Song of the Exile Read online

  “SUPPLE AND EVOCATIVE . . .

  The Hawaiian chapters are a sensory blowout—the scent of ginger, the taste of mango, the sound of frying squid. . . . Pack Song of the Exile for your next trip to the tropics. . . . Richer than a box of macadamias.”

  —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “With a keen sense of place and history, Davenport’s well-researched and exquisitely crafted novel explores the myriad facets of racism worldwide. A historical novel in the most vibrant sense of the term, Song of the Exile brings the past alive with grace and subtlety.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “The strengths of this novel are many. Davenport is a superb story-teller. She always keeps her readers engaged in her novel’s story and caring about her characters.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “[An] utterly absorbing story . . . Song of the Exile is about love and war, hopes and dreams, the individual and history. It’s the perfect beach book, an escape to a Hawaii that springs to vivid life beyond the postcard views.”

  —New Orleans Times-Picayune

  “Roiling, romantic . . . Rich and textured . . . There’s music, passion, refugee camps, cruelty, and all the strange bedfellows bred by destiny.”

  —Boston magazine

  “Davenport weaves into her lush narrative indelible portraits of Honolulu’s narrow back streets and hot music clubs, Hawaii’s complex coming to statehood, and of the pain, disfigurement, and shame that was the legacy of the war’s tragic legion of so-called comfort women.”

  —Elle

  “Haunting . . . A powerful tale of love and loss.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Selected by The Quality Paperback Book Club®

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART I

  RABAUL

  KE ALANA

  RABAUL

  N ‘IKE NA ‘AU

  HO‘ONALU

  HELE WALE

  RABAUL

  KNONI

  MAKA KILO MAKA KIHI

  KA WEHE ‘ ANA O KE KAUA

  N KA’A KAUA

  N HOA PAIO

  MAHUKA

  PILI P KA HANU

  HULI PAU

  K‘INO

  RABAUL

  OCTOBER 15, 1942

  N KLANA P‘INO

  PART II

  HO‘OWAHINE

  N PALI O N KO‘OLAU

  HO‘OLOHI I N MEA NUI

  LEINA A KA ‘UHANE

  RABAUL

  HO‘OKAUMAHA

  HILI P

  KE KNE JACARANDA

  HONOLULU

  KA ‘UMEKE K‘ EO

  ‘AWAPUHI LAU PALA WALE

  ‘OHANA

  OLA HOU

  KA HULIAU

  HO‘OIKAIKA

  KA ‘INA HNAU

  IHU PANI

  ANAHOLA

  MAKA HAKAHAKA

  HNAU HOU

  HO‘OPA‘I

  ‘NANA

  HA‘INA MAI KA PUANA

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  A Reader’s Guide

  About the Author

  Also by Kiana Davenport

  Copyright

  To the memory of those brave women

  sacrificed in World War II,

  and to “Eva” of Singapore,

  “Margaret” of Kowloon,

  “Sunny” of Honolulu

  . . . who survived

  Ha‘ina ‘Ia Mai Ana Ka Puana . . .

  Let the Echo of Our Song Be Heard . . .

  —From The Echo of Our Song:

  Chants and Poems of the Hawaiians

  Translated by Mary K. Pukui, Alfons L. Korn

  Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to

  exist . . . it is just like roads across the earth. For the earth had

  no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way,

  a road is made.

  —Lu Hsun, Call to Arms

  PART I

  HELE MALIHINI

  To Go to a Place as a Stranger

  RABAUL

  NEW BRITAIN, 1942

  “. . . SOON THE ‘IWA BIRD WILL FLY. HUGE MAMMAL WAVES WILL breach and boom. It will be Makahiki time. Autumn in my islands . . .”

  She sits up quickly in the dark, taking her body by surprise. Her fingers roam her face, a face once nearly flawless. She drags her knuckles down her cheeks.

  Outside, electrified barbed wire hums. She feels such wrenching thirst, she sucks sweat coursing down her arm. Then carefully she rises, gliding like algae through humid air. She listens for the sea. For that is what she longs for—waves cataracting, corroding her to crystals. From somewhere, gurgling latrines. Even their sound is comforting.

  A kerosene lamp is steered into the dark. Sunny watches as dreamily it floats, comes down. A soldier’s hand, the hand of memory, places it on the floor, revealing a yeasty, torn mosquito net. Inside, a young girl on a narrow bed, so still she could be dead.

  In watchtowers surrounding the women’s compound—twenty Quonset huts, within each, forty women—guards yawn and stroke their rifles. One of them half dozes, dreamily composing an impeccable letter to his family in Osaka. “Mother, we are winning. . . . The Imperial Japanese Army will prevail!” He is growing thin.

  In one hut a young girl, Kim, pulls her net aside. Burning with pain, she crawls into Sunny’s narrow bed, into her arms, and sobs.

  Sunny calms her, whispering, “Yes, cry a little, it will help you sleep.”

  “It’s hardest when the sky turns light. I think of my family who I will never see again. I want to run outside, throw myself against the fence.”

  Sunny sighs, breathes in the smell of sewage, failing flesh. “Kim, be strong. Think of music, think of books—normal things we took for granted.”

  “I don’t remember normal things.” Kim scratches at her sordid legs, a girl of sixteen. “I don’t remember life.”

  Sunny shakes her gently, feeling mostly bone. “Listen now. When the whistle blows for mustering, we’ll stand up straight, eat whatever scraps they throw. No matter how filthy the water, we’ll drink. With what is left we’ll bathe. We’ll do this for our bodies, so our bodies will know we still have hope for a future.”

  “What future?” Kim whispers. “Two years of this. I only want to die.”

  “Hush, and listen. Death would be too easy, don’t you see?” Sunny sighs, begins to drift. “. . . In Paris now it would be cool. We would stroll the boulevards.” Her voice turns dreamy. “We might even take a cab.”

  Kim looks up, asking softly, “Will the drivers be rude again?”

  “Oh, yes. And my French is so bad. Maybe this night we would go to Chez L’Ami Louis.”

  “Oh! The food is rich, so excellent.” Kim momentarily comes alive, for this is her favorite game. Imagining.

  “What wine shall we order? The house Fleurie?”

  “And paté. And oysters! Will you dip mine in horseradish, Sunny?”

  “Of course. And I will scold you when you pocket the matches, such a tourist thing.”

  Her voice softens. She thinks of Keo, their time in Paris. Rocking in lush geometries of morning light, nothing between them but heartbeats. Then spinning under marble arches, through terraced parks, young and careless and exiled. Not seeing Paris collapsing around them, not seeing their lives were crumbling.

  “How happy we were. Grabbing each moment, so alive.”

  “I have no such memories,” Kim weeps. “I never shall.”

  “Of course you will! One day this will end. You will heal. Life will help you to forget.”

  “. . . Yes. Maybe life is waiting in Paris. Beauty and adventure. And shall w
e walk this evening down the Champs Elysées? Shop for the softest kid gloves? And cologne? Or maybe take a café and wait for Keo. I’ll close my eyes, pretend I’m there, just looking on.”

  “Shh,” Sunny whispers. “Soon it will be daylight. If they find us together, they’ll beat us again.”

  She feels tears come: hunger, torture, incessant pain, the knowledge that she and this girl—all of them—are dying.

  “Don’t think so much. It will consume you. You will never survive.”

  “Survive. For what?” Kim’s voice grows loud; girls sit up listening behind their nets. “You talk of life. How can we face life after this? How can we face ourselves?”

  Sunny’s voice turns urgent. “We must live. Or what have we suffered for? Will these years have been for nothing?”

  Under her pillow is a makeshift map, drawn so she can remember where they are, where they were shipped to months ago. Here is the town of Rabaul on the island of New Britain, east of Papua New Guinea, just north of Australia. Here is the Pacific Ocean and, far to the north-east, Hawai‘i. Honolulu, home. Farther out is the world, the great oceans. Far across the Atlantic, there is Paris. Yesterday. But, always, her mind snaps back to Rabaul.

  Exhausted, weak beyond knowing, Kim sinks back on the filthy mattress, stale grains of rice matting her hair. “I want to sleep, I want to dream. Oh, take me back to Paris, shops, cabarets. Tell me again how you and Keo rode in a car with the top down. . . .”

  Paris, Sunny thinks. We were so innocent. Not understanding trains were already leaving stations, streets were darkening with blood. She sighs, begins again, dreamily, and as she talks, girls struggle from their beds, move down the aisle, brushing her mosquito net. Some so thin, their movements seem delicate, some so young they are children, ghosts weaving through a scrim. Wanting only to listen and dream, they sit with arms entwined, heads bowed against each other.

  “. . . I remember, French women were so chic, and arrogant, always rushing off to rendezvous. I tried to imitate them, to be caustic and quick. It was not in my nature. . . .”

  “And did you paint your nails each day?”

  “And did you drink champagne?”

  She smiles wearily. “Oh, yes. Sometimes we danced all night. Then stood on little bridges, waiting for the sun.”

  Kim curls against her, like a child. “Tell us again about your sweetheart. Was he always kind?”

  Sunny weeps a little, and they wait.

  “He was an island man, very kind. And shy. A musician, have I mentioned? So gifted, he played in famous cities. New Orleans. Paris. He was known.”

  Girls shudder and sigh, as if her words are talismans, miracles that will transport them, save their lives.

  “Keo was not my first, but he was my only. I thought I chose him, now I see I was the chosen. It’s so nice when someone reaches for you. Try to imagine. A young man, not terribly handsome, not very tall. Dark, very dark, and proud. Even at home in Honolulu, he always stood apart. . . .”

  KE ALANA

  Awakening

  HONOLULU, MID-1930S

  DAWN COMING PURPLE OVER THE KO‘OLAUS, HE STROLLED UP Kalihi Lane, west of downtown Honolulu. A lane so narrow he could reach out his arms, almost touch bushes on either side. A world remote, unspoken for, so modest there was the temptation to hate it. There was the fear this was all he would know.

  Wood-frame bungalows going to termites, their porch steps scalloped by generations. Each separated by wire fences snaked with chenille plants, crown flowers, golden trumpet vines. The heavy scent of ginger, plumeria. Each day he left this lane with the breath of an animal running. And each night he returned.

  Some nights he felt the lane reach out to him, beautiful in moonlight. In every yard, chicken coops, orchids rioting in lard cans, blue sobs of jacaranda. And mango trees drooping with lianas, shell ginger hanging like pink jewels. Overhead, scraggly palms stretched back and forth across the lane, forming a feathery vaulted ceiling like a long primeval foyer leading him into a forest of shy and friendly tribes.

  Sometimes he stood very still and listened. Mr. Kimuro snoring on his left answered the piping snores of Mr. Silva on the right. Mary Chang’s phone rang, and across the lane Dodie Manlapit sat up in bed. He heard the sea, he heard its call. He laid his hand against a tree. I have not lived. At lane’s end, he stepped into a tiny yard, a carless garage, climbed the steps of a bungalow, and quietly removed his shoes.

  On a stool in the hallway his mother, Leilani, already astride the day. Husky-armed, mocha skin unwrinkled, face flawless as a child’s, she sat gabbing on the phone with Aunty Silky, who worked the six-to-six shift at Palama Women’s Prison.

  “. . . listen, girlie, was scarlet fever, no cholera, dat took her, so much coming at us in dose days. She nevah sat up. Just blink and die. Dat’s when some buggah stole her crystal necklace. And whatchoo t’ink? Last year Milky Carmelita show up fo’ Pansy’s wedding wearing dem same damn crystals! ‘Auw! I near went die. Wait—here come my son, da midnight owl.”

  He stood in cool drafts, drinking guava from the bottle, then closed the Frigidaire and kissed his mother’s head in passing. Sprawled in his tiny room, younger brother Jonah, his walls a grid of baseball mitts and rowing paddles. Malia, his sister, in her room, snoring in a chair, eerie white face mask, head helmeted with pleated metal meant to train her curly hair.

  In their shared room, older brother DeSoto, on leave from his ship in the merchant marine. Keo pulled off his waiter’s shirt and trousers, hung them carefully, and crawled into the bottom bunk. Listening to the faltering tenor of his brother’s snores, he covered his face with a pillow, steeped in the distillate of envy and frustration.

  He’s crossed the Pacific seven times. Seen Antarctica. Known women in Java. Manila. I’ve never been off this rock. Just a guy who carries trays . . .

  HE COULD HAVE BEEN BORN BLIND, SIGHT SEEMED SO WASTED on him. As a child, he fingered everything, not trusting what his eyes beheld. Then, for years he walked with his nose up like a dog, relying on smell. When he was ten, his ears became his eyes, his head always turned, an ear thrust forward, sounding out life. Folks thought he was simpleminded.

  In 1921, when he was eleven, Kamaka ‘Ukulele and Guitar Works opened on South King Street. Keo ran errands after school, fetching tea and Luckies for the workmen. One of them was deaf, a Filipino with his own unique method of determining perfect resonance in constructing an ‘ukulele.

  “All in da fingahs,” he said, gently tap-tapping, sensing by his nerve ends vibrations of the sound box.

  He covered Keo’s ears, placed his fingers on the box of a pine-apple-shaped ‘ukulele, then strummed. He did the same thing on a standard guitar-shaped ‘ukulele, so Keo could feel the difference: more mellow sounds of the pineapple uke because of the internal volume of the box.

  “Human ears not always accurate,” he said. “Sometime ears in fingah tips.”

  When he was twelve, the deaf man gave him his first ‘ukulele, selling it for five dollars. Keo sat in the dark and stroked the thing, listening with his fingers. Sound came to him then, pouring into him like light. Within weeks he could play any song heard once. But when he tried to go beyond himself, attempting wild variations on island songs, “Palolo,” “Leilehua,” “Hawai‘ian Cowboy,” his playing was blundering and crude.

  Keo did not know how to be moderate, to gently coax his instrument so it would hum and glow. Instead, he corrupted its sounds into whining exhalations of stunned wood, playing so hard calluses grew on his fingers. There was no one to guide him, to mesh his wild cogs, no one to help him articulate.

  At fifteen, finding a worn-out radio, he rewired it and taped the crumbling shell. Each night, staring at distempered walls, listening to truculent snores of his brother, Keo twisted dials until he heard a crackly reception from the mainland. Choral groups. Concertos. Music called “classical.” Listening, he felt a keen, prehensile yearning of his heart toward music he couldn’t comprehend. Currents passed throug
h him, so strong his body smelled like something scorched.

  From ‘ukulele and guitar it seemed a slow-motion glide to piano. Sometimes he slipped into the Y, where bands entertained the armed forces. The crowd was mostly white, a few Negro soldiers on the side. Keo edged his way toward the bandstand, trying to observe musicians, how they held their instruments, how they controlled their breathing. Because he was civilian and local, MPs always shoved him outside.

  One night he stepped into a room of punching bags, moldy leather gloves. Rank odor of sweat and sawdust. Something massive in the corner caught his eye. That was how he discovered the Baldwin. He pulled off the filthy canvas, opened the creaking lid, and wiped the keys. After that, several times a week he slipped into that room and sat at the piano.

  At first he didn’t care how it sounded, only cared how keys resonated to his touch. The thing was out of tune, strings mildewed, felt hammers hung with insects. Still he got so he could play almost recognizable songs, anything heard once. He played dregs of Bach and didn’t know it. Rachmaninoff. Ellington and Basie. He played hour after hour, then dragged himself off to wait tables at the Royal Hawai‘ian Hotel. On his day off, he played the Baldwin straight through the night and into the next afternoon. He didn’t know what he was doing. Such a torrent poured out of him, his nose bled.

  Each night after waiting tables he joined the band in the Royal Hawai‘ian’s Monarch Room, strumming ‘ukulele, fox-trotting with rich, lonely tourists. He was striking rather than handsome, but his dark, mahogany skin seemed backlit, his impeccable presence was like something charged, and women were drawn to him.

  Keo learned to tell by their perfume which woman would thrust her hips against him, wanting sex. Imperceptibly he would move her across the floor to Tiger Punu, who women couldn’t get enough of, or Chick Daniels, matinée-idol handsome, first ‘ukulele in the Monarch Room. Or one of the other “golden men” whose names had the ring of rampant health: Surf Hanohano, Turkey Love, Blue Makua, Krash Kapakahi, the Kahanamoku brothers.