Both Sides of the Moon

by Duff, Alan

  I am not woman, I am of the name Mihinui Taikato, my father’s name who banished me to here. He had pattern not unlike yours. But I did not think his was his true face, either. I think the meaning made him. Not he the meaning.

  You put together words cleverer than what the gods and nature gave me brain to understand, Mihi.

  Oh, but I think you take in more than you’ll admit. How like you your hair these days — of old or my interpretation? What interpretation is that? Open your eyes. He opened his eyes. She was with that crooked smile. I would give you hair true of who you are this day.

  He sighed: So gone of warrior then? Her smile was even more crooked, the better she meant it — My interpretation is a face better, more true, has replaced it and I shall give you cut to affirm that.

  And what if it causes me more shame than I have only just managed to endure? Sir, this place, these people, know shame. Why would we bring more upon others?

  He closed eyes once more — Then cut as you will.

  She must be close to finishing, for his head felt considerably lighter, unburdened of physical weight he realised now he’d got used to, and now even his slightest movement of head at her request felt like rocks taken off. Why, he asked, why did your father banish his own family name to here? Heard her give short chuckle, as if the hurt was almost gone now.

  Well, I had reached my time for marriage consideration. My father went against the arranged marriage, as he could because of his standing. I had the pick of the handsomest, bravest men. I was, though you believe not now, of some beauty enough that even before my puberty boys and men fought over me, and some they died in making claim. And I did not think that anything but fitting and proper. To who I was, the daughter of a respected man. To my people their ways. I was a woman in her prime, with a loving father more rare than most warriors, who would help choose my matrimonial partner. Then one night in my bed I felt this terrible dizziness and all was black. I remember thinking just before, so this is death. Well, it is not so bad after all.

  When I woke I could not move. I was a cripple. So I thought this indeed was death and I had thought too soon of how well it was. For though I could not move, I could see and hear everything around me. My family in their concern for me. My friends come to look and be shocked at me. Studying me as if I were dead and how would they prepare my body for burial.

  The tohunga came, he studied me closest but with different eyes. I could see the workings of them. And in my state, for never had I thought ill of the tohunga, what I saw was not divine discussion with the gods or great spirits of guidance, but a man who did not understand and so was giving it — me — his own meaning.

  I heard him say that I had been inhabited by evil spirits. Yet I heard fear of my father as he told him that the decision was his as to what to do with me. For my father loved me so, I was his favourite child even above his own fighter sons.

  My father had always discussed most matters with my mother, even though publicly she had no rights as a woman. I lay there, in my stranded fish state, able to hear and see, as they talked in much anguish over what to do with me. They spoke of his mana, the family name mana, the mana of the people of a high-born warrior like my father. He was in much anguish, he hurled things against the walls, he promised death most gruesome to the next enemy he met in battle, or one of his own who stepped out of line.

  I cried inside for my father, I wanted to tell him I could hear and see but something was wrong with my body, except I did not feel as if it was an evil spirit.

  Their discussion went on over many days. He consulted with tribal elders. My mother sought advice from the senior women. I was gaining slight return of movement. It seemed to me then a race, of my body’s recovery against the process of my parents, my family, my people, making up their minds.

  But when I tried to speak, words would not come, only strange sounds. But at least speech and not silence, I thought.

  My father stood over me, and I looked up and tried to give smile. But he frowned harder back. I was looking at the man I loved most becoming a stranger to my eyes. He told my mother, Our child’s face is as though a blow has crushed one side of it. Her beauty is all gone, as if this crippled state is not bad enough to bear. She makes strange expression, as if indeed she is taken by evil spirits.

  I gave what I thought was smile again — oh, did I try so hard! I heard him say as if from a distance, she has more movement now. He did not mention my smile. So I knew that my face was no longer with that capacity. My father said, If she walks, then she shall walk self and evil spirit inside this body out of here. Ohh! my beloved home! To be banished from it by my own parents!

  Kapi the warrior of yesteryear said: If I had been of your village I would have done the same. It has always been the way.

  She made no answer. But he was not going to open his eyes again to that sight. She resumed cutting. He asked: Tell me truth, was it evil spirit? He added: One that has now left you?

  No, she said. Tekapo there sitting listening to Wild Hair is knowledgeable of the body. He told me it is to do with blood not reaching my head. A blockage.

  But the warrior was not believing. And how would this Tekapo have eyes to see inside the brain?

  He needs, he says, only to observe and to put tests himself. It is why, he says, if you grip a person around the throat and squeeze, he soon starts to know that blackness in his head and nothing else. The same if you hold a man beneath water till he almost drowns. Ask him what happened and he’ll tell you he started to see blackness. Tekapo has also made observation of those who suffered what I did and noted that some regained all of their former selves, whilst others were like varying sections of a fruit in recovery. Tekapo knows this, for he had same happen to him. But he will laugh in that way of his, that you can truly trust, and tell you he lost more than half the man his body was but gained the thinking of several men. He has taught us, along with Wild Hair and many others, that no understanding nor change for the better comes if your thinking stays still. Though we are all agreed that our life like this does not appear to say we are making great strides forward. But I would never go back to my home, not even if my parents arrived here and begged me. There, I am finished with my interpretation of your true face, man who Wild Hair has named Moonlight.

  Moonlight opened his eyes. Mihi had gone, replaced by another. He asked where was Mihi, so he might thank her for her task as well talking with him. This woman made no answer; she was with eyes concentrated elsewhere.

  He looked again and startled. ’Twas Mihi, with her good side turned to him. And it was as she had said: of considerable beauty. Enough to take his breath away. And stir him more than he could think possible.

  She was looking across him, at Wild Hair doing a dance like a praying mantis insect. At once bizarre as it was evocative and more true than mantis itself, as if to tell that the insect can be given more meaning that its face. As if another interpretation of other life, in a kind of sympathy.

  Mihi’s facial pose was one of total absorption in Wild Hair’s descriptive dance: beauty admiring beauty. Inside, Kapi cursed nature for a blockage of blood to the brain that took away half a woman’s beauty. Though it was the beautiful remaining side he felt feelings of almost love for.

  And inside his head — nay, it went deeper than that — inside with brightest, brightest light. And it spoke to him in the classical language: Feel you that you can catch stars this evening?

  And his reply: Stars? Why, when I have the light of the largest star, the sun, in my face?

  27

  She had given birth on the cold muddy ground of winter, wet beneath one of their crude coverings of threaded fern. Mist at her squatting feet, cold at her everywhere. She had made countless attempts to show these savages how to make garment protection from worked flax. Gathered flax from swamps with bones feeling at her feet of the long-gone giant bird the moa.

  But they laughed and said easier to enjoy feasting on the fat of cooked birds, but human fat the best, from
bodies lain on the battleground from true people’s tribal fighting. Drag it to where heating stones can be put to wood fire, drain off the fat from the cooked body into gourd or make slugs to fit flax carrying-bags. So to make fat a living garment. Or else take the garments from the dead, what use to they, these stupid tribal people fighting each other over never-satisfied honour all the time.

  They were proud in their cackling way of laughter that they were like the scavenger birds, and her suggested ways but those of a contemptible tribal woman. They boasted of letting the people who called themselves true do the labours to make the garments and tools and weaponry — the life! — which they gathered from the aftermath battlegrounds.

  Now, Tangiwai wished she had lowered her dignity to taking a garment from a slain warrior for herself, on one of these people’s scavenging forays, as she shivered against the cold and the cold worse inside.

  She had not called nor now expected one of her own women to be midwife, for if they hadn’t succumbed to fear of punishment for associating with each other then they had become like lizards, coloured of the humans all around.

  She prayed to the few gods she still had faith in to deliver Kapi’s child a girl. So that the child be ignored, grow up considered human only enough to serve men’s sexual needs and tend to these men’s feeding. But before then she would escape from here for she had heard a new people had arrived in growing numbers to this land and the indigenous people were having change forced upon them. Perhaps enough so she might find a different place to settle where she was forgiven the deeds of her lover, the shame of her people succumbing as they did.

  Her first son, Ratanui, though only five season cycles young, was now one of these unruly beast children, quite gone of soul and therefore meaning of life as Tangiwai understood it. She prayed that no male life be born to these and this.

  She pulled him from her herself. He came out face down to the dirt, the mud. She cut the cord with a sharp rock. She put the afterbirth aside for burying beneath a tree as was the tradition she had brought here. Then she slapped the child’s rear, but had to slap again when it did not cry out the first time. So she knew it was Kapi’s image before she turned its bawling face and little innocent penis up to her.

  The thought of smothering it came. Of turning it back to the mud and forcing the face into the ooze; better than to grow up in this, as one of these people for whom wretched was but weakest description. Ratanui was lost to their ways. Before it was discipline, respect for your olders — since hardly did many live long enough to become elders, and then most were women since it was they who reared the fighters — having bond with your own tribe, your own village world in which all of your not-so-long life would be spent. Here, it was no one caring for structures, no one caring for anything but immediate satisfaction. Here, when a child got sick it was left to nature’s healing or mortal taking. And none were with grieving much if any.

  Her body hurt but not as much her aching inside. She looked at her son brought into this place, this world, this life, and she did turn it face down and start to plunge it into the mud. She had the resolve in her aching heart, she did, for she was a strong woman.

  Until it started to shiver, this new life from her womb and Kapi’s fine loving. And she pulled the child to her bosom and give him sucking, loving connection, gave him bonding, gave him mother, as was his right. Even here where were no rights and they were a bondless people except by brutishly shared qualities and nowhere else to join them to, she bonded love to that child. She made sad wish that it might see as she did as soon as seeing became its way.

  This was late afternoon. All day it had drizzled. Just this very same morning Hakere had taken her sexually, even though she had told him — not begged, proud woman does not beg — that his entry might hurt the child’s unborn head. He laughed in her face and said he didn’t care if he put a hole in it. Afterward she had washed herself even though only a gourd of muddy water was available, better than newborn’s entry assisted by Hakere’s slime.

  Late afternoon, a fine rain, and these people crouched around many separate fires under trees they seemed not to know could catch fire, eating all the day long, of wads of bird fat, rendered-down human fat from their fat-slug bags; their talk of cackling comment on nothing of meaning or substance, they lived in every unthinking moment, a people more crude than any could imagine. Look, there goes another shitting but a few lazy steps from where he will squat again on haunches with his caste. Do they not smell it! No. And there, another coupling of man and woman in public and hear their excited cries and ugly callings, see how it gets others going. These are not people, they are not even wild dogs. They are a life form of their own.

  She took the child after it had gorged on her breasts and sought out one of her people who was recognisable as one for garment that she might wrap around her and son. But that was proving hard, for they were either lizard-changed to exact same or they were miserable wretches with resentful, even hating eyes at her for bringing them to this place of wild living demons. But she blamed them for giving in so easily and she feared not their loathing. She sought out Hariana, knowing that she had kept her inner flame burning brightly. But she could see nothing of the older woman.

  She found one who used to be her own, Hemana Te Kaka, a man with tattoo markings that no longer looked proud — and she kicked at him, curled there on his side under a heavily leaking shelter under a feather cloak. It was a wonder it had not been taken from him. Give me your cloak, Hemana!

  His eyes remained fixed to the ground they weren’t seeing. She kicked at him again, this young man like the oldest of men now, with only breathing will left in him. You are like a slave, Hema! Where is the pride you promised?

  Hemana rolled and looked up at Tangiwai. Aee, Tangiwai, we should have leaped to our glorious deaths like our great chief and those who stayed with him. But she was not having this, she’d heard it from them all but for a few. Let me and this strong child of Kapi’s — yes, Kapi is the father — use your feather cloak warmth, the better to keep hope and strength alive than to warm you.

  And she snatched the cloak away and wrapped self and half-self in it and walked over to where Hakere was sprawled, ungarmented, beneath fern of someone’s lazy making that dripped with rain, even though the sky was clearing, and in normal circumstances she might have seized good omen from that but not this day.

  He saw her approach and called: Hah! the woman has new member of our group to make known to us! Good. In a few days she will be ready for me again! Let no other man dare to try with her, for she is born with fattest submission to a man’s thrusting. Her cunt is joy itself.

  And of what sex the child — female I hope, for in my old age I shall need young woman — many of them! And even though the rain and the surrounding forest took most sounds in an instant, not so this man’s laugh, which boomed as though down from conquered hilltop. She told the conqueror: He is male.

  And conqueror laughed and said, that is a good thing, too. For I shall have need of young males when I am in my old age.

  And she, its mother, thought: What old age is this? I shall not allow you to harm my child’s existence when so quickly your ways alone took my first. And she smiled at him, but not so that it told him anything but promise of what was in store for him once her body was recovered from birthing. She even imparted that the same slightly smiling mouth might be of use to him while her other wet sweet fruit was healing.

  Her child suckled again on her not long after the dark. For the first time in being amongst these life forms, she smiled. At the child, the promise she made it and herself in her heart. At near a full fat moon up there. And the light of idea, plan, in her mind.

  28

  He learned to measure time with them, to have it mean more when all his life, time was not a concept of any great note. Every day a little bit older, but no expectation that he would feel the creep of old age tiring his muscles, stripping away his muscular form – no longer a warrior. Warrior did not live ti
ll old age, or so few for them to be considered perhaps more cunningly self-preserving, more skilled at avoidance than action, than they ought. Unless a warrior so surpassed his others that he reached old age. But then what warrior should wish of his physical glory to weaken slowly and not look admirable any longer? Better to die in battle looking your finest and doing your ferocious, utmost best.

  But with this outcast group, under Wild Hair’s acute influencing, and never was he insistent nor adamant, nor so fixed on an idea it could not be discussed, he, Moonlight, and they his adopted family, were given eyes into a future that projected out like long reaching branches. So that a man notioned that he was growing. Or extending.

  Which Moonlight discovered was exciting in itself. Truly so, for it changed the days into wondering what the next would bring. And since these were on the constant shift, from one camp to another, he never knew which of the landscapes was next for another first time. Nor did he know of such variety, and even in heat or cold between places in the same space of days. Telling him that climate, like thought, like idea, is not fixed after all.

  It was from Wild Hair’s influence, Wild Hair’s example, that Moonlight learned about his landscape, previously of war, that beauty could be taken from it, no different from dipping hand into water and drinking of it. He came to see in rocks and mountains and forested hilly places and lush valleys and water flows and water places and high vantage points that a man gains a quite different sense of himself: as if he is both small and insignificant and yet this is all his that his eyes and senses can take in.

  It was Tekapo of the eternal interest in everything that showed Moonlight smaller life, of insects and how they fought and consumed each other and yet the numbers were infinite; whilst mankind he had known were either dwindling in numbers consumed by battle, or they flourished and consumed others the more. It was Tekapo who suggested this was a way of life that must destroy itself. And Moonlight saw enough to agree.