Jungle Rock Blues, page 7
The hawk slid along its wire above the clearing. It had Caliban’s eye in its head. The eye saw everything very clearly, from far, far away.
When the leg began to heal Caliban limped back up the valley to the tree where he had squatted to watch the path, and looked for his things. There was a foul pool of ooze, covered in dead and dying insects, and weta parts were strewn about. His spear was broken, he found only a part of its shaft. Further up the trail he found the slasher and, even though its haft was pitted with teeth marks, each one like a little poisoned hole, he carried the thing all the way down to the stream and washed it. It was a fearsome object, it had sliced through the weta’s plates, cleaved its skull, and he held it knowing that it had the power of death over life in it, a famous thing in his mind like Excalibur the great sword. It was the first weapon ever in that part of the bush and he the first to wield it.
Or so he thought. But some days later, returning again – the battle place drew him back, he kept pacing over what had happened there, seeing how it had played – he was suddenly aware that lying beside the track was an object. It was a long, slim piece of stone, twice the length of his finger, and he squatted over it. There had been rain, a nearby bank had slipped and this thing had rolled down and was just lying there, gleaming. None of the bush creatures would have picked it up, there was no profit to be had from stones, but Caliban saw that this was no mere stone. Like the slasher and the spade and the eggbeater, it had been shaped. It was pointed at both ends, and swelled smoothly towards its belly, like a slender fish, but hard and green. It was greenstone, what the Maori call pounamu – it’s a variety of jade. In one end a hole had been drilled.
He went to the tree where he had placed Nudu’s body and sat beneath it and twisted grasses until he had made a cord of sorts, and hung the greenstone around his neck. From above he could hear tiny sounds and he knew that the burrowing insects were picking the last flesh from her bones. He could smell her clearly, a sharp tang, decomposing in the sun. He had carried her body here and climbed with it as high as he could, well beyond the reach of the wetas, and placed it securely in a fork so that even when the hawks tore at it it wouldn’t fall.
The greenstone hung heavy on his chest. When he looked at it, it seemed possible that he could look into it. Its greens seemed to have depths, like the pool downstream of the waterfall, if you looked for long enough you began to see things moving in there. He sat beneath Nudu’s tree and in the stone he saw the events of his life which had slowly led to her death. He saw her being dragged by the weta. He saw himself carrying her. He saw her face, dark, slightly turned away from him. Inside the stone he saw the trace of his mother, her pale face framed by dark hair, looking down at him. He sat beneath the tree and saw what he eventually decided was Elizabeth Taylor.
Years later, investigators combed the valley looking for bones in a tree, to see if Caliban’s story could be confirmed. But no such bones were ever found.
Caliban stayed beside Nudu as she lay, struggling to fight the poison of the weta. It had gone deep into her system. The jaws had torn away a hunk of her shoulder, which was insult enough, but the fangs had left their particular trace, deeper, a creeping paralysis that slowly worked its way through you so that the wetas would find you alive but immobile, stranded trackside – they would carry you off to feed to their young. She had lost so much blood. The wound had been washed by the other gorillas, and Caliban had covered it with mud. The flies buzzed, frustrated. But Nudu was not concerned. She knew where she was going. Only her eyes moved. They went slowly over his face.
It came to him that she had been up in the weta’s domain because she was looking for him.
He sang to her. The moon came out over the clearing and the moths flew. There were stars. The other gorillas in their humpies grumbled, low, about the noise, but this was no genuine complaint. From time to time one of his fellows would come and study him – Caliban making this strange noise. He was undeterred, even by the numbness the weta ooze had left in his mouth. He sang around the numbness.
His singing was good now. He had heard the songs so often, so undistractedly, and repeated them, carefully following the ways of each tune. A pause here, a rise to the kiss-off at the climax. A shaping of your throat so that the sound came full and made your chest feel as though the sun was rising inside it. The shapeliness of the thing, the tune, which was as deliberately made as the spade or the eggbeater, this he began to consciously enjoy.
He squatted beside her there in the bracken and leaf-mould, and sang his way back and forth through his repertoire. Dawn gradually eased the dark from the valley, and the shapes of night, looming, suggestive, full of faces, faded to become the dusty old world, so well-known. The sun rose slowly, warming the bones, and then bringing sweat. Caliban shaded her with branches. The cicadas sang. The gorillas brought him frogs and worms but he wasn’t eating. Just a little water, given mouth-to-mouth – first to him, then from him to Nudu. He would let no one else touch her. In the last days he became fierce and marked out the place she lay as his territory. Terjick let him do this. Caliban became aggressive, bared his teeth. Everyone stayed away. The cicadas sang, then shut down for the night. The cold gathered. Caliban covered her with branches and leaves.
He sang, his face close beside hers, looking into her eyes. If she could have moved she would have smoothed his brow. His voice just there, at the edge of her, rising and falling, as he worked his way through every tune he knew. Neither one of them understood a single one of the words he sang.
Is there anybody out there?
Am I here all alone?
Please, if you should happen
To hear me,
Could you get on the phone.
8
Nudu’s death left a hole in Caliban. He walked the edges of this hole, he looked down into it, he tried to walk away from it. But from this time onwards it was always there.
He was fourteen. By this time he understood that Nudu could not have been his mother but this did not diminish his grief. In some way he understood now that someday he was going to unlock the secrets of his past and there would be someone with black hair, someone whose face he could almost glimpse, she would step forward to hold him and he would look into her eyes – but none of this had anything to do with Nudu, who had, he knew, given him his life. And so he sat under her tree and sang quietly to himself that he was dreaming of a white Christmas.
He lost weight.
In his hands he held the long, slim stone and tried to understand it. The green had a light in it, and in some way it was as though Nudu had gone into this stone – he seemed to see her in there. But at the same time he understood that the stone had been made the way it was, and not by an animal. This was a Huh stone, but not from the cabin – he sensed this. He had found it so far from there, and it had a different quality to it, it wasn’t like the things from the cabin which were manufactured, but was of some other order, of things that had been shaped. Of course he could not have explained any of this.
The stone had no smell and so the gorillas were not interested in it. They came to see him and looked up into the branches – Caliban never looked up – and listened to the insect sounds up there. Then they looked at him sitting, fondling his stone, pale-faced, and off they went to bring him some food. Have a worm, Caliban.
The stone wasn’t the only thing that at this time he was fondling. Despite the weight loss, there was no denying that he had grown, had developed a large frame. He was taller now than Terjick, taller than all of them – plus of course he walked upright. He was skinny, a sapling, but his shoulders were broad, his arms dangled like appendages and if you’d been there to see you would have said he was going to be a big man some day.
People have speculated about exactly how big Caliban was, as though this might be the key to his success. It was part of the wildman mythology that he was well-equipped as a donkey and many reporters showed their sophistication by making stylish remarks about “the thigh muscle that bulges out of his pants,” and so forth. Well, this is marketing, and the world believes what it gives pleasure to believe. All those film stars who throw the monster punches – fabulous creatures, but shake hands with them and they only come up to your nipple. But a bulge. You can sell a bulge.
Meanwhile teenage Caliban sits beside the stream, grieving, thoughtfully stroking himself, the length between his legs perfectly adequate for all human requirements but no more than that, rising from its delicate wisps of hair. Hair is sprouting everywhere, a line which runs like a line of ants down his belly, hair starting from his thighs and under his arms, growth spurting everywhere. There are pimples on his chin, mixed with the down – and, ah, here now is something in the stream, milky, clotted, floating away. Caliban observing this with keen interest through his shiver of pleasure.
He longed for Nudu, though. He saw her face in the trees, in shapes that the shadows made. He would turn, expecting her to be there. He knew about death, in the bush it was as familiar as your foot, things died all the time and the bodies lay where they fell until they sank into the earth. Going down the trail, you didn’t break stride for dead things.
But what was not common was loss. You had what you wanted – this was the nature of the gorilla’s life in the bush. Sometimes your wants shifted, this was only natural. But the feeling that you had had something and now it was gone, that part of what you were made of could go – this was new. This meant you were now made of something else – this new part, which was there in you but was an absence, a hole. So could everything go? Or was it just that the thing that had gone was the thing that mattered most?
There were days when he would not leave the tree.
But there were also restless days, when he pushed his explorations of the gorilla territory to new limits. He returned to that place where he had found the greenstone and, mindful of wetas, searched thoroughly, as he had searched around the cabin, the driveshaft within him spinning, spinning. If one of his kind had been here, up close to the ridgeline, to drop this thing, would he find other signs? Were there Huh creatures hidden in the bushes, watching him? Why didn’t they come forward? He climbed, scanned. He threw his head back and gave his loud call and then listened for an answer. He went over the ground closely, looking for any sign. Of course he found nothing. But that was because he didn’t know what to look for. No more pounamu has been unearthed, but archeologists have in this area found middens where sea shells had been dumped. Caliban found these too, sniffed up the faint salty tang. But he had never seen the sea and didn’t understand that these things could not have come here on their own.
He returned again to the tree where he had squatted and waited for the pigs. This was where it had started. Now, here he was again, and the tree smelled the same, felt the same beneath his feet. The track was the same. And now here came the pigs. They were dark, bristly, with dark eyes that seemed like fierce little worlds. He could have dropped onto the back of the boar, it was directly below him. Of course there were the tusks to think about, plus there was fierceness in these creatures which reminded him of the driveshaft – that hum of energy. But the pigs were no longer the point. He didn’t even have his spear. Caliban was trying to understand how he could be here, and everything could be here, and Nudu could be not here.
Even in grief, he grew. It was his time for growth and while his mind had been stretching, his body had merely been a thing he was in, the shell of him. Now suddenly it had a fascination for him that he had no reason not to enjoy. Part of this, as I have said, was his organ, which he played with the usual teenage virtuosity – but not only this. Every part of him now seemed fascinating. He held his arm out and regarded his swell of muscle. He was taking pride in himself and stood straighter. Upright, he was provocation for Terjick and had to make sure he didn’t find himself suddenly in the silverback’s path. Terjick was not as tall, but there was no doubt about who was the big guy, and Terjick never shied from a chance to prove it. Zembak had grown too, and often these males could be heard growling and play-fighting. But Zembak’s place in the gorillas’ scheme of things was clear – he was Terjick’s inferior. Caliban was something else. Increasingly it was understood that he was other. Only Jimpi really spent much time with him. Caliban had taught Jimpi to ride the supplejack highway and together they would swing and chase and explore and test their muscles and beat their chests. But Jimpi was a follower. Caliban had a design in his head.
And so several years passed.
Nothing seemed to change, it seemed only that there was more of some things. Food, for instance. Caliban became adept at killing the larger animals, pigs and deer, and thus obtained a better source of protein. His frame began to fill out. The down on his chin became prickly. His voice deepened.
Standing high upon an exposed branch he would survey the treetops and the fall of the valley. His ears would listen and bring him the next tune from the cabin. Ah, he liked this one. And he would sail his voice out into the audience of animals and leaves. He did have the sense that there was an audience, he knew they were all listening to him – the bush listens to everything. Even the cicadas stopped. Sure-footed on his branch, one hand clasping a vine, he was a bell in a high tower. He didn’t fling his arms about, or touch his heart when he sang about love, in the manner of singers who need you to know how moved they are. He didn’t emote. He just sang. He belted those big songs out – There Ain’t Nothin’ Like a Dame ...
While he’s standing in clear air we might just as well have a bit of a look at him.
He’s on his way to being a big guy, six-four, and he’s got shoulders and arms and a chest that would be good if you had a door that needed breaking down. A good chest. None of the overstuffed-couch look that you get with the studs on the beach, who pump all day and shave themselves. No, his was all vine-swinging muscle, pig-hefting sinew, spear-chucking, slasher-swinging, tree-climbing, gorilla-wrestling honest bounce. Standing up there, he’s naked of course. The personal equipment I have already covered. There’s a scar on the outside of his left leg, it runs down to his ankle, an ugly thing, and in fact his whole body has scars great and small all over it. It’s not a display surface, not what it became – his skin is dark with dirt. He washes every day but not with soap, not with a flannel or pumice, and the bushworld, well, it’s all dirt.
And now the head. Again it’s large. A big head on a big body, this is always attractive. Hair everywhere, shaggy, as though he was a proto-hippie. He used the slasher to keep it out of his eyes, but he continued to look like a black haystack caught by the rain. Not that he cared. A strong brow, dark, and blue eyes. Interesting eyes, I think. If we could just move the camera in a bit closer. Yes, now we have his face. Full lips, strong nose, large deep blue eyes. Okay, let’s say it: the fellow was good-looking. You don’t get your picture on the cover of every magazine on the planet because you look like a hedgehog. He was pretty, even – disturbing in a big guy. When the scars healed, and his hair was cut, when he was dolled up for the stage, this pretty quality became disturbing. When we start to really study the face, there’s strength in it, but also a devoted quality. The more you look at this the stranger it becomes. Big good-looking guys get what they want. Such faces shouldn’t yearn. This is the face of someone who is searching. His eyes actually look at you. This is somehow tragic. He is supposed to be so far away, so unattainable. What is he yearning for? What could such a face possibly want? This is, I think, what gave him his special quality. His yearning for something beyond himself. And he had no clue what.
Let him sing.
Let him swing through the branches with Jimpi, let the rains fall on him, let the spear be steady in his hand at the moment he launches it. Give him a year or two here, just to enjoy himself, to expand. He was a powerful being in the bushworld now. He didn’t hide himself. When he was happy on the trail, he sang. If he felt like it he would let forth the long yell that, in time, became so famous that audiences wouldn’t let him leave the stage without hearing it. Aaaaaahahieahieahieaa ... Give him time to study the books in his cabin – he thought now of that place as his. Give him room. If the bushworld has anything it has room. Let him grow.
And give him his privacy. We don’t need to be there when the urge takes him and he strokes himself a length.
Give him a thousand evenings, with the dusk falling, the fat moon rising, the stars, the looming shapes of night. What’s a thousand – three years? That’s about right. Let the winds play on his skin, and the rain run down his back, and the sound of the bush fill his ears – the big circle that he’s listening at the centre of. Let him lie on his back in his humpy with the soft fresh grasses beneath him. Give him owls, and hawks, and fantails, and pigeons, every kind of bird, New Zealand is full of them, to fly his thoughts around. The taste of rabbit on his lips – a little blood there, too. The shape of the valley, like a great spoon, a cupped hand containing a myriad of worlds, and they’re all his. Every pathway here, every wriggle made by a worm in the dust is known to him. He hears a weta scratch its forehead high up in the valley. He hears the passage of the owl’s wings. He stretches and turns on his side and pulls the blanket which he has borrowed from the cabin up to his shoulder so that his skin doesn’t shiver in the night, and closes his eyes.
Now he’s finished his last song and he drops from the branch and sets off through the highway among the leaves to find some gorilla company, something for dinner. Let him go.
9
June McMay when she steps up to the camera is an entirely different proposition. Equally complicated, of course.
For a start she’s not a natural blonde. The world in those postwar years was in love with blondes – Anita Eckberg, Jayne Mansfield, and, the blonde goddess, Marilyn Monroe – if you wanted to be a player you had to be blonde. Furthermore, lovely Marilyn was all woman. Compared with the stick-figures sold to us as sex objects these days, she was fat. And June was built on the Monroe model and had curves you had to steer around or come off the road. But we don’t see her that way. I’ve talked to modern kids about how they see June McMay and they have her looking pretty much like them, slim and shallow-chested. They put her in their clothes, they have her navel showing – as did Marilyn, of course. Marilyn however is trapped in the millions of pictures taken of her at that time and so we see her on video and wonder what the big deal was. A big lump of country girl, sure, and storytelling eyes. Ah, don’t get me started – Marilyn looked as every woman should and I won’t hear another word on the subject.
