by Duff, Alan
And then the forest creatures sang and scuttled and kept killing to the dawn, and the loudest of them provided trilling sound cover, as one swift, murderous group of hard-trained and thought-voided men set upon the sleeping village. The blood of the sleepy night sentries had already been shed silently on the pre-dawn ground by a select few: trained deaf mutes, chosen because they knew not the tales of night ghosts and omens and evil spirits of the dark, born of their condition to be unafraid to move in the spirits’ medium, killing enemy man as silently as the world they permanently dwelled in — Oh, men mighty in their utility of what each is born with.
In amongst enemy village, nothing of whom and which is respected or held in slightest regard; so slaughtering the children, enjoying the boy warriors who put up fights but slicing their little throats, cutting off their screaming untattooed heads the same as any man.
But yet there was the occasional child who struck an invading warrior with promise, so he was snatched in instant adoption on later condition that his blood was a new blood, and as soon as he was capable, his seed would join with his adoptive tribe to well-selected woman. But mostly they were killed, despatched to their own ancestors awaiting them on the other spirit side of this world.
Runners put down special flax mats to which enemy old men and women were dragged to be killed; so that legend should not say of these mighty victors that they spared not the dignity of old men and helpless women.
Our (my) ancestors were these — Tell me, Chumpy, who of them would have run?
Chumpy, I tell you: my ancestor was renowned for his skill and strength at driving his best fighting taiaha up under an enemy’s groin and lifting him aloft, a living, screaming trophy of flailing, impaled enemy manhood now gone. Renowned for his mighty strength in holding that vanquished enemy weight with great straining arms and parading him around the battle field so that enemy men and fellow men might remember his name and who they beheld: Te Aranui Kapi, that is who.
8
Picture it: big fires heating stones to white-hot, transferred to the dug hole and layered upon them the flax and leaf-enclosed food — of kumara sweet potato, fat wood pigeon and, best of all, the meat of a slave killed fresh just before the food was to be covered with large fern leaves — and then earth, to cook slowly for a day divided into daylight measures by each season of two fingers of ten if summer, a finger added for each colder season.
It was he, Te Aranui Kapi, one of the great fighters who, after the chief and high-borns, got first choice of the cooked slave meat from the earth ovens. It was he who hacked the tender rump meat from the cooked human carcass and made poetic statement of appreciation how good this man’s tattooed behind tasted, laughing that it was surely better than when the contemptible slave was alive and squatting over the latrine.
It was he who more often than not got the chief’s nod to pull the spine from the carcass and break apart the spinal column of the slow-cooked sub-human, offer to the tohunga to place first morsel into the mouth of the tapu sacred chief.
He who made wide eyes of gladness at his chief expressing delight, then his own at sucking the marrow from the back bone centres, and slurped, tonguing off the tender meat so soft it melted in the mouth; who tossed the sucked bone to his favourite bird-hunting dog and patted his gorged stomach to show that of this feasting he was sated; and soon with eyes for an available woman to complete victory’s sweet tastings. Eyes especially for Tangiwai. Though he was not yet ready to marry her. The less now after what had happened to her.
I see the thunder clouds form over the hilltop acres, and women, old people, children hurrying from the burst of downpour, but warriors unhurried to take shelter and making sure sentries know their appointed times of duty. I see the thunder in his, Kapi’s, intricately tattooed face upon being reminded by his own gathering storm inside of his brother warrior, Tamatea, having made fat with pending child his favourite woman, Tangiwai, forcing himself upon her. I smell his anger crossing the five generations we are apart — and I thrill for him, what his anger is going to do. Puh! My ancestor was no runner.
I learn from Mereana of my ancestor flattering his brother Tamatea’s battle prowess at every opportunity, so that as night followed day Tamatea became full on himself, a warrior gorged of compliment from his greatest peer. I see how clever my antecedent in causing this sibling cuckolder disfavour with his own people for letting pride swell to an unacceptable vanity. How knowing he must have been to see that the vain warrior loses control of his fighting cruelty so necessary in battle and becomes foolish amongst his own. They watched this great man, corrupted on himself, taking displeasure at mere child’s cheek, and thrashing it; beating the village idiot for a born-misaligned bad eye at him; killing a slave on the spot for just glancing with eyes as though an equal.
I see the village schemer doing his self-appointed role by putting before Tamatea woman temptation that brings powerful disapproval; planting the seed in the tribe’s ear that now Tamatea has stepped beyond the claim, the crude love, the respect of his people. So, at last, they say, He is yours, Te Aranui Kapi. He is your blood gone bad – take him.
A younger man knocked him down from behind, who just moments before had smiled humbly and made expected compliment on his, the venerable Tamatea’s, superior warriorhood. And before the deft Tamatea could regain his feet, he learnt a painful knowing, an all-encompassing claim of his existence that would become his for the entire forever of his last excruciating day in this life.
Te Aranui it was who drove a leaf-shredded manuka stake up through his bowel hole. And many strong young warriors held the pain-enraged, violated length of muscularity to the ground, folding and shaping Tamatea’s screaming, thrashing, projectile-violated body, so Te Aranui might push the stake up through his brother’s insides; slowly, carefully, ignoring the deafening bellow as if roared in a high echoing canyon, avoiding the vital organs.
It was Te Aranui’s discipline to ignore the pleasure of what he did. Only when the act came to an end and the wooden stake emerged out of Tamatea’s mouth, and was thrust further enough so hand-hold could be gained, did Kapi allow himself smile and utter to the man, Was this how your penis entered Tangiwai, with such powerful, final thrust?
A breathing hole was cut just below the man’s wood-occupied windpipe, so his pains might last as long as his warrior will to live was sure to. Then they carried him from one village to the next of their same neighbouring tribe.
It took all the morning and into the late afternoon. The people took chance to spit on the living body, to go on haunches below the slung weight and glee up into the eyes that had known so many of their sufferings at his vanity-diseased hands. Small boys flicked derisive fingers at his once proud penis now shrivelled by the body’s total preoccupation with its pain. Old men taunted wise words to his innerly screaming ears — since no voice nor cry nor pleas nor apologies could escape him — of dire prophecy come true for he who dares to believe he is above his own people.
Carried by warriors taking turns front and behind, this swinging live weight on a stake went from village to village, and each time they neared a settlement my ancestor took the front end of the hanging weight so that people might know it was he who had been most outraged by this man’s arrogant behaviour. And let this be sign of most vivid proportion that no man took the lover of Te Aranui Kapi, especially not his brother.
And it was Te Aranui who every once in a while laid the man upon the ground and poured water down past the stake to give at least tiniest thirst quench, and threw cooling water over him so he might find life still to continue his painful last ordeal.
And he spoke closely to the face with its grotesque outjutting of wooden stake, out its mouth like it was a warrior tongue in haka war dance just before battle; he told the face that no man was more than his contribution to his people, lessoned him that tribal thinking was thus: No single man means anything, only what he adds to accumulated deeds, accumulated culture. Man is but one shellfish in a huge line of
baskets. Tribal man is tribe before everything. Then he is warrior, a man of mana, a life of mana, who dies with his mana but only if his every act deserves to retain it.
Te Aranui Kapi spoke at him thus, as he prodded at his brother’s full facial tattoos and said how he had shamed his warrior markings and their name and why had he not seen this was coming, for surely foresight is also the untattooed mark of a great warrior? He spoke this in gentle, tongue-clicking tone of the man who has won completely and there is no hope for the other, not one star in the countless sprinkled sky, not one single twinkle of light of hope for the man.
Oh, and so it was of these times. And then they lifted him again, so that the pain took away his deepest desire to sleep finally, and pain existed unto itself. Pain. They trudged him through forest pathways screaming and singing with birds, only birds, for this land ran with no animal other than silent and inedible lizards and the kiore rat — brought by the first great ancestors across the vast ocean — not counting the infinite number of insects (and what is one insect, like one man, but a meaningless thing?)
When Tamatea Kapi finally expired, there managed to escape through the taken-up mouth a kind of moaning sound like few had heard, since this punishment was rare, and few men lasted it so long; it was a whooshing of life itself, like a witch fleeing and screaming in her terrible way that she had been wronged.
It was, the oral legend became, the life of a man of too many great battle deeds to go like this, in such vilest, unimaginable, tortured pain and, even more, at the hands of his own brother, even if he had cuckolded him. Perhaps he should have been given chance to make apology, symbol amends for losing his way. Perhaps he should have been brought before the people and humiliated in some lesser way than this. That is what they were thinking in the moments of hearing that terrible last sound leave his body.
It, the final breath, came out of him like a bird flight — enraged bird flight — and it hovered, furiously beating wings in echo over the last village to be witness, as they stared at the slumped body with its open eyes unseeing at hard-worn ground but still borne on men’s shoulders.
They said it got suddenly cold in a short span of time, and the trees shivered in it, and the birds ceased their normally constant dawn-to-dusk trilling, and the attachment of warriors who had borne the arrogant warrior became uneasy, until Te Aranui let his front end of the body drop, face first, to the ground. The bearer the other end let his end go, and then Te Aranui rolled the body over with his foot harder than even the tramped ground, and sneered down at its face.
Your last chilling cry to other’s ears fears me not, Tamatea. You ceased being my brother when you ceased being of your people.
He did not even give it, the lifeless body, a last name of his family line — not when he had vanquished it in such complete manner.
He bent down and put hand to the dead tattooed face, and with his practised thumb flicked out one of those staring eyes. And he held it for a moment, out before him, smiling sneer at it. Then tossed the piece of bloody jelly into the bushes: To be — he declared in thundering voice so the people might know who and what they beheld — To be consumed by the insects! By the collective might of minuscule life whose meaning is only in gathered numbers.
He (my ferocious ancestor) did same with the other eye, so the face was with two hollows hardly leaking any blood since it had bled away in the man’s long endurance of steady, bouncing carrying along the pathways of the people. Two hollows and a protrusion like a penis coming from its mouth.
Te Aranui said to it: Choose no fight, nor divergent path greater than yourself, fallen warrior. Which relieved this village, to see courage greater than that awful, omen-suggesting, last, moaning sound.
And they praised the great warrior, they closed around him and cried out his greatness over the defeated body of one who had yet been their own. A few were still less sure that such fate should be a great fighter’s end. But the noise of the majority said otherwise.
Te Aranui was offered any unattached woman of his choice; naturally he chose the most beautiful one, a young woman just reached breeding age. The loving, as the village later heard, was of much passion on both their parts. And they expressed hope that this should put the young woman with child, for surely if it was a boy it would be a great warrior too, and even if a girl child, then of considerable beauty and physical stature and strength to be respected, if not feared. (But no child did come of it.)
After the deed was done, and done twice, the villagers sniggered approvingly. Now Te Aranui had one last act to perform before returning home in triumph to his own hilltop fortress village.
He walked quite deep into the forest, deigning company even of his warriors. Soon they heard a long, continuous scream — not of pain but triumph. When the greatest warrior emerged from the forest, he told them it was for Tamatea, his scream, since it could not escape his wood-occupied mouth. He told them he had screamed, too, a challenge to Tamatea’s spirit to dare show itself, as person or omen or any sign at all that might tell Te Aranui Kapi that at least his brother was worthy of his respect.
He was smiling when he informed the breath-held, awed, blood-related villagers that no such sign appeared. No large rat rushed suddenly from unexpected place. No bird made sound different to unomening bird sounds, nor insects make many-numbered shape upon the forest ground to signify that Tamatea’s spirit would gain revenge. That, he spat, is the end of Tamatea.
Then he turned and his feet fast conveyed him back to the village of his birth, and he smiled often. No mangy running dog from battle he. But a hero, a warrior of no peer. Where his people waited to greet him so.
How dare the man Chumpy say my ancestor ran.
9
But I’ve run. From her, from them, from the house supposed to be my home. And in fear. But more hurt. At the weight of them, their agreeing numbers, the sheer raw power of their presence. And women too. The momentous events they make of minor matters. The bickers they turn to huge brawls. Everything about them is weight. When it isn’t size it’s arrival, it’s outburst, it’s every possible moment of loaded lives.
They don’t arrive — they thump presence and presences into the house. They don’t greet quietly, they ask, How the fuckin’ hell are ya! Make big hugs and loud sloppy kisses. Or give long stares of, This time it’ll be different. The card game. Or the situation.
They arrive thumping and laughing and bitching about someone or something done against them that isn’t right and will be avenged. They dump down bags of food to eat. Watercress never made such a smacking sound on bench. A cooked leg of roast pork or mutton is another bench-shuddering offering for eating throughout the day. A half sack of mussels is hefted in and dumped at my mother’s feet. They’re fatter than fat, Heta dear, to my mother. Her smile or look has yesterday’s or last week’s deeds measuring it. But food is an acceptable start to peace negotiations. These are Maoris, remember. Who love their food. It’s from the old days when you ate big when it was around. And eked out the lean days in this harsh winter climate with no organised system of making sufficient garments.
They drag chairs up to the card-playing and drinking table with a loud scrape. Sit down with heavy thuds. They smoke loud, sucking and blowing on the things. They bellow and bawl out their one-sentence summaries on life. On a relation. A bitch neighbour. Some bitch’s new dress. Another bitch’s new set of flash pots. This is substantial talk to them. Given weight by their weighty existences. A fuckin’ husband who’s long overdue to be left. Or fucked around on, give him some of his fuckin’ own back. Yeah, drink to that. Here’s to your husband, dear, may he be given his own back. And they are funny. If only funny stayed.
But how when it’s household money at stake at the card table? It’s food from their children’s mouths if the losing run is bad. It’s pride and conspiracies and cheatings seen. It’s life at another kitchen table.
Only thing that is relatively quiet is the first beers being brought out and poured. A moment of mouth-w
atering contemplation. A time of anticipation like it is loving to be made that none ever tires of. The same sense that anything can happen and this time it will only be good. The mind forgets.
You come home from school and there’s always a chance they’re partying. Might be it’s progressed into joyful singing. Or most unjoyful brawling. The two are close runners at all times. It’s why we witnessing children kept hope alive. But the hope became mostly Warren being there for us.
Get to the top of the street and search out the signs: a beat-up car or two, apparitions of wandering drunks appearing down the side of your house, pissing against the wall, a tree, engaged in that self-absorbed one-way conversation they have with anyone they can accost, preferably a stranger because a stranger will tolerate them longer. Even our experienced, cynical neighbours. Life, after all, wasn’t so exciting then.
Check out the neighbours, see what their faces are saying. You usually know by halfway down the street: their movements are not typical, not weeding the garden, which is a concentrated activity we’ve seen them lost in. Not checking the mailbox when delivery is mornings in our street. Not happening to go over to a neighbour who lives closer to the action. It’s their street too. But our fucking accursed house.
They themselves call it the piss. With reverence. Passionate, happy abidance the way they drink the stuff. It’s not beer, it’s liquid gold. It’s not liquid gold, it’s star-bursts and diamond glitters in their taken minds. It gives them a sense of existence that nothing in a sober world can give. It must do for their Maori minds what nothing of other culture or otherness can. That’s all we can figure it as. Even when we’ve seen drunk whites about the same. About, but not quite.
They’ll kill for it, meaning ultimately their own children. Meaning that, in the name of the piss, anything goes.