Both Sides of the Moon (21 page)

And inside his head — nay, it went deeper than that — inside with brightest, brightest light. And it spoke to him in the classical language: Feel you that you can catch stars this evening?

And his reply: Stars? Why, when I have the light of the largest star, the sun, in my face?

She had given birth on the cold muddy ground of winter, wet beneath one of their crude coverings of threaded fern. Mist at her squatting feet, cold at her everywhere. She had made countless attempts to show these savages how to make garment protection from worked flax. Gathered flax from swamps with bones feeling at her feet of the long-gone giant bird the moa.

But they laughed and said easier to enjoy feasting on the fat of cooked birds, but human fat the best, from bodies lain on the
battleground
from true people’s tribal fighting. Drag it to where heating stones can be put to wood fire, drain off the fat from the cooked body into gourd or make slugs to fit flax carrying-bags. So to make fat a living garment. Or else take the garments from the dead, what use to they, these stupid tribal people fighting each other over
never-satisfied
honour all the time.

They were proud in their cackling way of laughter that they were like the scavenger birds, and her suggested ways but those of a contemptible tribal woman. They boasted of letting the people who called themselves true do the labours to make the garments and tools and weaponry — the life! — which they gathered from the aftermath battlegrounds.

Now, Tangiwai wished she had lowered her dignity to taking a garment from a slain warrior for herself, on one of these people’s scavenging forays, as she shivered against the cold and the cold worse inside.

She had not called nor now expected one of her own women to be midwife, for if they hadn’t succumbed to fear of punishment for associating with each other then they had become like lizards, coloured of the humans all around.

She prayed to the few gods she still had faith in to deliver
Kapi’s child a girl. So that the child be ignored, grow up considered human only enough to serve men’s sexual needs and tend to these men’s feeding. But before then she would escape from here for she had heard a new people had arrived in growing numbers to this land and the indigenous people were having change forced upon them. Perhaps enough so she might find a different place to settle where she was forgiven the deeds of her lover, the shame of her people succumbing as they did.

Her first son, Ratanui, though only five season cycles young, was now one of these unruly beast children, quite gone of soul and therefore meaning of life as Tangiwai understood it. She prayed that no male life be born to these and this.

She pulled him from her herself. He came out face down to the dirt, the mud. She cut the cord with a sharp rock. She put the afterbirth aside for burying beneath a tree as was the tradition she had brought here. Then she slapped the child’s rear, but had to slap again when it did not cry out the first time. So she knew it was Kapi’s image before she turned its bawling face and little innocent penis up to her.

The thought of smothering it came. Of turning it back to the mud and forcing the face into the ooze; better than to grow up in this, as one of these people for whom wretched was but weakest
description
. Ratanui was lost to their ways. Before it was discipline, respect for your olders — since hardly did many live long enough to become elders, and then most were women since it was they who reared the fighters — having bond with your own tribe, your own village world in which all of your not-so-long life would be spent. Here, it was no one caring for structures, no one caring for anything but immediate satisfaction. Here, when a child got sick it was left to nature’s healing or mortal taking. And none were with grieving much if any.

Her body hurt but not as much her aching inside. She looked at her son brought into this place, this world, this life, and she did turn it face down and start to plunge it into the mud. She had the resolve in her aching heart, she did, for she was a strong woman.

Until it started to shiver, this new life from her womb and Kapi’s fine loving. And she pulled the child to her bosom and give him sucking, loving connection, gave him bonding, gave him mother,
as was his right. Even here where were no rights and they were a bondless people except by brutishly shared qualities and nowhere else to join them to, she bonded love to that child. She made sad wish that it might see as she did as soon as seeing became its way.

This was late afternoon. All day it had drizzled. Just this very same morning Hakere had taken her sexually, even though she had told him — not begged, proud woman does not beg — that his entry might hurt the child’s unborn head. He laughed in her face and said he didn’t care if he put a hole in it. Afterward she had washed herself even though only a gourd of muddy water was available, better than newborn’s entry assisted by Hakere’s slime.

Late afternoon, a fine rain, and these people crouched around many separate fires under trees they seemed not to know could catch fire, eating all the day long, of wads of bird fat, rendered-down human fat from their fat-slug bags; their talk of cackling comment on
nothing
of meaning or substance, they lived in every unthinking moment, a people more crude than any could imagine. Look, there goes another shitting but a few lazy steps from where he will squat again on haunches with his caste. Do they not smell it! No. And there, another coupling of man and woman in public and hear their excited cries and ugly callings, see how it gets others going. These are not people, they are not even wild dogs. They are a life form of their own.

She took the child after it had gorged on her breasts and sought out one of her people who was recognisable as one for garment that she might wrap around her and son. But that was proving hard, for they were either lizard-changed to exact same or they were
miserable
wretches with resentful, even hating eyes at her for bringing them to this place of wild living demons. But she blamed them for giving in so easily and she feared not their loathing. She sought out Hariana, knowing that she had kept her inner flame burning brightly. But she could see nothing of the older woman.

She found one who used to be her own, Hemana Te Kaka, a man with tattoo markings that no longer looked proud — and she kicked at him, curled there on his side under a heavily leaking shelter under a feather cloak. It was a wonder it had not been taken from him. Give me your cloak, Hemana!

His eyes remained fixed to the ground they weren’t seeing.
She kicked at him again, this young man like the oldest of men now, with only breathing will left in him. You are like a slave, Hema! Where is the pride you promised?

Hemana rolled and looked up at Tangiwai. Aee, Tangiwai, we should have leaped to our glorious deaths like our great chief and those who stayed with him. But she was not having this, she’d heard it from them all but for a few. Let me and this strong child of Kapi’s — yes, Kapi is the father — use your feather cloak warmth, the better to keep hope and strength alive than to warm you.

And she snatched the cloak away and wrapped self and
half-self
in it and walked over to where Hakere was sprawled,
ungarmented
, beneath fern of someone’s lazy making that dripped with rain, even though the sky was clearing, and in normal circumstances she might have seized good omen from that but not this day.

He saw her approach and called: Hah! the woman has new member of our group to make known to us! Good. In a few days she will be ready for me again! Let no other man dare to try with her, for she is born with fattest submission to a man’s thrusting. Her cunt is joy itself.

And of what sex the child — female I hope, for in my old age I shall need young woman — many of them! And even though the rain and the surrounding forest took most sounds in an instant, not so this man’s laugh, which boomed as though down from conquered hilltop. She told the conqueror: He is male.

And conqueror laughed and said, that is a good thing, too. For I shall have need of young males when I am in my old age.

And she, its mother, thought: What old age is this? I shall not allow you to harm my child’s existence when so quickly your ways alone took my first. And she smiled at him, but not so that it told him anything but promise of what was in store for him once her body was recovered from birthing. She even imparted that the same slightly smiling mouth might be of use to him while her other wet sweet fruit was healing.

Her child suckled again on her not long after the dark. For the first time in being amongst these life forms, she smiled. At the child, the promise she made it and herself in her heart. At near a full fat moon up there. And the light of idea, plan, in her mind.

He learned to measure time with them, to have it mean more when all his life, time was not a concept of any great note. Every day a little bit older, but no expectation that he would feel the creep of old age tiring his muscles, stripping away his muscular form – no longer a warrior. Warrior did not live till old age, or so few for them to be considered perhaps more cunningly self-preserving, more skilled at avoidance than action, than they ought. Unless a warrior so surpassed his others that he reached old age. But then what warrior should wish of his physical glory to weaken slowly and not look admirable any longer? Better to die in battle looking your finest and doing your ferocious, utmost best.

But with this outcast group, under Wild Hair’s acute influencing, and never was he insistent nor adamant, nor so fixed on an idea it could not be discussed, he, Moonlight, and they his adopted family, were given eyes into a future that projected out like long reaching branches. So that a man notioned that he was growing. Or extending.

Which Moonlight discovered was exciting in itself. Truly so, for it changed the days into wondering what the next would bring. And since these were on the constant shift, from one camp to another, he never knew which of the landscapes was next for another first time. Nor did he know of such variety, and even in heat or cold between places in the same space of days. Telling him that climate, like thought, like idea, is not fixed after all.

It was from Wild Hair’s influence, Wild Hair’s example, that Moonlight learned about his landscape, previously of war, that beauty could be taken from it, no different from dipping hand into water and drinking of it. He came to see in rocks and mountains and forested hilly places and lush valleys and water flows and water places and
high vantage points that a man gains a quite different sense of
himself
: as if he is both small and insignificant and yet this is all his that his eyes and senses can take in.

It was Tekapo of the eternal interest in everything that showed Moonlight smaller life, of insects and how they fought and consumed each other and yet the numbers were infinite; whilst mankind he had known were either dwindling in numbers consumed by battle, or they flourished and consumed others the more. It was Tekapo who
suggested
this was a way of life that must destroy itself. And Moonlight saw enough to agree.

There was the day Tekapo gave to Moonlight a beetle, inviting him to inspect it closer than he had anything — even a beautiful woman! Tekapo was not without humour. So Moonlight took the beetle and gave it inspection.

But he could see nothing other than striking patterns formed upon its shell that were more intricate and detailed than any carvings or tattoos he had seen. He told Tekapo of this. But Tekapo only smiled and said that was not what he had noticed and looked glad at
Moonlight’s
findings. Look closer, Moonlight, he said.

He looked and looked until his eyes began to water. About to ask again of what mystery was this, when he thought he saw
movement
. Tiniest, tiniest movement beneath the beetle’s belly.

Never had he held an object so still. And soon the movement grew form, so minuscule it could have been a speck of dust on his eye. Then it seemed to enlarge and Moonlight grew a little afraid. At the unknown, rather than this creature and whatever it was bothering him lodged on its stomach.

He held it to the sun at a different angle so that light filtered along the stomach side; there were hairs finer than those in a man’s ears; and the legs had construction immediately clever and barbed and speared like fish hooks and sharp killing points.

And then there was this other shape, unto itself, moving ever so slowly. He asked, is this the creature’s baby, Tekapo?

What I had thought. But see its shape: they are no relation. You and I are more related than they.

Moonlight affirmed that. Studied it under slightest
adjustment
to the light. His mind was stirred. Memories and associations
and times he had hardly been aware of from the warrior days when he had been contemplative, sated of blood lust after battle, and sat around in a quieter state of thinking, now they all flooded in like moonlight broken from cloud.

He saw a picture. But it was of a fish and the location was seashore and the day was a shellfish-gathering expedition of many of the village to a bed of pipi, tuangi and, in water just deep enough to mean diving, fattest mussels attached to a stretch of rocks below. He had been heading the guarding of the gatherers from life’s fixed threat of attack from enemy tribes, but he had wanted to try this diving beneath the sea surface, especially since the divers had told him and the senior warriors of how fat the mussels were. He gave command over to another, perhaps it was to Te Matai, if his recall was true.

It had hurt his eyes trying to see in that briny water. But he could at least see with blurred vision enough to pluck some of the shellfish himself. He dived as deep as he dared and grabbed many of the largest kuku from their hairy holds on the rock, making the advised nostril hold-and-blow of the experienced divers that provided him a relief rather profound. Though he did not understand what of nature’s laws could be at work here.

It was on this day that a young girl with a fishing line had hauled in a small shark. Everyone was as excited for her as at the shark. For it had delectable meat and dried well and smoked even better. Attached to the shark was a comparatively tiny fish with lips on its back. The tohunga had said the larger creature was the host. And that it repaid life attached to a more formidable living body by certain tasks that the gods had not yet explained to the tohunga. All he could say was that the fish with lips upon its back is the guest of the shark’s living form.

Which must be what Moonlight was now looking at in so much smaller form. A tiny guest.

Though the association gave him excitement in the finding, he managed to cover over his joy by saying in most casual voice to Tekapo: The beetle does be host to another creature. He has permanent dwelling room upon his stomach. I would know not what the guest does to show his gratitude. And then he looked up and
Tekapo was beaming at him. And saying, Yes. Oh yes, Moonlight.

Tekapo said, Perhaps it is not gratitude as like two in a marriage, Moonlight. With each to offer and no need to measure it?

Moonlight said, My thoughts were not like that, not of union between man and woman, or what gratitude I might owe anyone or any god. I am amused and happily confounded it is a mere beetle and its guest telling me of life larger and with wider scope. So I am with gratitude to you, Tekapo. And I think your people do suffer greatest loss for turning you out of their midst.

One day the brilliant-minded Tekapo returned from one of his observation watches on the white people, who Moonlight had grown more curious to see for himself and intended asking Tekapo if he could accompany him. Tekapo had acquired most strange objects, which were each many many in thin number and layers, each covered on both sides in tiniest black symbols, and held together by some mysterious process, which yet allowed flickering or lingering access to them, without surrendering what they were.

And the strangeness continued, for Tekapo said there was nothing to be gained of understanding in them, they were a white man’s object, hardly a tool, of some meaning substantial to the white people who were spreading over this land, which was never this group’s in the first place, or not from when they were shunned and banished by and from their own and so they did not call them demons as tribe people did. Yet each of these objects was passed around with the suggestion that a person observed, felt, what he or she would of them.

So with Moonlight it was feeling the thin layers flicker off his thumb like playing idly on strands of cut grass. The jumble of symbols he had sought out for smaller meanings like the creature the beetle hosts. But they had a kind of regularity about them like re-occurring marks and symbols in a carving. But no meaning offered. He felt tempted to tear the thing apart to understand how all that number of symbol-blackened layers held together by the outside and somehow at its back the inside. But everyone was asked that they not
destroy or soil as little as possible these things. And not one person, to Moonlight’s knowledge, questioned why the suggestion to consider the unfathomable. It was like being asked to tell what was beneath a deep sea.

Mihinui, his woman taken as wife within their looser meaning of marriage, was his other greatest learning. And joy. He could not bear much movement of the sun to go past without putting eyes on her, to hear her voice, or just see her — either side of her physical countenance.

She loved him well, of that there was no question. Now she did. At first he had denied his own feelings and teased her that she only replaced her beloved father with him, with his reminding tattoos and warrior strength. But she laughed at his vanity and dared to ask if he had considered that her father had been much more handsome, of finer, more-ennobled tattoo etchings, and of greater strength.

In disbelief he would have laughed back except to see that she had turned her bad side of face to him and the drooped mouth was sneering at him.

He asked why her contempt when he had thought — Thought what? For the words ceased on him. They dried up. She asked again: Thought you what?

Rather than see her sneer worsen, he gave up his denial and said to her the classical way of terming love: Why stars, when I have the light of the largest star, the sun, in my face? But with not much embarrassment.

And so she had turned her other side to him. And it was with glowing smile like the sun itself. And she told him back words in exact echo. And then they had loved. Under the shadow of a large rock she hurried him somewhere to. No love had he experienced as well as this. No anything. (Not even you, Tangiwai. Not even you.)

One of them came back from an acquiring raid on the white invaders with a shiny piece of smoothest, hard material, which gave most frightening images back at whosoever gazed upon the shiny part, and had men and women reeling in confoundment. Till Tekapo informed
it must be a means of taking stillest water and putting this hard, transparent material over it so to contain permanent reflection of whatever stood before or was caught by it.

But many were in denial for they said that is not me! It cannot be! And yet each in turn was with laughter at the other, and some were quite mirthful over it in telling that it was indeed a water reflection that was indeed the truth.

Moonlight returned to being Kapi for a too-tempting moment. For he had seen himself in pool reflections but never as clear as what it was throwing back at its self-beholding subjects. Nor did he have memory of what he looked like. Not clearly. He wanted most to see his tattoos, since no water he had gazed into was still or clear enough to see the fine pattern indentation so familiar to his touch. He thought he knew them by heart, like words, a long and
complicated
chant learned.

But he was brutish in pushing others aside, and Mihi’s voice chided him and demanded that he step back from this object and let others take their turn. He waited in a state between anger at her for daring chide him publicly — at all — like that, and a certain shame that he had been without dignity.

When he finally gazed upon himself he was without
recognition
. Only everyone’s laughter told him it was, alas, the same truth for him. For he had a most prominent brow, as if with much scarring. And one of his eyes was not quite aligned, which he remembered hurting in a battle — and killing the man, of course he had killed him. He had all his life felt considerably more handsome than this.

As for the tattoos, though, they were quite beyond his greatest expectations. So much so he cried out in joy. Till again Mihi’s voice behind him was with chiding. She said to his back, to his
still-astonished
self-contemplating rear, what had he done to deserve these markings he was so proud of?