Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  He hung up and Libby stared at her open palm where she held the tangi-wai stone that Mahina had found at Anita Bay. She had kept it with her ever since she discovered it still lying on the dressing table. Getting up, she wandered outside where snow lay along the branches of the trees and not a single bird was singing. She hugged her arms to her chest, closed her eyes and imagined him standing there with her. The ache lifted against her breast and she had to fight the sobs that rose in her throat.

  She phoned Steve Watson at the Marine Studies Centre in Dunedin and arranged to see him the following day. Watson was in the lab when she got there and they went through to the lecture area where a TV and video was set up. He watched the film and his jaw dropped.

  ‘My God, that’s fantastic.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘Who was with you?’

  ‘John-Cody Gibbs.’

  Watson frowned then. ‘Hey, I’m really sorry about that. I heard you two were an item.’

  ‘We were, yes. Well, about to be. Yes, you can say we were.’

  ‘I’ve met him a few times. There are very few people who have done more to protect Fiordland. He’s a good man, Libby.’

  ‘It’s a pity the immigration authorities didn’t think so.’

  ‘I heard he was wanted by the FBI.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘Not any more?’

  She shook her head. ‘He phoned from Seattle yesterday. They cleared him, pardoned him, whatever. Anyway the slate is clean now.’

  ‘Legally? You mean officially?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Libby stared at him. ‘Why?’

  Watson got up and switched off the TV. He ejected the video and passed it back to her. ‘This is worth money, Libby. I’d say a lot of money. Either by sale to a TV company or on the lecture circuit, both maybe.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Have you considered what you’re going to do?’

  ‘Right now?’ Libby nodded. ‘I’m going to prove there’s a resident pod of dolphins in Dusky Sound.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘Use whatever I make from the tape to fund an acoustic model.’

  ‘Of Dusky?’

  ‘And Doubtful: if they put hotels in one, they’ll put them in the other.’

  Watson furrowed his brow. ‘That’ll take years.’

  ‘Perhaps, but that’s my plan.’

  He sat down again and folded his arms. ‘Libby, there’s something I need to tell you. I’m leaving the university. I’ve been offered a post with the World Wide Fund for Nature.’

  ‘That’s great, Steve. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He pushed his glasses higher up his nose. ‘It means there’s a vacancy here now: head of cetacean research. Ph.D. required, of course.’ He smiled at her then. ‘I don’t know what you think but I reckon I’m looking at the best possible candidate.’

  ‘My work’s in Fiordland, Steve.’

  ‘I know. But you’ve done more work on dolphin communication than anyone I’ve ever met, Libby. Not only that, you know more about baleen whales than I ever will. The university would benefit hugely from you being part of the team.’

  ‘Would I get the job?’

  ‘Of course you would. You know that already. They want continuity and a smooth transition. You would provide both.’

  ‘But why would I want it?’

  Watson looked closely at her then. ‘For two reasons, I think.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘Number one, you could administer the acoustics study from here if you brought in the funds to do it: and you’ve already told me you can do that.’

  ‘And number two?’

  ‘You could apply for New Zealand residency. Citizenship eventually if you wanted it.’

  Libby looked up sharply.

  ‘That means your husband could as well,’ Watson went on. ‘If he was of good character and had no criminal record.’

  Libby stared at him. ‘I’m not married, Steve.’

  ‘No, you’re not, are you?’

  Kobi drove to Te Anau with Jonah.

  ‘Where does that joker Pole live these days?’ he asked.

  Jonah looked sideways at his father. ‘By the golf course. Why?’

  ‘Take me there, would you?’

  ‘Ned Pole’s house?’

  ‘Yeah, Ned Pole’s house.’

  Jonah turned off the main road and trundled down the track to Pole’s house. His red and silver twin cab was parked in the drive and Kobi looked at his son as they pulled up.

  ‘Just leave me here, Jonah. Ned’ll drive me back to Manapouri.’

  ‘You sure, Dad?’

  ‘Course I’m bloody sure. Go on with you.’ Kobi struggled out of the car and straightened his back. He stood leaning on his cane and watched as Jonah turned the car around then headed down the drive. When he was gone Kobi surveyed the log-style house.

  Pole watched from where he was dumping hay into the feeders for the horses in the barn. They were stabled for the winter and Barrio kicked at his door in anticipation of eating. Pole did not hear him; his attention was fixed on the wizened old man who shuffled towards the house. Kobi Pavaro, Mahina Pavaro’s father: he hadn’t set eyes on him in twenty years, but he would recognize that face anywhere. For a moment he leaned on the stable door. Then Barrio kicked again and the impact jarred his bones.

  ‘Enough,’ he snapped and tossed hay into the feeder.

  Kobi heard him shout from where he stood in the yard and he looked across at the barn and waited. Moments later Pole appeared in the doorway and the two men regarded each other.

  Kobi cleared his throat. ‘I want to speak to you, Pole.’

  Pole walked towards him, silently thanking God that Jane had gone back to the States for a few days. He looked at Kobi’s bent back and Kobi looked at him.

  ‘Kobi,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long time. Good to see you.’

  The old man’s eyes were pale slits. ‘Is it? You may not think so when you’ve heard what I’ve got to say.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  POLE STARED AT THE old man as he spoke: Kobi’s voice soft, barely louder than a whisper but with a sense of menace that chilled Pole to the bone. Kobi was diminutive and frail but his eyes were like razors and his words cut to the quick. Pole looked beyond him, beyond the lower paddock to the copse of manuka, and he was back in the bush cutting entrails from a deer ready for the helicopter.

  The sound of somebody approaching came to him long before he saw them: he had spent two years with special forces in Vietnam and lying hidden in jungle while detecting any approach was his business. He could tell the person was barefoot by the way the sound lifted from the forest floor, softer than booted feet, the sticks straining before they broke, a subtlety not noticed by the untrained ear. He looked through the branches, saw a flash of naked skin and his throat slowly tightened.

  Silently he watched now, sweat on his face as she moved between the beech trees, the staggered growth of fuchsia, supplejack like lianas strung across the forest. She moved with care and poise, disturbing no leaf in her passing; she eased aside a crown fern and paused to watch a yellowhead. Birds called around her as if they knew who she was and her presence was as natural as their own. She was Maori, not yet nineteen and naked as the day she was born.

  She was heading straight for him and Pole crouched, aware of the deer’s blood on his hands and arms, matting the hair to the elbow. He was aware of the scent of death, the black vacuum in the eye of the stag he had brought down with a single shot. Little bubbles of blood crusted the deer’s lips and Pole looked from their blackness to the black of the girl’s hair: Mahina Pavaro, John-Cody Gibbs’s new girlfriend.

  His eyes bunched as that truth hit him. Pole had coveted Mahina; wanted her from the first moment he saw her in the bush, naked as she was now. That had been three years ago. She had been roaming around like this since she was fifteen and he had seen her often, had been a silent witness content just to watch her with a tightening in his throa
t and a stirring in his jeans. Never once had he thought of allowing her to see him, knowing how wary she would be in the future if she thought someone was watching. But he knew the paths she trod and when he was with the helicopter crew he made sure he was the one to drop into the bush to hook up the fallen carcasses.

  He was married and he had a son and often when he watched her he thought of his wife, and when he did guilt clouded like fine mist in his head. But that guilt had eased of late: since Eli was born his wife’s interest in him had diminished to all but nothing. As if she had desired his presence inside her to procreate and no more: she was fertile, she had her child and Pole felt more and more marginalized within his own family. But he had these secret times when he watched Mahina and in his heart he loved her, wanted and desired her. Yet he had remained content just to watch, till that last time in Gaer Arm when he was after a stag and his hunt had been disturbed by the sound of a dinghy on the Camelot estuary. Curiosity brought him to the clearing and the waterfall and his world caved in when he saw her naked with John-Cody Gibbs.

  Those thoughts haunted him while he hid behind a rock as she stood ankle deep in ice water and stripped off shorts and T-shirt, not for him, but for Gibbs. And Gibbs had taken her, not just then but for ever. In that moment she was lost to him: and that loss served only to deepen the darkness he walked in at home.

  And yet there she was, moving into the clearing and heading straight for him: he could see her between the ferns and secondary growth trees, a glimpse of thigh and stomach, of black pubic hair shadowy under her belly. If she kept on this path she would step on him. Closer and closer she came. He caught sight of her breasts, her full dark nipples; he watched the way her hair washed against her shoulders as she ducked between the trees. Just a few more feet and she would see him. There was no way to avoid it now. He crouched a moment longer then stood up from his hiding place over the fallen deer.

  Mahina jumped back with a cry: shock in her eyes then fear. They stood there a moment, Pole looking down at her, so much taller, throat working as the lust grew in his eyes. He said nothing, just looked on like an animal and then slowly, blood encrusting his fingers, he reached out and touched her. Mahina recoiled, trying to cover her nakedness. From somewhere above them a falcon shrieked. Pole gripped Mahina’s shoulder, fingers pinching her flesh. He bent and tried to kiss her.

  Mahina jerked her head away, writhing under his grip: her foot caught in some roots and she toppled over. Now Pole stood above her and his hands hung loosely at his sides, blood still drying on them, blood on the side of his face where he had wiped away sweat. The sun peeped between the tops of trees and shone on the smooth darkness of Mahina’s skin. She wriggled back on the forest floor, thighs rubbing against each other. He just stood there gazing down on her, didn’t move, didn’t speak, tongue swollen inside his mouth. Again the falcon shrieked, closer this time, and again he ignored it. Mahina tried to get up but fell back a second time and Pole dropped to his knees beside her. He grasped her hand, but she lashed out and began to thrash with her legs. The movement exposed her further and Pole’s eyes dulled. He held her ankle with one hand, the other on her thigh, a crude rough stroking, fingernails like a claw.

  The falcon hit him with the force of a punch, a stinging pain at his left eye. He threw up both arms to protect himself and saw the bird beating the air with steel-blue wings and screeching at him. Mahina rolled away, got to her feet and disappeared into the bush. The falcon dive-bombed Pole again and he flailed at her with his fists. Only then did he see her nest scraped under a ledge at his feet.

  The spell was broken and his heart thumped his ribs. He leaped to his feet and called after Mahina.

  She ran naked through the bush, the sound of Pole’s voice echoing across the valley, the fingers of beech trees scraping her flesh. She ran blindly, hands out in front of her, down the hill, crashing through the undergrowth, then she heard him coming after her. A scream lifted in her throat but she stifled it and ran on, ducking through the trees, stumbling on roots and fallen twigs, feet sucked by mud and soaking vegetation. She ran and she ran. She ran until she saw water glinting beyond the final tree line and all she could think about were her clothes and her boat and just getting away.

  ‘Mahina.’ Again he called from behind her. ‘Mahina, wait. I didn’t mean anything. Wait. You’ve got it wrong. Wait.’

  But she hadn’t got it wrong and she ran and stumbled, face scratched by branches, nicks in her naked flesh, cold though sweat covered her body.

  Pole stumbled blindly, fear and panic and sudden self-loathing welling up in his breast. What was he thinking of? What on earth was he doing? Again and again he called her. But his only answer was the cry of the forest birds rising as one against him. Finally he stopped running. In the distance he could hear the whump-whump of the helicopter rotor blades. He caught his breath, bloodied hands on his knees, then he scoured the bush ahead. She was gone, vanished as mist in the trees.

  Instinctively he fingered the scimitar-shaped scar at the corner of his eye and Kobi’s voice brought him back to the present. He looked down at the old man and then beyond him again to the paddock and the lake and the mountains.

  ‘Mahina wrote to me,’ Kobi said. ‘She told me what you did. We never spoke of it; she just wanted me to know and told me to say nothing because she feared what John-Cody might do, or worse, her brother. John-Cody’s a peaceful soul, but Jonah is a warrior.’ He paused and looked at the house. ‘Where’s your wife?’ he said. ‘She’ll be the first one I tell, then I’ll publish the letter and when that happens your precious American backers will drop you like hot coal.’

  The colour was gone from Pole’s cheeks. ‘That’s not how it was, Kobi.’

  ‘That’s exactly how she wrote it.’

  ‘That’s how she would. I can see that’s how she would. But it wasn’t like that.’ Pole looked beyond him again, unable quite to look him in the eye. ‘I didn’t do anything to her, Kobi. I didn’t hurt her.’

  ‘You were about to.’ Kobi indicated Pole’s scar with the end of his walking stick. ‘A falcon: what would have happened if she hadn’t been guarding her nest?’

  Pole was quiet, kneading the knuckles of one hand in the palm of the other. He looked beyond Kobi, back to the bush and Mahina’s nakedness.

  ‘Nobody will believe you,’ he said quietly.

  Kobi laughed, his voice cracking like a dry twig. ‘Won’t they? What would I have to gain — an old man from Naseby? At worst they’d believe the rumour. Jonah would kill you. Even if he didn’t, who would want to go hunting with a rapist?’

  The word stung and Pole closed his eyes. Strange feelings clashed inside him, a mixture of fear, self-loathing and, in a way — relief.

  ‘I only found out when Mahina was dying,’ Kobi said. ‘This was her last hope. Humiliation for her in memory, but that was all right if it would stop you ruining Dusky Sound.’

  ‘Kobi.’ Pole’s voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘My backers will get someone else.’

  Kobi shook his head. ‘No, they won’t. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard about the big man, the original Aussie bushman, the best hunter and guide in Fiordland. Their plans won’t work without you. The scheme is in your name. Besides, the whole thing will be tainted. Walk away, Pole, or I’ll expose you for what you are.’

  He turned then, towards the barn where he could hear a horse stamping. He stood for a moment looking at the house and the paddocks then he moved back to Pole. ‘Drive me to Manapouri,’ he said.

  Pole drove in silence. The sun came out and warmed the tops of the mountains and the Lake of the Sorrowing Heart glinted in icy blue. ‘I’m not a bad man, Kobi,’ he said as they pulled up outside the office.

  ‘Aren’t you?’ The old man stared ahead through the windscreen.

  Pole grasped him by the shoulder. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered why I didn’t go after Gib when Eli died?’

  ‘Eli’s death was an accident. If it appeased your conscience tha
t’s up to you.’ Kobi shook off his grasp and opened the door of the truck.

  Pole watched him shuffle across the little wooden bridge into the office then he turned his truck and drove home. When he pulled up in the yard he sat for a moment and heard birds in the trees and the breath of wind through the grass and he felt strangely liberated. He climbed out of the truck and went indoors, into his bedroom where Jane’s things littered the dressing table. He wandered up to the study and looked at his rifles and the fax machine and the two computers; then he sat in his leather chair and swivelled back and forth. His son smiled at him from the photograph. Pole looked at him for a long moment, then he picked up the telephone and dialled the regional council. When he was finished he wrote a letter to Jane and pasted it to her computer screen. Then he went to the bedroom, threw his clothes in an old grip bag and snapped it closed. Finally he took his Bible and Eli’s picture from his desk and went out to his truck.

  John-Cody was in New Orleans, renting a battered room in the French Quarter and waiting tables in a restaurant on Decatur Street. He had been there for a month and still Libby hadn’t sent him any money from New Zealand. It concerned him; the cost of living was not what he remembered and he had to rely on tips to get by. He had bought a guitar and on his days off busked for a few extra dollars, playing guitar blues on the stone steps of Washington Artillery Park across the street from Jackson Square.

  He had not intended to come back to New Orleans: he hadn’t experienced city life since he left it the first time and had doubted whether he could stand the hustle and bustle again. When Agent Muller had given him the news he had not known what to do: back at the hotel he had packed his bag then stood on the sidewalk with nowhere to go. A week and a half later he arrived at the same Greyhound bus station he had left twenty-five years earlier. He walked familiar and yet unfamiliar streets, went to his parents’ old house in mid-city and watched the new family who lived there, from across the street. Quite why he had come back he didn’t know; perhaps it was just that it was the only familiar place in the United States, except maybe Hogan’s bar in McCall. He thought about going back there a third time, but the previous trips had been less than successful and Hogan would be long dead anyway. He felt the restlessness in his soul, however, and the road beckoned as it had done all those years before and he took a bus heading south.