The Whale Rider (2 page)

three

I suppose that if this story has a beginning it is with Kahu. After
all, it was Kahu who was there at the end, and it was Kahu’s intervention which
perhaps saved us all. We always knew there would be such a child, but when Kahu was born,
well, we were looking the other way, really. We were over at our Koro’s place, me
and the boys, having a few drinks and a party, when the phone rang.

‘A
girl
,’ Koro
Apirana said, disgusted. ‘I will have nothing to do with her. She has broken the
male line of descent in our tribe.’ He shoved the telephone at our grandmother,
Nanny Flowers, saying, ‘Here. It’s your fault. Your female side was too
strong.’ Then he pulled on his gumboots and stomped out of the house.

The phone call was from the eldest grandson, my brother Porourangi,
who was living in the South Island. His wife, Rehua, had just given birth to the first
great-grandchild of our extended family.

‘Hello, dear,’ Nanny Flowers said into the phone.
Nanny Flowers was used to Koro Apirana’s growly ways, although she threatened to
divorce him every second day, and I could tell that it didn’t bother her if the
baby was a girl or a boy. Her lips were quivering with emotion because she had been waiting
for the call from Porourangi all month. Her eyes went sort of cross-eyed, as they always did
whenever she was overcome with love. ‘What’s that? What did you
say?’

We began to laugh, me and the boys, and we yelled to Nanny,
‘Hey! Old lady! You’re supposed to put the phone to your ear so you can
hear!’ Nanny disliked telephones; most times she was so shaken to hear a voice
come out of little holes in the headpiece that she would hold the phone at arm’s
length. So I went up to her and put the phone against her head.

Next minute, the tears started rolling down the old lady’s
face. ‘What’s that, dear?
Oh
, the
poor thing
. Oh the poor thing. Oh the poor
thing
. Oh. Oh. Oh. Well you tell Rehua that the first is the
worst. The others come easier because by then she’ll have the hang of it. Yes,
dear. I’ll tell him. Yes, don’t you worry. Yes. All right. Yes, and we
love you too.’

She put down the phone. ‘Well, Rawiri,’ she said
to me, ‘you and the boys have got a beautiful niece. She must be, because
Porourangi said she looks just like me.’ We tried not to laugh, because Nanny was
no film star. Then, all of a sudden, she put her hands on her hips and made her face grim
and went to the front verandah. Far away, down on the beach, old Koro Apirana was putting
his rowboat onto the afternoon sea. Whenever he felt angry he would always get on his
rowboat and row out into the middle of the ocean to sulk.

‘
Hey
,’ Nanny
Flowers boomed, ‘you old paka,’ which was the affectionate name she
always called our Koro when she wanted him to know she loved him, ‘Hey!’
But he pretended he didn’t hear her, jumped into the rowboat and made out to sea.

Well, that did it. Nanny Flowers got her wild up. ‘Think he
can get away from me, does he?’ she muttered. ‘Well he
can’t.’

By that time, me and the boys were having hysterics. We crowded onto
the verandah and watched as Nanny rushed down the beach, yelling her endearments at Koro
Apirana. ‘You come back here, you old paka.’ Well of course he
wouldn’t, so next thing, the old lady scooted over to my dinghy. Before I could
protest she gunned the outboard motor and roared off after him. All that afternoon they were
yelling at each other. Koro Apirana would row to one location after another in the bay, and
Nanny Flowers would start the motor and roar after him to growl at him. You have to hand it
to the old lady, she had brains all right, picking a rowboat with a motor in it. In the end,
old Koro Apirana just gave up. He had no chance, really, because Nanny Flowers simply tied
his boat to hers and pulled him back to the beach, whether he liked it or not.

That was eight years ago, when Kahu was born, but I
remember it as if it was yesterday, especially the wrangling that went on between our Koro
and Nanny Flowers. The trouble was that Koro Apirana could not reconcile his traditional
beliefs about Maori leadership and rights with Kahu’s birth. By Maori custom,
leadership was hereditary and normally the mantle of mana fell from the eldest son to the
eldest son. Except that in this case, there was an eldest daughter.

‘She won’t be any good to me,’ he would
mutter. ‘No good. I won’t have anything to do with her. That Porourangi
better have a son next time.’

In the end, whenever Nanny Flowers brought the subject up, Koro
Apirana would compress his lips, cross his arms, turn his back on her and look elsewhere and
not at her.

I was in the kitchen once when this happened. Nanny Flowers was making
oven bread on the big table, and Koro Apirana was pretending not to hear her, so she
addressed herself to me.

‘Thinks he knows everything,’ she muttered,
tossing her head in Koro Apirana’s direction.
Bang
, went her fists into the dough. ‘The old paka. Thinks he knows
all about being a chief.’
Slap
, went the bread
as she threw it on the table. ‘He isn’t any chief. I’m his
chief,’ she emphasised to me and, then, over her shoulder to Koro Apirana,
‘and don’t you forget it either.’
Squelch
, went her fingers as she dug them into the dough.

‘Te mea te mea,’ Koro Apirana said.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

‘Don’t you mock
me
,’ Nanny Flowers responded.
Ouch
,
went the bread as she flattened it with her arms. She looked at me grimly and said,
‘He
knows
I’m right. He
knows
I’m a descendant of old Muriwai, and
she
was the greatest chief of my tribe. Yeah,’ and,
Help
, said the dough as she pummelled it and prodded
it and stretched it and strangled it, ‘and I should have listened to Mum when she
told me not to marry him, the old paka,’ she said, revving up to her usual
climactic pronouncement.

From the corner of my eye I could see Koro Apirana mouthing the words
sarcastically to himself.

‘But
this
time,’ said Nanny Flowers, as she throttled the bread with both hands,
‘I’m
really
going to divorce
him.’

Koro Apirana raised his eyebrows, pretending to be unconcerned.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ he said. ‘Te mea
—’

It was then that Nanny Flowers added with a gleam in her eyes,
‘
And
then I’ll go to live with
old Waari over the hill.’

I thought to myself,
Uh oh, I better get out
of here
, because Koro Apirana had been jealous of old Waari, who had been
Nanny Flowers’ first boyfriend, for years. No sooner was I out the door when the
battle began.
You coward
, said the dough as I
ducked.

four

But that was nothing compared to the fight that they had when
Porourangi rang to say he would like to name the baby Kahu.

‘What’s wrong with Kahu?’ Nanny Flowers
asked.

‘I know your tricks,’ Koro Apirana said.
‘You’ve been talking to Porourangi behind my back, egging him
on.’

This was true, but Nanny Flowers said, ‘Who, me?’
She fluttered her eyelids at the old man.

‘You think you’re smart,’ Koro Apirana
said, ‘but don’t think it’ll work.’

This time when he went out to the sea to sulk he took my dinghy, the
one with the motor in it.

‘See if I care,’ Nanny Flowers said. She had been
mean enough, earlier in the day, to siphon out half the petrol so that he couldn’t
get back. All that afternoon he shouted and waved but she just pretended not to hear. Then
Nanny Flowers rowed out to him and said that, really, there was nothing he could do. She had
telephoned Porourangi and said that the baby could be named Kahu, after Kahutia Te Rangi.

I could understand, however, why the old man was so against the idea.
Not only was Kahutia Te Rangi a man’s name but it was also the name of the
ancestor of our village. Koro Apirana felt that naming a girl-child after the founder of our
tribe was belittling Kahutia Te Rangi’s prestige. From that time onward, whenever
Koro Apirana went past the meeting house, he would look up at the figure of Kahutia Te Rangi
on the whale and shake his head sorrowfully. Then he would say to Nanny Flowers,
‘You stepped out of line, dear, you shouldn’t have done it.’
To give credit to her, Nanny Flowers did appear penitent.

I guess the trouble was that Nanny Flowers was always
‘stepping out of line’. Even though she had married into our tribe she
always made constant reference to her ancestor, Muriwai, who had come to New Zealand on the
Mataatua canoe. When the canoe approached Whakatane, which is a long way from our village,
Muriwai’s chieftainly brothers, led by Toroa, went to investigate the land. While
they were away, however, the sea began to rise and the current carried the canoe so close to
the rocks that Muriwai knew all on board would surely perish. So she chanted special
prayers, asking the gods to give her the right and open the way for her to take charge. Then
she cried, ‘E-i! Tena, kia whakatane ake au i ahau!’
Now I shall make myself a man
. She called out to the crew and
ordered them to start paddling quickly, and the canoe was saved in the nick of time.

‘If Muriwai hadn’t done that,’ Nanny
used to say, ‘the canoe would have been wrecked.’ Then she would hold up
her arms and say, ‘And I am proud that Muriwai’s blood flows in my
veins.’

‘But that doesn’t give you the right,’
Koro Apirana said to her one night. He was referring, of course, to her agreeing to the
naming of Kahu.

Nanny Flowers went up to him and kissed him on the forehead.
‘E Koro,’ she said softly, ‘I have said prayers about it.
What’s done is done.’

Looking back, I suspect that Nanny Flowers’
action only helped to harden Koro Apirana’s heart against his first-born
great-grandchild. But Nanny was keeping something back from the old man.

‘It’s not Porourangi who wants to name the girl
Kahu,’ she told me. ‘It’s Rehua.’ Then she confided
to me that there had been complications in the birth of Kahu and, as a result, the delivery
had been by caesarean section. Rehua, weak and frightened after the birth, had wanted to
honour her husband by choosing a name from his people, not hers. That way, should she die,
at least her first-born child would be linked to her father’s people and land.
Rehua was from the same tribe as Nanny Flowers and had that same Muriwai blood, so no wonder
she got her way with Porourangi.

Then came a third telephone call from Porourangi. Rehua was still in
intensive care and Porourangi had to stay with her, but apparently she wanted
Kahu’s afterbirth, including the birth cord, to be put in the earth on the marae
in our village. An auntie of ours would bring the birth cord back to Gisborne on the plane
the next day.

Koro Apirana was steadfast in his opposition to Kahu.

‘She is of Porourangi’s blood and
yours,’ Nanny Flowers said to him. ‘It is her right to have her birth
cord here on this ground.’

‘Then you do it,’ Koro Apirana said.

So it was that Nanny Flowers sought my help. The next day was Friday,
and she got dressed in her formal black clothes and put a scarf over her grey hair.
‘Rawiri, I want you to take me to the town,’ she said.

I got a bit worried at that because Nanny wasn’t exactly a
featherweight, but she seemed so tense. ‘All right,’ I said. So I got my
motorbike out of the shed, showed her how to sit on the pillion, put my Headhunters jacket
on her to keep her warm, and off we roared. As we were going along Wainui Beach some of the
other boys joined us. I thought, ‘I’ll give Nanny Flowers a thrill and
do a drag down the main street.’

Well, Nanny just loved it. There she was, being escorted through the
Friday crowd like royalty, waving one hand at everybody and holding on tightly with the
other. We had to stop at the lights at Peel Street, and the boys and I gunned our motors,
just for her. Some of Nanny’s old cronies were crossing; when they saw her through
the blue smoke, they almost swallowed their false teeth.

‘Oh my goodness,’ they said. ‘Who is
this?’

She smiled supremely. ‘I am the Queen of the
Headhunters.’ At that stage I was getting worried about my shock absorbers, but I
couldn’t help feeling proud of Nanny. Just as we roared off again she poked out
her little finger, as if she was having a cup of tea and said, ‘Ta ta.’

But when she met Auntie at the airport, Nanny Flowers’ mood
changed. We were watching from the road when Auntie got off the plane. She started to cry,
and then Nanny started to cry also. They must have been cryingfor at least ten minutes
before our Auntie passed Kahu’s birth cord to Nanny. Then Auntie escorted Nanny
over to us and kissed us all and waved goodbye.

‘Take me back to Whangara a quiet way,’ Nanny
asked. ‘I don’t want people in the town to see me crying.’

So it was that Nanny and I and the boys returned to the village, and
Nanny was still grieving.

She said to me, ‘Rawiri, you and the boys will have to help
me. Your grandfather won’t come. You’re the men who belong to
Whangara.’

The night was falling quickly. We followed Nanny as she went back and
forth across the space in front of the meeting house. She took a quick look around to make
sure no one was watching us. The sea hissed and surged through her words.

‘This is where the birth cord will be placed,’ she
said, ‘in sight of Kahutia Te Rangi, after whom Kahu has been named. May he, the
great ancestor, always watch over her. And may the sea from whence he came always protect
her through life.’

Nanny Flowers began to scoop a hole in the loose soil. As she placed
the birth cord in it, she said a prayer. When she finished, it had grown dark.

She said, ‘You boys are the only ones who know where
Kahu’s birth cord has been placed. It is your secret and mine. You have become her
guardians.’

Nanny led us to a tap to wash our hands and sprinkle ourselves with
water. Just as were going through the gate we saw the light go on in Koro
Apirana’s room, far away. I heard Nanny whisper in the dark, ‘Never
mind, Kahu. You’ll show him when you grow up. You’ll fix the old
paka.’

I looked back at the spot where Kahu’s birth cord had been
placed. At that moment the moon came out and shone full upon the carved figure of Kahutia Te
Rangi on his whale. I saw something flying through the air. It looked like a small spear.

Then, far out to sea, I heard a whale sounding.

Hui e, haumi e,
taiki e
.

Let it be done.