Once Were Warriors

by Alan Duff

  Toward that dark shape of house and tree outline sitting like a huge ship anchored in the night.

  She’d been over this same ground before; earlier, when she’d walked home, left her siblings to take themselves to the pictures. Depressed. I felt depressed. She’d dreaded them having got a dog this time. But they hadn’t. She’d climbed a tree. She’d watched them, the Tramberts, from her perch like they were a film, a TV show; the eatings and goings-on of the other species. Ten ofem there were. If you don’t include her, the girl. The fuckin self-assured has-to-be-smartarse girl who can’t be any older than me. The pianist. Eleven if you do. And they sure had counted her as one a them. Consumed a girl with jealousy she had, that Trambert kid. The way she, you know, conducted herself amongst all those people. Daring to not only talk but converse withem, as if she was not only a confident child but their equal. Not only that, she seemed to think it was such a big yawn.

  For hours this show went on: each person seeming to take a turn at talking (tawking) how they do, holding court as they’d say in English at school, then someone replying or responding or no one saying anything at all, just resuming their eating, their wine sipping, their dabdabs at their mouths with serviette, which a Pine Block girl knows’re called sumpthin else except she doesn’t know precisely what.

  And the woman, she musta been Mrs Trambert, with her shining lovely hair getting up every so often but not before giving em a beautiful smile with the tiniest of nods, and sometimes her daughter had got up after her, and they came back after a bit carrying plates of food and wearing smiles, handing em around ever so graciously, and everyone not touching their grub like a Pine Blocker would, not till the Mum and her spoilt little bitch’d sat down. Oh, and there woulda been five — five — courses. Compare with Pine Block where it’s one course and it lasts as long the food does not a moment longer or sooner.

  Nibble-nibble-nibble, then down’d go their knife and fork or whatever it was they were eating the course with, V-ed points in on the plate, dabdab with that bit of cloth at their dainty mouths, picking up their glass of wine, which’d started off as white and then the mother and her husband’d come along and filled more glasses with red wine; it had to be red wine unless it was something else a Pine Block girl didn’t know about just as she didn’t about red or white wine, only that she’d figured it from TV. Each course taking an age to eat.

  And she could see the lights of her world from her tree perch. And she’d look through the foliage at the row of lights of home — back into the room of other species — so nicely dressed: the women with, oh, just indescribable dresses, outfits, and the men with a tie and a nice jacket. Grace looking back again, at home. Then down into that room. The feeling that something, someone had done this to her; this sense of having been not deprived but robbed of a life, growing stronger in her more and more tormented mind.

  Ideas, notions, concepts kept zinging back and forth across her vision of thoughts, like flashes of light trailing a message but going too fast to catch the words. So it was just the row of lights and faint sounds of a car revving a snatch of group singing. A real-life TV scene down there, in that sitting room, or dining room, or whatever the hell they call it I don’t know I’m just a …

  The departure of the people. The visitors. Mrs and Mr coming outside withem; the front door — big woodpanelled thing it coulda been the courthouse — light flooding the area, the cars, the suited men, the smiling laughing women, the girl-bitch so fuckin confident in herself; their goodnights, their we must do this more oftens, their oh yes, we musts, ringing so clearly to a trespasser in a tree. Their accents, their demeanours, their soberness, their every communication so so different.

  The red eyes of tail-lights disappearing into the night and a girl betting those cars wouldn’t have to be returned in the morning; lights disappearing like everything disappearing: stars, moon, day, picnic, mother, hope.

  A girl thinking: What if you people came over to our world, joined our party? What’d happen? Imagining the novelty of havin not just Pakehas in their midst but posh ones at that; all over em, breathin beer fumes over em, gettin over-friendly the way they do when they’re drunk, askin em stupid questions, rude questions, insulting questions. Eyin em up, the men, for trouble to pick. The women for what they — Oh can’t even think about it. Then sure as eggs (fried eggs) someone’d walk up to one ofem and ask: The fuck’re you lookin at, cunt? Then, Tramberts and friends, they’ll punch the shit out of you, kick hell out of you, spit on you, scream abuse on your bloodied head. Then they’ll party on, inspired, spurred by the beating they have given you. For they know it is the only taste of victory they get from life.

  Feet freezing. Solid blocks of ice. Oh, but what does it matter? And she climbed her shivering form, step by painful barefooted step up the tree. (The girl, the Trambert kid, had done the act: just that simple kissing of her mother, her father, goodnight.)

  This high enough? Looking down, hard to tell in the dark and no moon up there. No. I’ll go higher. (And the mother and father they’d gone back to that big room with the big table. Sat down. Sipped at their red wines; she smiling lipsticked lips at him this nice complimentary scarlet: everything fitted. Everything. They’d talked a bit. Grace couldn’t hear a word, only see her lips moving and his profile in animation but mostly still. Controlled, see.)

  She stopped. She bounced her weight to test the strength. This’ll do. She unwound the rope round her arm. (They stood up, she stretching, and seeming to giggle at him smiling funny at her. She had her arms up and he walked over to her and they started pashing. Wow. As old as that and pashing. Then they broke away and they left the room, holding hands. Pop! they went like that in a disappearance of love stepped into the dark. And Grace left there. Lonely — lonelier than ever.) She tied the knots with a practised skill; jerking on each one as she went. (And the front entrance light went out. Then an edging of light speared alight on her left. Stayed on for some time. Then it too popped out.) Wow. Just me now. Me and the dark. Me and —

  Felt so strange, the rope around her neck, tickly against her throat. Strange and this calmness. As if it really wasn’t going to happen, that it couldn’t possibly. And yet … nothing there, in the background of vague thoughts and blurry pictures and this odd buzzing sound, to say this is not going to happen. Because it was happening … I’m testing the rope.

  Potential. It popped up in her head, an old familiar word, concept she’d latched onto. From a magazine it was; about everyone having the right — the right, it said — to realise their potential. POTENTIAL.

  It sat there in her mind as clear as a neon sign. Like the McCLUTCHY’S one. No need for on/off blinking. Not when it was what everyone knew. No need to blink on and off.

  Then her breathing quickened. In and out in and out, rapider and rapider.

  Then she jumped.

  … so she could not hear the sounds from the row of two-storey lights over yonder field, of song in mass rendition, a party trying to surge back to life. And succeeding. And remarkably in tune … (and thas even tho we pissed as, man. We — huh! — we c’n still sing tho. Issa … issa … issa potential of us, eh. Comin out in us because we’re pissed. Drunk as. Issa potential us Maoris got for singing — oh not juss singing, neither. Iss lotsa things we got potential for. Lotsa things. But singing, well, thas our best potential, eh. Oh, and fighting too. HAHAHAHA! Thas why we don’t wanna go ta bed: because we, you know, are re-a-lising our poten-shall. Ya realise that doncha? HAHAHAHA! gotta laugh, eh, or we’d cry. No we wouldn’t, we’d fall over flat on our drunken backs and go ta sleep. But not forever, no way. Juss a few hours. Because there’s tomorrow, eh. So play that gat!)

  But eventually there was no more light along that back view of state houses. Only the stars, as always, up there shining on. Though a man in town owned a telescope and had much learning, he could have told you that even they, the stars, go out. So what’s a life? (Potential, sir. It’s an unrealised potential.)

  10. They Who
Have History II

  And now the second day … And tomorrow (tomowwow, kidsth … Remember that, Beth?) tomorrow’ll be the last day. Beth looking at the face — Tomorrow, and you’ll be gone.

  As if you were ever here in the first place.

  A constant, low wailing from an older woman sat at the end of the coffin. And people all around, backs against the walls, sat on mattresses, and out in the centre of the vast room they were sat on woven mats; and the elders, men, sat on bench seats.

  Beth touching the face (I still don’t believe it) so cold. So utterly, unfeelingly still. Still in disbelief and yet nothing could be more final and absolute as this. And an elder rising to make yet another speech in a language a mother did not understand. (And yet he is part of me, my heritage; probably related to me. Yet he speaks his tongue and I understand only another. Yet they are gathered here …? to help a mother farewell her tragically gone daughter?)

  Beth not understanding. Not the language, not their insistence that she bring her child home for proper farewell. Beth half resenting the male elders, their privileged position, their secret language that only they and a few others knew; remembering that this very place, its cultural practices, had always been a mystery to a young girl growing up: a males-only domain. And only certain males at that. From certain families. From chiefly lines. And to hell with the rest, you’re here to serve us. That’s how a girl’d felt. And growing up to the knowledge that as a woman she was never going to have the right to speak publicly, as this man now was. Not ever. So Beth had to draw a deep breath to stop herself crying out to the speaker to shut up if he wasn’t going to speak English. But courtesy. And lifetime fear instilled. And a woman knew her grieving had her in a state.

  A single-roomed building of huge dimensions: forty metres by thirty wide. Steep-pitched roof giving the inside a chamberlike effect; a speaker’s voice tended to echo somewhat, despite the absorbing presence of two hundred and more people.

  Walls of woven and rolled plant, decorated with simple geometric patterns of traditional design.

  Every pace a carved wooden slab of wall column, depicting an illustrious ancestor, the legends of the people; the lore of the tribe etched out in intricate (but secret) detail. Warrior figures with huge tongues poking grotesque defiance at the imagined (and assumed) enemy; three-digit hands holding a weapon, and perhaps an animal depicted at the warrior’s feet, a lizard, a whale, a bird. And the odd woman was depicted too; you could tell by the two droops signifying breasts, as well the chin and lip tattoo.

  Ceiling a rib-row of rafters painted in traditional fern-curl or geometric pattern. Two main centre support poles, each an elaborately carved totem of massive log. A bookless society’s equivalent of several volumes. If you knew how to translate it, that is.

  Outside, the doorway framed in more elaborate carving, the single window frame, the gables the same.

  Atop the apex of iron roof a wooden warrior with legs astride, spear in hand, fierce face wild-eyed and tongue-ejected at all would-be enemies. Wainui. (Where a girl once roamed and had dreams.)

  Over by the wall on the right as you entered she lay in state. Ancient feather cloak draped over her from breasts (buds cut short of their prime) down. The lid to her last residence stood on its end directly over the coffin. You could see her (sad) reflection in the highly polished wood: just a face framed in white rayon.

  All the people except the male elders without footwear. Black the predominant colour worn by the women. Beth on Grace’s left; her children, Abe, Polly and Huata beside her; opposite her an aunt on her mother’s side; and beside her, Maggie, Beth’s sister, for once looking genuinely of pity. Down from the aunt a disgruntled paternal aunt, put out and making it known her slight at not having prime position up there with the mother. Giving smouldering looks at every opportunity her usurper. And at meal breaks telling all who’d listen that it wasn’t right, you know, the auntie on the mother’s side to have head position over the auntie on the father’s side. And everyone going, Yeah, yeah, Auntie Tare.

  Jake, the father, doing his grieving at where he felt he belonged.

  Light rain pitterpattering on the iron roof; it’d been like that all day. Ah, the sky weeping. A sure sign from the heavens of exceptional grief. And rightly so. In the, uh, you know, the circumstances.

  The older women taking it in unspoken turn to maintain the formalised wailing: a haunting, sobbing sound that never let up, and it’d rise and fall and rise again to such an extent it had Beth’s hair standing on end. Chilled a woman. (But I done my weeping.) No more to cry. Only guilt left. And a slow-building anger — no, a rage. A rage building up in her. (Wasn’t me who killed you, girl … Wasn’t me who made the circumstances that had you go and do this. It was your father. It was his fault.) Yet not sure. Not yet. Too soon. Beth afraid of judging too soon.

  The speaker intoned on. And it, his voice, sort of moved in and out of a woman’s hearing, like a tide, a wave lapping the shore, ebbing, coming back again. A rhythm. No denying that; there’s a definite pattern of beat in the way he’s talking. But that rage also creeping over her. And the nagging thought: (Oh please don’t let it be …?) that her race, Grace’s facthood of being Maori (deprived, I don’t know …) might have been the cause? The speaker ending his speech.

  Cigarette smoke wisping up from a score of sources. And Beth struggling with her thoughts: (What damn use your formal speeches, elders, in a tongue most of us don’t understand and never will understand even though they’re drumming it into us from everywhere, on the TV, the radio, the papers, this kohanga reo stuff, what use when a race is tearing itself apart?) Easy, Beth, easy. Grabbing a handful of black dress and squeezing till it hurt and her rage’d subsided. Then another elder stood. He coughed his throat clear. And off he went into a foreign-languaged speech whose only quality Beth could hear was that eerie clicking pattern of rhythm.

  Beth wanting a smoke. Badly. But not proper. Not right beside the body. The face … always that face … can’t get away from it. One more day. (Sorry, darling. Not that I want you to go. But you’re sending a mother mad.) Beth buried her face in her hands (and everyone thinking it was her grief, her love for her tragically self-taken daughter. Ah, such a terrible shame, eh. And so young.) The speaker breaking into a waiata, lament for something precious lost. Others joining in. And so collectively compelling they had a wretched mother’s head lifting … Drawn to it.

  … three, four … eight ofem. Chanting. The notes hardly changing. Yet as sad as anything Beth’d ever heard.

  Melancholy, that’s it … Beth listening quite intently now … Hei tuupoho ake te wahine a tangi aurere nei: Making glad the hearts of women who bitterly lament …

  The line of bare lightbulbs glowing brightly down the centre of the room, strung over the cross-members. A kid bawling loudly. The kid being hushed. The waiata continuing its rolling rhythmic throb. Quarter-tones. That’s what a woman remembered from somewhere as this style of singing. So moving. (Have to get a grip on myself or I ain’t gonna last. Gonna crack.) Be strong, Beth.

  People came; they stood in their little groups before the coffin with bowed heads and just the wail of formal weeping. Then a speech of welcome from a host elder, followed by a reply from the visitor leader. Then around the room rubbing noses in the old way: hongi. Getting to Beth and embracing her, sobbing over her, patting her back, mostly wordless, and then gone. Ghosts. Just nice ghosts being kind to a woman, not because they knew her but because she was one of them.

  This occurring more and more to Beth, their kindness.

  They’d take their leave and there’d be a break in the speeches, so a woman’d be left with only her thoughts and that quiet sobbing in the background, and her daughter laying there speaking — calling — from her tomorrow’s grave: (Mum, I am wronged. I lie here because I have been wronged.) But a mother unable to figure, for the life of her, how great the wrong to have Grace do this.

  And her remaining children — what remained of them, wi
th Nig still not shown up and the welfare not having brought Boogie, so with half the offspring she began with — stunned and not able to find much comfort from Mum (Oh I’m sorry, kids) only take them in her arms now and then. (But what to say because what use words?)

  So the hours passed, another hour gone, one more hour closer to a girl, a life, a supposed potential, gone forever. And, sometime in the haze, a buzz going up at the entrance of a man, and Beth’s aunt, telling Beth with a reverence: It’s Te Tupaea, paramount chief of the tribe. But Beth giving the man only a glance, So what?

  He wasn’t tall, nor particularly distinguished. Just an ordinary man who’d been born with chiefly status, was how Beth gave her cursory interest when the man stood began his speech. And even given the Maori he spoke in, Beth was thinking the chief as ill-suited to the role, and thinking it was proof of this inheritance thing that you can’t make a leader from poor material to start with. Then Matawai, Beth’s maternal aunt, began what Beth presumed was a translation, perhaps it was rough outline of what the chief was saying.

  … his whakapapa, Matawai was saying, he speaks first of his genealogy, as the chief rapid-fired in a half-whisper a complex and endless mouthful of names, words … His ancestry — your ancestry, therefore, Beth, and mine — he recalls all those tupuna long gone yet still alive in the heart of every true Maori. He is saying, Beth, that we are what we are only because of our past … and that we should never forget our past or our future is lost … Beth wondering if perhaps that was what ailed her people: their lack of knowledge of the past. A history.