The Dream Swimmer, page 23
‘Get her, Eli,’ Zac said.
‘Out of the way, bitch!’ Eli raised an iron bar.
Eli never knew what struck him. Tiana’s lash came whistling out of the light, its feathered thongs aimed at his eyes. All he felt was a light flick across the irises and then a crack as they were shredded. With a cry, he put his hands to his face.
I looked at my mother. She had lost none of her skills. The whip sang its anger as she moved forward, cracking it above the heads of the men, crack, crack, crack.
‘Get back, get back, you bastards,’ she cried.
Another of the men threw his baseball bat at her. She saw it coming, caught it in her lash and deflected it spinning into the darkness. Then she directed her lash at the man who had thrown it, slashing him across the face.
Zac signed for the gang to retreat. For a moment there was a silence. Then the men reappeared.
‘Cousin –’ Raina whispered.
This time Zac had a sawn-off shotgun.
‘All we want is what is ours,’ he called. ‘Mary belongs to us.’
‘Go to the ute, Raina,’ I ordered.
I turned to Aunt Hiraina, Uncle Hepi and Sammy. ‘I’m taking Raina. When we go, they’ll follow. But I want to know why they want Raina.’
My mother looked at my aunt. ‘Doesn’t he know, Hiraina? Didn’t you tell him? Didn’t you tell him that Raina belongs to them?’
Aunt Hiraina’s face was still. Tiana turned to me.
‘The Rastas,’ she began, ‘they all think Raina is Mary, mother of the new Christ.’
‘Let’s go,’ I cried.
I swung myself into the driver’s seat. Tiana and Raina clambered in the other side. Aunt Hiraina, Uncle Hepi and Sammy wrestled with the gang, giving us time to get away. I reversed the ute crazily out of Aunt Hiraina’s front garden, down the slope and through the gateway.
The gang scattered for their cars.
I braked, put the ute into first gear. With a squeal of tyres we were away. We hit the first bend. Behind I could see the lights of two cars in pursuit. Meanwhile, Raina had not been buckled in and had hit her head. She was unconscious. I looked down at her drug-ravaged face.
‘God, I didn’t know she was as bad as this,’ I said.
‘You call this bad?’ Tiana asked. ‘You don’t know anything, Tamatea. Have you ever seen someone coming off drugs?’
‘No.’
‘The withdrawal symptoms are beyond description.’
‘Then Aunt Hiraina should face the facts and set up proper medical care for Raina. You and the other women of Waituhi have no hope of helping her.’
‘Listen to yourself, Tamatea. What do you know? You’re only a man. Only a mother knows that, for better or worse, the buck stops with us.’
Tiana looked in the rearview mirror. Two sets of headlights, dazzling, coming out of the pit of the night.
‘They’re gaining,’ Tiana said.
Then the two cars were on us. Zac was hanging out of the window of the front car. He had the sawn-off shotgun in his hands and was trying to make a shot. Whang, a bullet ricocheted off the rim of our left rear wheel.
‘They’re trying to shoot one of our tyres out,’ Tiana yelled.
I nodded. I eased off the accelerator and waited. Zac’s car began to come up beside us. I yanked the steering wheel to the left. Startled, the driver in the first car swerved to get out of the way and then corrected. But the movement was enough to catch Zac off-guard. He lost grip of the gun and it fell into blackness.
I put my foot back on the accelerator again.
‘This business of Raina being Mary,’ I began. ‘I don’t understand –’
‘What is there to understand?’ Tiana answered.
‘Why her?’ I asked.
‘Is she not from Riripeti?’ Tiana said.
The road had widened and the two cars following us had souped-up engines. They were gaining on us again, and trying to pass. I wrenched the ute from side to side so that they could not get in front.
‘Yes, but there are others from Riripeti.’
‘Not like Raina,’ Tiana said.
I returned my concentration to the driving. I’d had an idea. I positioned the ute in the middle of the road.
‘What are you doing?’ Tiana asked.
‘It just might work,’ I answered.
I began to play with the two pursuing cars, trying to separate them so that they would not come up on the same side.
Then, gotcha. The second car slewed over to the left.
It was a moonlit night. I was driving the ute in the middle of the road. The two pursuing cars drew level, one on each side of us. Three abreast we roared down the gravelled road, the dust rocketing in our wake. The cars had their interior lights on so that we could see the faces of the gang members. They were laughing. Looking at Tiana. One poked out his head and roared:
‘Hey, Grandma, you’re mine.’
He began licking his lips. Obscene. Then he saw Raina. She was recovering, and when she looked out at Zac he pretended to be at mock prayer. Then he mimed slicing into Raina’s belly with a knife and pulling her baby out.
‘Zac,’ Raina murmured. ‘He’s like Johnny-Too-Bad.’
We turned on to a long straight. The road was a white ribbon in the dark. The moon went behind a cloud.
‘We’ve got to get out of this,’ Tiana said.
I nodded. ‘Are those cars still level?’
Tiana nodded, wondering what I was up to. I switched off the headlights of the ute.
‘Hang on,’ I said.
My mother realised what I planned to do. For a moment, her eyes glistened with grief. She had forgotten that for all my time away I still knew the country roads around Gisborne like the back of my hand.
The three cars were roaring down the straight. I put the palm of my right hand on the horn and kept it there, trying to divert the attention of both other drivers on us rather than on the road ahead. The guys were laughing and laughing, thinking I had lost my nerve. I drew my noose around them.
At the last second, I switched the headlights back on.
Ahead was the one-way bridge. It leapt out of the blackness like a scaffold. With a cry of triumph I floored the accelerator and aimed the ute forward and through the gap.
The car on the left smashed into the side of the bridge and erupted in a ball of fire. The other car was luckier, the driver swerving and plunging down the bank into the stream below.
I braked the ute. I looked back. The orange ball of fire boiled into the sky.
‘We should go back and see –’ Tiana began.
‘See what?’ I asked. ‘They played a game of life and death. They were out to kill us. We won. They lost. It could have been the other way around. It wasn’t. You see how well I’ve learnt from you, Tiana? It was you who taught me to be pitiless.’
My mother looked at me. Her face was remote.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You get that from Riripeti.’
Back in Gisborne, Tiana put Raina to bed. I telephoned the hospital to ask about Te Ariki. They suggested the family visit him in the morning. I told Tiana and she nodded. Then, as was her habit, she took a long hot shower. ‘I’ve left some water for you,’ she said as she stepped past me. Later I heard her talking on the telephone.
‘Everything all right at Waituhi?’
‘Yes. Hiraina was worried about Raina. With all that’s happened to her, it’s a wonder she still carries the baby.’
I walked to my room. My mother went to kiss me and I almost succumbed, almost surrendered again. But all the events and memories of the day crowded in on me like harpies and I pushed her away.
‘No,’ I said.
The next morning, I went up to the hospital with Tiana. Teria, Erina, Vanessa, Mana and Meri were already there. Te Ariki was trying to tell them to keep quiet while he spoke to our other brother, Hamuera, on the telephone. He was wan but his spirits were high.
‘Your father is as strong as a horse,’ Dr Rajisanam said.
I told Te Ariki I had to return to Wellington.
‘Can I come with you?’ he asked. ‘It’s a madhouse here with your sisters gabbling away at me. Either that or get me headphones so I don’t have to listen to them.’
My sisters laughed, pretending to be offended.
‘Thank you, Son,’ Te Ariki said as we embraced and kissed.
Oh, I wanted my mother to see the love between my father and me. I wanted her to weep that there was no such love between me and her. But I knew my gesture was hollow because my mother never cried.
I pressed on. ‘Te Ariki, I went to the Place of the Willows.’
My father looked up at me, startled.
‘I saw a spider, Dad. There was only one, but –’
‘Where there is one there are –’ My father began to sob.
‘Be at peace, Te Ariki,’ I said. Some gentleness in my voice made my father look up at me again. ‘When you get out of here, call the ope together.’
‘You’ve decided then? Is it time?’
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘Tell them that we have another appointment with the Prime Minister.’
Teria wanted to stay with Dad. I would have preferred that Vanessa or Erina take me to the airport but, in the end, it was Tiana who took me to the terminal.
‘You’ve never forgiven me, have you?’ she said.
‘No,’ I answered.
‘After all these years –’
I looked at my mother, incredulous. She was making it sound only a matter of a few years but it involved my whole life. I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my voice.
‘I’m like you, Tiana. A thousand years, a hundred years, ten. I never forget. Like mother like son.’
The boarding call was made. Relieved, I got up to go. All of a sudden Tiana plucked at my arm. I pulled myself away. The violence of the movement attracted the attention of bystanders who looked at me, alarmed. Tiana’s face fell. Then she recovered.
‘Wherever you go, Tamatea,’ Tiana said, ‘I will find you. Wherever you or your sisters are, there I will be also. I do this for love of you, Son. For love of your sisters –’
‘So you were in Venice?’ I answered. ‘And Afghanistan too?’
‘Yes, I broke that promise but not the other.’
‘I’ve told you before, Tiana. Stay out of my life and my dreams.’
Seconds passed in silence between us. Anger had pushed me beyond talking. Another boarding call was made.
‘There’s something else,’ Tiana said at last. ‘You asked if there was mate. There was. There is.’
So it was true. ‘And it comes from Venice?’
Tiana did not respond. At the time I took her silence for assent.
‘Can it be taken off?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘How?’ Tiana answered. ‘You’ve always had the power to take it off.’
I wanted to say to Tiana, Thank you, but I couldn’t and she knew I couldn’t. She gave me a smile. Wan. Fleeting.
‘I’ll keep the wings of your plane up,’ Tiana said.
She was swaying back and forth, and I knew she wanted to embrace me. I left her like that, turning on my heel.
The plane took off, arrowing through the clear sky. It was still daylight, but a few stars were already shining. The blue reflection of the moon had risen on the horizon. The burning Pleiades began to sink into the sea, though the night was still tardy in coming.
I closed my eyes. I thought, yes, Te Ariki and Aunt Hiraina had pulled on my bridle as surely as Wi Pere had Riripeti’s. The spiral had taken me out into the wide world as far as Afghanistan and was returning. Now, my time had come. I felt no elation in this, no sense of destiny. Rather, a rightness, an exhalation, as if I had been holding my breath all my life. Would the mate now stand in my way?
Then I thought of Tiana. Her memory conjured up the sounds of the rustling pursuit of the Eryinnes. I looked out the window of the plane. Somehow I felt the Furies were not far behind me.
You’ve always had the power to take it off, Son.
What I did not know was that the Furies weren’t behind me at all. They were ahead, waiting with their net of memories, to trap me in Wellington.
ACT IV
In The Depths of Te Kore
Twenty-two
Ah pieta.
Che piu mi resta? Un deserto é la mia vita; Vivi e regna, il tuo furore io tra breve plachero … Oh, mercy. What more is left to me? My life is a desert; live and reign, your fury I shall soon placate. This love which angers you I will extinguish in the tomb.
Transcript, July, 1958. Lieutenant Richard Tompkins, Demolitions Expert, New Zealand Army: The Sea Beast
Yes Sir, I understand you want to know what I saw when I was doing that bomb demolition job at Mangaia. My oath, that was heavy work. Dangerous? Not really. What happened was this.
There was a stockpile of bombs which were left over from World War Two. They were dangerously corroded, and me and my mates were sent up to the Cooks to deal with them. Some, however, were so deteriorated that we had to sink them with depth charges just outside the lagoon.
The detonations were all happening right on schedule. We were tipping the bombs off the lighter; we’d get clear, the bombs would reach the assigned depth and explode. You’d see the water boiling, and then the vibration from the detonation would reach you. Sometimes fish would float to the surface, stunned by the impact.
The Islanders were out on their canoes. Every time a bomb went off they’d cheer and dance around and then gather the fish from the surface.
Then something went wrong. One of our bombloads went down and Phil had forgotten to send the depth charges down with it. There was nothing else to do except get the scuba gear on and fix it.
The water was warm, but I had this weird kind of feeling. Part of it had to do with the fact that the sea was filled with stunned fish, floating like silver tinsel paper, twisting and turning in that lifeless way and catching the surface sunlight. All of a sudden, right beneath me, I saw this giant split in the bottom of the ocean floor. The bloody bombs had fallen into it.
Well, as soon as I entered the place, the weird feeling just grew. I mean, this wasn’t just an ordinary crevice. It was an opening to a huge underwater cavern. Well, Phil had set a timing device to the depth charges, so I decided just to drop them and make back to the surface.
Ten minutes later there was a loud thud as the depth charges went off. Next, a boom as the bombs exploded. The Islanders cheered and did their usual little dance and began to paddle out to pick up the stunned fish. But next minute there was this huge crack, as if part of the ocean floor had caved in, and the water boiled and seethed. Those Islanders in their canoes thought it was a great joke. They were laughing and laughing, but then all of a sudden they began to cry out in terror.
Something huge and dark was ascending to the surface. It began to roll as it came up, and I caught a glimpse of a huge misshapen head and eyes rather like those of a Maori carving staring up through the surface. It was horrible to look at, and there was something about the way it moved or didn’t move. It was just like the fish. That’s when I realised that it, too, was either stunned or dead.
Yet, even then it was awesome. It rose head first out of the sea, reaching higher and higher. At least fifty feet of the monstrous thing. Then slowly it toppled back into the sea. Although dead, there was a presence about it, a kind of power.
Well, the Islanders went crazy. They forced us away from the sea, making us go back to land. Later that afternoon we watched as their head priest and others went out on canoes to pull the beast on to an exposed part of the reef. I had binoculars and could see that they were praying.
Around dusk, the sky was filled with a humming sound. All of a sudden thousands of seabirds came, amassing above us and obliterating the sky. They began to dive on the sea beast and strip it of its flesh. I don’t know what happened to the bones.
Sir, I’m pleased to have your explanation of what the bloody thing was.
A taniwha, you say? Last seen in 1891?
Yes, the Islanders were calling to it. Yes, they were acknowledging a role it once had as an escort to a Maori canoe.
Can I remember what they were calling out? Something like:
‘Arai Te Uru! Aue, Arai Te Uru!’
In the Northern Hemisphere, the Second World War was ending. The birth of a son in the Southern Hemisphere was an infinitesimal happening when compared with the massive negation of life in the slaughter and destruction of war. A small sickly cry was no triumph when set against the sudden stopping of thousands of lives and the creation of empty spaces where people once sang and laughed.
But for Tiana, it was the one great validation of herself and her life.
I have perhaps given the impression that Tiana was always violent to her children. That is not the case. Indeed, from eyewitness accounts, Tiana was, in the beginning, a loving parent.
‘I stayed with your mother,’ Mereira said, ‘when Riripeti allowed Te Ariki to return to her. Tiana was angry with your father for quite a while, and I thought he was such a coward for not going against Riripeti and seeking your mother out earlier. Of course Riripeti wanted Te Ariki and Tiana to go out to live in Waituhi. But your mother said, “No fear, I’m staying in Gisborne. I don’t want to get mixed up in the Mahana family.” That’s how you got to be brought up at that house in Crawford Road instead.’ Mereira was getting sentimental. She reached for my hand. ‘I know you and your mother never got on, Tamatea, but when you were a child your mother just adored you. And straight away she began to clash with Riripeti. In those days it was the custom for the firstborn grandson to be taken by the grandmother, but your mother would not agree to this. Te Ariki, however, forced your mother to agree to an arrangement that enabled Riripeti to have you at least in the weekends. All day Tiana would bathe you, play with you and then bathe you again. This was because you were her first child. When it was near to time, Tiana would dress you in your baby robes and wait at the front window. Often she would hum to herself, her eyes glazing over, her feet beginning to paddle. But she knew she could never escape.’
