And you could only do your best, the best that you knew. He wanted all the whanau back, wanted to be sure that everything they needed was there. And it was up to him to make sure it was, that was how he felt. It was all leaning on him.
Well last night someone had come, he didn’t know who. Sat on him, heavily. On his chest as he half slept. Frightened him too, and he’d had it on his mind all day. Didn’t know what it meant and didn’t know who. Perhaps he wasn’t doing things right. Or it could have been a warning. Someone come to tell him something … but about what? Surely they’d had enough. ‘Ko wai tenei?’ he’d asked into the dark. ‘He aha to pirangi?’ But there’d been no sound, no reply, only weight which held him so that he couldn’t move.
A warning? But what more could happen? He didn’t want to think of what more could happen … He would say nothing to anyone, because no good could come of talking about it just now. Only more for them to worry about. One day he would talk about it. For now he would just live with it, try to think only about what was the right thing for him, for people, the ones here, the ones gone. All he could do now was what he’d always done, or tried to do – keep the home warm.
The outside world would turn, faster and faster, he supposed, and in what direction he couldn’t tell. But his world, the one he knew and understood, was there just the same, to hold if he could. The same, except that sometimes the self could shift. Who had come to him in the night, and what did it mean?
He trundled the barrow towards the wharekai which was all lit and full of sounds. And there were lights on in the workshop too, as people set up to work for a few more hours.
He left the barrow by the door of the wharekai and made his way towards the wash-room.
23
Roimata
The stories had changed. It was as Toko had said, the stories had changed. And our lives had changed. We were living under the machines, and under a changing landscape, which can change you, shift the insides of you.
Above all we lived under the threat and destructiveness of the power people, and we had only really begun to understand the power.
Before the burning of the house we had known and felt our own strength, which had come from knowing ourselves, and from knowing a direction. But after that time, the time of the fire, we began to really live with fear, and with a question in our minds as to what else could happen, what else could be done in an attempt to destroy us. Was the strength of our own feet enough? Was it enough to have feet on ground? ‘Because it’s not ordinary,’ Reuben warned. ‘Not just a dirty game. They’ve found money won’t shift you and they’ll want to push you off, frighten you, get you off somehow. We mustn’t think it’s just a dirty game that they’ll become tired of sooner or later. They can’t help it, can’t stop. Can’t think, because they have become just like their machines.’
Yet I am a patient watcher of the skies. We worked so hard that summer, which was a summer of long, fine days and of hot, heavy work. The gardens flourished and the new house went up. In spite of the threat in our lives there was excitement about, and energy.
Our visitors, who had been away from their homes for several months by then, must have been anxious to go home. What they were doing for us would never be forgotten, though to them what they were doing was simply a return for support we had given them in the past.
They stayed because they knew what it meant to the spirit and upliftment of people to be housed in a house which expressed and defined them. They knew what those who had conducted the enquiry had not known, that for us to have destroyed our own house would have meant an end with no new beginning, a nothingness – earth nothing, sky nothing, nothing in the belly of the sea, a return to the nothing where nothing stirs.
But I am a patient sky watcher, and there was not, after all, nothing. In amongst the debris our very dearest Mary had sat, with her man. She had pulled him from the ash, put her ear against his chest, and begun, softly, to sing.
So Mary and her man were the first new breath. People coming in trucks were the second. From there had come a growth and a flourishing, a leaping from within the dark sea, a deep and excited breathing.
At another level there was pain. We had not forgotten what had happened, what had been done. We could not ignore the falling rock, the levelling of land, the arrival of materials, the new yellow colour of the sea.
And Tangimoana had gone. She had not phoned or written, had hardly said goodbye. She did not agree with our acceptance of a situation, which was not a deep-down acceptance, but only a waiting one. She saw the strength of a bending branch to be not in its resilience, but in its ability to spring back and strike.
24
Toko
There is a special door that was made for me and my chair. It is a door at the side of the new wharenui specially hinged so that it opens either out or in. There is a ramp and a wide pathway from the road to enable me to come and go easily. It was not easy by then, for me to be without my chair.
My uncles planned and built the special door for me, and the people made the ramp and path. My brother James carved the doorway, and in his carvings told the special story of the joining. It is the story of how our people had become as one with the people of Te Ope.
To do this my brother had looked back in the genealogies until he found a common ancestress from whom both people could show descent. He carved the head and shoulders of this ancestress at the centre of the door lintel, showing her to face both out and in. The two thick, strong arms of the woman stretched out to embrace the two poles that made the door frames on either side. Down these two poles the people were interspersed, the people of our iwi and the people of Te Ope, but linked at the top of the columns by the woman. It was her children that she clasped at either side of her. And these children were working, laughing, crying, singing people, some small and some larger than life. They were young and old, and were joined by their fingers or toes, hands, feet, arms, legs, foreheads or tongues until all had become part of one another. They faced to the hills on the outside, and on the other side they looked in.
It is a beautiful door that opens without noise. Inside the door and to the left of it was my mattress covered by a rug, which was left there all the time for me, and there was a space beside my mattress for my chair.
Once inside the house someone would help me onto my mattress, and I could wrap warm in my rug. I could listen to what I wanted to listen to, and if I wished to speak, or was asked to speak, I could speak from there, throwing my voice high into the heke. I was always given a time to speak even though speaking is mostly done by those who are old. But the people knew that I would never be old, and that is why they allowed me oldness while I was a child still. Some would say that I had never been a child.
I could sit or sleep right there beneath the carving-man/loving-man made complete again, his new feet resting on my head. Because there hadn’t, after all, been nothing. It was my own mother Mary who had sat amongst the water-soaked ruins of the first house and pulled the loving-man from the ash. She had held him to her, put her ear to his heart, and had begun, softly, to sing.
I had helped her to clean the ash and marks away, and under the dust we’d found the little watching eyes, the talking tongue, the other mallet-heart. We’d found, just faintly, the pattern of scarves, and found the hand that clasped the handle of the lifing chisel – but the broadened, figured, penis end of the chisel had burned away. The feet and legs of the man had gone, fire having gone mostly to the groin.
This poupou, found in the dust by my first mother Mary, was the link from old to new, that’s what everyone said. It was the piece that showed that there had been no real death, or showed perhaps that death is a coiled spring. This piece had been the last one carved for the old house, but had not been completed even then. And it became the first piece for the new house, which meant we were able in our new house to show a linking from the man who had no children of his own, and a linking from before that through him, connecting all of us to the great and
ancient ancestor whose name the house had been given.
And the man who had no children had been gifted down in wood by one who had represented himself in a pattern from scarves, even though he’d been told not to show a living memory, by one who had chosen, at the end of his life, to do what he had been told never to do – to give breath to wood. It had all been told in stories from when Granny was a little girl, when the man grown out of his frailty had built a house for the people. He had brought out of wood a living memory, then he’d given his breath.
He had left the lower half of the poupou untouched, a place for the mokopuna of the man who had no children of his own.
And that was the place given to me to sit, keeping warm the place of the child not by then known. I could be, for a while, the mokopuna, the one not yet shown in wood.
It was a quiet place for me. I could listen there, or rest. Because I had been given special oldness I could speak from there to the heke, or to the quiet, waiting hearts.
One night Roimata and I went out to look for Manu, and found him sitting under the new doorway. ‘There’s fire,’ he said, but Roimata told him there was no fire. ‘That was before,’ she said, and tried to wake him, tried to make him see. He did not wake, did not see, but we took him back home to bed where he slept quietly for the rest of the night.
Part Three
* * *
25
Roimata
The hills are quiet and the machines have been taken away. After a while the trees will begin to grow again and soon the water will be clear. There is comfort in knowing these things, but is there enough comfort? Good can come from what is not good, good can come from sorrow, new life from old, but is it enough? Hemi and I will put down the nets again and we will have butterfish and moki. We will fish from the dinghies or from the shores. We will have clean mussels from the reef when the water is clear.
All that we need is here, Hemi says. It’s true and there’s comfort in knowing it, but is there enough comfort, even considering that I am, have always been, an ever-patient watcher of the skies? We have known what it is to have had a gift, and have not ever questioned from where the gift came, only sometimes wondered. The gift has not been taken away because gifts are legacies, that once given cannot be taken away. They may pass from hand to hand, but once held they are always yours. The gift we were given is with us still.
His death had been with us a long time but not the manner of it. The manner of his death, that is where the pain is – the manner of his death, and the brokenness and suffering of the little bird. His death brought Tangimoana back to us, brought others to us, gave us much that is good, but is it enough, can it be enough?
Tangimoana would not sit at his side during the time of mourning. She went alone that first day, up to the workplace in the hills. ‘You’ve killed my brother,’ she said. ‘You’ve killed our own brother, my own brother who, when I was a child, I saved from drowning.’
‘He hasn’t been here,’ they said, some of them moving away to begin their work.
‘You bled the land,’ she shouted, and those who had been about to move remained. ‘And you almost destroyed the sacred place in a time of rain. You fired our first house and now you’ve killed our brother.’
‘He’s not here,’ one said.
‘Hasn’t been here.’
And another said, ‘Don’t come here shouting, you can’t blame those things …’
But another said, ‘What do you mean about your brother?’
‘He’s dead and you did it. You, you, all of yous.’ And she began telling them about her brother.
While she was telling, Matiu and Timoti left and came running down from the hills and have not been back there since, except once. And when she had finished telling they were all quiet.
‘It’s bad,’ someone said.
‘We know your … feelings. But us …’
‘We work …’
‘Just a job …’
‘For money …’
‘And kai.’
They were all silent for a long time, then Tangimoana said, ‘It’s true what you say, but I want to blame … it’s how I feel … to stop from crying. There’s no time for crying. But I said it also to make you listen to me. Yous have to listen to me, you’re the only ones who can help. Yous have to listen to me, and understand, and believe me. When I’ve told everything to you, and when you think back to all what you’ve heard, then yous’ll know and yous’ll believe me, and yous’ll understand.
‘Well the enquiries and investigations that we had did not show that what I’m saying to you is true, and an enquiry will not be likely to show the truth this time either. But we know. Us living on the land, we know. I want yous to know. You’re all here for a job like you said. And yous are the only ones who can believe … not high-up people. High-up people are evil, and … blind. They’re weak … and doomed.’
The men did listen to her. It’s a way Tangimoana has, a sharp boldness that will make people listen to her. Also it is a way of hers to act alone.
The machines were not heard that day on the hills, and have not been heard since, except once. Many of the men who walked down off the hills that morning were of our own race but some were not. They had listened to and understood and believed what Tangimoana had said to them, and had come to bring their aroha and their koha to us and to our child.
They stayed with us throughout the three days, helping us with the visiting people that came. People came in hundreds. It was a comfort to have such crowds of people coming to be with us and our child, our precious one, our potiki. It was comforting, and yet in one respect there could be no comfort. It was exhausting too, but exhaustion was something to be thankful for.
Tangimoana spent the nights sleeping beside her brother, but during the three days she was out amongst the people with Pena alongside her, working in the wharekai. Which is not the usual way, but Tangimoana acts alone. ‘I want them to know,’ was all she would say, ‘I want them to believe and to understand. And I want to know who are the ones who believe and understand, and who are the ones who don’t.’
We did not question her.
At the final karakia for our child the marae was full. It was a warm day, and although there was fine rain we took our potiki out onto the marae for the karakia, so that everyone could be accommodated. There were more people on our marae that morning than I have ever seen. There was much comfort in seeing it, but for some things there is little comfort. We were glad of exhaustion.
It was a painful thing when the lid went down taking our child from our sight, our child along with his pendant and his basket, but he had other gifts as well.
It was a painful thing to follow the polished casket, walking slowly between Mary and James and holding them to me, and with Hemi and Tangi all but carrying the little broken bird. It was a heavy and painful walk up the hill with the hundreds of people following, their hundreds of voices singing the final songs. There was pain in seeing the little children and their quietness, pushing ahead of us the wheelchair, hung with wreaths and loaded with flowers and greenery. And it was difficult indeed, and painful, to watch our child being lowered, and to hear the first fall of earth, and the wailing which came from around and from within me. There was pain, finally, in turning away.
After our return to the house, and after the freeing of the house for the living, there was hot food ready in the wharekai, and the wharekai was bright with flowers. There was talking and laughter and singing to turn us all to the living. It was not easy to turn to the living but there was obligation to do so.
It was not easy to turn to the living although grief had been shared amongst many, amongst hundreds. Not easy even though there was exhaustion, and acceptance of death. Because although our child’s death had been with us a long time and was not a new thing in our minds, although a gift, once given, is with you for always, and although it is true that there is much that is right in death, it was the manner of the death that gave, gives pain. More than that,
it is the brokenness, the sorrowing of the little bird that is most awful for us to bear.
I woke that night hearing the wheels bump over the little step, move onto the verandah and down the ramp. I listened for the gate latch but did not hear it so I knew that the gate had already been opened. I knew that Toko was going out to find his brother, his companion, the little Manu. I would have got up quickly then to help Toko with his chair. We did not want him to be using his small strength, wheeling his chair on his own. We wanted to be his strength, and to be with him at any waking time. His death had been with us for a long time by then.
But Mary was ahead of me. I heard her singing and I heard her bedroom door open, and she went along the passage and out. So I did not hurry. I got up and put on a jacket and some shoes, and by the time I reached the gate I could see Mary ambling, in her own way, to the front entrance of the wharenui. It was a bright, starry night and I could see her quite clearly though there were no lights on in the house. The side entrance of the house I could not see, but I could hear Toko backing his chair up the ramp. I could hear, faintly, the sound of Manu’s voice calling and talking, but this was nothing new to us. Toko would talk to him and they would come home together. Manu would get quietly back into bed and sleep heavily until morning. Or I could have gone there and helped Toko onto the mattress beside his brother. I could have covered them both and they would have been comfortable sleeping there.
But it was when Toko pushed the swinging door open that there was a different sound, like a soft explosion, then Manu screamed out and there was a glimpse of light although the house itself was in darkness still. There were running footsteps but I could see no one by the light of stars. No one passed my way.
Potiki Page 15