The Whale Rider

by Witi Ihimaera

The flotilla was heading out to sea.

  ‘Our fishing areas have always been placed under the protective custody of the guardians,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘In their honour we have often placed talismanic shrines. In this way the fish have been protected, attracted to the fishing grounds, and thus a plentiful supply has been assured. We try never to overfish for to do so would be to take greedy advantage of Tangaroa and would bring retribution.’

  Then we reached the open sea and Koro Apirana motioned that we should stay close to him.

  ‘All of our fishing grounds, banks and rocks have had names assigned to them and the legends surrounding them have been commemorated in story, song or proverb. Where our fishing grounds have no local identification, like a reef or upjutting rock, we have taken the fix from prominent cliffs or mountains on the shore. Like there and mark. And there and mark. In this way the fishing places of all our fish species have always been known. And we have tried never to trespass on the fishing grounds of others because their guardians would recognise us as interlopers. In this respect, should we ever be in unfamiliar sea, we have surrounded ourselves with our own water for protection.’

  Then Koro Apirana’s voice dropped and, when he resumed his lesson, his words were steeped with sadness and regret. ‘But we have not always kept our pact with Tangaroa, and in these days of commercialism it is not always easy to resist temptation. So it was when I was your age. So it is now. There are too many people with snorkelling gear, and too many commercial fishermen with licences. We have to place prohibitions on our fishing beds, boys, otherwise it will be just like the whales —’

  For a moment Koro Apirana hesitated. Far out to sea there was a dull booming sound like a great door opening, a reminder, a memory of something downward plunging. Koro Apirana shaded his eyes from the sun.

  ‘Listen, boys,’ he said, and his voice was haunted. ‘Listen. Once there were many of our protectors. Now there are few. Listen how empty our sea has become.’

  In the evening after our lesson on the sea we assembled in the meeting house. The booming on the open waters had heralded the coming of a rainstorm like a ghostly wheke advancing from the horizon. As I went into the meeting house I glanced up at our ancestor, Paikea. He looked like he was lifting his whale through the spearing rain.

  Koro Apirana led us in a prayer to bless the school. Then, after the introductions, he told us of the times which had brought the silence to the sea.

  ‘I was a boy of seven years’ age,’ he began, ‘when I went to stay with my uncle who was a whaler. I was too young to know any better, and I didn’t understand then, as I do now, about our ancestor, the whale. At that time whaling was one of the great pastimes and once the bell on the lookout had been sounded you’d see all the whaling boats tearing out to sea, chasing after a whale. Doesn’t matter what you were doing, you’d drop everything, your plough, your sheep clippers, your schoolbooks, everything. I can still remember seeing everyone climbing the lookout, like white balloons. I followed them and far out to sea I saw a herd of whales.’

  The rain fell through his words. ‘They were the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.’ He made a sweeping gesture. ‘Then, down by the slipway, I could see the longboats being launched into the sea. I ran down past the sheds and the pots on the fires were already being stoked to boil down the blubber. All of a sudden my uncle yelled out to me to get on his boat with him. So there I was, heading out to sea.’

  I saw a spiky head sneaking a look through the door. ‘That’s when I saw the whales really close,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘There must have been sixty of them at least. I have never forgotten, never. They had prestige. They were so powerful. Our longboat got so close to one that I was able to reach out and touch the skin.’ His voice was hushed with awe. ‘I felt the ripple of power beneath the skin. It felt like silk. Like a god. Then the harpoons began to sing through the air. But I was young, you see, and all I could feel was the thrill, like when you do a haka.’

  He paused, mesmerised. ‘I can remember that when a whale was harpooned it would fight like hang. Eventually it would spout blood like a fountain, and the sea would be red. Three or four other boats would tow it ashore to the nearest place and cut it up and share out the meat and the oil and everything. When we started to strip the blubber off the whale in the whaling station, all the blood flowed into the channel. Blind eels would come up with the tide to drink the blood.’

  I heard Kahu weeping at the doorway. I edged over to her and when she saw me she put her arms around my neck.

  ‘You better go home,’ I said, ‘before Koro Apirana finds out you’re here.’

  But she was so frightened. She was making a mewling sound in her throat. She seemed immobilised by terror.

  Inside, Koro Apirana was saying, ‘Then, when it was all finished we would cut huge slabs of whale meat and sling them across our horses and take them to our homes —’

  Suddenly, before I could stop her, Kahu wrenched away from me and ran into the meeting house.

  ‘No, Paka, no!’ she screamed.

  His mouth dropped open. ‘Haere atu koe,’ he shouted.

  ‘Paka. Paka, no!’

  Grimly, Koro Apirana walked up to her, took her by the arms and virtually hurled her out. ‘Go. Get away from here,’ he repeated. The sea thundered ominously. The rain fell like spears.

  Kahu was still crying, three hours later. Nanny Flowers was livid when she heard about what happened.

  ‘You just keep her away from the meeting house,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘That’s all I say. I’ve told you before. And her.’

  ‘My blame,’ Kahu wept. ‘Love Paka.’

  ‘You men,’ Nanny Flowers said. ‘I can show you where you come from.’

  ‘Enough,’ Koro Apirana said. He stormed out and that ended the argument.

  Later that night Kahu kept sobbing and sobbing. I guess we thought she was still grieving about being growled at, but we know better now. I heard Nanny Flowers going into Kahu’s bedroom and comforting her.

  ‘Shift over, Kahu,’ Nanny Flowers soothed. ‘Make a little space for your skinny Nanny. There, there.’

  ‘Love Paka.’

  ‘You can have him, Kahu, as soon as I get my divorce tomorrow. There, there.’ Nanny was really hurting with love for Kahu. ‘Don’t you worry, don’t you worry. You’ll fix him up, the old paka, when you get older.’

  In the hiss and roar of the suck of the surf upon the land I listened to Nanny Flowers. After a short while Kahu drifted off to sleep.

  ‘Yes,’ Nanny Flowers crooned, ‘go to sleep now. And if you don’t fix him,’ she whispered, ‘then my oath I will.’

  Hiss and roar. Ebb and flow.

  The next morning I sneaked in to give Kahu a special cuddle, just from me. When I opened the door she was gone. I looked in Koro Apirana and Nanny Flowers’ bedroom, but she wasn’t there either. Nanny Flowers had pushed Koro onto the floor and had spread herself over the whole bed to make sure he couldn’t get back in.

  Outside the sea was gentle and serene, as if the storm had never happened. In the clear air I heard a chittering, chattering sound from the beach. I saw Kahu far away, silhouetted on the sand. She was standing facing the sea and listened to voices in the surf. There, there, Kahu. There, there.

  Suddenly Kahu turned and saw me. She ran toward me like a seagull. ‘Uncle Rawiri!’

  I saw three silver shapes leaping into the dawn.

  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 i
n 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 nigh
t. 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 —’