Compliments continue to come from the shaded terraces below, along with whistles from the bulk of the crowd seated on the far side—all bounced by the amphitheatre’s acoustics. She finds him easily, the flatterer. His admiration has taken on a wider aspect. He sees her. Karen bows her thanks for the welcome, declines a shouted request to remove her dress and pass it around for perusal, and joins in praise of the magnificently still and clear evening with those seated nearby. What a night! Amazing! Michael and Doug open the bamboo hamper they carried up from the house. The linen blankets they shake out and lay down are immaculate.
It is only a kid’s show—as some people have pointed out—but the TS Stanaway crew have dressed up to set an example for minor harvest events, in order to expand the range of smart-casual occasions and to heighten the sense of ritual around shows. It’s a luxury project, Karen knows, to advocate for a change in dress standards in the amphitheatre, but the crew are only half-joking in the workshop when they speak of appropriately clothing the return of civilisation. She’s gratified to receive waves and nods of approval from the Three Aunties, sitting in a row on the terrace opposite. Silver-haired, their kauae moko blue with age, they smile gummily. The good cotton shirts they’ve put on especially for the occasion are a statement of support for Karen’s project.
‘Yes.’ Karen smiles and nods in return. The aunties’ approval is important, even in this secular, non-traditional space. ‘The aunties are onboard.’
‘Awesome!’
‘Alright.’
That hurdle passed, and with the commotion caused by their entrance subsided, Karen assesses the audience’s attire with a more professional eye, as if it wasn’t her community, as if their voices, gestures and laughter weren’t familiar and smile-inducing.
Brief and casual. Insecticide and moisturiser. For a moment she pines desperately for a dab of French perfume. If only! Many of the men wear singlets or go shirtless. A few sport waistcoats without shirts. The lean brown torsos and muscled arms of those who work with their bodies and eat no processed food—it wasn’t long ago, she thinks, when it cost a fortune to look that good. The women, too. Bare-limbed, comfortable, free to move; they’re far more confident in their skins than she remembers her own generation being. The bombardment of body-image pressures and products against which success and self-worth were measured ended long ago. Karen has had to admit her contribution to that saturation campaign when she was younger. But it was unintentional. Money always came first in the old world. It made deep channels, diverted the energy and ambition of the pure and innocent to meet its end. Her goal—as she had to argue regularly after the revolution, around campfires, in kitchens, potato fields and in other labouring environments—was never to be a model of corporate consumer perfection. She just wanted to make beautiful clothes.
Karen can’t help it; she sees limbs wasted from old breaks that didn’t properly heal, and prosthetic limbs replacing those lost in farm accidents and fights. Teeth missing in the heads tipped back in laughter. Fingers absent from hands raising glasses to the cloudless sky. She checks herself. It’s mean-spirited to notice scars, especially on such a lovely evening as this. The last thing she wants to be is one of those from the older generations with irresolvable post-traumatic grief, for whom happy times inspire only memories that spiral into despair and depression. She tells her crew the brief she received for the show they’re about to watch: to supply six laden banana trees and a lion suit.
The talk turns from hemp bananas to the definition of a kids’ show, and she loses herself.
By the time Karen leans back against the earth wall with a plate of fruit and cheese, the first stars have appeared. More sweet sallies of fresh air come too. Warmth radiates against her back. Stored by the earth. Always there.
She has to laugh. The kids in front of the curtained stage are nearly berserk with excitement. They call the amphitheatre ‘the Ear’, because it hears, they say, the spirit that animates everything. Even an old urban Päkehä like me can feel something here, Karen thinks, a quiet gathering of boundless energy.
It seems to Karen that the kids of her own generation were much more passive. By the age of 10 or so, she and most of her friends needed to be entertained with moving images, music or even drugs in order to lose themselves. The infinite possibilities of childhood had ended abruptly. For these kids, becoming adults will be different. The inanimate will still be able to become animate; living things will continue to transform and shift in shape; the dead will always be present.
Karen turns to Tess, who at 35 is the next eldest crew member. She’s also tiny and, but for the frown-lines etched in her brow, is quite childlike in appearance.
‘Were you guys like these kids, Tess? Full of the spirit?’
‘Wairua?’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Karen hopes she doesn’t provoke a lecture on the true nature of progress, which Tess is inclined to deliver on occasion, outside and inside the workshop. ‘Did you guys identify with birds and trees like these guys? Creeks and hills?’
Tess frowns.
‘Like, Biko has relationships with a couple of large stones, which I had even noticed until yesterday. It’s like he knows them.’
‘We were raised like battery hens for generations and our spirit died. Now our most important connection is coming back, Karen. We’re part of the world now. In a direct relationship with it.’
‘True, but I guess I’m wondering about the kids in particular. I mean, how do you separate the magic state of childhood from a new worldview?’
‘We don’t need to separate anything anymore. We celebrate the abundance of new possibilities now—and all the important personal responsibilities, too. In childhood and adulthood.’
‘Yes.’
They turn back to the kids. They’re different, Karen thinks. They didn’t just bow to the rhythms of nature like we did, the shell-shocked urban professionals who found themselves toiling hungry in the fields, fighting bouts of dengue and diarrhoea, washing with cold water and settling petty disputes with their fists. They were born into the cycles of light and dark, growth and harvest, life and death.
Death.
Karen sighs. She looks to the deepening sky for inspiration.
Night begins with two stars, she thinks. Does it? Where did that saying come from? The more southerly and higher of the bright pair is Atutahi. Twelve thousand times more luminous than the sun, Jeremiah is prone to tell her, with a masculine kind of enthusiasm. Atutahi will become the brightest star in the firmament once Sirius slips below the horizon for the year.
Like me, she thinks. The brightest by default.
Atutahi means ‘stand alone’. The first star to appear at night—once Sirius has gone—and the last to go at dawn, it’s solitary, tapu. Jeremiah told her that when Täne wove the basket containing the Milky Way, Atutahi was left out.
He actually looks through his telescope now.
Atutahi twinkles more towards the horizon. She can’t remember if that forecasts wet or mild weather. Jeremiah would love to be asked. She smiles.
The torches around the top of the amphitheatre have been lit. Like guards against the invading night, she thinks. Enclosed by a ring of fire, the bowl of peopled earth feels even more intimate.
Karen always pours the first round. She’s been remiss. ‘Cider, anyone?’
‘Oh?’
‘Why not?’
‘Go on then. Twist my arm.’
But when it comes to making a toast, Karen founders. She wants to remember Trix—again. It feels like one time too many. Things can be remembered too much.
Solangia raises her glass emphatically to the sky, and Karen feels that whatever Sol says will be right, in the way that her teased hair and heavy make-up looks right. With darkness coming on and in the play of firelight, her choice is perfect, and Karen is glad that she gave her protégé the benefit of the doubt, the room to move. It’s what Trix did for her.
‘To Aunty Trix,’ Sol says, ‘who must be loo
king down tonight.’
It feels like Trix’s blessing has been passed on, through Karen to Sol, a blessing that also burns the torches around the amphitheatre tonight.
You enabled me 30 years ago, Karen thinks, tonight and always. Thank you.
‘To Trix.’
‘To Trix.’
Her deathbed. The Crash reduced Trix so quickly. Her body’s debt for decades of NST before the revolution was withdrawn in full. So feeble she was, so laboured of breath, so slow to turn her head and open her eyes. White needles of hair sprouted from her face and body like mould. Her fists clenched so tightly that blood stained the white fur. Her eyes rolled frantically beneath the lids. Living memories made her body rigid, and loose when they briefly released her.
Laughter breaks Karen’s reverie. She catches herself opening and closing her hands.
A few older kids are shouting and gesticulating, ablaze with intent, as they attempt to shepherd the group in front of the stage. Many remain comically oblivious to their commands and entreaties.
The workshop crew tut and shake their heads at the kids’ antics.
Tess frowns. ‘You know what, Karen? We were too hungry to be this happy.’
A proper gust of wind ruffles the amphitheatre. The torches bend and flare. Blankets are tugged at, unattended glasses upended. The torches stand straight again.
Global civilisation. What a statement. It’s like a dream that becomes more and more fantastic as the years go by. Impossible to convey to the young. Like a myth now, or the first act of a fairy story: Once upon a time there was a magic kingdom ruled by a greedy and wasteful King.
Samuel Starsailor, the prophet who should have taken the throne, died suddenly in hospital; the official explanation was accidental anaphylactic shock. An insider claimed Michael Klotch had gifted the alien a murderous pavlova. The Klotch tapes were leaked. Samuel was denied an official funeral. Global demonstrations led to riot and revolution. New Zealand’s post-revolution government collapsed in 2046, along with the currency. Law and order ended shortly after government salaries did. Elites like Klotch were lynched. It was profoundly dispiriting to discover just how paper-thin the veneer of civilisation actually was. Emergency services became patchy and then stopped. Might became right. People unlike Klotch were lynched. There were no safety nets. People fell all the way. They died with increasing frequency, rotted in their homes.
The Brodericks were on Bill’s farm when the ships stopped and all familiar and reliable urban comfort ended. Despite warnings, the new world of hard labour in highly stressed rural communities came as a brutal shock. Starvation and sickness led inexorably to death. Murder, rape, stabbings, theft, fights and beatings became a form of justice. There were constant ruinous fires and gun battles with raiders. Traditional medicine was used in the face of infection. Infants died. And the whole time the weather worsened and food got harder to come by. There were more storms, droughts and heatwaves; more insects, disease-bearing mosquitos and pests. The nightmare went on and on. People lost their minds.
The kids have organised themselves to play bullrush. One stands out in front of the rest, hands on hips, silent; delaying the call, enjoying the attention.
‘This game’s dangerous,’ Karen says.
No one replies.
They’re too young to know, still fearless. They don’t understand that their little bones can be broken and never properly heal, that they could carry a shortened arm for life, one that stiffens in middle age and aches into old.
‘Well, I hope I’m proved wrong.’
The wind’s getting up. The torches around the amphitheatre stretch, leap and hiss.
She picks out Biko after a while. He’s smiling and jumping with excitement along with the all the other kids waiting for the call.
Could Biko be any happier? He’s told that he lives in the best place in the world, in a country isolated from armed migrants crossing storm-tossed oceans, and by virtue of those same oceans, in a country much cooler than the landmasses to the north. Who’d want to leave Aotearoa? This safe part of Aotearoa? This valley? Three good harvests in a row. There’s less sickness, more efficiency and better security. And although thermal inertia means the temperature continues to rise 30 years after largescale industrial emissions ceased, experience has made the small number of survivors far more resilient to weather shocks, and infinitely more careful and just with resources.
The bull holds the centre of the arena, his thick tongue distended, his shoulders hung with bandoliers. Blood streams down his sides.
‘Uh.’ Fear leaps in her stomach. Gone. She’s back entirely, with her colleagues in white linen on the terrace, hoping no one heard her gasp. Just a memory, Karen tells herself brightly—a regular memory.
The kids are growing impatient. Come on!
The bullrush tackler points at someone.
‘Me?’
He keeps pointing.
‘Who?’
‘Me? Who? Say the name!’
No. He’s pointing above them. To a dark figure on stage. A male. He stands off-centre in front of the curtains.
A single electric footlight comes on. His eyes are craters. Some children flee up the terraces to their parents and relatives. The rest close themselves into a staring knot. The golden beam of a single spotlight illuminates the new flax fedora and linen suit that Karen made for Jeremiah. The hat casts a shadow on his face. She holds her breath. Jeremiah’s head of security. This could be bad news.
Jeremiah removes his hat and his face is lit. He runs a slow hand over his bald dome. The gesture swells his bicep. He blinks and smiles.
From the children come happy cries of recognition and welcome.
‘It’s Uncle J!’
‘Hi, Uncle J!’
‘Wow. Nice suit!’
‘Happy harvest,’ he calls, his voice flung by the acoustics. He’s less substantial at 61, but still very strong, and still strong of voice.
‘Happy harvest!’ The hard bowl of earth amplifies the crowd’s responding cry.
Jeremiah replaces his hat and, taking offstage direction, moves forward until his face is lit properly by the footlight. His smiling face is bright. ‘Hi, everyone. Sorry to give you a fright, kids. It’s okay, I’m just going to say a couple of words before the show.
‘You see, I just realised that it’s almost 30 years to the day that Bill and I leaked the Klotch tape. So I—’
Applause and whistles come loudly. For a moment the past is close.
Jeremiah opens his hands. Closes them. Opens and closes his mouth. He’s clearly not prepared to speak. That’s very unusual for him. Unheard of, Karen thinks. Is there a problem after all?
‘Please.’
The applause subsides.
‘A lot of things happened around that time for a lot of people, of course, but I just want to remember Bill for a moment by dedicating this play to him. In remembrance of his work as a leader for us here on the east coast, during the darkest times.’
Crackling applause.
Bang. Bang.
The shots aren’t close. Jeremiah turns and cocks an ear to the rolling echo carried by the gusting wind. Karen’s heard enough gunfire to know that both shots came from the same high-powered rifle. They’re probably celebratory. She hopes they are. But raiders often strike during celebrations, when defences are low.
‘And also as a mentor to me,’ Jeremiah continues, obviously unfazed by the gunfire. ‘Though Bill wouldn’t have called it that. He would’ve called us partners.’
Bang.
The atmosphere changes. People stand and peer in the direction of the gunfire, look for the flicker of fire, listen for screams.
‘Oh God, not tonight,’ Inni mutters.
The sword is buried between the bull’s shoulders. He tosses his horns. Panting, wheeling, blood and saliva fling from his snout. A second sword is brought to the matador. Jeering. It’s gone on too long. It should be over. The matador creeps up and lunges between the horns. The bull leap
s. Four hooves leave the ground. A heavy carcass lands on its side. Stone dead.
No!
Sol’s warm hand. Karen surfaces. That sudden, terrible spring into death! She knows, now, that the bull’s spinal cord was severed for humane reasons.
‘Ah, that’s Joe’s .270.’ Jeremiah smiles. ‘Sorry, I should’ve said. He’s selling it. The target must be moving in this breeze.’
Muted laughter and muttering. Those standing adjust their blankets and resume their seats. Glasses are drained and refilled. The show will go on, because the audience trust Jeremiah with their lives. Karen trusts him too. His physical strength and courage in conflict are great. He has saved her life several times. She’s proud of him. The strong, bald old man on stage had to start all over again in a capsized world in which money was no longer the reward for talent, ambition and energy. While the Golden Gate was being looted and CEOs lynched, Jeremiah was feted by the locals around Bill’s farm for the leak that inspired the revolution.
‘You okay, Karen?’
‘Yes.’ She is. Really. The memory has gone. Madrid was more than 40 years ago. She squeezes Sol’s hand and smiles. ‘All clear.’
It’s true. She’s back. Back 30 years ago, to when Jeremiah became connected and began another climb. Solangia’s biological father, from the local iwi Ngäti Kahungunu, joined them at Bill’s farm too, bringing his sister and mother, and everyone on the farm became part of a community of like-minded and related people, working together for a common good. Those local relationships proved the difference between life and death. Something special happened. For survivors, it had to.
‘Epicurus,’ Jeremiah announces, ‘said that it’s “not what we have but what we enjoy that constitutes our abundance”. It took me a long time to understand that.’ He peers down at the kids. ‘The man who can’t enjoy a simple meal will never be satisfied. I had to learn how to be grateful when I was an adult. It’s important to see and be grateful for what you have.
Star Sailors Page 44