The old man's face has been impassive: he doesn't look surprised or disturbed to hear that Joe is newly free of jail, but as soon as "mentions friend, the impassivity vanishes. This friend… is she a gardener, perhaps?" Joe grins.
No, she's a painter… though she does take good care of her dandelions!"
The other frowns.
"She doesn't have anything to do with digging or cultivation then?"
"Nope," and suddenly he hears Kerewin telling the dream that came with Tahoro Ruku,
"Keria! Keria!" she says again, "bloody strange way to end a dream eh?"
"She had a dream of being told to dig. Dig something, she didn't know what," he says slowly.
The old man leans forward a little, stabbing the air with his pipe.
"Ah!" he says, his eyes very bright, "pardon this discourtesy, this curiosity… but is there someone close to you who might be called a stranger?"
And how the hell would he know this?
Joe shivers. "Yes," hesitantly, "my son. I went to jail for beating him up." He darts a look at the old man. "I hurt him badly and they, the court, you know the welfare people, have taken him off me. I'm not even allowed to see him… but you could call him a stranger."
Understatement of the year, Ngakau.
"I mean, I know him, I've known him for four years, but he wasn't mine to begin with, and his background is a mystery. No-one knows his name or where he came from. He was too little to let us know when we found him, and besides, he can't talk." Or do anything much now, he thinks, his heart aching.
It is long seconds before he dares take another look at the old man. He is smiling with delight it seems, but tears are squeezing past his shut eyes. For Himi? thinks Joe in astonishment, but then the man says,
"Well, Joseph of sorrows, man from the east coast, when you are old you cry easy. You are young, your tears will keep. You may even find that you needn't weep, for this strange friend and your lost hurt son. If I'm given time, I'll find out for you, but now I must talk, for a long time, uninterruptedly."
Joe nods to him, Yes, I understand.
Tiaki Mira is greyfaced, and the lines about his mouth and eyes are eaten in sharp and dark against the pallid skin. Pained and dying.
But he is chuckling to himself, saying, "E kui, how could I have guessed such a riddle as that? Stranger and digger and broken man all in one. All in one… how could I know? I was just looking for one of them-"
He sighs, and looks at Joe.
"It began with my grandmother. O, it had been in existence a long time before that, but it needed someone with my grandmother's foresight and intelligence, and sense of what was proper, and I say it, fanaticism, for it to continue. Otherwise it would have become,
even in her time, just one more piece of lost knowledge. Another legend. One more of the old people's dreaming lies. But my grandmother heard, and searched, and found, and stayed as a guardian. She got herself a husband, and bred of him two children. None of them, husband or children, were as strong as she was. They all died before her, and because she had these strange skills, she knew they would die, and she didn't tell any of them. When my mother died, my father sent word to my grandmother, and she came to get me.
"I was ten years old, a smart child. I'd been brought up to speak English. I even thought in English. I still can… they spoke Maori on the farm sometimes, but they were no longer Maori. They were husks, aping the European manners and customs. Maori on the outside, with none of the heart left. One cannot blame them. Maori were expected to become Europeans in those days. It was thought that the Maori could not survive, so the faster they become Europeans the better for everyone, nei?"
The old eyes are as blank of sympathy as a hawk's, watching fiercely for any sign of agreement.
Joe stares unwaveringly back.
The kaumatua lowers his glare.
"My grandmother was not like that. The only European thing about her was her hat… ahh, the hats she used to wear! Great wheels covered with fruit, with birds, with all manner of wax fakery. Stuck with steel pins like daggers… ahh, her hats…" shaking his head, "but aside from those hats, she was one of the old people. She didn't wear shoes, and her feet had soles as hard as leather. She was tall, taller than I am, and heavy with muscle and fat. A big woman, a very big woman… she had a disease in her private parts, and her smell was offensive. Her hair was rusty black, and her teeth were huge, like a horse's. She stood in the doorway, and called to me, 'Mokopuna! Tamaiti!' and I was terrified, and squashed myself in by my father lest she seize me, and maybe devour me. I was a smart child, but I imagined too much… she knelt in the door, and tears streamed down her face. 'Come to me!' she called, 'o little child, come to me! I have such a need for you!' And she called and wept until I was no longer afraid, because how could someone who needed you so much harm you?
"I went into her arms, and she hugged me tightly, and then she stood up, and with her great hard hand, smacked me round the ears. 'Next time, come at the first call,' she said, and I was dazed and confused. Such a mixture… I learned, over the next twenty years, that she could be as tender as any person born, and as hard as stone. She was herself, and a very strange woman indeed. I was lonely, too much by myself as a child, and more lonely and even more by myself as a young man. She perceived this, and judged the exact time I could no longer endure the vigil and the learning
she imposed on me. Then she gave me a handful of money, a literal handful of gold sovereigns, and her hand was large, remember.
"And she said, 'Go away, learn some limits of yourself. Learn to enjoy all that towns and people can offer you. Get married if you must. But when I send for you, come back!' By then I had learned to obey her least word without hesitation. She was a terrifying old woman, and she had more knowledge than any one person should have.
"I went, and I found I was a stranger wherever I went. Women were afraid of me. I was too serious for the men to find me a good companion. I drank and learned to dislike drinking. I took to smoking, and enjoyed that. I went to bed with whores and easy women, and found my imagination and the blurred pictures I had retained from childhood were more vivid that what occurred. I read a lot. I listened a lot. Then I came back to my grandmother, and returned to her seventeen gold sovereigns. I didn't say much about what I had done, and she didn't ask at all.
"Since then I have left this place one time only. That was two years ago, when I became ill with phlegm in my chest… it wasn't the illness that drove me away, but fear that I would die before the people I was waiting for arrived, digger and stranger and broken man. I made a deal with a lawyer in Durville, that is the town nearest here… a strange deal he called it, but an acceptable one. I made a will, which is unsigned as yet, with no beneficiary, yet. I left with the lawyer a complicated design which I said I would draw over the name of the beneficiary and my own name on my copy of the will, so he would know I had completed it with a sound mind, without being under duress. I told him if he never received the will, if I died too soon, he must hold the land in trust, and find a suitable person… but I didn't think that would happen, even then. The lawyer directed me to a doctor, and the doctor healed the lung disease, and then, days later, I returned home.
"My grandmother died nearly forty years ago, and she died hard. She whispered to me, before she choked, that I must wait until the stranger came home, or until the digger began the planting, or until the broken man was found and healed. Then they could bear my charge. They could keep the watch. They could decide the next step on the way… she instructed me to dispose of her as I told you. She said if I deserted this place, the land would curse me beyond my death. 'Keep watch!' she cried to me, 'Keep watch as I have taught you! While you watch, it will be safe, and when your watch is done, if you have kept faith with me, it will be safe…' she pleaded in the end, when her mind snapped, pleaded with me, which she had not done since that long-ago day she collected me from the farm.