"I have remained, and kept watch here. Many times, I have cursed bitterly, because I am doomed to live alone and lonely, and to what end? To keep guard over something that modern people deem superstitious nonsense. Something modern people decry as an illusion. And yet, forty years after the death of my grandmother, I am visited by the person who bears in his heart two of the people my grandmother foretold. And he is the broken man… is it not strange?"
The soft high voice has been hypnotic. The old-fashioned phrases slide easily into Joe's ears. He has been staring, eyes fixed on the fierce sharpened face. He hasn't been aware of thinking anything while the voice told the tale.
Told what? he asks himself, told me nothing. A tale of a lonely old man, warped and defeated by a domineering old woman… but he says,
"Yes, very strange, quietly.
The old man chuckles. It has a breathless sound to it, as though there is not enough air left in his lungs to support mirth.
"And you think I have gone off my head with the pressure of loneliness and the years, eh? Or maybe you think I was like that to begin with? hell!"
Joe looks at the table, blushing. He studies his soup cup; the mouthful left in the bottom has a scum on top, with golden globules of fat studded over its surface. He doesn't say anything. The old man wheezes again.
"Small wonder!" he adds, "I think I would too, if I were you. But let me tell you some more… o Joseph, would you have some tobacco with you? See," taking out his battered tin, and holding it out open, "mine is nearly finished. Like me." Cackle, cackle.
No-one can laugh at their madness if they're mad, can they? Joe stands clumsily.
"I've got some smokes in my pack, I'll get them."
He fetches the two cigars and places them on the kaumatua's lap.
"Anana!" he says with surprise and delight. "These were the kind I smoked first of all… what a kind gift."
He's peeling the wrapping off one with shaky fingers.
"My friend Kerewin left those for me. She left them with my relations in the town I came from, with a letter. Well, it isn't really a letter…."
The old man nods.
"Tell me soon, if there is time… but first I must finish what I have to tell you."
He lights the cigar carefully, and breathes out smoke with a deep sigh of satisfaction.
"It is odd how the mouth and nose remember, nei? Well, let me see how to reassure you… I think the heart of the matter is that I was waiting for you, the broken man. Or one of the other two People, right?"
To Joe's nod, he answers,
"I have been here for fifty years, no, nearly sixty years, and very few people have come during that time. There was a sawmill here at one time, but they quickly cut down all the trees, and it ceased to operate before my grandmother died. After her death, there have come pig and deer shooters. Once, three men, looking for gold. Some survey people. I watched what they did, and where they went. I followed them secretly. And never did any of them fit the descriptions. They were all whole people, rough strong ordinary men. There was one man who was very different, and for a while-"
For a minute, the old man muses, his eyes clouded. Then he shakes his head, and his eyes become bright and aware again.
"When I came back from the town, after preparing this will of mine, I didn't come back alone. There was a man with me, who wanted to die in peace. He had been in hospital, in the bed next to mine, and he had said this, and I invited him to come here to die. That is his picture," gesturing to the photograph of the young white man, "and his name was Timon. He was a singer, he said. He had no family. His wife was dead, and his child gone too, he said, and soon they would all meet again. He seemed very happy at that thought. Though it may have been the drugs. He injected himself with them many times a day, and he was always resigned and placid afterwards. One day, a week after he arrived, I found him dead outside the door, the needle still in his arm. He looked so peaceful that I wept. I stopped the bus the following day, and told the driver, and later that afternoon, the police arrived and took him away."
A puff of smoke.
The old man says,
"He was a beautiful man, or he had been beautiful. He had a marvellous voice, that even in his pain could ring and soar. He didn't say very much about himself, only that he had been a singer, and that he lived with a lady old enough to be his mother. Those were his words. 'She's old enough to be my mother, and mother of god, she's lovely. I mean, she was. She wasn't lovely when she died.' He cried sometimes for her and his child. He cried at other times because he said they were all far from home. And sometimes, he cried for me. 'A wait I could sing of,' he said, 'the wait of a hero indeed… may it finish soon, sir, very soon.' He never called me anything but Sir, although I had given him my name and circumstances."
He shrugs.
"The day before he died, he sang a song for me. I don't know what the language was, but the melody has haunted me since. That day he gave me the photograph. He had had it taken before he went into hospital, he said, because he thought he was going to die there, and he wanted to send it to someone, a woman I think, as a memento of him. But he said he wanted to give me all there was to give, and that was all there was, his song and his picture. I wish I could remember enough of his song to give it to you. It is a shame I cannot keep his song going." He drew a last inhalation of smoke and coughed as he breathed
out.
"I have spent too much time on Timon the singer… but he was the only different man of those few who came here. Besides, he died… Two nights ago, a green gecko lay on my bed. That night a huhu stayed on the window until I slept. My grandmother has been talking a lot to me. I cast twigs to see what I should do and where I should go. One broke. The other found it at a place I had designated the Three Mile beach. I knew you had come at last. Not before time!" and he laughs again.
I wish he wouldn't, thinks Joe. It's too harsh. It sounds as though he's going to go at any moment. He looks as though he might too.
He says, to cover his dismay,
"You are a keeper, you say. And I am the person who was foretold, to keep watch after you. What do I look after?"
"I will show it to you very soon… but you must know what it is before I show you. Otherwise it will seem to be shadows in the water…."
He stands, bending up slowly from the waist, standing piece by piece as it were, chest, shoulders, neck, head. He looks at Joe for a long time, and he doesn't say anything.
"Maybe I can't put it in the proper words," he says finally.
He bows his head.
"I was told about it, taught about it, for a long time before I met it. I was prepared, and aue! there isn't time to prepare you. I think it best to say it bluntly. I guard a stone that was brought on one of the great canoes. I guard the canoe itself. I guard the little god that came with the canoe. The god broods over the mauriora, for that is what the stone is home to, but the mauri is distinct and great beyond the little god… the canoe rots under them both… aie, he is a little god, no-one worships him any longer. But he hasn't died yet. He has his hunger and his memories and his care to keep him tenuously alive. If you decide to go, he will be all there is left as a watcher, as a guardian."
The old voice limps and stutters. The kaumatua does not look up. There is a shudder running constantly through him now.