Both Sides of the Moon (13 page)

Back then, last century, when life was even cruder, more basic than this, a venerable warrior watched the boy changing his mind as he moved toward the slave compound and moved away again. He, Te Aranui Kapi, began to smile and took up one of his weapons, of hard high-mountain stone tumbled down to river bed, bound by flax to a
carved wooden handle bearing the figures and faces of Kapi’s ancestral line; not that the line was much since he was an aberration, with little history, with little of his forefathers running in him for it was all his own, his great warriorhood. He held the hacking club up to the boy, inviting in his eyes, a smile on his tattooed warrior face: Here, boy, take this and do your will.

The boy hesitated; he looked from the slave he desired to kill to Te Aranui Kapi and at the offered means of despatching the slave and he started to shake his head till Kapi frowned at him, no: you invited this.

The boy must have considered his future then, of what talk might be of him, if he did not take the weapon, in what tone his name would be spoken in times to come. He took the weapon without word and, turning, he strode toward the slave. And the warrior who had handed it him, his mouth watered, and his heartbeat sped up a little.

The slave barely gave glance, though his nostrils flared taking in last air, and his thinking must have been that he was once a warrior but that had all been surrendered in allowing himself to be taken captive; there is something of the subservient man in ferocious men, something starkly opposite his trained countenance that rarely sees light of day. Until he has been made slave.

Though slave must have had thought that he could swat this boy-child killer like he would an insect, he was even size and strength enough to take on the venerable warrior watching who had handed over the weapon. But then he was abject and dull in his no-
longer-proud
heart, his suppressed sensibilities, so if he had such thought it would not have lasted long. And he lowered his head and waited for the final insult of being conveyed to the slave spiritworld by a boy hardly older than ten season cycles. He could but obey the nervous child’s grunt to kneel, and he went down on tattoo-adorned knees and closed his eyes to the dusty ground of his only and last residence, a dirt compound everywhere with the smell of human waste and wasted human spirit and certain death in the air. Around him the normal sounds of village life: laughter, combat practice, carvers
chopping
and chanting, and the birds and insects, women singing.

The boy raised the weapon, cicadas were noising in the nearby forest edge, and birds as always sing when there is light to go by, and
never go silent at human death; and the venerable warrior’s pulse quickened, he could not help it, not even after all these accomplished years of taking human life, there is nothing quite like it, like taking life.

He followed the boy’s arm-raising movement with his mouth, slowly opening its darkened tattooed partings … seeing his weapon up and held in a child’s hand, death suspended, now in complete despising of the slave for his failed existence and for not lifting his head: Die like a man, slave.

He saw the young muscles flex and ready to spring, and still the slave did not make last protest at his life about to end, and that made the warrior want to rush forth and kill the coward himself — Ah, but let the boy do it.

The stone went clean into the bone. The blood spurted up like a thermal geyser he’d seen on a far-ventured war party when flush with themselves and nearly fatally so in enemy territory, their caution was taken away by this awesome sight, of hottest water issuing in great display out of the ground, as if lighted fires were under river and water pools under the earth. The enemy surprised them and only his own leadership and quick thinking gained them escape from certain death.

But this little geyser was red, and it had the heat of brain and pumping heart erupting it and it hardly took away a man’s breath, but it did quicken his heart. Then the skull opening began to spill out with brain matter, it had detail and, the warrior presumed, thought. But not thought that mattered. Not for a moment.

It was the boy’s shriek that made the witnessing warrior’s hair stand on end, as though a sound true to basic male. And he saw what murder does to a man even when he has not yet formed into one, as the boy saw what he had done and pulled the stone axe out and did it again, and shrieked a second time, though now without the surprise at what he had done but with pure, naked pleasure — and the muscled poise of impatience to do it again.

The slave toppled over, his face pointed towards Kapi, who sneered at it and spat his contempt on the dusty ground puddling with oozing liquid, and the body quivered as the weapon hacked at it, and holes started to appear all over it. And excited boys ran to the
scene like excited dogs, and they laughed and made happy sounds for the boy become the man and so young.

And at last the warrior’s gaze returned to the slave as he lifted himself up, on his side, and stared at Kapi and returned his own
contempt
— a slave in contempt! Kapi’s every muscle tightened in rage and he started forward, angry at this doomed slave’s effrontery.

The slave turned a now inconceivably proud head at the boy who was killing him; he dared to sneer and tried to manage words to fit this his last occasion. But the words were turned instantly to smashed fragments of stone on bone and so it looked as if the slave’s last living act was to be a teeth-missing bloody smile. Which was incomprehensible enough.

Kapi cocked his head at the same angle the slave’s face was on, so to see what last was left there to witness — as if Kapi cared that much now his rage had subsided at the child’s assuming of it for him. Yet still the slave looked up with those unafraid eyes.

And then it occurred to Te Aranui Kapi that the face was like the child, not this killer child but the enemy drowning one, who had stared and given last taunting smile at him and haunted Kapi’s thoughts and dreams for some disturbing time afterwards.

So Kapi walked over to the corpse and rolled it on its back and, reaching down, cut off the penis with a single blow of bone club and called out to his favourite dog to come enjoy. The dog took the meat and swallowed it and waited for more. Kapi laughed and said he should have got a woman to excite the slave and then his dog would have got more. The slave, though, was like a man when he endures tattooing: he cried out not, only his face contorted in most excruciating pain.

Now the slave’s entire existence was devoted only to pain as the inexperienced boy struck blows down at him. And many women had rushed over and were yelling encouragement to the boy, at his (normal) violent deed, while his jealous peers were more muted in respect and envy.

Somehow the slave got his body twisted and turned at an impossible angle so that his eyes had Kapi in his last anguished sight. And so, in hatred, Kapi started to rush forward to sever that insulting head. Except the eyes then shuddered, they tried to keep their fixed
state, but failed and rolled up into that ruptured skull to become just eye-whites. And he died.

And quickly he, the slave meat, was being reduced by boys practising to process the body so each might claim, later, the piece he had hacked or cut away. The ground was stained its usual red.

And when these men’s six am start and four o’clock finish day of slaughtering and meat processing was finished, Jack and I had the wind on our faces on the back of his father’s work truck, out here in this reverberating open steel coffin with the souls of sheep in
forty-four
gallon drums and bins of severed heads with sightless dull greens of eyes; we had salted cattle hides that used to cover animals grazing in passing fields and now were rests for our conquerors’ bare feet, feel the hair, note the wet slip of underside salted membrane, and our ears echoing with screaming chains, lowing and bleating animals, Joe singing, the men laughing, an engine rumbling under us, we could be going off on a long, exciting journey.

We felt, didn’t we, Jack, his father’s truck was just going to keep on going, we could end up anywhere, free from this life. Free.

But too soon our truck slowed, I picked up the waft of boiled mutton and stinking fuckin’ cabbage. Though it wasn’t the cabbage got me swearing, it was the screaming of women, of mothers not mothers, as we turned into Jack’s dried-mud drive.

We looked at each other, Jack and I, but what to say, what can we do? This is the house we dwell in, this one here or mine or on the circuit. This is the house of flawed design, that leaks and falls apart, because it is built on no plan. No-fucking-plan, is it, Jack? No, he won’t meet my eyes. So nor are we, of any-fucking plan.

The room they were fighting in was littered with cards, upturned numbers and pictures, an expressionless queen noticing not the chaos around her. The room was smeared and stained with red like a slaughtering place. Dignity lay everywhere like killed creatures.

Now he, Te Aranui Kapi, was hating the boy for having started all this now he could not dispense the face in its too-knowing contempt of him — he! He felt like taking the child, as was a warrior’s right of a commonly born child offending him, and burying him in the kumara garden, in a hole deep enough to die in but shallow enough for a truly determined child to dig and claw his way out.

But how could he do such a thing when the village was celebrating the boy’s unusual warrior showing, and the women had already cast the slave in his many parts on to the heated stones, the smell of searing meat was making mouths water, leaves were being placed over the flesh, a piece of rump was promised the boy, earth was being shovelled into the cooking pit, the boy was displaying his blow-by-blow deed to his peers, their laughter had delirium and murder-want in it.

An elder was picking out in his mind tattoo designs for the boy’s later youth face — ae, and they would be the markings of a fine man. The markings of the true man who does not ponder the world, this existence, in any way other than how he fits into its scheme, the plan the gods and ancestors have for man. Though he, the elder, could not know that their greatest man with the proudest tattoo markings was alone in his dwelling with much thought of a troubled, perhaps questioning, nature. It was inconceivable to the elder’s mind.

That night, Te Aranui Kapi could not find sleep, he only saw faces, of a drowning child, of a shrieking boy-murderer, of a slave daring to stare contempt, of the boy getting his promised piece of rump followed by a lower-arm bone to gnaw on by the firelight and listen to men tell tales of war, of bravery, of courage, of love, too.

The boy’s eyes glistened only with tears of gladness, wholly of his time, his people, their way, as men spoke of it, and made
shapings
of hands and vivid arm actions shaping his deed, the only shape he knew to take, this young killer child taking his turn, making graphic story-telling movements in the air as the night moved on, in times, for some, not entirely different from now.

Our father informed us one night — I think it was a Friday — that she had gone, she was living with another man, and Dad would be applying to the court for custody of us.

It was Friday because we were eating fish and chips, our Friday fortnightly evening meal treat. I remember Warren started to
slow-chew
his food and he had this stare on, and he said, What, for good? Yes, for good. Ian’s eyes took him to his secret place of refuge from all pain. Brian started a strange cackle, and his chewing got very noisy. And he kept saying, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That night in our room we waited for Warren to get a
discussion
going on her but he didn’t. Though he was very quiet and more intense than usual, and he did ask if we were all right and he did say that we should think of other things or we wouldn’t get any sleep.

The last sight I had of Brian was a weird grin, like something let loose. His glare was the last image I needed before entering this long night. Though why should it be any longer? You’d think we’d get to have the most peaceful deep sleep of our lives. So I called to Warren, why would it be a long night if she’s not coming back?

Because she can’t ever leave our thoughts, can she, kid? he answered.

He looked as handsome as I’d ever seen him, I think from the seriousness of the situation, of him having to decide how he would react to give us our lead. Dad came to say goodnight, to ask if we were all right, and Warren said yes on our behalf. And Dad said it might turn out the best thing that ever happened, as if throwing a life-line. And he switched off the light, we listened to his footsteps go quietly down the hallway, to an empty bed that had never been filled even when she was here, even when they were fucking. Poor Dad. Lucky us.

Four sons in the dark staring at a different yet same truth: their mum’s gone. Didn’t even say goodbye. Wouldn’t expect her to.

I hurry to the place she has moved to, she’s been gone a month, we’re still afraid of the change her absence has made, we’ve suspended our joy our reactions our celebrations. But I got it into my head that she’d be secretly suffering our loss, even her loose, rule-less custody of us her children. Thought I’d check out in my invisible way of witness, I’m the town’s best, to catch her in her moment of children-missing truth.

So I’m hurrying through the streets — it had to start drizzling this night, of course I didn’t bring a raincoat — past the hazy blocks of house lights, households, the normal-people shapes moving about in them, they seem different now since ours has lost its mother, as if their homes are even more normal and right and ours is even more glaringly worse.

Through the drizzle in the dark under the streetlight to this address I have been given by Warren, and his words that I shouldn’t be thinking of visiting her if I wasn’t prepared for disappointment, and I said I was prepared and who said I was going with hope — hope for what? Liar that I am. Hoping to happen upon a window portrait of Mother just like the statue of Mother Mary in the pedestal concave, pining for her child her children.

Well, this is it, number 379 Benson Street, lover’s haven, an ordinary little place in an ordinary street just out of town and lights on in there (I see lights!) An age to gather up the courage, then I trespassed on to my own mother’s new domain.

I took a while to find her — them — they were sitting at a small kitchen table, Formica just like every house I’ve seen other than a few. And there was a bottle of something between them that wasn’t beer, which was a change and for the better I figured, she’d acquired a touch of class with that tumbler glass she lifted to his, they touched, they made happy faces at each other —

She looked rather radiant, with bright red lipstick and nothing else on her brown skin, which had never needed make-up, and her
eyes were soft and warm. I think she’d done something to her eyelashes unless it was her excitement her contentedness, her black hair was fluffed up, she must have been to a hairdresser, radiant she was, my mother her lover’s darling.

And he wasn’t too bad, kind of handsome, a worker’s face, expression of a simple (fooled) man, strong hands (the better to caress her with, dear boy), strong body, and open laughter of the kind that no educated man knows, while uneducated man is and knows no other. If I was a woman I’d be lovers with an artist or a musician.

I have to say she looked happier than I had ever seen her. Really truly happy. I had never seen her this content. No caught pose through a window of missing her children (and why should I have expected that for a moment when she hadn’t done so when she was at home — stupid, hopeful boy?). Heta is happy. Heta is in love. That’s all that matters. So time to take my leave. Nothing more to observe nor say, nor even think for that matter.

In the rain, in the dark, through the wet streets, in the park, in the toilet, the public toilet, in a cubicle, trying to read a name a date a time a place a cock length, to hear maybe footsteps, but who’d be out in this, now raining harder.

Matching a drawing of an erect cock with my own, tingling inside, afraid now, and hopeful, a boy is always hopeful, thinking: she’s gone she’s not coming back she doesn’t miss you, not any of you, so forget about her. Forget it.

In the cubicle, in my dirty little mind, in my straining
condition
, rain easing, my tension not, why am I here? What am I doing here in this cold shivering, heat-producing place?

The answer comes in footsteps, please don’t let it be him (but let it be him, or let it just be someone like me like this). The feet stop there, the rain is a mice patter on the tin roof, what if that’s a
murderer
standing outside? My erection is going down rapidly, my heart beating fast. I’m dead in a few moments and my mother won’t know she was the last familiar face I saw and that I witnessed her so happy. This cubicle has become my death cell.

Excuse me in there, but have you got the time? Damn rain, my watch stopped …

(It’s him!) I haven’t got a watch, I hear my voice in an
unrecognisable
croak (of fear or lust or both, or self-loathing?), I think it’s about eight o’clock … He takes a long time to respond.

Eight o’clock, that late? (This early?) I can hear the catch in his voice, I can hear the weighing-up fighting against the animal lust in the man. I might be the wrong boy. But I’m the right boy all right.

Or maybe it’s nine, I don’t have a watch. You don’t have a watch, but you do have a voice I think I recognise, forgive me if I’m wrong, but … Is that you? (Yes. No!) Who? You. Come on now, kid. We all know who we are. (And what we are too?)

Yeah … yeah, it’s me.

Open the door, that’s my hand opening it. He comes in. He closes the door. Death cell a tightened squeeze, like a grip. Open his mouth in smile, Oh kid. Shaking his head in grinning disbelief: A dream come true. Can’t smile back, too nervous, too scared, too
overwhelmed
(too stupid, too wretched), if I open my mouth vomit might gush forth.

Hello, Dan.

Hello, kid. Dan, I don’t want to do it here, someone might be outside hearing. No they won’t and it’s raining out there, boy. We’ll be all right, who’d be out in this ’cept us? (’Cept us.) Oh, kid.

Open my fly, let him open his, let ourselves spring out, surely even cocks mean more than just blood engorgement and sexual excitement, surely? It’s symbol meaningful in the rigid arrogance and yet hapless surrender to terrific need. Oh well, oh, God. Hold my sick in, lock the muscles in my legs to keep from collapsing — close my eyes, that’s better already.

We must be some sight, two cocks sticking up from trousers around our ankles, crowded into a toilet cubicle, whipping at each other, this is ridiculous, this ain’t love, this isn’t anything but wretchedness of me and a warping of him, whatever has made him like this. I’m not a homo but I’m doing like a homo, so I’m a homo becoming one. Or something.

He starts on me. I start on him. Say nothing, what to say, what
to say? Nothing. Just hear slishing in the dark, the breathing, the soft groaning trying to contain itself within him. (I’m sorry, someone, for doing this, being like this, but I am of my times, my circumstances, am I not? In far back times I might have been murdering a slave.)

My potential child(ren) spilled on to the concrete floor, his potential homosexual child(ren) erupted all over me. Good to see you, kid.

Can’t answer. Can’t say anything. Got to get away.

The child, now the third time a man, back out in the dark. (Mother, observe me now, tell me what you see, your child hurrying through the wet dark, they’re tears not rain from my eyes, you should be looking after me, every mother should, you are supposed to be one of those shapes in the shrouded window blocks of back-light from the passageway of mother checking child and children, just listening that their sleep breathing is as it should be.)

Then Warren and Dad’s voice telling me I shouldn’t succumb to self-pity, and God telling me off for blaming others for my own sins. And no clear voice from myself, as if I’ve been run over, or utterly forgotten about.

Follow me to my house that you deserted, Mum, hear me tell my father lies: I’ve been at Jack’s house, Dad, honest to God. No, I’m not crying that’s just rain. (Got to get away.)

To the bedroom. Warren and Ian asleep, so it’s late. Brian gives me a fright when I see from the hallway light he’s lying there in the dark with his eyes wide open. And in my clarity of vision I see
something
bad forming or formed in my brother, I see him even worse than the man I have just — voluntarily — been with. I see my mother in him and realise I don’t know him, I don’t know any of them, my brothers, and they don’t know me.

Even in my wretched state this bothers me. That we should grow up in the same bedroom, the same life, and have shared only a now-gladly absent mother. Not our inner feelings. Not our reducing, taken innocence. No same fears and certainly not tears. But still I’m bothered. And beyond how my spying visit on my mother ended, beyond even that.

Then for some reason I look down at my feet — and I nearly faint. For I’m not standing on anything, not floorboards, not in the
comfortless shared bedroom. I’m standing on air. I — we — have no base.

So with dark empty nothingness at my feet, I think I’m going to start falling and never stop — nothing to stop me. I am there, suspended above this chasm for a long time. It’s only my father’s footsteps that bring me back. He’s going to bed.

Carefully strip off my wet clothes. I inch over to hit out the hallway light, the dark is a threat to then engulf me, my face tingles hot, my stomach is alive, but the light must go out or my brothers will wake up and accuse me at the same knowing time: You did it!

Bed feels as though I’m sinking into a deep darkening ocean. Sheets clinging like Juice’s grip.

Lie there still, brace the legs, the body muscles to stop from collapsing. But how can you collapse in your own bed lying down? Smell him on me, his body odour, his semen, the strong smell of his cock, his tobacco breath, his stinking predator existence — in my own bed, my own shared room with my three brothers, my father down there with his worried frown at how he’ll cope with bringing us up. Then Warren’s voice floats across the room.

Did you see her? Yeah, I did. And? And what? You see anything? Yeah, she looked pretty happy. I thought she might.