Fish of the Week

by Steve Braunias

  New Zealand, that outer reach of the Empire, is mentioned twice—glancing references to a butter campaign, and to the Queen’s recent five-week tour (‘Her Majesty’s triumphal progress’). And then the newspaper resumes its focus on home revelations: ‘Cars, with tubes from their exhausts, are to be used in Yampton to kill moles … A reaping machine cut the leg off a farm worker at Derby yesterday. He died … There will be 8,000,000 more eggs than usual this week.’

  And so on, the banal and the appalling, gathered together over seven days in the book of the dead. Creepiest of all, though, is the thought: whatever happened to the New Zealander who first opened up their overseas Mirror, and read about the man sleepwalking in Middlesex?

  [May 8]

  The Authors

  Everybody who is anybody in New Zealand writing will be at next week’s Auckland Writers and Readers literary festival, apart from Keri Hulme, Alan Duff, Bill Manhire, Brian Turner, Vincent O’Sullivan, David Eggleton, Paula Morris, Ian Wedde, Sam Hunt, Joy Cowley, Marilyn Duckworth, Cliff Fell, Kate Camp, Emily Perkins, Tom Scott and a few hundred others, but everybody else will be there. They include many new and established authors who will be there to launch fresh publications, or to discuss works in progress. Extracts have been made available to this column, and confirm the exciting developments in local writing.

  Published by Victoria University Press, Wet is the debut novel by Penelope Race, a recent graduate of Victoria’s famed creative writing programme. It reveals the exquisite sensitivities of a recent graduate of Victoria’s famed creative writing programme. From chapter four: ‘Dolores watched the rain falling softly as a cat on the mute pavement which stretched itself like a cat across the brooding city beneath a cat-soft sky full of distant thunder, which barked like a dog. Her father remarked, “It’s raining cats and dogs.” Dolores snapped, “You don’t understand me!” and took the first plane to London. She was headed for Bucharest.’

  Thanks to a Creative New Zealand grant of $58,000, Marjorie Wallace is completing a historical novel set in the Hutt Valley in the 1840s. From chapter one: ‘Eleanora took her petticoats out to the washing line, and sighed. Once again her divided heart ached with concern for her frail brother Robert—and raced with a hot want for the noble Te Rauparaha, whom she desired ever since that afternoon she saw the dusky chief buying an axe at the Petone hardware store. The two men were at war. War! O, thought Eleanora, what is it good for?’

  Specialist publisher Holloway Press is launching a limited edition of 125 numbered copies, printed on a Littlejohn cylinder proof press on Barcham Green India Office handmade paper damped for printing and quarter-bound in cloth with Canson Mi-Teintes paper-covered boards, of a previously unpublished note written in 1969 by James K. Baxter about a poem he had started but never finished. Five pages, $499.

  Published by Victoria University Press, The Initiation is the fourth novel by Louise Redknapp, a past graduate of Victoria’s famed creative writing programme. Set in Romania in 1862, and meticulously researched, it follows the moral collapse of an expatriate New Zealand wool baron. From chapter 19: ‘Wallace watched the drip, drop, drap of rain outside his window. He thought of the rain on the Rangiora plain. It fell differently there. Or did it? He was a long way from home. But where was home? He picked up the telephone and ordered raw herrings and an espresso from room service. “Achtung, Fritz!” he barked.’

  An extract is not yet available from Butch Wilkins, a new name on the literary scene who has applied for writer’s residencies at Auckland, Waikato and Otago Universities, the Sargeson fellow ship, the Katherine Mansfield award, the Berlin scholarship and the writer’s retreat in Foxton. He has a working title for a book he intends to write based on his sexual awakenings at a boy scout camp in the Tararua ranges, but is unsure whether to craft A Row of Puptents as a tender, erotic memoir and send it to Penguin, or to submit it to Longacre Press as a work of young adult fiction. He will be in attendance at the Auckland festival every day.

  Published by Auckland University Press and edited by Professor Peter Simpson, Along Tohunga Crescent is a collection of letters written by the late Allen Curnow and then hand-delivered across the road to his neighbour and friend, C.K. Stead. These entries are dated from 1993. July 10: ‘Karl, I couldn’t help but notice the latest copy of the Times Literary Supplement [TLS] in your letter box this morning. Forgive me but I have borrowed it for a short while. I felt the impulse too strong; I had a steely resolve; I was “wild with the iron that tears at the mail”!’ July 14: ‘Karl, excellent essay by Fenton on Auden in the TLS. You really must read it.’ July 19: ‘Karl, please find enclosed my latest poem. Come over later with a bottle of good Italian red and we’ll celebrate. Am peckish so would be partial to a pastry.’ July 24: ‘Dear baldy, I don’t appreciate your curt note re the TLS. It’s your own fault. What did the swan of Avon say? “Nor a lender be” I believe.’

  Published by Victoria University Press, Dry is the seventh novel by Cecilia Buttle, one of the first graduates of Victoria’s famed creative writing programme. The action moves imperceptibly from Europe in the Middle Ages to a future space colony on Mars. From chapter 28: ‘The dark Romanian night. A foot step. Stewed goat for dinner, again. Wind on cold stone, the heavy groan of distant bells. “When?” she asked. “Not now,” he said, and pinned a tail on the donkey. “Eee-awww,” it brayed. “Now?” she asked. He took off his helmet. Nothing happened for 900 years. She gazed at the red Martian day. “I wish it would rain,” she said.’

  [May 15]

  An Evening in Blackball

  The bright lights of Blackball, population nearly 400, were few and dim underneath a low, still fog on a Friday night in late autumn. I walked down the main street until it was completely dark, as black as the coal that built the town. I turned along a side street, and then another, and saw a couple sitting on chairs in their front yard. They had lit a small wood fire, and there was a pot of something on the flames. Hidden in the white mist and the dark, quiet night, I spied on them and thought: They look like the luckiest people in the world.

  This was probably sentimental nonsense. But the town was so pretty, with its willows and rowanberries, its glow-worms and keas, its drowsy and delicious smell of burning coal from every chimney. It was also tremendously friendly. You could say that about most small towns in New Zealand, but there is a particular quality of friendliness on the West Coast, formed by its distance, its seclusion—shut in by the shore of the Tasman and the wall of the Alps, with forests, marshes and vast nothingnesses in between. An empty country, an unpeopled land. Yes, it attracts tourists, but for much of the year a new face is an event. It was like that in Blackball when a convicted paedophile came to live, and when that particular quality of friendliness took on another shape.

  I was there on assignment. I came to inspect the town that got rid of a child abuser. The local butcher and the local pub owner knocked on his door, advised him to leave, and he did. Hours after he drove away, a vigil formed outside his house to discourage him from returning, and he didn’t. The house is for sale, the curtains are drawn. Inside the garage, there was a handwritten lyric—he had said he was a musician who played the guitar and sang—for a famous country and western lament called ‘Honky Tonk Angels’. Second verse: ‘God didn’t make honky tonk angels / I should have known that you’d never make a wife.’ He was seen in Blackball with his wife. She was thought to be a deaf mute—he spoke with her in sign language. A married paedophile who played the guitar and spoke in sign language and who lasted three weeks in a small town before being run out: this was another kind of ballad.

  He had breached his parole when he moved into town. The police told the school, the school told the parents. Out of curiosity I went to the school—somewhat nervously; I was a stranger roaming the playground—just as a fat boy waddled outside and pulled on a rope to ring the bell for home time. There were two classrooms, a murder house, and a menu listing misspelled hot food from the tuck shop: ‘Potatoe fritters, 50 cents.�
�� Mums came to pick up their darlings: ‘Campbell! Come here! Don’t do that! Campbell! Hurry up! Don’t throw stones!’

  Life had returned to normal. Children had stayed off the streets when it became known a paedophile had moved in; now they were riding bikes, mooching, and two had climbed a tree and had great fun bashing at rotten branches. The mist covered the hills, and trailed the Grey River, Blackwater Creek, Moonlight Creek. The willows wore red, the oaks wore yellow. There was a general store, a hotel, a shop selling salami, a pub on the corner. I spent a lot of time in the pub. It was my command post; I only call it that because I like the term, which I had learned from hearing that the vigil, which lasted for three days and nights outside the paedophile’s house, was referred to as the Stafford St Command Post.

  There was a sign in the pub above the men’s toilet that read HOG SWAMP. There was a poster advertising local boxer Eric Briggs, ‘the West Coast Tattooed Man’, who runs a lawnmowing business. I played pool, I stood and drank, I was shown what sphagnum moss looks like by a fellow who wanders into swamps and harvests the stuff with a pitchfork, I sat and drank. I thought: I could do this for the rest of my life. In short, I got steadily drunk, mostly with a top bloke and former Greymouth punk called Rotten (so nicknamed because of the mohawk he kept under his woollen hat) and vaguely recall shaking hands with his mate, a guy called Liquid (I assume he was so nicknamed for the usual reasons) who lived in a house lit only by candlelight.

  Cheers to Rotten, and cheers to Dougal, Dion, Pat and Jane, Geoff and Debbie. They lived there; I was passing through, a drunk inspector, fed on salami and watered with Monteiths. They stayed on, in the mist and with the willows and the smell of coal; I filed my story for the Sunday paper on the hotel balcony on Saturday morning and fled to catch a plane, away from a town so pretty and quiet, away from a town where a man and his wife were told to leave and never come back, away from Blackball, population unlikely to ever, at this rate, reach 400.

  [June 5]

  Many Returns, Happily

  During a slow news day last year, I made the front page of The New Zealand Herald. It was vaguely dramatic, and vaguely accurate—I was identified as ‘a prominent journalist’. It was a story about how I had fallen foul of the law. The maximum penalty for my crime spree was a term of six months’ imprisonment. Nothing much happened—I’m still at large—but the story reminds me that I really ought to get around to setting out a range of gift ideas for my upcoming birthday.

  The report gave my age as thirty-nine. Again, this was only vaguely accurate, but I believe everything I read in the paper. And so, on the occasion of apparently reaching the grand old age of forty this week, I have thoughtfully listed some things I’d like, and which readers may wish to provide. I certainly don’t expect anyone to comply, but as a gentle hint the address is P.O. Box 1409, Auckland. Remember: generosity makes the world a better place.

  A meatpack. I have travelled the length of the country buying up raffle tickets in the hope that I might one day win a meat pack, and yet never won so much as a sausage. Last year, when I bleated about this disappointment in a column for another magazine, a kind man called David Slack tried to help. Slack is an author, and also has the misfortune of writing a blog. He offered his Public Address readers a superb range of T-shirts adorned with the graphic that illustrated my weekly column; all proceeds would go towards buying me as many meatpacks as my fridge would allow. I cried happy tears—but my then employers acted quickly to close down his offer, saying that the graphic was in breach of copyright. Bah. I was so close to a free steak and a free chop and all the rest of nature’s red bloom, and yet so far. Readers now have an opportunity to put matters right.

  An axe. I have three talents. The most practical is lighting fires, but I really could do with a new axe, or a new—this is one of the best words ever invented—tomahawk. Chopping up wood is one of life’s great pleasures. The dull, stubborn thunk when a blow only gives the wood a headache; the slick, whooshing thwack when the wood is executed. There is a pleasing mental soundtrack, too, because tearing wood apart often puts you in mind of someone who might have done you a disservice—bank managers, lawyers, former employers, etc. The other great virtue of an axe or a tomahawk is that they look so good: the sensual curve of the handle; the cutting edge of the blade. Readers wishing to donate an axe or tomahawk can be assured I will put it to good use, and that I will also exhibit it on my wall. Possibly.

  Nivea products. Man can very nearly live on meat and axes alone, but there comes a time when he has to impress upon the womenfolk that he is a smooth beast. I favour Nivea products. A couple of years ago, I wrote a column setting out ideas for gifts I’d like for Christmas; among them were Nivea deodorant, moisturiser, shaving gel and aftershave. A nice woman who handled Nivea’s PR account subsequently sent me the full range. I’ve just about run out of everything though, and could do with more. Please.

  A full-length wool coat from Keith Matheson. I know the one I want. It costs about $890. All I’m saying here is that men’s outfitters Keith Matheson might want to consider the benefits of clothing a notorious criminal and prominent journalist, who is often seen in bars and restaurants, at openings and launches, and Black socks. I don’t know why buying socks as a present gets such bad press. Socks are the best friend a naked foot can have; socks are the thin line that comes between you and your shoes. New research shows that many of the great figures in history have worn socks. Jesus would have worn socks had they not clashed with sandals.

  A TV commercial. I am contributing to a new television series directed by Paul Casserly and presented by Jeremy Wells. They are trying to track down the film of a famous TV commercial made some time in the 1980s for a kind of mince pastry, in which the actor, who may have been Japanese, says the hilarious line: “Frying saucer!” Can anyone help? It may alter the course of television comedy, and race relations.

  Notebooks and pencils. I will be a familiar figure in the corridors of power and on the election trail this year. Politicians will know they are up against a powerful and confident journalist when they smell my Nivea products and admire my Keith Matheson coat, but they will get away with murder if I have run out of the favoured tools of my trade—a Warwick 3B1 notebook, and a Staedtler 110 HB pencil. Readers wishing to make an informed decision on the democratic process will need the kind of reporting I can offer. You, too, could be part of the story. For a small price. Remember: generosity makes the world a better governed place.

  [June 19]

  A Visit to London

  London in summertime is a light that almost never goes out. I have just returned from a week in the great capital, where I very nearly suffered from the rare state of darkness deprivation. For the first few jet-lagged days, I was sound asleep before night fell at about five past ten, and wide awake when dawn broke at ten to four.

  It was a city caught in soft light, upon the gluggy Thames, all over the green and pleasant parks, climbing the length of Nelson’s column, wedged into every side street (Jamaica Road, Cavendish Square)—no one was home, everyone was out and about; apparently there were bad ratings even for a remarkable new TV chat show called 18 Stone of Idiot.

  We all think of the English seeking the sun in Ibiza, on the Costa del Sol, in the south of France. But that traffic also goes the other way: London was full of European tourists, their hands twitching over fold-out maps of the Underground, their sensual mouths shaping words in French and Spanish and Italian, although the most common foreign accent was Russian—the biggest spenders in England, in order, are Arabs, Americans and Russians. I bought British Isles tea towels. The Arabs tended to buy shops (Harrods); the Russians went for football clubs (Chelsea). As always, the heart ran its own expense account: by the end of the week, when I was able to stay awake for the comfort of night, I sat in a bar called Tsar at 2 a.m. while a beautiful Russian girl, alone at the next table, wept miserable tears into her mobile phone. I asked, ‘Are you all right?’ She said, ‘I am doubt.’

&nbs
p; New Zealanders, too, were everywhere. We were on television—a documentary about the Mongrel Mob, and an 11 p.m. show called Naked in New Zealand. We were teaching—at Victoria Station, a Maori party instructed commuters to perform a haka. We were in bookstores—New Zealand journalist Garth Cartwright’s Princes Amongst Men: Journeys with Gypsy Musicians had just been published by Serpent’s Tail, and was receiving excellent reviews. We were in art galleries—a photo exhibition of Bloomsbury starred Katherine Mansfield, looking, as Lytton Strachey approvingly described her to Virginia Woolf, ‘sufficiently mysterious’.

  But that show was in the posh end of town. On a whim, I caught the tube to Whitechapel, birthplace of the Salvation Army. The poor will always be with Whitechapel. There was a welcoming sign at street level: ‘Warning. Muggers operate in this area.’ It was market day, it was cheap and cheerful, it was baffling and exotic. At a lingerie stall I had to fight off two women wearing burkas to buy a black négligée. ‘I saw it first!’ I told these lewd daughters of Islam, who finally backed off, their eyes—well, what else?—blazing. At a suitcase stall, I listened to an African woman on her mobile phone: ‘How is your wife? … Eric. Why you go quiet when I ask how is your wife?’ Eric, perhaps, was doubt.

  Opposite the market was the grim Royal London Hospital, built in 1740. Some of the original patients shuffled across the road in bandaged paws and tattered dressing gowns to buy half-price packets of cigarettes from an Arab on a street corner. I saw two other white people. One had MFC tattooed on his forehead and said, ‘Out the farking way.’ The other slept in a gutter with a can of White Lightning. It was the end of Empire, it was olde pubs—Grave Maurice, King Rodney’s Head—converted into shops selling saris, it was a man chanting the Koran outside an Almes House built in 1695 by a Captain Mudd for ‘decay’d masters and commanders and widows of such’.