Potiki

Earlier when preparing the house for the meeting, some had thought that we should bring in a table for the man’s plans and papers, and a chair for the man to sit on, but my mother Roimata disagreed.

She said to let the man be like everyone else because that would be good psychology.

“You mean let him sit on the floor in his suit and sock feet so he’ll feel a fool, him not being used to our ways?” Tangimoana said.

“Tangi, I didn’t mean that, not exactly. I meant let the boot be on the other foot for a change. Let him feel what we sometimes feel…in different situations.”

“It’s exactly what you meant no matter how nice you put it,” said Tangimoana. And al the women laughed while they unrolled the whariki [floor mats] and the boys put the mattresses down on them.

“Looking down from the road. You can see. Half hidden, but you can see. Put there, by … someone, to take the water down and do … harm. Someone from the job.”

“And all this too,” Hemi said. “It took a man and a machine to do all this.”

[…]

[Matiu] and Timoti and the other three men, as well as Tangimoana and Tania, took over the work that we’d been doing.

No one spoke then. We stood in silence about the dinghy, our feet being pulled further and further into the mud of our own turangawaewae, our own standing place. It was a world of silence, an unfamiliar world, a world of other, a world of almost drowning. We stood, not speaking, only trying to search and sort the other, the almost drowning, to find a pattern and a sense, to work through piece by piece to get us home.

He did not want anger, or sorrow to turn him … against people. It wasn’t his way. In his whole life he had never kept anger in him, against people. Now … it was hard. Now, it was the soil that saved him, the need to feed the whanau. And there it was again. People. People needing people. Tangimoana wouldn’t agree with driving feelings into the soil, digging over the loss and hurt, just struggling day to day. “The minute you’re born,” she’d say to him, “You nose is in the ground. But I’ll die, no sweat, if I can do it saying I’m me, and knowing that someone believes it. […]

Well he wasn’t sure. It sounded wrong. He’d tried to say things to her, to help her with … anger. Tried to dig her anger in, alongside his own. But no […]

We have known what it is to have had a gift, and have not ever questioned from where the gift came, only sometimes wondered. The gift has not been taken away because gifts are legacies, that once given cannot be taken away. They may pass from hand to hand, but once held they are always yours. The gift we were given is with us still.

His death had been with us a long time but not the manner of it. The manner of his death, that is where the pain is—the manner of his death, and the brokenness and suffering of the little bird. His death brought Tangimoana back to us, brought others to us, gave us much that is good, but is it enough, can it be enough?

“We all got up and went out. It was still too dark to see but we heard the machines start up. We could hear them pushing rubble down the hill, pushing down what had been built. We saw the torches and the fires. Then we all went back to bed.”

“All of you?”

“All.”

“Didn’t you want to know what was happening?”

“We did, so we got up and went out. Once we found out what it was we went back to bed.”

“Could you identify …”

“We could not. It was not light enough to see.”

“Surely you would have been interested in knowing who …?”

“We were not interested.”

“Why not?”

“If we’d been able to identify people we’d have been able to help you with your inquiry. We’ve helped you before on two occasions, as you know. We were not satisfied, not happy with what you made the inquiries show …”

But the doorway, suddenly, had become the toothed aperture. It was suddenly the toothed aperture through which all must pass.

The night was edged now, and clamorous.

All the stars were falling.

*

And from this place of now, behind, and in, and beyond the tree, from where I have eversight, I watch the people.

The people work and watch and wait. They pace the tides and turn the earth. They stand, listening on the shores.

They listen, hearing mostly the quiet. It is the quiet that is trees growing, the sidling of fish through water, the hovering cloud, the open-eyed quiet of the night.