by Duff, Alan
Anyrate, some of us are curious too, here to explore the park, discover its intimate secrets that even the groundsmen don’t know, how many parks have thermal manifestations; on hands and knees over crusty thermal ground looking for the source of a steam rising; change your identity to any number of wild animals, feel the change within you, of thought stripping away, of a scenting keenness, sharper ears, dullness to pain, vision peripheral and focused at same time. Find the thermal source return to being a human in awe, or disappointment, at a vast boiling mud, a mere hissing fissure, a quietly simmering pool. Discover a little cave grotto, a natural tunnel in the growth, places in the trees. But make sure you look for an escape route first.
Where have you been? your parents, one or the other but never both the same time, ask you. I been everywhere and I’m going nowhere, not that you tell her or him that. Out walking. I like walking, Mum, you know that. The hell she does. I don’t know no such thing, she says on the rise to that angry state, she could be a geyser on the permanent ready to explode. But I do know, li’l mister, that you’re out there roaming this town and people are asking questions about you. (About me! How I wish I could have told her, no, Mum, the town I’m roaming is asking questions about you.) They say you’re a strange one, feel as if you’re spying on them — is that true? (Not a spy — a boy on the lookout for something to fill his aching heart. Seeking explanation, is that so bad?) No, Mum, I’m just a curious person, I can’t help it. But why try curious as a mitigating quality to a person of a people who have no regard whatsoever for curious for its own sake?
Oh yes you can, Mister. Yes you can when it’s making me look like I’m the mother of a weirdo. I’m not weird. You are weird. I’m not. Ask anyone, they’ll agree with me: you-are-one-weird-kid. Now scat. I can’t stand looking at you, you give me the creeps, something about your face, your features, I dunno, maybe you got too much of your father in you for my liking.
Or you take yourself to Waiwera and wallow in the warm waters, at the same time you watch out for Chumpy, wanting to tell him what you’ve found out about your ancestry, from a few doors up at Mereana’s on the hill. He knows shit. I’ve got it from the town library, it’s all there if you want it, Chumpy, not just knowledge of yourself but of the whole fuckin’ world. And yet you’re fearful that he’ll come when you’re here alone, maybe drown you, force that weight down on you, your head under these waters supposed to be embracing you. Or hurl you into a boiling pool, or drown you down in the river and let the current take your body to the sea, which he has never thought about, not where rivers go.
So you sit poised, same as trespassing under someone’s window-sill, in case Chumpy times his arrival to suit your early-morning one. And you are thankful you have Uncle Henry’s name protecting you. And maybe she, Mereana of the chin-tattooed past, has put the word out to Chumpy not to touch me.
Out of the steam married to a mist from the river she comes shuffling her decreasing weight across her crusty soil, slippers scritching, thermal cracks and fissures taking sips of air.
I saw her porch light come on before, I saw the kitchen light glow in the back of her hilltop house, in winter she uses a torch; in her younger days there wasn’t electricity nor battery torch, there weren’t any cars, no radio, no aeroplanes, and senior women like her got selected for tattooing, to sign who and what they were.
In her day she was a princess, a minor queen. Now she is a slippered shuffling from her sulphur-eroding house to this, her last refuge and this half-caste kid with half a right, awaiting with too many questions.
I tell myself to leave her be. She asks me the same question: Who’s that? Oh, it’s you. Gee, you mustn’t like sleep, boy, all the time here so early. You beat the birds up! And the worms!
Hear the rustle of her removing her clothing. See her one-bulb illuminated shape come out bent from the shed, towel around her, which she drops without the delicacy younger women and girls do, what to hide? And she slips down into the water in the bath beside me, as if my vessel has shimmered its urgent wanting with questions.
And she starts talking soon enough.
15
Flushed with victory, the warriors rose in the morning, hardly bothering with wounds, it was more war they wanted. Men saw the mirror of each other, as when stooped drinking from a still pool; it was in the eyes in their tattooed surround reflecting the rigid notions of mind. From boyhood this had been. So they each asked the same question of one another: Should we not follow this mind state to make more victorious war?
Even the level-headed chief was with this blood running faster in his powerful being, as with his two favourite fighting sons. But, as always, the chief listened to the council of elders, and to the signs and omens the tohunga saw, and gave it consideration beyond the immediate needs of his waiting warriors; only then did chief allow the trickle of war words to become an irresistible torrent.
The chief asked Kapi of his thoughts on making good while the men were at this feverish war pitch. Te Aranui Kapi surprised everyone by asking the chief and the elders how much more mana did they desire, when already, in days just past, the enemy blood had hardly dried on the ground, enemy blood was still coursing through the people’s veins from consuming their cooked bodies, surely the gourd of mana was filled to overflowing? And Kapi gave rolling chuckle that should he add one more deed of mana to his now-swollen belly of them, he would burst! And his chief and council of elders laughed with him.
Then Te Tono the tohunga stood, and only he was not with smile at Kapi’s reasoning words. He reminded them of an allied tribe settled a good length along the mighty Waitotara River, and how uneasy was their tribal cousin’s understanding with the fish-loving tribe who plied its waters; the tohunga told of incidents of insult, slight by the fisher people indicating signs they were claiming the river stretch beyond their bounds. He asked what loyalty did they owe to these eaters of fish when their cousins were under threat? He plucked from his vast storage of their tribe’s history a name from the fishing tribe who had done an ancestor a grave slight, it must be grave or why should it install itself in oral history for all these generations?
At this the village’s greatest warrior grew angry. And he roared that he would not be partaking of the eating of men who tasted of fish! I am so full I could not even partake of a woman! Though only he laughed at that.
But outside they could hear the excitement in the younger warriors making weapon practice and now breaking out in another haka that shook this ground the seniors were seated upon on flax mats. And the chief did not so much command Kapi with his eyes as suggest to him that their ears were hearing the same.
Kapi stared fixedly ahead then, and the ornately carved room became silent so the haka was war clamouring at the door. And at last Kapi inclined his head; and those eyes flickered the familiar murder they all knew. Of their greatest war man answering war’s call.
Kapi stood once more and said: If this is what the warriors want, and our great chief agrees with them, and it is fact that one of our tupuna was besmirched by one of these eaters of fish, then utu surely is the right path.
Ae, said the chief, whilst we are eaters of men! But we wait for the first heavy rain, spoke the chief, when their beloved river runs too high with flood and their small fish-bellies grumble like hollow shells. Then we avenge the besmirched name of our ancestor, and — he looked at Kapi — perhaps by the time rains fall our bellies shall hunger for mana more.
Even the excited warriors knew how to contain their blood lust till the skies turned black and fell. They practised combat to ease the wait. Such clear sound it was too, of wood clash against wood clash, of bone to wood, stone to bone, over and over and over, the highest art perfected. With occasional glances of hope to the sky.
… They laid waste to the village of mere eaters of fish; their slayers said they were like gasping and dead fish strewn on the rain-sodden ground, where all life ebbs out on to, when it isn’t water claiming it, or fire.
Ground so
ggy with blood and spilled brains and bodily insides scattered distances from their origins, or flung out from corpses like unheeded cries for help; freshly severed heads topped wooden stakes, some of the more attractive women were being ravaged and then killed; the last were running towards their beloved river supposed to protect them, pursued by grimly silent warriors running them down like once the larger-than-man moas had been run to extinction.
He, the blood-sated chief warrior, on the far bank, content to watch the last remnants slaughtered down where the river bent and good view afforded. Smiling at the woman being run down by Te Wheke, a promising young fighter, flipping her on to her back (oh, how a man is taken by his lust in time of battle and blood being shed) and taking her there on the track, his tattooed buttock-muscles flexing his sweet savagery, heaving sweated shine into the enemy woman’s wetness, the place of her very being, as his men ran past, howling laughter at his sexual ravaging, laughter at the slaughter before, at the last of the slaughter-feast to be had.
A slender young girl, hardly of procreational age, felled from behind by Matua, a warrior more vicious than most; chopping, hacking at her, cleaving open her chest and reaching in for the heart. Oh, how thrilling the sight of beating life about to be torn from its housing! Dark red shreds like holding strings and strands to her heart, like pleading hands torn away by Matua the terrible; look how he holds the young heart aloft to the sky, see how his eyes bulge and threaten to spill out with glee. And he rams the woman’s most vital piece of herself into her dead, open mouth; it is Matua’s born contempt of any who are declared enemy. As it should be.
His face was with sneer to see an older man with proud tattoo markings and surprising speed bring up short at his precious waters, Kapi close to calling out to the man to leap, see if his river would save him. A river Kapi had crossed not so long before along a vine strung back up aways. But the old man anyway plunged into the raging water and promptly disappeared. Kapi’s eyes scanned for a long, breath-held resurfacing somewhere near him, with readied spear to hurl, though even a good shot should surely miss. But the man did not surface. So Kapi sighed and gave no more thought to that self-extinguished existence. None.
Upriver, on a fine-sand patch, a fine young enemy’s face turned calm as he made the decision to fight his last, such bravery to be admired, even in an enemy. Look how he turns into best-postured fighting stance, with taiaha in last display of twirl and ritual flourish, of complex movement at the screaming oncoming victors of a village devastated behind them. The back right heel kick up, the weapon in spinning twirl and … so swiftly, one of Kapi’s good men felled.
Kapi stiffening now, this could be something to witness, as combat was announced by facial feature from Hamiora Te Matai, his eyes wide in true arrogant warrior outrage that such youth should be challenging his widely renowned fighting prowess. And the fine young enemy doing a dirt-scuffling foot-dance as he shows his taiaha skills to Hamiora. (Kill him most horribly then. But fight well, young enemy. Perhaps our man will respect you by tossing your body into your sacred river.)
Look, now Hamiora lifts his hand to tell his men this is his fight. And hark! the young enemy throws haka wording at Hamiora Te Matai, even though he is surrounded and certain only of death. He yells: For you to know when my feet stop.
Dancing and circling each other, like two bird lovers. Kapi saw his men watching in frustration at being commanded to be but witness. Then the weapons rang out their difference, of enemy wood weapon to Hamiora’s bone club, this way that way, every move a dance step, such beauty, such terrible, sweet sight to come. Fight well, both warriors.
Such Te Matai swiftness to parry the longer-armed blows, to step from them at last thrusting, missing moment. How supple and fast his body, like his brothers, his father, his grandfather, as he twists and turns and folds and strikes a blow, makes club slash reply of his own. There, the red smile of Te Matai bone blade sliced open the young enemy’s stomach. See the pain appearing in the flexing of the buttocks and thighs, so young to be with full warrior tattoos — how can this be of a people who exist on fish? If the situation were less immediate he could be considered for adoption into this tribe worthy of his obvious manhood.
Back he comes, the warrior before his time, with a flurry of blows to Hamiora’s head, turning it scarlet; again, again he connects. The head now shows pinkly white of exposed brain. But he is made of his forefather’s strongest stuff as he charges under the final intended blow, his muscular being propelling upwards that flash of finest-worked bone, which once helped keep together a massive creature swimming the deep seas.
For a moment obscured to his watching admirer and blood relative, then the young enemy’s head flopped back unnaturally at an angle indicating severance, as Hamiora Te Matai’s snarling features came back into vision.
But severance was complete only when brain-exposed Hamiora, alas in his last, made the final chop through spine connection and then another and another slicing at the skull, bone to bone, whale-bone to man-bone. And then his left fingers scooped into the man’s thinking being and brought it to his mouth, his encrazed tattooed features marked with the greatness of manhood design, and he swallowed whatever thoughts were contained therein of the fine young enemy’s mind. And then Hamiora toppled to one side and lay there, eyes blinking at the familiarity of death come to take his spirit to the spiritworld back in Hawaiiki where these people began.
And the river took the runs of blood from both men, and Kapi was not sure for whom the tears formed in his eyes. He had brief thought of potential, what waste it was when belonging to a man who is born your enemy.
He saw the life at last leave fine Hamiora’s eyes, the fluttering then the still. So many times he had seen this, of foe and friend. Farewell, good warrior, we shall remember you tonight and many nights to come. Your name will take place beside others of your line in oral legend.
Now he sees two heads bobbing in the water, coming toward him; they must have gone further upstream but no further progress that way, only large and exposed rocks. A mother and her child hopelessly swept along in their failed river. Watch them drown.
The mother did her best to reach her child. Her mouth kept moving, shaping to form her son’s name but trained to be silent in case the uneven rises of racing water and the liftings against rock revealed their swift passage long enough to be caught by any pursuer.
But the child had its own rate of rushed carry. And Kapi could see its eyes, the confusion, its attempts to turn and look for its mother, he would have been no more than five, six.
Die, little enemy child, before you grow up to be living continuance of besmircher of our ancestor’s name. Die, little boy, die.
He kept going under the clay-coloured water, and still the mother gave no voice to her child’s name, and still he broke back up to the surface, coughing, spluttering less each time. Soon he would sweep by.
Hamiora lay still on the water’s edge in the last glimpse Kapi gave him, and when Kapi returned eyes to river and saw the child once more, it was then he got the thought: is this what fear means, but a knowing that one cannot turn away from? Is it the mountain of event right before you that you are rushing headlong into? And since this must be so, what then does a person do? What does he think? Of whom? Of what?
Kapi’s mind advanced the question further, without even knowing that he had. And is it right that an innocent child should not only suffer so but gaze into the maws of death itself long, long before his time? And Kapi was ever so slightly troubled by that question.
The child was sweeping by now, and his face had turned to Kapi, to this set of unfeeling eyes upon a child of short duration; eyes of a man lived of his times and perhaps a few seasons beyond, blessed that he was by superior warrior skills and a certain element of good fortune, who was mouthing words at the child: Die. Die. Uttering quite calmly. But not as calm as before.
Now the child was suspended for several moments. As if the river had stopped. As if the swollen muddied fury wa
s appeased. And Te Aranui Kapi cocked curious glance at the child. Another. He wondered how many more moments of air were left to the child; he counted it would be four, five gulps of its tiny lungs and then. Then what?
Does such a small child see its own death? What does death look like? What does it feel like? Kapi had to shake his head to rid the thoughts as just aberrations. Except his mind asked another question: a child, an innocent of hardly five years old, and you are willing it to drown before your eyes?
Kapi forced a smile to himself. Of course. Drown, enemy child, drown. But the thought lacked passion.
Now the child’s face grew serene. Kapi’s heart began beating faster. How could this be, that a child staring at its own imminent death should be of such serenity, even as the waters kept claiming his parted mouth?
And then the child smiled — it smiled!
Kapi’s head came forward, chills ran through his hard-muscled, many-scarred body with dried caking blood of earlier slain enemy over him, chips of bone caught in congealed enemy blood, his own blood splattered over him; a deep, desperate nail gouge from a vanquished foe who clawed his last at his victor’s right calf and was severed of the hand in one blow. And that child’s smile was just disappearing beneath the raging waters. Kapi holding his own breath now, hoping the child had held his.
But the child had not. And its mother swept by, still disciplining herself not to call out his name, but imploring formed upon her features. As only a mother’s unable to save her child can be.