Call of the Kiwi, page 31
part #3 of Neuseeland-Saga Series
“So be it, Maaka. Talk to Frank; he needs to step back. And keep Gloria busy with the sheep and dogs. Nothing can go wrong there. And one more thing, please take the riding pony to the stallion. You know, Gloria’s pony, Princess.”
Gloria had Ceredwen gallop until both horse and rider were out of breath. Nimue ran with her tongue hanging out behind them. Normally Gloria made allowances for the dog, but that day, all she wanted was to get away, as fast as possible. She knew that she had overreacted; she should not have struck out at Frank Wilkenson. But when he had gripped Ceredwen’s reins and reached for her stirrup, something in her had exploded. This was not the first time it had happened, but until then her lightning-fast reactions had always been useful for keeping men at bay. On Kiward Station, however, such behavior would get her into trouble—Maaka might already be talking to her great-grandmother.
She had intended to herd a few ewes to a winter pasture, but she had forgotten about the animals in her confrontation with Frank. Now it would be senseless to turn back. She would rather check on the outposts—or ride to the circle of stone warriors. She had only been there once since her return, to visit Grandpa James’s grave. But Gwyneira had accompanied her then, and Gloria had felt watched and self-conscious. Did Gwyneira have to constantly correct her form sitting on a horse and holding the reins? Had she not watched Gloria too searchingly, displeased that Gloria did not cry at her husband’s grave? Gloria always found herself fighting her insecurity when she was with Gwyneira. In fact, there was no one on Kiward Station in whose presence she felt secure. Maaka wanted to tell her how to herd the cattle; Frank Wilkenson thought he knew which horse suited her best. Everyone picked on her. It was just like at Oaks Garden. She could not do anything right.
Caught between rage and brooding, Gloria reached the rock formation. Mighty stone blocks formed a circle that was almost comparable to the menhir formations at Stonehenge. But here it had been nature at work, not the hand of man. The Maori saw in the ring a sign from the gods that this land was sacred. Except during specified days or times, they tended to avoid such places. So Gloria was surprised when she noticed smoke rising from the ring. As she approached she saw a small fire. A young Maori sat beside it.
“What are you doing here?” she yelled at him.
The young man seemed to awaken out of a deep meditation. When he turned toward her, Gloria was startled to see that the man’s face was covered in moko, his people’s traditional tattoos. Lines wound out from his nose, extending above his eyebrows, over his cheeks, and along his chin. Gloria knew this pattern, as Tamatea liked to paint it on Kura’s dancers every evening. Unlike traditional Maori, he wore jeans, a flannel shirt, and a leather jacket.
“You’re Wiremu,” Gloria said.
The man nodded. The only young Maori in his tribe to still bear the tattoos of his ancestors, the chieftain’s son wore his name like a badge. Most young Maori had dropped the tradition when the whites arrived, but as Tonga’s son, he had been marked with the designs at a young age.
Wiremu threw another piece of wood into the fire.
“You can’t light a fire here,” Gloria informed him. “This place is tapu.”
“I can’t eat anything here,” he corrected her. “If I were to stay here a long time, I’d have to go hungry. But no one’s forcing me to freeze while communing with the spirits.”
Gloria tried to hold fast to her anger, but she could not stop herself from smiling. She steered her horse into the circle and was thankful that Wiremu refrained from asking her what she was doing. She was not sure if the tapu allowed someone to ride there.
“Weren’t you going to university?” she asked. She vaguely recalled a letter from her great-grandmother explaining that Wiremu had attended high school in Christchurch and was then planning to attend either Christ’s College or the university in Dunedin.
Wiremu nodded. “I went to Dunedin.”
“But?” Gloria asked.
“I gave it up.” Wiremu’s hand ran seemingly unconsciously over his tattoos.
Gloria did not ask him anything more about it. She knew how it felt when people stared at you. Surely it made no difference whether they did it because you did not look like your mother or because you too closely resembled the stereotypes of your people.
“What are you going to do now?” she inquired.
“This and that. Hunt. Fish. Work on my mana.”
A Maori man’s mana defined his influence within his tribe. If Wiremu distinguished himself as a warrior, dancer, storyteller, hunter, and gatherer, he had a good chance of becoming chief, despite the fact that he was the youngest son. Even a girl could lead a tribe, though that was rare. Most Maori women exercised their power behind the “throne.”
“You’re Gloria,” Wiremu said. “We used to play together as children. And my father wanted us to marry.”
“I’m not going to marry.”
Wiremu laughed. “That will deeply upset my father. Good thing you’re not his daughter. Otherwise he’d surely find some tapu that bound a chieftain’s daughter to the hand of some chieftain’s son. There are a great many tapu concerning a chieftain’s daughter.”
“Among the pakeha too, even if it’s called something else. And you don’t even need to be a princess.”
“Heiress will do as well,” Wiremu said perceptively. “How was America?”
“Big.”
Wiremu seemed satisfied with that. Gloria was thankful that he did not ask about Australia.
“Is it true that everyone is equal there?”
“Are you joking?”
Wiremu smiled. “Don’t you want to come down from that horse?”
“No,” Gloria said.
“A tapu?” Wiremu asked.
She smiled.
The next day Wiremu was waiting at the fence that enclosed the winter pasture. After calling to Nimue to herd some ewes into a nearby corral, she rode Ceredwen over to Wiremu.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice softer than when she’d asked him the same question the day before.
“I’m enforcing a tapu. In all seriousness. It’s almost embarrassing. You’re going to start to believe I’m the tribal witch doctor, but my father sent me to make sure you’re keeping the sheep within the borders.”
Gloria frowned. “Isn’t the stream the border?”
“Yes, but my father discovered a sacred site behind that corner. Or something like that. A couple of people fought there ages ago. Blood flowed and that sanctified the ground. He wants you to respect that.”
“If it were up to your father, all New Zealand would be tapu,” Gloria said, becoming agitated.
Wiremu grinned. “Exactly.”
“But then you would not be able to eat anywhere.”
“Indeed.” Wiremu laughed. ”You should tell him that. Come down to the village, Gloria. Marama thinks you visit her too rarely as it is. I just caught a few fish in a completely tapu-free stream. We could roast them and, who knows, talk about tapu in England?”
Gloria found herself in a bind. Gwyneira, too, had suggested that she visit Marama since she was riding in that direction.
“If you don’t want to get down, I can hand the food up to you.”
Gloria almost had to laugh. Albeit a little reluctantly, she directed Ceredwen toward the Maori village.
Though Gloria had no talent for chitchat, she eventually made an attempt at conversation as she slowed her horse to an amble alongside him. “What did you want to be?” she asked. “At the university, I mean.”
Wiremu frowned. “Doctor. A surgeon, actually.”
“Oh.” Gloria could almost hear the whispering. They had probably called him “medicine man” behind his back.
Wiremu lowered his eyes when he saw her looking down at his tattoos. He was embarrassed, even here on his land among his people. Not that the blue-black tendrils disfigured him in any way; on the contrary, they softened his somewhat square face. But to have Wiremu in a Western operating room? Impossible.
“My father wanted me to study law,” he continued to break the silence.
“Would that have worked out better?”
Wiremu snorted. “I would have had to limit myself to Maori affairs. I would have made a living, though, since there are more and more legal disputes. ‘A task fit for a warrior.’ ”
“Your father?”
Wiremu nodded. “I just don’t like to fight with words.”
“What if you studied herbal medicine?” Gloria suggested. “You could become a tohunga.”
“And spend my days extracting tea-tree oil?” he asked bitterly. “Or becoming one with the universe? Listening to the voices of nature? Te Reo?”
“You tried it,” Gloria said, venturing a guess. “That’s why you were in the circle of stone warriors, right?”
The blood shot to Wiremu’s face. “The spirits were not very open.”
“They never are,” Gloria whispered.
“Just let your breath flow. No, Heremini, try not to wrinkle your nose. That’s better. Ani, you’re not going to become one with the koauau by changing; it’ll accept you as you are. The nguru wants to feel your breath, Heremini.” Marama sat in front of the meeting hall teaching two girls how to play the flutes. Ani’s and Heremini’s efforts to produce the notes were making Marama and the other women around her laugh.
Gloria was horrified, but the girls giggled too. They did not seem to think it such a tragedy that they could only draw a few squeaky sounds from the flutes.
“Gloria,” Marama said, standing up when she saw her granddaughter. “How nice to see you. You come here so rarely we ought to dance a greeting haka for you.”
Normally only honored guests—and therefore mostly outsiders—were greeted with a dance. But Ani and Heremini leaped up, raised their flutes and began playing their instruments like mere pounamu—war axes. When they began to chant verses, Marama asked them to be quiet.
“Now, stop it. Gloria’s no outsider. She belongs to the tribe. Besides, you ought to be ashamed of your croaking. Better try it again with the flutes. Gloria, mokopuna, don’t you want to come down from your horse?”
Gloria blushed and slipped down from the saddle. Wiremu grinned and moved to take her mare away.
“May I take the throne of the chieftain’s daughter to graze somewhere, or would I be trespassing on a tapu?” he whispered to her.
“Horses eat everywhere,” Gloria said. She was surprised when Wiremu understood it as a joke and laughed.
“Horses live in gods’ good graces,” he added as he removed Ceredwen’s saddle.
“Taua, here are fish for dinner. I’ve invited Gloria,” Wiremu said, turning to Marama.
“We’ll roast them later. But Gloria does not need an invitation; she is always welcome. Sit with us, Gloria. Can you still play the koauau?”
Gloria blushed. Marama had shown her how to make music with the flute as a child, and she had proved quite adroit at breath management. Though she had less of a talent for melody, she did not want to decline in front of the tribe. Nervously, she reached for the flute and blew into it with her nose as she had been taught, startling herself as she did so. The koauau let out a sort of moan that became a cry. Marama picked up the nguru, put it to her mouth, and began to provide a wild, stirring rhythm. Gloria winced when someone joined in with the pahu pounamu. The girls, Ani and Heremini, got up and began to dance again. They were still so small that their war-haka did not look particularly martial, but they nonetheless demonstrated the self-assured movements of the Maori warrior women of old.
“Does Kura perform this haka? How do you know it?” Marama asked her granddaughter. “It’s a very old piece—from the time when Maori men and women still fought side by side. It’s better known on the North Island.”
Gloria reddened. She had not known the dance before, having struck the opening note by accident. But the koauau had screamed out her rage—and Marama had led her into battle. Gloria had the feeling not so much of having made music as of having lived it.
“Kia ora, daughters! Should I be afraid? Has war broken out?” A deep voice vibrated behind them as dusk began to fall, and Rongo Rongo stepped into the light of the fire that Wiremu had lit.
“I must warm myself, children; let me by the fire, unless you need it right now to temper your spear points.” Rongo rubbed her short, powerful fingers over the fire. Behind Rongo, Gloria recognized Tonga, the chief. She had not seen Tonga since she’d been back, and his dark, tattooed face almost scared her.
But Tonga smiled. “Look, Gloria daughter of those who came to Aotearoa on the Uruau and on the Dublin.”
Gloria blushed. She knew the introduction ritual of the Maori—on important occasions, a person would name the canoe on which his ancestors had come to New Zealand hundreds of years before. Gloria’s pakeha matriarch had traveled to New Zealand only sixty years before aboard the Dublin.
“Have you come here to claim your inheritance? That of the Ngai Tahu or that of the Wardens?”
Gloria did not know how to respond.
“Leave her alone,” Marama said. “She’s here to eat and talk with us. Don’t listen to him, Gloria. Why don’t you help Wiremu and the girls prepare the fish?”
Gloria fled gratefully to the stream that flowed beside the village. She had not gutted fish since she was a little girl and had learned to fish from Jack. At first she was awkward, but to her amazement the other girls did not laugh at her. When Wiremu came over to show her how to do it, Gloria backed away from him.
“Would you rather dig up some sweet potatoes?” asked an older girl named Pau who had noticed Gloria’s reaction. “Come with me then.”
Pau linked arms with her in a friendly way as they walked to the field.
“Wiremu must like you,” she laughed. “He never usually cooks with us, just plays the great warrior. And he took care of your horse too.”
“I don’t like him,” Gloria said gruffly.
Pau raised her hands defensively. “Don’t be mad. I only thought, well, he’s a good fellow and the chief’s son. Most girls would like him.”
“He’s a man,” Gloria blurted out as if that justified her condemnation.
“Yes,” Pau said calmly, handing Gloria a shovel. “Dig in that bed to the right. And pick the smaller ones; they have a stronger flavor. We’ll wash them in the stream afterward.”
“Don’t pick on the girl, Tonga. It’s best you just leave her alone. She has suffered much.” Rongo Rongo watched Gloria as she left with the other girls to prepare the food.
“Is that what the spirits tell you?” Tonga asked, half-mockingly. He respected Rongo, but as much as he liked to appeal to tribal tradition, communing with the spirits of his ancestors did not work any better for him than for his son.
“My memory of the globe Mrs. O’Keefe had at school tells me that,” she said. “Do you no longer remember where America is located, Tonga? Or how big Australia is? Ten times bigger than Aotearoa. Gloria walked, or rode, through that. No one knows how she managed it. A pakeha girl, Tonga.”
“She’s half-Maori,” Tonga said.
“A quarter,” Rongo corrected him. “And not one raised with the knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness. You have heard of Australia, haven’t you? The heat, the snakes. She would not have been able to do that all alone.”
“She could also hardly have swum across the ocean herself,” Tonga said, laughing.
“Exactly,” said Rongo, and her face reflected her sorrow.
Marama didn’t press her granddaughter for details of her travels or Kura that evening. She simply allowed the girl to sit peacefully by the fire and listen to the conversation and stories unfolding around the fire. When Gloria was finally saddling her horse—after declining Wiremu’s offer of help—Tonga approached her. She was startled and kept her distance.
“Daughter of the Ngai Tahu,” he said at last. “Whatever was done to you, it was done by pakeha.”
6
After the first few exciting weeks of marriage, Lilian Biller realized with a shock that their cash reserves had shrunk considerably. Although their rent was affordable, food and clothing, books for Ben’s studies, and even basic used furnishings, silverware, and linens had cost a great deal more than she’d anticipated. Turning her attention to how to make money, Lilian spoke to her husband first.
“Can you take on some work at the university?”
Ben looked up from the book he was reading, irritated. “Dearest, I work every day in the university.”
“I was referring to paid work. Does your professor need any help? Aren’t there some courses you could teach or something?”
Ben shook his head apologetically. The linguistics department at the University of Auckland was still small. The number of students hardly justified a full professor’s attention, let alone an assistant. And subjects like “the comparison of Polynesian dialects for the purpose of locating the Maori settlers’ region of origin”—though of great interest to his professor—would hardly fill a lecture hall.
“Well, then you’ll just have to look for something else,” Lilian said, interrupting his long-winded explanation of the situation. “We need money, dearest, there’s no way around it.”
“But my studies! If I concentrate on them now, then later . . .”
“Later we’ll be starving, Ben. Find something you can do alongside your studies. If I work too, we’ll manage.”
Lilian kissed him encouragingly.
Lilian was able to find a respectable number of piano students in no time. She concentrated her efforts on the artisans’ quarter, steering clear of academic families, since the housewife might play better than Lilian could. Among the hardworking second-generation immigrants who had often achieved more than modest wealth with their flourishing workshops, there was a desire to imitate the rich, and this included a basic musical education for their children.
