Читать книгу Aunty Pinau's Banyan Tree - Helen Berkey - Страница 8

Chapter 2

The Happiest Thing that Ever

Every day Jo-Jo watered Aunty Pinau's banyan. The tree was sturdy and strong. It drank Jo-Jo's water thirstily, put out thick green leaves, and pushed itself up higher and higher. By the time Jo-Jo was through grade school, the banyan had grown over twenty feet. Its shiny green leaves made a canopy over the earth. When the rascally Little Wind came out of the gap in the mountains and blew the black rain clouds over the road to Ilikai, the raindrops pattered against the leaves and slid right off, and not one drop dampened the earth beneath the tree. It was a real umbrella, just as Aunty Pinau had said it would be.

Soon everyone on the road to Ilikai began to notice and admire Aunty Pinau's banyan. The banyan tree became the nicest thing on the road to Ilikai. The first to take advantage of the tree were the mynah birds. They made straight for the highest branches where the leaves were the thickest. They came in flocks and set up housekeeping at once. And what a fuss they made! They squabbled and scolded and squawked while they settled down for the night, and they fussed and quarreled before the sun came up. But even though time and again Jo-Jo stood under the banyan and looked up into the dark canopy of green leaves to try to see the birds, he never once saw a single mynah bird. He could only hear their rustling and squawking.

It wasn't long before the lei-women from Ilikai found that the banyan tree was the coolest place to sit and string their leis. On boat-day they came in the early morning with their baskets of flowers. They strung long necklaces of carnations, pikake, plumeria, orchids, tuberoses, crown flowers, cigar flowers, marigolds, and pansies and hung them fresh and beautiful from the branches of the banyan until their fragrance filled the air.

In the afternoon the watermelon-women came with pick-up trucks loaded with ripe fruit. They would split a few melons in half and cover the dark red fruit with waxed paper and display it temptingly under the banyan on the road to Ilikai. All afternoon they would sit upon mats on the ground and wait patiently, hoping for someone to stop and buy.

Then after the watermelon-women left, Mr. Matsumoto came with his pie-wagon and parked it under the banyan. He even brought a small table and two wooden benches and placed them under the tree too. When the children from Ilikai School stopped by on their way home, he was ready for them. In the cooler he had stored large cubes of ice. With a handy iron claw, he scraped and scraped the ice until it was like half-melted snow. Then when the children put their pennies on the little shelf of the pie-wagon, Mr. Matsumoto scooped the shave-ice into paper cones and poured thick raspberry syrup over them so that the shave-ice turned a lovely pink, delicious and refreshingly cool. The children took their cones of shave-ice back to the wooden benches where they sat quietly enjoying their after-school treat.

After the children had gone home, Mr. Matsumoto built a fire in his charcoal stove. At first the charcoal just smoked, then it crackled and flamed, and finally it died down into hot glowing coals. Mr. Matsumoto took an aluminum pot filled with broth and placed it on the stove to simmer. Beside the pot sat a bowl of cooked noodles waiting to be ladled into the broth as soon as it was heated. While the fragrant broth simmered, he chopped green onion tops with a long sharp knife. These he would sprinkle on top of the broth when the fishermen came from Ilikai.

At sunset, just as the sky turned pale pink and green and one evening star came out, the fishermen came from Ilikai. How happy they were when they saw the banyan tree! They were glad to hear the mynah birds squabbling in the branches and to smell the broth bubbling gently in the pot. Hot, tired, and sunburned, they threw down their bamboo poles and unfastened their damp knapsacks and let them fall to the earth beneath the banyan. They sat down on the wooden benches and waited patiently for Mr. Matsumoto to serve them a kind of broth called saimin. Before serving them, Mr. Matsumoto sprinkled the broth with the green onion tops and gave each of them a pair of red lacquered chopsticks. The fishermen deftly picked out the noodles with their chopsticks and lifted the bowls to their lips and drank noisily.

After the sun went down behind the mountains, the fishermen picked up their poles and left for home. The banyan tree was left alone with the complaining mynah birds rustling in the top branches to wait for the dawn of a new day when the lei-women and watermelon-women, and Mr. Matsumoto and his pie-wagon, and the school children and fishermen would return again.