by Duff, Alan
And so the name had quickly faded into obscurity. But then there is always someone who has need of the most obscure or insignificant knowledge that may be turned into weapon against others.
This speaker at my brother’s tangi had referred to a life taken by its own hand as not unknown to this person’s antecedents. Had they not in substantial numbers taken their lives rather than live in shame? And was not the cause one Te Aranui Kapi, who had a childless union with a woman said to be like the moon: ugly on one side, beautiful the other? But did not Kapi leave a woman named Tangiwai Kotuku with child, which she bore and raised and gave it the name of Te Amo, meaning supporting? And does not a defiled being pass down to future generations, not diluted so fast by marriage that others do not have memory? For I am Te Tono, this mister average man said, doing my solemn duty to my father’s sacred name, and the mana that this man’s actions took from him. You, Henry Te Amo, are a descendent of him. As is that young man lying dead by his own hand.
Henry Te Amo’s reply was thus: We are all sinners and sinned against, the Bible says this and so has every man of every tribe and every race said so. For it is true. When I sin against you, member of Te Tono hapu, then you may do your worst to me. Your words here, where I am thought highly of, could be called sin against me and mine. But you look a man of no threat to me, nor significance that others would hear you and pay heed.
If I and my nephew lying at peace there are sinners, then pray strike me down, or show means of exacting punishment. These carved ancestors are mine whether you make counter claim or not. Just as the child who is adopted into any family becomes the child of those parents. You, of Te Tono name, and related to the man who takes his living from the rents paid on his inherited land, are fittingly descended from a tohunga line of known manipulation of men. Perhaps it is you who should be explaining away the sins of your forefathers. Though I shall not bother to demand that of you, since you are not worthy of one more moment of my time. My nephew awaits the love of our farewell.
Of Kapi and Mihinui, from whom he was inseparable, after that discussion that lasted several days they all went their separate ways. The people, that is. Though some went in small groups of family members, or good friends, or partners of love. And on Wild Hair’s urging that they overcome their fears and be willing to embrace change and change would embrace them back.
Mihinui could not conceive children. Which gave the loving some added poignancy for what may have been. But so was the loving deep and meaningful for accepting. And it gave them much time to talk, to discover, especially of the place they took themselves to, and on their own shared admission were scared, truly afraid of the white man’s unknown, his vastly more complicated doings evident from when they got to a rise looking down on his places of construction, like tightly compressed village but not like anything they had seen.
They had not language nor any other to offer as they trudged into an unknown future, perhaps soon to be ended with one of these magic weapons of which they had heard. She reminded him of how much was he different from the man arriving in their outcast midst offering naught but his warrior services, which were rejected.
She asked again, what would he offer to a people whose tongue neither had and who were known not to approve the ways of warriors? He was not sure, except perhaps he thought he might have within him a capacity to understand their building construction now they were getting closer, and he saw that they were still four-sided with sloped roof. Their tongue is what I fear most. I feel I am too stuck in my ways of speech to learn another.
She said she would help him, she was confident her training in classical expression from her parents’ practising on each other would surely gain language empathy even of a foreign tongue. Tongue is not soul, Moonlight. Love is.
And of course he agreed with that. Now he did.
He wanted to know did Tekapo report of any having tattoos like his. No, he said a few white men carried strange tattoo markings on their arms, but they gave a meaning that signified a lesser class, unlike Moonlight’s warrior tattoos of highest class. Once it was. But now, my lover, you can be vain about them again, as they cannot be rubbed off. And they will be unique, at least amongst the white people and be only a record of what you once were.
I don’t understand you, Mihi. You contradict yourself.
It is a time of contradictions. I have heard they are a people who have admiration for a warrior’s fighting courage; and yet they do not allow it amongst themselves. She smiled. The tales you could enthrall them with, Moonlight.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. I think little of those battles fought. I have fought and won a harder battle. I know now of what awful fate I caused them and I feel shame for that. My chief leading so many of our people down the endless trenches. Oh, those thoughts burden me still.
But you know that Tangiwai Kotuku went another way, and she bore your child, and though she joined her reduced lot to a bad dream of lowest life form, of deserving outcasts, she vanquished over that too. The runners say she has moved to a place where the ground makes steam and roaring upthrusts of boiling water and there is cooking facility all over the ground. You have told me you have been there. She sought out your tohunga and joined his new tribe. The runners we paid food to gain news of her say she is boring her adopted people to tears of talk of this restored pride. With respect to your former lover, she makes mistake in wanting only to return to what was, when surely it’s same that failed her?
And he asked: You mean she does not realise that she has made the dream by herself?
That is how I see it. But look, Moonlight, the dwellings of the newcomers have many even-sided shapes dazzling like tiny suns! Oh, I am frightened but excited too! So now they had hurry in their footsteps.
And those strange objects of the symbol-covered thin layers, like beaten cloth, they were of meaning sure enough, as Tekapo had indicated. For wherever this disbanded lot of people went, like seed scattered to the winds, this was their means of making its society function. They were its instructions, its rules and codes and morals, as well the supporting works of their immorality. They were its history recorded like the first inhabitants had recorded orally and in their carvings. Except these had, for every book claiming one thing, many others making differing claims. It was a contest, a means of testing one argument against another.
He died well before she did. And where he is buried only she knew. There her line ended, as she had believed it should be. There are always others springing up. Like hope.
33
It wasn’t over, not for me. Brian was next, but given of his life to a living death: on the treadmill of toughness, tough-guy outlook, toughest of all to escape from. Have to want to escape. In and out of jail, fighting, always fighting, can’t stop, can’t stop, my youngest brother just couldn’t stop. He’d always had those hard, easily narrowing eyes. Like his mother.
And even if he desired to change, ask Tangiwai Kotuku how difficult are the mountains you have to climb: the same reply to what oppresses you that you have to give as your parting shot, your means of escape. Brian will murder someone one day. And though the law won’t give him honoured markings of tattoo etchings, his ilk will in his incarcerated places, they’ll crown him warrior, they’ll name him another son of Tu, God of War. A taboo scar signifying the damage he’s done to others — and himself.
Ian made it. All by himself, too. Or as much as a person can be considered doing his best alone. My turn was just going to take longer in coming.
But I can take it. And I did take it. Mereana said a person must take from his situation whatever it is. She used to say I’d grow up to be a voice from whatever reality fate had in store for me. But if I didn’t, then someone of my line would.
She’d have told me that if I couldn’t do it then urge someone who can. Urge him, child, to come this side of the moon. Tell him that dark is only but a step away, though a big step, from here this other all covered in light. In light, e kare, child, children of my beloved people.
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She would tell them, as I do now, that on this side of the conceptual moon not only is there light to the eyes, but singing can be heard. And they are strong, powerful, harmonised Maori voices, singing European hymn: Come Unto Me. And I (we, they, God if you must) shall give you love. Which is light, is it not? Child, children, she tells you (I tell you): Love is light. Love is light. Light is love.
Copyright
A VINTAGE BOOK
published by
Random House New Zealand
18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand
First published 1998
© 1998 Alan Duff
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN 978 4 869 79877 2
Cover illustration by Sheila Pearson