Then it was my turn.
The room was brightly lit, as if Grandfather had decreed that all should see him as he was. There was to be no pretence of shadows and curtains to veil the reality of the cancer. A sweet smell perfumed the air. Incense was burning, presumably to mask the rotting of Grandfather’s wasting body. Smoke curled from tapers placed at the four corners of his bed. I looked down upon my grandfather. He still retained his hair and his frame was not skeletal. God had been kind to him, permitting the cancer to eat away his insides but forbidding it to take away the props to face, chest, arms and legs. His body might be scraped hollow inside but outside it still maintained the illusion of substance.
Nevertheless, something intangible marked him as not quite the same. Something to do with aura. His life was draining away, the candle of his life diminishing. The lamp was low.
‘Ko wai ia?’ Grandfather asked. His eyes searched around and I realised that he was blind.
‘Ko Himiona, e pa,’ Aunt Ruth answered.
‘Aaa —’ Grandfather nodded. ‘The viper —’
Grandfather made a sign with his head that the door should be closed. Then he added another sign: Grandmother and my aunts were to leave us alone. Aunt Sarah shook her head but Grandmother Ramona said, ‘Kaati. Haere atu.’
‘Don’t stay for too long,’ Aunt Sarah said. ‘There’s other people more important than you has to see him.’
There was a click of the door as they departed.
‘Himiona —’ Grandfather sighed.
He shook his head and his lips creased into a grin. He put his right hand down to me. I wasn’t too sure whether he was going to take a swipe at me or not. I decided to trust him, and lowered my head to receive his blessing.
‘Kaore —’ he said.
Puzzled, I saw his eyes gesturing at my own right hand. I wasn’t too sure what he wanted. Then I realised: Grandfather wanted to Indian wrestle. He had never wanted to Indian wrestle with me.
I grinned at him and spat on my hand. Grandfather indicated with his eyes that he wanted me to spit on his, too. He opened his palm and, when I went to take it, gripped me with an iron hand. I was startled. This was not a man in extremis. Our hands wavered in the air, and with disgust I noticed that Grandfather was managing to bend mine back to the bed. I knotted my muscles and started to push his hand back.
Even if you’re on your death bed, you bastard –
He laughed. A small quiet laugh, but there was joy in it. Then he said –
‘Drop your pants.’
Drop my pants?
‘Ae,’ he repeated. ‘Down your trou.’
I shrugged. A man’s last wish is a man’s last wish. I took my belt off. My trousers slid to the floor.
Grandfather’s right hand reached down beneath my shirt. I gasped as his hand reached through my pubic hair. I had a sudden thought that maybe he was going to take his revenge by twisting my balls off and turning me into a eunuch. Instead he cradled my balls and took the measure of my cock. He gave a small tug and I was embarrassed to feel myself thickening and lengthening. His eyes looked into mine.
‘Ae,’ he said. ‘Ae.’
There was a look which conveyed all that an old man must feel about youth and the sexuality of one’s grandson. Regret that he will not be able to feel the bucking of another person beneath him in orgasm. Nostalgia for all those times of heated encounters and lust. And pride that one’s own offspring has achieved a rightful inheritance.
‘You and I the same —’ he said.
Was this Grandfather’s blessing? This acceptance that I was one of his? Had I now obtained his acceptance?
‘Ah, Himiona —’ he sighed. There was such regret in his voice. ‘You and I —’
I bent to kiss his eyelids. My lips tasted the salt of his life, my nose felt the warmth of his breath and my skin took the warmth of his cheek.
He took his hands from my thighs. I buttoned myself up.
‘You make the decision,’ he said.
Nothing more. I left the room.
At the end of his life, Grandfather Tamihana was moved from the bedroom into the sitting room. A space was made for him where his throne had been. There, swathed in blankets and propped up by pillows, we looked upon him for the last time. Mother Ramona was by his side. The Mahana clan gathered, kneeling in homage around him, waiting for his last breath. Every intake of breath was ours. Every exhalation was also ours. The windows and doors of the homestead were all open. Outside on the verandah were the Whatus, the Tuparas, the Peres, the Horsfalls, the Kerekeres and all the people of Waituhi.
Grandfather laboured, sighed, coughed, hissed, held his breath and laboured again late into the morning.
‘Maybe,’ Haromi whispered to me, ‘he’s waiting to hear that old Rupeni Poata has dropped dead.’
I grinned at her. It would make Grandfather’s night to know that his arch enemy had gone before him.
Still Grandfather hung on. Even when, at three in the morning, Grandmother reached across to him, patted his shoulders and said, ‘You should go now’, he kept breathing.
‘E hara!’ Grandmother Ramona continued. ‘Go now and let us get some sleep!’
Around four, Grandfather’s breathing levelled out. All of a sudden he took a breath. His eyes flickered open. He looked up and saw something awesome approaching from far away, flying down from the clouds, through an open window and into the room. The curtains billowed with the wind.
He watched alert as something blond and glittering, with blue eyes and lazy smile, flew around the walls, trying to find a way through his defences.
‘Kaya-oraa, Tamay-hana,’ the angel laughed.
The angel feinted, swerved and tested Grandfather to ascertain how it could get through.
‘The best of three falls?’ the angel asked.
Imperceptibly, Grandfather nodded. His eyes darted this way and that in quick flickering movements, following the rippling wings of the angel, waiting for a break. But the angel always seemed to keep out of his reach.
Grandfather became impatient. He let out his breath in one explosive ‘Haaaaa —’. He could wait no longer.
The angel opened its wings as if to claim Grandfather. With a cry the mighty Bulibasha, King of the Gypsies, sprang through its defences and started to wrestle with it.
‘This time I’ll defeat you!’ he cried.
The room opened and Grandfather and the angel fell into searing light.
‘Kua mate o tatou papa,’ Uncle Matiu said.
The dogs which until that time had been silent all started to howl.
Chapter 55
Maori people say that when Death’s angel visits he sometimes takes two people rather than one. I don’t know why this should be so. Perhaps it’s God’s way of saving on travelling. Whatever, when the news spread that Grandfather had died, people associated his passing with the death of my cousin Mohi. They said that Mohi had gone ahead to make ready the way for Grandfather.
Grandfather’s tangihanga was held at Waituhi, on Rongopai marae, and was one of the largest ever seen in the Poverty Bay and East Coast. This would have pleased Grandfather, who always placed great store on size and on ceremony, as if this was a measure of a person. Elders from all tribes travelled with large ope to mourn his passing. Indeed, he became a greater person in death then he had been in life.
During the three days of mourning references were made to Grandfather’s many illegitimate children and to his having killed a man who had the audacity to walk over his legs, and his sporting prowess reached epic proportions. By the third day the family was almost convinced that Bulibasha had been a supernatural person. We kept on looking at him in his casket and thinking, He’s going to get up and start haranguing us any minute for thinking he’s dead.