Column 14--Top of the Hill

This is the fourteenth column in a serialization of PACIFIC FLASH: A Year in FIJI by Gerry Takano. Copies will be available April 1, 2010. Stay tuned for more information.

Participating in a piano recital at the Patterson mansion perched high above the town was such a treat. The verandah architecture, with hints of Victorian details, was utilitarian and rather elegant with its high ceilings and tropical wood veneers. Fruit trees and flowers graced the exterior garden; a gravel path lead to the formal entry. Colonialist Mrs. Dora Patterson, the grand dame of Levuka, was a proper and most gracious lady who traced her ancestry to the arrival of the British in Levuka. At first I thought Dora would be a sanctimonious and supercilious madame of an ancient time. Luckily she was not. Perhaps we imagine the grandiose elite as snobbish relics who are remotely interested in our less lofty lives. But Mrs. Patterson proved instead to be a quiet, unassuming and gracious woman. What a relief.

Canadian Fred Nolte, a manager at the local tuna processing plant and recovering from a broken arm after a major Suva accident, unstrapped his flute and together we began practicing for a piano and flute duet. Aussie Dennis, the event organizer, said the recital would be very informal. But in this British post colonial country and I did not expect American informality.

While admiring Dora’s hilltop view of Levuka, the writing of Somerset Maugham’s The Trembling of Leaf written in 1921 became clearer. His character, a Mr. Winter who lived in Honolulu, described the Pacific town to the protagonist:

All our best families are missionary families, he said. You're not very much in Honolulu unless your father or your grandfather converted the heathen.

Is that so?

Do you know your Bible?

Fairly, I answered.

There is a text which says: The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. I guess it runs differently in Honolulu. The fathers brought Christianity to the Kanaka and the children jumped his land.

Heaven helps those who help themselves, I murmured. It surely does. By the time the natives of this island had embraced Christianity they had nothing else they could afford to embrace. The kings gave the missionaries land as a mark of esteem, and the missionaries bought land by way of laying up treasure in heaven. It surely was a good investment. One missionary left the business--I think one may call it a business without offence--and became a land agent, but that is an exception. Mostly it was their sons who looked after the commercial side of the concern. Oh, it's a fine thing to have a father who came here fifty years ago to spread the faith.

But he looked at his watch. Gee, it's stopped. That means it's time to have a cocktail.

Gerry Takano was reared in Honolulu, Hawaii and received his architectural education and early training in upstate New York and Boston. Gerry served as Hawaii’s National Trust Advisor and State of Hawaii Commissioner of the Historic Sites Review Board.

He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can be reached at gertkno@aol.com