Weeping Waters

by Nicholson, Anne Maria

‘Why is there so much resentment to Maori ways here?’

  At first he doesn’t reply. He swirls the wine in his glass and says, ‘This isn’t too bad. I’m more of a beer drinker myself, but I’ve got to say I could get used to this.’

  Then he looks at this outsider, who has taken him by surprise.

  ‘It’s just some people. They can’t relate to our culture, our way of doing things,’ he says at last. ‘Yet the same people’s kids might be on the dole or they’re getting some fat superannuation as a handout but they always point the finger at Maori as if they’re bludgers. It’s true a lot of our young generation, the mokopuna, might be a bit laid back to work too much. But I don’t blame them. I was like that myself when I was a teenager. I think you have to work hard but there’s more to life than that.’

  ‘You mean balance?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so. We have a phrase—te ao hurihuri: it means the changing world. It’s our way of saying that everything in our life, the way we do things, the things we believe in, our connections to the past and our tribes, to the land, our place in the world, our relationships, if you like…they’re all bound up together. But that’s enough about me. What about you? Why are you interested in volcanoes?’

  ‘Once you’ve been close to one, it’s like an addiction. I came to New Zealand as a teenager and I have to say I was overawed by Ruapehu the first time I saw it.’

  ‘How come you were here?’

  ‘On a holiday with my parents,’ she hedged. ‘When I went home to England I became obsessed with geology and volcanoes and read everything I could find about them. I remember going to sleep at night, calculating how, if I was a wizard, I could fit the twelve giant pieces of the earth’s jigsaw all back together again—the east coast of South America fitting into the west coast of Africa, Madagascar could pop back into the African mainland, the Antarctica part of Australia’s south coast and so on. I used to imagine pieces of the earth floating over seas of rocks, constantly moving and colliding.’

  ‘You’ve missed your calling—you should be a storyteller,’ Tori says. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘I was an only child,’ Frances feels the words catch in her throat, ‘so I spent a lot of time on my own and I would escape in my mind. I used to sit in our little garden at the back of the house and I would calculate what would happen if I drilled a hole in the flowerbed on and on for thousands of miles, through the cool rock of the planet’s crust, deeper and deeper, and the more I drilled, the hotter it became. Then into the centre of the earth, the engine room where the sheer heat and force of the molten layer moved the huge pieces of jigsaw around the earth in the continental drift.

  ‘And I remember the first time I heard about the ring of fire. It sounded so romantic. It fascinated me and, as you can tell, it’s become part of my life and I’ve followed it all the way down the coastline of the Pacific Basin until I landed back here in New Zealand.’

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly taken on a job and a half, Frances, and if you can convince everyone the early warning system works, I for one will be very grateful.’ As if he suddenly remembered an appointment, Tori stands up abruptly. ‘I’m sorry if I barged in here. I wasn’t expecting this to happen. I certainly didn’t expect the others to leave.’

  ‘Please don’t worry. I haven’t known Shona long but nothing really surprises me. I’m glad you came by.’

  As they walk to the door, Frances turns to him. ‘I was serious about wanting to learn more of Maori culture—all I’ve heard is second-hand information.’

  ‘Fine. As it happens, I’m climbing up one of the other mountains for a special ceremony with some of my iwi on Sunday. Maybe you’d like to come along.’

  ‘Sure. I’d like that,’ she tells him. She fetches a writing pad and watches as he writes directions to his house in bold printing with a little map and lots of arrows pointing towards the lakefront.

  ‘It’s about an hour’s drive away from Taupo, near the lake. Wear some strong shoes and warm clothes. It’ll be a long day.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I can skim it more times than you—I’m better than you!’ The boy runs three steps, stretches his arm back as though bowling a cricket ball and throws the stone with all the might of his ten years. The small grey missile skips across the lake, bouncing once, twice, three times before dropping out of sight. The morning sun captures the ripples billowing out in large circles from the spot where the waters of Taupo swallow it.

  The taller slender girl beside him laughs. Ignoring the taunts of her younger brother, she selects a larger, flatter stone from the shoreline. Rather than running, she stands, barefooted with her jeans rolled up to her knees, in one spot on the wet sand, strokes the stone and passes it from one hand to another. Then setting one foot in front of the other, she brushes back her long, straight, black hair with one hand and with the other, she aims the stone at the water and throws it with a sideway spin as hard as she can. It bounces a full four times before sinking.

  The boy’s eyes widen and his chin sets determinedly. ‘Let me have another go! I’ll beat you this time!’

  Enjoying their play, Frances approaches the children and asks if they know where she can find Tori Maddison.

  ‘Dad’s just coming now,’ the girl says, eyeing the woman in her well-fitting beige jeans, polished brown leather boots and pale-blue parka.

  Frances looks back to see Tori sauntering out of an old green weatherboard house with a small satellite dish on the roof about 50 metres back from the shore. It is surrounded by a number of sheds and a large concrete water tank. Wearing what looks like a well-loved black T-shirt and denim jeans, he comes towards her, his handsome face creased in a smile.

  ‘Glad you could make it,’ he says, holding out a large hand that reveals a life of manual work. ‘Hemi, Moana, this is Frances. She’s the scientist I was telling you about. She’s coming up the mountain with us today.’

  The two children nudge each other and giggle.

  ‘Sure you want us to come, Dad? Maybe we’ll be too crowded,’ his daughter says, setting off her brother into another round of giggling.

  ‘She looks brainy, eh Dad?’ Hemi adds.

  ‘Come on, you kids, we haven’t got all day,’ their father says, looking embarrassed. ‘Have you packed up the chilly bin yet? We need lots of cold drinks and sandwiches from the fridge. There are no shops where we’re going. Leave your car here, Frances, and we can all go in the four-wheel-drive.’

  They drive for less than an hour before pulling over to a clearing in the foothills of Mount Tongariro.

  ‘This is the end of the comfort part of the journey,’ Tori says. ‘Everyone out, we have to walk from here—just a four-hour stroll up and back. Let’s see what you Americans are made of.’

  Frances is feeling better than she has for months.

  ‘I’m getting used to these so-called mountain strolls,’ she jokes. ‘The one I did last week was five hours and I can still feel it here,’ she says, leaning down to rub her calves.

  They pack the drinks and food into a backpack and the four of them walk briskly along a track pushed through brown tussock and dotted with pumice stones.

  ‘Is that heather?’ Frances asks as she reaches down to pick a purple flower.

  ‘’Fraid it is,’ Tori says. ‘It’s a legacy of one mad Scotsman who spread tonnes of heather seeds here in the nineteenth century. He was trying to recreate his lost highlands. He’d been planning to go another step and introduce grouse and woodcock to complete his creation of a new Scotland downunder until it was realised all the native plants and birds were dying. But the Pakeha introduced lots of other animals that have taken hold here—possums, deer and pigs. Good hunting but not great for the environment.’

  As they continue climbing, the landscape changes dramatically, first to open green scrubland and then to a rich damp forest of centuries-old native trees. They slow to a dawdle as they enter the forest, a last remaining remnant spared from the rush to clear land and harve
st the magnificent trees to build ships, houses and furniture. Moana calls out the names of the wooden giants to Frances: rimu, totara, kahikatea, matai, miro.

  The air is cool and moist and they can hear the trickling of hidden streams. A moment later the silence is broken by beautiful birdsong.

  ‘That’s a tui,’ Moana tells Frances. ‘It’s our nightingale.’

  ‘I’d love to see it. Where is it? Tui’s my second name and I’ve never seen the bird.’

  They scan the branches of the trees that rise up around them, looking right up to the canopy screening the sky, following the melodious call. Then they spot it, a small, dark, shiny metallic purple and green bird with two tufts of snow-white feathers at its throat.

  As Frances cries out in delight, the bird flies away and is instantly lost in the arboreal gloom.

  ‘How come you have a Maori name?’ Tori looks at her curiously.

  ‘My parents were caught up in the Tangiwai disaster. They were on the train with my sister. She drowned in the river, a long time before I was born, and a woman named Tui looked after my mother while they were searching for her. So, when I came along, she gave that to me as my second name.’

  ‘Well, it’s a beautiful name—it suits you. You’re full of surprises. No wonder you want to tame that mountain. Have you come to grips with the loss of your sister?’

  The question takes her by surprise. ‘I suppose so,’ she stammers. ‘It’s hard to deal with the loss of someone who is linked to you and yet you never knew.’

  She follows Tori closely as he strides ahead.

  ‘Tui have always been important to us,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘They actually like being around people and I’ve seen some of the old people train them to sing certain songs on the marae. That’s in our settlements.’

  When he sees her sceptical glance Tori slows down until she is level with him. He’s laughing. ‘Would I lie to you?’ he asks. ‘Maybe we can track the other Tui down—we’re probably related. A lot of my aunties have that name too. You’ll meet one of them up the mountain today. She would be too young to be the same person but she may know who it was.’

  As they continue walking, the old forest gradually thins. The thick green underlayer of shrubs and moist ferns disappears and gives way to red and silver beech. Eventually, they leave the verdant land behind. The ground hardens and as they climb higher the vegetation peters out completely. Soon the track meets a small steaming river.

  ‘Come and feel this,’ Tori calls out as he stops to scoop up a handful of water. ‘It’s warm and the higher we go the hotter it gets. We call this the Manga-a-te-Tipua, the enchanted stream. Great for the rheumatism!’

  ‘Dad, can we stop now?’ Moana complains. ‘I’m feeling dizzy.’

  ‘OK, let’s have a breather, sit over here.’ Tori directs them to an outcrop of rocks next to the stream and then produces bottles of cool water and some chocolate from his backpack. ‘Don’t drink the water in the river, kids, it’s full of chemicals. Take your sneakers off and bathe your feet and while we’re here, I’ll tell you all a story about why we Maori have learnt to live with landslides.’

  ‘Oh, not another one of your boring ancestor stories,’ Hemi teases his father. Tori shakes his head at the boy in mock anger. ‘Listen, young man, you can make fun of it if you like but they’re your ancestors too, your heritage, and you should know your stories.’

  Chastened, Hemi stays quiet but, not about to sit still, splashes up and down the stream, picking up stones and tossing them into the water. Moana sits as close to Frances as she dares, enjoying the scent and the difference of this exotic stranger.

  Frances loves the way Tori includes his children in all their conversations, encouraging them one moment and gently chiding them at another. Sometimes he talks to them in Maori, other times in English.

  ‘One of our ancestors, Te Heuheu Tukino, was the paramount chief of Taupo in the early 1800s. He was a giant of a man, with snowy-white hair and a tattooed face. He was well loved by both Maori and the first white travellers in this region, but he was also a fierce, victorious warrior known for his military planning and tactics, what we call whakatakoto parekura.’

  Tori is warming up now, clearly enjoying his role as storyteller, drawing them in.

  ‘He lived with his clan and several wives in a stockaded village at Te Rapa, not far from here. On a night before a battle he would gather his warriors and before addressing them he would recite a potent karakia.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Frances asks.

  ‘It’s a prayer or a chant.’

  Tori draws himself up and recites from the ancient incantation: ‘Hira mai ai te whekite o te rangi’.

  Moana and Hemi start giggling and are silenced with a glare from their father.

  ‘It’s my special prayer,’ Tori tells Frances. ‘I always try to remember to say it to myself in difficult times. It’s supposed to ward off evil spirits and destructive powers of nature.

  ‘But the story goes that just before the floods hit the hillside behind the village, the chief forgot to say the prayer to divert an impending disaster. The village was preparing a welcome for another visiting tribe when the floods hit. Part of the hillside that was pierced through by dozens of boiling springs suddenly gave way. A great mass of mud, clay, rocks and water thundered down into the village and Te Heuheu and most of his family were killed in a giant landslide.’

  ‘So did anyone survive?’ Frances asks.

  ‘No one in the middle of the village did. Fifty-four of them died, including his wife. When they found her body she was holding the tribe’s sacred greenstone mere—club—protecting it. The only members of his immediate family who survived were his brother and one son.’

  Tori explains that the grief-stricken tribe wanted to bury their chief at the top of the mountain in a cave, believing the more important the person, the higher up they should be put to rest, but rival chiefs were against it, not wanting to strengthen the tribe’s ownership of the land. ‘There have been many wars over sovereignty of the land, not just with Pakeha but also between other tribes. And it still goes on today. So at first the old chief was buried elsewhere.

  ‘Te Heuheu was a very sacred person when he was alive and once he died his power became even greater. So everything around him—his possessions, food—became forbidden to anyone of inferior rank. Even the lake was tapu because the landslide had swept into the water so they couldn’t eat the fish. To remove the tapu and before the old chief could be exhumed, the tribe had to find others with equal status to perform some special ceremonies.’

  ‘How could one man hold so much power over everyone?’ Frances asks.

  ‘When a chief dies it’s like a mountain having its tip broken off. Our legends tell us that the stern anchor of the great Arawa canoe is firmly fixed on top of Tongariro and the prow anchor is equally firmly fixed on the east coast. We have the saying “Mai makeutu ki tongariro”, which means the mountain is held fast, there for us for eternity. So to protect themselves from death or disaster after his death, the people brought in other chiefs and priests of the highest status from surrounding tribes. They performed ancient rites, including cooking special food in a sacred oven to remove the tapu.

  ‘They were then able to exhume his bones and they took them and hid them in a lava cave on Tongariro not far from here. They rested on this mountain for sixty years and then they were removed again and buried closer to his home where he now rests in peace.’

  ‘The caves sound amazing,’ Frances says. ‘Like a Maori version of the ancient Egyptian pyramids. Have you seen any of the lava burial places?’

  ‘Yes, but they’re secret places. I’ve seen them in these mountains and another on an island where there are many bodies of Maori princes and princesses lying in state in large lava caves. Frances,’ Tori moves so close to her she can feel the warmth of his breath, ‘our belief in tapu is a very serious and important part of our culture. Do you understand that?’

  Frances
nods slowly. ‘I guess I do in principle but I don’t really grasp it.’

  ‘We see the world in a holistic way—everything in our lives, the spiritual, the intellectual and the physical, is bound with the life force of the environment, what we call the mauri, and the rest of the universe.

  ‘In the old days, my people wouldn’t even climb the sacred volcanoes because the chief was buried there and it was tapu. They were afraid to even look at the mountain for fear of breaking its tapu and courting death. Some wore wreaths of large leaves around their heads to cover their eyes so they could only look at the ground as they walked. These blinkers stopped them from accidentally looking at the volcanoes.

  ‘The first Europeans who travelled here didn’t care about such things and climbed the mountains. At first my people refused many of those who asked permission to climb. But the land wars between Maori and Pakeha and between tribes disrupted the traditional way of life and with the white man’s laws and culture everything changed. And once the chief’s body was moved away from the mountain, a condition my people put on before the area became a national park, the ban on climbing there was lifted. Now we climb the mountains from time to time for special ceremonies like today but the tapu remains and we’re deeply respectful.’

  Tori stands up, brushing the dust off his pants. ‘That’s enough storytelling for now. We’d better get moving—the others are waiting for us up the mountain.’ He explains that six or seven elders started climbing to an area of sacred hot volcanic springs earlier in the morning.

  ‘Unfortunately, not many of my people climb here these days. A lot of the older people have very bad health problems like diabetes and kidney failure. Too much junk food, booze and smoking. And the young ones aren’t that interested. That’s why I bring my kids while they’re young enough to want to come. It’s important they learn their history.’

  They walk for another half hour, lost in thoughts of the past. Moana sticks closely to Frances while Hemi leaps up and down the rocks like a restless puppy. The higher they climb, the hotter the stream becomes and the steamy sulphur envelops them. Suddenly, ahead on the track out of the volcanic haze, they hear a woman’s voice, half chanting, half singing. The voice is strong and sure and the sound fills Frances with awe. Soon they are close enough to see her. Thickset build, with short curly black hair and wearing a dark blue tracksuit, she is standing erect. Her brown face is finely lined.