The Whale Rider (4 page)

seven

The next time Kahu came to us she was two years old. She came with
Porourangi, who had a lovely woman called Ana with him. It looked like they were in love.
But Nanny Flowers had eyes only for Kahu.

‘Thank goodness,’ Nanny Flowers said after she had
embraced Kahu, ‘you’ve grown some hair.’

Kahu giggled. She had turned into a bright button-eyed little girl
with shining skin. She wanted to know where her grandfather was.

‘The old paka,’ said Nanny Flowers.
‘He’s been in Wellington on Maori Council business. But he comes back on
the bus tonight. We’ll go and pick him up.’

We had to smile, really, because Kahu was so eager to see Koro
Apirana. She wriggled and squirmed all the way into town. We bought her a soft drink but she
didn’t want it, preferring water instead. Then, when the bus arrived and Koro
Apirana stepped off with other Council officials, she ran at him with a loud, infectious joy
in her voice. I guess we should have expected it, but it was still a surprise to hear her
greeting to him. For his part, he stood there thunderstruck, looking for somewhere to hide.

Oh the shame, the embarrassment, as she flung herself into his arms,
crying, ‘Oh,
Paka
. You home now, you
Paka
. Oh,
Paka
.’

He blamed us all for that, and he tried to persuade Kahu to call him
‘Koro’, but
Paka
he was, and
Paka
he became forever after.

Being a big chief, Koro Apirana was often called to
meetings all over the country to represent us. He had the reputation of being stern and
tyrannical and because of this many people were afraid of him. ‘Huh,’
Nanny Flowers used to say, ‘they should face
me
and then they’ll know all about it.’ But me and the boys had a grudging
admiration for the old fella. He might not always be fair but he was a good fighter for the
Maori people. Our pet name for our Koro was ‘Super Maori’ and, even now,
telephone boxes still remind me of him. We used to joke: ‘If you want help at
Bastion Point, call Super Maori. If you want a leader for your Land March, just dial
Whangara 214K. If you want a man of strength at a Waitangi protest, phone the Maori Man of
Steel.’ Mind you, he wasn’t on our side when we protested against the
Springbok Tour but then that just shows you the kind of man he was: his own boss.
‘Right or wrong,’ Nanny Flowers would add.

The meeting that Koro Apirana had attended was about the establishment
of Kohanga Reo, or language nests, where young children could learn the Maori language. The
adult version was the language school, the regular instruction of the kind which Koro
Apirana had established a year before in Whangara. Although we weren’t that well
educated, the boys and I enjoyed the lessons every weekend. It soon became obvious that Kahu
did also. She would sneak up to the door of the meeting house and stare in at us.

‘Go away,’ Koro Apirana would thunder. Quick as a
flash Kahu’s head would bob away. But slowly we would see it again, like a spiny
sea urchin. I suspect that Kahu overheard more than we thought. I am certain she must have
been there when we learnt that man was once able to talk, to communicate, with whales. After
all, Paikea must have had to tell his whale where to come.

The whale has always held a special place in the
order of things, even before those times of Paikea. That was way back, after the Sky Father
and Earth Mother had been separated, when the god children of both parents divided up
between themselves the various Kingdoms of the Earth. It was the Lord Tangaroa who took the
Kingdom of the Ocean; he was second in rank only to the Lord Tane, the Father of Man and the
Forests, and so was established by them the close kinship of man with the inhabitants of the
ocean, and of land with sea. This was the first communion.

Then the Lord Tangaroa appointed the triad of Kiwa, Rona and Kaukau to
assist his sovereign rule: Kiwa to be guardian of the southern ocean, Rona to help control
the tides and Kaukau to aid the welfare of the sea’s denizens. To the triad, two
other guardians from the Kingdom of the Land, Takaaho and Te Pu-whakahara, brought a special
suit: their offspring had been given lakes to live in, but they preferred to roam the
freedom of the sea. The suit was accepted, and this was how sharks and whales were granted
habitation of the ocean.

From the very beginning the whale was grateful for this release and
this was why the whale family, the Wehenga-kauiki, became known as the helpers of men lost
at sea. Whenever asked, the whale would attend the call, as long as the mariner possessed
the necessary authority and knew the way of talking to whales.

But as the world aged and man grew away from his godliness, he began
to lose the power of speech with whales, the power of
interlock
. So it was that the knowledge of whalespeaking was given only to a few.
One of these was our ancestor, Paikea.

Then came the time when Paikea asked his whale to bring him to our
land, far to the south, and it was done.

As for the whale itself, some people say the whale was transformed
into an island; viewed from the highway to Tolaga Bay, the island certainly does look like a
whale breaking through the water.

The years went by, and the descendants of Paikea increased on the land
and always paid homage to their ancestor and the whale island. In those days there was still
communion with the Gods and a close relationship between land inhabitants and ocean
inhabitants. Whenever man wished to cross the border between his kingdom and that of the
ocean he would honour Tangaroa by making offerings of seaweed, or fish or birds. And when
Tangaroa granted man good fishing, man would return the first fish of the catch to the sea
god as acknowledgement that his welfare was only by leave of Tangaroa. So it was that
ceremonials of respect were employed between man and sea. For instance, fishing was sacred
and women therefore did not go out with the men, and fishing grounds became steeped in
special rituals to ensure their bounty. And even the shark, in those days, was a helper to
man unless man had transgressed a sacred law.

Until the time came when man turned on the beast which had been
companion to him and the whalekilling began.

That night, after the school on the whales, I arrived
home to find Nanny Flowers out on the verandah with Kahu in her arms, rocking back and
forth, back and forth.

‘Rawiri, what happened down there?’ she asked,
jerking her head at the meeting house. I saw Kahu rubbing small fists against her eyes.

‘Nothing,’ I answered. ‘Why?’

‘This kid has been sobbing her heart out,’ Nanny
Flowers said. She paused. ‘Did the old paka growl at her?’

Ever since the school had started, Nanny Flowers had been chucking off
at Koro Apirana. While she agreed that the instruction should take place, she
couldn’t help feeling affronted about the exclusion of women.
‘Them’s the rules,’ Koro Apirana had told her. ‘I
know, but rules are made to be broken,’ she had replied in a huff. So, every first
Saturday of the month, she would start to play up and pick on Koro Apirana. ‘Yeah,
yeah, yeah,’ he would say. ‘Te mea te mea.’

‘He didn’t growl at Kahu any more than
usual,’ I answered. ‘he just doesn’t like her hanging around
when we have the school, that’s all.’

Nanny Flowers compressed her lips. I could tell that rebellion was
ready to boil over inside her. Then she said to me, ‘Well you take this kid with
you somewhere because I’m going to have a word with Koro Api when he gets back,
the old paka.’

I must admit that I was brassed off, having Kahu shoved at me like
that. I was planning on taking my darling Cheryl Marie to the movies. So I phoned her up to
explain that I had to look after a baby.

‘Oh yeah,’ my darling said sarcastically.
‘And I suppose she’s not five foot two with eyes of blue.’
Cheryl was jealous of my other darling, Rhonda Anne.

‘No,’ I said. ‘My baby is
you
. Eyes of brown and lives in town.’

Would you believe it, my darling hung up on me? So what else could I
do except take Kahu to the movies instead. The boys laughed when I zoomed up to the Majestic
with my substitute ‘date’ under my leather jacket, but the girls loved
her. ‘Oh isn’t she gorgeous? Isn’t she sweet?’ Yuk.
I could see a mile off that the girls were also assessing whether I had now become marrying
material. No
way
.

The movie had already started. Children weren’t supposed to
see it, but the darkness made it easier to sneak Kahu in. What I hadn’t realised,
however, was that the main feature was about a whale being hunted through Antarctic waters.
Everything was fine, really, for most of the film, because Kahu soon fell asleep. Having her
curled up so close to me made me feel protective, like a father, I guess, and I think my
bonding to her was confirmed that night. I felt I should look after her till the world
ended; every now and then, I would open my jacket and sneak a look at her tiny face, so wan
in the light of the flickering film. And a lump would come to my throat and I would think to
myself, ‘No, Kahu, I won’t forget you, ever.’

Then the final tragedy of the movie began. The whale, wounded, was
dying in its own blood. The soundtrack was suddenly filled with the sound of the whale in
its death throes: long, echoing, sighing phrases which must have been recorded from real
whales. The sound was strange and utterly sad. No wonder when I looked at Kahu she had woken
from sleep, and tears were again tracking down her face. Not even a lolly would help to
pacify her.

Nanny Flowers and Koro Apirana had finished their
argument by the time I returned home, but the atmosphere was as frozen as the Antarctic
wasteland in the film.

‘He’s sleeping in the bunkhouse with you
tonight,’ Nanny Flowers told me, jerking her head at Koro Apirana.
‘I’ve had enough of him. Divorce tomorrow, I mean it this
time.’ Then she remembered something and after taking Kahu from me, screwed my
ears.
Ouch
. ‘And that’ll teach
you to take my grandchild gallivanting all over the place. I’ve been scared to
death. Where’d you go?’

‘To the movies.’

‘To a
picture
?’
Bang
came her open
hand over my head. ‘And
then
where!’

‘Down the beach.’

‘The
beach
?’ I
ducked her hand (Ha ha, ha ha, you missed me, you missed —) but
kick
came her foot to my behind. ‘Don’t
you do that again!’ She hugged Kahu tightly and took her into hers and Koro
Apirana’s bedroom and
slam
went the door.

I thought of my darling, Cheryl Marie. ‘Looks like both of
us lucked out tonight,’ I said to Koro Apirana.

Half way through the night I suddenly remembered
something. I tried to wake Koro Apirana, snoring beside me, but he only tried to snuggle up
to me, saying ‘Flowers, darling wife …’ So I edged away from
him quickly and sat there, staring through the window at the glowing moon.

I had wanted to tell Koro Apirana that on our way back from the movie,
the boys and I had gone up to the Point at Sponge Bay. The sea had looked like crinkled
silver foil smoothed right out to the edge of the sky.

‘Hey!’ one of the boys had said, pointing.
‘There’s orca.’

It had been uncanny, really, seeing those killer whales slicing
stealthily through the sea, uncanny and disturbing as a dream.

Even more strange, though, was that Kahu had begun to make eerie
sounds in her throat. I swear that those long lamenting sighs of hers were exactly the same
as I had heard in the movie theatre. It sounded as if she was warning them.

The orca suddenly dived.

Hui e, haumi e,
taiki e
.

Let it be done.

eight

The following summer, when Kahu was three, was dry and dusty on the
Coast. Koro Apirana was concerned about our drinking water and was considering at one point
bringing it in by road tanker. One of the boys suggested that the sweetest water was DB
light brown and that the hotel up at Tatapouri would be happy to deliver it free. Another of
the boys added that we’d have to escort it to Whangara because, for sure, someone
would want to do a Burt Reynolds and hijack it.

Into all this rough and tumble of our lives, Kahu brought a special
radiance. Koro Apirana was as grumpy with her as ever but, now that Porourangi was home, and
now that the school sessions were attracting young boys for him to teach, he seemed to bear
less of a grudge against her for being a girl and the eldest grandchild.

‘Don’t blame Kahu,’ Nanny Flowers used
to growl. ‘If your blood can’t beat my Muriwai blood that’s
your lookout.’

‘Te mea te mea,’ Koro Apirana would reply.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

In particular, Koro Apirana had discovered three sons from royal
bloodlines to whom he hoped to pass the mantle of knowledge. And from the corner of his eye,
he could see that Porourangi and his new girlfriend, Ana, were growing very fond of each
other. Now
she
didn’t have any Muriwai blood
so, you never knew, Porourangi might come up with a son yet.

Under these conditions, the love which Kahu received from Koro Apirana
was the sort that dropped off the edge of the table, like breadcrumbs after everybody else
has had a big feed. But Kahu didn’t seem to mind. She ran into Koro
Apirana’s arms whenever he had time for her and took whatever he was able to give.
If he had told her he loved dogs I’m sure she would have barked, ‘Woof
woof’. That’s how much she loved him.

Summer is always shearing season for us and that
summer the boys and I got a contract to shear for the local farmers around the Coast. On the
first few mornings when Kahu was at home I would see her staring at us over the windowsill
as we left. Her eyes seemed to say, ‘Hey, don’t forget about me, Uncle
Rawiri.’ So one morning I made her life happy.

‘I think I’ll take Kahu to the shed with
me,’ I said to Nanny Flowers.

‘Oh no you don’t,’ Nanny Flowers said.
‘She’ll drown in the dip.’

‘No. No. She’ll be all right. Eh, Kahu?’

Kahu’s eyes were shining. ‘Oh
yes
. Can I go, Nanny?’

‘All right then,’ Nanny Flowers grumbled.
‘But tomorrow you have to be my mate in the vegetable garden. Okay?’

So it was that Kahu became the mascot for me and the boys and it only
seemed natural, after a while, for us to take her with us wherever we went — well,
most places anyway and only when Nanny Flowers didn’t want her to help in the
garden.

But that first night I got my beans from the old lady.

‘
Hoi
,’ she
said, and
bang
came her hand. ‘What did you do
with Kahu at the shed? She’s tuckered out.’

‘Nothing,’ I squealed.
Biff
came her fist at my stomach. ‘She just helped us sheepo and
sweep the board and press the wool and pick up the dags and —’

Swish
came the broom.
‘Yeah,’ Nanny Flowers said. ‘And I’ll bet all you
beggars were just lying back and having a good
smoke
.’

You could never win with Nanny Flowers.

At that time the school sessions were proving to be
very popular. All of us felt the need to understand more about our roots. But Nanny Flowers
still grumbled whenever we had our hui. She would sit with Kahu in her arms, rocking in the
chair on the verandah, watching the men walk past.

‘There go the Ku Klux Klan,’ she would say loudly
so that we could all hear.

Poor Kahu, she could never keep away from our school. She would always
try to listen in at the doorway to the meeting house.

‘Go away,’ Koro Apirana would thunder. But there
was one school that Kahu could not eavesdrop on, and that was the one which Koro Apirana led
when he took us out in a small flotilla of fishing boats to have a lesson on the sea.

‘In our village,’ Koro Apirana told us,
‘we have always endeavoured to live in harmony with Tangaroa’s kingdom
and the guardians therein. We have made offerings to the sea god to thank him and when we
need his favour, and we have called upon our guardians whenever we are in need of help. We
have blessed every new net and new line to Tangaroa. We have tried not to take food with us
in our boats when we fish because of the sacred nature of our task.’

The flotilla was heading out to sea.

‘Our fishing areas have always been placed under the
protective custody of the guardians,’ Koro Apirana said. ‘In their
honour we have often placed talismanic shrines. In this way the fish have been protected,
attracted to the fishing grounds, and thus a plentiful supply has been assured. We try never
to overfish for to do so would be to take greedy advantage of Tangaroa and would bring
retribution.’

Then we reached the open sea and Koro Apirana motioned that we should
stay close to him.

‘All of our fishing grounds, banks and rocks have had names
assigned to them and the legends surrounding them have been commemorated in story, song or
proverb. Where our fishing grounds have no local identification, like a reef or upjutting
rock, we have taken the
fix
from prominent cliffs or
mountains on the shore. Like
there
and
mark
. And
there
and
mark
. In this way the fishing places of all our
fish species have always been known. And we have tried never to trespass on the fishing
grounds of others because
their
guardians would recognise
us as interlopers. In this respect, should we ever be in unfamiliar sea, we have surrounded
ourselves with our own water for protection.’

Then Koro Apirana’s voice dropped and, when he resumed his
lesson, his words were steeped with sadness and regret. ‘But we have not always
kept our pact with Tangaroa, and in these days of commercialism it is not always easy to
resist temptation. So it was when I was your age. So it is now. There are too many people
with snorkelling gear, and too many commercial fishermen with licences. We have to place
prohibitions on our fishing beds, boys, otherwise it will be just like the whales
—’

For a moment Koro Apirana hesitated. Far out to sea there was a dull
booming sound like a great door opening, a reminder, a memory of something downward
plunging. Koro Apirana shaded his eyes from the sun.

‘Listen, boys,’ he said, and his voice was
haunted. ‘Listen. Once there were many of our protectors. Now there are
few.
Listen how empty our sea has become
.’

In the evening after our lesson on the sea we
assembled in the meeting house. The booming on the open waters had heralded the coming of a
rainstorm like a ghostly wheke advancing from the horizon. As I went into the meeting house
I glanced up at our ancestor, Paikea. He looked like he was lifting his whale through the
spearing rain.

Koro Apirana led us in a prayer to bless the school. Then, after the
introductions, he told us of the times which had brought the silence to the sea.

‘I was a boy of seven years’ age,’ he
began, ‘when I went to stay with my uncle who was a whaler. I was too young to
know any better, and I didn’t understand then, as I do now, about our ancestor,
the whale. At that time whaling was one of the great pastimes and once the bell on the
lookout had been sounded you’d see all the whaling boats tearing out to sea,
chasing after a whale. Doesn’t matter what you were doing, you’d drop
everything, your plough, your sheep clippers, your schoolbooks,
everything
. I can still remember seeing everyone climbing the lookout, like
white balloons. I followed them and far out to sea I saw a herd of whales.’

The rain fell through his words. ‘They were the most
beautiful sight I had ever seen.’ He made a sweeping gesture. ‘Then,
down by the slipway, I could see the longboats being launched into the sea. I ran down past
the sheds and the pots on the fires were already being stoked to boil down the blubber. All
of a sudden my uncle yelled out to me to get on his boat with him. So there I was, heading
out to sea.’

I saw a spiky head sneaking a look through the door.
‘That’s when I saw the whales really close,’ Koro Apirana
said. ‘There must have been sixty of them at least. I have never forgotten, never.
They had prestige. They were so powerful. Our longboat got so close to one that I was able
to reach out and touch the skin.’ His voice was hushed with awe. ‘I felt
the ripple of power beneath the skin. It felt like silk. Like a god. Then the harpoons began
to sing through the air. But I was young, you see, and all I could feel was the thrill, like
when you do a haka.’

He paused, mesmerised. ‘I can remember that when a whale was
harpooned it would fight like hang. Eventually it would spout blood like a fountain, and the
sea would be red. Three or four other boats would tow it ashore to the nearest place and cut
it up and share out the meat and the oil and everything. When we started to strip the
blubber off the whale in the whaling station, all the blood flowed into the channel. Blind
eels would come up with the tide to drink the blood.’

I heard Kahu weeping at the doorway. I edged over to her and when she
saw me she put her arms around my neck.

‘You better go home,’ I said, ‘before
Koro Apirana finds out you’re here.’

But she was so frightened. She was making a mewling sound in her
throat. She seemed immobilised by terror.

Inside, Koro Apirana was saying, ‘Then, when it was all
finished we would cut huge slabs of whale meat and sling them across our horses and take
them to our homes —’

Suddenly, before I could stop her, Kahu wrenched away from me and ran
into the meeting house.

‘No, Paka,
no
!’
she screamed.

His mouth dropped open. ‘Haere atu koe,’ he
shouted.

‘Paka. Paka, no!’

Grimly, Koro Apirana walked up to her, took her by the arms and
virtually hurled her out. ‘Go. Get away from here,’ he repeated. The sea
thundered ominously. The rain fell like spears.

Kahu was still crying, three hours later. Nanny
Flowers was livid when she heard about what happened.

‘You just keep her away from the meeting house,’
Koro Apirana said. ‘That’s all I say. I’ve told you
before.
And
her.’

‘My blame,’ Kahu wept. ‘Love
Paka.’

‘You
men
,’
Nanny Flowers said. ‘I can show
you
where you
come from.’

‘Enough,’ Koro Apirana said. He stormed out and
that ended the argument.

Later that night Kahu kept sobbing and sobbing. I guess we thought she
was still grieving about being growled at, but we know better now. I heard Nanny Flowers
going into Kahu’s bedroom and comforting her.

‘Shift over, Kahu,’ Nanny Flowers soothed.
‘Make a little space for your skinny Nanny. There, there.’

‘Love Paka.’

‘You can
have
him, Kahu,
as soon as I get my divorce tomorrow. There, there.’ Nanny was really hurting with
love for Kahu. ‘Don’t you worry, don’t you worry.
You’ll fix him up, the old paka, when you get older.’

In the hiss and roar of the suck of the surf upon the land I listened
to Nanny Flowers. After a short while Kahu drifted off to sleep.

‘Yes,’ Nanny Flowers crooned, ‘go to
sleep now. And if you don’t fix him,’ she whispered, ‘then my
oath I will.’

Hiss and roar. Ebb and flow.

The next morning I sneaked in to give Kahu a special
cuddle, just from me. When I opened the door she was gone. I looked in Koro Apirana and
Nanny Flowers’ bedroom, but she wasn’t there either. Nanny Flowers had
pushed Koro onto the floor and had spread herself over the whole bed to make sure he
couldn’t get back in.

Outside the sea was gentle and serene, as if the storm had never
happened. In the clear air I heard a chittering, chattering sound from the beach. I saw Kahu
far away, silhouetted on the sand. She was standing facing the sea and listened to voices in
the surf.
There
,
there
,
Kahu
.
There
,
there
.

Suddenly Kahu turned and saw me. She ran toward me like a seagull.
‘Uncle Rawiri!’

I saw three silver shapes leaping into the dawn.