anger only grew as I listened to her tell me how worthless she was. I knew she had more integrity and dignity than the man who had bought her. I grabbed a knife and went looking for Jack, while Maluhia ran to get Kahanu.

I found Jack snoozing in a hammock slung between two palms where the lawns sloped down to the sea. I took the knife from my belt and slashed the rope, spilling him onto the grass. Jack scrambled quickly to his feet, then crouched low in a boxing stance. He raised his fists, grinning.

“I guess you found out I took what you’ve always
wanted.” He taunted me as he circled me. “Funny, I thought Maluhia was a mother figure to you. But then, you’re not beyond a little motherfucking, are you, brother? Just for the record, she wasn’t worth it. It’s a myth what they say about Chinese women. Maluhia’s not woman enough for a man of my appetites and dimensions, though I’m sure she would suit a little monkey like you just fine. As for me, I’ll take a good warm-blooded white woman any day—”

I lunged at him with the knife, catching him on the shoulder. As he dodged backward, I stumbled and almost fell. I saw him put his hand to his shoulder, then look at his bloody fingers. And in that moment he forgot all about the inheritance and needing to keep me alive for three more years.

I was desperately trying to regain my balance when he jumped me. He grabbed my hand and twisted it behind my back until I let go of the knife. He bent to get it and I drop-kicked him, but his rage had given him lightning speed. He took hold of the knife and slashed out at me. I heard a faint hiss as the flesh of my cheek opened to the bone, and I tasted the warm, metallic flavor of my own blood.

I kicked and fought in my Oriental style, but I was no match for his extra height and weight and the sheer power of his rage. He lunged at my neck, at my chest, my groin. I put up my arms to protect myself, screaming not with fear but with an anger that matched his. I did not care whether I lived or died. I loved gentle Maluhia, and I wanted to see Jack dead for what he had done to her.

Strong arms finally forced Jack off me. Kahanu punched him to the ground. He snatched the knife and towered murderously over him.

“No no, Kahanu,” I heard Maluhia scream. “I am not worthy of such an act of retribution. I am only a
kawahine
, a concubine.”

A tremor ran through Kahanu’s massive torso as
he looked from her to Jack. Then he strode to the water’s edge and tossed the bloody knife into the ocean.

Jack sat up, rubbing his jaw, wiping the blood from his face. He was laughing. “I hope you die, you motherfucking little Monkey,” he yelled, clambering to his feet. “I’ll get you yet—when you’re not hiding behind Maluhia’s skirts and Kahanu is not around to protect you.” He was still laughing as he walked away.

Kahanu picked me up and carried me back to the stables. He laid me down on the sweet fresh straw and Maluhia bathed my wounds, but I was bleeding badly, and she could not staunch the flow.

Kahanu looked worriedly at Maluhia. He knew I needed medical help. He said that when it was dark, he would take me by boat to Maui, where his family lived. The doctor would stitch me up, and his family would hide me and look after me until I was better.

Maluhia was the eyes and ears of the household, she knew everything, and now she told me that Archer was planning to kill me when I was eighteen and to take “my inheritance.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about. “What inheritance?” I asked because as far as I knew I was penniless. She shook her head; she didn’t know. But she knew Jack could no longer be trusted; he wanted me dead.
Now
.

“I won’t go away without you,” I said stubbornly, realizing that I was leaving her at Jack’s mercy.

She said, “You are only a boy. You must go at once to Maui. When you are strong enough, you must go far away, where they will never find you.” And then she pressed her life savings, forty dollars, into my hand.

“Never come back, Johnny,” she whispered, bending to kiss me good-bye.

I told myself I would remember her sweet, chaste
kiss forever, and the scent of the plumeria blossom in her hair, the cool smoothness of her lips, and her soft dark eyes shining with love and unshed tears. I knew I would never see Maluhia again, and the wrench in my heart was more painful than my wounds. As the boat slipped away from the dock into the darkness, I sat in the bow, staring sadly back at the now-invisible island, holding her in my memory.

“Go back where you came from,” Kahanu urged me as the boat lifted over the waves. “Tell no one who you are, or they will surely find you. Make a new life for yourself. You are being thrust into manhood, my friend. The gods are telling you to take the opportunity of a new life.”

I watched the handsome bronze giant guide his boat across the channel, and I thought how strange it was that Jack Kane should be the one who had finally given me my boat ride to freedom.

I wondered what I would do with such a prize. I had not left Kalani for ten years. I had never seen a town or a city. I had never even been to Honolulu or Maui. I thought with a sinking heart that Archer had been right. I was a savage, and I did not know how to behave in a civilized society.

I stared across the waves at Maui. I had Maluhia’s forty dollars in my pocket and the bundle of clean clothes she had sent with me. And I was free.

29

I
knew Kahanu planned to tell Archer I had made my escape on Jack’s little boat, as I had originally intended. He said he would scuttle the boat and tell them that I must have been lost at sea. I don’t know whether they believed him or not, but no one came looking for me. Kahanu’s family cared for me as they would their own son, and I envied their slow island way of life, the gentleness of it, each day blending sweetly into the next.

They were happy people, and I still remember them gathering on the lanai of their small frame house on the long, warm evenings, greeting friends and neighbors who always stopped by for a chat or to share a meal. Someone would be strumming a ukulele, and they would sing the lovely old chants and songs, and the women would dance; even the old ones were still caught up in the rhythms and the joy of their island life. I envied it, but I was apprehensive and anxious to move on.

Five weeks later, with many farewell leis and alohas, I was on a slow boat heading for Honolulu.

The island of Maui and Kahanu’s family had been
an easy transition for me; I understood them and their way of life. After all, I was more like them than like my so-called family. But Honolulu was a sprawling, crowded city, hard-edged and fast-paced for an island boy like myself. And when I saw the famous Kane name emblazoned on the wharves and ships and even on a street sign, I knew I was in enemy territory. I wasted no time: I gave myself a new name, John Jones, and got a job on the first cattle boat I came across that was plying between Honolulu and San Francisco. Ironically, it turned out to be a Kanoi Ranch boat, but no one knew me. After all, no one had ever seen Johnny Leconte. I could handle cattle, and that was all anyone was interested in.

I had been awed by Honolulu, but I was terrified by San Francisco. I had never seen such tall buildings, so many automobiles, such throngs of people, such shouting and bustle and noise. I hesitated to cross the roads, not knowing which way to look. I did not know what to order in the cheap café I went to or how to pay. People looked strangely at me in the street, staring over their shoulders at my ragamuffin clothes. Ashamed, I went into a store and bought two shirts and the first pair of real pants I had ever owned. I also had my hair cut by a barber, and when I saw myself in the mirror, I saw a different person. But I knew I was still a raw country lad in the big city.

I counted my money and found that I had only five dollars left. I would have to get a job, but the only thing I knew was cattle. I was wondering what to do when a young fellow, standing in line at a hot dog stand on Market Street, spoke to me. He was wearing a smart uniform with a short red jacket and black pants, and he told me he worked as a bellhop at one of the big hotels. He looked me up and down in a friendly style, and I guess I looked needy all right, so he told me there was a job available if I was interested. Now, I had kept to myself on the cattle boat,
barely exchanging more than a few words with the other men, and this fellow was the first real person I had encountered outside the islands.

His name was Augustus Stevens. “Call me Gus,” he said cheerfully as we walked back together to the hotel. He was smaller than I, and just as thin. He said he was from the East Coast and had come out west to seek his fortune. He was sixteen years old at the time, and many years later I was to see his name again, as the president of a famous oil company, so I guess he finally made that fortune. But then he was struggling to hold it all together, just as I was, and we formed an instant bond.

That afternoon I became a bellhop with my name, Johnny, written on a badge pinned to my smart red jacket, running errands, opening doors, and hefting baggage at one of the city’s deluxe hotels. The basic pay was poor, but Gus had said that the tips helped even it up, and he was right. I found myself a small cheap unfurnished room in the Chinese quarter and by eating mainly rice and bean sprouts in the local restaurants, I found I could just manage.

I had gravitated to the Chinese quarter because I felt safe there. I understood the customs of the Chinese better than those of the brash, hard-eyed men I worked with. But there was still not enough distance between me and the islands. I knew Archer and Jack often came over to San Francisco, and I was constantly on the alert, looking over my shoulder in the streets and keeping a watchful eye out at the hotel. I needed to put many thousands of miles between the Kanes and me before I could feel that I had really escaped them.

I hoarded what few dollars I could with the vague notion of somehow making my way back to France and the Villa Mimosa. I wondered if Nanny Beale was still there. And if she would remember the boy she had left on Kalani all those years ago. But when I
read in the newspapers about the war raging in Europe and that France had been occupied by the Germans, I knew that Nanny and the villa were just a dream.

The year was 1941. I had settled into my job at the hotel, taking pride in my quick service, smiling my thanks for the tips I received. On my days off I explored the city with the eyes of a man seeing the pyramids for the first time. I traveled on the clanging cable cars, and on the ferries that took me across the bay to the woods and hills. Occasionally I visited a movie theater with Gus. Mostly we went to westerns. I enjoyed the horses and the action.

And then, on December 7, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States was at war. I thought with horror of Oahu—that peaceful island and the waterfront and all the wonderful ships I had seen, now devoured by flames—and of the many lives lost. Filled with anger, I immediately went with Gus to enlist in the Navy.