Artwork © Richard Spisak

 

Chapter 27

The Container of Self in the Bedroom Cell in Iolani Palace

Characters:
Queen Liliʻuokalani
Malia, a servant

Servant:
Madam, please pardon the intrusion. Is it possible to come inside? They want me to ask you this — that you remove yourself from the balcony. That is why I have intruded on your privacy. They have asked me to ask you if you might come in at once, but they don’t seem to be asking, really. They seem to be demanding this of you, a queen, I know.
Madam, are you awake?

(She comes closer and sees that she is.)

Perhaps you have had too much sun and feel unwell.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Unwell, Miss, when deprived of sunlight, but surely not now.

Servant:
It may still be morning, but at this late hour the sunlight can be intense, even for someone so strong, so redoubtable, on so many levels. Perhaps you might come in for me, for now.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
For you?

Servant:
For me and all of your subjects.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
For you and all my subjects?
(She smiles, holding back a laugh from curiosity.)

Servant:
Yes.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
For you, me, and all my subjects. “For now” often gets extended to forever.
(She laughs.)

Don’t worry. I am not nearly as obstinate as I want to be. Besides, as an inmate, I suppose I should look the part. The real denotation of the word, you know, suggests an individual who is confined to a cell. So if certain persons waving American flags over our revered institutions were to make a successful prison from a palace, it would be a mistaken policy on their part to allow inmates to wander all over the place when they need to be confined to their little cells. Don’t you think so?

Servant:
I do not know, Madam. I think no other thoughts than of your welfare.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
You go home every evening. You no doubt have family and friends and surely think other things, have other concerns than just me.

Servant:
Even at home you are foremost on my mind. Here, there, and always my concern is you and all else is secondary — a maintenance of me to maintain you. I don’t talk much to anyone now.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
You mean for these two weeks that I have been confined here, and you have assisted me?

Servant:
Yes.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
You do not ever speak of your time here to anyone?

Servant:
No, they asked that I speak to no one, and so I have.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
I see. Yes, they want memories of me to fade away. So to help a little in bringing this about, they have asked you to keep secret your affairs here. At least that is my guess. It is the best logical extrapolation I am capable of. How, may I ask, did you procure this odd position? They could have chosen thousands of women, but they chose you for this very peculiar role.

Servant:
I don’t know really. I had been cleaning for the Dole family for years and then suddenly I was asked to come here.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Foremost on your mind? You are sweet. And what queen ignores the sweet wishes of her subjects — not that any of them, except for you, would know what has become of me. You are probably right. Staying out here much longer would make one sick physically, not that being contained inside does not do its share of inward damage. It does, but with a strong mind it doesn’t have to, I suppose.

Servant:
There are always ways to escape boredom. We don’t always have to knit and play chess.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Not play chess? My heavens, we can’t put away our chess board with your innate gifts. How remarkable that, introduced to the game just a week ago, you should become such a formidable challenger. It’s all in the imagination, you know. As long as the mind does not turn on itself and one fuels it with ample imagination, there is edification and connection. Friends, in most circumstances, rarely see each other. It is imagining them in similar circumstances and how they would find them amusing and regrettable that sustains friendship. And a widow gets some continuity and respite from thinking that the deceased is with her in spirit. This congeals the broken shards or fragments of a life. Even if one isn’t a widow there are plenty of broken shards and fragments. What we were yesterday will never be what we are today.

Servant:
Then you have chosen to come in, Madam.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Well… wait a minute. I am giving it ample consideration. It isn’t so easy. If I come in for good I will miss my perch overlooking the city. Like everyone, I suppose, when out of the container of self that allows being instead of to be, I/we are fully well for a few minutes on any given day, the spirit again percolating to the rim, spilling and dissolving into all life before receding back. But it doesn’t last long.(She laughs.) You look perplexed.

Servant:
I am sure you are right, my lady, but it is far beyond me.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
It isn’t beyond you. Not at all. Meditation is as old as the Hawaiian islands themselves. It is going beyond the limits of an “I,” albeit briefly, returning to one’s container regrettably at the next itch, the next hunger pain, the next collision with a voice.

Servant:
Oh. I fear I am the collision of a voice. I know I often interrupt you.
Queen Liliʻuokalani:
You try to assist me at all times. A very nice colliding, it is. This I know. This I am grateful for.

Servant:
Can’t you meditate inside?

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Well, yes, a bit — but then what would I dissolve into? A wall or a bedpost?
Hmm. And when I think about it, why wouldn’t it flow back into the container? Where else would it flow, as there is no greater container for it all?

Servant:
Madam, your understanding is no doubt great on so many matters. This I am certain of even if what you say, at times, eludes me. But there is one thing you are not aware of. They claim sitting out here makes you a target for an assassin’s bullet.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Yes, that would be the claim — with all things having the potential to be vaguely plausible, and the vaguely plausible being palpable enough to resemble the substance of things. But far more likely it is that the Americans themselves would be the ones to waste a good bullet on one like me.

Servant:
Madam! Waste a bullet on one like you! These things you say — that they say — I do not understand the intent of either party. I just know that they want you in now, at least for now.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
So I gather. Virtues become vices if too much and at the wrong time. I suppose I should comply even though it is hard for me to do as they wish. Everything the Americans say I want to do the exact opposite. Maybe as we get older we become more intransigent. I don’t know.

Servant:
Don’t do it for them, but for us — for all Hawaiians who are solicitous for the welfare of our cherished queen!

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Then inside we must go.(The queen steps inside, followed by the servant.) Well, here we are — you stuck in here with your estimable, albeit grumpy queen — estimable to most of the general Hawaiian population, probably, especially in areas in which the bloodline of Hawaiians is pure and undiluted, but, in the perspectives of everyone else, unremitting obstructionist to democratic values, political will, freedoms of commerce, and freedom of religious expression — of course in their mindset freedom of religion being freedom to explore Christian themes as one wishes, and even that only if there is Biblical doctrine to justify it. That is nearly the consensus of the vast majority, I think, in these isles.

Servant:
I can’t believe that.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
(She sits down in one of the two chairs in the bedroom.) Nor did I a few years ago when power passed into my hands as regent for a time during my brother’s travels.

Servant:
King David Kalākaua?

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Yes. I traveled around Hawaiʻi after lifting the restrictions I had imposed during the epidemic. People were so thrilled to see me. But ideas — impressions of royalty — can change so quickly, so radically.

Servant:
My lady, I wonder about something.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Yes. Feel free to speak what concerns you.

Servant:
Was that epidemic due to the presence of foreigners?

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
I don’t think anyone knows these things very well. They are all germ diseases, we think. And our newness to them — to their breath, to their coughs and sneezes — seems to be the impetus of it all. And proximity to a sick person can, at times, make one susceptible to illness, which explains why we. Hawaiians, passed it to other Hawaiians.

Servant:
Perhaps it is wrong to think this, let alone say it — but really, should foreigners have ever been allowed into Hawaiʻi?

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
I understand and don’t think that you are bad to consider this topic. I have as well despite having married a foreigner. As you know, he died months into my reign. My time as ruler was punctuated by all of these many daily commutes from Washington Place where we stayed and the palace, and both obligations were compromised in the process. Definitely, he died long before this critical juncture. If I thought that I could count on his advice, I instead got life disabusing me of such notions. To rely on anyone, according to the lessons of life, is to lean on the unpredictable for stability. Thus, our only staff is our own self‑determination. I guess I didn’t answer your question well, did I?

Servant:
No, madam.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Yes, I was a bit evasive. I know that seems like a question with a simple answer, but it isn’t. I am sure when the nēnē first encountered Polynesian people on their homeland, they would have thought us an invasive species. As for the rest, the rise of the Hawaiian nation under King Kamehameha the first could only happen because of Western weapons. Thus, for us to have our own country and our own identity, we needed Westerners living amongst us. We coalesced into a nation because of foreigners, and the consequence of these wars we made on ourselves with their weapons was the decimation of these once populous isles. With more foreigners living amongst us came more diseases further reducing the population. And with so many hungry giants wanting to exploit the islands for commerce and military ports — and needing to stand visibly before them in this world of nations so as not to be devoured — we needed foreigners as government ministers as they could read and write international treaties. A nation nearly bereft of a population, we Hawaiians also needed foreign businessmen and laborers to have any substance of an economy. Ironically, we became Hawaiian because of foreigners residing here, and if — God forbid — we change into something different, it will be because of foreigners. Should they have been allowed to enter? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I have struggled with the issue myself. Whenever I hear a nēnē it sounds like he or she wants us all to fly away.

Servant:
So there are no easy answers.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
No, not with anything. Well, had they never come we would have just been Polynesian tribes on eight islands, so to wish them never setting foot here is like wishing to never be Hawaiian.
Anyway, the only real thing I know for sure is that I left my hat outside. If the Americans think my head is under it they might blast it into oblivion. (The servant moves to the balcony door.) No — rest yourself and don’t deny me one last minute outside. They won’t shoot. They want to numb the Hawaiian spirit, not have it flare up over a martyr.

Servant:
Madam, please—

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
It will be fine! But even if lesser ideas from less rational ideologues were to prevail and a stray bullet come at me from an American shotgun, that shot could be fired no matter if I were inside or outside the palace.

Servant:
Madam, all I can do is adhere to your wishes.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
It is strange to be queen de jure in the hearts of so many and perhaps in reality as well and hardly able to step outside to get my hat. Sometimes it feels truly peculiar — as is this agreement to suspend my royal authority — partial abdication we might call it — partial abdication by extortion to save lives of men I don’t even know who launched a counter‑revolution in my name I never even sanctioned.

Servant:
(Moved by the display of vulnerability.) Please, madam. It is you who should rest. Please let me get the hat. If the unlikely situation were to occur and a bullet were to hit you — you, who are my sole responsibility to care for — can you imagine how shattered I would be? It would be a hundred bullet holes not at the body but at the human soul itself. (She begins to cry.)

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
My, how foolish I am with my loud, awkward attempts at levity. Bullets and hats instead of crowns, humor around the cruel and the profane that has little or no possibility of ever occurring.

I make sorrow exacerbated when the hope was to placate it. Are you crying for your queen or your country? There, there. No doubt it is both. I am certain everyone is so fatigued by this national nightmare. Not just us. When and how it will end we still do not know. Yes, please get the hat.

Servant:
(Giving a slight bow, she goes out and brings the queen her hat.) Your Highness.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Oh, my crown!(Laughing, she puts the hat on her head.) Yes, meditating and dissolving is certainly going to be more of a challenge from a bedroom jail cell. But formidable obstacles and challenges should be met courageously.I guess chamber imprisonment does not preclude meditating through what I read and write, does it — or in communicating with you, Malia?

Servant:
No it doesn’t. Do you feel better when you meditate?

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Up to a point. Everything is to a point, my dear. After meditating, one accepts abhorrent, or seemingly abhorrent, outcomes that have come about perhaps by more intelligent forces than oneself or, more likely, random fate. These are outcomes not of one’s preference and liking and yet they are the way things are. How jarring it is to return to this shoddy container after simulating dissolving into life itself most vicariously.

Servant:
Shoddy! Madam, you are queen.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
I am queen, yes, as I haven’t abdicated yet. No, not yet. I just put it in abeyance to satisfy most of their demands and that was done so that no blood would be aimlessly shed because of me. But I firmly believe it would have been far better to be born a nēnē strolling on foot looking for berries, or flying to meeting spots and upon necessity to different islands.
It is they who are engaged in the present moment and enmeshed in the thickets of life, and, as a form of self‑protection, are only vaguely aware of themselves in instinctual appetites.
Perhaps the delusion of self for any mammal — myself included — arises in this instinct for self‑preservation. But here I am. Here we are.I bet you have had higher goals than taking care of an old bird like me.

Servant:
It is my great honor, madam, to assist you in all things.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
I am not sure that being stuck with me, an attenuated queen, is anyone’s great honor. Not that there is much consolation in this fact, but had there been the collateral damage of the loss of my life, and only mine, I would not have succumbed to any of their wishes. The cache of weapons were in fact found buried in the garden at Washington Place and any jury anywhere in the world would have said that this was more than enough evidence of culpability. They would not be wrong in thinking so, even if it is not so.

Servant:
It is the innocent, the noble, and the virtuous whose extended conscience flagellates them for deficiencies of the world that are not their own making.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
(Smiles.) Who says the young are not wise. Beautifully said. It might not be entirely true, but it is entirely kind. (She looks at the tray on a table) Breakfast for me? Oh, bacon, eggs, and a pancake of some sort. For practicality amongst the governing class our names had to change — or perhaps we should say extend — in Western directions: name extensions like my brother David and mine, Lydia. Likewise, English had to be used in government both domestically and internationally in keeping Hawaiʻi Hawaiian when making it a viable nation amongst nations and navigating it around bigger ships. So it is no wonder that the cuisine has changed. I take it you did not cook this?

Servant:
It seems that they have begun bringing a meal to you on alternate days.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
(Guffaws.) Oh, the very thought of it. The every‑other‑day starvation method: if they fully starve me to death then they would be blamed, but if they weaken me my body would be blamed.
Who says they don’t know what they are doing? And the other meals?

Servant:
I cook them and bring them to you.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
At your expense.

Servant:
They pay me a little every few days. Don’t worry about me.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
I must and I do. Surely you have had other dreams than serving me and others.

Servant:
Silly ones really. I was good at mathematics and science at school. So my teacher used to say. I don’t know why she said such a thing. It filled my head with impossibilities: that I might be a medical researcher seeking cures for measles and other epidemics afflicting our land. That was my girlhood fancy.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Fancy in this context should mean intricate, ornamental, and great, and not fantasy.

Servant:
Peasant girls should not think such things.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Peasant girls are no different than any other girls. All must entertain excellence and the highest aspirations for themselves. In America women will soon be able to vote and do as they like. But as far as they get, they are a long way from having a queen as a reigning monarch. But then, because of them, so is Hawaiʻi.

Servant:
We have different traditions, a different heritage.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Thank God! When the behemoth take over the smaller, turning them into vassal states just because they can, there is something primordial and brutish in it all that is a far departure from the rational and the understanding of the aloha of the people here. Yes, American women will have more career choices soon; but if only men and women had choices to not do anything in particular but meditate and develop themselves and the spirit of kindness that they are imbued with, then we would have a good–maybe a perfect– society.

Servant:
Madam, it is best to eat your meal while it is hot.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Yes, few things are less appealing than a cold, tepid, and inert pancake bleeding in syrup.

Servant:
I would be happy to cook something different for you but I worry that if I leave early they might not allow me to return.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Then stay where you are. Did they bring any toiletries?

Servant:
No, my lady, but I did.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
At your expense, no doubt. I am so sorry. You do so much for me.

Servant:
You have done so much for our nation and people.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Have I? Maybe it would have been better had I done nothing. I thought strengthening the monarchy was the best alternative to Western ministers under the influence of plantation owners and missionaries. I thought that was especially true when the latter were under the influence of American democratic and imperialistic ideology, but it just gave them justification to end my role altogether. But dwelling on decisions made and consequences from them that cannot be reversed can drive the sanest of us mad.(Eyes welling in tears.) You, my dear, are using your own food to feed me most of the time, your own money to buy me necessities. How are you getting paid these past two weeks?

Servant:
It’s not only a labor of love. They paid me two days ago.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
My heavens you are a dear one. Aren’t I lucky to have you?

Servant:
It is we who are fortunate to have you. My small gestures are just a child’s attempt to show appreciation.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
I bet you were most appreciative of your parents when you were a girl.

Servant:
I remember often making a lei of wildflowers I collected and putting them around the necks of my mother and father.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
Are they still alive, Malia?

Servant:
Not many. My mother is.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
So much of our energy is spent in trying to bond to others to no avail. Sometimes one does wonder the cost, especially if one remains a stranger to oneself through it all.

Servant:
Why did you not have any children of your own?

Queen Liliʻuokalani:
My husband was busy being a governor, and I a diplomat and ultimately queen, deceiving myself that my two years in this role would be two millenium. Yes, we imagine friends and friendship to think we aren’t alone, bonds of deceased husbands for continuity in life’s fragments, and that our roles in life are monumental and forever. Well, I think you won our last chess match, so that means you make the first move in this next round. Maybe during this game, if chamber and existential confinement allows it, we can devise a ballad of Hawaiian continuity — even if fictional in essence.

Servant:
If you allow the pancakes to get any colder they will be hard as rocks.

Queen Liliʻuokalani:

Apparently we are not without ammunition.

Servant:
(laughs) Madam, food is your fuel in this battle of wits that we call chess. Will you not eat?

 

Steven David Justin Sills is a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright or writer of philosophical dialogues living in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has a Master’s degree in a humanities/classical studies emphasis (great books of the Western Canon) and has taught literature and writing classes for many years. His first book of poetry was published by Professor Clarinda Harris at Towson State University in Baltimore and this book, An American Papyrus, and a few subsequent novels are in the Online Book Page at the University of Pennsylvania. Hard copy versions of An American Papyrus are catalogued in many libraries and a scanned copy is also available in the Internet Archive. Sills has published 21 cantos of his poem about the Ukrainian War, A War Papyrus, at Oddball Magazine and has written 28 essays for Oddball Magazine which he calls Moral Quandaries of the Libertine. Whether read as a second act of a three act play or a philosophical dialogue complete in its own right, this 28th “essay” is about Queen Liliokulani, the last monarch of Hawaii

Richard Spisak began his artistic career as a light artist in the Lumonics Studios of Mel Tanner, a legendary Light Artist. After serving under Jack Horkheimer as a planetarium operator at the Miami Space-Transit Planetarium, he left to begin traveling with Lumist Kenvin Lyman, whose show Dazzleland Studios traveled across America. Richard later worked as a Laserist with LASERIUM and Laser Productions, served as a technical producer for the festival company PACE Concerts, and later as operations Manager and Senior Producer at WWHP and WTCN-TV in Stuart Florida.

Richard writes for Theatre, TV, radio, and the web. He published two short story collections, Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors, and Between the Silences. Followed by his poetry collection 7370 Allen Drive and the recently released STONE POETRY. Richard also produces “POETS of the East,” a televised webcast featuring poets from across the globe.

 

Chapter Guide

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty- One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six