Hers the Kingdom (96 page)

     She proceeded to hire the Danes to build her a house on the beach adjacent to the pier, with the ocean to its front and the lagoon to the back. She already had the architectural plan drawn up; she had, in fact, had them for some weeks.

     "Whatever do you want a house for?" I asked as we continued on our way. "Isn't the Casa Blanca enough of a problem?"

     "The Casa Blanca is Mother's house, not mine," was all she would say. I supposed that there was more to it than that, but I would have to wait to find out, I could see.

     As for the Casa Blanca—I wandered into the ballroom the other day. The lath and plaster is all exposed, and it seems terribly raw. The chandelier is missing several pieces, I can't imagine what could have become of them. Coated as it is with dust, it looks altogether forlorn. Like the whole of the country.

     
July 9, 1934, San Francisco:
We rushed here, Kit and I, to be with Porter. He is in the hospital with second-degree burns on his hands and arms, suffered when he pulled a strikebreaker out of a blazing truck that had been overturned in the violence of Thursday last—"Bloody Thursday," as it is called.

     Hundreds are hurt and two union men are dead in the ugliness that erupted last Thursday. I am thankful that Porter's injuries are not even more serious. I am grateful that they were suffered not in an act of destruction, but of courage.

     I believe in Porter's work in support of the union. But I cannot condone violence or the wanton and reckless disregard for human life.

     The strikebreaker Porter saved is a man of thirty-eight who has five young children. He hasn't worked in six months. How can anyone believe that man to be anything but a victim? Porter
knows that, he believes it is wrong to set one poor man against another. And yet the police wade in with their tear gas and their nightsticks. Who is to blame? The governor talks of martial law and union men are calling a general strike. Ten thousand people marched up Market Street in memory of the dead. I saw it, and was moved to tears.

     
July 29, 1934:
Porter is recovering, cheered by the knowledge that the general strike served its purpose. The union and the employers agreed to submit their differences to arbitration and, in the end, the union victory was all but total.

     Kit is looking frazzled and worn, and Porter is mending. I suppose it seems irresponsible in a world so desperate, but I have suggested that we go to Hawaii to recuperate. Sara has started a new painting and does not want to leave right now. But to my great surprise, both Kit and Porter agreed.

     Kit because she wants to get Porter away from the docks for a time, Porter because, in the midst of all the excitement on the docks, he has received extraordinary news. Ch'ing-Ling's arranged marriage did not take place. Her uncle died, and her aunt is now head of the household, and amenable to giving her niece the freedom to see a friend from California.

     "I hope we get to meet her," Kit told me.

     "That may not be possible," I answered, "it is rather complicated cultural problem."

     She sighed. "I suppose I should have known we couldn't expect a nice old-fashioned love affair from Porter."

     "
Old-fashioned
it is," I laughed, "more than you know."

I think that neither Kit nor I expected the memories that would wash over us when we returned to Honolulu. My last time on the beach at Waikiki had been in 1914, when we went to meet Soong. Kit was there last on her honeymoon, and she trembled visibly
when we walked into the elegant lobby of the Royal Hawaiian.

     Porter was too distracted to notice two women awash in painfully sweet memories. I breathed in the scent of plumeria from the leis that had been given us upon landing, and decided to give myself over to the sun and the swaying palms.

     For a time, Kit and I moved as in a trance. The Islands can do that. We sipped cool drinks, rested in the shade the palms threw on the raked enclosure that was the Royal Hawaiian's private section of the beach, and listened to the ukelele music played by supple young Hawaiians. We watched the clouds billowing high offshore, watched the children stand, backs straight, waiting for the next wave to wash over them, and we let ourselves forget about the misery that was, even then, drawing closer.

     We came in, that first day, in time to see Porter on his way out, dressed in tropical whites, and looking uncommonly handsome.

     "Looks like a deluxe date," Kit teased, affectionately.

     "Very deluxe," he answered, giving us both a quick kiss so that we felt his excitement.

     "I think perhaps Porter is going to be well occupied," I said to Kit, "why don't we make some plans of our own?"

     We arranged to have dinner at the Officer's Club on the naval base as guests of the commanding officer, a family friend of some years. It was a large group. Kit's dinner partner was a personable young lieutenant commander. His name was Michael Flannery and he made Kit laugh, which was nice to see.

     The next evening, with my blessing, Kit agreed to see Flannery again, this time for dinner and dancing. Porter knocked on the door of the suite I shared with Kit just as she was preparing to leave. His eyes were red, he had neither shaved nor slept, it seemed.

     "Where are you going?" he asked Kit.

     "Out for the evening," she said flippantly, "on a date. Looks like you're just coming in."

     When Kit left, he lay back on her bed and closed his eyes. I started to cover him, but he stopped me. "I'm going to go out
again," he said. "I just wanted to rest for a few minutes."

     "Porter . . ." I began, but he stopped me.

     "I haven't been with Ch'ing-Ling all this time, Auntie. I've been on the beach, walking and thinking. I'm to see her again in an hour."

     I sat, watching as he dozed, knowing some struggle was taking place and not knowing what I could do to help.

     He pulled himself up. "You and Kit are invited to her aunt's home, for tea. You have been presented as friends of one of Ch'ing-Ling's teachers. I wanted you to meet her, and she thinks this is the best way—in the family home."

     "We couldn't entertain her here, in the hotel?"

     "She would rather you came there. She really is timid."

     "That's fine," I said, not wanting him to suppose I minded, "did you find out why the arranged marriage didn't take place?"

     He grimaced. "The man was killed. Chiang loses a good many of his officers, the ones who will go anywhere near a battlefield. Ch'ing-Ling's uncle died then, and he was the family patriarch. Her father was much more agreeable when she said she did not want to marry. She is in medical school, she plans to become a doctor."

     "A doctor!" I exclaimed, surprise registering in my voice.

     "I know. I was surprised too," he said, in such a way that I raised my eyebrows in question.

     "I'm not sure how I feel about it. She is showing courage, and a willingness to strike out in new directions. China will need doctors when the war is finally over, she says. And she is right. It's just that . . ."

     ". . . she is planning a future, and not around you," I finished for him.

     "Maybe," he said, "she hasn't said as much."

     I wanted to know how it had been, seeing her again after so long a time, but I hadn't the courage to ask.

     "You will know, when you meet her, how I could feel so strongly . . ."

     "How do you feel about her?" I asked.

     He rubbed his reddened eyes and grinned. "Like nothing I've ever felt before. Like I'm spinning. Like . . ."

     "I see," I said, bending to kiss him on the top of his head. "Go shower, and take a fifteen-minute nap, at least. I'll call you."

     On the afternoon of the fifth day of our visit we were received at the home of Ch'ing-Ling's aunt. With great courtesy, the aunt told us how honored she was to receive friends of her niece's professors at the university. Both Kit and I understood the subterfuge, and did not correct her.

     We chatted, as best we could, with the aunt and her sister, neither of whom spoke English well. Kit had decided not to use her Mandarin, I suppose because she felt it would exclude me. The formality of taking tea made it all somewhat easier than it might have been. We smiled, and bowed, and I was impressed as ever with the Chinese ability to entertain graciously.

     After a time, we were joined by a tall young woman in traditional dress. Porter was right; looking at her, I understood. She had a face of extraordinary clarity—beautiful, and more. There was in her eyes, in her expression, intelligence and warmth and a kind of wisdom that is not learned. Kit became aware of her presence after I did, I knew when I heard a tiny intake of breath, Kit's way of registering amazement.

     Ch'ing-Ling made polite inquiries into the state of our health and our pleasure with our visit on Oahu. Only the politest of formalities passed between us, nothing that would suggest that we had a mutual acquaintance. And yet, when she called each of us by name—or so it seemed to me then—it was as if she were telling us how much she cared for him, for Porter. And I understood, then, how Porter could have fallen so completely in love with her.

     As the taxi drove us through the streets of Honolulu on our way back to the Royal Hawaiian, we said nothing at all for time. Finally Kit found the words. "I always thought the woman Porter would fall in love with would have to be extraordinary," she said,
"I wasn't quite ready to find someone so . . . ethereal." I do not know how much time they were able to spend together, or how they arranged to be alone. That they did, I am certain. I was happy for my son, and worried too.

     For the rest of our vacation, Kit saw a good deal of Lieutenant Commander Flannery and his friends. I was pleased to see her having such a nice time, especially since Porter was so occupied.

On the voyage home, Porter kept to himself all the first day. On the second, we ran into heavy seas and I was obliged to stay in my bunk with a mild case of
mal de mer.
Porter and Kit fussed over me, as they tended to do whenever I could not disguise my discomfort.

     Porter made, as he put it, a "run on the mess" to bring tea and toast, and as the three of us sat around the tiny table in my cabin, he said, "I suppose you want to know about her."

     "Are you going to tell us?" Kit asked.

     Porter rested his chin on his clasped hands. "What do you want to know?" he fenced.

     Kit was direct: "What she means to you."

     "Lord," Porter said. "Everything. At least, that's the way it feels now. Maybe it won't be so bad after a while."

     Kit took his hand. "Don't count on it," she said, and tears came stinging to my eyes.

     Porter began to speak then, in a low and urgent voice he explained that Ch'ing-Ling had decided on a medical career in part to forestall another attempt by her family to arrange a marriage. While her father was by no means the autocrat her uncle had been, neither was he willing to entertain the idea of her marrying someone who, if not a communist himself, was connected to Wing Soong, a well-known comrade of Mao Tsetung, both of whom had prices on their heads. And Ch'ing-Ling
could not bring herself to break with her family, or with her country. She "recognizes the wisdom of the old ways" she told him.

     "So what is to happen?" Kit asked.

     Porter shook his head. "We talked interminably. She is so totally intelligent, and yet I could not make her see some of the contradictions in her life. I could not get her to examine it . . ."

     Kit turned to me. 'The 'unexamined' life—was it Plato who said the unexamined life was not worth living?"

     "No," I answered, "not quite. What he said was, 'I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the very best thing a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living.'"

     "It isn't the same," Porter observed, "but it applies. Ch'ing-Ling will not discuss the questions that need to be asked at this moment in history."