by Albert Wendt
Mike led them round the house – Daniel realised the air was laced with the smell of marijuana – to the back, where they found three Māori men and a Pākehā sitting round a wooden table that stood in overgrown grass and was shaded by rimu and ponga. As usual, Daniel recognised the men’s intense attention focusing immediately on Mere; and, as usual, she reacted as if she wasn’t aware of their very sexual appraisal and assumption she was Aaron’s girlfriend. He caught the young Pākehā man, whose bulging rotund body was struggling to burst out of his leather jacket and jeans, hiding the joint in his hand under the table. The other Māori man was squat and thickset, with a well-groomed black beard. He rose now with a huge smile. Aaron rushed to him and they embraced in hongi. The man exclaimed, ‘Shiiitt, boy, you as big as your dad now, and handsomer!’
Aaron replied, ‘But not as tough as you, Henare.’
Quickly, Mike introduced the other men to Aaron, who in turn introduced them to his party.
An attractive woman, with ebony skin and piercing blue eyes, and three teenage children brought out more chairs, and they sat down. The warriors, at the woman’s invitation, went into the house with her children.
Mike took the chair facing Aaron across the table. Frank, the young Pākehā, sat down next to him. ‘You jokers havin’ a good holiday?’ Mike asked.
‘Yeah, thanks to you, Uncle,’ Aaron replied. ‘It’s a beaut house.’ Mike and his friends laughed.
‘Nah, thank ya mates – what’re their names again?’ Mike asked Frank.
‘Bonzy and that Samoan mate of his,’ Frank replied. That attracted Daniel’s attention instantly: Feau and Bonzy were always there in Aaron’s life and Daniel couldn’t understand why Aaron allowed that.
‘Thanks, mate,’ Mike said. “Yeah, Bonzy and Feau. They’ve been very good to us.’ Daniel glanced at Mere, who was also now intensely interested.
‘Bloody useful having them in the city,’ Henare said. ‘Good for business.’
‘Bonzy rang me and I got you the best holiday home in our area,’ Mike reminded Aaron. ‘Jesus, I like that: “holiday home”!’ Mike wheezed with laughter.
‘Yeah, rangatira, very original,’ Frank flattered his boss.
‘Mr Poutama, the “holiday home” we are very grateful to you for belongs to Mr Brent Knowing of Te Awamutu?’ Mere’s intrusion into their males-only discussion was like the clicking of a camera; it caught them completely by surprise. Daniel expected a stern rebuke, but, after a moment of shocked surprise, the men’s faces assumed smiles of condescending tolerance, and he could see their intensifying naked sexual interest in this shit-hot-looking woman who was daring to speak to them as an equal. Beside him, Aaron was trying to hide his annoyance.
While everyone waited, Mike’s stern face melted into a wide grin, and he said, his voice hissing through the gap of his missing teeth, ‘Āe, Mere, it belongs to Mr Brent Knowing, a wealthy farmer and a grateful mate of ours.’ The others nodded and imitated their boss’s laughter. Daniel, now drenched with sweat, prayed Mere would be satisfied with that, and he looked to Aaron to intervene.
Smiling, Mere said, ‘Koro, Aaron hasn’t yet told us what the rental is for Mr Knowing’s beautiful home.’
‘For you, my beautiful kōtiro and my loyal cousin Arona, it is free,’ Mike replied. The others nodded. Now leave it there, leave it there, Daniel hoped; he tried to catch Mere’s attention. Under the table he stepped on Aaron’s foot, but Aaron refused to acknowledge him.
‘Last evening, Koro, two policemen came to welcome us to your marae,’ Mere pressed on. Daniel started noticing that her calm demeanor, commanding beauty and courage and beguiling mana were having their usual captivating effect on her audience, and he breathed easier.
Aaron straightened up to speak, but Mike raised his hand and stopped him. ‘Did they follow correct marae kawa and accord you a proper welcome, my kōtiro?’ They all waited for her reply.
But she turned to Aaron and said, ‘Perhaps Aaron can best answer that, rangatira.’ Brilliant move, Daniel thought; now Aaron had to decide. Mike looked at Aaron.
‘Yes, they did, rangatira, and we want you to thank them for that.’ Aaron replied. Daniel glanced across at Mere, who was gazing with aroha at Aaron.
Mike said, ‘Henare, please visit Sergeant Dickson and thank him on my behalf.’ He paused and, gazing with admiration at Mere, added, ‘Tell them my kōtiro and cousin and their whānau are our guests.’
‘Thank you, Uncle,’ Aaron said, lowering his gaze.
That evening, alone with Mere and Laura, Daniel thanked Mere for her intervention. She chortled easily, and, pressing his hand, said, ‘See, you can sometimes win by getting off the fence, bro, and respecting the law.’
‘What the hell happened?’ asked Laura, puzzled. Daniel and Mere looked at each other and laughed.
‘Bloody Mere stalemated our enterprising and vengeful Aaron,’ Daniel said.
‘In this instance, maybe, but what about the future?’ Laura warned. ‘You know what he’s like – he hates to lose, and he’s tenacious.’
When Laura left to help the warriors washing the dishes, Mere and Daniel sat on the veranda, looking out at the darkening sea and horizon. ‘Laura’s right,’ Mere admitted. ‘We’ve got a lifetime with our beloved Aaron.’
‘We just have to keep an eye on him,’ Daniel replied, without much thought. He paused, then reflected, ‘That’s stupid, isn’t it?’
‘But that’s all we can do, bro,’ she murmured. ‘He’s still connected to Bonzy and Feau, and they’re scarier than Uncle Mike Poutama and his crew.’
Daniel couldn’t sleep for a long while that night, trying to dispel the stark and disturbing memories of Feau, Bonzy, and Aaron abusing Arthur and Martha.
22
It was exhilarating that summer was now spreading across their neighbourhood, bringing with it the healing warmth that fingered its way into every cold and wounded corner of him and massaged them away. His whole body, inside and out, was dancing as he jogged along Ponsonby Road in the late afternoon. During the summers, he jogged for an hour each second day. This was his second session that week, and he was starting to lose his thinking mind in the compelling adrenalin-high rhythm of his running.
It wasn’t until he was ten or so paces past the front doors of the restaurant that his startled, bewildered sight and thumping heart stopped him. No, don’t go back. It’s not her. He started moving away again. But the bursting angry insistence in his lungs wouldn’t let him. He’d suspected her for years now, and had examined and debated in long painful sessions, which made him feel physically ill, all the implications of the possibility that she was being unfaithful to his father. Whenever the lurid imagery of his mother making love to another man cut through his resistance, he hugged his hot face with his hands and muffled his erupting cries of protest. He told himself repeatedly that, as their son, he had no right to interfere in their lives, check up on her; and what if he discovered it was true? Was he going to be able to confront her or reveal it to his father? Would he be able to bear the consequences of what that would do to his parents and their family?
He turned to continue jogging away; it was best his father didn’t know about it, it would kill him. Coincidence? Fate? Accident? How he had come to be jogging past that restaurant at that particular time didn’t matter; he had to find out if it was her: he couldn’t allow his father’s long betrayal to continue. But as he walked back – or shuffled, slowly – through the tables and lunchtime diners on the footpath to the restaurant door, his heart cupped in his mouth, he held onto the desperate hope it wasn’t true; wasn’t.
There weren’t many diners inside. Through the pot plants on the low partition at the back of the restaurant he tried to identify the trim Polynesian woman in the light red blouse, with neatly bundled-up black hair, sitting with her right arm stretched across the table, her hand in the caressing grip o
f a blue-suited Palagi, who was gazing into her eyes as she talked. He didn’t recognise the woman’s radiance and animated presence as his mother’s. Pulsing with relief, he pulled back. But just then, the man turned his face to the road.
He would never forget that instant of his recognising the man and the searing pain of it slashing across his heart. Her supervisor at work. It was as if his whole life had been in preparation for experiencing that pain, and the confirmation of the betrayal by his mother of his lifelong love for her.
Motionless, he stood in the centre of the doorway and scrutinised the woman again, this time without hope, without forgiveness. And he saw it was her when she turned her face up and gazed into her lover’s face, with that glowing look of adoration and desire that he’d often seen in his own lovers.
‘Oi ka fēfē! Ese lou le ava i lou kigā!’ she accused Daniel, but he recognised from the undramatic way she uttered the huge accusation that she was searching frantically for a way to counter the truth of what he’d just accused her of. ‘Aga o oe se kama Samoa mogi, e ke le fai mai gi upu fa‘apega ia ke a‘u.’ He stood firmly in front of her and refused to revert to the obedient Samoan son she was expecting him to be. ‘Fa‘akoese mai gei ia ke a‘u!’ She was now riveting her gaze on him, hands clasped together as if she was trying to wring out the pain, the moral indignation, she believed he believed she was suffering. As far back as he could remember, she had always used Samoan whenever she wanted to belittle or discipline him. ‘Do it now, Daniel. Apologise now. Say you sorry. It is monstrous what you accuse me of!’ She switched into her usual high gear, the English language, her rich version, which she knew was his language of guilt and regret and self-flagellation. She knew that intimately, because she had raised him on English and deliberately away from the Samoan language: ‘Samoan language, it is no use in this country; it is the language of Samoans from kuāback, the not-educated, and it not going to get you a job or make you rich, Daniel.’
She rose slowly to her feet, her narrow face assuming the twisted, distorted map of offended anger that she had always cultivated. As a teenager, Daniel had realised she had a well-rehearsed repertoire of faces, postures, expressions and vocabulary, for every emotion and occasion. She was a consummate actor; the best in their family. With her whole body quivering and trembling as if it was going to disintegrate into pitiful fragments if he didn’t obey her at once, she said, ‘Daniel, you going for to kill me. How – how can you accuse me, yes, me, the only mother you got, of … of …’ She paused dramatically. ‘God will stop loving you, Daniel. He will.’ Abruptly she turned her bony back to him, hands clasped around her face as if to stop the bleeding. Soon the sobbing and tears will come, Daniel thought – and they did, in melodramatic quantity and sound.
He started walking towards the door. Her sound subsided into a pitiful whimpering, broken by heart-rending indrawn sobs and gasps for breath. He looked back at her.
She was gazing at him through a screen of large tears, dripping snot and eyes as red as Scarlett’s in Gone with the Wind; her favourite movie role. ‘Daniel, I swear – I swear – and God will kill me if I not telling the truth – that I never been unfaith …!’ She pleaded, stopping where he expected her to because, despite her life of arrogant conning and lying without remorse or guilt, she was still too afraid to bet everything on there not being a God with a conscience who would condemn her to the agonising fires of the Hell, which her exemplary pastor father had beaten ferociously into her. Despite Samoa’s almost two hundred years of a forgiving loving Jesus, she had inherited her pagan ancestors’ belief that if you break an important tapu or offend your atua you will suffer their righteous, unforgiving wrath.
So he had to say it for her. ‘You have been unfaithful; you have been unfaithful to Dad.’ He stopped himself from adding, Mum, because that would open the floodgates into him pitying her again and letting her escape blame, guilt and punishment. ‘I also know this isn’t the first time, but it is the first time I have proof – and the courage to confront you with it.’
He turned and headed for the door, knowing what her next move was going to be. She waited, and they both counted his six irrecoverable steps to the door. His hand wrapped round the doorknob and pulled back the door, and he stepped into what he believed then was the severance of his ties to her as a son.
‘If your father finds out, it going to destroy him’, she pleaded for the last time.
‘He has known for a long time – you know that.’ He turned and, when he noted she couldn’t look into his eyes, continued to enjoy his punishing her, by saying quietly in the manner of his father, ‘You’ve been destroying him for a long long time.’ He paused and then delivered the final stroke, ‘Did you ever love him?’
He shut the door behind him and hurried away from her long, long, long wailing, which he’d first heard her performing at his grandfather’s funeral.
That afternoon after work, he avoided going home by drinking with Laura, Paul, Aaron, Keith and Mere at the Argosy, their favourite pub, at the bottom of Queen Street. Concerned by the speed and amount he was drinking, the always perceptive, observant, considerate Mere was the first to ask, ‘Everything okay, Dan?’
‘Yeah, you don’t have to drown in it,’ Aaron joked. ‘We all know you can out-speed all of us, but you don’t need to do it today.’
‘Ī, sole, slow down,’ Keith echoed.
Laura reached over, and the warm consoling feel of her hand wrapping around his threatened to break open his need to confess to them his fears about what might happen to his father – the frailest, most precious person in his life – who, for most of their life together, he had protected not only from his mother but from the whole destructive, fearful process of being a migrant.
While draining another glass of beer – Paul, the least sensitive and perceptive of their Tribe, oohed at his speed – he decided not to ask for their advice. ‘I’m just stressed about finishing my thesis,’ he lied, and thumped his empty glass onto the table. ‘Anyone else for another drink?’ he offered.
‘Not for me; gotta finish preparing some cases I have tomorrow,’ Mere lied. She nodded towards Laura, who put her palm across her empty glass.
‘Me too, Dan,’ Laura said. ‘Mere and I’ll give you a lift home.’ Aaron and Paul mumbled something about needing to be somewhere else, and got up to leave. Keith followed their example. Daniel wanted to protest, but Laura came and stood beside him and, lifting up his satchel, repeated, ‘C’mon, we’ll give you a lift.’
‘Kama, you’ve had too much already,’ Keith urged. ‘You can’t drive home on your own.’
His silence increased until it clogged the car and drove Mere and Laura into silence too, as they headed for his home through rain that was sweeping in drifts across the darkening early winter streets and through his memories of his parents’ life together, which he was attempting to lock out.
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ Laura offered, when Mere stopped the car in front of his house. He mumbled no and scrambled out of the car, oblivious to the cutting rain. ‘I’ll ring you, later!’ he heard Laura call. He paused and almost retreated back into the car and her protecting love, away from the house with only its corridor light struggling to shine through the dark rain.
He tried not to make a noise as he unlocked the front door and stepped over the threshold into what was still visibly the home that, over his life, had become his second self in sight, smell, touch, imagination, memory and hopes. Now, as he moved warily down the corridor, he realised, with a regret as deep as his breath, that it was a ferocious alien creature waiting to consume him and what he’d come to believe his family was. The dank mildew smell that usually filled their house as winter progressed was already rising up from the floorboards and carpet.
‘Aua!’ the whispery voice begged when he reached up to turn on the lights. He hesitated and then slid into his chair at their family table, which, caught in the li
ght from the corridor, was glowing with a hypnotic luminosity. `
In silence they sat, they waited; they sat, they waited, Daniel’s eyes growing accustomed to the gloom and his father’s dark, motionless outline in his chair opposite, and the empty chair on his left that had been his mother’s. The past tense had slid automatically into his thoughts and, recognising that, a breathless panic started agitating him again. His need for his father to start articulating their relationship in this new phase in their life without his mother became an undeniable pain. But his father maintained his silence. ‘How was your day?’ His father tried to hold on to the way their family had been, and Daniel was surprised at the strength of his voice and the fact he was using English.
‘It was good, Dad,’ he heard himself say.
Daniel didn’t see his father bend forward in his chair, but his right hand with the tattooed cross on the back between the thumb and forefinger slid into blazing view and across the table towards him, with two folded sheets of white paper under it. His father withdrew his hand quickly as if the sheets were a poisonous creature. ‘She left me that; you should read it because it involves you as well.’
‘If it is a letter to you, Dad, then I can’t read it; it’s private.’ Daniel attempted to evade the new configuration of their family.
‘It is from your mother, Tanielu,’ his father whispered, deliberately using Daniel’s Samoan name because that was his quick way of conveying his love. ‘Tanielu, it is time you found out what your mother is really like.’ Daniel knew that already, but he reached over, unfolded the letter and, holding it with both hands to steady his visible trembling, started reading it. ‘Read it aloud,’ his father urged.
‘It’s mainly in Samoan – and you know my Samoan isn’t that good.’
‘That’s right; she made sure you didn’t learn the language of the “not-educated from the kuāback”,’ he said simply. There was a tinge of rebellious anger there, and it surprised Daniel. His father’s hand came out of the dark again and took the letter from Daniel. His head and face were finally staying in the light, his bushy prematurely white hair shining like silver as he reread the letter to himself and then, for Daniel’s sake, translated: ‘When you get back from work today, I will be gone. That is what you and your son have always wanted …’