Legacy

by Whiti Hereaka

  There are hundreds of tents all lined up in avenues. Each looks the same to Riki, but Jack seems to be able to tell them apart. He stops outside of one and begins to unlace the door. ‘Ah, home, sweet home. I bet Matatau is in bed already, the lazy sod.’ Jack sits down and unwinds the strips of cloth from his legs, rolling them as he does. He takes his boots off and puts the rolled up cloth inside, then lifts a side wall slightly and tucks his boots away. He ducks into the tent, and Riki waits outside.

  The tent is shaped like a lady’s skirt from the olden days; the camp is like hundreds of ladies lined up waiting to dance. Riki laughs at the strange idea of tents dancing, and hopes that his brain will conjure it up: but all the tents stay pinned to the ground. He has always believed that he has power over his dreams; that if he simply thinks something within a dream, it would come true. But that does not seem to be how this dream works.

  Jack pokes his head out of the tent. ‘What are you doing, boy? Come in here.’ He holds out his hand and Riki reaches forward with his own. Jack scowls. ‘The lamp, “m’lord”. I’m not asking for this dance.’

  Riki hands Jack the lamp, slips off his own shoes and then follows him into the tent. It’s not like any tent that he’s ever been in. There is a wooden floor, and the walls are made of heavy canvas. There is a smell that Riki can’t quite place: something almost nutty – but not like peanuts. The tent must be new, because there is no hint of mildew from it being stored while still damp. A single pole holds it up, so Riki can stand comfortably in the middle but has to stoop at the edges. The bell of the tent slopes down to low walls, where there is room for six camp beds squashed in around the perimeter.

  Someone is sleeping, snoring loudly, in the bed opposite the entrance.

  ‘Matatau.’ Jack kicks the camp bed hard and holds the lamp close to Matatau’s face.

  Matatau sits up and shields his eyes from the light. Riki wonders if Matatau always looks this way – his eyes are puffy, like he is having a reaction to something.

  Matatau looks away from Jack to the ground. ‘I was sleeping …’

  Jack shakes Matatau’s shoulder, forcing him to look back up at his face. It’s strange, almost as if Matatau cannot look Jack in the eye.

  ‘You were supposed to be looking after the boy here.’

  Matatau squints as his eyes adjust. When he sees Riki in the lamplight, his eyes grow wide. He tries to scramble backwards, but his legs are caught by his bedding.

  ‘Jesus!’ Matatau looks away from Riki. He crosses himself and weeps.

  ‘What is wrong with you, Mata? I’ve never seen a black fella so white.’

  Now Riki realises that Matatau is holding something tightly in his fist. His hand is so close to his mouth that it seems like he is talking to it rather than to Jack: ‘Kēhua …’

  ‘It’s the boy. I found him wandering around the Wazza. He was supposed to be with you, finding curios. Instead, you left him to get himself into mischief. The bloody Gyps took his tunic and boots …’

  Matatau does not seem to hear Jack talking. He is mumbling something – karakia or catechism, Riki cannot tell which.

  Jack gives the lamp to Riki and places both his hands on Matatau’s shoulders. ‘Mata. Mata! Stop talking nonsense, and tell me why you left the boy alone.’

  Riki holds the lamp at chest height. Matatau looks up at him – he looks frightened, and Riki realises how he must look, the lamp illuminating his face from under his chin. He hangs the lamp from the pole so he doesn’t look like a psycho, and sits down. Matatau has not broken his stare as Riki moved. Matatau’s brow is furrowed, and his eyebrows are pinched together at the bridge of his nose. ‘Who are you? Where did you come from?’

  ‘Have you some sort of fever, man?’ Jack holds tight to Matatau’s shoulders as the crazed man tries to shake him off.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It’s Pūweto. Who else would it be?’

  ‘It can’t be. It can’t be …’ Matatau holds his fist out towards Jack. ‘I know it can’t be.’ He slowly opens his fingers. From where he sits, Riki can see a small round disc in Matatau’s palm: a necklace of sorts, with a piece of twine for a chain. Jack takes the disc from Matatau and waves for Riki to bring the lamp closer. Riki stands again and reaches for the lamp. As he steps forward, Matatau shuffles back.

  Jack looks up from the disc to Matatau. ‘Why have you got Te Ariki’s identity disc?’ he asks, and hands the disc to Riki.

  Riki had expected it to be made of metal, but it’s not. He can’t tell what it is made from – it can’t be plastic; it’s not smooth enough for that. Whatever it is, there embossed into the material is his tipuna’s name: Te Ariki Mikaera Pūweto.

  Matatau is on his knees, his hands clasped together as if in prayer, but it is Jack to whom he pleads, not God. ‘That’ – Matatau points at Riki – ‘is not the boy. He is a demon.’

  ‘Stop it now, Mata. I can smell spirits on you. You’ve been drinking.’

  ‘E kī ana te kupu, nā te wairua poke ngā whakahaurangi katoa.’

  ‘What do you mean, your spirit is unclean? It’s the drink talking. This is what it does. Waipiro. A teetotaller and a child drinking – neither of you can handle it. I suggest you two sleep it off. Hopefully I can get some sense out of you in the morning.’

  Matatau stares at Riki, and for a little while Riki stares back. But it becomes too intense, making Riki uncomfortable; so he looks at Jack. Jack hangs the lamp on the pole and turns and kneels down to roll out his bedding. He takes off his jacket and shorts and folds them carefully.

  Riki looks at them – two of the men he apparently shares his tent with. Obviously his mind has modelled Jack on Jackson – they have the same way of making light of any situation, the same crooked smile. This ‘Jack’ even sounds like Jackson; his tone and rhythm are the same, although his language is a little old-fashioned. Maybe, in the real world, Jackson has come to visit him, and is talking shit to his coma-ed body; that’s why Riki’s created this Jack. He seems older than Jackson, but Jackson was always into things years before Riki – or at least that’s what he claimed.

  Matatau just keeps looking at Riki as if he doesn’t think that he is real. How can a figment of Riki’s own imagination be doubting whether Riki is real? That’s way too meta, Riki thinks.

  There is something familiar about Matatau – in his furrowed brow, or his tight frown; but Riki can’t place it. He wonders where in his mind he created Matatau. Or do characters like that just lurk in everyone’s mind?

  Jack is stretched out on his bed roll, his hands clasped behind his head and his eyes closed. ‘I’m not making your bed for you, Pūweto.’ He reaches out and pats the camp bed beside him.

  Riki rolls out his own bed roll and takes off his hoodie and shorts, trying to fold them as neatly as he has seen Jack do. Matatau is still watching him.

  ‘Snuff out the light, will you?’ Jack says. Matatau rises slowly and moves towards the lamp. Riki moves back without thinking. Matatau turns the knob on the side of the lamp and the light grows dim – he still hasn’t looked away from Riki. He unhooks the lamp and blows the small flame out and the tent is finally dark. But as Riki closes his eyes, all he can see is the scowl on Matatau’s face.

  5

  3 APRIL 1915

  A bugle wakes the camp, but Riki has been awake for ages, watching the light creep into the darkness. He couldn’t sleep; his mind was too busy trying to process what happened. None of this could be real – but it felt real. The camp bed sagging underneath him, the smell of the canvas, the sound of the other men snoring. Maybe he’s dead, or in a coma. Maybe it’s a curse, or magic of some kind. Maybe there was a portal, or a rift in time. Maybe that big experiment in Switzerland had ripped the universe apart. His thoughts go around and around; they don’t line up to give him an answer. He just doesn’t know. He is forced to accept that, for now, this is his reality. It is barely light and surprisingly cold; he sits up with his blanket huddled around him. All of the others,
Rewai, Big and Little Mo, Jack and even Matatau, are already out of bed and dressing, their bedding folded in neat stacks at the head of their camp beds.

  ‘Are you getting up today?’ Jack smiles at him. Matatau’s face seems permanently frozen in a scowl.

  ‘I feel terrible.’ Riki really wants to say that he feels like he’s been hit by a bus, but it’s far too soon to be making jokes at his own expense.

  ‘That’s what the drink will do. Hurry up, we’ve got morning drill.’

  ‘I thought I’d stay here today …’ Riki tries to lie down again.

  Rewai’s having none of it. ‘Get up, boy.’

  ‘I really feel sick …’

  ‘And you’ll feel worse if the doc assigns you to light duties. Believe me, cleaning latrines when you have a touch of bottle-ache is worse than running around for a bit,’ Jack says.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ says Big Mo. ‘You don’t want to go near the tins after Little Mo has had a go.’ Big Mo holds his nose, and Little Mo pushes him. And then Big Mo pushes Little Mo back, and suddenly they’re in a scuffle like little kids in a playground.

  ‘Kāti!’ Rewai says, and Mo and Mo freeze. ‘Come on, you two, let’s give the rest of the lads some room.’

  ‘Get up, Pūweto. We don’t want to be late.’

  Riki sighs and throws off his blanket, grabbing his hoodie.

  Jack shakes his head. ‘What’s the sergeant going to say when you arrive in that Gypo thing? You’ll just have to wear your dress uniform until I can get you sorted.’

  ‘He’s already had his lot from the quartermaster.’ Matatau’s scowl is evident in his voice too.

  ‘We’re not going to the quartermaster. I have a plan. You boys up for a bit of sightseeing tomorrow?’ Jack grins and raises his eyebrows. ‘Hurry up, Pūweto. What’s got into you today?’ He opens a kit bag next to Riki’s bed. ‘Here: shirt, tunic, putties, boots …’ As Jack takes out these items, Riki notices a small leather-bound book fall out of the bag. It looks like the diary, but it can’t be. He lost that in the accident yesterday – his satchel was empty. But now here it is, in his hand. How did it get here? Did Mata take it, like he took Te Ariki’s disc? But Mata wasn’t even in the Wazza yesterday. And anyway, this can’t be the same one – it looks brand new. Riki flips through the pages – it is mostly empty, only the pages at the front filled with Te Ariki’s neat handwriting. He looks for the hole carved into the pages – it’s not there. The last entry is from the first of April. The day before yesterday, if he is right about the Battle of Wazza. Before Riki arrived.

  ‘Look, Pūweto, I’m not dressing you like an infant.’

  Riki puts the diary in his shorts pocket and dresses.

  ‘Mata, can you see to his bed? We’ve got to go clean up the lines before breakfast. I’ll help him with his putties.’

  Matatau groans, but bends down to tidy the blankets. Riki knows that he’s not doing it for him, but for Jack. Riki smiles at Matatau, says ‘Thank you,’ and is sneered at in return.

  ‘We’re like the Three Musketeers around here, eh Mata? All for one …’ Jack says.

  Matatau rolls his eyes in reply.

  ‘You two are going to be a joy today, eh?’ Jack ties off the putties – they feel strange to Riki, like he has both legs bandaged. They are pretty tight, too, which he guesses is so he doesn’t get sand in his boots.

  Jack opens the tent flaps, and the three of them line up outside with Rewai and the brothers Mo.

  Riki thinks that this will be like all the films and TV shows he’s seen that have been about the military. They usually go like this: the troops are mucking about and having a laugh when they hear ‘AAAH-TEN-SHUN!’. They all scramble to their places, and their CO enters – a huge guy, made entirely of muscle and rage; the sinews of his neck standing proud against his ruddy skin. He finds a target – the larrikin, or the small kid – and shouts at them until they shrink with humiliation. Later, that character will rise to be the hero or take his own life, depending on whether the film is a blockbuster or art-house.

  But the officer who inspects is slight compared to the muscle-bound caricature. He’s a little shorter than Riki, and has a sandy coloured moustache that is neatly clipped, combed and coated in wax. He has the kind of skin tone that goes blotchy and red with the slightest provocation. Riki can imagine him beetroot red and yelling at them for a slight infraction.

  ‘Attention!’ He does raise his voice, but it is not a vein-popping cry that wrings out extra syllables. This command is one of assured confidence. This man knows that he will be respected even at a whisper.

  He steps into the entrance of the tent and with an air of boredom looks to the camp beds. ‘Good, good, very good. As you were.’ And then he leaves – as if he is too busy for a soliloquy or a personal vendetta; he has not belittled or humiliated anyone.

  ‘Come on you fullas. We should get to drill.’

  The six of them walk past rows of tents, and are joined by other young men. They assemble not far from the camp. Riki notices something in the distance, jutting up out of the desert. He stops and looks up at it – other men walk past him, flowing around him as if he is a rock in a river.

  ‘What’s that over there?’ he asks.

  ‘What?’ Big Mo is at his shoulder. ‘The little lord has gone daft.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘It’s a pyramid.’ Big Mo furrows his brow like he can’t understand what the big deal is.

  ‘It’s a pyramid.’ Riki feels like he can’t take his eyes from it.

  ‘Hey, Pūweto. Step lively,’ Jack says.

  ‘It’s a pyramid.’

  ‘Yes. It’s the pyramid. It’s been there for longer than anyone can remember. It was there yesterday, it will be there tomorrow. Meanwhile we need to be over there.’ Jack yanks Riki by the arm.

  ‘I’ve never seen it before.’

  ‘Let’s not start that nonsense again. Come to your senses, boy.’

  ‘It’s like a mountain …’

  ‘Have you heard that idea that Māori came from Egypt? Maybe we did, and when we got here we saw that there wasn’t a maunga to look over us. So we built one,’ Rewai says as he walks past them.

  Matatau looks at the pyramid and nods with his lips jutting out, ‘He maunga.’

  Jack, Matatau and Riki stop and look up at the pyramid. ‘Tēnā koe, Maunga o Cheops,’ Jack says, and he puts his arms around Riki and Matatau. ‘Now that we’ve said hello, can we get moving?’ And the three of them catch up with the rest of the men and find their place in the assembly.

  Drill is the first thing about this place that feels familiar to Riki. It’s strange to run in boots and putties rather than his running shoes, but he still finds his rhythm, and for a while forgets everything apart from his pace and breath. He hasn’t run in a group since training wrapped up last year, and he didn’t realise how much he had missed it; moving as a pack, feeling like you’re a small part in a larger organism.

  The barked orders that would normally grate are somehow welcome in this situation – Riki doesn’t need to make a decision on direction or speed, he just moves, and there’s a funny sort of freedom in the restriction. For the first time since he woke up here it doesn’t seem to matter where he is, or when he is, just that he is – he exists, he’s alive.

  Riki has never handled a rifle before in real life. He assumes that his mind will fill in the gaps of his experience. But as soon as he has the gun in his hands, he feels as if he is in that blank room of his limited imagination. He watches the men either side of him, and mimics what they are doing. He shoots but misses the target.

  Big Mo is to the left of him, and says, ‘Phew, Pūweto. Hope you’re better with a shovel than a rifle.’ And everyone laughs. Riki reloads, and takes his time to line up his sights with the target.

  Rewai, who is a couple of men down the line, says, ‘The way I hear it, we all need to be. They’re not putting us in to fight. We’ll be on garrison duty.’

  ‘Bu
t they wouldn’t bring us all the way here, give us guns and not let us fight,’ Big Mo says.

  ‘You can’t trust a Native with a firearm,’ Rewai says.

  ‘You can trust Pūweto. He can’t hit a sack of sand,’ Big Mo says.

  Riki breathes out and pulls the trigger. He clips the top of the target, and everyone laughs again.

  Jack smiles at Riki. ‘Hey, leave off the boy, lads. He had a big night last night and he’s probably still seeing double.’

  Big Mo nudges Riki. ‘You sure wet your whistle last night, eh?’

  And Jack shouts out, ‘Not the only thing he got wet!’ The whole platoon whoops and whistles until they are chastised by their officer.

  Riki laughs too – laughing feels like a release; it feels normal. He realises that this is how he will cope with whatever this situation is: by finding the normal even in the weirdest circumstance. And so he turns his attention back to the improbable rifle in his hands and lines up his sights once again.

  He has heard a lot of talk about garrison duty this morning. The men – or at least the Pākehā – are being prepared to go off to battle soon. There seems to be a lot of frustration that the war is happening and yet these men have been little more than tourists so far. Riki doesn’t understand their hunger for action.

  In the afternoon, the men of the Contingent are gathered in a large roped-off area for an official welcome of some sort. They’re expecting some top military brass, apparently. Riki stands with Rewai among the other men around the perimeter of the area – they line three sides of a square of sand that has been watered and rolled so it is tightly compacted. All the men face the empty space of the square, a makeshift tomokanga. Jack, Matatau and the brothers are part of the haka group in the middle, stripped bare to their waists. Riki is glad that he’s not part of the group; maybe Te Ariki was just as useless at kapa haka as he is.

  The area is guarded by another contingent, so it seems to Riki that his men are a curiosity, or an exhibition of some sort; like exotic, wild animals. If Te Awhina was here she’d probably say something about ‘dial-a-pōwhiri’; that their culture is only valued as novelty entertainment.