Waking Up in Eden (22 page)

When Robert returned to Chicago after his five-year European adventure studying in Munich, Paris, and London, he declared his painting career a fiasco and set fire to all of his canvases. For the next two years, he did very little. Unlike his ambitious and sometimes uncouth father, Robert would never work a day in his life, distinguishing himself in Chicago society columns as a
“club man and philanthropist” who appeared at the opera or gave parties and dinners. At his father's pressing suggestion, Robert agreed to try to make a go of it on the Piatt County farmland that Sam had deeded to him at birth. Robert employed experienced farm managers who actually grew the corn and wheat crops that covered his twelve thousand acres, while he maintained a posh apartment in Chicago and quickly departed for England to find a model for the grand country house he planned to build. As became his habit, he took a young male protégé in tow, Ralph Borie, an architect from Philadelphia. They spent an entire year looking at castles and baronial halls before settling on the Stuart-styled Ham House in Surrey as a suitable design. Robert directed Borie to build a near copy along the banks of the Saginaw River near the tiny Illinois town of Monticello.

Although he named it “The Farms,” there was nothing farm-like or modest about the house, with its ninety-foot entrance hall opening into a two-story library and a music room with twenty-two-foot ceilings. He concocted another European grand tour to fill up the house. With another young artistic companion, Russell Hewitt, Robert stormed through Europe, shipping back spoils by the ton. To landscape new gardens to surround his Monticello manor, Allerton again turned to English design, copying its rectilinear angles, walled gardens, and straight allées. His vision soared ambitiously large: He treated the entire 1,500 acres of his estate as a garden. He built a parterre maze of clipped boxwood hedges and laid squared brick beds for spring bulbs and a collection of two hundred peony varieties. Robert conceived of “garden rooms” — the Sunken Garden, the Lost Garden — as spaces carved from the forest, the surrounding vegetation creating natural walls.

Chicago society eagerly sought invitations to The Farms. The
Chicago Tribune
chronicled Robert's weekend parties attended by the Marshall Fields, the McCormicks, debutantes, and matrons. The newspaper pronounced Robert as the “Most Eligible Bachelor in Chicago.” One young woman visited so often that she and Robert became engaged to be married. The engagement was soon broken off. There were limits to his endurance. Gentlemen suitors also came calling, attracted to the uncommonly handsome young millionaire.

As he glided into middle age, Robert sponsored activities for the nearby University of Illinois School of Architecture at Urbana-Champaign. John liked to tell the story of how Robert had been invited to attend a “Dad's Day” football game and dinner at the U of I Zeta Psi fraternity house in the fall of 1922. The childless older man was paired with an orphaned student, handsome John Wyatt Gregg.

Then twenty-two, John was older than most other students. And broke. To earn free room and board, he worked as the steward for the fraternity. His mother, Kate, had died of cancer in 1918. His father, James, a traveling salesmen, had died of pneumonia in one of the killing epidemics that swept the country in 1921. They had raised John in a roomy boarding house two blocks from Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, endowing him with good manners that complemented his natural charm. Tall and slim, with a high brow and clear eyes, he was good-looking, open, and friendly. He sang in the Glee Club and signed up for membership in the Architecture Society. The Ku Klux Klan attracted wide membership in the Midwest in the 1920s, and John Gregg joined the campus chapter, perhaps an early sign of the self-loathing he would later exhibit when he called homosexuals “queers” and “fairies.”

After John graduated in 1926, he spent weekends at The Farms as Robert's companion. Robert introduced him as his foster son and took him everywhere — to parties, to the opera, on travels. Some called John Gregg an opportunist. Others, a captive bird in a silken net. Robert arranged for John to work for society architect David Adler, designing big houses, mostly English in inspiration, for the wealthy. John lived in Robert's Astor Street apartment during the week, until Adler's wealthy clientele could no longer afford grand mansions after the 1929 stock market crash, and the architect nearly closed his practice. John moved full-time down to Monticello, becoming Robert's secretary, in-house architect, landscape draftsman to design a garden folly or a flimsy gazebo, shopping companion with an educated eye, and general dogsbody.

With John now free for winter travels, Robert's itineraries grew more elaborate. Something reminded them of a favorite restaurant in Paris? They flew over for a meal. They wanted inspiration for building a new garden room? They booked two weeks to wander the gardens of Italy. The shopping became frenzied. Robert now bought gifts for the Art Institute, bestowing on the museum six Rodin sculptures and a Picasso drawing. He built a wing for the museum, named in honor of his gentle stepmother, the Agnes Allerton Textile Wing (now subsumed into the Decorative Arts galleries), and set out with determination to fill it. Toward the end of his life, Robert was surprised when told by a
Chicago Tribune
reporter that he was the biggest donor in the history of the Chicago Art Institute. Today Robert's extraordinary gifts to the Art Institute are only minimally remembered. A plaque hangs near the main entrance, unnoticed by museum goers streaming past it.

L
UXURY HOTELS, SHOPPING
malls, fast-food chains, and movie theaters glut the western lobe of the figure-eight-shaped island of Maui. Mount Haleakala, the 10,023-foot-high dormant volcano, dominates the eastern half of the island with its cinder-dry moonscape, studded in spots by the giant silversword plant.

Only the more adventurous tourists drive to the tiny town of Hana on Maui's remote eastern tip, following a swerving two-lane road that zigzags through 617 curves, crosses 54 rickety bridges, and threads through jungle terrain that becomes increasingly empty of human habitation. The small settlement of Hana at the end of the road offers little to do but buy an ice cream at the old Hasegawa General Store. The largest remaining population of pure-blood Hawaiians scrape out a meager living here, many on welfare, housed in modern subdivisions that are a world away from the wealthy tourists luxuriating in the nearby five-star Hotel Hana-Maui. Movie stars, moguls, and other millionaires fly into the tiny airport to avoid the drive, then bunker down in mansions tucked in the surrounding hills. A little further out of town, a quiet cemetery holds the unadorned grave of aviator Charles Lindbergh, who ended his days nearby, seeking
privacy and peace in a location as far from American society as he could go and still remain on U.S. soil.

If you know where to look, a narrow dirt lane leads to Kahanu Garden, one of the five satellite sites managed by the National Tropical Botanical Garden. The Garden closed it to tours along with its other facilities after Hurricane Iniki. Kahanu doesn't offer much as a botanical garden. Its lonely peninsula is surrounded by jagged lava rocks and crashing waves. A virus-infected palm collection slowly rots away. In one corner, a collection of breadfruit grows in rows.

But all the local residents know about Kahanu and its vast, ancient Hawaiian temple. Elders stay away. The younger Hawaiians creep in after dark, on dares. Locals whisper tales of full-moon animal sacrifices and ghostly sounds of drumbeats emanating from thin air. Former Kauai mayor Maryanne Kusaka swears that when she was a young girl growing up in Hana, she and friends would sneak up to the temple steps and take photographs that, when developed, came out blank.

The great Pi'ilanihale Heiau rises ninety feet from the flatlands, at once dark, brooding, heroic, Mayan in scale, intimidating, and amazing as an engineering feat. It is the largest temple ever built in Hawaii, perhaps in all of Polynesia. The Hawaiian equivalent of Chartres Cathedral. Begun in the fifteenth century, construction spanned two centuries. The structure consists entirely of serrated lava bits and pieces, all fitted together without mortar, like a jigsaw puzzle. When I visited Kahanu early in my tour of Garden properties, I ignored warnings not to walk on the immense platform, the size of two football fields. I carefully picked my way across it, imagining what it would look like filled with platoons of Hawaiian warriors, each a thousand
strong. Archeologists say there is no real evidence that Hawaiians made human sacrifices here, but legends stubbornly persist. I believed them.

And so when the
kapu
— Hawaiian for
taboo
— sticks appeared, they were just one more addition to a long history of strange doings at Kahanu Garden.

That early summer day, the garden crew drove up to the gates and discovered two bamboo spears sunk savagely into the ground, blocking their way. Each spear bore an ominous head-sized ball, one covered with red cloth, the other black. Taller than a man, they leered threateningly. A sign in uneven hand lettering proclaimed:

“Does this mean that the garden's closed, or just that we can't go through the gate?” asked Adam Rose, the newly hired director of Kahanu Garden as he nervously eyed the spears. Scrawny, bearded, and trained in English horticulture, Rose was only twenty-seven and in his second week on the job. He was hired to open up the site to visitors.

“
Kapu
sticks,” pronounced Francis Lono, who along with his son, Arnold Lono, made up the rest of Kahanu's workforce. “Taboo,” Francis explained, as the three men puzzled over what they should do. Francis shook his head. “Probably means don't go in,” he said. Eric Kanakole had put up
kapu
sticks before. Francis knew all about Eric, his cousin, as many of the residents of Hana were related to one another.

Arnold didn't say a word. Like most of the young men of Hana, Arnold had warrior tattoos circling his biceps, and a long braid spilled down his back, almost to his waist. He merely nodded.

The three men decided to go to work anyway. They simply went around the gate and jumped the fence. But Adam's bewilderment began to intensify.
Black magic,
he thought.
Island voodoo
. What was supposed to be
kapu
— him? Or Dr. Klein's idea of opening Kahanu to public tours?

Later that day, Adam peeked under the cloth of the
kapu
sticks and saw that they were only coconuts wrapped in ordinary T-shirts. But he grew unnerved when he learned that in Hawaiian ancient ritual, red signified blood; black, death. His unease escalated into panic when he discovered more about Eric Kanakole, known more commonly as Ricky Waikiki before he started styling himself as a leader in the Hawaiian activist movement. Eric was a dark figure with tattoos, a long ponytail, and fierce knitted eyebrows. He and other activists harbored deep grievances about what they called a “government seizure” of family land that dated back to the bloodless coup, arranged in 1898 by the Big Five sugar company planters. The wealthy oligarchy ushered in U.S. troops to depose the last of the Hawaiian monarchy and annex the islands as a U.S. territory. They appropriated most of the native lands as well. During a 1970s renaissance of Hawaiian native music, hula, and other traditions, activists began talking about seceding from the United States and reinstituting the monarchy. The movement had no apparent leader nor stated goals, except for demanding some sort of reparations, and appeared to be going nowhere — Hawaii was so Americanized that it was doubtful that the population would ever forgo U.S. citizenship.

All we knew at Garden headquarters was that somehow this century-old discontent was erupting at Kahanu Garden.

We received bulletins from Adam in increasingly frantic phone calls. He pleaded for reinforcements. “The
kapu
sticks could be a precursor to more overt actions, perhaps violence,” Adam warned in a squeaky voice. “This guy Eric Kanakole is big and scary! We're sitting on a bombshell that traditionally would have been resolved with physical force.”

Dr. Klein promised he would fly over the next Saturday.

No other Garden site would so test Dr. Klein's diplomatic ability. Reviving a closed botanical institution in the middle of nowhere presented difficult, if somewhat graspable, problems. But walking into a blood feud and the wrath of Hawaiian activists demanded another set of solutions. He was a stranger in a strange land.

L
ITTLE BY LITTLE
, we untangled the brewing forces of revenge and anger that erupted in the
kapu
sticks. The story was as old as Cain and Abel. By the mid-1400s, King Pi'ilani had united all the warring tribes of Maui under his rule and began construction of his royal war
heiau,
a temple large enough to hold troops from the entire island. At old age and near death, he summoned his two sons to rule in peace, together as partners. One son, Kiha, did not arrive in time, so the king granted the kingdom to his other son, Lono. Inevitably, the brothers quarreled after a few years and went to war. Ever since, the descendants of Kiha and Lono have been enemies.

The garden's caretaker Francis Lono descended from the Lono line. His cousin, Eric Kanakole, the self-proclaimed high priest of Kahanu, descended from the Kiha side. They might
live in modern-day subdivisions in Hana, but the native Hawaiians still knew their bloodlines. They were still fighting fourteenth-century feuds.

The Garden had inherited the temple because no one else really wanted it. It lay abandoned and near ruin, all but disappearing under encroaching jungle. The death of King Kamehameha in 1819 had plunged Hawaii into spiritual turmoil. The king's many wives seized the opportunity to turn their backs on his elaborate
kapu
system that had forbidden women from eating pig and bananas, among other privileges. In one of the weird confluences of history, at almost the very moment that Hawaiians rejected their faith, New England missionaries arrived, preaching Christianity and rapidly converting the natives. All the
heiaus
were abandoned. Sections of walls crumbled at the great Pi'ilanihale structure. Cows from the neighboring Hana Ranch grazed on its platforms.