Both Sides of the Moon

by Duff, Alan

The men call out requests from time to time, Sing us that Pat Boone one, Joe. And Joe will smile and play his role, and they’ll stop cracking remarks and laughing for the pleasant duration to listen, and always agree without dissent that he should have been a pro. But in tones showing they know that hardly anyone breaks from this life, and it may be why they laugh and joke so much, to insulate them from life’s highly ordinary serving.

  The metal rod keeps firing into hard skulls, the chains clank, the hoser sings, the men wait for Joe to finish then resume laugh and call out manhood and sexual references again in their gene-encoded chorus.

  The line goes right across a vast cavernous room of white-painted concrete under powerful fluorescent lights, glistening carcasses of hide-fall in ruthless unravelling of beast — to think: just back there in the long-ago moments it had sight and ears and dull cognition and muscles to move its weight, it had capacity to desire to mate with its own species, but now just another stripping carcass in a steady line of men hacking and sawing at still-twitching thousand-pound objects of meat and bone.

  Guts spill out, rushing blobs of once-living mass, at once darkly red and lost of shape and utterly gone of purpose, and how quickly they depart the host body, which they helped function; the slapping sound guts make when they hit the floor; organs are blobs that get cut out and tossed like basketballs into metal trays, men take pride in accuracy of throw, no one misses, no one dares. And still the denuded mass quivers all over with nerves twitching and life stubbornly refusing to leave it (it must be how a man goes: with more trembling nerve movements than answering outraged muscle. And it was how my ancestors killed the slaves for the ovens, like this, with little feeling, just a job, just another day’s feeding to get started).

  Uncle Hamu has sheep-despatch duty, with several other powerfully muscled men from the years of killing and being born physical, they’re each in their own pen with experienced straddle over each animal, squeezing together leather-protected legs and taking the sheep’s head, yanking it back and making a quick slicing motion, a flash of sharp silver, and the woolly creature is one outburst of outraged muscle squirting red dye over its fellows. It is a weight dropped to the concrete floor and a pouring of blood — hear the slaughermen’s gumboots sloshing in it — and the hook man moves in to ram his attachment to a leg and up it goes to take its blood-pouring place on the moving chain, where men strip its woollen garment like an easy woman, and its gashed throat hangs in shreds making its head loll, its tongue hanging out, the killing chamber resounding with sheep bleating and men laughing and the old man singing like Pat Boone or Bing Crosby or all The Ink Spots at different-taken harmony time. He can even sing like Vera Lynn or become an Italian lover singing a love song in the same language learnt from the war he fought in, as he plays his water here and there and makes the channels and gutters run varying dark reds and diluted pinks, which he has figured must eventually go out to sea, but it’s a long way from here to the sea, so he thought some time ago when occurring things were still quite profound. Like his dream of becoming a professional singer had once been until resigning to being confined to here, this slaughtering place awash with blood and his hosed water and men’s laughter and the noise of machinery and rolling chains.

  Worker men start to hunger for cooked meat, for sweetbreads and fried entrails and chops and rump steak that the women cooks will have ready for lunch, and they never stop talking, and joking, and making serious, about woman, about soft body tissue that woman has that man must have; she is best meat, which is why men have need to talk constantly and think about her and it, her meat objective, her soft giving, even when it’s not being given it’s being taken, it’s how the world is, who would question it? Not these; hardly any man would question it.

  A hooter claims the loudest echo in the men’s ears, and the chain shudders to a halt as they grab hoses and clean themselves down and make metal clattering of boots heading to the canteen, with a visitor boy staring at them and the bloodied room; and his cousin Jack with that experienced cocked eyebrow of a little less excitement, and barely any wonder left, at death.

  Back then, last century, when life was even cruder, more basic than this, a venerable warrior watched the boy changing his mind as he moved toward the slave compound and moved away again. He, Te Aranui Kapi, began to smile and took up one of his weapons, of hard high-mountain stone tumbled down to river bed, bound by flax to a carved wooden handle bearing the figures and faces of Kapi’s ancestral line; not that the line was much since he was an aberration, with little history, with little of his forefathers running in him for it was all his own, his great warriorhood. He held the hacking club up to the boy, inviting in his eyes, a smile on his tattooed warrior face: Here, boy, take this and do your will.

  The boy hesitated; he looked from the slave he desired to kill to Te Aranui Kapi and at the offered means of despatching the slave and he started to shake his head till Kapi frowned at him, no: you invited this.

  The boy must have considered his future then, of what talk might be of him, if he did not take the weapon, in what tone his name would be spoken in times to come. He took the weapon without word and, turning, he strode toward the slave. And the warrior who had handed it him, his mouth watered, and his heartbeat sped up a little.

  The slave barely gave glance, though his nostrils flared taking in last air, and his thinking must have been that he was once a warrior but that had all been surrendered in allowing himself to be taken captive; there is something of the subservient man in ferocious men, something starkly opposite his trained countenance that rarely sees light of day. Until he has been made slave.

  Though slave must have had thought that he could swat this boy-child killer like he would an insect, he was even size and strength enough to take on the venerable warrior watching who had handed over the weapon. But then he was abject and dull in his no-longer-proud heart, his suppressed sensibilities, so if he had such thought it would not have lasted long. And he lowered his head and waited for the final insult of being conveyed to the slave spiritworld by a boy hardly older than ten season cycles. He could but obey the nervous child’s grunt to kneel, and he went down on tattoo-adorned knees and closed his eyes to the dusty ground of his only and last residence, a dirt compound everywhere with the smell of human waste and wasted human spirit and certain death in the air. Around him the normal sounds of village life: laughter, combat practice, carvers chopping and chanting, and the birds and insects, women singing.

  The boy raised the weapon, cicadas were noising in the nearby forest edge, and birds as always sing when there is light to go by, and never go silent at human death; and the venerable warrior’s pulse quickened, he could not help it, not even after all these accomplished years of taking human life, there is nothing quite like it, like taking life.

  He followed the boy’s arm-raising movement with his mouth, slowly opening its darkened tattooed partings … seeing his weapon up and held in a child’s hand, death suspended, now in complete despising of the slave for his failed existence and for not lifting his head: Die like a man, slave.

  He saw the young muscles flex and ready to spring, and still the slave did not make last protest at his life about to end, and that made the warrior want to rush forth and kill the coward himself — Ah, but let the boy do it.

  The stone went clean into the bone. The blood spurted up like a thermal geyser he’d seen on a far-ventured war party when flush with themselves and nearly fatally so in enemy territory, their caution was taken away by this awesome sight, of hottest water issuing in great display out of the ground, as if lighted fires were under river and water pools under the earth. The enemy surprised them and only his own leadership and quick thinking gained them escape from certain death.

  But this little geyser was red, and it had the heat of brain and pumping heart erupting it and it hardly took away a man’s breath, but it did quicken his heart. Then the skull opening began to spill out with brain matter, it had detail and, the warrior presumed, thou
ght. But not thought that mattered. Not for a moment.

  It was the boy’s shriek that made the witnessing warrior’s hair stand on end, as though a sound true to basic male. And he saw what murder does to a man even when he has not yet formed into one, as the boy saw what he had done and pulled the stone axe out and did it again, and shrieked a second time, though now without the surprise at what he had done but with pure, naked pleasure — and the muscled poise of impatience to do it again.

  The slave toppled over, his face pointed towards Kapi, who sneered at it and spat his contempt on the dusty ground puddling with oozing liquid, and the body quivered as the weapon hacked at it, and holes started to appear all over it. And excited boys ran to the scene like excited dogs, and they laughed and made happy sounds for the boy become the man and so young.

  And at last the warrior’s gaze returned to the slave as he lifted himself up, on his side, and stared at Kapi and returned his own contempt — a slave in contempt! Kapi’s every muscle tightened in rage and he started forward, angry at this doomed slave’s effrontery.

  The slave turned a now inconceivably proud head at the boy who was killing him; he dared to sneer and tried to manage words to fit this his last occasion. But the words were turned instantly to smashed fragments of stone on bone and so it looked as if the slave’s last living act was to be a teeth-missing bloody smile. Which was incomprehensible enough.

  Kapi cocked his head at the same angle the slave’s face was on, so to see what last was left there to witness — as if Kapi cared that much now his rage had subsided at the child’s assuming of it for him. Yet still the slave looked up with those unafraid eyes.

  And then it occurred to Te Aranui Kapi that the face was like the child, not this killer child but the enemy drowning one, who had stared and given last taunting smile at him and haunted Kapi’s thoughts and dreams for some disturbing time afterwards.

  So Kapi walked over to the corpse and rolled it on its back and, reaching down, cut off the penis with a single blow of bone club and called out to his favourite dog to come enjoy. The dog took the meat and swallowed it and waited for more. Kapi laughed and said he should have got a woman to excite the slave and then his dog would have got more. The slave, though, was like a man when he endures tattooing: he cried out not, only his face contorted in most excruciating pain.

  Now the slave’s entire existence was devoted only to pain as the inexperienced boy struck blows down at him. And many women had rushed over and were yelling encouragement to the boy, at his (normal) violent deed, while his jealous peers were more muted in respect and envy.

  Somehow the slave got his body twisted and turned at an impossible angle so that his eyes had Kapi in his last anguished sight. And so, in hatred, Kapi started to rush forward to sever that insulting head. Except the eyes then shuddered, they tried to keep their fixed state, but failed and rolled up into that ruptured skull to become just eye-whites. And he died.

  And quickly he, the slave meat, was being reduced by boys practising to process the body so each might claim, later, the piece he had hacked or cut away. The ground was stained its usual red.

  And when these men’s six am start and four o’clock finish day of slaughtering and meat processing was finished, Jack and I had the wind on our faces on the back of his father’s work truck, out here in this reverberating open steel coffin with the souls of sheep in forty-four gallon drums and bins of severed heads with sightless dull greens of eyes; we had salted cattle hides that used to cover animals grazing in passing fields and now were rests for our conquerors’ bare feet, feel the hair, note the wet slip of underside salted membrane, and our ears echoing with screaming chains, lowing and bleating animals, Joe singing, the men laughing, an engine rumbling under us, we could be going off on a long, exciting journey.

  We felt, didn’t we, Jack, his father’s truck was just going to keep on going, we could end up anywhere, free from this life. Free.

  But too soon our truck slowed, I picked up the waft of boiled mutton and stinking fuckin’ cabbage. Though it wasn’t the cabbage got me swearing, it was the screaming of women, of mothers not mothers, as we turned into Jack’s dried-mud drive.

  We looked at each other, Jack and I, but what to say, what can we do? This is the house we dwell in, this one here or mine or on the circuit. This is the house of flawed design, that leaks and falls apart, because it is built on no plan. No-fucking-plan, is it, Jack? No, he won’t meet my eyes. So nor are we, of any-fucking plan.

  The room they were fighting in was littered with cards, upturned numbers and pictures, an expressionless queen noticing not the chaos around her. The room was smeared and stained with red like a slaughtering place. Dignity lay everywhere like killed creatures.

  Now he, Te Aranui Kapi, was hating the boy for having started all this now he could not dispense the face in its too-knowing contempt of him — he! He felt like taking the child, as was a warrior’s right of a commonly born child offending him, and burying him in the kumara garden, in a hole deep enough to die in but shallow enough for a truly determined child to dig and claw his way out.

  But how could he do such a thing when the village was celebrating the boy’s unusual warrior showing, and the women had already cast the slave in his many parts on to the heated stones, the smell of searing meat was making mouths water, leaves were being placed over the flesh, a piece of rump was promised the boy, earth was being shovelled into the cooking pit, the boy was displaying his blow-by-blow deed to his peers, their laughter had delirium and murder-want in it.

  An elder was picking out in his mind tattoo designs for the boy’s later youth face — ae, and they would be the markings of a fine man. The markings of the true man who does not ponder the world, this existence, in any way other than how he fits into its scheme, the plan the gods and ancestors have for man. Though he, the elder, could not know that their greatest man with the proudest tattoo markings was alone in his dwelling with much thought of a troubled, perhaps questioning, nature. It was inconceivable to the elder’s mind.

  That night, Te Aranui Kapi could not find sleep, he only saw faces, of a drowning child, of a shrieking boy-murderer, of a slave daring to stare contempt, of the boy getting his promised piece of rump followed by a lower-arm bone to gnaw on by the firelight and listen to men tell tales of war, of bravery, of courage, of love, too.

  The boy’s eyes glistened only with tears of gladness, wholly of his time, his people, their way, as men spoke of it, and made shapings of hands and vivid arm actions shaping his deed, the only shape he knew to take, this young killer child taking his turn, making graphic story-telling movements in the air as the night moved on, in times, for some, not entirely different from now.

  18

  Our father informed us one night — I think it was a Friday — that she had gone, she was living with another man, and Dad would be applying to the court for custody of us.

  It was Friday because we were eating fish and chips, our Friday fortnightly evening meal treat. I remember Warren started to slow-chew his food and he had this stare on, and he said, What, for good? Yes, for good. Ian’s eyes took him to his secret place of refuge from all pain. Brian started a strange cackle, and his chewing got very noisy. And he kept saying, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

  That night in our room we waited for Warren to get a discussion going on her but he didn’t. Though he was very quiet and more intense than usual, and he did ask if we were all right and he did say that we should think of other things or we wouldn’t get any sleep.

  The last sight I had of Brian was a weird grin, like something let loose. His glare was the last image I needed before entering this long night. Though why should it be any longer? You’d think we’d get to have the most peaceful deep sleep of our lives. So I called to Warren, why would it be a long night if she’s not coming back?

  Because she can’t ever leave our thoughts, can she, kid? he answered.

  He looked as handsome as I’d ever seen him, I think from the seriousness of the
situation, of him having to decide how he would react to give us our lead. Dad came to say goodnight, to ask if we were all right, and Warren said yes on our behalf. And Dad said it might turn out the best thing that ever happened, as if throwing a life-line. And he switched off the light, we listened to his footsteps go quietly down the hallway, to an empty bed that had never been filled even when she was here, even when they were fucking. Poor Dad. Lucky us.

  Four sons in the dark staring at a different yet same truth: their mum’s gone. Didn’t even say goodbye. Wouldn’t expect her to.

  I hurry to the place she has moved to, she’s been gone a month, we’re still afraid of the change her absence has made, we’ve suspended our joy our reactions our celebrations. But I got it into my head that she’d be secretly suffering our loss, even her loose, rule-less custody of us her children. Thought I’d check out in my invisible way of witness, I’m the town’s best, to catch her in her moment of children-missing truth.

  So I’m hurrying through the streets — it had to start drizzling this night, of course I didn’t bring a raincoat — past the hazy blocks of house lights, households, the normal-people shapes moving about in them, they seem different now since ours has lost its mother, as if their homes are even more normal and right and ours is even more glaringly worse.

  Through the drizzle in the dark under the streetlight to this address I have been given by Warren, and his words that I shouldn’t be thinking of visiting her if I wasn’t prepared for disappointment, and I said I was prepared and who said I was going with hope — hope for what? Liar that I am. Hoping to happen upon a window portrait of Mother just like the statue of Mother Mary in the pedestal concave, pining for her child her children.

  Well, this is it, number 379 Benson Street, lover’s haven, an ordinary little place in an ordinary street just out of town and lights on in there (I see lights!) An age to gather up the courage, then I trespassed on to my own mother’s new domain.