by Albert Wendt
‘But that’s not true!’ Daniel interrupted. His father held up his hand for Daniel to wait.
‘… I know you will deny that but I know that is true, Lemu, because you have never loved me. No one but me knows that, because I am the only one who remembers that you fell in love with that other woman in our village, that nobody your parents did not want you to marry because she was a nobody! You have not stopped loving her. I know because in our twenty-two years of married life I could tell from your actions, from your treatment of me, from your refusal to get a good job and be somebody our son could look up to, from your refusal to accept responsibility for leading and providing for our family, from your refusal to fully perform and fulfill your duties and obligations in marriage as a husband, from your leaving of our son’s upbringing totally up to me, and so forth, that you didn’t truly love me. That your heart is still with her …’
Even if she was telling the truth, how could she have ever arrived at such a misreading of our lives together? Daniel thought. Haven’t we been living in the same home, doing the same things, and growing into people shaped largely by that? Daniel kept questioning himself as his father read on.
‘… And by not being a good provider and husband, you forced me into using what your self-righteous son calls “immoral ways and lies” to get jobs and the things we needed to stay alive and together as a family in this strange country. Someone had to take the bold decision to migrate to New Zealand – and I knew you weren’t strong enough to. So, as usual, I had to decide. I did not want the children God was going to bless us with to grow up in the poverty and ignorance of our village and country. No, I wanted a better life for us, and to get you away from that woman Satan sent to smite you with …’
Daniel didn’t want to hear any more.
‘… As for your loving son, you have succeeded in turning him against me, and I hope you’re happy about that because he’ll end up treating you too as just another ignorant FOB he’s ashamed of introducing to his over-educated friends. And have you told him that he is our only child because that is what you wanted, and that, against my deepest moral beliefs and feelings as a woman and mother, you made me go and have my tubes tied? ...’
‘Please stop, Dad. As usual, she’s – she’s seeing it totally from her selfish viewpoint and really hurting you again.’
‘You mean, she’s lying as usual, don’t you, Tanielu?’
‘If you have to put it that way, yes.’
‘Then I think we should hear her to the end.’
‘… In my suffering – yes, suffering – your silence and inadequacies as a man, I had to turn to men who noticed and cared for me and could …’
‘And that is what she has done, finally, Tanielu,’ his father said. ‘She has gone to the latest man who is satisfying her needs.’ When he gazed up, Daniel expected to see tears in his eyes, but there were none. In his gaze was now a barely perceptible sliver of – hope? Triumph? Daniel dared not continue that search.
Daniel felt the tears sliding down his cheeks, and quickly slid his hand across them, cutting them off from reaching his recognition. ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’ Daniel pulled his head back into the dark, like a turtle hiding in its shell.
The next morning, before his father was awake, Daniel dressed quickly, packed his satchel and caught the bus to university, through the fierce rain, escaping what he believed was a man who was suffering his worst humiliation as a man, and who, now, in his deep grief, might relinquish his desire to live. Because Daniel loved him more than even himself, he felt as if he was dying with him, unable in his almost overwhelming sorrow to rescue him.
In the crowded bus, holding onto the strap and sandwiched in between people who still smelt of sleep, his mother, against his wishes, insisted on clogging his head and driving out his sorrow. He was overcome with an unquenchable desire to punish her, make her pay for her betrayal.
When he got into his office he rang his friends and asked them to have lunch with him at the Niuean, a café in High Street owned by some of Keith’s relatives, where they lunched at least once a week.
‘I hate her,’ Daniel whispered to Laura, who was the first to join him.
‘Dan, what did you say?’ she asked as she pulled a chair close to him and sat down.
‘I hate her!’ It was a tight, clenched declaration. Her consoling hand gripped his shoulder.
‘Who, Dan?’
‘My mother.’
‘Shit, Dan, what’s happened?’ she asked, now leaning close to his face, her arm round his shoulders.
‘My mother has left,’ he admitted finally to himself.
‘I don’t understand, Dan.’ She pressed her forehead against his, gripping his hand.
‘My mother has left my father!’ Abruptly, he pulled away from her.
‘Here’s Mere,’ Laura said. ‘She’ll know what to do.’ Mere sat down on Daniel’s other side. ‘You tell Mere, Dan,’ Laura urged, but he refused to.
‘What the fuck’s happening?’ Mere asked, more to Laura than to Daniel.
‘You want me to tell her?’ Laura asked him. He looked away.
‘Tell me what, Laura?’ Mere’s knee pressed into Daniel’s. She dragged her seat closer to him and wrapped her hand round his wrist. As her presence eased into his pain, he experienced some hope, knowing that Mere, the wise centre of their Tribe, was going to help. ‘Okay, Dan, what happened last night after we dropped you at home? Remember, Dan, there are no secrets in our Tribe …’
‘And we always help one another,’ Laura added.
He gazed at Mere, into her boundless aroha and reciprocity. ‘My mother has left Dad.’ He heard her abrupt intake of breath, once, and her pausing. ‘She has fucking well betrayed him!’
‘And Dan!’ Laura accurately brought that truth into his view.
‘I’m sorry, Dan. So sorry!’ Mere whispered. In running her fingers gently down the left side of his face, she conveyed the truth of her aroha for him. ‘I won’t ask how your dad is taking it.’ She paused, and, delving deeply into the memories of her pain, said, ‘I think I know a little of what he’s going through.’ Again she paused. ‘My mum’s still going through it after Dad left us about ten years ago. My brother and I have had to live with that too.’
‘You never get over it.’ Aaron was unexpectedly in their view, Paul following close behind. Aaron dumped his bag on the ground and slid into the seat opposite Daniel.
‘It’s now a fact of life in our crazy society,’ Paul declared, speaking as usual before thinking. ‘Statistics show that most marriages now end up in divorce within ten years. You’re lucky, Dan – your parents lasted, what? Twenty-something years?’
‘Sit down,’ Mere ordered. Paul hesitated, and they all watched him.
‘I was only being real,’ he mumbled, and sat down, head bowed. ‘My parents are still together after thirty plus years, but they may as well be apart.’
‘Being real can also mean being fucking insensitive,’ Mere chastised him. ‘Dan and his dad are suffering the death of the family they have always known. In her leaving them, Dan’s mother has killed that – but she is still alive, and will be around to remind them of that death. Perhaps it would have been best if she had died physically and was buried.’
‘Like mine should have done after they abandoned me, a?’ Keith, who had just arrived, reminded them of his years of searching unsuccessfully for his biological parents. ‘Loko malosi, loko koa, Dan,’ he encouraged.
It is uncanny but true that when the people you’ve been with for years are nearby, you can sense their presence. ESP? No – throughout the years, every sensory aspect of you becomes intricately woven with theirs, and, if you’ve lived together in the same house, that house and its smells and sights and feelings impregnate themselves into all of you. So do your pets and other property. You come to know they are there before you see them, because you’ve all
become extensions in every way of one another and your group.
That was how it was when, after Daniel’s first morning lecture, when his office phone rang, he knew who it was. His heart raced as he let it ring and he visualised her at the other end, daring him to pick it up, daring him to confront her for the first time since she’d left, taunting him with that. It stopped finally, but he knew the trouble was only beginning.
He attempted to settle into an essay he was writing about Alistair Campbell’s recent poetry, and was beginning to forget her, when the phone rang again. This time it sounded more demanding. Once again he let it ring itself out, but, knowing she wasn’t going to relent, he packed his satchel and got up to leave for home. As he did so, the phone started ringing shrilly again. In defiant anger, he picked it up and tried not to shout: ‘Yes?’ Silence: she was playing games with him. ‘Why are you ringing me?’
‘You’re still my son, Dan, and I haven’t talked with you for so long.’ She sounded different: happier, less stressed – gloating?
‘Well, I have not felt the need to talk to you!’
‘I hear you and your – you and Lemu are going to Samoa?’ She was feeling him out.
‘Yes, but of what interest is that to you?’
‘I just wanted to find out how you were …’
‘Forget about us’ he continued his attack.
‘Daniel, someday – and I hope for your sake it’s soon – you will learn the truth about – about your father and me …’
‘I know enough already to believe that you caused it all.’ He paused, and then let her have it: ‘You betrayed him; you shamed him as a man, and in front of our whole community!’
‘Daniel, you cannot judge me: I’m your mother!’
‘No, you’re not,’ he said simply. ‘You are no longer part of our aiga.’ Was that an almost inaudible gasp of pain from her? He put the phone down.
But the heady feelings he’d derived from inflicting pain on her vanished as he picked up his satchel and headed for the door. Memories of his childhood with her blocked out everything else, and he tried to persuade himself he didn’t love her any more. How do you rid yourself of someone you were biologically part of; someone who you’ve lived with all your life and who, in every way, in every sense, your every memory has been part of? How do you cut her out of your memories and your genes and your heart and your self?
23
‘I need to go back home,’ his father said, while they were having the breakfast he’d cooked – bacon and eggs, toast and tea, his favourite. His father wasn’t eating. He was unshaven, haggard.
‘Samoa, Dad?’ Daniel had to ask. His father nodded slowly once. ‘To get away from …?’ His father didn’t react, but Daniel understood he wanted to escape the house, which was composed of everything to do with his mother, and sinewed with the now bitter memories of her and their life together. ‘I understand, Dad. I too want to get out of this …’ Daniel couldn’t say it. ‘We should sell the house,’ he suggested.
‘Even our savings account was under her name.’
‘And has she taken that money with her?’ Daniel immediately leapt to the angry conclusion.
‘I don’t want to say any more bad things about her,’ his father sighed.
‘We should go and see our lawyer, and see if she can do that,’ Daniel said. Then Daniel remembered that his father always avoided such hurdles; things that he knew little about – palagi things, he called them. ‘I’ll go and see Mr Forrester,’ Daniel added quickly. ‘I’ll ask him about the house too.’
‘I remember she – your mother – told me once that the house is under both our names,’ his father explained.
Daniel learned from Mr Forrester, their lawyer, that all their property, including their savings account, had to be halved, and relayed this to his dad. ‘She’s not entitled to anything,’ Daniel declared. ‘She’s the one who has left, and she doesn’t deserve anything, Dad.’
‘No, son. Legally, she is entitled to half,’ he said. ‘And a legal fight over what we own may take a long time.’
‘And that would delay your going home …’ Daniel realised.
While Mr Forrester was arranging the settlement with Daniel’s mother’s lawyer, Daniel got a valuer to value the house, obtained his mother’s permission through their lawyers to sell it as soon as possible, and then put it on the market. With Laura’s and Mere’s help, Daniel found a villa in Ponsonby he and his father could rent.
His parents refused to be in the same room at the signing of the settlement, and Daniel also refused to see his mother, so the lawyers had to go from room to room for the signing and witnessing. About three weeks later the house was sold, at ten times the value they’d paid for it years earlier. Daniel insisted that his father accompany him to the bank, where they set up an account for his father and deposited his hefty share of the sale. His father insisted that $10,000 be put in Daniel’s account. Over the next few days, Lemu got Daniel to teach him how to use a cheque book, bank and transfer money, pay bills and so forth: all the things his mother had done for him in the past.
But when it came to packing their things and cleaning the house for their shift to their new flat, his father, having done all the domestic chores throughout their life together, insisted Daniel learn from him.
On a calm sunny Saturday, Laura, Mere, Keith and Aaron – Paul had to play rugby – turned up in a hired moving truck and helped them shift. Daniel’s father managed the whole move, to the admiration of Daniel’s friends.
After the move they kept busy, burying their pain, but every night, when the busyness was over, Daniel found his father in his room or in front of the television, loaded down with his relentless grief.
A few weeks later, Lemu informed Daniel he’d booked and bought two tickets for Samoa, timing the trip for the start of Daniel’s semester break. Daniel was surprised he’d done this on his own, and loved Lemu even more for inviting him to help settle back into his Samoa home.
In their previous visits to Samoa, they’d always stayed with his mother’s aiga at Gagaifo, Lefaga. Now, when they arrived, Dad’s brother, Pati, and other relatives were waiting for them at Faleolo Airport, with a second-hand truck Dad had sent them money to buy.
On their way into Malie, Lemu told Daniel casually that he’d bought a prefabricated three-bedroom house in Auckland, and it was arriving in containers over the next few months.
‘Who’s going to assemble it? Daniel asked, surprised.
‘I went to the factory in Onehunga,’ his dad said, ‘and the company showed me how to do it.’ Such surprises continued in the two weeks Daniel spent with Lemu as he reestablished himself in Malie.
Daniel’s father’s younger brother, Pati, held the ali‘i title of their aiga because, so his mother kept telling him over the years, his father was ‘too weak to assert his rights to the title that is rightfully his’. Pati, with their mother’s backing, had simply insisted that he was the best educated and the best employed – he’d completed Samoa College, and was now a senior clerk in the Customs Department – and was therefore the best qualified to hold the title. ‘Your father didn’t try, as usual – it was too difficult,’ Daniel’s mother had said. And though Daniel had sympathised with his father, he had resented him for this supposed weakness.
Over the years, in their dealings with their Malie aiga, it was Daniel’s mother who’d unashamedly asserted their rights and claims, using the money they brought back from New Zealand and her unrelenting, unmitigated ability to manipulate people and circumstances. The more she did so, the more Daniel’s father withdrew, and the more his father’s aiga resented Tasi, branding her behind her back as ‘le Fafige Papālagi mai Kuā,’ the Papālagi Woman from the Back.
So Daniel wasn’t surprised when, over the two weeks he spent with his father in Malie, no one in his aiga or village referred to his mother. No one. The scheming ar
rogant nobody Palagi Woman from the Back was no longer part of us! Good riddance!
But Daniel was surprised when, in that time, he observed his father, in his quiet manner, and using his wealth from New Zealand, becoming the new centre of their Malie aiga. Certain things shifted the power to him: the truck and glittering promise of the most impressive house in Malie; his large contribution to the church on their first Sunday service; his generous distribution of gifts, in the form of money and clothes and food, to all the elders of their aiga and village; his agreeing with their pastor to become a deacon; and, most impressive, his inarticulate stumblings on public occasions, which steadily turned into confident, lucidly poetic speeches that impressed and swayed even his brother. Before Daniel left, his father was no longer afraid of expressing, with commitment, his views and feelings.
‘You are happy to be home, aren’t you, Dad?’ Daniel said to him at the crowded airport while they waited for Daniel’s plane.
His father’s face shone, as he said, in Samoan, ‘Yes, Tanielu, I am starting to be myself again.’
‘This is where you belong?’
‘Yes, and your mother had no right taking me from here.’ For an unbelievable moment, Daniel didn’t want to recognise the unforgiving resentment in this assertion. It was so new; so unlike the father he’d known all his life.
On the plane, as Daniel gazed out at the limitless ocean of clouds burning with sun, suspended between the past and a future he was apprehensive about because his parents had wrenched themselves out of his life, he recalled what his mother had said about his father in her farewell letter. Her accusations were lies, he was sure; all part of her pretentious life of selfish self-advancement.