When the short service is finished, before the sexton fills in the hole, he lowers the sugarsack onto the coffin. The undertaker watches with astonishment, the solicitor, calmly. Joe kneels, and plants the tiri at the foot of the grave. It sways gently a minute, and stills.
The drizzle continues. The silver drops slide down the golden stalk.
That is all, Tiaki.
Sleep in peace, or find your way home.
The solicitor says,
"Stay with me and my wife tonight, please." "Thank you," says Joe, smiling brittlely. "Do you often put up crims?"
"No. Only people I like and respect."
The dry hollow in Joe fills alarmingly fast with tears.
He talks a lot that night.
About the kaumatua. About Simon. About Kerewin. About the dream world, and the world of the dead. About legends and myths, and nine canoes, tatau pounamu, the possible new world, the impossible new world.
The solicitor and his wife seem stolid educated middleclass people, but they know what he talks about. They agree and sympathise and draw him out, until he is talked out. He goes to bed weary, but rested. He sleeps soundly and dreamlessly. The solicitor says to his wife as they undress for bed, "He is one hell of a man, but you'd never pick it just by looking at him. Like the old man, very like the old man… isn't it odd how
it's worked out? Him arriving just before Tiaki died? And the old man meeting him in his need?"
His wife is a woman of much thought but few words.
"Ordained," she answers.
''Keep in touch," they say after breakfast. "I will. Kia ora korua!" he says, and is gone.
Two things more to do, and then he can rest as long as he likes.
He buys what he needs, food and clothing, and a set of wood chisels. New bedding and a guitar.
Then he goes to the police-station.
"Gidday, you're looking a bit better," says the sergeant. "Everything okay now?"
"Yes thanks, more or less… but I'm wondering if you could help with something. The old man, you know Tiaki Mira?"
The sergeant nods.
"Well, he told me about this man," handing over the photograph,
"staying with him, and dying with him, but he said he never knew who he was."
The sergeant looks at it, pursing his lips.
"Can't say I do either… was he a criminal? Do you want us to check through the files or something?"
"I don't know… I thought maybe there was someone who should have the photo. Tiaki said he injected himself with drugs, and I thought, if he was a heroin addict or something, you might know him…" voice trailing away.
"Can I have a look?" says a constable, coming to their side. "O him," he says, after a cursory glance, "that's that hippy fella… before your time Dave, you wouldn't have known about him."
He says to Joe,
"He was called Timon Padraic MacDonnagh, I remember that, I'm Irish background myself. Spoke well, but a right layabout. He did cause quite a stir when he first came here, as there was a bit of a drug-scandal going on, and he was a registered heroin addict. Harmless enough though, just did himself in. Arrived from Auckland in ahh, late 1976. His wife and kid were killed in a car accident there… he had to report to us on a regular basis because he was more or less an illegal immigrant as well as the other business. I think the Ministry let him stay on for compassionate reasons, eh. He died at Mira's place about six months after he arrived anyway. I was one of the lot who brought the body out. Thin as a bloody rake he was… I felt sort of sorry for the bloke, you know, not having any reason to live, and killing himself by degrees."
II
II
"Yeah, I can understand," says Joe. "And his wife and child were both dead, eh?"
"Yeah. Auckland, as I said. I've got a good memory for things like that, though I say…."
"… though you say it yourself," says the sergeant grinning. Joe grins too.
Then he sighs,
"Well, that's one more mystery wrapped up… it's a pity I can't tell Tiaki. I was curious myself, too."
"Understandably," says the sergeant. "That old man had a lot of secrets you could be curious about… know what they call him here? The last of the cannibals. They reckoned he ate his grandmother in the old days. All I've heard of is that the old lady just disappeared and-"
Joe grins again.
"Well, he was nice enough to me, and that's all I worried about. And he had plenty of chances to make me kai if he wanted."
The police laugh.
Forgive me, Tiaki. But if we keep talking this way, they might get curious about some of your other secrets. Kill it with a foolish joke-
Outside the station, he looks at the photograph again. It had been a slim chance, going on no more than the young man's colouring, and the pointed chin, and something about the eyes, an impossible chance… Ahh, forget it, Ngakau. What does it matter now?
He hired a truck to carry his gear to the track turnoff, but he carted the gear in on his back. It took three trips. The new mattress was worst. It kept slipping away from his one-handed grasp. By the time all the stuff was packed away, he was exhausted.
He sat on the doorstep, propped against the frame, and watched the stars come out, one by one by three by a hundred. The air was still.
I'll stay here, he thought, until things make sense again. Until I'm healed anyway. Until I know more about the pool, the mauri. Until the title's mine, and I've set up some proper boundary markers. Until, God help me! I know what to do.
The cry that came out of him was not intended to happen. It burst out, while his mind listened amazed. And then he was caught UP in the streaming sound. It was full of grief, a lamentation without words.
When it stopped, there was silence.
Then the treefrogs begin their chirruping again: a cricket zitzitt, close by: down by the river, a morepork calls.
Life goes on, Ngakau.
The weeping doesn't last forever.
Nor does the waiting.
You'll heal, man, back together again.
In the deep south, a shooting star blazes brightly, and is extinguished by the night.
««
The earthquake hit on Saturday morning, just before dawn.
He wakes a second before the first shock strikes, the air full of cavernous rumbling, and slides off the bed before the shaking starts. It grows in intensity, becoming violent.
"Be still, o God be still," while the earth groans,
Jesus the ground's gonna open right under here in a' dirty great crack what are my rahui doing that noise is murder the mauri'll die
"stopit stopit STOPIT!!"
bellowing furiously, and over the earth moaning and the skriek of
iron grating all round him, surprises himself by laughing loudly.
Jesus, Ngakau! This'll take heed of you!?
The tumult suddenly ceases. His heart pounds on in the preternatural quiet.
If this keeps going I'm not going to make it to any Christmas party…
Face on the hard dirt floor, waiting uneasily.
If this is an all over one, she won't either. If she's still alive-
The earth shudders again.
The window behind him splits with a ringing crack!-
Stillness.
Ready for it, sphincters clenched in all directions. Nothing happens.
You might as well get back to bed, man. Damn cold here.
For all that, sweat is trickling down his face. He stands up, his feet meeting the ground unsteadily, still expecting it to jolt.
Might as well stay up… it's getting light anyway.
But Haimona honey, where are you? Kerewin, Kerewin, where
are you?
He rakes away the soft ash and lays wads of fuchsia bark on
the still-glowing coals. It smokes immediately. Twigs, larger pieces of driftwood, hunks of heartwood to top it off-