Show Me a Huia!

by Chris Barfoot

  “That was a fine shot of the huia that he took. He saw the peck marks, made sure he had another witness, concealed himself, imitated the whistle, got the right focus, then he put in a faultless sighting report.”

  “He did everything right.”

  “Only one thing wrong; it wasn’t a photo of a live huia.”

  Dick’s body suddenly went taut, his face reddened and his fists clenched with white knuckles. For a moment Kate thought he was going to hit her, but instead he exploded into a string of expletives, most of which concerned the mental state of his three captors.

  She ignored his reaction and continued blithely. “It was a photo of Keulemans’ illustration of the huia in Walter Buller’s Birds of New Zealand, but only the female bird because the male was behind and less distinct and a little obscured and would not have reproduced so well.”

  “Don’t give me that crap!”

  Kate sailed coolly on. “The male was removed, the perch and the background were changed and it was facing right instead of left. But it was no trouble to an expert on photo doctoring like Kevin.”

  “All huia look alike.”

  “I know, but no two photos of a living bird are the same because it can’t sit still and is constantly changing its position. Have you seen the illustration?”

  “I’ve got more important things to do.”

  “The reprint was done in 1967 and there weren’t many copies.”

  “I haven’t even tried to get hold of it.”

  “Really. But Kevin’s not like you. He’s a very studious type. He borrowed our Ornithological Society library copy for two weeks before he left for the Raukumara. You can’t tell me he didn’t study it carefully, especially the illustration. Yet when I remarked that his huia slide was very similar to the illustration, what did he say? ‘Keulemans – never heard of him’.”

  “You just want to get in there with your geologists.”

  “In other words, he lied. But why did he lie? He got excited because of something I said about Nga Tama and he wasn’t thinking straight. He just took the easiest way out, thinking that the people listening to him would never have heard of Keulemans, as you probably haven’t.”

  At this she paused and looked at the ranger’s eyes. They were angry, but did she sense some hesitation in them as well? Was his anger his way of resisting what he didn’t want to believe?

  “Listen, Dick. You’ve had a fair experience of poachers telling you lies. What do you do to get the truth out of them?”

  “I can’t see what all this has got to do with Kevin.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think you’d do. You’d rattle them so they would say something they didn’t mean to. That’s what I did with Kevin. I asked him a question which made him angry, and as a result he resorted to a direct lie. As for his huia story, he must have made it up, then written it down. In the documentary he just read from his notes. He had nothing else, no humour, no anecdotes, and no excitement. Now would you expect a man that has achieved his life’s ambition to act like that? Not likely. The man’s a sham, an automaton. He’s being manipulated by someone else. He doesn’t really care about birds at all.”

  “You’ve been listening to those mental geologists...” and he began another tirade.

  During this outburst, Tane unfortunately broke out laughing. That’s canned it, she thought. Then David joined in. It was good humoured, jovial, clean, honest laughter. They were just laughing at the description of themselves. She looked at the ranger’s face and saw that he didn’t know how to take it.

  She was becoming aware of something quite odd. The ranger was uneducated, uncouth, a man of strong likes and dislikes, a man who spoke before he thought. All his knowledge came from-on-the-ground observation. He was scornful of knowledge that came out of books and didn’t even bother to read them.

  How was it that he had been appointed to a position of such responsibility?

  Was it because he was the simple outdoor type whom the public could identify with but who could be relied upon not to ask questions?

  “I’d really like to congratulate you on your appointment,” she continued. “They could not have chosen a better person. I suppose you have plans to get in there and see the huia soon.”

  This time he definitely hesitated before he replied. “Every Tom, Dick and Harry wants me to come and address a meeting.”

  “It’s probably a good idea to check on how they’re getting on, isn’t it? Put in a few traps for stoats, for example.”

  “Dr Holcroft told me that my work would be outside the sanctuary.”

  “So you’ve never been in there?”

  “Dr Holcroft knows what he’s doing. If he hadn’t acted, there would be no huia sanctuary.”

  “Don’t you think because of all these rumours, you should ask him again?”

  They were in Rotorua now. They could smell the sulphur in the windless summer night.

  David glanced at Kate and she nodded. In Fenton Street he stopped momentarily.

  “Thanks again, Dick,” said Kate. “Give him the Land Rover key, Tane.”

  The ranger leapt down and strode off into the darkness with clenched fists and without a backward glance.

  ***

  The Mercedes gathered speed on the highway to Whakatane. Kate had taken over the driving. It was 2 a.m. on Monday and only the big transporters were on the road.

  “He was very angry,” said David. “I don’t know how you managed to handle him.”

  “He’s angry because he regards the huia sanctuary as his personal property and any doubts about it he sees as a personal attack. All the same it’s curious he’s never been in there,” she mused, “because he’s a real huia man.” She paused and added, “I’m sorry that I was so nasty about geologists just now.”

  “You’re actually quite right. You spoke about the geologists who are trying to get their hands on Forest Parks. I ought to tell you that I am about the worst of them.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “My present research is on how to find legal methods to open up National and Forest Parks for mineral develop-ment.”

  She felt sick inside.

  “But I’ve decided to give it away.”

  In spite of her determination to remain professional, Kate almost wanted to kiss him.

  CHAPTER 35

  From his time as an undergraduate and graduate at the University of Auckland, Tane had loved the mountains, especially their rocks. He had been awed by the dark Waitakere gorges where the Pararaha and the Piha Streams carved deep into the black volcanic rock as they plunged down to the wild west coast. He had climbed the rearing columnar basalt towers in Great Barrier and Coromandel. He had aqua-tramped down fossilised sea beds exposed by the rivers of the Urewera. He had walked out on the delectable ridges of the “candy mountains” of North West Nelson. By the time he went to Australia for his doctorate he knew nearly all the mountain ranges of New Zealand.

  Tane’s knowledge of mountains was not just of routes or peaks climbed or of crossings made. He knew the secrets undisclosed to those who somewhat fearfully only pass through and remain extraneous to the mountains’ spirit. He sensed the mystical nature expressed in the Maori names like Moehau and Hauturu and Maungapohatu. He knew the place of the thunder and the mists and where the wind gathered. From the deep dark gorges and from towering bluffs he read history, almost from the beginning of time. On the soaring ridges and in the river beds, he fathomed the blending of minerals in all their multitudinous hues.

  When he became a geologist, the pattern of his life did not change, but he began to search deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the mountains. For him it was not so much a search as a relationship. It was because he was aware of his relationship with the mountains that he was able to explore and discover. As with the Maori of old, he entered into the mountains with awe, not to exploit but to respect. And the mountains in turn revealed to him their secrets.

  Then everything collapsed. What have you done with what we
gave you? they accused him.

  He could not speak to them as he did before, and he wept because they had become his enemies. But that was not the worst thing. The mountains had already signalled the revenge that they were preparing, and there was no way back.

  It was like a vision of hell.

  That was why he could not face the mountains again.

  He had not told David. There were some things which David could never understand.

  4.30 a.m. on Monday 24th January.

  The course from Rotorua for two and a half hours had been eastwards. Kate was driving and David was with her in the front seat. The sky was already lightening and he peered excitedly ahead for the Raukumaras which would soon be revealed.

  The light was coming more intensely than usual and David averted his eyes.

  “Isn’t it too early for the dawn?” said Kate, “or the sunrise?” But her voice faltered.

  Suddenly the whole landscape was ablaze.

  Red, flaming red, burned the sky, a wall of fire stretching right across the horizon in front of them. And silhouetted against it was a huge dark shape like the grotesque saw-tooth outline of an advancing prehistoric monster.

  An unearthly scream shattered the silence. Hands lunged forward over Kate and shaking white fingers reached out towards the ignition keys trying to pull them out.

  “Get away, you fool!” shouted Kate as the car veered and swayed across the road at a hundred miles an hour.

  David threw himself against Tane, forcing him back, and they grappled, their writhing shapes lit up in the fearful red, the car interior seemingly bathed in blood. At last he was able to overpower him.

  “Stop the car!” he said.

  Slowly, slowly, the terrible colour in the sky faded. David felt the horror and the trembling subside. The real dawn came. The windows were open and he could smell the dew and the pennyroyal, see the sleepy cows across the misty paddocks. The silence stole in, healing, reassuring.

  But for David the silence was pregnant with terror. The man he had wrestled with was a stranger. The same mop of dark curly hair, but a man whose character had suddenly, totally, changed.

  Tane was huddled now in an almost foetal position, the sunken eyes looking at him fearfully.

  “What was it?”

  A shaking hand pointed to the mountains. “I can’t go on.”

  “Because of that red sky? “

  “You can’t help me. You never understood me.”

  “I know I didn’t. But now I want to listen.”

  There was a long pause. “It was – the tutumaiao.”

  “Is it a sign?”

  “The second aitua, or omen.”

  “It is saying something?”

  “Papatuanuku is angry. The first one was a warning. The second one means she is about to take revenge.”

  “Papatuanuku is the earth mother, I know. But revenge for what?”

  “Defilement.”

  Kate was looking back anxiously the way they had come. “Dick will have told the police. They’ll be following us,” she said.

  “Hold on, Kate. We must listen.” He turned to Tane. “You heard about this from your people?”

  “Te Whanau-a-Apanui. The first tutumaiao was three years ago. Just before I went to Waitehaia.”

  “Did they understand?”

  “They understood all right, and they were terrified.”

  “What did they do the first time?”

  “They went to the forests, the fishing grounds, the kumara and maize crops, but they couldn’t find any sign of a defilement. But there was a breach of tapu all the same. They only knew it was in the mountains because things kept happening. Like drownings on the Motu and pig hunters not returning. Even the rahui didn’t help. The trouble was they didn’t look far enough”.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They didn’t realise who was responsible.” And as Tane spoke his eyes narrowed and his face twisted strangely.

  “Surely you can’t think …?”

  Tane did not reply, but turned his face away.

  And David suddenly knew. Waitehaia – it was not a sick imagining. The member of the whanau who was most sensitive to the spirit of the mountains had known all along why that spirit was disturbed.

  “Surely you’ve been healed,” but even as he said it, the words mocked him.

  Tane looked back at him with fearful eyes. He seemed to be curling back into a foetal position.

  He felt the same numbing fear gripping him, and desperately he turned to Kate. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “My pastor once laid his hands on someone like that. Do you think…?”

  David didn’t know quite what happened next but he found himself and Kate sitting on each side of Tane and saying over and over again some of the words that the vicar had used at the service. As he did so, he felt the taut, coiled body gradually relax and saw the light coming back into the face and the eyes beginning to focus outwardly.

  “Thanks, you tohunga,” said Tane at last in his normal voice.

  David sank back, exhausted, full of silent gratitude.

  Tane was mopping his brow. “That tutumaiao. It was for me. I wanted to run away. But now I know I can’t.” He looked ahead to where the ranges rose in the real dawn, fresh, cool, their highest peaks mist-wrapped. “They are my life. I don’t know what’s going to happen and I’m scared as hell. But there are things which have to be put right.”

  David looked at Kate. “I think Tane is saying that it’s OK for him to go on. How do you feel?”

  “Le-et’s go!” said Kate as she pressed the starter and the Mercedes leapt forward towards the Raukumara.

  David too was scared. They were probably the most wanted people in New Zealand – the subjects of a manhunt by police and who knows how many other people. Yet what they were involved in wasn’t just the physical action of a rescue or a kidnap or an escape or a chase. It was a struggle with invisible forces whose very existence a short while ago he would have doubted – Papatuanuku, the tutumaiao, the utu.

  The tutumaiao showed that the mountains were still defiled. What that defilement was he did not know.

  As in one sickening moment a canoeist loses control and feels himself borne helplessly onwards into a roaring whirling mass of white foaming water, so now they were being swept inexorably into a very maelstrom of horror and destruction.

  The ranges now hemmed them in on all sides. Kate had turned off the main highway onto a roughly metalled road that wound up the narrow valley of the Kaniwhaniwha River.

  The bush, alive with cicadas and tui, rolled down into sunlit paddocks. Every now and then the crunching of the metal was interrupted by the rattling of a wooden one-way bridge as little streams rippled down from the valley sides, their pleasant burblings fading out as they were lost in the sleepy meadows.

  Kate’s organisation had been superb . They learned now who her Opotiki contacts were. “My parents have a farm round here,” she said casually, “and they happen to believe me instead of what they see in the papers.” Half way up the valley, she stopped outside an isolated hay barn. There was no one in sight. She led the way into the barn, and after some rummaging in the hay, she presented them each with a pack complete with all their needs for fourteen days: tents, sleeping bags and covers; spoons, knives, plastic bowls and mugs; billies and dehydrated food; matches, a primus and bottles of white spirit for when it might be unsafe to light a fire – even torches for each of them.

  At the head of the valley, the road would end, and the tramping would begin.

  David glanced at Kate as she slid behind the wheel again. After they had dropped Dick Burton at Rotorua, she had taken over. She had driven the one hundred and fifty miles at a furious pace, and she had had no sleep. She did not appear tired. Indeed she looked – well, you might say – glowing. Strange. He had never thought of her that way. Efficient yes, cheerful, and game as they come. What a fantastic job she had done arranging the getaway from the church with t
he clothes and the car switch. Without her he would not have known what to do as they faced the terrible curse of the tutumaiao. And she was with him now, and she was glowing.

  She turned to him and smiled. He placed his fingers gently on her arm. “Thanks for your help back there.”

  She did not seem to resent his liberty. “It was we who were helped.”

  “By the way, I’d like to apologise for dragging you into all this.”

  “You big oaf! it’s far too late to apologise.”

  ***

  07:00 hours on Monday.

  David found himself looking out of the window of the car across the sunny, dew-filled paddocks. Suddenly he was startled by a loud roar close by and was surprised to see a yellow helicopter with a large Number 1 painted on the fuselage, alighting about a hundred yards from the road.

  “Only a pilot in it. It’ll be picking up hunters,” said Tane.

  Kate slowed down and looked at David. “It’d be a lot quicker,” she said with an impish grin.

  He glanced back along the road. At the other end of the flat he saw the dust swirling behind a red sports car being driven up the valley. It was not a farmer’s car and it was being driven very fast.

  Kate had seen it too. She stopped. “The helicopter!” he shouted.

  Over the fence, across the paddock, they ran, stumbling, falling, with their heavy packs.

  “We need to leave straight away,” said David as they piled in.

  The pilot saw the revolver in David’s hand, and he started the rotors again.

  “How long does it take to warm up?” asked Kate anxiously.

  The sports car had stopped. Determined-looking Pakeha in football jerseys emerged with revolvers in their hands, and were looking towards the helicopter. Now they were over the fence and running through the paddock, shouting as they came.

  “Stop them! They’re the kidnappers!”

  “They’re going to shoot up your helicopter,” said Kate.

  The pilot decided to protect his helicopter and ask questions later. Fortunately, the engine was warm. He lifted up just as the leader of the pack flung himself furiously towards the skids.