Potiki Read online

  Patricia Grace

  * * *

  Potiki

  Contents

  Prologue

  PART ONE 1. Roimata

  2. Mary

  3. Roimata

  4. Roimata

  5. Roimata

  6. Toko

  7. Roimata

  8. Toko

  9. Toko

  10. Hemi

  11. Roimata

  12. Toko

  PART TWO 13. Dollarman

  14. Toko

  15. Roimata

  16. Roimata

  17. Toko

  18. The urupa

  19. Roimata

  20. Toko

  21. Toko

  22. Hemi

  23. Roimata

  24. Toko

  PART THREE 25. Roimata

  26. Roimata

  27. James

  28. The stories

  29. Potiki

  About the Author

  PATRICIA GRACE is the author of five novels, four short story collections and several children’s books.

  Awards for her work include the New Zealand Fiction Award for Potiki in 1987, the Children’s Picture Book of the Year for The Kuia and the Spider in 1982 and the Hubert Church Prose Award for the best first book for Waiariki in 1976. She was also awarded the Liberaturpreis from Frankfurt in 1994 for Potiki, which has been translated into several languages. Dogside Story was longlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize in 2001.

  Patricia Grace was born in Wellington in 1937. She lives in Plimmerton on the ancestral land of Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa and Te Āti Awa in close proximity to her home marae at Hongoeka Bay.

  To my father, in loving memory

  Love and thanks to Dick, Keri and Robyn

  Prologue

  From the centre,

  From the nothing,

  Of not seen,

  Of not heard,

  There comes

  A shifting,

  A stirring,

  And a creeping forward,

  There comes

  A standing,

  A springing,

  To an outer circle,

  There comes

  An intake

  Of breath –

  Tihe Mauriora.

  There was once a carver who spent a lifetime with wood, seeking out and exposing the figures that were hidden there. These eccentric or brave, dour, whimsical, crafty, beguiling, tormenting, tormented or loving figures developed first in the forests, in the tree wombs, but depended on the master with his karakia and his tools, his mind and his heart, his breath and his strangeness to bring them to other birth.

  The tree, after a lifetime of fruiting, has, after its first death, a further fruiting at the hands of a master.

  This does not mean that the man is master of the tree. Nor is he master of what eventually comes from his hands. He is master only of the skills that bring forward what was already waiting in the womb that is a tree – a tree that may have spent further time as a house or classroom, or a bridge or pier. Or further time could have been spent floating on the sea or river, or sucked into a swamp, or stopping a bank, or sprawled on a beach bleaching among the sand, stones and sun.

  It is as though a child brings about the birth of a parent because that which comes from under the master’s hand is older than he is, is already ancient.

  When the carver dies he leaves behind him a house for the people. He leaves also, part of himself – shavings of heart and being, hunger and anger, love, mischief, hope, desire, elation or despair. He has given the people himself, and he has given the people his ancestors and their own.

  And these ancestors come to the people with large heads that may be round or square, pointed or egg-shaped. They have gaping mouths with protruding tongues; but sometimes the tongue is a hand or tail coming through from behind the head, or it is formed into a funnel or divided in two, the two parts pointing in different directions. There will be a reason for the type of head or tongue the figures have been given.

  The carved ancestors will be broad-shouldered but short in the trunk and legs, and firm-standing on their three-toed feet. Or their bodies may be long and twisting and scaly, swimmers, shaped for the river or sea.

  After the shaping out of the heads, bodies and limbs, the carver begins to smooth the figures and then to enhance them with fine decoration. The final touch is the giving of eyes.

  The previous life, the life within the tree womb, was a time of eyelessness, of waiting, swelling, hardening. It was a time of existing, already browed, tongued, shouldered, fingered, sexed, footed, toed, and of waiting to be shown as such. But eyeless. The spinning, dancing eyes are the final gift from the carver, but the eyes are also a gift from the sea.

  When all is finished the people have their ancestors. They sleep at their feet, listen to their stories, call them by name, put them in songs and dances, joke with them, become their children, their slaves, their enemies, their friends.

  In this way the ancestors are known and remembered. But the carver may not be known or remembered, except by a few. These few, those who grew up with him, or who sat at his elbow, will now and again remember him and will say, ‘Yes, yes, I remember him. He worked night and day for the people. He was a master.’ They may also add that he was a bit porangi too, or that he was a drunk, a clapmouth, a womaniser, a gambler or a bullshit artist.

  Except that he may have been a little porangi, and that he certainly became a master, none of these words would apply to the carver of this chapter of our story. He was a humble and gentle man.

  He was the youngest child of middle-aged parents who, because he was sickly as a baby, decided that he should not go to school.

  Before the parents died, and when the boy was ten years old, they wrapped him in scarves and put him at the elbow of a master carver who was just at that time beginning the carvings for a new house. This man had no woman. He had no children of his own.

  The boy sat and watched and listened and, until he was fourteen, he barely moved except to sweep shavings and smooth and polish wood.

  Then one day the master shaped out a new mallet from a piece of rimu and carved a beaky head at the tip of the handle, and gave the head two eyes. He handed the mallet to the boy and said, ‘Unwrap yourself from the scarves, son, and begin work. Remember two things,’ he said. ‘Do not carve anyone in living memory and don’t blow on the shavings or your wood will get up and crack you.’

  The boy let the scarves fall at his feet, and took the mallet in his hand. At the same time he felt a kicking in his groin.

  He never went back into scarves. He dropped them in the place where he had sat at the elbow of his tutor and never went back for them. Later in life he, in turn, became master of his craft. There was no one to match him in his skill, and many would have said also that there were none who could match him as a great storyteller and a teller of histories.

  Near the end of his life the man was working on what he knew would be the last house he would ever carve. It was a small and quiet house and he was pleased about that. It had in it the finest work he had ever done.

  There were no other carvers to help him with his work but the people came every day to cook and care for him, and to paint patterns and weave panels and to help in every possible way. They came especially to listen to his stories which were of living wood, his stories of the ancestors. He told also the histories of patterns and the meanings of patterns to life. He told of the effects of weather and water on wood, and told all the things he had learned at the elbow of his tutor, all the things he had spent a lifetime learning.

  At the time when he was about to begin the last poupou for the new house he became ill. With the other poupou, the ones already completed, much discussion, quarrelli
ng and planning had taken place. The people were anxious to have all aspects of their lives and ancestry represented in their new house. They wished to include all the famous ancestors to which they were linked, and also to include the ancestors which linked all people to the earth and the heavens from ancient to future times, and which told people of their relationships to light and growth, and to each other.

  But the last poupou had not been discussed, and the people, to give honour to the man, said, ‘This one’s yours, we’ll say nothing. It’s for you to decide.’

  The man knew that this would be the last piece of work that he would do. He knew that it would take all of his remaining strength and that in fact he would not complete the work at all.

  ‘If I don’t finish this one,’ he said, ‘it is because it cannot yet be finished, and also because I do not have the strength. You must put it in your house finished or not. There is one that I long to do but it cannot yet be completed. There is no one yet who can carry it forward for me because there is a part that is not yet known. There is no one yet who can complete it, that must be done at some future time. When it is known it will be done. And there is something else I must tell you. The part that I do, the figure that I bring out of wood, is from my own living memory. It is forbidden, but it is one that I long to do.’ The people did not speak. They could not forbid him. They went away quietly as he turned towards the workshop.

  He decided that he would leave himself hollow for this last work, that he would not bring out this final figure with his eyes or his mind, but only with his hands and his heart. And when he spoke to the wood he only said, ‘It is the hands and the heart, these hands and this heart that will bring you out of the shadows, these hands and this heart before they go to earth.’

  In his old age his eyes were already weak, but he covered the workshop window to darken the room, and his hands and his heart began their work.

  The boy at his elbow asked no questions and no one else came near.

  After several weeks the carver pulled the cloth from the workshop window. He called the people in and told them that the top figure was done. ‘I’ll tell you the story,’ he said, ‘but the lower figure must be left to a future time, for when it is known.

  ‘This is the story of a red-eyed man, who spent his life bent in two, who had no woman and no children of his own. He procreated in wood and gave knowledge out through his elbow. At this elbow of knowledge there is a space which can be left unfilled, always, except for this pattern of scarves. It is like a gap in the memory, a blind piece in the eye, but the pattern of scarves is there.

  ‘His head is wide so that it may contain the histories and sciences of the people, and the chants and patterns, and knowledge concerning the plants and the trees. His forehead is embellished with an intricate pattern to show the status of his knowledge. His eyes are small because of the nearness of his work and because, before my time, he worked in a dim hut with a lantern at night, and worked many hours after dark.

  ‘His tongue is long and fine and swirling, the tongue of a storyteller, and his neck is short so that there is no great distance from his head to his arms. His head and his hands work as one.

  ‘The rounded back and the curve of the chest tell of his stoopiness and his devotion. The arms are short because of the closeness to his work. He has come to us with six fingers on each hand as a sign of the giftedness of his hands.

  ‘The mallet in his right hand rests on his chest, and the mallet is another beating heart.

  ‘His left hand grasps the chisel, and he holds the chisel against his pelvis. The long blade of the chisel becomes his penis thickening to the shape of a man. And this chisel-penis-man resembles himself, like a child generated in wood by the chisel, or by the penis in flesh.

  ‘The eyes of the man and the eyes of the penis-child contain all the colours of the sky and earth and sea, but the child eyes are small, as though not yet fully opened.

  ‘There is no boldening of the legs, and they are not greatly adorned, but they are strong and stand him strongly to his work. And between and below his three-toed feet there is an open place. It is the space for the lower figure, but there is none yet to fill that place. That is for a future time.

  ‘All about the man you can see the representations of his life and work, but with a place at the elbow which will remain always empty except for the pattern of scarves.

  ‘A man can become master of skills in his lifetime but when he dies he may be forgotten, especially if he does not have children of his own. I give him to you so that he will not be forgotten. Let him live in our house.

  ‘“A life for a life” could mean that you give your life to someone who has already given his to you. I was told not to call out anyone in living memory, but it is done. I was told not to give breath to wood but … “A life for a life” could mean that you give your life to someone who has already given you his own.’

  When the people had gone and he had sent the boy away the carver closed the workshop door. He put his face close to the nostrils of the wood face, and blew.

  The next morning the people lifted the poupou from off him and dressed him in fine clothes.

  Part One

  * * *

  1

  Roimata

  My name is Roimata Kararaina and I’m married to Hemi Tamihana. We have four children, James, Tangimoana, Manu and Tokowaru-i-te-Marama. We live by the sea, which hems and stitches the scalloped edges of the land. This piece of land is the family land of the Tamihanas. Our houses stand close together on this, the papakainga, and they window the neatened curve of sea. Towards this curve we pitch our eyes constantly, tides of eyes rolling in reverse action to the sea.

  The house we live in is the old family home positioned at the centre of the curve. On either side of us are the other Tamihana families and at the far end, near to the hills, is the little wharenui where Hemi’s sister Mary goes every day with her brush and polishing cloths to clean and shine. While she works she sings, sometimes softly, sometimes loudly, to herself and to the house.

  I have loved Hemi since I was five.

  Our son James is like his father – quiet and sure, and with the patience that the earth has. Although first born, it was James who came most easily from between the thighs. His cries caused no earth tremble or sky rumble, no ripple on the midnight hour.

  Tangimoana is a year younger than her brother. She is not patient, but is as sharp-edged as the sea rocks, and hears every whisper of the tide. On the night she was born I woke to the pained crying of the sea. We took her name from the sounds that the sea made.

  Manu is the youngest that was born to Hemi and me. He is afraid of noise and night, shapes and shadows. He calls and struggles in sleep and we need to wake or comfort him. I knew nothing of his birth. By the time I saw him he was sleeping, a tremor on the mauve closed lids of his eyes.

  Tokowaru-i-te-Marama is two years younger than his brother Manu, but he was not born to Hemi and me.

  Hemi’s sister Mary lives with us too. I have loved her since I was five, since the day we both started school. I knew then that she was someone to love, that she was good and that goodness should have love and care. I looked after her even though she was bigger and older than me.

  At school we were given holy pictures and toffees to help us do God’s will. God’s will was for us to sit still, or stand straight on two feet. It was His will that we pray, that we have clean handkerchiefs, wear aprons, bring pennies for souls, eat our crusts, hold our partner’s hand. It was His will that we did not push or dribble, whistle, spit, swear, or make dog’s ears in books. But how did you make dog’s ears in books? Could there be dog’s ears without whole dogs? There could, because there was Little Dog Turpie all taken to pieces and put back together again – perhaps without ears.

  It was God’s will that we sing the alphabet, the multiplication tables, the hymns and the catechism, and the toffees and the pictures of the suffering saints were kept in a green Jesus tin.

 
; The children who pleased Jesus could put a hand in the green tin for a picture or a toffee – which were little samples of the heaven which was to be the eventual and top reward, where you could reach in and grab a handful and have pictures and toffees poking everywhere between your fingers, and some of them dropping on the ground, or on the clouds that floated past. If you wanted to you could take the whole tin.

  We all had slates, and later books and pencils, except for Mary who had a duster and a basket. If she was poked or teased she would sometimes laugh, sometimes cry. If she was unhappy she would come and sit by me.

  I listened to the lessons on goodness and knew that Mary was the closest to the Jesus tin, being never calumnious nor detractful, slanderous, murderous, disobedient, covetous, jealous nor deceiving. I knew that she needed my care.

  Every morning I would watch Hemi and Mary come into the paddock next to the school on their horse. She would have her ear against Hemi’s back and her arms about his waist. Sometimes when they arrived at school she would forget to unlock her arms from round Hemi and he would have to pull her fingers apart. He would see to the horse and I would see to Mary.

  She was always excited to be at school, and to see me. ‘Roimata, Roimata,’ she would say, ‘I got suffing in my bag,’ and she would smile showing her strange pointy teeth. ‘What is it?’ I would ask, and she would show me her parcel of sandwiches, her apples or plums, and her clean handkerchief, apron and hand-towel. I would say, ‘Good girl,’ in Sister Anne’s voice, and then take her to put her things away, and to get the cloths and basket from the cupboard for her.

  Sometimes Hemi, who was short and wide, would smile at me and tell me that pigtails belonged on pigs’ bums. In his shirt next to his heart he carried his spelling book.