Both Sides of the Moon

by Duff, Alan

  I took a while to find her — them — they were sitting at a small kitchen table, Formica just like every house I’ve seen other than a few. And there was a bottle of something between them that wasn’t beer, which was a change and for the better I figured, she’d acquired a touch of class with that tumbler glass she lifted to his, they touched, they made happy faces at each other —

  She looked rather radiant, with bright red lipstick and nothing else on her brown skin, which had never needed make-up, and her eyes were soft and warm. I think she’d done something to her eyelashes unless it was her excitement her contentedness, her black hair was fluffed up, she must have been to a hairdresser, radiant she was, my mother her lover’s darling.

  And he wasn’t too bad, kind of handsome, a worker’s face, expression of a simple (fooled) man, strong hands (the better to caress her with, dear boy), strong body, and open laughter of the kind that no educated man knows, while uneducated man is and knows no other. If I was a woman I’d be lovers with an artist or a musician.

  I have to say she looked happier than I had ever seen her. Really truly happy. I had never seen her this content. No caught pose through a window of missing her children (and why should I have expected that for a moment when she hadn’t done so when she was at home — stupid, hopeful boy?). Heta is happy. Heta is in love. That’s all that matters. So time to take my leave. Nothing more to observe nor say, nor even think for that matter.

  In the rain, in the dark, through the wet streets, in the park, in the toilet, the public toilet, in a cubicle, trying to read a name a date a time a place a cock length, to hear maybe footsteps, but who’d be out in this, now raining harder.

  Matching a drawing of an erect cock with my own, tingling inside, afraid now, and hopeful, a boy is always hopeful, thinking: she’s gone she’s not coming back she doesn’t miss you, not any of you, so forget about her. Forget it.

  In the cubicle, in my dirty little mind, in my straining condition, rain easing, my tension not, why am I here? What am I doing here in this cold shivering, heat-producing place?

  The answer comes in footsteps, please don’t let it be him (but let it be him, or let it just be someone like me like this). The feet stop there, the rain is a mice patter on the tin roof, what if that’s a murderer standing outside? My erection is going down rapidly, my heart beating fast. I’m dead in a few moments and my mother won’t know she was the last familiar face I saw and that I witnessed her so happy. This cubicle has become my death cell.

  Excuse me in there, but have you got the time? Damn rain, my watch stopped …

  (It’s him!) I haven’t got a watch, I hear my voice in an unrecognisable croak (of fear or lust or both, or self-loathing?), I think it’s about eight o’clock … He takes a long time to respond.

  Eight o’clock, that late? (This early?) I can hear the catch in his voice, I can hear the weighing-up fighting against the animal lust in the man. I might be the wrong boy. But I’m the right boy all right.

  Or maybe it’s nine, I don’t have a watch. You don’t have a watch, but you do have a voice I think I recognise, forgive me if I’m wrong, but … Is that you? (Yes. No!) Who? You. Come on now, kid. We all know who we are. (And what we are too?)

  Yeah … yeah, it’s me.

  Open the door, that’s my hand opening it. He comes in. He closes the door. Death cell a tightened squeeze, like a grip. Open his mouth in smile, Oh kid. Shaking his head in grinning disbelief: A dream come true. Can’t smile back, too nervous, too scared, too overwhelmed (too stupid, too wretched), if I open my mouth vomit might gush forth.

  Hello, Dan.

  Hello, kid. Dan, I don’t want to do it here, someone might be outside hearing. No they won’t and it’s raining out there, boy. We’ll be all right, who’d be out in this ’cept us? (’Cept us.) Oh, kid.

  Open my fly, let him open his, let ourselves spring out, surely even cocks mean more than just blood engorgement and sexual excitement, surely? It’s symbol meaningful in the rigid arrogance and yet hapless surrender to terrific need. Oh well, oh, God. Hold my sick in, lock the muscles in my legs to keep from collapsing — close my eyes, that’s better already.

  We must be some sight, two cocks sticking up from trousers around our ankles, crowded into a toilet cubicle, whipping at each other, this is ridiculous, this ain’t love, this isn’t anything but wretchedness of me and a warping of him, whatever has made him like this. I’m not a homo but I’m doing like a homo, so I’m a homo becoming one. Or something.

  He starts on me. I start on him. Say nothing, what to say, what to say? Nothing. Just hear slishing in the dark, the breathing, the soft groaning trying to contain itself within him. (I’m sorry, someone, for doing this, being like this, but I am of my times, my circumstances, am I not? In far back times I might have been murdering a slave.)

  My potential child(ren) spilled on to the concrete floor, his potential homosexual child(ren) erupted all over me. Good to see you, kid.

  Can’t answer. Can’t say anything. Got to get away.

  The child, now the third time a man, back out in the dark. (Mother, observe me now, tell me what you see, your child hurrying through the wet dark, they’re tears not rain from my eyes, you should be looking after me, every mother should, you are supposed to be one of those shapes in the shrouded window blocks of back-light from the passageway of mother checking child and children, just listening that their sleep breathing is as it should be.)

  Then Warren and Dad’s voice telling me I shouldn’t succumb to self-pity, and God telling me off for blaming others for my own sins. And no clear voice from myself, as if I’ve been run over, or utterly forgotten about.

  Follow me to my house that you deserted, Mum, hear me tell my father lies: I’ve been at Jack’s house, Dad, honest to God. No, I’m not crying that’s just rain. (Got to get away.)

  To the bedroom. Warren and Ian asleep, so it’s late. Brian gives me a fright when I see from the hallway light he’s lying there in the dark with his eyes wide open. And in my clarity of vision I see something bad forming or formed in my brother, I see him even worse than the man I have just — voluntarily — been with. I see my mother in him and realise I don’t know him, I don’t know any of them, my brothers, and they don’t know me.

  Even in my wretched state this bothers me. That we should grow up in the same bedroom, the same life, and have shared only a now-gladly absent mother. Not our inner feelings. Not our reducing, taken innocence. No same fears and certainly not tears. But still I’m bothered. And beyond how my spying visit on my mother ended, beyond even that.

  Then for some reason I look down at my feet — and I nearly faint. For I’m not standing on anything, not floorboards, not in the comfortless shared bedroom. I’m standing on air. I — we — have no base.

  So with dark empty nothingness at my feet, I think I’m going to start falling and never stop — nothing to stop me. I am there, suspended above this chasm for a long time. It’s only my father’s footsteps that bring me back. He’s going to bed.

  Carefully strip off my wet clothes. I inch over to hit out the hallway light, the dark is a threat to then engulf me, my face tingles hot, my stomach is alive, but the light must go out or my brothers will wake up and accuse me at the same knowing time: You did it!

  Bed feels as though I’m sinking into a deep darkening ocean. Sheets clinging like Juice’s grip.

  Lie there still, brace the legs, the body muscles to stop from collapsing. But how can you collapse in your own bed lying down? Smell him on me, his body odour, his semen, the strong smell of his cock, his tobacco breath, his stinking predator existence — in my own bed, my own shared room with my three brothers, my father down there with his worried frown at how he’ll cope with bringing us up. Then Warren’s voice floats across the room.

  Did you see her? Yeah, I did. And? And what? You see anything? Yeah, she looked pretty happy. I thought she might.

  19

  Crouched he is, under the towering shadow and wei
ght of mighty totara tree, in his long-waiting mind estimating that this single life form weighs more than his generation of entire village and yet a single man could fell it. Which makes him more curious, thoughts of more churning than these circumstances should allow. As if he had heard Tamatea’s voice right beside him.

  All around they wait like him, fight-bright eyes in tattooed faces hidden amongst the dappled shadows of leafy concealment, warrior designs in nature’s designs, beasts perfectly adapted; behind rocks, weapons in hands or lain on the soft mossy ground; dry twigs placed along the path to give warning of enemy progress through its own forest territory, if not flurries of startled birds before that; perhaps the enemy will be talking, perhaps laughter of complacency will betray them, for who would think that here should be a trap, deep in their own territory?

  Up there at the highest vantage point on the bank, where the mightiest of all-around mighty trees had found, somehow, growth and formed a little platform as if the gods had decreed that whosoever should find this place should have nature as ally, Kapi had view of all he needed.

  His men were placed so they would pour down on the enemy like boiling containers of fat, with no escape available. And such was the narrowness of rocky passway that fighting back in the surprise of the moment would take longer than the time it would to kill them. And each end of the pass was readied with numerous men to spear the fleeing. It would be like a flock of birds, of fat wood pigeons in a cage trap.

  Through the day and into the late evening they had walked to this place. No man spoke, not one uttered word; each trod his inching responsibility to the battle cause as though over sharpest sea shells, or as if every footstep held a buried sharpened stake and every moment a hovered threat of taking away a man’s most precious possession, his mana. His mana, his mana, his mana-all. Better to be dead. To be dead than lose mana.

  He, the great warrior of supreme mana, had said it might require many days of waiting and therefore the discipline must be at its strongest; he warned that if any warrior should break for even one moment his discipline, by uninvited word or escaped cough or careless movement, he would be slain on the spot and his family slain upon their return. For this was the enemy tribe of much fighting mana and to take them in this way would elevate these victors to the gods. Even though he had told them his gourd was full to overflowing with victories.

  They brought food barely enough to last spare days, the better to fight on hungry stomachs; and garments of scant protection so as not to be encumbered. Anyrate, their staple diet of fat consumption put a layer of natural garment over fighting men, over all people in this bountiful but harshly peopled and variantly climated land. They could wait, they could endure. So long as the tohunga saw sign in the forest and bird and insect life that omened well and that he could signal silently as he moved assuringly amongst the men, which he did from time to time, and he ate not, so to show them the supreme way of high priest not in need of food nourishment but with spiritual comfort for them, the heroes who would soon bring home honour and added mana.

  Before he made his last report to the eldest son of the chief who was at home ill from a food sickness, the high priest came down to Kapi from the higher approach, making exact but coded bird call to signal the great warrior that he was coming lest he be mistaken for enemy.

  He crouched down before the strategically positioned man already of legend, and knew that he was before shrewder and more knowing eyes of his tohunga ways, they being the ways of slyest man, cunning man, contriving man; though they both knew how life gave men born roles and that the tohunga’s was one most necessary, even if of less substance than it claimed. Their eyes exchanged messages that said leave each to his role and so the people to their continuance. Let mana accumulate, let it endure, let one man protect the people’s spiritual integrity, the other its physical, fighting mana.

  Though this time the tohunga thought he saw a face different than the Te Aranui Kapi he knew. One that had progressed on from the man who had expressed disdain for this planned attack.

  But he showed no sign he had seen. He told of hearing a tui break forth in song not usually heard but only on occasions of good omen. He gave the call in perfect imitation. And when the great warrior only gazed and gave slightest incline of head, the tohunga gave away slightest questioning frown at Kapi’s countenance, for the warrior did not seem the same. But perhaps it was Kapi just not going to break his own rule of imposed silence, who was the tohunga even to think questioning him?

  Kapi inclined again that great head of his, but as if with a boulder weight. The troubled tohunga took his leave, in his heightened state alert for every tiniest little sign and omen, and decided to test what his eyes thought they saw as he made careful way down the bank; he turned to see where Kapi’s eyes were. And was startled.

  For they were eyes far from this place of pending battle, as a slave’s eyes go when he accepts his pending doom. Te Aranui Kapi, it could not possibly be true, was not in this place. Te Aranui Kapi was expecting — surely not — death?

  But not even a tohunga can dare speak of a great warrior showing alarming signs in mere body posture, in how his eyes look far away, even when they seem to be absent of fight. Aee, no! It cannot be! So he went beneath a fallen log and peeked up at the warrior: Aee! but it was so!

  But then again, how could he be sure? Many men know a little fear before battle, and why would they not? It is the outcome that counts and, anyway, fear is a great platform, it can put great spring in a man.

  So he went to the chief’s son representing the chief’s mana along with his earned own, and he told that the signs were well. Then he slipped away, as a tohunga’s role was over for now, but he went further than he might, out of sight even of the battle place. And he climbed a high tree where he composed from a configuration of possibilities what word and shaped meanings his skilled voice would give them. Included amongst those possibilities the impossible: Te Aranui Kapi was not what he once was.

  Now Kapi is huddled, he is huddled, and not from the cold even though it is; for he is with sweat dripping from him.

  The trees sing with birds, they and the floor and the air swarm with insect life, and to a highly trained sense there is presence of concentrated warrior life. With this warrior staring transfixed into the drips from his forehead forming a pool in his limp, open, best-fighting palm. He hears his own inner voice ask in confusion: Oh, what is happening to me? But it is with the weak tone of the defeated man. It could be a dog whimpering, an abject slave groaning for his mother.

  In the pool mirroring himself in the whole palm of his best hand stares back his tattoo markings; the pain of their doing is engraved more deeply, he sees the tattooist tohunga hammering and chiselling the marks, the exquisite designs of manhood, all over his face, in spirals and fern-leaf curls and cross-markings down the bridge of his nose; he remembers moments of the mind in so much pain that blackness threatened to overcome him, and how he had fought back from the darkness and stared eye-fixed at the old man causing the blackness and smiling; gladdening at the tattooist nodding approving, admiring tattooed features back. And a comforting chant had come from the tattooing priest, a refrain from the ages of manly enduring like this.

  His eyes go so deep into the pool of his fear it becomes a lake, or a still river, in which he sees a child’s face, a child’s head and tiny frail shoulders bobbing on the surface drowning. And smiling at him. He hears his voice strong now in question: What if a man knows fear when fear is not a permissible thought? When does innocence have a claim to be spared the doings of men? What is happening to me?

  This is what is happening: a man is being reduced.

  His seasons and seasons of battle-proven, long-practised muscles tried in one almighty effort to regain the inexplicably lost manhood: his brain commanded every instruction to his muscles that they should break free of these thoughts — but it was the same mind that his physical state came up against. He could not break free and so his eyes fell deeper in horri
fied gaze into the pool reflecting himself.

  All into the day this state continued. He fought to hold down the bile wanting to erupt from his heaving stomach, as much as he had fought anything, since it was his fundamental instruction from the body against fundamental instruction of his own mouth to his men, that no sound be made, not even smallest cough.

  So his eyes streamed with the effort, his body went into hot and cold shivers, the forest became like a scene from a cruel dreamscape, the birds sounded as shrieks and screams of drowning children and tormented mothers in accusation against him. But through it he knew he had not broken the silence.

  He held on to this as sign therefore that he would see this through. Perhaps he was with the same illness as afflicted the chief except got it worse? He prayed to Tu the God of War that the enemy not happen along whilst one of His sons was in this helpless state. And Tu seemed to hear him by strengthening that great concentration on holding back the bodily eruption. With Tu’s assistance Te Aranui Kapi willed himself. He willed himself, and his stomach held as if fastened down by the thickest forest vines.

  And the sun crossed its midway point, and still he held singularly to that picture of his unbreakable will.

  The afternoon went on; he heard vaguely the bird sound increase, but at least it was not in torment and accusation. He found words within himself, simple words to say that he must be the true and surely greatest warrior of all to have held his silence, the bile down, all this while.

  Then the twigs set along the pathway cracked and voices murmured. And the bile was worse than a man inside pushing upward with all his might. Worse than many men of great strength. And enemy voices spoke to each other. And there was violent terrific swelling in his stomach.