Russell Hoban - Come Dance With Me

‘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 made 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.

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.

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?

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.’