The Whale Rider (6 page)

eleven

I was two years with Jeff in Papua New Guinea and while they were
productive years, they were not always happy. Jeff’s father couldn’t
come down to Port Moresby to meet us but his mother, Clara, did. Although Jeff had told her
I was a Maori it was obvious that I was still too dark. As soon as I stepped off the plane I
could almost hear her wondering, ‘Oh, my goodness, how am I going to explain this
to the women at the Bridge Club?’ But she was polite and gracious and kept up a
lively chatter on the plane to Mount Hagen.

Tom, Jeff’s father, was another story, and I liked him from
the start. He was a self-made man whose confidence had not been shattered by his long and
debilitating illness. But it was clear that he needed his son to help him. I can still
remember the first time I saw Tom. He was standing on the verandah of the homestead, resting
his weight on two callipers. He wasn’t embarrassed by his disability and when Jeff
went up to greet him he simply said, ‘Gidday young fella. Glad to have you
home.’

Tom had contracted Parkinson’s disease. It wasn’t
until weeks later that I discovered the disease had not only struck at his limbs but also
had rendered him partially blind.

The situation was clear. Jeff would have to act as an extension to his
father, his arms and legs and eyes. Deskbound, Tom would run the plantation from the
homestead and Jeff would translate the instructions into action. As for me, I’ve
always been pretty good at hard work, so it was simply a matter of spitting on my hands and
getting down to business.

Putting the plantation back on its feet was a
challenge which the countryside really threw at us; I have never known a country which has
fought back as hard as Papua New Guinea. I doubt if it can ever be tamed of its
temperatures, soaring into sweat zones, for its terrain, so much a crucible of crusted
plateaus and valleys, and its tribalism. But we tried, and I think we won some respite from
the land, even if only for a short time. Man might carve his identification mark on the
earth but, once he ceases to be vigilant, Nature will take back what man had once achieved
to please his vanity.

Sometimes, when you yourself are living life to the full, you forget
that life elsewhere also continues to change like a chameleon. For instance, I used to
marvel at the nationalism sweeping Papua New Guinea and the attempts by the Government to
transplant national identity and customs onto the colonial face of the land. They were doing
so despite an amazing set of difficulties: first, Papua New Guinea was fractionalised into
hundreds of tribal groups and their language was spoken in a thousand different tongues;
second, there were so many outside influences on Papua New Guinea’s inheritance,
including their neighbours across the border in Irian Jaya; and, third, the new technology
demanded that the people literally had to live ‘one thousand years in one
lifetime’, from loincloth to the three-piece suit and computer knowledge in a
simple step.

In many respects the parallels with the Maori in New Zealand were very
close, except that we didn’t have to advance as many years in one lifetime.
However, our journey was possibly more difficult because it had to be undertaken within
European terms of acceptability. We were a minority and much of our progress was dependent
on European goodwill. And there was no doubt that in New Zealand, just as in Papua New
Guinea, our nationalism was also galvanising the people to become one Maori nation.

So it was that in Australia and Papua New Guinea I grew into an
understanding of myself as a Maori and, I guess, was being prepared for my date with
destiny. Whether it had anything to do with Kahu’s destiny, I don’t
know, but just as I was maturing in my own understanding she too was moving closer and
closer to that point where she was in the right place, at the right time, with the right
understanding to accomplish the task which had been assigned to her. In this respect there
is no doubt in my mind that she had always been the
right
person.

My brother Porourangi has always been a good letter
writer and he kept me in touch with the affairs of the people at home. I could tell that his
chiefly prestige was growing, his spirit, and I appreciated the chiefly kindliness he felt
in wanting me to know that although I was far from the family I was not forgotten.
Apparently Koro Apirana had now begun a second series of schools for the young people of the
Coast. Our Koro had accepted that Porourangi would be ‘the one’ in our
generation to carry on the leadership of the people, but he was still looking for
‘the one’ in the present generation. ‘He wants to find a young
boy,’ Porourangi jested, ‘to pull the sword out of the stone, someone
who has been marked by the Gods for the task. Nobody has so far been able to satisfy
him.’ Then, in one of his letters, Porourangi made my heart leap with joy. Ana had
told him it was about time that Kahu came back to stay in Whangara, with her and Porourangi.

Kahu was then six years old; Rehua’s mother had agreed and
so Kahu returned. ‘Well,’ Porourangi wrote, ‘you should have
seen us all having a cry at the bus stop. Kahu got off the bus and she has grown so much,
you wouldn’t recognise her. Her first question, after all the hugging, was
‘Where’s Paka? Is Paka here?’ Nanny Flowers said he was
fishing, so she waited and waited all day down at the beach for him. When he came in, she
leapt into his arms. But you know our Koro, as gruff as usual. Still, it is really good to
have Kahu home.’

In his later letters Porourangi wrote about the problems he felt were
facing the Maori people. He had gone with Koro Apirana to Raukawa country and had been very
impressed with the way in which Raukawa was organising its youth resources to be in a
position to help the people in the century beginning with the year 2000.
‘Will
we
be ready?’ he asked.
‘Will we have prepared the people to cope with the new challenges and the new
technology? And will they still be Maori?’ I could tell that the last question was
weighing heavily on his mind. In this respect we both recognised that the answer lay in Koro
Apirana’s persistence with the school sessions, for he was one of the very few who
could pass on the sacred knowledge, to us. Our Koro was like an old whale stranded in an
alien present, but that was how it was supposed to be because he also had his role in the
pattern of things, in the tides of the future.

Near the middle of our second year in Papua New
Guinea Jeff and I could afford to relax a little. We took trips to Manus Island and it was
there that Jeff put into words the thoughts that had been on my mind for some months.

‘You’re getting homesick, aren’t you
Rawiri?’ he said.

We had been diving in the lagoon, and in that wondrous blue water, I
had picked up a shining silver shell from the reef. I had taken it back to the beach and was
listening to the sea whispering to me from the shell’s silver whorls.

‘A little,’ I replied. Many things were coming to
a head for me on the plantation, and I wanted to avoid a collision. Jeff and I were getting
along okay but his parents were pushing him ever so gently in the right direction, to
consort with his own kind in the clubs and all the parties of the aggressively expatriate.
On my part, this had thrown me more into the company of the ‘natives’,
like Bernard who had more degrees than Clara had chins, and Joshua, who both worked on the
farm. In so doing I had broken a cardinal rule and my punishment was ostracism.

‘We’ve come a long way together,’ Jeff
said.

‘We sure have,’ I laughed. ‘And
there’s still a way to go yet.’

Then Jeff said, ‘I want to thank you. For everything. But if
you have to go, I’ll understand.’

I smiled at him, reflectively. I placed the shell back to my
ear.
Hoki mai
,
hoki mai ki te
wa kainga
, the sea whispered,
come home
.

Jeff and I returned to the plantation the next day. There was a letter
waiting from Porourangi. Ana was expecting a baby, and the whole family were hoping that the
child would be a son. ‘Of all of us,’ Porourangi wrote, ‘Kahu
seems to be the most excited. Koro Apirana, too, is over the moon.’

The letter had the effect of making me realise how much time had
passed since I had been in the company of my whanau, and I felt a sudden keenness, like
pincers squeezing my heart, to hold them all in my arms.
Hoki
mai
,
hoki mai. Come home
.

Then three events occurred which convinced me that I
should be homeward bound. The first happened when Jeff and his parents were invited to a
reception hosted in Port Moresby for a young expatriate couple who’d just been
wed. At first Clara’s assumption was that I would stay back and look after the
plantation, but Jeff said I was ‘one of the family’ and insisted I
accompany them. Clara made it perfectly obvious that she was embarrassed by my presence and
I was very saddened, at the reception, to hear her say to another guest,
‘He’s a friend of Jeff’s. You know our Jeff, always bringing
home dogs and strays. But at least he’s not a native.’ Her laughter
glittered like knives.

But that was only harbinger to the tragedy which took place when we
returned to Mount Hagen. We had parked the station wagon at the airport and were driving
home to the plantation. Jeff was at the wheel. We were all of us in a merry mood. The road
was silver with moonlight. Suddenly, in front of us, I saw a man walking along the verge. I
thought Jeff had seen him too and would move over to the middle of the road to pass him. But
Jeff kept the station wagon pointed straight ahead.

The man turned. His arms came up, as if he was trying to defend
himself. The front bumper crunched into his thighs and legs and he was catapulted into the
windscreen which smashed into a thousand fragments. Jeff braked. The glass was suddenly
splashed with blood. I saw a body being thrown ten metres to smash on the road. In the
headlights and steam, the body moved. Clara screamed. Tom said, ‘Oh my
God.’

I went to get out. Clara screamed again, ‘Oh no. No. His
tribe could be on us any second. Payback, it could be payback for us. It’s only a
native.’

I pushed her away. Tom yelled, ‘For God’s sake,
Rawiri, try to understand. You’ve heard the stories —’

I couldn’t comprehend their fear. I looked at Jeff but he
was just sitting there, stunned, staring at that broken body moving fitfully in the
headlights. Then, suddenly Jeff began to whimper. He started the motor.

‘Let me out,’ I hissed. ‘Let me
out
. That’s no native out there.
That’s
Bernard
.’ A cous is a
cous.

I yanked the door open. Clara yelled out to Jeff, ‘Oh, I can
see them.’ Shadows on the road. ‘Leave him here. Leave him.’
Her words were high-pitched, frenzied. ‘Oh. Oh. Oh.’

The station wagon careered past me. I will never forget
Jeff’s white face, so pallid, so fearful.

The second event occurred after the inquest. Bernard had died on the
road that night. Who’s to say that he would have lived had we taken him to
hospital?

It was an accident, of course. A native walking carelessly on the side
of the road. A cloud covering the moon for a moment. The native shouldn’t have
been there anyway. It could have happened to anybody.

‘I don’t blame you,’ I said to Jeff.
‘You can’t help being who you are.’ But all I could think of
was the waste of a young man who had come one thousand years to his death on a moonlit road,
the manner in which the earth must be mourning for one of its hopes and its sons in the new
world, and the sadness that a friend I thought I had would so automatically react to the
assumptions of his culture.
And would I be next
? There
was nothing further to keep me here.

It was then that another letter came from Porourangi. The child, a
girl, had been born. Naturally, Koro Apirana was disappointed and had blamed Nanny Flowers
again. In the same envelope was another letter, this one from Kahu.

‘Dear Uncle Rawiri, how are you? We are well at Whangara. I
have a baby sister. I like her very much. I am seven. Guess what, I am in the front row of
our Maori culture group at school. I can do the poi. We are all lonesome for you.
Don’t forget me, will you. Love. Kahutia Te Rangi.’

Right at the bottom of Kahu’s letter Nanny Flowers had added
just one word to express her irritation with my long absence from Whangara.
Bang
.

I flew out of Mount Hagen the following month. Jeff
and I had a fond farewell, but already I could feel the strain between us. Clara was as
polite and scintillating as usual. Tom was bluff and hearty.

‘Goodbye, fella,’ Tom said.
‘You’re always welcome.’

‘Yes,’ Jeff said.
‘Always.’
Each to his own
.

The plane lifted into the air. Buffetted by the winds it finally
stabilised and speared through the clouds.