The Whale Rider (5 page)

autumn

season of the sounding whale

nine

If you ask me the name of this house, I shall tell you. It is Te Kani.
And the carved figure at the apex? It is Paikea, it is Paikea. Paikea swam,
hei
. The sea god swam,
hei
.
The sea monster swam,
hei
. And Paikea, you landed at
Ahuahu. You changed into Kahutia Te Rangi,
aue
. You gave
your embrace to the daughter of Te Whironui,
aue
, who sat
in the stern of the canoe.
Aue
,
aue
, and now you are a carved figurehead, old man.

The sea trench, Hawaiki. The Place of the Gods. The Home of the
Ancients. The whale herd hovered in the goldened sea like regal airships. Far above, the
surface of the sea was afire with the sun’s plunge from day into night. Below
lay the sea trench. The herd was waiting for the sign from their ancient leader that it
should descend between the protective walls of the trench and flow with the thermal
stream away from the island known as the Place of the Gods.

But their leader was still mourning. Two weeks earlier the herd had
been feeding in the Tuamotu Archipelago when suddenly a flash of bright light had
scalded the sea and giant tidal soundwaves had exerted so much pressure that internal
ear canals had bled. Seven young calves had died. The ancient whale remembered this
occurrence happening before; screaming a lament of condemnation, he had led them away in
front of the lethal tide that he knew would come. On that pellmell, headlong and
mindless escape, he had noticed more cracks in the ocean floor, hairline fractures
indicating serious damage below the crust of the earth. Now, some weeks later, the
leader was still unsure about the radiation level in the sea trench. He was fearful of
the contamination seeping from Moruroa. He was afraid of the genetic effects of the
undersea radiation on the remaining herd and calves in this place which had once,
ironically, been the womb of the world.

The elderly females tried to nurse his nostalgia, but the ancient
whale could not stop the rush of memories. Once this place had been crystalline clear.
It had been the place of his childhood and that of his golden master too. Following that
first disastrous sounding, they had ridden many times above the trench. His golden
master had taught the whale to flex his muscles and sinews so that handholds in the skin
would appear, enabling the rider to ascend to the whale’s head. There, further
muscle contractions would provide saddle and stirrups. And when the whale sounded, he
would lock his master’s ankles with strong muscles and open a small breathing
chamber, just behind his spout. In the space of time, his master needed only to caress
his left fin, and the whale would respond.

Suddenly, the sea trench seemed to pulsate and crackle with a
lightswarm of luminescence. Sparkling like a galaxy was a net of radioactive death. For
the first time in all the years of his leadership, the ancient whale deviated from his
usual primeval track. The herd ascended to the surface. The decision was made to seek
before time the silent waters of the Antarctic. But the elderly females pealed their
anxieties to one another because the dangerous islands were also in that vicinity.
Nevertheless they quickly followed their leader away from the poisoned water. They were
right to worry because the ancient whale could only despair that the place of life, and
the Gods, had now become a place of death. The herd thundered through the
sea.

Haumi e, hui e, taiki e.

Let it be done.

ten

The next year Kahu turned four and I decided it was about time I went
out to see the world. Koro Apirana thought it was a good idea but Nanny Flowers
didn’t like it at all.

‘What’s wrong with Whangara?’ she said.
‘You got the whole world right here. Nothing you can get anywhere else that you
can’t get here. You must be in
trouble
.’

I shook my head. ‘No, I’m clean,’ I
answered.

‘Then there must be a girl you’re running away
from. She looked at me suspiciously, and poked me between the ribs. ‘You been up
to mischief, eh?’

I denied that too. Laughing, I eased myself up from the chair and did
a Clint Eastwood. ‘Let’s just say, Ma’am,’ I
drawled, then went for my six-gun, ‘that there’s not enough room in this
here town for the two of us.’

Over the following four months I put in double time at the Works and
got my Air New Zealand ticket. The boys took up a collection and gave me a fantastic party.
My darling Joyleen Carol cried buckets over me. At the airport I said to Nanny Flowers,
‘Don’t forget to look after my bike.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said sarcastically,
‘I’ll feed it some hay and give it water every day.’

‘Give Kahu a kiss from me.’

‘Ae,’ Nanny Flowers quivered. ‘God be
with you. And don’t forget to come back, Rawiri, or else —’

She pulled a toy water-pistol from her basket.

‘
Bang
,’ she
said.

I flew to Australia.

Unlike Kahu, my birth cord couldn’t have
been put in the ground at Whangara because I didn’t return there until four years
later. I discovered that everything I’d been told about Aussie was true: it was
big, bold, brassy, bawdy and beautiful. When I first arrived I stayed in Sydney with my
cousin, Kingi, who had an apartment in Bondi. I hadn’t realised that there were so
many other Maoris over there (I thought I’d be the first) and after a while I
realised why it was nicknamed ‘Kiwi Valley’. Wherever you went, the
pubs, the shows, the clubs, the restaurants, the movies, the theatres, you could always
count on bumping into a cousin. In some hotels, above the noise and buzz of the patrons, you
were bound to hear somebody shouting to somebody else, ‘Gidday, cous!’

I was like a kid in a great big toyshop, wanting to touch everything.
Whangara wasn’t as big as
this
, with its
teeming city streets, glass skyscrapers, glitter and glitz. Nor could Friday night in the
town ever compare with the action in the Cross, that part of Sydney to which people
thronged, either to look or be looked at. People were selling anything and everything up the
Cross and if you wanted to buy you just ‘paid the man’.

It was there that I came upon my cous Henare, who was now wearing a
dress, and another cous, Reremoana, who had changed her name to Lola L’Amour and
had red hair and fishnet stockings. I couldn’t understand Kingi’s
attitude at all; he was always trying to cross the street whenever he saw a cous he
didn’t want to be seen with. But I would just bowl along regardless and yell,
‘Gidday cous!’

As far as I could see, they were living the way they wanted to and no
matter what changes they had made to themselves or their lives, a cous was a cous. I guess
also that I didn’t feel that much different: I looked much the same as they did,
with my leather jacket and pants matching their own gear with its buckles and scarves and
whips. ‘What game are you into?’ they would tease. ‘What
game?’ They would josh and kid and joke around and sometimes we would meet up
later at some party or other. But always, in the early morning, when the sunlight was
beginning to crack the midnight glamour, the memories would come seeping through.
‘How’s our Nanny? How’s our Koro? If you write to them,
don’t tell them that you saw us like
this
.’

In the search for fame, fortune, power and success, some of my cousins
had opted for the base metal and not the gold. They may have turned their lives upside down
in the process, like Sydney Harbour Bridge’s reflection in the harbour, but they
always craved the respect of our tribe. They weren’t embarrassed, but hiding the
way they lived was one way of maintaining the respect. There was no better cloak than those
starry nights under the turning Southern Cross.

Kingi and I got along fine, but when I found a mate
of my own, I moved in with him. I had gotten a job working as a brickie and had also started
playing League. It was through League that I met my buddy, Jeff, who told me he was looking
for someone to share his flat. Jeff was a friendly, out-front guy, quick to laugh, quick to
believe and quick to trust. He told me of his family in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea, and I
told him about mine in Whangara. I also told him about Kahu.

‘You’d love her,’ I said.
‘She’s a fantastic looker. Big brown eyes, wonderful figure and lips
just waiting to be kissed.’

‘Yeah? Yeah?’ he asked eagerly.

‘And I can tell she’d go for
you
,’ I said. ‘She’s warm and
cuddly, great to be with, and she just loves snuggling up close. And —’

Poor Jeff, he didn’t realise I was having him on. And as the
weeks went by I embellished the story even more. I just couldn’t help it. But
that’s how our friendship was; we were always kidding around or kidding each
other.

I must have been in Sydney over a year when the phone call came from
my brother Porourangi. Sometimes life has a habit of flooding over you and rushing you along
in its overwhelming tide. Living in Aussie was like that: there was always something going
on, day and night. If Jeff and I weren’t playing League we’d be out
surfing (the beach at Whangara was better) or partying with buddies, or hiking out to the
Blue Mountains. You could say I had begun drowning in it all, giving myself up to what Kingi
would have called ‘the hedonistic life of the lotus eater’. Kingi was
always one for the big words. He used to tell me that his favourite image of Australia was
of Joan Sutherland singing ‘Advance Australia Fair’, a can of Fosters in
one hand, and surfing supremely into Sydney Harbour like an antipodean Statue of Liberty.
See what I mean? All those big words? That’s Kingi, for sure.

I was still in bed when the telephone rang, so Jeff answered. Next
minute, a pillow came flying at me and Jeff yanked me out of bed saying, ‘Phone,
Rawiri. And I’ll talk to
you
later.’

Well, the
good
news was that
Porourangi was getting married to Ana. Nanny Flowers had been pestering both of them about
it. ‘And you know what she’s like,’ Porourangi laughed.
‘Don’t bother to come home though,’ he said,
‘because the wedding is just going to be very small.’ Kahu would be the
flower girl.

‘How is she?’ I asked.

‘She’s five and started school now,’
Porourangi said. ‘She’s still living with Rehua’s folks. She
missed you very much last summer.’

‘Give her a kiss from me,’ I said. ‘And
also kiss our Nanny. Tell everybody I love them. How’s Koro?’

‘In Nanny’s bad books as usual,’
Porourangi laughed. ‘The sooner they get a divorce the better.’

I wished Porourangi and Ana the very best with their life together.
The season of bereavement had been long over for Porourangi and it was time for renewal.
Then just before he hung up, he said, ‘Oh, by the way, your mate was very
interested in Kahu, so I told him she was doing well with her spelling.’

Uh oh. That was the
bad
news. No
sooner had I put the phone down than Jeff was onto me.

‘Warm and cuddly, huh?’

‘No, wait Jeff, I can explain —’

‘Big brown eyes and fantastic figure, huh?’

‘Jeff, no —’ In his hands he had a soggy
apple pie.

‘Lips just waiting to be kissed?’ His eyes gleamed
with vengeance.

I should count myself lucky that I had cooked dinner the night before.
Had it been Jeff, that apple pie wouldn’t have been so scrumptious.

Not long after that Jeff also got a phone call, but
the news wasn’t so good. His mother called from Papua New Guinea to ask him to
come home.

‘Your father’s too proud to ring
himself,’ she said, ‘but he’s getting on, Jeff, and he needs
you to help him run the coffee plantation. He’s had a run of rotten luck with the
workers this year and you know what the natives are like, always drinking.’

‘I’ll have to go,’ said Jeff. I knew he
was reluctant to do so. Indeed, one of the reasons why he had come to Sydney was that it was
as far from his family as he could get. He loved them deeply, but sometimes love becomes a
power game between the ambitions that parents have for their children and the ambitions that
children have for themselves. ‘But it looks like all my chickens are coming home
to roost,’ Jeff said ruefully.

‘Family is family,’ I said.

‘Say,’ he interrupted. ‘You
wouldn’t like to come with me?’

I hesitated. Ever since speaking to Porourangi I had actually been
thinking of going back to Aotearoa. Instead, I said, ‘Sure, I’ve been a
cowboy all my life. Let’s saddle up, partner.’ So we started to pack up
ready to move on out. I rang Whangara to tell Nanny Flowers.

‘You’re going
where
?’ she yelled. As usual she was holding the phone at
arm’s length.

‘To Papua New Guinea.’

‘What!’ she said. ‘You’ll get
eaten up by all them cannibals. What’s at Papua New Guinea’ —
I mouthed the words along with her — ‘that you can’t get in
Whangara? You should come home instead of gallivanting all over the world.’

‘I’ll be home next summer. I promise.’
There was silence at the other end. ‘Hullo?’

Koro Apirana came to the telephone. ‘Rawiri?’ he
said loudly. ‘What did you say? Your Nanny is crying.’ There was a
tussle at the other end and Nanny Flowers returned.

‘I can speak for myself,’ she said in a huff.
Then, in a soft voice, full of longing, she added, ‘All right, boy. You go to
Papua New Guinea. But don’t make promises about next summer. Otherwise I will be
watching the road, and going down to the bus every day to see if you are on it.’

Tears began to mist my vision. I could just imagine my Nanny walking
down the road in summer, Kahu skipping beside her, and sitting on the verge watching the
cars going past, and asking the bus driver —

‘We love you,’ Nanny said.

Waiting and waiting. Then the phone clicked on the handset and she was
gone.