‘One evening I collected ngakihi from a rock and baited my hooks with them. I uncoiled a length of line and threw it out over the sea of polished dark. It was a waiting, watching dark, a watcher’s, waiter’s dark, an open-armed dark. It would have been so easy to have closed the eyes and to have been enfolded there.
‘But the shore is a nothing place, a neutrality too salt for growth, a watcher’s place. So this watcher waited there, not knowing at first that the sliver, the speck, dotted on the eye and traversing the sky, would come, not from the sky itself but from the depths.
‘Because suddenly the kahawai leapt from a flat and waiting sea, arcing momentarily against the wall of sky.
‘There is a greenstone silverness about the kahawai. It is life. And its eye is little and bright like the paua-shell eyes ever-wakeful at the edges of the night. It was the awaited glimmer, that rose and fell in bloodshot drops, and then became written, stained upon the eye.
‘Blood is life, and you have a life of blood. In hefty knots it thrusts out between the thighs, and the child borne on it sneezes to live, or lives, screaming the night in two. Tomorrow two children of mine will go before the courts. I will accompany them proudly and gladly. Birth is only the beginning of pain, to which there is no end.
‘And there’s no end to love. But the sinews binding love can sometimes be severed, staining earth with blood-ochre colour, and the face of love can be turned another way. My husband, as rooted to the land as a tree is, turns in his pain to the soil, while I wait for, and eventually hold, the sliver in my eye. But love has not lessened and never will. In being turned another way we have turned to each other, the one looking to the sky, the other to earth – the mother to the father, the father to the mother. We will accompany our children proudly when tomorrow comes.
‘The kahawai leaps gilded, silvered and green from a dark and hidden place, while the watchers tread so carefully at the edge, disturbing no stone, no footprint of theirs making shadows on the sand.’
A man told of an end that was a beginning. The time of no work was a time when his real work had begun, or was taken up again as he had always intended. His story was of the ground, the earth, and of how earth was a strength, how earth strengthened them all. ‘Care for it and it cares for you,’ he said. ‘Give to it and it gives. Through it you shoulder your pain.
‘People are strength too. Care for people and you are cared for, give strength to people and you are strong. It’s land and people that are a person’s self, and to give to the land and to give to the people is the best taonga of all. Giving is strength. We’ve always known it.
‘The hills are quiet now. They went from our hands long ago but we do not need them in our hands. We only need them to be there, to be left to heal, to be left for trees to grow on. With trees on the hills again our own corner is safe and we are who we are. For now it is safe. With trees on the hills we can keep our ground productive, our sacred places safe, our water clear. For all of us. Us, who live here now, and also those who belong here and will return one day, whether during their life or when they die.
‘But it’s not only for us now. We have a trust. We look after this place for those who have not yet been born. It’s for the life and health of people and we have it in trust from those who’ve gone on ahead of us.
‘I don’t want to talk too much about this other thing but only say I’m proud of the young ones, and of others that don’t live here, for what they did. I won’t talk too much even though there’s only us here. We’ll all be there to support them tomorrow. It’s all of us up there. They are all of us. We are all of us. And what I think is … what those representing them think is … there’s not enough known … our young ones, and the others … they’ll come to no harm.
‘Also I have to tell you, I didn’t think that I would ever support … any action. But good has come of it, and I think it was … right. If it wasn’t, time will show. Time will show if it was meant.
‘And time. I spend a lot of time looking at the soil but don’t think I’m turning my back. It’s a way of making the pain less. Everyone’s got hurt, which is always present there on the circle. But there are ways, on the circle, if we can find them, of making it less, of living through. No reira, tena koutou katoa.’
The young man did not tell his story in words but gave it to the people as it was, chiselled into shape at the base of the tree.
It was an old story, an ancient story, only now there was a new phase to it, an old story beginning with the seed that is a tree.
But that was not the real beginning. The story came, like all stories, from before the time of remembering which is in the time when there was only darkness. Only the giving, loving dark. There was nothing seen or heard there, and there was no movement. There was no living but only the potential – which became the conception.
It was a story that opened and put its seed into the time of remembering. It became a people story through wood, both people and wood being parented by earth and sky so that the tree and the people are one, people being whanau to the tree.
Yet in the time of remembering, the story was only partly told, could only be partly told.
In the new phase the child was recognised by his mother, and shown to his father – and through the young man who told by hands, he was returned, with all his life stories, to the whanau.
The young woman had her stories written in a book. She stood and said, ‘Here is a song to hang on the tree. It’s about the colour red:
‘The girl ran the sharp track home
Feet lacerated by stone and the voice
Close to her ear
Whispering
“Unwind me from the kelp strands
Pull the barnacles from my thighs
Take the stone from my throat
Remove the scales from my eyes.”
Ran sharp over the stone track home
Tumble heart to tumble heart
Hearing
“Red is the sea
From the time of my borning
But blood-ochre is the sacred colour,
Your hands are cupped
Round the heart of my crying
Paint your houses
With the sacred colour.”
And once she woke
On a crimson night of
Flaring sky
To the tekoteko
Painted in fire and
Calling
“Kua hinga
Kua hinga
Night has
Taken the eyes
Takoto, takoto.”
Then on another night while far away
The wombed house
Became a wailing cavern
One entrance the fire-toothed aperture
Through which all must pass,
And she heard
“Wrap me again
In bright weed
Which will be a blanket for me
Salt my eyes and my tongue
Mo te ao pouri.”
And she cried
“Take up the shells
Cut open the foreheads
And let the faces be flamed
Let them be
Painted in sorrow
Painted with
The sacred colour.”
The girl sang the sharp track home
In detonating dawn
Singing
“Listen as the wind sings
And white birds carve the sky
The song before dawn
Is the soft song of rain,
Anger is the sacred
Colour
Salted close to the heart,
Anger is ochre-coloured,
Let some of it remain
On the tree.”’
The boy had a story of night.
‘It’s real,’ he said. ‘There was a barracouta silver on the horizon and centred with a greenstone eye. She was two-headed, having no tail, but having instead another snapping jaw where her tail would have been. It’s real.
‘And we all went with him, all the little birds. Not the gulls which call and cry, but all the little birds which sing of insects and berries and flowers. Happy and scared. Singing and scared, with wingbeat sounds coming from our such small and frightened hearts.
‘Nothing can be like before.
‘Swimming close to her, the little taniwha. The greenstone eye was closed, but the jaws at either end lay open as she slept.
‘Little one, swimming close. Then in. It’s real, it’s real. In he swam. Then the green eye opened and the jaws closed down.
‘Nothing can be like before, but I search for the barracouta. Sometimes I find her, but nothing can be changed. And I find that she has been given wrong paint by starlight. She waits silver only in starlight, but otherwise she is many-coloured. Starlight has given wrong light to the stone eye, because her eye otherwise holds tenderness. And in other light the jaws are not jawlike. In other light they extend, armlike, to embrace. No need to fear. And it’s real.
‘Nothing is like before but everything’s real. The little bird sits in his tree.’
The old woman sang of a time gone ahead, and of those already walking ahead of her on the pathways. Her eyes were reddened as though they bled.
And her songs, like the pathways, were interweavings of times and places and of all that breathed between earth and sky. And the pathways and the songs went into a time beyond the thumbing down of the eyelids.
The child-woman had a story to tell but she did not tell it. She too sang along pathways not known. Yet her story could be heard if you listened to the whisperings of the house.
And the stories continued well into the night, moving from one person to the next about the house until the circle had been fully turned. Then the people slept.
But the telling was not complete. As the people slept there was one more story to be told, a story not of a beginning or an end, but marking only a position on the spiral.
29
Potiki
There is one more story to tell which I tell while the house sleeps. And yet the house does not sleep as the eyes of green and indigo brighten the edges of the world. There is one more story to tell but it is a retelling. I tell it to the people and the house. I tell it from the wall, from where yesterday and tomorrow are as now.
I know the story of my death. I tell it from the tree.
The night was a night of stars, like the long-ago fish night, but the fish night too is now. Though I did not remember the glitter of the night of the fish but was later told, yet I see it in the now of now. And I do see now the dancing, bangling water, the orange light, the brine, the vine. I know the pull of the great barking fish of that first star night.
On this other night of stars there was a soft quiet with only a small tapping of water that had to be listened carefully for. The hills were shadowed, not catching the light of stars. The big machines that would slice the morning’s light were hidden somewhere in the hills’ shadows.
My brother Manu was not in his bed when I woke. Perhaps it was his getting up that woke me. His bed was empty and our door was open. I listened but did not hear him in the house, or on the path, or on the road outside. I did not hear him cry or call out.
I worked myself out of the bed and into my chair and pulled my rug over me. My mother Mary was awake, I could hear her slow movements in the next room. I hear them now. I did not call her and I did not wait.
There was a warmth and stillness in the night and it was sweet and salt-smelling. It was a night of stars.
My brother would come to no harm but I would go and find him. If he woke when I found him, and if he knew what was real, we would sit together for a while and star-talk. There was not much time left for us to talk. Not much time for me.
If he did not wake or did not know what was real I would take his hand and wheel along beside him. He would come home with me, get into his bed and sleep quietly for the rest of the night.
It was not easy for me by then to wheel my chair, but I could do it slowly. I was supposed to call someone if I wanted to go in my chair, but that night I went on my own, moving slowly.
I wheeled out through the open door of the bedroom, out of the open front door, and down the ramp that had been made especially for my chair. Then I moved along the path, which because of my chair had been widened.
It was a good night to be out, wheeling slowly. My brother would come to no harm. I listened for him but the night was still. There was only a soft water sound which could be heard if listened very carefully for.
I knew that my brother would be in the meeting-house. He would be sleeping in there, or could have been sitting, dark-eyed, covering his ears with his hands, waiting for me to come.
I moved slowly towards the door that had been built especially for me. Then, as I moved slowly up the path I saw the door quickly open, and someone, perhaps my brother, come out. But it was not my brother walking so quickly towards the hills which were shadowed and without the light of stars. ‘Where’s Manu?’ I called, but it was not one of my uncles or cousins running quickly and darkly into the night with scarcely a sound.
I wheeled slowly along the pathway that had been made for the width of my chair. I remembered to move slowly so that there would not be strain on the heart growing too big for me.
At the bottom of the ramp I turned my chair carefully so that I could back up the ramp, because this was easier for me when alone. I was thinking about the shadow that had moved so quickly into the shadowed hills.
I listened, and now there was sound. But it was sound that was not different, sound that I was accustomed to. I heard my birth mother Mary coming slowly in starlight, walking in her special rocking way. I heard the quiet sound of her singing as she made her way to the main door of the house.
Behind me as I backed my chair slowly up the ramp I heard my brother begin to talk and cry, but this was not a different sound. I would go in and talk to him. He would come home with Mary and me, and get back into his bed. He would sleep there quietly until morning.
As I inched my chair close to the doorway he began to call more loudly.
‘There’s fire,’ he called, but the words were not different words. ‘There’s fire, there’s fire. And it’s real.’
Then there was a bursting sound, and a scream, which were sounds that were different.
I hurried then, backing my chair through the doorway.
But the doorway, suddenly, had become the toothed aperture. It was suddenly the toothed aperture through which all must pass.
The night was edged now, and clamorous.
All the stars were falling.
And from this place of now, behind, and in, and beyond the tree, from where I have eversight, I watch the people.
The people work and watch and wait. They pace the tides and turn the earth. They stand, listening on the shores.
They listen, hearing mostly the quiet. It is the quiet that is trees growing, the sidling of fish through water, the hovering cloud, the open-eyed quiet of the night.
Because the shores are the silent places that take no seed, that long ago were left devoid when anger and fear sent some of life to the protecting belly of the sea, and some of life to the protecting arms of land.
The man letting crumbled earth sift between his fingers hears mainly that, but he listens too for the shadows closing in, the whisperings about the edges of the land.
The woman throwing her line hears the flutter and splash of it as she casts.
Those who fish with nets hear the creak of oars and the sliding of the net being let out over the stern.
The ones who work in words or wood listen for the beat that words and wood have.
Because, although they listen too for the approaching shadows and the whisperings about the edges of the land, they cannot, from whe
re they are, hear the sounds distinctly. They cannot, as I can in this time of now, distinctly hear the sounds of this now place, which is a place beyond the gentle thumbing of the eyes.
From where they are the people see the boles and branches drift ashore. They see these whiten to the beat of tides and sun. They hear the stones roll and shuttle, and see them patterning the shore.
But they do not clearly see the big logs being rolled into position, or see themselves crouching down behind. They do not quite see the stones nesting in their own cupped palms. They do not see distinctly the white sticks stand, and do not see themselves fingering the white sticks, taking the white sticks in their hands.
They do not hear distinctly the stirring within the house, the murmuring, the assembling.
They do not clearly hear the footfalls, some of them their own. They cannot see the shadowless forms, forms of which they themselves may be the shadows, taking up and shouldering the sun-bleached wood.
And they do not distinctly see the tekoteko as they come, taking up the bones, moving in silently beside them.
Ko wai ma nga tekoteko
Ka haere mai?
Ko nga tipuna
O te iwi e.
Ko wai ma nga tangata
Ka whakarongo atu?
Ko te iwi
O tenei whenua.
Ka wai te tamaiti
Ka noho ai i tera?
Ko ia
Te potiki e,
Ko ia
Te potiki e.
No reira, e kui ma, e koro ma, e hoa ma. Tamariki ma, mokopuna ma – Tena koutou. Tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.
Ka huri.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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Potiki Page 17