Into the River (7 page)

“So he sailed all the way back to Spain?”

“This time he went back as a passenger on the Shaw Savill line. He had money now, and must have cut an interesting figure, with his European clothes, his brass-buckled sea boots, his moko and his beloved cigars.”

“He smoked cigars?”

“Always. He claimed it was the only thing about Spain that he missed, and no one returning here from Auckland or Wellington would think of doing it without bringing him a box of cigars.”

“So what happened on his trip?”

This time Ra was more matter of fact. Gone was the spell that had held them rapt.

“It was a long one. He was gone a year. Many of our people thought that we would never see him again. That he had gone home to his own country to finally rest with his ancestors. It made sense to them, for his bones to lie with their bones. That is what they would have done. But finally, Diego was not like them — or maybe because he was now one of them — he returned.

“His voyage was long and stopped at many places and he saw many things. It was these stories that I remember him for. As kids
around the pa we would nag him until he told us another, and then another. We were greedy for images. Don’t forget, this was the age before television. We never even had a radio. He told us about Sulawesi and Torres. About trading with the Chinese at Mallacca. About visiting the royal city of Kandi on a rickshaw. About these little plants that would wither and die before your eyes, when you touched them with your finger. He told us about his trip up the Ganges to the holy city of Benares. Of the smell of burning flesh from the cremation fires. About passing through the Suez Canal.

“Anyway, when Diego finally made it to Barcelona he found a different place. In forty years it had grown to a loud and busy city with street cars and big buildings. Little remained of what he remembered. All those years of living among our people had changed him, too. He and the city were strangers. The place he remembered now lived only in the fondness of his memory.”

“Did he find his brothers? His fortune? Was it all a waste of time?”

“Nothing is ever wasted in this life, Te Arepa. Everything happens for a purpose. Part of him knew what he would find: the brothers dead, the fortune scattered to the four winds, the family in unweeded tombs. The city moves on. So it is with us all. His line had already been reaching its end at the beginning of his life. His dream of taking his place among the mighty was a boy’s fantasy. For a family to survive through many centuries takes a powerful vision. An ethos. A certain ruthlessness. His brothers were ruthless, but they didn’t maintain the vision that had been carried from generation to generation. Without it, the stone walls crumble and fall. The great families of Barcelona had survived by knowing this, and by eating the weaker of their number.”

“It’s horrible.”

“It is their way. It is our way too. The Ngapuhi were after more land, more sovereignty. The coming of the Pakeha rocked the boat and the scramble for guns changed everything.”

That night Te Arepa tossed and turned endlessly in his little bed as images of Diego flashed through his head. It wasn’t just that he had listened to the stories, but rather that he was inhabited by them. Everything seemed to be meshing together: the rahui, the taniwha/eel, his whakapapa, and there he was, in the middle of it all.

“Haere mai, Te Arepa!”

It was Ra calling him from the kitchen. He stood at the bench with a letter in his hand.

“What’s the story with this panui?”

“Mr McLintock called me into his office. He said he wanted me to do a test. He was going to tell you about it in the letter.”

“Is that all he said?”

“He said other things, but I can’t remember.”

Ra looked at him, his head slightly tilted. He didn’t like Te Arepa saying “I can’t remember.” and usually told him, “That’s what stupid people say. Or people who are lazy, which counts as the same thing. Can’t remember, won’t remember!” But he didn’t this time. He returned to the bench where he was preparing the vegetables for a boil-up. Te Arepa went back to his room where he had been reading. Rawinia came by with her deck of cards. She stared in for a while with that special look on her face. She wanted him to play but he was at a part in his book where it couldn’t be put down.

“When are you going to stop reading?” she asked.

“Half an hour.”

She seemed satisfied and went out to the kitchen.

The following day, after Ra had taken them to school, Te Arepa saw him over by Mr McLintock’s office. He knew the letter had opened a door that couldn’t be closed. All day, as he sat in the classroom, he wondered what it would mean.

That day after school, Ra was at the gate.

“I’ve talked to the headmaster,” he began. He spoke slowly and deliberately, as though his words had been carefully rehearsed. “He says you’re a smart boy. That you need to go where there are
other boys like you. In the big city.”

“Are we going to leave Whareiti?” Te Arepa asked. That couldn’t be right.

“No boy, listen. There is a scholarship exam that could get you to a famous school in Auckland. Mr McLintock seems to think that you might have a chance. Evidently this is all because of a poem you wrote.”

“‘Taniwha Dream’?”

“There are others?”

“Lots.”

“‘Taniwha Dream’ is the one he read to me.”

“It’s about that day at Goldsmith’s Bush.”

“Something about the ‘tohunga clawfingers tearing the fabric of time’.”

“Yes. Then it goes, ‘drenching the boy with his poisoned dream,/ blighting his life with an ancient malice,/a thorn-filled garden,/an empty chalice …”

“And how does it finish up?”

“The last part goes, ‘Knowing now, till the end of his days/ He could never alter, never erase/With angry tears, or happy lies/What’s etched on the walls of paradise.’”

“Where did you get these words?”

“I got them from you, Ra.” Then he added, “From the books I read. Some from the Bible. It’s about that day on the river. The eel. The goat cave.”

“I know that, Te Arepa. McLintock says it’s good. It’s more than good. He says a boy your age can’t usually write poems like this. It’s like the poems adults write. But then he said he saw you do it, so he knew there was no mistake.”

“I wrote it.”

“He says you have a gift.”

“What gift?”

“The talent you have with words. You’ve got to use it. To do otherwise would be a crime against God. Remember the
parable
?”

Te Arepa nodded.

“Yours has been buried, but it’s out now and we have to do something about it. It’s what your mother would want.”

“You’ve spoken to Ma?”

Ra shook his head.

Te Arepa was stung. He rarely brought up his mother now, it was too huge.

“So there’s an entrance test. If you do well, then they’ll offer you a place. A free place in the boarding house.”

He could see that Ra had been already won over by the idea so he said nothing more. All he could think about anyway was that it would soon be Guy Fawkes and he knew for a fact that they had no fireworks.

A few weeks later he was off to Auckland with his cousin, Paikea. She drove the courier van. ‘From the Coast to the smoke, 3X a week’ was written on the door in gold letters. No one messed with Paikea. She had played softball when she was younger and it was as though her short wiry frame was always tensed, as though ready to catch a fast-ball. She would leap from the van, as tireless and springy at the end of a thirteen hour run as she was at the beginning. Her theme was black. Black trousers, black shirt, black jacket and black boots. Her hair, which luckily was naturally black, was cut really short, like a man’s. The only jewellery she wore was a big chunky watch, and a ring in her left ear. She lived with a Pakeha woman called Jinny on a little farm out of town.

It was still dark when the red van pulled up in the driveway. The gleaming wheels and blacked-out windows had made it famous the length of the Coast.

“Kia ora, Ra, where’s this parcel?” she bellowed as soon as her feet hit the ground.

Ra said, “Kia ora, Paikea!” They kissed. “He’s inside, all wrapped up and ready to go.”

And so he was. Ra had told him to dress his best because they would judge him by what he was wearing as soon as they saw him. Te Arepa had polished up his black school shoes and Ra had even ironed his grey trousers and white shirt. He had borrowed a rugby club sweat-shirt from his cousin Errol. Everyone respected the Whareiti Pirates Rugby Club. He liked it for the skull and crossbones emblem. Because of Diego, this had become his personal symbol.

The trip to Auckland took forever. Paikea claimed six hours, twenty, but he reckoned it was much longer. They wound their way up the Coast through the darkness. As it grew lighter the towns began to get bigger. It was all new to him. At every post office Paikea leapt out, van hardly stationary, and disappeared for a few minutes, before reappearing with a bag over her shoulder. As the towns got bigger so did the bags. The van filled but the speed never varied. Paikea drove at one hundred and nine kilometres an hour. She said the cops allowed a ten percent speedo error.

Paikea was shocked to hear that he couldn’t drive as if he didn’t know his seven times table. Even though Ra didn’t drive, and they didn’t have a car, somehow she thought it was Te Arepa’s duty and that he should have found a way. She was ‘born to drive’, ‘lived for it’, ‘only really came alive behind the wheel’. And it was true. Behind the wheel Paikea had an intensity that he hadn’t seen before. It was like her whole body became a part of the drive train. Te Arepa watched the muscles in her wrists, her restless eye, the nimble flick of her gear changes. All her movements were quick and precise. Two fingers pulled the gear stick back; the palm of her hand slapped it forward.

“Listen to the motor, boy, feel the power band flatten out and bang! Change up. As easy as that.”

She taught him about picking a line for the corner. “Look ahead as far as you can around it. Pick a line that lets you through the
fastest. I call it the sweet line.”

She flashed him a serious look as if he had said something. “Never brake on a corner! It’ll be the end of you. Brake in, power out, that’s the rule.”

After a while she got him to steer from the passenger seat. She rolled a smoke and gave instructions. “Go wider … pull in … pull in, man! That’s better. You got it! Beauty!”

No one passed them for the whole trip.

They reached the outskirts of Auckland at about twelve o’clock. Te Arepa spotted its crenulated skyline as they crested the Bombay Hills.

His heart kicked when Aunty said, “There she is boy, Sin City.”

About forty minutes later she dropped him at the gates of a huge school.

“Good luck, Te Arepa. I’ll be back around five,” she said, and then roared off down the road, leaving him bewildered and daunted beside a rugged stone wall.

The gateway was a massive arch. Along the drive there were little cardboard signs lettered with the words ‘Scholarship Examination’ and an arrow. They led to the hall. This too was on an enormous scale. The whole of Whareiti would be lost in this place.

At the top of the driveway there were lots of family groups, each with a boy his age amongst them. The boys were all wearing blazers, trouser and ties: he was the only one in a sweatshirt. The only one alone. The others were nearly all Asian or Indian, only a few Pakeha. He was the only Maori.

They gathered on the steps outside the hall, waiting for a word. The boys all carried pencil cases and rulers; he realised he was empty-handed. A bad start: he didn’t think to bring his stuff. A tall, red-faced Pakeha man came out onto the steps. His hair was funny. It could be a wig, Te Arepa thought. The man cracked the knuckles on his long fingers then began to speak.

“Welcome to Barwell’s Collegiate.”

He smiled and waited as if he expected a response, then continued slowly and deliberately, as if he was talking to someone very old and deaf, or maybe someone very young.

“I am sure you are all eager to show us what you can do and, believe me, we are eager to find out. The test will take about two hours so I would ask all the parents and guardians to reassemble here at three thirty … and we will give you back your little men.”

Most people had a quiet laugh at this point. Te Arepa didn’t.

The man continued like this for some time, stopping every now and then for the adults to have a chuckle. Te Arepa didn’t listen to most of it; he kept looking around at the big buildings, wondering what went on there.

Then, at some cue given in the man’s speech, all the boys surged up the stairs, as if there was a lolly scramble. Once through the big doors, they all stopped again. A woman at a desk was writing names on name tags and a man was ticking everyone off a list.

When Te Arepa reached the table, he had to say his name three times because the woman couldn’t understand him.

“Your name isn’t there,” the woman said. “There’s some mistake.”

Te Arepa leaned over and pointed to it on the list.

The man intervened, speaking sharply. “So Santos is your name. How do you expect us to find you from your Christian name?” It was as though he had been cheeky. “See if you live up to your saintly moniker.”

The hall was huge and filled with desks like a giant classroom. The walls were lined with dark panels inscribed with lists of names. The names of the fallen. The scholars. The sportsmen. The leaders. And the dates. All the way back to the 1880s. It was more like a wharenui than a school hall: the meeting place for the tribe of scholars and sportsmen who lived out their times here, in the olden days. Handisides, Harris, Harris, Heremaia. Not many Maori names, he noted. Maybe his would be there, and one day, far from now, a boy like him would be reading it, thinking the
same thing.

There must have been two hundred desks and chairs, each a metre from the next. He thought for a moment that someone was going to teach the whole group from the stage with a loudspeaker. The hall was filling up fast so he looked for a lucky spot to sit at. He saw the back of a brown boy near the front, so he went up and sat behind him. The boy turned briefly and smiled. He was Indian. He turned to the front again, ready to go.

After a while an old man — he looked a bit like Mr
McClintock
— got up on the stage. He was wearing a black robe over a suit. Te Arepa could see the legs of his grey trousers coming out the bottom. He stood for a while in front of the microphone, looking about the hall and waiting for the huge room to settle, then he began to speak.

“Welcome, gentlemen. Welcome to Barwell’s Collegiate. Look around you. This is called Memorial Hall. It commemorates our finest. The achievers, the leaders, the fallen. All like you once, little boys seated on hard chairs in this great hall. Their destinies were mere potentials, waiting to be unlocked and revealed. And that’s what this place does. Has done. And will continue to do.” He waited for everyone to decode his syntax.

“For now, though, it’s a matter of ‘Into the valley of death rode the two hundred’, to re-phrase Tennyson.”

He paused, as if expecting some glimmer of recognition, and then continued. “You are the few, the final few, pruned back from many more, and when you leave this hall we reduce your ranks to a humble ten. It’s a harsh process. I am sure you are all worthy, boys. You have all known academic success. You all deserve to come here. But life is short and cruel and it is our responsibility to ensure that the culling is fair, if nothing else.”

He paused again, giving time for this to sink in.

“This then, is your arena of choice. From this room lead many pathways. Once, long ago, I too sat here, in this room, pen in hand, anxiously waiting for a grey-haired headmaster to stop talking.
Never guessing that years later I would be standing up here, doing the same.” He paused again as if re-living the moment.

“Think carefully before you write. So much of what happens to you for the rest of your life could be determined by what happens between these four walls today. Give the best of yourself. Impress us. Thank you, boys.”

Then he stepped back from the microphone to allow another man, younger and with glasses, to step forward and begin his lengthy instructions. After he had finished, booklets were given out and everyone seemed to ready themselves for the big test. Te Arepa was the only boy without a pen. It was too late. How could he put his hand up now? Whakama! Everyone else started. The room filled with the deafening swish of the first page being turned. A hundred or so heads dropped down low over their pages. He looked around. The man who had mangled his name stared back and then walked towards him.

“What appears to be the nature of your problem?”

“No pen.”

“No pen?” he repeated incredulously.

Te Arepa nodded.

The teacher looked around angrily and took one from his pocket. “Make sure you return it.”

Te Arepa took the pen and read through the booklet.

Eighty tick-the-box questions and an essay. The topic: who are you? Where do you come from? Where are you going? No other choices.

The first part of the paper was all odd man out. Which is the correct rotation? What is the next number in this sequence? Which is the correct sentence? He flew through, finishing it in twenty minutes.

Then he closed in on the essay. He liked that question. It was the perfect question for him.