Potiki Read online

  Often in the weekends my father would bring me here to this beach, which fronts the Tamihana land. My father would fish, or help the Tamihanas in the gardens, but probably it was the company that was of importance to him. No doubt he had been a lonely man since the death of my mother. I would swim with Mary and her brothers, sister and cousins, or play in the creek or on the hills. Sometimes I would work in the gardens with them, or go to get seafood, or help in the wharekai. Sometimes we would sit on the verandah of this house and talk and sing. I always wished that I could ride on the Tamihanas’ horse with my arms round Hemi Tamihana, ear against his back, listening through his back to his heart sounds, but I never did.

  Mary stayed at school for three years, dusting the pictures and statues for Sister Anne, or zigzagging about between the desks with her polishing mop. She sang quietly as she dusted and polished, or loudly as she banged the chalk-dusters on the concrete ledge outside. Sometimes she would fall asleep with her head against the statue of Mary, her mouth open a little, showing her strange teeth that looked as though they had been filed.

  When Sister Anne left, Mary did not return to school. Hemi left that year too, to attend secondary school. A year later when their father died, Hemi left school altogether to work in the family gardens.

  He worked on the land for some years learning all that he could, and intended this to be his life’s work, using the knowledge that had been given to him and eventually passing that knowledge on. Then for some years the land had to be left and other work found, but Hemi always knew that he would one day see the land supporting us all again.

  As a child I lived with my father in a railway house with a small dark kitchen. The little kitchen window was a window onto curving steel – steel which had come from the earth and was now riveted to it. Our window framed the flying windows, flying eyes, of trains which riveted the senses, carrying them into different mornings, different afternoons and different nights.

  But I live now on this other curve that binds the land and sea.

  The shore is a place without seed, without nourishment, a scavenged death place. It is the wasteland, too salt for growth, where the sea puts up its dead. Shored seaweed does not take root but dries and piles, its pods splitting in the sun, while bleached land plants crack and turn to bone.

  Yet because of being a nothing, a neutral place – not land, not sea – there is freedom on the shore, and rest.

  There is freedom to search the nothing, the weed pile, the old wood, the empty shell, the fish skull, searching for the speck, the beginning – or the end that is the beginning.

  Hope and desire can rest there, thoughts and feelings can shift with sand grains being sifted by the water and the wind.

  I put my bag down there one evening and rested, leaving a way for the nothing, the nothing that can become a pinprick, a stirring. I took warm clothing from my bag and waited through the night for the morning that would become a new beginning.

  2

  Mary

  Mary stood on the step and shook her dusters, then started off over the beach stones to the meeting-house with her bucket of tins and cloths. ‘Away, away, away Maria, Away, away, away Maria,’ she sang.

  She made her way along by the water’s edge singing, sometimes talking as she went. Every now and again she would bend and pick something up. If it was something that either lived or could live – a crab, a shellfish or a weed – she threw it into the sea. If it was something that did not live and could not – paper, plastic or tin – she put it in her bucket to take home. ‘Now that’s better and nice,’ she kept saying.

  At the far end of the beach she saw a man standing by a small fire dipping tea from a billy. She had not seen him since the summer but she remembered him. ‘Joe-billy,’ she called. He heard and turned to wave. ‘Hey Joe-billy. You come back. Did you?’ He called something to her which she did not hear and she went on her way singing to herself, talking, tidying the shore.

  As she came nearer to where the wharenui was she left the shoreline and made her way up towards it. Before she went in she called to Granny Tamihana who had been watching out for her, ‘You coming Gran?’

  ‘After, darling.’

  ‘Come and see my work.’

  ‘Yes, soon.’

  ‘In my pretty house.’

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Come and get me.’

  ‘Yes I come and get you after, for our cup of tea.’

  ‘After?’

  ‘Ae, not long.’

  Mary stood on the verandah and changed her shoes for slippers and went into the house. ‘Here’s me,’ she said to the house, and put the stone by the door. She opened the window, then put the bucket down and spread the cloths on the floor. She smoothed the cloths, and picking up the can of polish she shook it close to her ear, listening.

  She began dusting and polishing the poupou, speaking to the figures and calling each by the name she had given. Sometimes she sang her song to them, ‘Away, away, away Maria, Away, away, away Maria.’ Sometimes she whispered in their ears.

  At twelve o’clock Granny Tamihana hobbled up onto the verandah and called out to her, ‘Haere mai te awhina o te iwi. Haere mai ki te kai, haere mai ki te inu ti.’

  ‘See, Gran?’

  ‘Very beautiful my Mary.’

  ‘Beautiful and nice.’

  ‘Very beautiful and nice … You come and have a cup of tea now.’

  ‘Cup of tea.’

  ‘Come and have a cup of tea and a bread.’

  ‘Come back after and do my work.’

  ‘When you had your cup of tea and a kai.’

  ‘Come back after. After,’ she said to the house as she followed Granny Tamihana out.

  In the kitchen Granny Tamihana’s cat whipped itself back and forth along Mary’s ankle. It leaned and purred. ‘Marama. Well you like me. Do you?’

  ‘Butter you a bread,’ Granny Tamihana said. ‘And I’ll pour us a tea.’

  Butter melted on the wedge of bread and the tea steamed. Granny looked at Mary through the steam. ‘Put blackberry jam on, dear. Beautiful. Put it on.’

  ‘You like Mary do you? Marama you like Mary?’

  ‘Put jam on. Nice jam.’

  Mary stabbed her knife into the jar and levered the jam. It was lumped with fruit and wine-dark and she spread it into the melting butter.

  ‘Eat it my darling. Drink your tea.’

  ‘Marama you runny tickle cat. You like Mary. Do you?’

  ‘Your butter’s dripping, dear.’

  Granny Tamihana cut her own slab of bread into little squares. She held each piece between finger and thumb and popped them into her mouth as though she was feeding a bird. She left her tea to cool. Mary bit lumps from her bread which she garbled round in her mouth before swallowing, but she was cautious about the tea.

  ‘Careful of your tea,’ Granny Tamihana said.

  ‘Hot.’ Mary’s elbow jutted. She frowned into her tea.

  Afterwards the cat followed her back to the house and curled itself up on the paepae where the sun hit. ‘Here’s me,’ Mary said to the tipuna as she went in. ‘Come back to my work now and make you beautiful and nice.’

  She moved from one poupou to another with her polish and dusters and a little stool, talking and singing, ‘You like my song. Do you?’ and she called them by the names she had given them, angry-mother, fighting-man, fish-woman, talking-girl, sad-man, pretty-mother. ‘I make you lovely and nice,’ she said. ‘You like that. Do you? You like Mary. Do you?’ She worked her cloth slowly from head to shoulders and down the arms and bodies and legs, standing on her stool to reach the top figure of each post. She worked the cloth carefully into the whakairo, singing, ‘Pretty man, pretty mother. You like that? Do you? Mary make you beautiful and nice. Very beautiful and nice.’

  Along the right wall near the top end she came to her favourite place. ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘And here’s me.’ She stood on her stool, shook the polish can close to her ear then sprayed polish o
nto the head of the figure and began rubbing the face, and in round the glinting eyes. She worked down over the short neck to the shoulders, and down and along the arms and hands. Then she lay her ear against the chest and listened, not singing or talking, only listening. ‘I hear you, loving-man,’ she said, then she went on with her work. She rubbed the body lovingly, talking and singing until she came to the penis which had the shape of the figure’s stooped, small-eyed self.

  It was then that she noticed that one of the penis-man’s eyes was missing. ‘O poor,’ she said, ‘O poor. Never matter, never matter, Mary make you better.’ She looked about on the floor for the missing eye but could not find it. So she went outside and found a little black stone which she fitted into the socket where the eye had been. She took her cloth and polished the penis and the thighs. When she had finished she stood on the stool again and said, ‘There, lovely and nice. You like that. Do you? Loving-man?’ And she lay her face against the carved face, and leaned her body against the carved body. Then they put their arms round each other holding each other closely, listening to the beating and the throbbing and the quiet of their hearts. Behind them were the soft whisperings of the sea.

  3

  Roimata

  I decided not to ring or write, but to take what I owned and go there. I needed to go back to the papakainga, and to Hemi and Mary, both of whom I had always loved. Only Hemi could secure me, he being as rooted to the earth as a tree is. Only he could free me from raging forever between earth and sky – which is a predicament of great loneliness and loss.

  Looking out of the train, my attention was drawn away from the hills on one side, the sea on the other, the houses holding to the slopes or squatting at the shores. I was drawn away from the groups of people waiting at the stations, their passive faces disguising their ticking lives. I watched instead the seagulls following the boats in, or arcing out over the sea before resting on the grassed playing fields or on the rocks of shore.

  Seagulls are the inheritors of the shores where they take up death and renew it, pulling the eyes from fish and pecking the lice that cling to the mouthparts and bone, snatching at the white bloated bodies of porcupine fish which decorate the edge of the water like macabre party balloons, cracking the mussel and pulling it from its shell.

  They are also the companions of Tawhiri Matea who dwells forever between Earth and Sky. And sometimes they are his challengers, screaming into the teeth of ice-cold winds, sleet-filled winds, the rolling cloud and thunder. But yet they are free, except from hunger and anger. Free, because although they inhabit the space, they find their place also in and on the sea, and have land as a refuge. The land gives anchorage to the wild matings and also shelters the nest. The gulls, unlike Tawhiri Matea, are not destined to rage in the void forever. They walk the edge, and from the edge fly out, testing and living out their lives.

  At the last bend was the little railway house that I had left when my father died. There was loneliness there still, and a memory, among other memories, of my father going each morning through the gate in the back fence, stepping up the bank and over the lines to the station with his kai in a little tin box.

  The Tamihanas came and stayed with me when he died. They waited with him and me until his family came for him, and then they accompanied us to my father’s family place. They told me then what they had always told me, that their homes would always be my homes, and they asked me to return with them. But my father had arranged for me to go away to school. I was fifteen.

  I stood on the platform with my bag. It contained all I owned and it wasn’t heavy. Then I began the walk that would end where the road ended, a way still familiar although the road had been straightened and sealed by then. It was the way Hemi and Mary had come towards me on their horse each morning, the way my father and I had gone towards them in the weekends needing warmth and company.

  I decided that I would not walk along the road but along the beach where I would not be recognised. I was not ready yet for recognition. So I made my way in the edged wind, pulling my feet through the sand. The sea pulled back. The gulls surged ahead of me in strident bands, as though there had been recognition after all. It was as though they expected me, with my load, to rise and cry and follow.

  There was only muted light in the sky and the sea receded darkly in shufflings of stone, pulling back between wet rocks. On the road cars went by but I did not turn to watch them.

  Before rounding the last corner I sat and rested as night came. The bag was heavy after all, and anyway it would be easier to arrive in the dark – easier to discover, under the shell of night, if there was still a place for me.

  When I picked up my bag again the light had gone but I knew the way ahead. I began to cross the barricade of rock that separated one bay from the next.

  I had not forgotten how to walk the rock, feeling each step and taking each foothold firmly. The rock was hard and sharp as I traversed it so surely in the dark. And as I stepped down off it at last I knew that the final span of beach ahead would be the most difficult part of my journey.

  I looked up and out into the now-dark, to where the hills would be, to where I would see the houses, or lights from houses, set about the shore.

  But ahead of me was only the dark. The hills had been obliterated in intense dark. There were no houses, no shadows of houses, no light from houses. There was no sky and no light from sky. Everything, everyone, gone, as though I had come to nowhere and to nothing. At first it seemed like that.

  But looking into the distance where I knew the far end of the bay should be, I saw the shadows. I knew then where the people were and why there were no lights on in the houses. There was pale light there at the end of the road, and through the light, people, as shadows passed back and forth.

  I knew then that all the people were at the meeting-house, and that in the wharekai the tables would have been set for morning and food prepared. The large pots would be ready in the fireplace, and the wood would have been collected and cut and piled. Inside the meeting-house the beds would have been prepared for the night, and I knew that the recently bereaved would be preparing to lie down for the night beside the recently deceased. I knew all of this in a moment, but didn’t know who. I didn’t know for whom the genealogies were being recited.

  I knew also that I could go no further that night. I would not approach the wharenui at such a late hour, and in any case I did not wish to enter the house of death alone.

  The gulls had gone into the dark. In the morning they would pace the light between heavy cloud and sea, a sea that was present at that moment only in its silvered fringe and its strong hearth smell.

  I took some warm clothing from my bag and prepared to wait the night through. I am a waiter, a patient watcher of the skies. The tide was beginning to climb the sand, and to drum further out on the reef.

  I moved higher up onto the beach, wrapped myself in a blanket and lay down to wait. For part of the night I slept, but most of it I spent awake, seeing only the dark, hearing the insistent nudgings of the sea.

  Morning came slowly giving outline to the sea and hills, patterning the squares of houses, moulding the rocks, the power poles and the low scrub. At the far end of the beach around the wharekai, shadows were already moving.

  The tide was low again and the birds were shifting, rising, calling, circling under the solid cloud, eyeing the water, dropping, turning, then rising again.

  I took a towel from my bag and went down to the sea to wash. The night’s cold was still on the water as I waded in. It was a salt cleansing that washed not only the road dust away. It was a discarding, or a renewal, like the washing of hands that takes leave of death and turns one toward the living.

  I dressed and spread my towel on the ground to dry. There was more waiting to be done yet so I sat down where I could not be seen, or not recognised. I did not wish to enter the house of death alone so I waited for other visitors that I knew would come.

  At mid-morning I heard a bus approaching. It stop
ped up on the road behind me, and people in it began to stir. I knew that they would have been travelling for most of the night and would now be putting on warm clothing and folding their rugs, and that the women would be tucking greenery in under their headscarves.

  The bus started up again and began to move slowly along past the houses to the end of the road where the people would get out, assemble, and wait to be called on to the marae.

  I picked up my bag and followed the bus to the assembling place, where I greeted each person and was greeted by each in turn. They put the bag in the bus for me where I would leave it until the for-malities were over. The sky had come closer to the earth and white sea was driving onto the shore. I was aware of hunger and glad of the awareness. At the wharenui the people had gathered under the verandah to call us to them.

  The first call came and we were treading slowly across the marae. Call and countercall filled the space across the sacred ground, sky shrouded the hills, the sea gashed its forehead on the rocks as the rain began.

  At the stomach of the marae we stopped to tangi for death, for the deaths from many ages and the deaths from all the many places, for all the many dead that gathered there with us. We wept for a particular death but I did not yet know whose death, in particular, we wept for. A glance had told me that it was one of Hemi’s immediate family that had died as none of them was present on the verandah. They waited for us I knew, inside the house with their deceased.

  Then we were called forward again, called in out of the rain. We stepped onto the verandah to remove our shoes, then into the house where we moved to the seating that had been arranged for us. In front of us were the people in dark clothing seated about the finely draped casket. There were the flowers and the photographs.

  At one side of the casket were Granny Tamihana and Mary with their heads bowed, and on the other was Mary’s older sister Rina, her aunts, and a woman and some children whom I did not know. Adjacent to us where I had not yet looked would be Hemi and his brother Stan with other members of the family.