A Crooked Rib (34 page)
Authors: Judy Corbalis
I knew that, in time, the gods of my mother, Kahe Te Rau-o-te-rangi, would punish me for my wrong-doing. Every day, I felt the imminence of their retribution. And Te Ariki, Jesus, He, too, would avenge himself for my sins.
The Serpent beguiled me and I did eat.
My bleaching, crumbling bones lie in a shallow grave far, far from Aotearoa. Though I seek it unceasingly, I cannot find the Broad Path of Tane that will lead me to Hawai’iki. There is no one from my tribe to call my spirit home; it is trapped forever, far from my ancestral lands.
I have looked for Mata Kawana here among the company of kikokiko, the ghost souls, but I have not seen her. It may be that she is not yet dead. It may be that the Heaven of Te Ariki is the true one after all, and she is there, while my restless spirit is condemned to wander …
At the kitchen fire, I warmed myself against the evening winter cold. Jane, called away to her ailing mother, had laid out my supper in the parlour before she left. As I sat, mesmerised by the orange and yellow flames in the grate, I had a sudden unwanted recollection of Rio and the blind fortune-teller. How had she known all our destinies? I fancied I saw in the fire the moving shapes of faces, heard in the crackling logs the whisper of voices. And, suddenly, there came a rapping at the kitchen door. I sat transfixed, unable to move or call out. The door was on the latch, unlocked. I had a vision of phantoms crowding outside, about to swirl inside the safety of my kitchen and overpower me. Forcing myself to look up, I caught a glimpse of something peering in at me through the window. The contorted mask from the hovel in Rio! I screamed and it withdrew; the door opened and a man entered.
So tall he could barely stand upright in the room, his light-coloured hair swept into a topknot, his face heavily tattooed, he moved towards me. ‘Kia ora,’ he said. For a moment I thought he might be Death, come to claim me. Then, he leaned towards me and pressed his forehead to mine in the long-remembered Maori salutation.
He moved a little towards the fire and I saw he was shivering.
‘Please to sit down and get warm,’ I said, recollecting myself, ‘and then tell me the purpose of your visit.’
‘Mata, I have travelled a very long way to this cold country. From the other side of the world I came to seek my mother.’
I could not take my eyes from him. I tried to speak, but for some moments I was mute. Then I said, ‘What is your name?’
‘I am Hori Kerei, the adopted son of the Ngapuhi chief, Te Toa.’
My heart hammered at my ribs. ‘Hori Kerei … George Grey,’
I said. ‘You are named for the Governor.’
Outside, the snow fell thickly. I struggled again to find my voice. ‘Te Toa … Tell me, is Te Toa … still living?’
‘Yes. And when he knew that I was determined to find my mother—’
I heard my voice break. ‘Has he … told you about your mother?’
‘No. He has always forbidden any talk of her. To protect her, he refused to disclose her identity. For many years, I had no idea of who she might be, but one day my grandmother called me to her. “You are a grown man,’ she said, “and I see how strongly you desire to know your parentage. This is something your father will never reveal to you. Even for me, he will not break his silence. Now, every child has the right to know the name of his mother and, as I am near to death, I have decided that I must tell you this. Listen carefully,” said my grandmother, “but swear that you will never disclose to your father that I have spoken to you of it.”
‘“I swear it,” I said.
‘And then she told me that, when I was an infant, shortly after my birth, Te Kawana and his wife agreed to adopt me. “And it would not be the first time a baby had been introduced in this fashion by its mother to its rightful household,” said my grandmother. But then Te Kawana refused the child. Te Toa, who had named the boy for Te Kawana, was most troubled, but Te Kawana remained adamant. So Te Toa took the child himself. That child was me, and my mother was the sad and headstrong young wife of Te Kawana.’
I stared at him, unable to speak.
‘Mata,’ he said, ‘I saw in your garden a most splendid tree.’
‘That … that … is a mulberry tree, more than two hundred years old.’
‘In the garden of Pihopa Selwyn’s old house at Waimate there is just such a tree. Mata Pihopa wished to take it with them to Kohimarama, but Pihopa would not permit it. Such trees, he said, are like certain people. They can never be transplanted. I think perhaps the same was true of my mother.’
I took in the colour of his hair, the lightness of his skin, the regularity of his features. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Mata Kawana could not be planted in one place. England,
Australia, Aotearoa, South Africa — she was without a turanga-waewae.’
I looked at him blankly.
‘A standing-place. Somewhere to lay down roots as a tree does. But more than just a dwelling place — the mountains and the sea, the land that claims your heart.’ He gestured at the garden. ‘That great tree there, I think it is part of your turanga-wae-wae, Mata. My mother, I believe, had nothing such to hold her fast to one home.’
‘I …’
‘I arrived in this cold, frozen England, seeking my mother, Mata Kawana, but I was unable to find her. And then I remembered the friend my grandmother said had been always with her. I determined to find this lady and ask her about my mother, so, many weeks ago, I wrote to Mata Colville, a Pakeha friend of my father, and she has sent me a letter from Aotearoa, telling me where I might find you. Mata Colville says she is not at liberty to tell me of my parentage, but I think that you will help me to find my mother. I believe you are that friend of Mata Kawana.’
‘I am … I have always been … her dearest friend. I love her as a sister. But after … after her return to England—’
‘After Te Kawana sent her away?’
‘
You
knew? Even
the Maori tribes
knew of her disgrace?’
‘Of course. It was carried to us from everywhere on the winds. But my father would not allow any mention of it. It was my grandmother who told me why Te Kawana had put away his wife.’
‘And why was that?’
‘Mata, it was because of my own existence.’
Before he left Aotearoa, Te Kawana took me with him to the pa of Te Toa, the Northern chief, to make a formal farewell. This chief was a favourite of Te Kawana, but he looked at me with eyes of frost and I saw that he despised me; he scorned me, but Te Kawana’s mana obliged him to welcome me. There, I could not share lodgings with Te Kawana. They placed me in the whare of the chief ’s mother. And in that dwelling was a tiny baby who gazed directly at me, then turned away his head, a certain sign of displeasure from the gods.
The chief ’s mother told me that the child was to be adopted by Te Kawana. I stared at the infant, at the lightness of his skin. I remembered the absence from Auckland of Mata Kawana and her sister. I remembered the desperation of Mata for the orphan … and, suddenly, I understood.
That evening, I whispered into the ear of Te Kawana. I told him that the chief ’s mother, herself, had told me of the boy’s parentage, that his mother was Mata Kawana.
And, as I said it, the flame of triumph flared in my breast, blazing throughout my body. I knew it was certain now he would refuse to take the boy.
But, in the night, in that strange whare, I was assailed by evil dreams, beset by ghostly howls and whistling winds. I woke to find the chief ’s mother beside me.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Why is your soul so violently distressed?’
In my confusion and fear, I confessed to her that I had discovered Mata’s secret and betrayed her. ‘And now,’ I cried, ‘the gods will punish me. I will die in a strange country. My bones will never lie in the soil of my ancestors.’
‘The closer one is to death,’ said the kuia, ‘the more wrongdoing eats the soul. You must go in the morning to Te Kawana and pretend to him that you lied.’
But how could I do that? Words cannot be recalled to the mouth. Forever now, Te Kawana would have the knowledge of the guilt of his wife.
We sat by the dying fire. I stared at Hori Kerei. ‘Are you saying that the Governor believed you were the child
of his own wife
?’
‘Yes, but for true utu, sometimes one must wait very long. It was so with Te Kawana. He waited many years to punish my mother.’
‘To
ruin
her.’
‘My poor mother …’
I saw that he was weeping. I went to him and put my arms around him. ‘Hori Kerei,’ I said, ‘you are not the adopted son of your father. You are Te Toa’s true son. And it is I who …
I
am your mother.’
Te Kawana and I rode together in the carriage from Government House into Cape Town and, as we returned, I saw before me a portent of death. A small dark cloud, a funeral wreath, encircled the head of Devil’s Peak. My heart filled with dread. I turned to
Te Kawana. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘What do you see?’
Te Kawana glanced upwards. ‘Why, only the mountain-top.’
‘And round about it?’
‘The blue of the Cape Town sky.’ The cloud-wreath swelled and grew until the mountain was entirely hidden in the sinister grey mist swirling now behind the House. I thought of the dying words of my mother, Kahe, as she looked towards Tutere-moana on Kapiti Island in far-off Aotearoa.
My terror increasing, I climbed the staircase and entered my room. The weather was muggy; the servant boy had left the balcony windows ajar to air the room. I stepped towards my bed. I will lie down, I thought, and rest until I am calmer.
And then I heard it. The softest, slightest sound, as if a stockinged sole slid across the floor. I looked into the dark corner, and saw, rising from the gloom like a pillar of fire, the sinuous shape and swollen hood of the Serpent, come to claim me. I felt the child leap suddenly in me. And I heard again Mr Hadfield’s voice:
Thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life …
Hypnotised, I stared at the Serpent’s small black eyes, the dark flicking fork of its tongue.
Dust thou are, and unto dust thou shalt return
, said Mr Hadfield.
The creeping fog outside now filled the room, covering the
windows, the walls, the bed, everything but the fiery column of the Serpent’s body. And from within that cloud of mist rose another sound, an eerie hissing, a whistling, like the howling of the wind — the voice of my gods. As it utterly enveloped me, it soared to a pitch so intolerable that I screamed aloud and felt, as I did so, the poisoned thrust of the flaming sword of the Serpent.
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay.
Utu.
Hori and I sat silently for some time, our foreheads gently pressed together. Then, he drew back and gazed at me.
‘Mata,’ he said quietly, ‘there is something I must tell you. After my grandmother died, as I had promised, I did not reveal to my father what she had told me, but, secretly, I determined to travel to England to seek my mother. My father was opposed to my leaving Aotearoa but he saw I was set upon it. And as he bade me farewell, I asked him one last time, “Tell me the name of my mother.” He looked at me and I felt his steadfastness waver. “I shall seek until I find her,” I said. “Let me know her name.” He was silent for a long time, then he said, “My son, I cannot. Long ago, I gave my word. But I bestow on you a father’s blessing. And, if you should find your mother, I charge you with a message for her.” ’
‘A message? Tell me, I beg you, what is it?’
‘Mata, I
have
found you. So here is the message from my father, Te Toa. “
Tihe mauri ora
.”’
‘The breath of life.’
‘Yes, Mata. And I am to say that he wishes her — he
implores
her — to return to Aotearoa.’
My life has been bounded by the sea. Now, whenever my thoughts drift back to Lyme, it is always late spring or early summer. I know very well that it rained, was dreary, sometimes biting cold with gales from the east, that the frost crunched underfoot and the snow lay deep in winter, but when I look away from this southern landscape of mountains and bush, rainstorms and blinding sunlight, and reinhabit that other northern world, above the pink blossom of my mulberry tree the sun shines perpetually in an eternally cloudless blue sky. I stand again on the shore near the Cobb, the sea curling up towards me, its bubbling white froth vanishing into the shingly sand. Strands of bladder-wrack lie beached, their fat greenish-black grapes waiting to be popped later before the fire. As the foam sinks, ribbing the grey Dorset beach, I see again the sea behind it, shallow ripples giving way to the slate colour of the deeper water stretching far away to Rio, South Africa, China, Australia and, furthest by far, New Zealand … And there we sail, all of us, Papa, Uncle, Aunt, the Admiral, the Governor, Makareta, Maud, Lucy, Hori my son, and I, forever crossing and re-crossing those hidden pathways on the vast expanses of the world’s oceans.
There is a want of intellectual apprehension of the vast difference that necessarily exists between the civilised man, brought up among a people who have been for many generations civilised and Christian, and those who, however sincere in their religion, still bear about them the marks of that barbarism and that heathenism which they have inherited from a long line of ancestors, and from which it is so difficult to divest themselves. But the Christian should endeavour to overcome such prejudice, and to emancipate himself from its deadening influence. Englishmen are apt to speak of these people as men of an inferior race, unfitted for civilisation, forgetting that a Greek — Aristotle, for instance — spoke in the same contemptuous way of the race from which we have sprung, as irreclaimable barbarians.
Octavius Hadfield.
Anglican missionary
Bishop of Aotearoa 1890–93