The Whale Rider (13 page)

twenty

After Kahu’s departure, Nanny Flowers collapsed. She was
taken to the hospital where, five days later, her eyelids flickered open. She saw Koro
Apirana sitting next to the bed. Me and the boys were also there.

Nanny Flowers shook herself awake. The nurse and Koro Apirana helped
her to sit up. Once she had gotten comfortable she closed her eyes a second time. Then she
peeked out of one eye and sighed.

‘Hmm,’ she said sarcastically. ‘If you
lot are still here that must mean I haven’t gone to Heaven.’

But we didn’t mind her sarcasm because we were used to her
being an old grump. Koro Apirana looked at her lovingly.

‘You have to lose some weight, Putiputi,’ he said
to her. ‘Your ticker is too weak. I don’t know what I would have done if
the both of you —’

Nanny Flowers suddenly remembered. ‘What has happened to
Kahu —’

Koro Apirana quietened her quickly. ‘No, no,
Flowers,’ he said. ‘She’s all right. She’s all
right.’ He told Nanny Flowers what had happened.

Three days after the sacred whale and its
accompanying herd had gone, and after Kahu had been given up for dead, she had been found
unconscious, floating in a nest of dark lustrous kelp in the middle of the ocean. How she
got there nobody knew, but when she was found the dolphins that were guarding her sped away
with happy somersaults and leaps into the air.

Kahu had been rushed to the hospital. Her breathing had stopped,
started, stopped and then started again. She was now off the respirator but she was still in
a coma. The doctors did not know whether she would regain consciousness.

‘Where is she? Where’s my Kahu?’ Nanny
Flowers cried.

‘She’s here with you,’ Koro Apirana
said. ‘Right here in this same hospital. Me and the iwi have been looking over you
both, waiting for you to come back to us. You two have been mates for each other, just like
in the vegetable garden.’

Koro Apirana gestured to the other bed in the room. The boys separated
and, through the gap, Nanny Flowers saw a little girl in pigtails, her face waxed and still.

The tears streamed down Nanny Flowers’ cheeks.

‘Push my bed over to her bed,’ Nanny said.
‘I’m too far away from her. I want to hold her and talk to
her.’

The boys huffed and puffed with pretended exertion.

‘Now all of you Big Ears can wait outside the
door,’ Nanny said. ‘Just leave me and your Koro here alone with our
Kahu.’

She was like a little doll. Her eyes were closed and
her eyelashes looked very long against her pallid skin. White ribbons had been used to tie
her plaits. There was no colour in her cheeks, and she seemed not to be breathing at all.

The bedcovers had been pulled right up to Kahu’s chin, but
her arms were on top of the covers. She was wearing warm flannel pyjamas, and the pyjama top
was buttoned up to her neck.

The minutes passed. Koro Apirana and Nanny Flowers looked at each
other, and their hearts ached.

‘You know, dear,’ Koro Apirana said, ‘I
blame myself for this. It’s all my fault.’

‘Yeah, it sure is,’ Nanny Flowers wept.

‘I should have known she was the one,’ Koro
Apirana said. ‘Ever since that time when she was a baby and bit my toe.’

‘Boy, if only she had real teeth,’ Nanny Flowers
agreed.

‘And all those times I ordered her away from the meeting
house, I should have known.’

‘You were deaf, dumb, blind
and
stubborn.’

The window to the room was half open. The sunlight shone through the
billowing curtains. Nanny Flowers noticed that the door was slowly inching open and that the
nosey-parkers were looking in. Talk about no privacy, with them out there with their eyes
all red and the tears coming out.

‘You never even helped with Kahu’s birth
cord,’ Nanny Flowers sobbed.

‘You’re right, dear, I’ve been no
good.’

‘Always telling Kahu she’s no use because
she’s a girl. Always growling at her. Growl, growl, growl.’

‘And I never knew,’ Koro Apirana said,
‘until you showed me the stone.’

‘I should have cracked you over the head with it, you old
paka.’

Dappled shadows chased each other across the white walls. On the
window-sill were vases of flowers in glorious profusion.

Koro Apirana suddenly got up from his chair. His face was filled with
the understanding of how rotten he had been.

‘You should divorce me,’ he said to Nanny Flowers.
‘You should go and marry old Waari over the hill.’

‘Yeah, I should too,’ Nanny Flowers said.
‘He knows how to treat a woman. He wouldn’t trample on my Muriwai blood
as much as you have.’

‘You’re right, dear, you’re
right.’

‘I’m always right, you old paka, and
—’

Suddenly Kahu gave a long sigh. Her eyebrows began to knit as if she
was thinking of something.

‘You two are always arguing,’ she breathed.

The whales were rising from the sea. Their skins were lucent and
their profiles were gilded with the moon’s splendour. Rising,
rising.

‘Does the rider still live?’ the ancient bull
whale asked. He was concerned that the rider was okay, still breathing.

‘Yes,’ the old mother whale nodded. She had been
singing gently to the whale rider, telling her not to be afraid.

‘Very well,’ the ancient bull whale said.
‘Then let everyone live, and let the partnership between land and sea, whales
and all humankind, also remain.’

And the whale herd sang their gladness that the tribe would also
live, because they knew that the girl would need to be carefully taught before she could
claim the place for her people in the world.

The whales breached the surface and the thunderous spray was like
silver fountains in the moonlight.

twenty-one

Nanny Flowers gave an anguished sob and reached out to hold Kahu
tightly. Koro Apirana tottered to the bedside and looked down at the sleeping girl. He began
to say a prayer, and he asked the Gods to forgive him. He saw Kahu stir.

Oh
yes
, grandchild. Rise up from
the depths of your long sleep. Return to the people and take your rightful place among them.

Kahu drew another breath. She opened her eyes. ‘Is it time
to wake up now?’ she asked.

Nanny Flowers began to blubber. Koro Apirana’s heart skipped
a beat. ‘Yes. It is time to return.’

‘They told me not to wake until you were both
here,’ Kahu said gravely.

‘Who are you talking about?’ Koro Apirana asked.

‘The whales,’ she said. Then she smiled,
‘You two sounded just like the old mother whale and the bull whale
arguing.’

Nanny Flowers looked up at Koro Apirana. ‘We don’t
argue,’ she said. ‘
He
argues
and
I
win.’

‘Your Muriwai blood,’ Koro Apirana said.
‘Always too strong for me.’

Kahu giggled. She paused. Then her eyes brimmed with tears. In a small
voice she said, ‘I fell off.’

‘What?’

‘I fell off the whale. If I was a boy I would have held on
tight. I’m sorry, Paka, I’m not a boy.’

The old man cradled Kahu in his arms, partly because of emotion and
partly because he didn’t want those big ears out there to hear their big chief
crying.

‘You’re the best grandchild in the whole wide
world,’ he said. ‘Boy or girl, it doesn’t matter.’

‘Really, Paka?’ Kahu gasped. She hugged him
tightly and pressed her face against him. ‘Oh thank you, Paka. You’re
the best grandad in the whole wide world.’

‘I love you,’ Koro Apirana said.

‘Me too,’ Nanny Flowers added.

‘And don’t forget about us,’ said the
rest of the iwi as they crowded into the room.

Suddenly, in the joyous melee, Kahu raised a finger to her
lips:
Sssshh
.

The ancient bull whale
breached the surface, leaping high into the moonlit sky. The sacred sign, the tattoo,
was agleam like liquid silver. The bull whale flexed his muscles, releasing Kahu, and
she felt herself tumbling along his back, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling. All around her
the whales were leaping, and the air was filled with diamond spray
.

‘Can’t you hear them?’
Kahu asked.
Interlock
.

She fell into the sea. The thunder of the whales departing was loud
in her ears. She opened her eyes and looked downward. Through the foaming water she
could see huge tail fins waving farewell, ‘Child,
farewell.’

Then from the backwash of Time came the voice
of the old mother whale. ‘Child, your people await you. Return to the Kingdom
of Tane and fulfil your destiny.’ And suddenly the sea was drenched again with
a glorious echoing music from the dark shapes sounding
.

Kahu looked at Koro Apirana, her eyes shining.

‘Oh
Paka
, can’t
you hear them? I’ve been listening to them for ages now. Oh
Paka
, and the whales are still singing,’ she said.

Haumi e, hui e,
taiki e
.

Let it be done.

Author Notes

The legend

For this newest edition of
The Whale
Rider
, I pay tribute to the ancestor who started it all: the original whale
rider. The whale rider is memorialised by a gable structure which rides atop the meeting
house, Whitireia, in Whangara, a small Maori settlement near Gisborne; the meeting house
was carved under the supervision of the great master carver Pine Taiapa and opened in
1939. When I was a very young boy and first saw the sculpture and heard the story of the
whale rider’s epic voyage from Hawaiki (Sir Apirana Ngata pinpointed Hawaiki
as the group of islands clustered around Bora Bora, notably Raiatea, in French
Polynesia) my imagination was immediately captured.

The whale rider faces eastward across the sea in the direction of
the place where the sun rises every morning. He is well known and claimed throughout
Polynesia; he is a Pacific version of Ulysses and, like that Greek hero, he has become
the stuff of legends. According to early twentieth century informant Wiremu Potae, who
told it to William Colenso, his name was Kahutia Te Rangi and he was the firstborn son
of Uenuku, one of the chiefs of Hawaiki. He had a brother, Ruatapu, who was jealous of
him and wanted to kill him. He planned to do this by taking Kahutia Te Rangi and sons
from other royal houses of Hawaiki out in a seagoing waka, and scuttling it. However,
when the canoe began to sink, a huge whale came up from the bottom of the ocean to save
Kahutia Te Rangi. It came in response to his chant, his karakia, today known as the
Paikea chant, asking for assistance from the gods so that he might prevail.

The whale lifted Kahutia Te Rangi up and carried him to safety,
swimming many days and nights. But it did not head back to Hawaiki. Instead, it carried
Kahutia Te Rangi southward; perhaps it was on its migratory journey around the great
Southern Ocean, heading for the rich krill feeding grounds at the bottom of the world.
Sometimes the seas and skies were calm. At other times there were fierce storms,
mountainous waves, heavy rain and dark skies split by thunder and jagged lightning. But
Kahutia Te Rangi continued his karakia, and early one morning as the star Poututerangi
(Altair) appeared over a far distant mountain arising from the sea (this was Mount
Hikurangi, 1756 metres high, the first place on the earth’s surface to greet
the sun every morning), he realised that the whale had brought him to a land only
rumoured about in Hawaiki; a fabled, bounteous country of great beauty and richness
called Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Kahutia Te Rangi made landfall at Ahuahu (Mercury Island), which
is off the Coromandel Peninsula. There he took the name of Paikea to honour the whale
that had brought him to Aotearoa, and in remembrance of his epic voyage. Other settlers
were already living in Aotearoa and, in time, Paikea married a woman from Ahuahu, whose
name was Parawhenuamea. Travelling south-east, he also married Te Manawatina at
Whakatane and Huturangi at Waiapu. With his wives he fathered many children. He settled
in Whangara with Huturangi, who was the daughter of Whironui at Koutuamoa Point.

From Paikea great chiefs descended, including Porourangi; and it
was from Porourangi that my mother’s tribe, Ngati Porou, takes its name.
Porourangi’s brother, Tahu, moved to the South Island and is regarded by many
as their founding ancestor. As for me, I have always been very proud to be a member of
Ngati Porou and to be able to trace my genealogy back to Paikea. He is what we call the
tahuhu, the ridgepole, of Te Tairawhiti, the migrant voyager and originating ancestor of
the tribe of the Eastern Tides, also binding other tribes of the East Coast,
Hawke’s Bay and the South Island together by blood ancestry.

This is one of the many versions of the whale
rider story. Another version describes Kahutia Te Rangi as not only a royal son of
Hawaiki but also a man who, by mystical powers, could transform himself into a taniwha,
a tipua, a whale even — operating fluidly between his human form and his ocean
form. And why should we not believe this? After all, Hawaiki was a paradisiacal land, a
Polynesian Eden half real, half unreal, where man walked with the gods and communed with
beasts, birds, forests and all animate and inanimate things. In this version, the
murderous Ruatapu pursued Kahutia Te Rangi to Aotearoa; it must have been a thrilling
sea chase. Ruatapu summoned up a series of five tidal waves and sent them ahead of him,
but Kahutia Te Rangi managed to get ashore and change back into his human form before
they were able to swamp him. The waves then recoiled, returning to their source, where
they overwhelmed he who had sent them — and so Ruatapu went to his watery
grave. The local people say that if you come to Whangara in September you can still see
these tidal waves breaking on the shore.

There are many variants to the story. Some say that Kahutia Te
Rangi and Paikea were two different people; and the narrative concerning Paikea and his
brother, Ruatapu, is still disputed. Leo Fowler, for instance, wrote in
Te Mana o Turanga
(1944) that there was another brother,
Ira Kaiputahi; and he gives further information about the canoe that was scuttled: it
was called Tutepewakarangi and it was a war canoe on its ceremonial first voyage. Fowler
explains that the reason Kahutia Te Rangi changed his name was that Paikea is also the
name given by Maori to a proper species of whale that is very long with a sharpish,
V-shaped head, a pike-nose and a white underbelly fluted longitudinally. And the reason
Kahutia Te Rangi was able to call on a whale to rescue him, or even to change into a
whale, was because his genealogy connected him to beasts of the sea — to the
porpoise and Portuguese man-of-war and, in particular, to large whales, including
pike-nosed whales.

Another variation tells that Kahutia Te Rangi had to leave a wife
and a son, Rongomai Tuaho, in Hawaiki when he eluded Ruatapu. Many years later, pining
for his father, Rongomai Tuaho sent a magic bailer to Aotearoa to ascertain if his
father was still alive. Another strand of the whale rider story is that the island you
see close by the beach at Whangara, Te Ana a Paikea, is the whale itself, transformed
into a rock. You can reach the island at low tide, but at high tide in winter a stormy
channel separates it from the mainland.

I am telling you this to indicate that Maori mythology is very
rich. All the narratives are multilayered, complex, extraordinary and transcendent. They
occupy a place between the real and the unreal, the natural and the supernatural
— the world you can believe in and the world you are told not to believe in.
This is why Maori mythology is so prevalent in my work: Maori and Polynesian stories
come from a different source, a different inventory than western tradition, and I am
writing from within that different tradition. Accompanying my work as an indigenous
writer is a whole thrilling mythology and history that encompasses all of Polynesia and
the Pacific.

The novel

I’m not sure how old I was when I first gazed upon that
sculpture of the whale rider at Whangara and heard the saga of his epic voyage
accomplished by fantastic means.

By 1956, however, when I was twelve, the story had become a
magnificent compulsion for me. Occasionally at weekends I would cycle twenty-seven
kilometres to Whangara. It was a long way, especially if there was a headwind; and if I
was lucky somebody would pick me up in their truck. People knew who I was because of my
father, Tom, who was a well known shearer and sportsman. One of them was Rangi Haenga,
also a shearer. ‘Off to Whangara again, eh?’ he asked. He threw my
bike in the back, gave me a lift up the East Coast highway and let me off at the turnoff
to Whangara. A short pedal later and I was there, on the rise above the village, church,
wooden houses, marae … and Paikea, an eternal sentinel gazing out across the
sea.

I would eat my lunch and just stare and stare at that sculpture. I
would ask boyish questions, like: ‘Do you kick a whale like a horse to make it
go? How do you stay on a whale when it dives? Don’t whales dive miles deep?
How do you keep your breath for so long? How did you speak to your whale? Did you know
whale talk? Maybe whales speak Maori!’ I gathered as much information as I
could about Hawaiki, too. With great awe I realised that the distance was huge
— over 3000 miles.

And so I would sit crosslegged, looking up at the sculpture of
Paikea, dazzled by that phenomenal voyage. Sometimes I stayed so long that Moni Taumaunu
would ring Mum and Dad in Gisborne and tell them, ‘If you’re looking
for Witi, he’s out here at Whangara. He can sleep with us tonight, or else
maybe somebody is coming into town and can bring him back.’

At the time, my sister Caroline and I belonged to the Comet
Swimming Club at the municipal Macrae Baths. After practice I liked to take a deep
breath and see how long I could stay underwater. ‘Where’s
Witi!’ the instructors would say, panicking. ‘Oh, he’s all
right. There he is, as usual, sitting at the bottom of the pool.’ But every
time I surfaced I would check the time on my watch and get very cross: four minutes, not
good enough. And down I would go again.

It never crossed my mind that the story might be a fantasy. As far
as I was concerned, Paikea really existed; a whale did rescue him and he rode on it.
Nobody could persuade me otherwise. Indeed, when I saw the film
Moby Dick
(1956), starring Gregory Peck and directed by John Huston, at
the local theatre, I was annoyed at the way the big white whale was demonised: he was
only trying to save himself from Captain Ahab.

Well, I grew into adulthood, and I
didn’t achieve anything as spectacular as Paikea did. But in many ways, his
story became the symbol of what I should do in my life — always look to the
horizon, pursue my dreams, and not let anybody or anything stop me from fulfilling my
destiny.

One of those dreams was to become a writer. It wasn’t
high on my list but, as the years went by and I didn’t become a fighter pilot,
All Black, film star or astronaut, writing moved more into the zone of possibilities.
Another dream was to see the world. It was not unexpected, therefore, that thirty years
later, in 1986, I had turned myself into both a writer and a diplomat for the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs (that had never been on the list) in the United States. At that time
I was forty-two, working in New York and residing in apartment 33G at 67th Street and
Broadway. From the apartment there was a view down the Hudson River towards New York
harbour. By then I had two daughters, Jessica and Olivia, aged nine and seven, who lived
in New Zealand but came to stay with me for the holidays. On one of those vacations,
over Christmas–New Year, the weather was freezing and the best place to go to
keep warm was a nice heated movie theatre. We saw lots of movies on that particular
vacation — including
An American Tail
,
Explorers
,
The Ewoks:
Caravan of Courage
and
Flight of the
Navigator
— but they had a curious effect on Jessica. One
afternoon, she stamped her foot on the pavement and asked me, ‘Daddy, why are
the boys always the heroes and the girls so hopeless? All they do is yell,
“Save me, save me, I’m so helpless!”’ Her
comment made me double up with laughter, but I knew what she was talking about. My
daughters have a marvellous mother, Jane, who has always had very strong views about the
equality of women.

I haven’t got my calendar with me, but it must have been
after Jessica and Olivia returned to New Zealand and spring arrived in New York that an
astounding event occurred: a whale came swimming up the Hudson River to Pier 86 at 12th
Avenue and West 46th Street. I can recall watching the event on local television; and
today it has become part of the city’s folklore: ‘Yeah, that whale,
what a thing to do, right?’ You see, the Hudson River at the time was very
dirty, what Maori call pango — a word that is often translated as
‘black’ but that has more distasteful connotations. Some people
thought the whale had lost its way. As for me, I was really overwhelmed with aroha,
love: that whale had come to say hello. It had come through all that pango stuff to tell
me that although I was living on the other side of the world I was not forgotten. Filled
with gratitude and inspired by both events — the visit of my daughters and the
whale — I wrote the novel, which takes place in New Zealand, on the other side
of the world. Indeed, I was able to write the book at astonishing speed;
that’s what inspiration does to you. Visitors turned up during the writing,
but fortunately they understood — well, I hope they understood —
when I couldn’t go out on the town with them. By the end of six weeks the book
was finished. Win Cochrane, my boss, cast a benevolent eye over me when I snatched the
occasional half-hour at the consulate to complete the second draft. Sometimes he would
come out of the office to find his secretary, Vivienne Troy, typing the manuscript.

I called the book
The Whale
Rider
, and I presented the manuscript to Jessica and Olivia the next time
they came to visit. I had written it for them. Then I sent a copy to my publisher, David
Heap, in New Zealand; and the first edition was published in hardback in 1987. I was
still in New York, so I arranged for David to take the book to Whangara where it could
be blessed and launched. The kaumatua of the marae committee was Jack Haapu, and he and
Nohoroa Haapu organised the hui. My parents and sister went out to Whangara, and later
they told me how stunning the evening had been: the moon came out, shining full upon the
carving of Paikea, and far out to sea a large whale leapt into the air.