Pounamu Pounamu

The Whale

He sits, this old kaumatua, in the darkness of the meeting house. He has come to this place because it is the only thing remaining in his dying world.

In this whanau, this old one is the last of his generation. All his family, they have died: parents, brothers, sisters, relations of his generation, all gone. Ruia, his wife, she’s been dead many years. His friends, there are none. Children, mokopuna, yes, there are many of those. But of his time, only he and this meeting house remain.

The meeting house …

This old one, he sighs, and the sound fills the darkness. He looks upon the carved panels, the tukutuku reed work, the swirling red and black and white kowhaiwhai designs, and he remembers he awoke to life here. That was long ago, another world ago, when this meeting house and whanau, this village, brimmed over with happiness and aroha. Always he has lived here. This meeting house has been his heart, his strength. He has never wished to leave it. In this place lie his family and memories. Some are happy, others are sad. Some are like dreams, so beautiful that they seem never to have existed. But his dreams died long ago. With each tangi, each funeral, they have died. And he is the last of the dreamers.

This kaumatua, his eyes dim. In this falling afternoon he has come to visit the meeting house for the last time. He knows it is the last time. Just as the sun falls and the shadows lengthen within the meeting house, so too is his life closing. Soon his photograph will be placed along the wall with those of his other friends, relations and tipuna — his ancestors.

This village has always been a proud place, ringing with joy. Its people are a proud people, a family. One great family, clustered around this meeting house. Ae, they quarrelled sometimes, but it is only the happiness that this old one remembers.

However, over the years, people have begun to leave in search of a new life. Many of the houses lie deserted. The fields are choked with weeds. The gorse creeps over the graveyard. And the sound of children laughing grows smaller each year.

That is the most heartbreaking thing of all. Once the manawa, the heart, throbbed with life and the whanau gave it life. But over the years more and more of its children left and the family began to break apart. Of those that went few returned. And the heartbeat is weaker now.

He sighs again, this kaumatua. He would like to stay but he has reached the end of his years. His people they will weep for him. Hera, his niece, she will cry very much. But in the end, she will remember.

‘Hera, don’t you be too sad when I’m gone. If you are, you come to this meeting house. I’ll be here, Hera. You come and share your aroha with me. You talk to me; I will listen.’

He’d told her that when she was a little girl. Even then the world had been changing. Hera, she’d been one of the few of his mokopuna who’d been interested in the Maori of the past. The rest, they’d felt the pull of the Pakeha world, like fish too eager to grab at a dangling hook. In Hera he had seen the spark, the hope that she might retain her Maoritanga. And he had taught her all he knew.

‘Hera, this is not only a meeting house; it is also the body of a tipuna, an ancestor. The head is at the top of the meeting house, above the entrance. That is called the koruru. His arms are the maihi, the boards sloping down from the koruru to form the roof. See the tahuhu, ridgepole? That long beam running from the front to the back along the roof? That is the backbone. The rafters, the heke, they are the ribs. And where we are standing, this is the heart of the house. Can you hear it beating?’

And Hera, she had listened and heard. She had clutched him, afraid.

‘Koro! The meeting house, it lives!’

‘The meeting house, it won’t hurt you, Hera,’ he had told her. ‘You are one of its children. Turi turi now.’

And he had lifted the veils from the photographs of all her family dead and told her about them.

‘That’s your Nani Whiti. He was a brave man. This is my Auntie Hiria, she was very beautiful, eh? She’s your auntie too. This man, he was a great rangatira.’

Later, they had sat in the middle of the meeting house, he on a chair, she sitting on the floor next to him, and he had told her its history.

‘This meeting house, it is like a book, Hera. All the carvings, they are the pages telling the story of this whanau. The Pakeha, he says they’re legends. But for me they are history.’

And page by page, panel by panel, he had recounted the history.

‘That is Pou, coming from Hawaiki on the back of a giant bird. He brought the kumara to Aotearoa. This is Paikea, riding a whale across the sea to Aotearoa. He was told not to let the whale touch the land. But he was tired after the long journey, and he made the whale come to shore. It touched the sand, and became an island. You can still see it, near Whangara. See the tukutuku work on the walls? All those weavings, they represent the stars and the sky.’

And Hera, her eyes had glistened with excitement.

‘Really, Koro, really?’

‘Ae, Hera. You remember.’

This old one, he closes his eyes to keep the memories away because inevitably, as had happened with all the others, even Hera had gone away to the city. And when she had returned for a visit, this old one could see that she was finding it difficult to reconcile the Maori way with the Pakeha way. He had tried to lead her back to his world, and she had quarrelled with him.

‘Don’t, Koro! The world isn’t Maori any more. But it’s the world I have to live in. I know you want me to stay. But I can’t.’

But he had been stubborn, this kaumatua. He’d always been stubborn. If she would not come back to his world, then she would take it to the city with her.

‘Come, Hera, I want to show you something.’

‘No, Koro.’

‘These books, in them is your whakapapa, your ancestry. All these names, they are your family who lived long ago, traced back to the Horouta canoe. You take them with you when you go back.’

‘Koro.’

‘No, you take them. And see this space? You put my name there when I die. You do that for me. You keep this whakapapa safe. And don’t you ever forget who you are. You’re Maori, understand? You are Maori.’

His voice had been fierce and passionate, his words ringing with conviction. And Hera had embraced him and he felt her own strength.

‘I understand Koro,’ she had whispered. ‘You taught me too well to be Maori. But you didn’t teach me about the Pakeha world.’

He opens his eyes, this old one, but he still hears his Hera’s whisper. Ae, he had taught her well. And one day her confusion would pass and she would find her way back. How? Through following the pathway of whakapapa and, through her journey, she would realise that belonging, being Maori, was truly what mattered. That’s why he had taught her well. That’s why.

For a moment he smiles to himself, this old one. Then he recalls an ancient saying. How old it is he does not know. Perhaps it had come with the Maori when he journeyed across the sea to Aotearoa. From Hawaiki. From Tawhiti-roa, Tawhiti-nui, Tawhiti-pamamao, the magical names for the first home of the Maori. No matter. Even before the Pakeha had come to this land, his coming had been foretold.

And with his coming, the tattooed face had changed. That was the way of things, relentless and unalterable. But the fighting spirit of the Maori, did that need to change as well? Ae, even in his own day, Maoritanga had been dying. But not the fighting spirit, not the joy or aroha.

He cannot help it, this kaumatua, but the anger rises within him.

The Maori language has almost gone from this whanau. The respect for Maori customs and Maori tapu, that too was disappearing. No more did people take their shoes off before coming into this meeting house. The floor is scuffed with shoe-marks. The tukutuku work is pitted with cigarette burns. And even the gods and tipuna, they have been defaced. A name has been chipped into a carved panel. Another panel bears a deep scratch. And a paua eye has been prised from a carved figure, a wheku.

This meeting house, it had once been noble. Now, the red ochre is peeling from the carvings. The reed work is falling apart. The paint is flaking from the swirling kowhaiwhai designs. And the floor is stained with the pirau, the beer, for even that has been brought into this meeting house.

And the young, not understanding custom, do not come to this meeting house with respect, nor with aroha. They look with blind eyes at the carvings and do not see the beauty and strength of spirit which is etched in every whorl, every bold and sweeping spiral. They too are the strangers behind the tattooed face.

Is it their fault? this old one wonders. Is it their fault that so many families had to leave in search of work? That the younger generation grow up not knowing their papakainga? He has seen too many of his people come as strangers. The Maori of this time is different from the Maori of his own time. The whanau, the family, and the aroha which binds them together as one heart, is breaking, slowly loosening. The children of the whanau seek different ways to walk in this world. Before, there was a sharing of aroha with one another. No matter how far away some of the children went there was still the aroha which bound them closely to this meeting house and village. But the links are breaking. The young grow apart from each other. They walk away and do not come back. That is why the old one’s heart beats so loud with anger. The language, the customs, the knowledge — matauranga Maori — must be brought back.

‘Aue! Aue!’

This kaumatua, he fills the meeting house with the sound of his grief. After all, it was his task, surely, to transmit the knowledge to the new generation.

‘Aue! Aue!’

And from his grief springs a memory which adds to his despair. Of a time not long ago, when people from all Aotearoa gathered at this meeting house to celebrate the wedding of a child of this whanau.

The visitors, they had come from the Taranaki, from the Waikato, from the many parts of Te Ika a Maui, even from Te Waipounamu — the South Island. They had arrived for the hui throughout the day. By car, by bus, by train they had come, and the manawa of this whanau had beaten with joy at their gathering together.

It had been like his own time, this old one remembers. The children laughing and playing around the meeting house. The men and women renewing their friendships. The laughing and the weeping. The sweet smell of the hangi, and the sudden clouds of steam as the kai was taken from the earth. The girls swaying past the young men, eyeing the ones they wanted. The boys standing together, both bold and shy, but hiding their shyness beneath their jokes and bantering. The kuias gossiping in the cookhouse. The big wedding kai, and the bride and groom pretending not to hear the jokes about their first night to be spent together. The singing of the old songs. The cooks coming into the hall in their gumboots and old clothes to sing with the guests:

Ae, it had indeed been like the old times. The laughter and the joy had sung through the afternoon into the night. And he had sat with the other old men, watching the young people dancing in the hall.

Then it had happened. Late in the night. Raised voices. The sound of quarrelling.

‘Koro! Come quick!’

A mokopuna had grabbed his hand and pulled him outside, along the path to the dining room. More visitors had arrived. They had come from the Whangarei, and they were tired and hungry. He saw their faces in the light. But people of his whanau, they were quarrelling with the visitors. They would not open the door to the storeroom. It was locked now. There would be no kai for these visitors. They had come too late. Heart was locking out heart.

He had been stunned, this old one. Always there was food, always aroha, always open heart. That was the Maori way. Aroha.

And he had said to his mokopuna:

‘Te toki. Homai te toki. The axe. Bring me the axe.’

The crowd had heard his whispered fury. They parted for him. His tokotoko, his walking stick, it supported him as he approached the door. The music stopped in the hall. The kanikani, the dancing, stopped. People gathered. His fury gathered. The axe in his hand. He lifted it and …

‘Aue.’

The first blow upon the locked door.

‘Aue.’

His anger showing in his face.

‘Aue.’

The wood splintering beneath the blade.

‘Aue.’

His heart splintering too.

He gave his anger to the axe. He gave his sorrow to the blows upon the door. The axe rose and fell, rose and fell, and it flashed silver from the light.

Then it was done. The door gave way. Silence fell. He turned to the visitors. His voice was strained with agony.

‘Haere mai, e te manuhiri. Haere mai. Haere mai. Come, visitors. Come. Enter.’

He had opened his arms to them. Then, trembling, he had pointed at the splintered door.

‘Anei ra toku whakama … See? Look upon my shame.’

Then he had walked away, not looking back. Away from the light into the darkness.

This kaumatua, the memory falls away from him. He sees the darkness gathering quickly in the meeting house. How long has he been here, contemplating the changing world?

This old one, he grips his tokotoko and stands. Aue, he has lingered too long. One last look at this meeting house. The carved panels glint in the darkness. The kowhaiwhai designs flash with the falling sun. The evening wind flutters the black veils which hang upon the photographs of his dead.

So still he stands, this kaumatua, that he seems to merge into the meeting house and become a carved figure himself. Then his lips move. One last whisper to this meeting house, and he turns and walks away.

‘No wai te he?’

He walks along the dusty road, through the village. The houses are clustered close together. A truck speeds past him.

‘No wai te he?’

He hears a gramophone blaring loudly from one of the houses. He sees into a lighted window, where the walls are covered with glossy pictures that have been carefully cut out of magazines. A group of young people are gathered around another house, laughing and singing party songs. They beckon him to come and join them.

‘No wai te he?’

Down the path from the village he goes, to where his own house lies on the beach, apart from the village. Through the manuka, down the cliff to the sand he walks. The sea is calm, the waves softly rippling. And far away the sun is setting, slowly drowning in the water.

‘No wai te he?’

Then he sees a cloud of gulls blackening the sky. Their guttural screams fill the air. They dive and swoop and cluster upon a dark mound, moving feebly in the eddying water.

And as the old one approaches, he sees that it is a whale, stranded in the breakwater, threshing in the sand, already stripped of flesh by the falling gulls. The water is washed with red, the foam flecked with blood.

He cries out then, this kaumatua, raging against the gulls.

‘No wai te he … Where lies the blame … the blame.’

Where lies the blame, the blame …..

The gulls shriek and wheel away from him. And in their claws they clasp his shouted words, battling and circling against one another with a flurry of black wings.

I was twenty-eight when Pounamu Pounamu was published in 1972. When I look at the photograph of myself on the back of the hardcover jacket I can scarcely recognise myself. The blurb invited readers to look through the greenstone … Memory is that David and Maurice wanted to give the book the best shot at success they could because, now, instead of it being a book solely for the educational market, they saw possibilities of it crossing over into the general, mainly Pakeha, market. To use the metaphor of a game of cards again, they wanted to make sure we had a good hand — and frankly, I needed all the help I could get.

I doubt whether any young author could have had a better publisher than David, who became a trusted friend. He and Maurice had great success with the Auckland Star (I suspect Harry Dansey, who was working as Maori reporter at the time, had something to do with it), which ran one story from the collection every Saturday for six weeks. They also decided to send me on a book tour, signing copies and speaking to the local Rotary and other groups in small towns throughout the country. My minder was Ted Bland, a terrifically buoyant guy, which was just as well because I was like an opossum transfixed by the lights of a truck. The local media turned up and the speaking events were well attended, except for one town hall appearance in Greytown. There, an old kuia and her grandson were the only members of the audience. She said to me, ‘The moko wanted to come.’

Well, all I could think of was all my grandmothers and how they had nurtured me; and, although it was suggested we cancel, I remembered the saying, ‘Where you see one, you see a thousand.’ So I spoke to my audience of two about my life, and I told the boy how important his grandmother was; he seemed to know that already.

Afterwards, the old lady insisted that I go and stay with her at their place. Lucky Ted Bland got to go back to his nice hotel, while I got taken to this whare in the bush somewhere, where I made the mistake — not realising the kuia was not on town supply — of asking if I could take a bath. So she heated some water in a copper, and she and her moko filled the bath bucket by bucket, and then I had to take my clothes off under the moon and suffer her ministrations and scolding as she soaped me up and washed me.

How did I feel? Like a puppy dog, in absolute bliss.

Although there’s not much bliss in ‘The Whale’, what’s important about this story can be said about the whole collection: Pounamu Pounamu provided a ‘greenprint’ for all my fiction to come. The same characters in all these stories turn up throughout my fiction. The tribal clans of Waituhi appear in The Matriarch, Whanau and Whanau II, The Dream Swimmer and Bulibasha, King of the Gypsies, and so on. And the family in ‘One Summer Morning’, although not named, becomes the Mahana family in my fiction, the Maori equivalent of Katherine Mansfield’s Burnell family.

As far as ‘The Whale’ is concerned, I was able to rework the elements in my novel, The Whale Rider, and turn its themes into something redemptive and triumphant.