Taniwha's Tear (11 page)

Lena lifted her chin haughtily. ‘I can make up my own mind about that,’ she told him, pulling herself from his grip. She walked towards the fridge, swaying her hips. ‘I need another drink.’ She turned back and waved her fingers at Mat. ‘See you at the concert tomorrow. Ciao for now.’

Sassman looked at Mat, and slowly shrugged his shoulders.

Mat’s parents had spent the day picnicking at Tolaga Bay,
an hour’s drive up the coast. Mat barely listened to their descriptions. All he could think of was the way Sassman had kept touching Lena’s arm whenever he spoke to her. His mum talked about some old cemetery near the beach, and a pier that went way out into the bay, but all he could visualise was the American’s hands on Lena’s skin.

His parents were making some show of togetherness, holding hands, talking a lot, but he could tell it wasn’t going all that well. Every time Dad’s phone rang, Mum tensed up, and she threatened to throw it into the sea at one point, only half-joking.

‘I’m going to Rhythm and Vines tomorrow,’ he announced during a pause in the conversation.

Tama’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I heard it had sold out!’

‘This American guy gave us some tickets.’

‘Gave you? How much did you pay?’

‘No really, he gave us them. He’s a musician, one of the acts. I guess he took pity on us.’

‘Apparently the whole town is full of musicians,’ Tama announced, gazing about the restaurant as if expecting his eyes to alight on someone famous. ‘Not that I’d recognise any of the modern acts, I guess,’ he sighed reflectively. ‘They’re probably all at private locations.’

‘Who’s “us”, Mat?’ Colleen asked, her eyes lighting up a little.

‘Uh, Riki, and his mate, Damien…and these girls.’

Colleen smirked. ‘Girls? Really?’ She laughed in a way Mat found suddenly irritating. ‘Tell us about the girls, Matty.’

Oh, for goodness’ sake…
‘Mum…’ he complained. ‘They’re just these girls we met.’ He described the girls as briefly and diffidently as he could. But he couldn’t keep the note of longing from his voice when he mentioned Lena, and before he knew it, Mum was using words like ‘girlfriend’ and ‘romance’. He’d never felt so annoyed by his parents, not even when they were breaking up.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ he snapped finally, ‘just grow up!’

He didn’t understand why his parents roared with laughter. At least they were laughing together though, even if it was at him.

T
he next day passed like a waking dream. It was the first day of Rhythm and Vines, and they had backstage passes. Few of the band names were familiar to Mat, who only owned a couple of CDs and barely played them, but Riki and Lena in particular were starry-eyed. They arrived, brandished their passes, and were herded into a fenced-off zone behind screens where kohl-eyed, lank-haired guitarists lounged, sipping cocktails with bronzed dream-queens. Lena kept putting her hand to her mouth and saying ‘Omigod, that’s so-and-so’, but the names meant nothing to Mat, who only had eyes for her.

The festival had begun several years ago as a semiprivate party among some university friends, which had ended up with 500 or so people bopping in a field to Kiwi band The Black Seeds, but half the crowd had jumped the fence and not paid. The three friends lost a lot of money, but having had a great time, and realising that there was money to be made if it was done properly, they persisted,
and with a series of further concerts they had more than recouped their losses. The same three guys still ran it, but now they had full-time employees and brought in overseas events people. A one-night party had become a three-day festival that attracted headline acts from all over the world.

DJ Sassman hovered protectively, but Mat decided after a while that nothing had ‘happened’ between Sassman and Lena when he left last night, and was prepared to forgive him. The man-mountain Dwayne was still no more approachable, but at least he kept to himself. They were able to come and go easily among the crowds in the main area, enjoying street performers, from fire-eaters and whip-crackers to a man with a little brown monkey that juggled, and of course there was always someone on stage. Techno DJs like Sassman mixed with reggae, rock, folk and rap acts, all under a baking sun. Sprinklers bathed the crowds that swayed and bumped before the main stage. There were police present, their pale-blue shirts plastered in sweat, but the crowd was in a good mood.

The press of people around the stage was like a huge creature, Mat thought, as he tried his best to stay on his feet in the heaving, sweating crowd. Lena was pressed against him on one side and Riki on the other; they were drenched in sprinkler water and perspiration and had stupid grins plastered all over their faces. Whenever they wanted, they could slip backstage and act like stars, getting free drinks and food and marvelling at their own
good fortune. At some point towards mid-afternoon they rendezvoused in the backstage area, panting like fish out of water, draining chilled water-bottles frantically.

‘Come on, let’s go check out that dance outfit from Denmark,’ Damien urged Cassandra.

The skinny girl looked Damien over, and pulled her mouth to one side. ‘Nah. Seen one techno-rave Scandinavian and you’ve seen them all.’

Damien rolled his eyes. ‘Come on! It’ll be fun. It won’t matter that you can’t dance for shit. I can’t either.’

Riki threw Mat a despairing look and buried his head in his hands.

Cassandra threw Damien a dangerous look. ‘I know you can’t dance, Dame. I’ve seen the evidence.’ She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘So, what you’re really saying is this: I’m a kook who can’t get a date, and you’re a dweeb and can’t get one either, so we should get together?’

Damien tried to work that one through. ‘Umm…yeah?’

Cassandra snorted. ‘Sorry, I have a healthy desire for lifesavers and he-men, just like “normal” girls. Go molest yourself in the toilets, geek-boy.’ She stalked away.

Damien looked after her with a puzzled expression. ‘What did I say?’

Riki looked at Mat and collapsed laughing. Eventually he picked himself up, clapped Damien on the shoulder, and lurched away. ‘You’re priceless, man.’

‘I don’t get it with girls,’ Damien complained to Mat. ‘I mean, what do they really want?’

‘Beats me,’ said Mat, and he leant in and kissed Lena, who hadn’t been following the discussion, on the cheek. She looked up at him and smiled. Damien rolled his eyes, and sloped off after Riki.

Sometime after sundown, with the big international acts ready to take to the stage, Sassman pulled Mat aside. Bigger and bigger entourages of musicians and hangers-on had been pouring into the backstage area, making louder and louder demands and complaining about everything they found. Even the starstruck teens were having their initial reactions soured by the prima donnas swanning about, looking down their noses at them.

They were all leaving to mingle with the main crowd when Sassman grabbed Mat’s shoulder. ‘Come with me, Mat. Somethin’ you need to see. You too, Lena.’ His face was uncharacteristically serious. He led them to a vantage point to the left of the main stage, and pointed out across the crowd to the far side, where a small knot of people had just entered. ‘It pays to get a look at your enemies,’ he growled softly.

Mat’s eyes narrowed at a flash of blonde hair, sixty metres across the press of bodies, and he felt his skin go moist. Donna Kyle was smoking a cigarette, using some kind of antique cigarette-holder, as if she were an old black-and-white movies starlet. She was clad in a clinging black one-piece that finished mid-thigh, and she was hung with gold bangles and chains. The wound on her face rather ruined the effect of glamour. She
reminded Mat of the gangster molls in American mafia films.

The man beside her looked like a relic of the Maori wars, which he probably was. He had long black hair tied in a top-knot, a full-facial moko, and his bared arms were similarly lined with swirling patterns. He was clad in a sleeveless muscle-shirt and jeans, but there was some thing more primitive about him, that spoke of war-parties and waka and hand-to-hand combat. He wore a large cross about his neck and, almost bizarrely, a wooden pipe stuck from one corner of his mouth. His eyes were constantly moving over the crowd. There were others about them, wild-looking fighting-type men, all wearing crosses and ill-fitting modern garb, maybe a dozen in all.

‘Who are they?’ asked Lena softly, her eyes round as she stared across at them.

Sassman answered her. ‘The blonde woman is Donna Kyle, who Mat spoke of yesterday. The pipesmoker is Kereopa Te Rau. They call him “Kai Whatu”.’

‘What does that mean?’ Lena asked.

Mat ransacked his little store of Maori words. ‘Eyeball Eater,’ he translated hesitantly. He looked at Sassman, a taste of bile rising in his mouth. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Eyeball Eater…?’

Sassman nodded grimly. ‘Sure is. Ole Eyeball Eater there killed a priest in Opotiki, name of Carl Volkner. The Maori reckoned he was passing the names of dissidents to the British. So Kereopa killed him in his church, severed
his head, then gave a sermon to his followers during which he plucked out Volkner’s eyeballs and ate them to make his point.’

Lena looked sickened. ‘That’s disgusting.’

‘By today’s standards. But it was more commonplace back then, they say. Ole Eyeball Eater’s a priest and warrior of the Pai Marire—them that you folks call the “Hauhau”. It was an offshoot religion of Christianity blended with beliefs Maori had about cannibalism and warfare. Reminds me of New Orleans—all that old-time Bible and hellfire preachin’ mixed up with African voodoo. Anyway, these Pai Marire, Te Kooti led them, back in the 1860s. They raided all round the East Cape, but after they were defeated, Te Kooti and Kereopa went into hidin’ for a while. Eventually Te Kooti was pardoned, but Kereopa was handed over and hanged for the murder of Volkner.’

Lena had gone white. ‘How can he have been hanged, if he’s here?’

‘He was hanged in this world, but like I told you last night, ghosts rise in the other place, in your “Aotearoa”. His ghost joined the other dead Hauhau.’ Sassman looked at them both. ‘Now I’m jus’ an American boy and I don’ take sides. Some folk here call the Pai Marire freedom fighters and others call them terrorists and murderers. There’s a case both ways. But I’ve never held with cannibals, and eating someone’s eyeballs is crazy-insane in my book.’

Looking at the wolf-faced Kereopa, it wasn’t hard to
envisage that he had slain the priest with relish. But Lena was looking at Donna. ‘Who is this Donna Kyle? Why do they let a woman lead them?’ she asked.

Sassman grunted. ‘Puarata’s girlfriend, and his apprentice. She’s probably almos’ fifty, but she don’ look it. Puarata used to rule all the big hitters in Aotearoa. So I reckon she mus’ be tradin’ on her old status, to get the Hauhau onside. Or maybe she’s got some hold over them, I dunno. I’ve heard that Te Kooti don’ like her and won’ play ball, but Eyeballs, he makes nice so his boys can raid and fight like they used to.’

‘And they accept a woman leader?’ Lena asked distantly.

Mat didn’t like the way she said it. ‘What was Te Kooti like?’ he asked, to change the subject.

Sassman shrugged. ‘Never met him. I’ve heard he’s got a way ’bout him, like Crazy Horse or Geronimo had back in the West. Smart, hard, lotsa charisma, y’know. Kinda “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”, like that Byron dude. He led the last big resistance ’gainst the colonials, an’ it got real nasty. Settlements got wiped, women and kids killed, all round these parts. Folk still remember. Some still fight it, on t’Other Side, in Aotearoa.’

‘Does America have an Aotearoa too?’ Lena asked curiously.

Sassman nodded shortly. ‘Sure does. Ev’where does. Our Ghostland’s still got slav’ry and Injun Wars and the Civil War, all goin’ down at once. And the cities . . it’s crazy, babe! Ain’t safe to be a black man there, I’m tellin’ yer. That’s mos’ly why I’m here.’ He pulled a melancholic
face, then shrugged it away. Mat wondered how old he was, and when he’d come to New Zealand. ‘Anyhow, kids, let’s get outta sight o’ that lot afore they see us.’ He led them back to the backstage area. ‘Hang tight, yeah? Enjoy y’selfs, but hang here for a while. Big Dwayne’ll keep an eye on y’all.’ Sassman slouched off, unusually downbeat.

Mat had suddenly lost his appetite for the festival, but followed Lena to the fringe of the crowd, where they watched the band without really hearing them. People danced and shrieked and laughed around them, but Lena just stared across at the small knot of people clustered about Donna Kyle. The blonde girl was unconsciously chewing on a straw in the same posture as Donna smoked her cigarette.

At some time in the evening, Donna Kyle and her entourage left, but the mere thought that she had been there dampened Mat’s spirits. He found himself constantly casting anxious glances over his shoulder. It didn’t help that Lena was distracted and fidgety. She let him put an arm about her, but she paid her attention to the music and the crowd with a fixed determination, as if to avoid talking about anything else.

Riki and Damien were joshing each other non-stop and seemed in high spirits, but as the evening wore on, Mat found himself more and more tense, and drifted to the fringe of the crowd.

‘Hey, dude, what’s happening?’ Riki materialised beside
him, and put an arm about his shoulder. ‘We’re missing you out there, man.’

Mat let out a slow breath and forced a smile. ‘Yeah, I dunno, just can’t get into it.’

‘What’s up? Lena? Your folks? Weird stuff?’

‘All of the above, mate. Well, not Lena, that’s all fine, I think…’

‘Never can tell with chicks, dude. Just when you think you’re cool with them, you’re usually not.’

‘Speaking from experience?’

Riki grinned ruefully. ‘You bet.’

‘How’s Damien getting on with Cassandra?’

‘He’s made the critical breakthrough of realising that every time he opens his mouth, he puts his foot in it. So he’s just admiring silently from a distance.’

‘I reckon they’d go good together.’

Riki sniggered. ‘You’re in a minority of two there. You and Dame. Anyway, it’s you she fancies.’

Mat stared at him. ‘Me? Cassandra?’ It seemed bizarre. And anyway, he was Lena’s guy. Well, sort of.

Riki shrugged. ‘No accounting for taste, eh?’ He clapped Mat on the shoulder. ‘She’s kinda cool for a geek. And she can surf. But she ain’t half the looker that Lena is. Now that’s what I call booty!’

Mat blushed. ‘She’s cool, isn’t she?’ He felt a flush of wellbeing, and his dark mood lifted. ‘We should go find them.’

Riki grinned. ‘Yeah, right on, bro. Let’s go party.’

After that, it was much better. As the headline act for
the night came on, Mat found himself sipping something potent diluted with Coke, his arm around Lena’s shoulders, wishing it would never end. Fireworks exploded above, and the band struck their opening chords. Everyone was screaming and jumping, and Lena excitedly pulled him into the press. He had no idea who the band were, but they looked like they didn’t get much sun and sounded English. The lead singer was scrawny and pasty, and had a nasally whine, but he seemed to think he was exceedingly sexy, a delusion most of the crowd seemed prepared to indulge by screaming every time he postured. Mat tried hard to forget Donna Kyle’s face, and gradually, pressed against Lena while she writhed sinuously or bounced joyously, he managed to.

Much later, with the beats of a techno outfit carrying into the VIP area, Mat was sitting watching Lena dancing slowly on her own while blearily sipping a soda, when Sassman found him. The DJ had played a set before dusk, a reggae-influenced dance set that sounded like some kind of far-future island party music, but it was pretty good and had been well received by the crowd.

He was watching Lena sway, thinking how perfect she looked, and how gracefully she moved. Riki and Damien were off autograph-hunting among the white-boy bands and soul divas. Cassandra was dancing with a skeletally thin drum-and-bass DJ from Scandinavia who seemed fifty, but she looked bored. Cassandra danced as oddly as she did everything else, all off-kilter moves and
strange expressions, but she was totally unselfconscious, which was quite an attractive quality, at least with aged Scandinavians, apparently.

‘Hey, Mat Douglas, how you doin’?’ Sassman sat beside him on the grass, holding a beer bottle and a thick cigarette that definitely wasn’t tobacco. ‘You want some smoke, my man?’

Mat didn’t want to try marijuana; anything that dulled his edge seemed unwise just now, quite apart from the fact that it was illegal and bad for you. He was regretting the alcohol already, and was quite ready to hit the next so-called ‘star’ that mistook him for a waiter and demanded a drink. He felt like a caged lion and more than ready to go home. ‘Nah, but thanks for the passes.’