The Whale Rider (10 page)

Haumi e, hui e,
taiki e
.

Let it be done.

sixteen

Yes, people in the district vividly remember the stranding of the
whales because television and radio brought the event into our homes that evening. But there
were no television cameras or radio newsmen to see what occurred in Whangara the following
night. Perhaps it was just as well, because even now it all seems like a dream. Perhaps,
also, the drama enacted that night was only meant to be seen by the tribe and nobody else.
Whatever the case, the earlier stranding of whales was merely a prelude to the awesome event
that followed, an event that had all the cataclysmic power and grandeur of a Second Coming.

The muted thunder and forked lightning the day before
had advanced quickly across the sea like an illuminated cloud. We saw it as a great broiling
rush of the elements; with it came the icy cold winds hurled from the Antarctic.

Nanny Flowers, Kahu and I were watching the weather anxiously. We were
at the airport, waiting for the flight bringing Koro Apirana and Porourangi back to us.
Suddenly there was the plane, bucking like an albatross, winging ahead of winds which
heralded the arrival of the storm. It was as if Tawhirimatea was trying to smash the plane
down to earth in anger.

Koro Apirana was pale and upset. He and Nanny Flowers were always
arguing, but this time he was genuinely relieved to see her. ‘Oh, wife,’
he whispered as he held her tightly.

‘We had a hard time down South,’ Porourangi said,
trying to explain Koro’s agitation. ‘The land dispute was a difficult
one and I think that Koro is worried about the judge’s decision. Then when he
heard about the whales, he grew very sombre.’

The wind began to whistle and shriek like wraiths.

‘Something’s going on,’ Koro Apirana
whispered. ‘I don’t know what it is. But something
—’

‘It’s all right,’ Kahu soothed.
‘It will be all right, Paka.’

We collected the suitcases and ran out to the station wagon. As we
drove through the town the illuminated cloud seemed always to be in front of us, like a
portent.

Even before we reached Wainui Beach we could smell
and taste the Goddess of Death. The wind was still lashing like a whip at the landscape. The
car was buffeted strongly, and Nanny Flowers was holding on to her seat belt nervously.

‘It’s all right,’ Kahu said.
‘There, there, Nanny.’

Suddenly, in front of the car, I could see a traffic officer waving
his torch. He told us to drive carefully as earth-moving machinery was digging huge trenches
in the sand for the dead whales. Then he recognised me as one of the people who had tried to
help. His smile and salute were sad.

I drove carefully along the highway. On our right I could see the
hulking shapes of the graders, silhouetted against the broiling sky. Further down the beach,
at the ocean’s edge, were the whales, rocked by the surge and hiss of the sea. The
whole scene was like a surreal painting, not nightmarish, but immensely tragic. What had
possessed the herd to be so suicidal? The wind hurled sand and mud at the windscreen of the
station wagon. We watched in silence.

Then, ‘Stop,’ Koro Apirana said.

I stopped the station wagon. Koro Apirana got out. He staggered
against the onslaught of the wind.

‘Leave him,’ Nanny Flowers said. ‘Let
him be with the whales by himself. He needs to mourn.’

But I was fearful of Koro’s distraught state. I got out of
the car too. The wind was freezing. I walked over to him. His eyes were haunted. He looked
at me, uncomprehending.

‘No wai te he?’ he shouted. ‘Where lies
the blame?’

And the seagulls caught his words within their claws and screamed and
echoed the syllables overhead.

When we turned back to the station wagon I saw Kahu’s white
face, so still against the window.

‘This is a sign to us,’ Koro Apirana said again.

We turned off the Main Highway and onto the road to
Whangara. It was so dark that I switched the headlights on full. I looked up at that
illuminated cloud. I had the strangest feeling that its centre was just above the village. I
felt a rush of fear and was very glad when Whangara came into sight.

Whangara must be one of the most beautiful places in the world, like a
kingfisher’s nest floating on the water at summer solstice. There it was, with
church in the foreground and marae behind, silhouetted against the turbulent sea. And there
was Paikea, our eternal sentinel, always vigilant against any who would wish to harm his
descendants. Caught like this, the village was a picture of normality given the events that
were to come.

I drove up to the homestead.

‘Kahu, you help take Koro’s bags
inside,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll take you and Daddy home.
Okay?’

Kahu nodded. She put her arms around her grandfather and said again,
‘It’s all right, Paka. Everything will be all right.’

She picked up a small flight bag and carried it up onto the verandah.
We were all getting out of the wagon and climbing towards her when, suddenly, the wind died
away.

I will never forget the look on Kahu’s face. She was gazing
out to sea and it was as if she was looking back into the past. It was a look of calm, of
acceptance. It forced us all to turn to see what Kahu was seeing.

The land sloped away to the sea. The surface of the water was
brilliant green, blending into dark blue and then a rich purple. The illuminated cloud was
seething above one place on the horizon.

All of a sudden there was a dull booming from beneath the water, like
a giant door opening a thousand years ago. At the place below the clouds the surface of the
sea shimmered like gold dust. Then streaks of blue lightning came shooting out of the sea
like missiles. I thought I saw something flying through the air, across the aeons, to plunge
into the marae.

A dark shadow began to ascend from the deep. Then there were other
shadows rising, ever rising. Suddenly the first shadow breached the surface and I saw it was
a whale. Leviathan. Climbing through the pounamu depths. Crashing through the skin of sea.
And as it came, the air was filled with streaked lightning and awesome singing.

Koro Apirana gave a tragic cry, for this was no ordinary beast, no
ordinary whale. This whale came from the past. As it came it filled the air with its
singing.

Its companions began to breach the surface also, orchestrating the
call with unearthly music.

The storm finally unleashed its fury and strength upon the land. The
sea was filled with whales and in their vanguard was their ancient battle-scarred leader.

On the head of the whale was the sacred sign. A swirling tattoo,
flashing its power across the darkening sky.

I zoomed on my bike through the night and the rain,
rounding the boys up. ‘I’m sorry, boys,’ I said to them as I
yanked them out of bed, ‘we’re needed again.’

‘Not more whales,’ they groaned.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But this is different
boys, different. These whales are right here in Whangara.’

Koro Apirana had issued his instructions to Porourangi and me. We were
to gather up the boys and all the available men of the village, and tell them to come to the
meeting house. And we were to hurry.

‘Huh?’ Nanny Flowers had said in a huff.
‘What about us women! We’ve got hands to help.’

Koro Apirana smiled a wan smile. His voice was firm as he told her,
‘I don’t want you to interfere, Flowers. You know as well as I do that
this is sacred work.’

Nanny Flowers bristled. ‘But you haven’t got
enough men to help. You watch out. If I think you need the help, well, I shall change myself
into a man. Just like Muriwai.’

‘In the meantime,’ Koro Apirana said,
‘you leave the organising to me. If the women want to help, you tell them to meet
you in the dining room. I’ll leave them to you.’

He kissed her and she looked him straight in the eyes. ‘I
say again,’ she warned, ‘I’ll be like Muriwai if I have to.
Kahu, also, if she has to be.’

‘You keep Kahu away, e Kui,’ Koro Apirana said.
‘She’s of no use to me.’

With that he had turned to Porourangi and me. As for Kahu, she was
staring at the floor, resigned, feeling sorry for herself.

Together, we had all watched the whale with the sacred sign plunging
through the sea towards us. The attending herd had fallen back, sending long undulating
calls to the unheeding bull whale, which had propelled itself forcefully onto the beach. We
had felt the tremor of its landing. As we watched, fearfully, we saw the bull whale heaving
itself by muscle contraction even further up the sand. Then, sighing, it had rolled onto its
right side and prepared itself for death.

Five or six elderly females had separated from the herd to lie close
to the bull whale. They sang to it, attempting to encourage it back to the open sea where
the rest of the herd were waiting. But the bull whale remained unmoving.

We had run down to the beach. None of us had been prepared for the
physical size of the beast. It seemed to tower over us. A primal psychic force gleamed in
its swirling tattoo. Twenty metres long, it brought with it a reminder of our fantastic
past.

Then, in the wind and the rain, Koro Apirana had approached the whale.
‘Oh sacred one,’ he had called, ‘greetings. Have you come to
die or to live?’ There was no reply to his question. But we had the feeling that
this was a decision which had been placed in
our
hands.
The whale had raised its giant tail fin:

It was then that Koro Apirana had asked that the men gather in the
meeting house.

Outside there was wind and rain, lightning and
thunder. The lightning lit up the beach where the stranded whale was lying. Far out to sea
the whale herd waited, confused. Every now and then one of the elderly females would come to
comfort the ancient whale and to croon its love for him.

Inside the stomach of the meeting house there was warmth,
bewilderment, strength and anticipation, waiting to be soldered into a unity by the words of
our chief, Koro Apirana. The sound of the women assembling in the dining room under Nanny
Flowers’ supervision came to us like a song of support. As I shut the door to the
meeting house I saw Kahu’s face, like a small dolphin, staring out to sea. She was
making her mewling noise.

Koro Apirana took us for prayers. His voice rose and fell like the
sea. Then he made his greetings to the house, our ancestors, and the tribe gathered inside
the house. For a moment he paused, searching for words and began to speak.

‘Well, boys,’ he said, ‘there are not
many of us. I count twenty-six —’

‘Don’t forget me, Koro,’ a six-year-old
interjected.

‘Twenty-seven, then,’ Koro Apirana smiled,
‘so we all have to be one in body, mind, soul and spirit. But first we have to
agree on what we must do.’ His voice fell silent. ‘To explain, I have to
talk philosophy and I never went to no university. My university was the school of hard
knocks —’

‘That’s the best school of all,’ someone
yelled.

‘So I have to explain in my own way. Once, our world was one
where the Gods talked to our ancestors and man talked with the Gods. Sometimes the Gods gave
our ancestors special powers. For instance, our ancestor Paikea’ — Koro
Apirana gestured to the apex of the house — ‘was given power to talk to
whales and to command them. In this way, man, beasts and Gods lived in close communion with
one another.’

Koro Apirana took a few thoughtful steps back and forward.

‘But then,’ he continued, ‘man assumed a
cloak of arrogance and set himself up above the Gods. He even tried to defeat Death, but
failed. As he grew in his arrogance he started to drive a wedge through the original oneness
of the world. In the passing of Time he divided the world into that half he could believe in
and that half he could not believe in. The real and the unreal. The natural and
supernatural. The present and the past. The scientific and the fantastic. He put a barrier
between both worlds and everything on his side was called rational and everything on the
other side was called irrational. Belief in our
Maori
Gods,’ he emphasised, ‘has often been considered irrational.’

Koro Apirana paused again. He had us in the palms of his hands and was
considerate about our ignorance, but I was wondering what he was driving at. Suddenly he
gestured to the sea.

‘You have all seen the whale,’ he said.
‘You have all seen the sacred sign tattooed on its head. Is the tattoo there by
accident or by design? Why did a whale of its appearance strand itself here and not at
Wainui? Does it belong in the real world or the unreal world?’

‘The real,’ someone called.