When his mum is stressed out – when isn’t she stressed out? – she makes lists; she writes down every little thing that she needs to get done. It cracks Riki up, but on every one of those lists Te Awhina always writes ‘Breathe’. The lists become a web of words and lines and arrows as she adds to her list – she uses arrows to link task to task, or to re-prioritise an item to the top of the list.
Riki makes a list on the glass of the shower door, tracing the words into steam and water droplets. His list is short: school, money, Gemma. He draws a curved arrow from the end of Gemma to the top of his list. He needs to see her. She can’t ignore him if he turns up at her school – can she?
Yeah, I’ll go and see her. Now that the decision is made, Riki feels both relieved and nervous. He rubs his hand across his jaw. He wasn’t going to shave today, but now he’s going to see Gemma it feels like he should make an effort.
He shuts off the water – that was a quick one – and steps out of the shower. He could have shaved in there, but he wants to do a good job, and without a mirror he always leaves some stubble somewhere. He looks at himself in the mirror, turning his face from one side to the other. He rubs his fingers over his jaw again – it’s been at least a couple of days since his last shave and he can’t really get away without one. If all goes to plan, he doesn’t want Gemma to go to class with a rash on her face.
He shakes the can of shaving foam and squirts some into his palm, pausing to watch the foam expand – his favourite part when he was a kid and watched Jase shave. He spreads the foam over his face and puffs out his cheek as he slides the razor down. The blades tug against his skin and it feels as if each hair is being plucked from his chin. Blunt. He looks in the bathroom cabinet for a new blade, but they’ve all gone. He’ll have to ask his mum to buy him more. She’ll complain about the cost and say something stupid like: Why don’t you just use Jason’s? She has no idea.
He just pushes down harder, trying not to rip up his skin any more than he has to, but he knows that the aftershave will sting like a bitch today.
If he hurries he should be able to catch Gemma before she heads into her first class. Queen Margaret’s is way on the other side of town, but if Riki times it just right, he should be able to catch a bus from the station and only be about ten minutes late to English. It doesn’t matter: English sucks anyway. Books are kind of frustrating, because he can’t ‘see’ the world as described in his head – it’s not until he sees a picture, or watches a movie, that he can get a story. It’s like he can hear the characters talking, but the rest of it is a blank. If the cover of the book has a picture of the main character, he can imagine that – but then that character is stuck in a blank room with the words the author has used to describe the world written on the wall. Unless it’s visual, Riki finds it really hard to make sense of it. He likes those books with maps in the front, so he can understand that world before the description gets in the way. Comics and graphic novels are good too – he can just concentrate on the story without spending a lot of time trying to conjure up the world. Sometimes he feels ashamed that he isn’t much of a student, what with his mum and his koro being hard out into academics. Even the ‘great’ Te Ariki was a reader – a great reader – not just novels, but the really heavy stuff like philosophy and physics. Maybe Riki missed out on the smart Pūweto genes. Doesn’t matter – Riki thinks – when you look this good.
Riki’s school doesn’t have a uniform, but he tends to wear the same thing every day. His go-to clothes are a t-shirt and his cargo shorts and slip-on shoes. He grabs Jase’s old Baja hoodie from back when he used to surf and have long hair. That’s how Riki remembers him from when he was a little kid: standing looking out to the sea with his hood up, then turning around and raising his eyebrows as Te Awhina and Riki approached. When Jase cut his hair a few years ago and was getting rid of his surfie clothes, Riki rescued the hoodie from going to the op-shop. What do you want that old thing for? his mother had said, but Jase just raised his eyebrows and nodded. He was passing it on to Riki. It’s not just a hoodie; it’s their shared history: worn during all the good times. The cuffs are fraying and the colours have faded, but Riki plans to wear it until it literally falls apart.
Te Awhina must have left while Riki was in the shower. He turns the heat pump off again and shakes his head. His mum’s been really forgetful lately. Maybe forgetful is the wrong word. Preoccupied – although that makes it sound as if someone else has taken residence in her body – like that old-school sci-fi movie where one by one those people in a small town began to change. Not on the outside – they still looked like themselves – but they had become hosts for an alien consciousness.
Riki laughs and shakes his head – his mother forgets to turn the heat pump off and he’s imagining she’s some sort of alien parasite. Besides, taking over Te Awhina’s life is a lame way to start an invasion.
He grabs an orange and chucks it in his satchel. He’s almost out the door when the land line rings. For a moment he just stares at the thing: no one calls the land line. The ringing stops as he reaches down to pick it up. Weird. And then his phone rings.
Mum.
‘What have you forgotten?’
‘Rik, are you still at home?’
‘Barely.’
‘Oh good. Can you grab Te Ariki’s diary for me?’
‘Where is it?’
‘By my notes.’
‘As if that narrows it down, Mum.’
Te Awhina groans like Riki is the one being difficult. Riki knows his mother is on the bus, talking too loud.
He looks on the table, picking up papers to look underneath them. He shifts the notes around, and then finds the diary on her chair. The thing is tiny, easily overlooked. She must have put it there to pack in her bag and then probably put her bag on top of it instead. Preoccupied.
‘I got it.’
‘Can you drop that off to me at uni?’
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘It just means that my entire day will be wasted. I wanted to get some things done before we leave for Koro’s.’
‘Why don’t I send you a photo? Of a page or two?’
‘The thing is, I kind of don’t know what I need until I see it …’
Riki holds the phone away from his mouth and sighs. No wonder you’ve been at uni for bloody years. He fakes a cheerful voice. ‘How about I bring it to you then?’
‘Yes!’ Te Awhina says it so loud that Riki has to take the phone away from his ear. ‘I’ll meet you at the top of the cable car. Thank you so much, son.’
‘Yeah, well. You can explain it to Mr Baker if I’m late to English.’
‘You’ll be OK if you catch the number 2 at half eight …’
Riki looks at the clock on the wall – it’s twenty-nine minutes past eight.
And he goes for his second run this morning.
Riki flicks through the diary on the bus into town. It is mostly text crammed into the small pages. Near the front of it there is a folded piece of paper tucked in. He unfolds it, hoping that he doesn’t rip the delicate paper. It looks like a map of some sort, and a sketch of a building; the white space of it feels like a relief from the densely packed handwriting. There is a small caption under the map and sketch. It says: ‘Dead City, grand tomb.’
Towards the back of the diary, a hole has been carved out of the middle of the pages – only a few centimetres or so deep and across. It kind of looks like a bullet hole, except there is no damage to the cover of the diary. It reminds Riki of the kids’ book The Very Hungry Caterpillar – the hole has been cut page after page. Whatever Te Ariki had hidden in the diary is long gone.
It must be the bus driver’s last run for the day. She guns the bus in between screeching stops that throw all the standing passengers forward and on to each other. Looking at the diary makes Riki feel ill, so he closes it and puts it back in his bag. It was strange reading it: it was like Te Ariki Mikaera suddenly changed when he got to Egypt. Riki never noticed that before. The
clipped upright hand he had written in at boot camp and on the ship became muddied and more childlike; printing rather than script, as if he had forgotten how to write. It didn’t help that his pencil was blunt and there were smudges on the pages. Maybe ‘preoccupation’ is hereditary.
There are only a few people on board as the bus rolls past the Cenotaph, which is being renovated for centenary Anzac Day commemorations. To Riki it doesn’t look like they’ll make it in time. The war memorial, Pukeahu, was finished a couple of weeks ago. It’s like the city has gone crazy with these commemorations.
Te Awhina has a lot to say about it. ‘It’s perverse. This whole ra-de-dah commemorations thing. Did you know that the government set up a special fund for this? And for what? So people can ‘honour’ the fallen? What did we do when those men were alive? How did we ‘honour’ them then? Did we listen to their stories? Or are the actual truths about that war, about any war, too distasteful? No, we’d rather think of it as a jolly adventure. That’s why we’ve waited until now, until the last of them has gone. That way, the powers that be can put their words into the veterans’ mouths. They’ll talk about their heroics and how they changed the world – but really it’s the same – they’re still sending young men off to fight in someone else’s war. We’ll mark the centenary of a bloody battle with light shows and theme park rides so kids will feel engaged with history – as if that is truly history. You see, Riki? That’s why my work is important. We need to change the narrative. I’m going to bring balance to this whole conversation …’ As if you could have a conversation with Te Awhina on this topic. You can listen to her rant or you can pretend to listen to her rant: those are your options.
Riki gets out at the last stop and walks up the hill past Parliament. He has come to visit Gemma at her school before. Since they started seeing each other at the end of last year, he’s picked her up a few times after school, and sometimes they’ve even had a picnic lunch on Parliament grounds. In his memory he sees the Queen Margaret girls in their long navy skirts and striped blazers. Riki looks for the flash of gold at the throats of Gemma and her friends – the girls in Year Thirteen wear a gold tie to distinguish them as seniors.
He closes his eyes and there she is. It’s like a movie: there’s a soft focus on Gemma, the light around her golden. And in the close-up, the audience would know that she was the only one for him. Riki raises his eyebrows at her. She doesn’t see him – or if she does, she looks right through him as if he were a ghost. She turns and walks away.
Man, even in my daydreams she’s rejecting me. He is at the gates now, and it’s weird – there doesn’t seem to be anyone around. He walks around the block to the other entrances to the campus. Surely there should be at least one girl who’s late, or a teacher prowling around.
He takes out his phone and calls her. Straight to voice mail as usual. ‘Hey Gem, it’s Rik. I’m at your school; can you call me?’ He texts her as soon as he’s hung up, then stares at his phone as he walks on. He looks up and finds that he’s at the American Embassy – the high metal fence and the concrete bunker building make him feel uneasy, especially because he’s loitering with a cell phone in his hand. Judging by the look of this place the people aren’t very trusting, even in friendly territory. Riki may be an ally, but he feels like an enemy. Maybe he’ll go back in to town to wait for Gemma’s reply.
He walks back down the hill into town. He feels suddenly sleepy, as if he had been high on adrenaline; he’ll grab a coffee on the Quay and take the cable car up to meet his mother. He is at the crossing at the base of the Cenotaph when he feels his phone vibrate.
Gemma.
What do you want R?
To see you.
I’m not there.
Where are you?
At home.
Are you sick?
Holidays.
That makes sense. Most of the parents of Queen Margaret girls are suits or civil servants; they’ve probably taken an extra day off for Easter. Riki thinks that he should take the day off too. It’s not like they’ll be doing much at school on the last day of term anyway, and he doesn’t want to leave it another week before seeing Gemma.
Come in and meet me.
Can’t.
Why?
I’m dealing with … stuff.
‘Stuff’? What does that mean? Riki is trying really hard not to get annoyed with her – he really does care for her – maybe he even loves her – but she’ll be stressing out over something trivial. Like an assignment, or what to wear to the ball in a couple months’ time. And is this ‘stuff’ the reason that she’s been dodging him for the past couple of weeks? It’s like she not into him any more. And then it all makes sense to Riki. She’s not into him, because she’s into someone else.
What stuff? Are you seeing someone else?
Riki isn’t even sure if he wants an answer. He can’t believe he’s spent so much time thinking about her; thinking about them. He knows what Jackson would say: Ditch the drama queen, bro. At this point, though, Riki’s not sure who the drama queen is – Gemma or himself. He stomps another block down the Quay, ignoring the phone when it beeps again. If I don’t read it, it’s not real.
There’s another beep, and at last he looks.
No.
Riki feels as if he can breathe again – as if he has been holding his breath since he sent the accusation. He knows that when his anger has totally subsided he’ll feel a little bit guilty. But not now – now, he’s annoyed that Gemma is still being vague. That Gemma can mess him up so easily.
Then WHAT?
I’m late.
So am I.
No. I’m LATE.
Riki is looking at his phone as he steps off the curb on Lambton Quay. And then the bus hits.
3
5 OCTOBER 1975
TRANSCRIPT:
Cassette number 1: Te Ariki Mikaera Pūweto (interviewee, WWI veteran) and Alamein Pūweto (interviewer and grandson of Te Ariki). Also present: Taimona Pūweto (daughter and caregiver of Te Ariki).
ALAMEIN I was surprised when you called me, Koro. I thought you weren’t interested in being part of my project. What changed your mind?
TE ARIKI I’ve cheated death for far too long. I’m going to die soon …
TAIMONA Don’t say that, Dad.
TE ARIKI I’m an old man, love. It’s a fact – I can feel it in me, the clock ticking – or rather – winding down. Someone once told me that to know when your time is coming is a burden. Maybe to the young; but for me? Well, I think it’s quite freeing.
TAIMONA Don’t be so morbid. Can you record over that, Alamein?
TE ARIKI Don’t you touch it, boy. If I’m going to do this I want to say what I have to say. I’ve kept things to myself for far too long. And if you don’t speak up for yourself, then other people are more than happy to speak for you; to invent something to fill the void. To ‘change the narrative’, some might say.
[Te Ariki laughs]
TAIMONA Dad, no one is trying to make things up about you. It’s just upsetting to hear that you think you’re going to …
TE ARIKI I’m sorry, love. Alamein, maybe we should change the subject; your auntie is feeling a bit sensitive. Where do you want to start?
ALAMEIN I’m not sure where to start. Maybe I should explain why I want to do this research? I mean, ultimately I’d like to publish a book with your stories about the war. Not just yours, of course; I’ve already interviewed other veterans from the Māori Contingent. I think I want people to understand the war on a human scale. You see, Koro, people think of the Great War in the abstract – the campaigns and manoeuvres, or the various theatres of war – these broad sweeps. Or at the other extreme, they focus on the details – the guns, the uniforms. But I’m interested in how you felt being there.
TE ARIKI Queasy. Off balance. Disoriented.
ALAMEIN I’m sorry?
TE ARIKI You travel a lot, eh boy?
ALAMEIN Yeah, up and down the country for this project.
/> TE ARIKI You know that feeling when you wake up in a hotel room and for a moment you don’t know where you are?
ALAMEIN Yeah.
TE ARIKI It feels as though I’ve had that feeling near on sixty years now. Disoriented. Even if it is only for a split second, there is that thought of where am I?
ALAMEIN Even when you came back to New Zealand?
TE ARIKI Especially here. It was so familiar, but different. It wasn’t home; not the home I left. I didn’t belong there, and I didn’t belong here either. But you can’t spend your days thinking like that, can you? You’d go mad. You get on with it; you just make a life for yourself, do your job, raise your children, have a laugh or two. But still, every morning there’s that feeling again – where am I?
ALAMEIN Even now?
TE ARIKI Yes. To be honest I haven’t felt at home since I was seventeen … Now, bub. Don’t get upset – I don’t mean that your mother and I didn’t make a home together, that I didn’t love her.
ALAMEIN Do you mean the war changed you?
TE ARIKI I mean that the war changed everything.
4
2 APRIL 1915
Riki is aware of the world around him before he is aware of himself. It is disorienting; it feels as if he has emerged from a void, that until this very second he has been swimming in nothing, or rather, that until this second he was nothing. Unconsciousness seems to be worse than death. If the near-death stories are to be believed, then at least in death you are still aware of yourself – there are lights to follow and family to welcome you. Unconscious, there is nothing at all.
Legacy Page 2
