by Alan Duff
In keeping with a (toughest) gang leader, he only nodded back and took his seat. But he sat down gentler than he might, what with so much at stake, made out like he was struggling with this formal shit, when he wasn’t. It was a game, and he felt he could play it better than they, easily better. Consciously, he lifted his tattooed face like a proud warrior of old. Greetings, (chief ) Ape said.
Greetings! Sarah Hudson near stood up in her toothy eagerness to return Montgomery’s surprise opening. The more when he turned to Pora and asked how he was, Kia ora. Pehana koe?
Pora replied in Maori, but couldn’t manage the smile getting beyond a breaking apart of lips, the upper in a neatly trimmed moustache. Then he opened with a karakia — a prayer to bless the meeting, asking that this occasion bring about a good outcome — spoken solemnly with the right gestures and expressions. And Ape sat there calculating that, on a $150-per-hour contract rate, the intoned words would have earned Pora about fifteen bucks. (What I earn in a month.)
Pora did the standard following speech in — convoluted — English on his and the inmate’s Maori ancestors, their wisdom, which he took as unquestioned, but even to an insensible Apeman prison-inmate doing life seemed ludicrous that wisdom from so long ago could have application in an unrecognisable age.
Next Pora took a shot at Europeans for overlooking, as he put it, what Maori had to offer by way of spiritual connection with another world, a different dimension, as if that in itself provided transport to a higher plane of existence. He said it in rather a smarmy way, even to Apeman’s life-hardened eyes, though that didn’t stop Ape from nodding in agreement, his eyes saying yes we did get given the rough end of the stick.
Then Manu Pora asked Apeman if he had considered their last proposal of doing a course on Maori culture, which was available in the Christchurch prison and run by a personal friend of his.
Ape made out to give it some thought, enjoying the silence becoming more and more awkward as he dragged it out. Depends, he said.
On what, Pora couldn’t keep the irritation from his tone.
Ape smiled — his way — a sideways twist of mouth that he knew contorted the tattoos into a more gruesome face (man, my ancestors must’ve looked mean-as). On if you approve my transfer.
Sarah Hudson spoke up: That’s what we’re here to make the final decision on, Montgomery.
Being called his proper name felt as strange as being called, say, Elliot. (No, make that James.) It didn’t set off the tuning fork, have him proud of who he was. It meant nothing. When the name Ape did. It was a low bass hum (like spoken from a dark cave, man).
He looked at Sarah (effin’ rich bitch) Hudson and said, Told you before, no one calls me that. My old man named me after this general in the war —
The Second World War, added Neil Richmond like a schoolboy shooting up his hand, not that he had fought in it. Too young. But his father had, Richmond said.
My … father, said Ape slowly but not deliberately, it just came out like that. He wasn’t a very nice man. (He was the opposite of nice, folks.)
We understand, said Sarah Hudson.
Ape looked at her for some long, unsettling for her, time. Then he said, I believe you, Mrs Hudson. Laying it on thick, the tone, the expression.
Please call me Sarah. Her tone saying, I’m no better than you. When clearly, demonstrably, in physical evidence terms alone, she monumentally was. Let alone the separate universe her wealth and class gave her.
Sorry, Mrs Hudson, I can’t. It don’t feel right. (Doesn’t come out right. It’s like we’re friends when we’re not and can’t ever be. Not even if we liked each other. I’m here, lady, and you’re over there, up there, in the high above.)
Whatever you feel comfortable with. And is there a name you’d prefer?
He smiled again, but differently. This was open. Amused in anticipation. It’s Apeman. Ape for short. Don’t think you’d feel comfortable calling me that, would you?
For a moment she was speechless. Lips slightly apart, involuntarily.
Then she said, Why that’s a most unusual nickname. And no, I don’t think I could call anyone that. Do you mind Monty as our reference?
Monty’s fine, ma’m. Now, where were we? (You mean where was I, Apeman Black, ’cos I’m running this li’l side-show. This is my carnival. I’m the freak show turned master on these people.) That’s right, the Maori culture class, Mr Pora.
Mr Pora raised lidded eyes at Monty to stop this game-playing before he shut him down. But Ape wasn’t a man who could stop, not when he was on a roll.
What’ll the course do for me, Manu?
You’ll have to wait and see.
That a yes? (Yes, we’ll let you transfer to Christchurch.)
It’s not a no.
(So don’t press it, you’re saying, Pora?) Will it help me understand myself? Which gained a look of cynicism.
We all must understand our past to understand who we are.
Your people have been denied knowledge of their own past by a succession of white governments, spoke Neil Richmond. The Maori people are innocent victims of a racist, colonial past.
(Yeah, right. Me and my gang brothers, who’ve denied justice to everyone we made our victims. Stomped heads in, maimed and killed. Stole from, ripped off, destroyed physically, emotionally, financially. Yeah, sure, Mr Richmond, we’re the real victims if you insist.)
Can’t remember feeling deprived in that area, Mr Richmond. Like not in a colonial past (when only past I was affected by is my own childhood). Not where I’m seeing it from.
Be that as it may, Monty, the fact remains your people have suffered unjustly at our European hands, for generations. It’s why — for some reason he checked himself, then finished it — why so many prison inmates are Maori. It is not your fault.
So Ape knew he had two down and one, the Maori ironically, to go.
I knew growing up as survival (of her, my juju-lip old lady and him, a violent old man who didn’t care for any of us kids. Though it was his complete lack of communication that got to me worst. I wanted him to talk to me). Only culture I knew was drink and violence (which you come to imitate, then love to bits). Don’t remember no Europeans doing unjust stuff to us.
Well it’s true. Pora spat the words. For so long we’ve put up with our culture, our mana, trampled on by the Pakeha. Our values were treated as if they never existed. It’s a good part of the reason so many Maori are here, why you are here, eh, Monty.
(Drop the familiarity, bro. We ain’t even on the same planet. In fact, I believe I’m one rung up from you on the morality ladder.)
Those who think knowledge is all written down — when it’s not, Pora continued. And his features leaked resentment. We are an oral culture and will always be. Who says we want this written culture of the European? Why can’t we have ours and they have theirs? It’s taken over a hundred and fifty years to get recognition from governments, from the Pakeha people. We have demanded they respect us, when previously they have treated us as if we didn’t exist. At last we are becoming the masters of our own destinies. We are in a cultural Renaissance.
(You mean you’re in the loop, Manu Pora, of getting paid simply for existing.) If you say so, sir. Apeman’s tone was loaded with contempt for Pora alone getting a fee for being here, when he should be alone in setting an example. One of the more friendly Maori warders would show Apeman and other inmates newspaper articles on Manu Pora and his cohorts, how they were raking in millions from government settling land grievances, asset redistribution, charging hefty consultancy fees, being involved in litigation.
Could you see yourself enjoying learning your Maori culture, Monty? Mrs Hudson, with desperation in her tone. We, the committee, feel knowledge of your past would be of great help to you.
That’s for people who’re getting out, Mrs Hudson. I’m doing life, remember?
Yes, but the average term is just over ten years. There is a future out there for you, Monty. And in only a few years’ time.
You said a good part of the reason Maori are here is because our culture, our ways never got recognised?
Yes, Pora nodded.
You’re saying we’re as much the victim as the victims the court convicted and sentenced us over?
Yes, Pora gave an adamant nod. So did Richmond mirror him. Sarah Hudson’s mouth tightened as if in emotional empathy for a great injustice done.
So do I, members of the committee. Sure, I know I done wrong. But it don’t feel all my fault. It’s bugged me for years that something else, some bigger reason, is why I’m in here doing life for, well, killing someone, God rest her soul and may I be forgiven. We’re all in here because we’re Maori. I didn’t want to agree with Mr Pora, or you, Mr Richmond, ’cos you might think I’m making excuses for what I did. I killed someone. And I can’t deny my guilt there. But I know there’s other reasons for why I did this terrible thing. You’re right: it’s the system puts us here. A racist system.
No one noticed the Maori warden shift uncomfortably. And Ape, looking directly at Mr Grant, saw his usual cynical expression darken with the cloud of outright disbelief.
I don’t think that statement is in dispute, said Neil Richmond. Not in this room. Or not where the committee are concerned. My views on this are well known, which is why I believe, and I’m sure my two colleagues here feel the same, that we must all do our bit in putting right this systematic injustice carried out over nearly two centuries. My society, my dominant, dominating white Anglo-Saxon culture, mirrored by successive, oppressive governments, has caused virtually all of this grief, this suffering, this unnecessary harm and hurt to innocents. It is high time we put it right.
So Ape knew his transfer was approved.
Mrs Hudson leaned forward, hardly able to disguise her approving smile. Just give us an undertaking, Montgomery, that you would take part in these Maori cultural classes, given we were unanimous in approving your transfer to Christchurch prison. A silent please deafening to Apeman’s ears.
Again he pretended to give it serious consideration, then he nodded. I guess I could. Be part of the new person I’m determined to become, Mrs Hudson. What with my daughter and partner down there able to visit me.
Richmond thanked Ape on the committee’s behalf. Pora gave a closing prayer in Maori. Ape calculated another fifteen bucks Pora’s way. And Sarah Hudson told Montgomery Black with her eyes that his transfer request was a done deal.
CHAPTER TWENTY
FOOLING EYES (FOR THE FOOL)
HE WAS ALL over Sharns from the moment he locked eyes with her across the (seedy) bar. Average height, handsome part-Polynesian, all flowing movement, those intense eyes that say fight and screw, either will do. And Sharns feeling her heat rising. Well, why not?
The courting game was their own here at Jojo’s. A guy gave a woman the eye, and unless he was held in low regard by his male peers she was expected to give it back if she wasn’t spoken for. No talk of equality here. You could be out in the back of a guy’s car within minutes of meeting, or doing it in the toilets, men’s or ladies it didn’t matter, because that was the way you connected, since you lacked words and concepts to exchange and investigate each other to any depth. No relationship could afford the luxury of complexity, and if you had a mind, if you owned sensibilities, what then were you doing in a joint like this?
The sex was always urgent. Everything was, even borrowing twenty bucks from someone: you had to have it that instant. And spend it in a stretched-out instant of several hours on drink. Everyone was urgent over a personal matter in need of resolution: booze, drugs and love, or rent arrears, debts and soured friendships. Whatever. Same old same old.
Over he came, glancing back at his mates throwing remarks at him, impossible to tell what with the jukebox going and the tortured, mostly brown, souls right by the coloured light machine, transporting them to other places their hearts thought they were, but minds knew otherwise, as they sang along with a song, thick with sentiment, oozing emotion on a catchy melody. But okay here in Jojo’s, most anything was.
His name was Leti. A Samoan, born in New Zealand but prouder to be Islander, even though he spoke English like a white Kiwi. You with anyone?
Nope, can’t say I am. Not t’night. You?
Not for quite a few nights. What’d you say your name was?
Is.
Hi, Is.
Very funny. It’s Sharneeta.
Is Sharneeta, my true Samoan cuzzies would shay.
Which got Sharns smiling. This dude had a sense of humour.
I’ll buy you a drink. ’Nother KBG?
Thanks. Watching his (beautiful) firm butt in tight jeans as he sauntered up to the bar, not buying into the challenging stares his being a stranger invited, polite in moving through the crowd. Sharneeta at that firm butt remembering she hadn’t had a man for, what, a couple of months. Feeling it register down there, the stickiness, the tingle, the ache (for love).
Leti invited her over to join his mates, said they were down from Auckland, on the cruise, checking different towns out, heard about Jojo’s and what they say is true. It’s a cool place, Leti’s smile reaching right into Sharns’s heart. So is Two Lakes cool.
They were of Samoan extraction, three of them, which might have brought them trouble if the mood of the predominant Maoris went that way. Or it could have turned out they were like brothers, Polynesians separated by centuries of relocation not (wild, happy) genes. The mood. In this world mood dictated so much.
Must’ve been Leti’s smiling charm and unthreatening manner got them invited to a party, where else but Pine Block. Sharns assuring Leti and his two mates it wasn’t a set-up, she knew the dudes who lived there, they just liked a good time. But don’t play on being the coconuts from the Big Smoke, boys, or they’ll have you.
All night Sharns couldn’t recall such a sustained period of being free of her gloom. She danced the night away with Leti, and he got more handsome, more desirable by the minute.
When the sun came up on the still-raging party, Leti was showing signs of tiredness and Sharns asked if he needed a bed to grab a few hours’ sleep, as he’d said he was from out of town. He looked around for his buddies and they’d split, found them asleep in their car; so he and Sharns walked round two corners to her place.
Back at the flat Sharns found Alistair and Kayla’s bedroom door still shut and silence behind it. She was hot to trot but found Leti wasn’t. He insisted on sleeping on the sofa and of course she had to say sure. Throwing a blanket over him, she pecked his cheek good morning, and went off to grab some sleep herself, a little bit frustrated, a bigger bit pissed off, feeling rejected, she stood in front of her mirror every which way, asking if it was something undesirable about her. But she was dying to sleep, too.
She woke up with a dream she was being raped. Dream became reality. The handsome face of minutes ago was someone else’s. Felt worse when she’d wanted to have sex, maybe even make love as they’d got on so well this long night. But not this kind of sex.
Leti honey, have a sleep and we can do it at our leisure. Please? Don’t let it happen like this.
But Leti was too far gone, and clearly he found a willing sex partner not to his liking; he wanted control. To be boss man. In charge. Taking his pleasure.
So she lay back and let him do it, which didn’t take long but still it didn’t satisfy him. She guessed he never could find satisfaction, not if he could do this to her.
The arsehole slapped her. The next was a punch. And he spoke a kind of pidgin-English, Samoan style in abusing her. Her blood went all over her nice clean pillowcases, sheets and bedspread. Effin’ lowlife. Why did he have to do it like this?
She asked why he’d hit her.
Because you treat me with disrespect, he said. Not a woman’s place to ask for sex — ish a man�
�s.
He must be drunk and/or high on some drug from the party. Such a handsome man, too. Jabbed a finger in her face and warned she better say nothing to anyone about this or he and his mates would be back.
Got off, calmly put on his trousers — or until her looking at him with obvious hurt had him whack her again. Don’t look at me like that, bitch! Then he was gone. (And he might’ve left something behind.)
She sat there waiting in the living room, away from the scene of violation. Till Alistair got up, for him two, three hours early and saw her, sitting there, huddled into herself, legs drawn up, shivering, not daring to think longer than a few seconds lest she crack.
Al went down on his knees and said, What’s happened, Sharns? His voice so genuine in its concern, face so genuine. But still a man, so she pushed him away, swore at him, asked him what would he care. That sort of stuff. When she didn’t mean it and how was her poor judgement of men any of Alistair’s fault?
Naturally he wasn’t staying down there, on his knees, offering help and friendship if she was going to be like this.
Alistair stood and shrugged those skinny shoulders. He looked rather appealing, vulnerable, an innocent and rejected unjustly. I’ll go wake Kayla up. Okay?
(Kayla? Kayla?) What would Kayla know about living in my head?
Well, she’s a woman. She likes you. But the darkness was coming in for Sharns. This time living, like a flying beast homing in on her, blotting her out in its wide-winged shadow, talons drawn, tearing beak on its way. All she could do to stop herself from screaming. Instinct telling her another life had begun inside her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
VIEW FROM A HILL
MOST SUNDAY LATE afternoons, Jake liked to be alone. Up here on the hill, in the cottage he loved, a couple of hours getting it spick and span, a habit he nearly depended on for his emotional well-being.