For telling a screw the sun would stop rising.
The fifth day lasted seven years
While he worked in the asylum laundry
Never out of the steam.
The sixth day he told the head doctor,
‘I am the Light in the Void;
I am who I am.’
The seventh day he was lobotomised;
The brain of God was cut in half.
On the eighth day the sun did not rise.
It didn’t rise the day after.
God was neither alive nor dead.
The darkness of the Void,
Mountainous, mile-deep, civilised darkness
Sat on the earth from then till now.
(1966; 1979)
Bill Pearson, from Coal Flat
Joe Taira and Arty Nicholson didn’t get to Arahura till ten o’clock. They had clubbed in and bought an old second-hand sedan, a 1929 model A Ford, intending to sell it again after their whitebaiting trip. The back seat was loaded with stores and a pile of raincoats, gumboots, a tarpaulin and a crate of beer that they had been able to buy with an easy conscience now the boycott was lifted. Two whitebait nets on long poles were roped to the roof of the car. As they drove through Greymouth they sang at the top of their voices to attract attention. Arty had a wonderful sense of release and anticipation, getting away for the first time in his life from his home and the town where he was known, being his own boss. They pulled up outside Kahu’s parents’ place, a small unpainted house of four rooms.
The front door opened at the noise of the car pulling up and Kahu’s mother came out, a stout middle-aged woman in a bright red frock. She called out lazily in Maori. Joe said, ‘She wants us to come inside and have a feed. She’s got something ready for us.’
‘Where am I going to put it?’ Arty commented. ‘I’m full of beer. Hell, we don’t want to be too long. We’ve got to get there by the morning.’
‘We’ll be there in the morning,’ Joe said, but the way he said it Arty wasn’t sure that he believed it himself. He reckoned he’d have to keep hurrying him.
Kahu’s mother in the car-light was smiling an easy deep smile of welcome and Arty was embarrassed grinning back and nodding. Then Kahu came running out, bare legged in high-heeled shoes that made her unsteady, in a short cheap print frock and a cardigan. Arty couldn’t take his eyes off her; he reckoned that, except for the cardigan, that frock was all she was wearing.
‘Catch, Kahu,’ Joe said and threw her a box of a hundred cigarettes.
‘Oh, Joe, you’re good to me,’ Kahu said, and ran her fingers through his hair. Joe put his arm behind her and squeezed her arm. ‘Oh! you hurt!’ she squealed. ‘You stop it now!’ He released her and she ran inside laughing. ‘You bring your friend in,’ she called from the door. ‘Don’t you leave him standing there in the cold.’
Arty tried not to notice the untidiness and dirt in the kitchen, a couple of dead flies on the window-ledge, a dusty last summer’s fly paper still hanging with its victims, the sticky patches and a small pool of spilt milk on the oilcloth table-cover, a broken chair and a dog’s bone on the floor. He was half-expecting Joe to demur and apologise, as he would have done taking a stranger into his own home even if it wasn’t untidy. But Joe didn’t seem to notice it. Kahu’s mother found a dishcloth and wiped the table-cover.
‘We thought you’d be coming yesterday,’ she said. ‘We had the haangi ready.’
She fried some steak and onions in a pan whose outside was crusted with black. There was a plate of cold pork as well, cooked in the haangi the day before. She served the meals on plates that she wiped, unnecessarily, with her apron. All the same Arty hadn’t tasted better steak and onions. Kahu’s father was a stout, broad-faced man, who made generous and slightly pompous gestures inviting Arty to make himself at home; he worked in the butter factory at Hokitika. His father sat back in an armchair with loose stuffing by the range, a greying-headed thinnish man with his front teeth missing and the rest tobacco-stained, who looked and coughed as if he had tuberculosis. He had worked on the roads with a tar-sealing gang till the end of the war, though he must have been nearly seventy. His English was poor and he only used it when he talked to Arty. But Kahu objected to her mother talking Maori. ‘It’s bad manners,’ she said. ‘Mum talks English good, Arty. She’s too shy to let you know.’ This made Mrs Torere cackle for a long time with laughter, though the old man said something sternly to her. She answered him in a tone of offence and then turned to Arty and laughed: ‘He reckons I don’t talk Maori too good either. Not good enough for him, anyway.’ There was a sixteen-year-old boy sitting watching, grinning but saying nothing, and three children came out, sleepy-eyed and stared at Arty, a girl of thirteen in her nightdress and two boys of ten and eight in pyjamas. Mrs Torere gave them smaller helpings of steak and they ate it with their fingers. After a few beers Arty was feeling indulgent and thinking what a tale he’d have to tell the boys when he got home again.
He was having a long yarn with Kahu’s father about pay in the mines and on the dredge and in the dairy factory, when Kahu’s mother interrupted.
‘Kahu got bad news, Joe,’ she said. ‘She’s got the sack.’
‘No!’ Kahu said. ‘I didn’t get the sack! I left the job, Mum, you should know that. I left the job.’
‘What for?’ Joe asked.
‘One of the guests at the hotel missed some money,’ Kahu said. ‘The landlady she reckons it’s one of us maids. We all look round at each other. They all look round at me. Oh yes, just ’cause I’m the Maori girl there. I say, “How much did she lose? Two bob or five quid? How much? Maybe it’s not worth all this fuss?” And the landlady says, that’s a silly way to look at it. It’s the principle, she says. And then she looks at me as if she’s sure it’s me just ’cause I said that. So I got in first, Joe. I told her, “You call me thief, I’m leaving.” And I walked out …. I bet it was that new girl always skiting about her boy friends and a different one every night. I bet she’s the thief. Oh no, they don’t look at that one. She’s not a Maori girl.’
‘Have you got another job?’ Joe asked.
‘I can get in the asylum as a maid,’ she said pouting.
‘You don’t work there,’ Joe said. ‘You’re not gonna work in that place. I don’t care even if you don’t work, you’re not to work there.’
‘You try the Woolworths,’ Mrs Torere said. ‘They often want girls.’
‘The Maori girl can’t get work in a shop,’ Kahu said. Mrs Torere rocked her shoulders and sighed. Mr Torere said, ‘Some of the people in the town are too bloody proud.’
‘I’m proud too. I’m gonna try another hotel,’ Kahu said. ‘You go down there an’ catch a lot of whitebait, Joe, so we can get married an’ I don’t have to worry any more about any job …. You got a girl, Arty?’
Arty grinned. Joe said, ‘Arty’s girl’s name is Winnie. She’s good looking too. She’s seventeen.’
‘When you gonna marry her?’ Kahu asked.
Arty shrugged. ‘Come off it. I’m not in a hurry yet.’
‘The Maori boy’s the best for the Maori girl,’ Kahu said. ‘The paakehaa waits too long to get married. The paakehaa girl runs around with three, four, maybe five men before she’ll marry anyone. Then she doesn’t care too much. The Maori girl marries the first boy, an’ she loves him the best. The Maori way’s the best way, eh?’
‘Haw!’ Arty said. ‘You want to see him eying all the sheilahs at the dances.’
But Kahu pouted and looked jealously at Joe. ‘Joe Taiha, you tell me the truth now! You run aroun’ with any other girl?’
Joe, as Arty’s host, was too polite to argue with him, as Arty would have done in similar circumstances. He answered Kahu in Maori. ‘You’re my only girl,’ he told her. ‘Arty’s just teasing. White people do that a lot.’ Kahu nodded, still resentful. Joe smiled. ‘No, she’s my only girl, Arty,’ he said quietly, and Arty was humbled. Teasing was a kind of universal language with which he had hoped to get on
easy terms with them. Now he had to remember to be himself and not act the goat. The trouble was he couldn’t forget himself; it didn’t come easy for the white lad not to be self-conscious and pull a series of poses.
‘Joe not a boy to run aroun’, Kahu,’ Mrs Torere said. ‘I know that. Joe not a boy to tell you the lies.’
The father grunted and nodded solemnly; the grandfather looked stern and offended.
‘That’s right too,’ Kahu said. ‘Joe’s good to me all right.’
‘I was only kidding,’ Arty said limply.
In Maori Joe said to Kahu, ‘If a Maori said that to you about me I’d want to fight him. But not Arty. He didn’t mean it. He thinks it’s something to boast about to run around with a lot of girls. He thought he was praising me.’ Arty was embarrassed when they spoke Maori. Then in English Joe said, ‘Arty doesn’t run around with all the girls. Only Winnie. Winnie’s a good girl too. Just the girl for Arty.’
‘You bring her down to see us some day when you get back,’ Kahu said. ‘Eh, Mum? Can Arty bring his girl down to see us?’
Mrs Torere beamed and nodded vigorously. ‘She be welcome here,’ she said, ‘long as she’s not too proud to stay with the Maori.’
‘When we come back,’ Arty said gratefully in a voice that didn’t sound his own, ‘I’ll bring her down.’
‘Joe and I are getting married,’ Kahu said. ‘Joe’s nineteen, I’m eighteen. That way we spend the best time of our life together.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘Yeah, long as Joe’s kind to me an’ the babies an’ he don’t run after other women, I don’t wish for anything better.’
They all drank beer and they sang to Joe’s guitar. The boy of sixteen was allowed to smoke and drink as well. Arty wanted to hurry Joe along but now felt too humble to start pushing his weight about. About one o’clock Mrs Torere said, ‘We won’t put the tent up tonight. You two sleep in here. The kids sleep on the floor tonight.’ The young girl went into her parents’ bed, and the two small boys took a couple of blankets and rolled under them on the floor. The light in the bedroom had no shade and the blind was stuck. Arty turned out the light and undressed in the dark. He was afraid that the sheets wouldn’t be clean but he put the thought out of his head. He waited for Joe to come to bed, but he dropped off to sleep, and when he awoke hours later, he put his foot out and found Joe still not there. He supposed he was with Kahu.
(1963)
Rod Derrett, ‘Puha and Pakeha’
Down by the mudpools, once upon a time,
In the land of the Long White Cloud,
The hungry tribesmen gathered for a meeting
And a warrior spoke to the crowd:
Py corry, boys, I’ve had enough
Of this stuff call moabone stew.
If you want to put some meat in
To the kai that you’ve been eating
I’ve got a new soup for you.
I call it, puha and Pakeha, puha and Pakeha,
The finest food you could ever wish for,
Better line a big fat flaxen dish for
Puha and Pakeha.
Then Good Queen Vic sent a fella with a Treaty
To the Land of the old kiwi
And Hobson called all the chieftains together
And he said, Lads, listen to me,
Sign the dotted line and we’ll all have tea.
But one old chief just sat.
He said, I don’t give a hangi
For the Treaty of Waitangi,
You can’t get fat on that—
Give me some puha and Pakeha, puha and Pakeha,
I don’t miss your chips or cream pavlovas,
I want a dish with no leftovers,
Puha and Pakeha.
—Come on boys, we’ve just caught another one, eh.
—I say, I’ve fallen in the geyser.
—You sit there and have a good wash, eh boy.
—Why, that’s a capital idea. Never could get a decent bath in the colonies.
I say, have you any soap?
—Sorry, no soap, Pakeha. Try some puha, make you smell good, eh.
—Spot of the old eau de colonial, what. Jove, it is feeling rather warm in here.
I’ll cook if I have to stay in here much longer.
—You catch on quick, boy.
—Great Scott, so that’s your little game, is it? You can’t cook me, sir. I’m a
cabinet minister.
—That’s all right, boy. We’re not fussy.
Don’t want instant soup for a very first course
Or a dish that’s swimming in parsley sauce,
A roast beef, lamb, or chicken or veal,
A TV dinner just doesn’t appeal.
You take a little umu and you get it very hot,
You catch a little Pakeha and put him in a pot,
Cook him all up in your old home brew,
And what have you got? Kiwi stew.
Now that was all a very very long time ago
In the Land of the Long White Cloud
And the bones of many utu
From the Cape to T’ Awamutu
Lie buried in history’s shroud.
Down where the mudpools bubble and squeak
A traditional dish is made,
And many a tourist, dropping in for lunch,
Has helped our export trade
—By trying puha and Pakeha, puha and Pakeha,
The finest food you could ever wish for,
Better line a big fat flaxen dish for
Puha and Pakeha.
You can stick your savaloys, oysters and pies,
Give me the food with a flavour surprise,
Puha and Pakeha.
(c. 1965)
The Joy of Sex
Frank Sargeson, ‘City and Suburban’
To me, it more or less fixes the time I belong to if I say there was always a war in progress when I was a schoolboy. To be more exact, though—the Armageddon I refer to was the second one this century. I remember particularly a teacher who plugged a line about my lucky generation. Last time there had been some mistake about the war to end war. But now, let there be no mistake about it! There was a good time coming for all young people—golden opportunities, glittering prizes later on; more to the point, generous bursaries for all students with ambition. But in those days my ambition was an opportunity denied me by the school leaving age. My elder brother, a little too young for any of the services, was establishing himself in a milkround which could have been profitably extended if I had joined in as a junior partner. I was told that in the meantime I must remain a schoolboy. It was suggested that for compensation I might usefully dig for victory in the vegetable garden.
Whenever there is any kind of petty crisis in my life that milkround will return into my mind as something I regret having missed out on. Let’s face it, I’m average. I have my university qualifications, I am by profession an accountant, that’s to say a partner in a public accountancy business. I am the end product of what may happen if you raise the school leaving age. Instead of neglecting opportunities provided (drawing my bursary for beer money), I worked hard and I still do. I’m a married man with two youngsters a home of my own and of course the car. Nothing alters the fact that you have only to strip away the higher education to find me average. If you like, the new average—the latter-day common man, the runner among the ruck in the urban rat race. In secret I yearn for something less complicated, let’s say a milkround and an unworried living in a small country town. For committing myself to paper I have the good excuse that I am at present enduring another of my crises.
But first I must say that it was only gradually during my years of exposure to the higher education that I discovered its two-sided character. It takes you on a stroll through civilisation’s flower garden (and I’m not being ironical—I am ready at any time to applaud the man who decides there’s nothing in life to compare with reading, say, history); and on the other hand it leads you to believe you are being singled out, made to
feel important, assisted to get on and make a career—earn good money. So the question eventually comes up whether you can have it both ways; whether, having been shown around the garden you don’t visit there any more, or whether (I am aware that am changing the metaphor), you endeavour to arrange an uneasy marriage between what is of perennial appeal, and what has its day to day uses in keeping the wolf a long way from the door—in my own personal case one party to the marriage a business career, and the other, well, history. (That study does in fact happen to be my special cup of tea; but with my enthusiasm only moderately abated I could mention others, and will even go so far as to specify theology. Granted free choice of a career I might well have preferred to all others that of a learned clergyman—and the advantage of an efficient curate to attend to parish duties would have clinched the matter beyond all question.)
Now I have aimed at establishing myself as a man who appreciates that some very attractive flowers grow on what used to be a kind of dung heap, sometimes called by fanciful names (such as Leviathan); but which is nowadays more aptly described as a combined junk and gadget heap, praised-and-damned as the welfare state—or sometimes just praised as the affluent society. What are the advantages I derive from that appreciation? Has the higher education sold me an outsize pup or not? Answers to these questions wouldn’t be just for me—as an accountant I would say that to reckon accurately the number involved could be a pretty sizable job of computing, one requiring to be served by the latest model electronic machine if the population explosion and all such kindred phenomena are to be taken into account.
I expect my use of the marriage metaphor is significant. After all, everything we endure in this world is rooted in the married state—I mean it’s the reason we are here unless we happen to be literal bastards. And I will say at once that I have no petty complaints about my wife. Since I began with women I have never been able to do without having one around. Pam is nicely put together, and I am confident about wearing qualities which should ensure that she remains for many years easy on the eyes. Also, being one hundred per cent woman, I can never see her landed in my own sort of jam—I mean to say I sometimes foresee the day when my life will be largely composed of an attempt to deal with long hours of boredom occupying the empty space between the morning and afternoon newspapers. That sort of horror will never be Pam’s cup of tea, and even if it was she would never recognise it as such. There’s a phrase (if I remember it was plugged by Spinoza), sub specie aeternitatis. To my certain knowledge Pam will never be plagued by the itch to relate her experience to any principle—I mean anything that might tend to upset her certainty about what is important in life and what isn’t.
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 85