The Whale Rider

Two

The Valdes Peninsula, Patagonia. Te Whiti Te Ra. The nursery, the cetacean crib. The giant whales had migrated four months earlier from their Antarctic feeding range to mate, calve and rear their young in two large, calm bays. Their leader, the ancient bull whale, together with the elderly female whales, fluted whalesongs of benign magnificence as they watched over the rest of the herd. In that glassy sea known as the Pathway of the Sun, and under the turning splendour of the stars, they waited until the newly born were strong enough for the long voyages ahead.

Watching, the ancient bull whale was swept up in memories of his own birthing. His mother had been savaged by sharks three months later; crying over her in the shallows of Hawaiki, he had been succoured by the golden human who became his master. The human had heard the young whale’s distress and had come into the sea, playing a flute. The sound was plangent and sad as he tried to communicate his oneness with the young whale’s mourning. Quite without the musician knowing it, the melodic patterns of the flute’s phrases imitated the whalesong of comfort. The young whale drew nearer to the human, who cradled him and pressed noses with the orphan in greeting. When the herd travelled onward, the young whale remained and grew under the tutelage of his master.

The bull whale had become handsome and virile, and he had loved his master. In the early days his master would play the flute and the whale would come to the call. Even in his lumbering years of age the whale would remember his adolescence and his master; at such moments he would send long, undulating songs of mourning through the lambent water. The elderly females would swim to him hastily, for they loved him, and gently in the dappled warmth they would minister to him.

In a welter of sonics, the ancient bull whale would communicate his nostalgia. And then, in the echoing water, he would hear his master’s flute. Straight away the whale would cease his feeding and try to leap out of the sea, as he used to when he was younger and able to speed toward his master.

As the years had burgeoned the happiness of those days was like a siren call to the ancient bull whale. But his elderly females were fearful; for them, that rhapsody of adolescence, that song of the flute, seemed only to signify that their leader was turning his thoughts to the dangerous islands to the south-west.

Three

I suppose that if this story has a beginning it is with Kahu. After all, it was Kahu who was there at the end, and it was Kahu’s intervention which perhaps saved us all. We always knew there would be such a child, but when Kahu was born, well, we were looking the other way, really. We were over at our Koro’s place, me and the boys, having a few drinks and a party, when the phone rang.

‘A girl,’ Koro Apirana said, disgusted. ‘I will have nothing to do with her. She has broken the male line of descent in our tribe.’ He shoved the telephone at our grandmother, Nanny Flowers, saying, ‘Here. It’s your fault. Your female side was too strong.’ Then he pulled on his gumboots and stomped out of the house.

The phone call was from the eldest grandson, my brother Porourangi, who was living in the South Island. His wife, Rehua, had just given birth to the first great-grandchild of our extended family.

‘Hello, dear,’ Nanny Flowers said into the phone. Nanny Flowers was used to Koro Apirana’s growly ways, although she threatened to divorce him every second day, and I could tell that it didn’t bother her if the baby was a girl or a boy. Her lips were quivering with emotion because she had been waiting for the call from Porourangi all month. Her eyes went sort of cross-eyed, as they always did whenever she was overcome with love. ‘What’s that? What did you say?’

We began to laugh, me and the boys, and we yelled to Nanny, ‘Hey! Old lady! You’re supposed to put the phone to your ear so you can hear!’ Nanny disliked telephones; most times she was so shaken to hear a voice come out of little holes in the headpiece that she would hold the phone at arm’s length. So I went up to her and put the phone against her head.

Next minute, the tears started rolling down the old lady’s face. ‘What’s that, dear? Oh, the poor thing. Oh the poor thing. Oh the poor thing. Oh. Oh. Oh. Well you tell Rehua that the first is the worst. The others come easier because by then she’ll have the hang of it. Yes, dear. I’ll tell him. Yes, don’t you worry. Yes. All right. Yes, and we love you too.’

She put down the phone. ‘Well, Rawiri,’ she said to me, ‘you and the boys have got a beautiful niece. She must be, because Porourangi said she looks just like me.’ We tried not to laugh, because Nanny was no film star. Then, all of a sudden, she put her hands on her hips and made her face grim and went to the front verandah. Far away, down on the beach, old Koro Apirana was putting his rowboat onto the afternoon sea. Whenever he felt angry he would always get on his rowboat and row out into the middle of the ocean to sulk.

‘Hey,’ Nanny Flowers boomed, ‘you old paka,’ which was the affectionate name she always called our Koro when she wanted him to know she loved him, ‘Hey!’ But he pretended he didn’t hear her, jumped into the rowboat and made out to sea.

Well, that did it. Nanny Flowers got her wild up. ‘Think he can get away from me, does he?’ she muttered. ‘Well he can’t.’

By that time, me and the boys were having hysterics. We crowded onto the verandah and watched as Nanny rushed down the beach, yelling her endearments at Koro Apirana. ‘You come back here, you old paka.’ Well of course he wouldn’t, so next thing, the old lady scooted over to my dinghy. Before I could protest she gunned the outboard motor and roared off after him. All that afternoon they were yelling at each other. Koro Apirana would row to one location after another in the bay, and Nanny Flowers would start the motor and roar after him to growl at him. You have to hand it to the old lady, she had brains all right, picking a rowboat with a motor in it. In the end, old Koro Apirana just gave up. He had no chance, really, because Nanny Flowers simply tied his boat to hers and pulled him back to the beach, whether he liked it or not.

That was eight years ago, when Kahu was born, but I remember it as if it was yesterday, especially the wrangling that went on between our Koro and Nanny Flowers. The trouble was that Koro Apirana could not reconcile his traditional beliefs about Maori leadership and rights with Kahu’s birth. By Maori custom, leadership was hereditary and normally the mantle of mana fell from the eldest son to the eldest son. Except that in this case, there was an eldest daughter.

‘She won’t be any good to me,’ he would mutter. ‘No good. I won’t have anything to do with her. That Porourangi better have a son next time.’

In the end, whenever Nanny Flowers brought the subject up, Koro Apirana would compress his lips, cross his arms, turn his back on her and look elsewhere and not at her.

I was in the kitchen once when this happened. Nanny Flowers was making oven bread on the big table, and Koro Apirana was pretending not to hear her, so she addressed herself to me.

‘Thinks he knows everything,’ she muttered, tossing her head in Koro Apirana’s direction. Bang, went her fists into the dough. ‘The old paka. Thinks he knows all about being a chief.’ Slap, went the bread as she threw it on the table. ‘He isn’t any chief. I’m his chief,’ she emphasised to me and, then, over her shoulder to Koro Apirana, ‘and don’t you forget it either.’ Squelch, went her fingers as she dug them into the dough.

‘Te mea te mea,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

‘Don’t you mock me,’ Nanny Flowers responded. Ouch, went the bread as she flattened it with her arms. She looked at me grimly and said, ‘He knows I’m right. He knows I’m a descendant of old Muriwai, and she was the greatest chief of my tribe. Yeah,’ and, Help, said the dough as she pummelled it and prodded it and stretched it and strangled it, ‘and I should have listened to Mum when she told me not to marry him, the old paka,’ she said, revving up to her usual climactic pronouncement.

From the corner of my eye I could see Koro Apirana mouthing the words sarcastically to himself.

‘But this time,’ said Nanny Flowers, as she throttled the bread with both hands, ‘I’m really going to divorce him.’

Koro Apirana raised his eyebrows, pretending to be unconcerned.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ he said. ‘Te mea —’

It was then that Nanny Flowers added with a gleam in her eyes, ‘And then I’ll go to live with old Waari over the hill.’

I thought to myself, Uh oh, I better get out of here, because Koro Apirana had been jealous of old Waari, who had been Nanny Flowers’ first boyfriend, for years. No sooner was I out the door when the battle began. You coward, said the dough as I ducked.

Four

But that was nothing compared to the fight that they had when Porourangi rang to say he would like to name the baby Kahu.

‘What’s wrong with Kahu?’ Nanny Flowers asked.

‘I know your tricks,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘You’ve been talking to Porourangi behind my back, egging him on.’

This was true, but Nanny Flowers said, ‘Who, me?’ She fluttered her eyelids at the old man.

‘You think you’re smart,’ Koro Apirana said, ‘but don’t think it’ll work.’

This time when he went out to the sea to sulk he took my dinghy, the one with the motor in it.

‘See if I care,’ Nanny Flowers said. She had been mean enough, earlier in the day, to siphon out half the petrol so that he couldn’t get back. All that afternoon he shouted and waved but she just pretended not to hear. Then Nanny Flowers rowed out to him and said that, really, there was nothing he could do. She had telephoned Porourangi and said that the baby could be named Kahu, after Kahutia Te Rangi.

I could understand, however, why the old man was so against the idea. Not only was Kahutia Te Rangi a man’s name but it was also the name of the ancestor of our village. Koro Apirana felt that naming a girl-child after the founder of our tribe was belittling Kahutia Te Rangi’s prestige. From that time onward, whenever Koro Apirana went past the meeting house, he would look up at the figure of Kahutia Te Rangi on the whale and shake his head sorrowfully. Then he would say to Nanny Flowers, ‘You stepped out of line, dear, you shouldn’t have done it.’ To give credit to her, Nanny Flowers did appear penitent.

I guess the trouble was that Nanny Flowers was always ‘stepping out of line’. Even though she had married into our tribe she always made constant reference to her ancestor, Muriwai, who had come to New Zealand on the Mataatua canoe. When the canoe approached Whakatane, which is a long way from our village, Muriwai’s chieftainly brothers, led by Toroa, went to investigate the land. While they were away, however, the sea began to rise and the current carried the canoe so close to the rocks that Muriwai knew all on board would surely perish. So she chanted special prayers, asking the gods to give her the right and open the way for her to take charge. Then she cried, ‘E-i! Tena, kia whakatane ake au i ahau!’ Now I shall make myself a man. She called out to the crew and ordered them to start paddling quickly, and the canoe was saved in the nick of time.

‘If Muriwai hadn’t done that,’ Nanny used to say, ‘the canoe would have been wrecked.’ Then she would hold up her arms and say, ‘And I am proud that Muriwai’s blood flows in my veins.’

‘But that doesn’t give you the right,’ Koro Apirana said to her one night. He was referring, of course, to her agreeing to the naming of Kahu.

Nanny Flowers went up to him and kissed him on the forehead. ‘E Koro,’ she said softly, ‘I have said prayers about it. What’s done is done.’

Looking back, I suspect that Nanny Flowers’ action only helped to harden Koro Apirana’s heart against his first-born great-grandchild. But Nanny was keeping something back from the old man.

‘It’s not Porourangi who wants to name the girl Kahu,’ she told me. ‘It’s Rehua.’ Then she confided to me that there had been complications in the birth of Kahu and, as a result, the delivery had been by caesarean section. Rehua, weak and frightened after the birth, had wanted to honour her husband by choosing a name from his people, not hers. That way, should she die, at least her first-born child would be linked to her father’s people and land. Rehua was from the same tribe as Nanny Flowers and had that same Muriwai blood, so no wonder she got her way with Porourangi.

Then came a third telephone call from Porourangi. Rehua was still in intensive care and Porourangi had to stay with her, but apparently she wanted Kahu’s afterbirth, including the birth cord, to be put in the earth on the marae in our village. An auntie of ours would bring the birth cord back to Gisborne on the plane the next day.

Koro Apirana was steadfast in his opposition to Kahu.

‘She is of Porourangi’s blood and yours,’ Nanny Flowers said to him. ‘It is her right to have her birth cord here on this ground.’

‘Then you do it,’ Koro Apirana said.

So it was that Nanny Flowers sought my help. The next day was Friday, and she got dressed in her formal black clothes and put a scarf over her grey hair. ‘Rawiri, I want you to take me to the town,’ she said.

I got a bit worried at that because Nanny wasn’t exactly a featherweight, but she seemed so tense. ‘All right,’ I said. So I got my motorbike out of the shed, showed her how to sit on the pillion, put my Headhunters jacket on her to keep her warm, and off we roared. As we were going along Wainui Beach some of the other boys joined us. I thought, ‘I’ll give Nanny Flowers a thrill and do a drag down the main street.’

Well, Nanny just loved it. There she was, being escorted through the Friday crowd like royalty, waving one hand at everybody and holding on tightly with the other. We had to stop at the lights at Peel Street, and the boys and I gunned our motors, just for her. Some of Nanny’s old cronies were crossing; when they saw her through the blue smoke, they almost swallowed their false teeth.

‘Oh my goodness,’ they said. ‘Who is this?’

She smiled supremely. ‘I am the Queen of the Headhunters.’ At that stage I was getting worried about my shock absorbers, but I couldn’t help feeling proud of Nanny. Just as we roared off again she poked out her little finger, as if she was having a cup of tea and said, ‘Ta ta.’

But when she met Auntie at the airport, Nanny Flowers’ mood changed. We were watching from the road when Auntie got off the plane. She started to cry, and then Nanny started to cry also. They must have been cryingfor at least ten minutes before our Auntie passed Kahu’s birth cord to Nanny. Then Auntie escorted Nanny over to us and kissed us all and waved goodbye.

‘Take me back to Whangara a quiet way,’ Nanny asked. ‘I don’t want people in the town to see me crying.’

So it was that Nanny and I and the boys returned to the village, and Nanny was still grieving.

She said to me, ‘Rawiri, you and the boys will have to help me. Your grandfather won’t come. You’re the men who belong to Whangara.’

The night was falling quickly. We followed Nanny as she went back and forth across the space in front of the meeting house. She took a quick look around to make sure no one was watching us. The sea hissed and surged through her words.

‘This is where the birth cord will be placed,’ she said, ‘in sight of Kahutia Te Rangi, after whom Kahu has been named. May he, the great ancestor, always watch over her. And may the sea from whence he came always protect her through life.’

Nanny Flowers began to scoop a hole in the loose soil. As she placed the birth cord in it, she said a prayer. When she finished, it had grown dark.

She said, ‘You boys are the only ones who know where Kahu’s birth cord has been placed. It is your secret and mine. You have become her guardians.’

Nanny led us to a tap to wash our hands and sprinkle ourselves with water. Just as were going through the gate we saw the light go on in Koro Apirana’s room, far away. I heard Nanny whisper in the dark, ‘Never mind, Kahu. You’ll show him when you grow up. You’ll fix the old paka.’

I looked back at the spot where Kahu’s birth cord had been placed. At that moment the moon came out and shone full upon the carved figure of Kahutia Te Rangi on his whale. I saw something flying through the air. It looked like a small spear.

Then, far out to sea, I heard a whale sounding.

Hui e, haumi e, taiki e.

Let it be done.