Both Sides of the Moon

by Duff, Alan

  Then his blurring vision caught head and shoulder movement down there on the rock-flanking pathway. His lifetime, his only universe of training told him a single word: Fight!

  But his fighting hands remained limp. And the sweat returned, pouring from him. And his stomach heaved, it heaved and heaved and the muscles cramped and contorted, and he fought more mightily against himself than any proud battle with actual enemy. But still he could not hold back that which is stronger than him.

  So the base of the mighty tree, with its single weight being more than an entire village, spurted forth with yellow from a man no longer one. The forest might as well have reverberated with huge sounded warning-like alarm calls blasted by many sentries through sea shells. Then he, Te Aranui Kapi, was running. (He was running.)

  20

  It was a war that had these men gathering at the Waiwera Arch of Remembrance. They wore black Maori Battalion blazers decorated with battalion badges, some chests bore medals, and all were with colour-code service stripes and each caught from time to time in the dazzle of arriving vehicle headlights.

  War had made them, though it had left many buried on foreign soil. War has long been the best making of man and men, so often what they measure themselves by. Again here, at another Anzac Dawn Parade, under the archway to the bridge over the river mixed with trickled warm waters from thermal baths natural pools and lakes in this pre-dawn with a hill-line hint of greying light.

  This side of the river with coughings and throat-clearings and male murmurs and soft chuckle in the dark; the other side its thermal noising: together a joined symphony, a link, a union between men and the steamy, providing earth that cannot be broken.

  A bugle called out of the dark; mournful piped sound, a rasping crudely worded metal voice given beauty by simple tune, found in the ineffable notes of men’s tears, the basic tune of men’s hearts, war-remembering men listening to the Last Post, the notes reaching across the water divide on this their day. A day when war is allocated but a formal ceremony of recall, having made call of men about once a generation.

  This year it was a sky not of stars but air of April autumn mist come up from the river, joined with waftings of steam. Air heavy, though, with men in rising emotional states now that that bugle called across the river from where the steam never stops rising.

  And when the bugle stopped, men could be heard sniffing, and there was rustle of clothing, of hands wiping at eyes and then the rustle of arms moving to military attention, of a sort, and then it became formal, when someone called out in a commanding voice: ’Ten-shun! bringing several hundred arms snapping smartly to stiffness.

  There were men of both races from all over the town, hosted by the Waiwera men, the women doing cheerful breakfast-preparation duty in the communal dining hall beyond, proud of their men clustered in a much-practised grouping right under the archway with the bronze plaques bearing their dead brothers and cousins and comrades’ names. Here was building emotion wanting release; hundreds of them, returned servicemen, citizen dignitaries and ordinary townsfolk come to pay respects, to remember war as they believe it should be — with pride.

  An opening prayer spoken in Maori, by a Maori Anglican minister with rich voice in flowing white robes, himself too young to have fought but chosen for reasons known better to men who arrange these affairs; God’s words to men stood with heads bowed, even unbelievers, what bold few there were against inherited Christian tradition. When men’s words keep failing, there are always the words of God that man ascribes to Him.

  And when God’s words were through they let them echo a little on the tiniest of breeze, and in their minds and less-rigid stance, until the struggling glow of dawn became more a tinge of whitish light in a thin horizontal line to begin the new day. It gave wan light behind the big man at the front of the group of other big men, the war boys of Waiwera, only a few were small and wiry, and fewer as prepossessing as Henry Te Amo, despite his peace years adding bulk and an expanding paunch. All eyes were to him, but he kept them waiting until the sky was with more light, enough to see men’s features and know that they were friend and ally and fellow townsfolk and all in a state of emotion trying to hold the line.

  Henry Te Amo lifted a dark-blazered arm and counted softly, two-three-four: and they, a self-selected group of Waiwera returned servicemen, sang as one about what they had endured, what lives it had claimed, what experience it had been, of God’s word —what else?

  They sang Come Unto Me in perfect harmony, meaning God, meaning unto all and every man, gathered or sleeping (or huddled somewhere, lost, afraid, in any time of these men, or past times for those who would remember that far back). Their voices were surely reaching the hills where the sun was threatening to break, they rang out to the ramshackle dwellings across the water, to the government programme residences at the listeners’ backs: Come Unto Me — when …

  And listeners gasped at the several dozen singers in such same timing and dramatic pause, at how they broke off that last word in a held-back breath and then let it go, like the finished child into the world.

  They sing on: Shadows softly gather. And — when. That breaking and letting go again. Resuming their harmonised hymn, singing of sad hearts that cry, resonating of tenderer man, more tender than men can feel in war, men reached of an idealistic, musical high rather than reflecting the reality of war embroil. They were telling all, telling selves, to come unto Him, (or he or she, just anyone of love) listen to them now, hear them wherever you may be. Come Unto Me. And I will give you love.

  21

  Back in another time where war had never stopped raging and hardly ever knew tenderer feeling, when warrior men might sing softly of higher things, concepts greater than even battle deed, mightier than their mere fighting ways, the people were enraged. This could not be.

  But not for so very long, one of their number discarded her horror and gave spreading impression that she at least was taking shape from this; hope made a light in her eyes. So Tangiwai’s anguish was first to ebb now that the tohunga was at last finished with his tale, of the war party in utter defeat, lying that he had seen the signs and warned Kapi and warned the chief’s son but that they had been so with the call of war they could not hear another to be leaving it.

  The people, other than Tangiwai Kotuku, began that mystical internal process of will surrender, of giving all of life’s expectations, even these simple and basic times, to another fate. Resignation swept through them like a silent but deeply cold wind.

  Being the tohunga, the keeper of his tribe’s sacred and special and exceptional knowledge, he had full knowledge of the trapped trail back up the hill. He had heard, he told them, their men being taken captive, at first they had resisted but quickly they came over with that abject, submissive way of subjugated warrior, and so it must be assumed that the way of safe ascent up their pathway would be pieced together if enough were captured and kept alive to gain the knowledge.

  Indeed, the tohunga had heard an enemy voice of authority making offer to spare lives if they surrendered in return the way through the trapped route. And those family members of pathway knowledge let out with groaning, dismaying cries insisting it would not be one of their family.

  But every person knows this is posture, to preserve family honour even when it has been dishonoured, and understandably so. The proving would be if the enemy breached these walls and by then denial would be as meaningless as acceptance.

  Someone cried out asking who was responsible for this calamity. And someone dared to suggest it could only be one of two men: the chief’s son or the tribe’s most venerated warrior, Kapi.

  Kapi! they all cried in unison. It is Kapi whose leadership destroyed them! It being incomprehensible that it should be the son of the venerated chief of highest blood lineage who’d let his people down. But the chief himself was not so impulsive of judgement that he didn’t call the people to silence: Let our tohunga speak.

  The tohunga told of hearing the enemy make first cry of
triumph when it should have been doomed surprise; he told of those captive men able to give instruction to the way around the traps. Meaning the impossible must surely happen, that enemy presence would be amongst these people, enemy feet would be treading in murderous rampage on this sacred ground — Kapi! Aeee, it is Kapi!

  The chief could have been expected to thunder his rage to yonder plains beyond these fortified walls. But he remained unwell, and anyway his heart was broken, or near to, at his eldest son probably dead but pray not be captive, that would be too much to bear, and this was a time beyond formalised posturing and ritualised speeching. It might, some could see it in his eyes, indeed be the end.

  Chief said: First, O Priest, enter the name Te Aranui Kapi into your great memory storage house, as he who has failed his people like no other in our proud history. For if none other lives then it shall be you, great man of vast knowledge, who shall carry this reviled name into history. You shall take it into our blood-related tribes — if they will have you now. But you must use all your wile to gain new belonging even though you have none to offer but our greatest, most incomprehensible shame. Soon you must hurry away to keep your — our — knowledge safe and that name burning forever in our lore, even should you have to start a tribe anew if — the chief paused, the people held their collective breath — if none other shall live.

  So feelings grew more anguished, and some were unashamed to be in fear of the coming reduced status to slaves or cooking corpses in enemy hangi pits. In the trees it seemed they heard an evil spirit shriek that their end was nigh.

  The chief first ordered that all slaves be killed before they became enemy ally with the invaders. But then he changed his mind and commanded that they be turned out, and if they could make their way down the trap-laden pathway then let perhaps one remember that a kind of mercy had been granted them in this their captors’ last.

  He ordered the sentries to keep sharpest look out for enemy; told the tohunga to take his wife, his children and make fast their escape. Tohunga made tears most miserable, and did not seek to depart with any but his vast head of knowledge, fixed knowledge, and wife and five children at his side. And they made for the secret opening beside the latrine at the far wall.

  The chief looked toward the trenches running into formed tunnels of water-smoothed wood to give no grip, which fell at an angle to slide a body, a weight, out into eternity, on the rocks below. He looked at these ingenious, long-ago diggings and plannings signifying greatest pride that a tribe should surrender its own life entirely rather than surrender pride to slave captivity, and nodded that now was the time for their use.

  He made praise to the ancestors for their foresight, their infallible wisdom in providing like this, that the people’s mana might stay true even to their very end. And the people understood, for they nodded almost as one in assent. The chief gave their thoughts words: Better to put all ourselves to death than live as slaves destined for the enemy ovens, cleaning latrines, existence without mana, spat on by enemy children, loathed by enemy women, despised by enemy old men. And the people made subdued assent and internally prepared for a rare time outside of collective thinking on the journey to the spiritworld in this long-ago planned way.

  But then a woman spoke up. Tangiwai. Lover of the now-defiled Te Aranui Kapi. And some threw hatred of him at her. Tangiwai asked: Are we to plunge ourselves to eternal death? Surely it is better to live like the outcasts, of whom we have always been in contempt lest it be ourselves dwelling in their shadows and unwanted places of lowly giving land?

  Outcasts? Outcasts? Lest they be ourselves? What manner of speaking is this! Outcasts? The word echoed as though it had been spoken in a vast chamber, a huge dark cave: Outcasts — we?

  An old warrior roared: I will kill you now, woman, for uttering such words! I will anyway kill you for carrying the coward Kapi’s seed in your body! And he strode for her, his eyes near popping from their sockets in murderous outrage, aloft his wooden-hacking weapon to enter this heretic’s skull.

  But then the chief cried out — Desist! Tai hoa, old warrior! You are too old to be headstrong, and supposedly too wise to make decision with your heart. He turned to Tangiwai: Speak more, good woman, Tangiwai Kotuku.

  And she was of the slender graceful form of the bird whose family name she carried, but of strong stature too, beneath the beauty and the fine glowing skin, it was carved in her face like an uninked tattoo, it bore in her proudly raised tattooed chin, it had shown early sign when she was only an infant. She was woman, like many women of this village: quietly and discreetly dispensing womanly wisdom to men’s ears so that matters of importance might get another perspective.

  Her voice rang out: None of even our related tribes would accept us. They would fear that our failure is a disease they could catch. Their laughter, their mockery, their contempt of us their own would be worse than any death. But-I-am-not-ready-to-die! A dead people live only in fading memories and in enemy’s oral tales of contempt. A dead people cannot all go, as one, killed of themselves to the spiritworld of far-away Hawaiiki — Huh! Our waiting ancestors, our shamed tupuna would not let us enter! But a people who cast themselves out because they have only this other self-ending choice, surely they do so with a remnant of former pride still intact — if they will it so? If every person who decides here that we shall not stay outcast forever.

  Before they could consider that dreaded word again she produced from beneath her skirt a bone club, a mere, and shook it at the old man who had threatened her. Come at me, old warrior, and I will kill you before I allow any man to take away my free will, my desire to live to fight another day! The old warrior moved not.

  Then she asked the people: Choose life as an outcast who can be redeemed, rather than death as a failed people, surely it is far better, surely?

  Her question rang out amongst her people. Though most were already heading into that state of mind that gives up on a life without mana. She addressed them again: Outcasts! You are in your minds, your broken hearts wailing at the thought of being outcasts …? Outcasts?

  If they are of such shame of existence, why have they so often appeared like defiant, taunting ghosts, stood on yonder hill across the low-plant plains mocking our warriors returning from battle victory, with bared buttocks and their hideous laughter of seeming madmen? Is that not pride of a kind?

  How porangi must they be if they have managed to stay alive, to keep themselves, to throw their taunts at superior warriors yet at a distance clever enough to avoid capture or death? Are they an enslaved caste of people? Or just cast-outs? I tell you we would impose our own rules, inflict our own influence upon them.

  An older woman stepped forth, who had given birth to many fine warrior sons and two of her last now gone in this catastrophic foray, and she was beckoning, urging with slightly skin-sagging outstretched arms. Look at me! she commanded. Look-at-me!

  And she lifted her flaxen waist garment and exposed herself. Look! she cried. Menfolk, feast your eyes on even this one no longer able to give my husband children before he was taken by war. Look at it and yourselves, menfolk, if even an older one of these is better than none at all!

  No need to ask what every man has answer for. Some heads lifted, as if with renewed hope. Hariana dropped her skirt. She ripped away her top garment to reveal full but sagging breasts. If you have but just these for comfort, would you decline their offer? I am asking you — She is telling you! Tangiwai chimed in. Hariana and I conjoined are telling you, o people, that old vagina and sagging breasts are better comfort than the eternal cold of shamed death.

  Now the people were starting to turn. But just then a sentry cried out that flocks of birds were in progressive startled risings from forest trees below. Tangiwai’s eyes grew bright like fire-heated stones ready for the oven. She pointed. There. There, she repeated and every eye was there. The escape route, the only one. Or there, she pointed at the trenches that turned to the suicide tunnels. Which one is it to be? And she stood rigid, not making
own decision but letting the will of the people decide. It was only fitting that the chief spoke once more.

  My people, he said, Tangiwai and Hariana are right: the better to live free as outcasts than dead as a failed people extinct like the moa, like the now-rare huia may be coming. And he dropped his head as they might have expected. So I am commanding you to take that escape route. And I, and those who wish to stay with me, shall remain here so that my name and that of the ancestors who carried it proudly before me shall live on with pride. But let not too many die with me, or what hope for the future generations of clawing your way back out from being an outcast people? Let no young fighting man without giving me truest reason offer to stay with me. Or I will kill him with my own hand for willing waste of his people’s mana.

  They could hear the yelling of the traitorously directed enemy already in triumph as they came up the hill. Which was why several family members of those who had a privileged section of path knowledge stepped over to where the chief stood, to take responsibility.

  Here now chief in his finest last partition of time, not divided by made mechanisms but by sun movement, was more proud and erect than usual, his wife having draped his finest ancestral feather cloak over his broad shoulders and appropriately they were nature’s feather clothing of the rare huia, and words pouring forth from him that his departing people might absorb and carve into memory and oral legend. He sang waiata that spoke of giving speed to fleeing legs and strength to their vengeance-taking hands another day, perhaps another generation. The morning was almost over. Life and lives, they have always been so. His wife and two daughters stood beside him, of love enduring. And others gave forth of reason to their chief for staying and he gave nod or head shake, and so the people divided into their chosen and choiceless fates.