by Duff, Alan
When we persisted with our plea that he give her back some of her own, he said he had no intention of punching anyone, let alone a woman, even one like our mother. He said the Irish and Baltic people were volatile, fighting races with clannish, tribal outlook like the Maori, and where had that got them? Locked in endless turmoil, stultified thinking calling itself religious, tribal, political difference when it was simply proof of no advancement being made, according to our reasoning, logic-revering, sweet, inadequate father.
Who could argue with him — but who would confer with such a man of such a thinking out of his environment? You just take him at the face value he was prepared to give, and feel affection for him. Wanting it to be love.
Words were his tools: spoken, in written form in his books and journals and magazines. Words were her weapons, from her volatile heart, her raging emotions, her lustful-born condition, and what alcohol brought out of her mouth and translated to her fists, her raking bitch-nails.
Words were what to hurl at the enemy. The enemy was whoever was nominated on the day, who nominated her/himself, in the heat of the moment or at the whim of her heated moment. Words were her taiaha, her mere. (Lack of the right words, too many of the wrong, were spearings and clubbing of us.)
Purely physical, wholly the hedonist, she hasn’t yet taken physical shape has she? Not when she is an impression, when her meaning is not a picture but an impact on lives. Articulate, eloquent words on her?
Here’s an impression:
My mother, the thing which gave birth to me, about ten stone of her then, about five foot four, attractive enough if you can be objective, but no class catch, hardly that. Black wavy hair, good smooth Maori skin, brown eyes, great Maori pearl-white teeth — when they’re smiled and not bared. If she were a prostitute she’d have plenty of regular customers. If she were a whore she’d be the one men would get into trouble over. Disposition and style of a fishwife, though. Movement of an athlete — a fighter. That’s her, the creature that conceived me in some moment of love or just sexual height, now straddled upon her female victim scratching her face. My mother, ladies and horrified gentlemen and neighbour children of our street. Well, someone’s got to have one like it.
Home from school to your mother brawling.
Fuckin’ big scrap on the front lawn of your father’s neat tending. Fight-ring confines defined by garden patches and stony footpath because the man of this house doesn’t like concrete, it’s obscene to his eyes, but so is this, his mowed and edge-trimmed front lawn seething with adults in violent tumult.
At half after the hour of three of a lovely sunny day. You had it signalled from around the corner. You saw women neighbours hurrying to get best vantage point but without being spotted by the beer-encrazed women brawlers. You saw old Mr Hodge shaking his head in disgust again as he always does, with that slow, incredulous walk towards the fight, his back to you. But you know how his eyes will be bulging in disbelief and, yes, a certain atavistic urge to do same: to give these uncouths, these primitives, some of their own back. But differently; in the name of justice and what is right.
In the jungle, boys and girl children of these jungle dwellers, beasts in their prowling place, at number nineteen Marsden Street, after Samuel a coloniser who did so much good for his claimed British Empire country, but not for these creatures: he went right over their heads, they were fighting back then as now, in a jungle just as savage as a suburban one, except murder is now no longer permissible, unless murder of their children’s hearts.
You know, you quicken your pace, feel your face flush, you turn sick inside, the very air feels crushing — you have to stop, catch your breath suddenly lost, suddenly drowning. In a sea of shame, of being the son, one of her children, of a mother like no other in this neighbourhood, this entire town of your yearning, searching, blindly groping looking that can turn itself to spying, and worse. (A thief is evolving in me. I want to steal what others have. And another beast stirs in me, though I know not what form he’ll take.)
Yeah, and your head can barely lift; you understand shame vividly because it has nowhere to hide. And if it did, then it would be different. Bearable.
Hey, shame is the eyes of others declaring it. No eyes, no shame. Listen: shamed kids are defeated kids, shame takes away their daily triumphs, turns every little victory to mush. You’re ashamed of even breathing. Which is existing is it not?
You’d rather turn and run, who cares where, you’d rather that not be a police siren and that they didn’t know this address off by heart. You wonder where the fuck Warren is. You care more for what he can do for you than what this is doing to him. He’s just got to save you, not save himself. But it is a siren and they do know the address off by heart. In two days her name will be in the paper — again. The buzz goes around the neighbourhood: She’s been at it — again. No! Again? Yes, again.
Here, read it for yourself: In the Two Lakes District Court Mrs Heta Burgess pleaded guilty to charges of causing a public disturbance and damage to police property, namely a police shirt and two police issue ties. The judge expressed concern that this was not Mrs Burgess’ first court appearance. Mrs Burgess spoke defiant words in response to the judge. The judge ordered her to be silent. Then he asked what her children wanted to ask her but never could: what was troubling her so?
She told him she didn’t feel so troubled, indeed she felt quite good considering she had been in a fight, and anyway why was she the only one charged, and on top of that, why press charges when it was a family affair hurting no one but each other? And your Honour, her very words there for the town to see, We do it all the time. What’s the big deal?
Big enough deal for the judge to fine her quite heavily and our father to pay it. Otherwise no big deal, mother. Not if not to you. Not if your children don’t count, their shame, their spotlighted state, the sniggering, the public humiliation.
You go to school after she’s been written up in the court pages, hahahha, your mother was in court, everyone saw it, my father read it. My mother would rather be dead than be in the paper like that. Well, who wouldn’t.
You catch glance, glimpse of your different neighbours, their reactions. Some despise you, they put you into the same Maori category of never being able to civilise you, can’t take the jungle out of you.
And you worry it’s true and when your turn is coming. But the Ropihas across the road are Maori and they’re good people. So are the Mahere family top of the street. Maybe the rumours are right, there’s something wrong with our mother’s family’s heads. They’re not all there. It’s the Te Amo family, Uncle Henry excepted, who are wrong. Not a good part of the Maori race. Except we know it spreads far beyond our mother’s family. And it is Maori. It is Maori.
On our street you get those decent people who are concerned for what this is doing to you, it’s obvious to the whole watching, witnessing street, that this can’t be doing your, um — well, your development much good, as Edith Dover says, and Mr Hodge gruffly agrees with in that manner of theirs, meaning they know the Burgess kids are being destroyed and so are a whole lot of families like them, but in those days they didn’t have the language yet for this.
Shame brings the sweat streaming from your forehead, it whips up a wet stink under your arms, it feels like a disease has caught you again, a lurking latent virus has struck. You tell yourself the words your father does: you are not responsible for your mother’s action, nor those of her relations. But it doesn’t work, sorry, Dad. It doesn’t get off the ground. Shame hurts.
Down the sloping hill to home, it’s only a few houses long but a gauntlet of neighbours are now mostly strangers to you; it’s the only way they can endure this sight, too much for ordinary folks’ sensibility, too much for their own comparative average lives, too much for decent citizens who do, we can assume, the right thing.
It must be written up for them, the ordinary good decent citizens, somewhere that they all understand a similar code of behaviour, muttering there should be a law
against this sort of behaviour even when they can hear the law is coming, it’s another screaming in the sunny afternoon, of this street anyrate, another sound in this after-school day, that this shouldn’t be happening. It’s like murder being allowed to go in their street, in their ordinary, fairly decent, citizenry witness.
Tongues click, eyes lump you in, words get thrown at you like poisonous darts. But then there’s always the hand that reaches out and touches you, you’re too upset to give it a face; there’s always hope, right? No. The faces of the neighbourhood mothers are now even more distant to you, this is what it must feel like to be shunned in a village, to be regarded as an outsider even though no fault of your own: shunners know and care not of justice and fairness. You’re shunned, you are shunned. End of it, of you.
12
The village was tense, for the war party was a day and night late in returning. Sentries scanned down from their high tower lookouts.
The tohunga consulted his dreams, his passed-down learnings of higher understandings; he studied the surrounding nature, the sky, the winds, the tiny insect life and their prevailing taken directions, he looked closely at their leavings and slime trails and meaningful messages of movement for the eye that can interpret them; he considered meaning in ancient chant. He studied in his steady incanting all the great warriors and ancestry, what of their past deeds may be of influence upon the future of this generation, certainly its same continuance.
And only a few souls, but most of the women, saw in his careful considering that he feared making the wrong call and delayed making hasty prediction or portent. That is why the women were always on the ready to steer him back on the right course, but as if it was his decision. Only they, and a handful of men, saw he carried a veil over his eyes like the steam from the fabled area of a said superior tribe, so that none — he thought — should glimpse his fallibilities.
He had been chosen from the two selected boys of necessarily retentive minds to store the vast oral knowledge. But first the two had to do battle with wooden clubs in a darkened whare to make final self-selection of who would grow, being trained and versed in the ways of village high priest.
His better eyes in the dark, his keener ears for the other boy’s movement, had him emerge with the blood of the other all over his eleven-year-old’s club. The elders in more awe that he had struck mortal blows at his pretender, for this was a warrior priest in the making. But even he might have calls of judgement made that would see him summarily killed should he make mistake, read the omens and signs wrongly. So now he went into himself, as if to consult with only the highest gods, for it was the chief and his two oldest sons on this mission and he, the tohunga, must not be wrong. He wore a look of concern to those who fed his sacred being by hand. But of course they spoke not of what they observed.
Had anyone watched the tohunga’s every movement, they would have seen that he had eyes on the sentries and not the changing, omen-meaning sky he appeared to be gazing at; so that when he saw the best-positioned sentry stiffen, the tohunga, like all great men, made his decision then. And his voice rang out before the sentry could say reason for his muscle tensing: Aee! I have sign now!
The hearing villagers stopped what they were doing, some in anticipatory fear for the worst, others the opposite, since to them it was inconceivable that their chiefly lord and two best sons should come to harm. And the sighting sentry turned in surprise at his post, and people saw his astonishment and then his admiration for the tohunga, since how could Te Tono have known what only the sentry could see, that the war party was back?
The sharpest eye might have seen the calculating tohunga’s eyes read the progressive responses of the sentry, as he cried out for all to hear: See how the cloud yonder has twisted to form shape of a warrior’s arm held aloft? And every eye went to the cloud, which indeed was as the tohunga described, when ordinarily they’d not have seen such good omen or any meaning at all. For they took their meanings, their definitions, mostly from his leadings.
So they saw the sign he imposed on them to see, and they cried out the tohunga’s name, and he was with instant response to them: Our warriors come home victorious! Which was his singular risked prediction, for even he could not make such interpretation in the mere muscle movement of the sentry.
Yet just then the sentry bellowed out: I see them! I see them! And he strained his eyes down to the point between rock walls where the sun most of the time put any figure passing between into sharp silhouette. And what he saw he relayed down to his people, and the secretly smiling tohunga. Hark! I see one of our brave fighters holding aloft a — A head! the tohunga slipped in first. I see many heads of our hated enemy they bring to us their people!
Indeed, the picture that filled the space between the rock walls was of many warriors holding aloft severed heads. And the sentry’s face was in more astonishment at his high priest.
Is that what you see yet, sentry? the tohunga called up to the tower. Yes, tohunga, that is what I see! So Te Tono’s greatness was confirmed and he allowed himself the smallest of smiles as his people gazed in awe and admiration at his powers.
The people became quickly impatient to greet their heroes. Several slaves were promptly killed and made ready for the earth ovens; the storage pits of sweet potato were uncovered and removed of considerable quantity; the fires were fed and the cooking stones thrown upon them; hunters went into the woods to snare the fattest pigeons for the hangi; birds preserved in their own fat were pulled from storage; dried fish and dried shellfish meat strung on flax lines were readied for the feast.
The carvers hewing out the timber slabs in their elaborate traditional shapes and meaning-laden patterns discussed amongst themselves if their task should make exception of pause to honour this auspicious day. But the head carver said not even such momentous event should cease their sacred work, or else it would bring bad omen at some later time. So their choppings and chiselling could be heard in accompaniment to their special chantings to each stage of the carving work, as they brought forth from the timber the forms of ancestors and symbols to remember their deeds and standing. And the work was made exact and of highest standard to show a people what an enemy would see, or know of, to represent a tribe with greatest pride in itself.
The excitement spread; women made themselves ready for a husband’s other needs, cleansing their bodies with water and scenting with a special bark oil; those in a noa state, with monthly bleed, had taken themselves into the chore and task background, none of it to do with food preparation. Her husband’s needs would have to wait, or he might take another woman not noa. But let her be plain, let her be but a receptacle for husband’s emptying, and let the elder women abort if child should come of it. A man was entitled to satisfy himself when he was victorious in battle, any woman understands this. And if they don’t, they are stupid, and hold less respect of the others.
The children’s play grew rough from their excitement, meaning the boys; and the old people grinned at this mirroring of the men they must become. They had to chide some for taking it too far: E tamaiti! You put wound to your cousin that you should keep for your enemy — enough now!
And the tohunga gazed at forest and sky and ground and into his knowledge-teeming head for even deeper meaning to give this pending homecoming; already he was composing poem for inclusion in the oral legends, the tales of battles fought.
When the people saw their chief and his two sons come first through the last wall barricade, they let loose with ferocious cry of joy. The older warriors, what few war had spared to older age, gave thundering haka of skin-wrinkled feet on the dusty ground, slapping still-muscled chests with hardest strength. They ejected stabbing tongues and words that flew the spit and bulged the eyes and made their young warrior men smile with pride and be all over with gladness (and unseeingness of anything else) that they were of the loins and example teachings of these thundering old men with fine facial tattoo markings, twisting in shouted, bellowing grimace.
All th
e people’s eyes grew wide and their mouths salivated at sight of carried severed heads, of enemy tattooed faces held like fat fruit in so many of the warrior’s hands; the chief himself slowly lifting two fine heads, one with skull cleaved widely open, and empty of brain, which he and his sons would have eaten even as it had had thought.
The head carver’s hands worked more rapidly at the sight as he deftly began to shape out the chief’s battle deed into carved legend, making myth of the man on the spot, giving him an enemy head in each three-fingered hand in beautifully crafted wood.
The eyes of the people grew angry at the sight of captive enemy warriors. A woman, knowing she was now a widow, rushed forth and stove in an enemy’s head with her husband’s bone club. Others, women, moved in to help drag his body away for preparing for cooking. The other captives could but lower abject eyes. They had their own slaves, and how close a man is to another fate such as this.
When the great warrior Kapi came up alongside the chief and his two sons, the people gave involuntary gasp: for he carried three heads in each weight-straining hand, like bunches of huge purple berries. The veins bulged in his forearms, caked in dried blood. No blood dripped from the heads, only hung expressions and most had eyes open and necks of torn skin fabric, and several had mouths bared in last grimace.
Te Aranui Kapi looked at his chief for gesture that he may lift his prizes to the sky, for there was always strictest protocol to adhere to. No smallest sign or gesture was to be made that could be interpreted to lessen the chief’s mana, his chiefly family line and therefore the entire village, the whole of the sub-tribe and even spilling over to the main tribe, Te Waka Toi.
So the eyes were on the chief, who nodded his mighty approval, and the mighty warrior gave his signs of respect back. And then six weights of former thinking and warrior pride thrust upwards in one immensely powerful arm of Kapi’s; he held aloft six weights of open-eyed sightless gaze to the sky scudding with cloud, sending its own meaning down to him.
