Both Sides of the Moon (8 page)

Down the sloping hill to home, it’s only a few houses long but a gauntlet of neighbours are now mostly strangers to you; it’s the only way they can endure this sight, too much for ordinary folks’ sensibility, too much for their own comparative average lives, too much for decent citizens who do, we can assume, the right thing.

It must be written up for them, the ordinary good decent citizens, somewhere that they all understand a similar code of behaviour, muttering there should be a law against this sort of behaviour even when they can hear the law is coming, it’s another screaming in the sunny afternoon, of this street anyrate, another sound in this after-school day, that this shouldn’t be happening. It’s like murder being allowed to go in their street, in their ordinary, fairly decent, citizenry witness.

Tongues click, eyes lump you in, words get thrown at you like poisonous darts. But then there’s always the hand that reaches out and touches you, you’re too upset to give it a face; there’s always hope, right? No. The faces of the neighbourhood mothers are now even more distant to you, this is what it must feel like to be shunned in a village, to be regarded as an outsider even though no fault of your own: shunners know and care not of justice and fairness. You’re shunned, you are shunned. End of it, of you.

The village was tense, for the war party was a day and night late in returning. Sentries scanned down from their high tower lookouts.

The tohunga consulted his dreams, his passed-down learnings of higher understandings; he studied the surrounding nature, the sky, the winds, the tiny insect life and their prevailing taken directions, he looked closely at their leavings and slime trails and meaningful messages of movement for the eye that can interpret them; he
considered
meaning in ancient chant. He studied in his steady incanting all the great warriors and ancestry, what of their past deeds may be of influence upon the future of this generation, certainly its same continuance.

And only a few souls, but most of the women, saw in his
careful
considering that he feared making the wrong call and delayed making hasty prediction or portent. That is why the women were always on the ready to steer him back on the right course, but as if it was his decision. Only they, and a handful of men, saw he carried a veil over his eyes like the steam from the fabled area of a said superior tribe, so that none — he thought — should glimpse his fallibilities.

He had been chosen from the two selected boys of necessarily retentive minds to store the vast oral knowledge. But first the two had to do battle with wooden clubs in a darkened whare to make final self-selection of who would grow, being trained and versed in the ways of village high priest.

His better eyes in the dark, his keener ears for the other boy’s movement, had him emerge with the blood of the other all over his eleven-year-old’s club. The elders in more awe that he had struck mortal blows at his pretender, for this was a warrior priest in the making. But even he might have calls of judgement made that would see him summarily killed should he make mistake, read the omens
and signs wrongly. So now he went into himself, as if to consult with only the highest gods, for it was the chief and his two oldest sons on this mission and he, the tohunga, must not be wrong. He wore a look of concern to those who fed his sacred being by hand. But of course they spoke not of what they observed.

Had anyone watched the tohunga’s every movement, they would have seen that he had eyes on the sentries and not the
changing
, omen-meaning sky he appeared to be gazing at; so that when he saw the best-positioned sentry stiffen, the tohunga, like all great men, made his decision then. And his voice rang out before the sentry could say reason for his muscle tensing: Aee! I have sign now!

The hearing villagers stopped what they were doing, some in anticipatory fear for the worst, others the opposite, since to them it was inconceivable that their chiefly lord and two best sons should come to harm. And the sighting sentry turned in surprise at his post, and people saw his astonishment and then his admiration for the tohunga, since how could Te Tono have known what only the sentry could see, that the war party was back?

The sharpest eye might have seen the calculating tohunga’s eyes read the progressive responses of the sentry, as he cried out for all to hear: See how the cloud yonder has twisted to form shape of a warrior’s arm held aloft? And every eye went to the cloud, which indeed was as the tohunga described, when ordinarily they’d not have seen such good omen or any meaning at all. For they took their
meanings
, their definitions, mostly from his leadings.

So they saw the sign he imposed on them to see, and they cried out the tohunga’s name, and he was with instant response to them: Our warriors come home victorious! Which was his singular risked prediction, for even he could not make such interpretation in the mere muscle movement of the sentry.

Yet just then the sentry bellowed out: I see them! I see them! And he strained his eyes down to the point between rock walls where the sun most of the time put any figure passing between into sharp silhouette. And what he saw he relayed down to his people, and the secretly smiling tohunga. Hark! I see one of our brave fighters holding aloft a — A head! the tohunga slipped in first. I see many heads of our hated enemy they bring to us their people!

Indeed, the picture that filled the space between the rock walls was of many warriors holding aloft severed heads. And the sentry’s face was in more astonishment at his high priest.

Is that what you see yet, sentry? the tohunga called up to the tower. Yes, tohunga, that is what I see! So Te Tono’s greatness was confirmed and he allowed himself the smallest of smiles as his people gazed in awe and admiration at his powers.

The people became quickly impatient to greet their heroes. Several slaves were promptly killed and made ready for the earth ovens; the storage pits of sweet potato were uncovered and removed of considerable quantity; the fires were fed and the cooking stones thrown upon them; hunters went into the woods to snare the fattest pigeons for the hangi; birds preserved in their own fat were pulled from storage; dried fish and dried shellfish meat strung on flax lines were readied for the feast.

The carvers hewing out the timber slabs in their elaborate traditional shapes and meaning-laden patterns discussed amongst themselves if their task should make exception of pause to honour this auspicious day. But the head carver said not even such momentous event should cease their sacred work, or else it would bring bad omen at some later time. So their choppings and chiselling could be heard in accompaniment to their special chantings to each stage of the carving work, as they brought forth from the timber the forms of ancestors and symbols to remember their deeds and standing. And the work was made exact and of highest standard to show a people what an enemy would see, or know of, to represent a tribe with greatest pride in itself.

The excitement spread; women made themselves ready for a husband’s other needs, cleansing their bodies with water and scenting with a special bark oil; those in a noa state, with monthly bleed, had taken themselves into the chore and task background, none of it to do with food preparation. Her husband’s needs would have to wait, or he might take another woman not noa. But let her be plain, let her be but a receptacle for husband’s emptying, and let the elder women abort if child should come of it. A man was entitled to satisfy himself when he was victorious in battle, any woman understands this. And if they don’t, they are stupid, and hold less respect of the others.

The children’s play grew rough from their excitement, meaning the boys; and the old people grinned at this mirroring of the men they must become. They had to chide some for taking it too far: E tamaiti! You put wound to your cousin that you should keep for your enemy — enough now!

And the tohunga gazed at forest and sky and ground and into his knowledge-teeming head for even deeper meaning to give this pending homecoming; already he was composing poem for inclusion in the oral legends, the tales of battles fought.

When the people saw their chief and his two sons come first through the last wall barricade, they let loose with ferocious cry of joy. The older warriors, what few war had spared to older age, gave thundering haka of skin-wrinkled feet on the dusty ground, slapping still-muscled chests with hardest strength. They ejected stabbing tongues and words that flew the spit and bulged the eyes and made their young warrior men smile with pride and be all over with gladness (and unseeingness of anything else) that they were of the loins and example teachings of these thundering old men with fine facial tattoo markings, twisting in shouted, bellowing grimace.

All the people’s eyes grew wide and their mouths salivated at sight of carried severed heads, of enemy tattooed faces held like fat fruit in so many of the warrior’s hands; the chief himself slowly lifting two fine heads, one with skull cleaved widely open, and empty of brain, which he and his sons would have eaten even as it had had thought.

The head carver’s hands worked more rapidly at the sight as he deftly began to shape out the chief’s battle deed into carved legend, making myth of the man on the spot, giving him an enemy head in each three-fingered hand in beautifully crafted wood.

The eyes of the people grew angry at the sight of captive enemy warriors. A woman, knowing she was now a widow, rushed forth and stove in an enemy’s head with her husband’s bone club. Others, women, moved in to help drag his body away for preparing for cooking. The other captives could but lower abject eyes. They had their own slaves, and how close a man is to another fate such as this.

When the great warrior Kapi came up alongside the chief and his two sons, the people gave involuntary gasp: for he carried three
heads in each weight-straining hand, like bunches of huge purple berries. The veins bulged in his forearms, caked in dried blood. No blood dripped from the heads, only hung expressions and most had eyes open and necks of torn skin fabric, and several had mouths bared in last grimace.

Te Aranui Kapi looked at his chief for gesture that he may lift his prizes to the sky, for there was always strictest protocol to adhere to. No smallest sign or gesture was to be made that could be interpreted to lessen the chief’s mana, his chiefly family line and therefore the entire village, the whole of the sub-tribe and even spilling over to the main tribe, Te Waka Toi.

So the eyes were on the chief, who nodded his mighty approval, and the mighty warrior gave his signs of respect back. And then six weights of former thinking and warrior pride thrust upwards in one immensely powerful arm of Kapi’s; he held aloft six weights of open-eyed sightless gaze to the sky scudding with cloud, sending its own meaning down to him.

The senior women took up wailing when they looked amongst their returned warriors and saw who was missing, howling worded lament for their sons and brothers and grandsons and nephews who were never coming home. Fathers and brothers and grandfathers and uncles openly grieved and bellowed out what terrible revenge would come upon the heads of the enemy who had killed their own, and they rushed forward in their angry grief and set upon the captives, killing them in due horrible manner, a sight of entrails and torn-out organs and genitals and screams of killers and killed; they grabbed at severed enemy heads and spat at them, they gouged out eyes and stuffed them into mouths, they reached up the spinal entry groping for brain, which became crushed matter between gnarled fingers; they held the sightless faces to their own and spat dire promise for the generations to come of this enemy tribe that their own deaths would be avenged over and over and over. For that was the way of this proud, ferocious, long-memoried people.

Freshly killed slave was hacked into pieces for the many hangi pits. Boy warriors pleaded with eyes to be assigned the task of killing more slaves so that they may sate their need to do murder. A senior elder saw this and he gave signal. The boys ran faster than the wind
from the north-west to the slave compound, leaped upon several slaves like attacking dogs, though the more disciplined boys made battle practice of it, if one-sided, and parried with a taiaha, or a bone club, at a hapless slave before thrusting the point up under his groin and driving it as far as his young strength could, or the blade into throat in effort to sever a head.

So the air was rent with sound: of groaning slaves, of wailing women and vengeance-crying men and grief-stricken parents and yelling, crying children, and excited dogs. It thucked with sound of more slave bodies being hacked to pieces, of boys screaming in their killing state, of excited, exclaiming cries of victory and pride, of ancient chant being intoned by old men and women allowed to join them, it was clarity of every person filling their role in the chaos of a culture immersed sweetly, ineffably in war.

The dogs barked in canine understanding that extra food was forthcoming, and affection too, from appeased men of war, and their scenting of blood gave added excitement to canine brains.

Children rolled enemy heads in the dust and squealed with joy and just a little fear at sight of a face rolling over and over in the dust propelled by their hardened little feet, and pocked with wet patches of spit clearing for a moment a broken segment of tattoo pattern. They poked sticks at the eyes and some, with experience of the seashore from shellfish-gathering forays to that sliver of sea visible from the high sentry towers, said the eyes were like the jellyfish sea creature, except without the poison sting, and they stared for a contemplative moment at the dusty head but wondered not of it when it was a living, thinking man, since one did not consider his tribal enemy anything but a living threat or a dead one no longer.

Over all this the tohunga made call to the ancestors, plucking appropriately with necessary cunning the references and
comparisons
, the former defeats of this same enemy; he spat the enemy names as he uttered with true majesty his own tribe’s lineage; he turned his tongue to giving his tribe the stories of their greatness. He included in his oral weave the name of the now-tired warrior, Te Aranui Kapi, leaning his superbly muscled form against the wall of the dwelling of his favourite lover, threading the name into legend, installing a man into history as he stood there and the sun dried to
crumbling the blood upon his body, and so said the tohunga of him: Six severed heads he did return home with! Lo, hear the name of Te Aranui Kapi, and lower your eyes.