Paul Theroux - Hotel Honolulu

"Why are you leaving?"

"I'm going home," she said. She touched his hand softly like a reminder. "Back to my life."

That made him sad, that she had a life he knew nothing about. He said, "This is for you, honey," and gave her the baseball cap.

She laughed and put it on. When she kissed him this time the visor poked his head.

"Gotta go," she said.

"Crazy kid," Buddy said, standing with Lionberg. They looked like an older couple seeing off their daughter — that same admiration and forgiveness, that same love. Buddy, fleshy, even bosomy in his T-shirt, was the gruff and bossy mother; Lionberg — small, leaner, forgiving, infatuated — was the tender father. They stood with the others saying goodbye at the departure gate as Rain entered the tunnel. When she was gone, Lionberg felt sick, and he wanted to get away from Buddy.

"Funny seeing you here," Buddy said, panting to keep up with him. "I haven't seen you out of your Bat Cave in ages." He poked his finger at Lionberg. "You're a very mysterious guy! You've got secrets." He called out to a man mopping the airport floor, "This is Royce Lionberg! He's got secrets!"

Lionberg drove slowly back to the North Shore on the empty roads, thinking how he had no secrets now. He wanted to be on that plane with Rain, to be going home with her. What she had said of Sweetwater had

moved him in its simple solidity. It was home in a sense that he had never known the word. He had made a home, but she had been born in one and still lived there. That was so different. It was permanent, it was safe and secure. Why would you ever leave?

Reentering his house that night, he was angry. He saw it with Rain's eyes and disliked it for being cluttered and airless. It was wrong, it was selfish. He couldn't remember a time when he had felt so dissatisfied. His collections, his treasures, seemed merely pretentious, just decorative, without significance, worthless.

The expensive humidor disgusted him. He took out a cigar and, in his reading chair, cut and lit it. A cigar always calmed him, even gave him moments of great happiness. Puffing smoke, he remembered how, long ago, in the days when he gave parties, he had been infuriated by seeing that someone had stubbed out a cigar in a carved jade saucer.

The moment enlightened him. The things people accumulated — old pictures and pewter, jade and carved ivory and ugly-faced masks and books and tapestries and large yellow sperm-whale teeth scored with scrimshaw, silver platters and spoons and sugar tongs, the incidental and ill-assorted objects that were supposed to have value — all of it was merely borrowed from the vast store of the world's artifacts and ultimately returned to it, sold, bequeathed, lost, stolen. These objects were protected, and found another home, another thief or borrower, but in any case just an overburdened custodian, until they were returned again or

destroyed. They had no meaning or use beyond their being handled or looked at.

Had he been a writer, he would have written that, and he wished he could write it, to rid himself of the sadness of its truth: nothing was owned. He was merely a watchman, a menial, with illusions, buffing things, polishing, dusting, being careful not to break them.

He had made a provision for everything as a legacy, but people did what they wanted. In time, it would all be sold or deaccessioned or snatched in spite of his wishes.

It was worth no more than a glance, which was what she had given

it.

His cigar splintered and sparked and came apart as he dug it into the white jade saucer, laughing angrily, pushing it against the fine carving. While the smoke rose like bitter incense he took down his Matisse footbridge, knifed open the taped back of the frame, and slid out the sketch. Holding it down with the flat of his left hand, he worked a cheap pencil eraser on the lines at the center of the bridge, leaving his mark, making it uncrossable. He felt savagely happy, with an intimation of insanity, desperate for his happiness to last and fearing that it would end at any moment, leaving him bereft.

His head lowered in reverence, the dark islander put out a set of fetish objects, like a shaman engrossed in a ritual for telling the future or interpreting the past. He crouched beneath the ragged wind-shredded fronds of the leaning palms, in the mossy corner of the shadiest part of the property, an islander at a jungle pool, the water's reflection spangling his belly and making it gleam. His face was close to a painted square that was blocked with the sort of mystical patterns you find in the boldest mandalas of Oceania.

I went nearer, feeling intrusive and awkward, until I saw it was Keola with his shirt off, bent over a board game. Peewee hurried behind me and said, "You want to play?"

It was Scrabble. They had started playing it between shifts at the far corner of the hotel swimming pool, after it closed for the evening. Everywhere I had lived, Scrabble was played differently, the game adapted to the culture and the lingo, certain words allowed and not others, challenges restricted, one society making a noisy free-for-all of it, another an intellectual exercise. The game of Scrabble reflected the people who played it, as when Trobriand Islanders made the game of cricket into something riotous, a reconciling adaptation known to anthropologists as syncretism, as valid with Scrabble as with cricket or Christianity.

"Only problem — Peewee take hours to choose a word," Keola said, which alarmed me, because Keola was the slowest worker in the hotel.

While he was talking, Marlene joined us, shaking her head. She had heard Keola and obviously agreed with him.

"Let's do rapid transit," I said. I explained how each player would have just two minutes to choose a word; if time ran out, the player's turn was forfeited. This way the game would be shorter and more exciting.

They liked this idea. They passed me the sock that served as a bag for the letters and told me to choose one, to determine who would start. I got an "M," which I was sure was no good, and handed the sock to Peewee, and smiled at the thought they were letting me join them. They knew that in a former life I had been a writer, Buddy Hamstra still introduced me by saying, "He wrote a book!" but they were not in the least put off by the prospect of my playing.

"Maybe I should have a handicap."

"You got a handicap," Keola said. "You one malihini."

It meant newcomer, but was I that new? More than seven years had passed since I had come to Hawaii and taken over as hotel manager. But the longer I stayed, the deeper my understanding of the paradox that the people with the lowest status had the greatest seniority. Like Mohawks in Manhattan, Hawaiians in Hawaii had no wealth and were almost placeless, yet they could pull rank even on the missionary families. Hawaiians were like impoverished aristocrats who had sold the castle, the land, and the

family silver, and yet, battered and threadbare, they still kept the family name. This also meant that every human encounter involved a tricky negotiation, because pride was involved.

"I'll do my best."

Marlene went first and put down "ped" at the center of the board.

"You allow abbreviations?" I asked.

"The sign say 'Ped Crossing.' Is a howlie sign," Marlene said, and chose three more letters from the sock to indicate that the discussion was over.

Peewee used the "p" to make "zap." Keola made "moped," which I put into the plural with the vertical word "same." Telling me I was wasting vowels, Marlene used my "a" to make "ama," and before I could question the word, she said, "Means outrigger in Whyan."

"Hawaiian words okay?"

"Dis Whyee."

"But they aren't in the dictionary."

"Try look in one Whyan dictionary," Keola said, and used his full two minutes to make "lua," which he declared meant toilet in Hawaiian, as well as the number two. One entire side of the Scrabble board began to bulk with Hawaiian words: "lolo," "manao," "puna," and "kumu." And then, after Marlene made the word "hi," Keola added two more letters and created "shim."