‘There he is,’ Dad pointed.
‘He’s been up to that bloody cave,’ Mum groaned when she saw him emerging from the trees.
He had something wrapped in a blanket. ‘What’s that he’s carrying?’ I asked her.
‘Don’t,’ she warned me, knowing I was teasing. ‘You know what it is.’ She wound down the window and yelled, ‘I’m happy to have you in the house, Pa, but that ironwood and whatever or whoever is in it is going straight into the storage unit.’
When he came to the car, Koro looked at me, puzzled.
‘What is your mother talking about?’ he asked.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SLIDING OUT OF THE SKY
Koro came to stay.
At first Mum, Dad and I were concerned that he would be lonely staying home by himself. What were we thinking! Two weeks after he arrived in Wellington the phone began to ring.
‘Hello, Uncle. Why didn’t you let me know you were in town? Could you help me out? I have to attend a land meeting with Ngati Awa and you’re just the right person to go onto their marae with me. I’ll send a car to pick you up.’
‘Tena koe, rangatira. I have to talk to some bankers today: would you come with me as my elder? The car will be there in half an hour.’
Again, the phone. ‘May I speak to Mr Mahana? Oh, Mr Mahana, I’ve been given your name. We’re looking for a kaumatua for the proposed heritage pathway around the eastern bays and I’ve been told you’d be perfect.’
‘Will you be home for tea?’ Mum would ask, as Koro smoothed his hair and tightened his tie.
‘Better not wait for me,’ he would answer. ‘I should have realised that my poor nephews and nieces would want someone from Uawa to be on their paepae. Had I known, I would have moved down earlier.’
Meanwhile, I was successful in obtaining one of the places for Maori in law at Victoria, and also got a Maori scholarship to help pay for my fees and give me an allowance.
How could I possibly fail? Koro had strong-armed every Maori politician he knew.
Bilbo decided to join me at university (‘Could you call me Alapati now, mate?’) but Thierry went to work with his father at the gym, and Horse decided to go overseas for a gap year. While I was in the line enrolling, I met a cute Maori girl, Marama Te Puni.
‘You’re not from the East Coast?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, puzzled. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ In private, however, I was thinking, Yay, not a cousin. As well, I needed to know somebody who looked like they had brains and could help me out; it was an added attraction that Marama was also pretty.
My university studies began well.
First-year law required me to take a general course — I chose arts: Maori, history and philosophy — plus legal studies. I gave English a miss; if I’d paid attention to Four-Eyes Wilson that might have given me the confidence to tackle it. Despite my anxieties, I took to my arts subjects as to the manner born. Much to my surprise, Koro turned out to be a help rather than a hindrance, mainly by doing his ‘homework’ at the same time as I did mine. Whenever he wasn’t helping out somebody in Parliament he liked to bring home piles of books on Maori and Polynesian culture.
‘Gee, Koro,’ I would tease, ‘how many of those did you steal from Wellington Public Library this week?’
‘Concentrate on your homework,’ he would growl.
To help pay for my studies, I got a part-time weekend job cleaning windows, but, hold on, these weren’t just any old windows and not from the inside either. No, they were high tower buildings and some of those windows were thirty storeys high.
Bilbo — sorry, Alapati — got me the job. You may have seen us, lowering ourselves down the buildings on scaffolding, hooked on safety lines like mountaineers. Alapati knew I had a good head for heights, and he and I liked to swing like monkeys across from one side of the building to the other. On my part, the big plus was the money, so, after I got my certification, there I was, earning more than most of my mates and, as well, doing law.
Jean-Luc saw me one day. ‘You are fearless too?’ he asked. ‘Are you not afraid you might fall?’
The thought had never entered my head.
Yes, and sometimes, something arose at university to remind me of Tupaea. During a history lecture, for instance, while the professor was talking about Captain Cook’s voyages throughout New Zealand, I was looking through his words and wilfully reading the history my way, Koro’s way.
‘Throughout the rest of his stay Tupaea captained the Endeavour on a circumnavigation of Aotearoa. Wherever he went the people cried out, “Tupaea! Tupaea! Welcome Tupaea, ariki no Hawaiki!”
‘Sometimes he tried to warn them about the red and white strangers. He often succeeded. On occasion, he didn’t. But they were magnanimous in their forgiveness; after all, the goblins and tricksters were under his protection.
‘The circumnavigation proved that there was no great southern continent. Cook’s masters in Great Britain had thought that the eastern coast of Aotearoa was its edge; they should have asked Tupaea as he would have told them it did not exist.
‘Near the end of the voyage, while the Endeavour lay at anchor in the sparkling waters of Waitangi, Tupaea invited Ngapuhi chiefs on board. The chiefs exchanged gifts of cloaks and mere with their visitor from Hawaiki.
‘Then came the time when Tupaea told them, “E’oa ma, e ’aere ana au.” His sojourn among them was ended.
‘The news was carried from one height to the other across Aotearoa, and a huge ululation of sadness and grief sounded even unto Te Raituitai, the highest heaven, as they beseeched ’Oro: “Will you not allow your priest to stay with us?”
‘War canoes accompanied Tupaea’s ship Endeavour to the horizon. There, flocks of birds were hovering, ready to accompany the priest onward and away.
‘Tupaea set his face northward. Finally, he was bound for England.’
I thought my version was better.
And, another time, the God ’Oro suddenly popped into my head during a philosophy lecture.
We had a guest from Europe who was talking about ancient myths. I thought of Four-Eyes Wilson — if he could see me now.
Then the lecturer said something interesting. ‘Of course, today, there are still many societies for whom the myths of Olympus or Valhalla, of gods, goddesses and one-eyed monsters, are still as real and as relevant as they were in ancient times.’
The lecture hall rippled with amusement. ‘What or how,’ the lecturer continued, ‘would they feel if Cyclops, say, had survived the ages of man and lived in a cave on Mount Olympus … or even here, in New Zealand, near Invercargill! Our rational mind would refuse to admit that possibility, but what if?’
As the laughter rose I thought to myself:
‘Mate, you don’t know the half of it. Maori still live with their own versions of Cyclops. Mine had his house in a cave at the back of Uawa where he slept in an ironwood cylinder and was kept warm by a royal loincloth of red feathers. Now he’s in a storage unit in Porirua.’
Then, one evening, I went to train at the gym but discovered a CLOSED sign on it and the words CONFIDENTIAL PRIVATE SESSION. Puzzled, I shrugged my shoulders and turned down the corridor. As I was leaving I saw Thierry. ‘What’s this about?’ I asked.
‘My father is taking a special clinic for a gymnast from overseas. He arrived this afternoon from Europe and he returns tomorrow.’