I was in a foul mood when I walked in to breakfast. With all the men gone, the only ones left in Waituhi were old women, girls or the useless.
‘How come,’ I asked Aunt Ruth, who was packing up the cutlery for Mahana Two, ‘we pray all the time?’
‘The family that prays together stays together,’ she said in a sing-song way. ‘You know that.’
Yeah yeah.
‘But we weren’t always like this,’ Aunt Ruth said. ‘Not as pious, and church-going. If your grandfather hadn’t met the angel —’
Glory dropped her spoon. ‘Met the angel?’ she repeated, her eyes widening.
Aunt Ruth sighed, looked at her watch and glared at me as if it was all my fault.
‘In those days,’ Aunt Ruth said, ‘the sky wasn’t cluttered with planes and satellites. God’s angels were still able to get through to earth with messages for the faithful.’
Aunt Ruth had an unswerving belief that the First World War was when human beings began to lose their godliness. It had something to do with the use of mustard gas on the Western Front; God’s voice had come through pretty regularly until then. The gas infiltrated into His Kingdom and affected His throat, then just when He recovered He found all the frequencies jammed by radio.
‘Your grandfather was twenty-three in 1918,’ Aunt Ruth said. ‘He wasn’t exactly an ungodly man, but he wasn’t a godly man either. He was an ideal choice for a visitation by an angel. He bowed to no man and he bowed to no god. He believed in what he saw and he believed in a man’s strength. He thought man was an animal like any other beast of the field or fowl of the air’ — like all the Mahanas, Aunt Ruth had a penchant for the well-turned biblical phrase — ‘and that at the end of your life you went away, found a place to die, and got on with dying. Furthermore, there was no Hereafter. How could there be? You couldn’t see God, could you? Therefore God could not exist. You couldn’t see an afterlife, could you? Therefore that did not exist either! Yes, a man’s own strength, that’s what your grandfather believed in.’
Aunt Ruth pointed through the door of the kitchen into the drawing room. She motioned to one of the photographs of Grandfather, the one hanging next to the oval photo of Grandmother Ramona in 1914. In it was the evidence above any other that Grandfather was exactly how his reputation has captured him. ‘Tamihana Mahana, Wrestling Champion, Gisborne District, 1914–1920, undefeated.’
Standing with feet apart, Grandfather balances on the balls of his toes, head tucked into shoulders, arms outstretched. He had the art, even then, of appearing twice as large as he was. He did not merely enter a space; he claimed it. Territorial, he expanded his arms and decreed, This is mine. If he saw something he wanted, he took it. He was a Samson of a man.
‘The irony was,’ Aunt Ruth said, ‘that although your grandfather was ungodly, your great-grandfather was the very godly minister in the Ringatu church, second only to Riripeti Mahana, its priestess. When they saw that a Samson had been born into their midst, ka tika, they agreed he would help to lead the people out of bondage to the Pakeha and into the land of milk and honey known as Canaan. But if only he could believe in God. Oh, he was a trial to them!
‘All through the war, your great-grandfather and Riripeti waited for him to take up the jaw of an ass and smite the Philistine Pakeha. But he just didn’t seem interested in anything else except sport, women and —’
‘Why women?’ Glory asked.
‘Never you mind,’ Aunt Ruth answered. ‘By the time the war ended they had almost lost hope that your grandfather would bring the Temple of Dagon down upon the Pakeha. So when that angel came, they took it as a good sign. At last God would let Tamihana see Him through one of his angels. Then your grandfather would turn to the paths of righteousness and help to fulfil the Ringatu destiny.
‘So it was that on a summer day in 1918 —’
Tamihana Mahana was behind the plough in the maize fields when the angel visited him. It was a Sunday, and coming on to midday. Tamihana didn’t care much about the Sabbath. There was work to finish, a crop to be sown. Very soon there would be another mouth to feed. Ramona was with child again, her fourth, whom they would name Hone if he was a boy or Ruth if she was a girl.
‘Hup!’ he called to the two draught horses. ‘Hup!’
The day was peaceful and quiet. Most of the people in the village had gone to karakia, to church, at Mangatu. There was nobody around except old man Kuki who was sick and Maggie who had taken the chance to tell everybody, ‘I’ll look after Kuki.’ What she really meant was that she wanted to stay by the window, watching Tamihana. Tamihana grinned to himself. He had taken his shirt off so that Maggie could really see what he was made of. He was proud of the V shape of his shoulders and the washboard tautness of his glistening stomach.
The horses came to the end of the field. ‘Ka mutu,’ he shouted. He took off his hat and sweatband, unhitched the team and let them head for the long grass on the side of the field. Perspiration poured from his brow and into his eyes. The ploughing should have tired him, but it didn’t. His body had never let him down, and in this he knew he was unlike other men. When they dropped by the wayside or fell out of a race, he kept on going. He relied on his physical strength to get him through life, to till his land and, more important, to secure cash work from the Pakeha farmers in the district. Now that he was a married man and a father, he relied on the crops from his land to feed his family. But obtaining cash work was harder. What he needed to do, he realised, was to create a business, something that would bring the work to him.
Perhaps I should pray, Tamihana thought. If I ask God, He might tell me what I should do to prosper. He started to mumble some words to God. Then he shook his head — only fools and old women prayed. He looked up at the sun and was momentarily blinded by sweat and sunlight.
Huh? He aha tera?
Printed on his retina was an after-image. The clouds had rolled back, revealing a blue kingdom. Something golden was fluttering down from the sky.
‘So the angel had wings?’ Glory asked.
‘Of course,’ Aunt Ruth responded. ‘How do you think angels get down from Heaven?’
‘Was it a man angel or a lady angel?’ Glory continued. ‘Or was it a baby cherubim?’
‘Shush,’ Aunt Ruth said, ‘don’t you see? Even though our father only managed to get a tiny bit of his prayer out, it was answered. Now keep still, because you’re spoiling my story —’
Tamihana shook his head again. He took a cloth from his trouser pocket and wiped the sweat away.
‘E hika,’ Tamihana exclaimed.
The angel was standing on the roadside. He was blond and had blue eyes and looked like Jesus in a cotton suit.
‘But I thought you said the angel had wings,’ Glory said accusingly.
‘The angel folded his wings away,’ Aunt Ruth answered. ‘After all, what would you do if you saw an angel with wings on the road. Would you believe it was an angel?’
‘No,’ Glory said after pondering this for a while. ‘I’d probably think the man was on his way to a fancy-dress party. Or had forgotten it wasn’t Christmas yet.’
‘That’s right,’ Aunt Ruth said.
‘Kia-a- orai-a, ee hor-a,’ the angel said in an American accent. He had a hideous midwestern crewcut and looked like he’d just flown in over the rainbow from Kansas City or Salt Lake.
‘Kia ora,’ Tamihana replied.
The angel came closer, leaned on the fence and blew away a feather that had fallen on his shoulder. He plucked a straw and began to chew on it. Still blinded, Tamihana saw golden rays emanating from the angel.