Witi Ihimaera - The Thrill of Falling - Stories

The lessons began when he told me the worship of ’Oro became so widespread it reached the extremities of the Maohi nation, even to Aotearoa. So let me set the scene a bit with the day declining into darkness, and the sound of the sea soughing and sucking at the sand.

‘From around 700 AD,’ Koro began, ‘the time when Aotearoa began to be colonised by Maohi from Tahiti, all our tribal histories tell of journeys back and forth between New Zealand to Hawaiki. ’Oro’s priests were among that number, travelling the pathways illuminated in the heavens by the stars, not only to Aotearoa but also to other islands of the Fa’atau Aroha, the alliance of nations which worshipped him.’

Mum and Nan Esther were laughing in the kitchen and Dad was chopping wood out the back, but, already, I was putty in Koro’s hands.

‘They came in slim double canoes, and such pahi could make voyages of up to twenty days without provisioning. They were designed to skim the waves, their sails full before the wind. They would come down from Hawaiki to Rarotonga and thence to Aotearoa, which was in the direction of the morning sun.’

He went out onto the verandah to show me; I joined him there. ‘The priests would have come from that direction,’ he said; the sun was high above the brilliant ocean. ‘However, at some time in the fifteenth century, a comet plunged into seas just south of Aotearoa, creating an immense wall of water that struck the east coast.’ Koro made a chopping gesture with his hands. ‘Ka kotia te taitapu ki Hawaiki. The sacred seaway of the priests, especially from Hawaiki to Aotearoa and back, was cut.’

‘But ’Oro didn’t forget us, eh,’ I said.

Koro put an arm around my shoulder. ‘No, mokopuna, he didn’t.’

That evening, as we were driving home, Dad looked across at me and grinned. ‘How was it today?’ he asked.

I looked up at the evening sky. ‘G-g-good,’ I answered. There were so many stars up there, eavesdropping from heaven. Good? It was better than that.

Dad was in a mischievous mood. He pretended he was holding a microphone. ‘Hello, Little Tu, are you receiving, over?’

Mum scolded him. ‘Wally,’ she said, ‘have more respect.’

Even the spring, with pollen aggravating my asthma and turning it into severe bronchitis, and keeping me in bed, couldn’t stop the momentum of Koro’s storytelling. When he found me miserably trying to breathe in a room hazy with a humidifier he would kiss me on the forehead, and prop up pillows to support me. ‘Are your Maohi ancestors speaking to you today?’ He would sit behind me, lift up my pyjama top and start massaging my back. Even though I sometimes protested, ‘Puh-lease, Koro’, he would carry on regardless.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he would ask grumpily if I tried to pull the pyjama top back across my skinniness and poking-out ribs. ‘I’m your koro. Ever since you were a baby, looking after you has been my job.’

He would resume his lessons whether I wanted him to or not.

‘Our ancestor, the original Tupaea,’ he began one day, ‘must have been born in Hawaiki around 1720. That’s when the worship of ’Oro was at its height in Tahiti. The Maohi may have worshipped many gods but ’Oro displaced them all; he became not only their most powerful god but the one God, Te Atua. And the society of the Arioi had grown to thousands of acolytes, sailing in great fleets from place to place, dancing, singing and praising ’Oro.’

I submitted to Koro’s rubbing and massaging and his strong hands kneading and opening the cavity in my ribcage so that my lungs would expand. Sometimes it hurt.

‘The most beautiful, the most sacred among the Arioi was Tupaea,’ Koro continued. ‘As a boy he was consecrated to ’Oro. He quickly became high priest and guardian of all the arts of ’Oro and the Maohi.’

‘What did he look like?’ I asked.

‘This is difficult to even imagine, but our ancestor was considered to be without physical flaw. He was tall and handsome, and he was also blessed with great intellectual powers and warrior skills. To mark his status he was given a special tattoo that radiated from the base of his spine, spreading and curving around the hips, and meeting again in the small of his back. One of these days, mokopuna, you’ll be as handsome and clever as him.’

Me? Dream on, Koro. And then he hit me sharply, ouch, to dislodge the phlegm that clogged my lungs.

But you can understand, can’t you, why Tupaea filled my daydreams?

On those infrequent days when I was well enough to go to school, instead of seeing cars and buses go by, I began to imagine, instead, an Arioi faery fleet, led by Tupaea.

The most famous waka was Hotu or Sea-swell, decorated with matiti, long pennants of many colours, and mou, small circular mat sails attached to the tops of the masts. Bunches of feathers tipped each mast. Behind Hotu would have been a flotilla of sixty to seventy waka, carrying up to seven hundred Arioi.

‘The Arioi,’ Koro said, ‘drew large gatherings wherever they went, and Tupaea never disappointed the waiting worshippers. Hotu and the fleet would come sailing out of the sun like brightly skimming birds. Each waka had a raised platform on which the Arioi danced. To the sound of song, conch shell, flutes and drums, the fleet would manouevre through the sparkling emerald sea, the breaking surf. Then the celebrations would begin: feasting, dancing, singing and exhibitions of athletic prowess that went on into the night.’

No wonder that, while the rest of the class got on with Four-Eyes Wilson’s English class, I was locked into my ancestor’s story.

But in the 1750s Hawaiki came under attack from nearby Porapora. Alas, the God ’Oro may have been above all others, but humankind, even in Tahiti, was driven by hubris.

‘Nothing could save the sacred marae,’ Koro told me. ‘Therefore, in the middle of the night, when the battle was at its highest peak, Tupaea rescued from Taputapuatea the sacred to’o in which ’Oro resided, a cylinder sheathed in red feathers. Tupaea also took the royal loincloth that symbolised ’Oro’s connection with the children of men. While Tupaea’s faithful guards fought a desperate rear-guard action, he escaped with the cylinder on Hotu and fled to Papara, the royal seat of Purea, the greatest ariki then living among the Maohi. She was regarded as the queen of Tahiti. Safely esconced, he became high priest and adviser to Purea and her husband.’

Koro showed me a small framed portrait of Purea. She was tall, beautiful and her curly abundant hair was bound with a piece of red tapa decorated with tropical feathers and flowers. Beneath a cloak of regal red she wore an ankle-length pare of white tapa patterned in yellow.

‘But there was one more task to do. A new marae for ’Oro had to be built. “Would you raise such a marae, o Queen?” Tupaea asked. She agreed, saying, “Let us call it Mahaiatea, and let it be the greatest temple compound in all the Maohi nation.” Once it was completed, the God was taken within.’

While Four-Eyes Wilson droned on, I liked to sketch Mahaiatea in my school book. I drew a pyramid with eleven large steps leading up to a sundial. I sketched bird-like figures, heralds of ’Oro, guarding the pyramid. On the middle of the top platform I drew the imposing figure of ’Oro, carved in stone, overlooking his earthly dominion.

The ancient Egyptians may have had their pyramids, and the Aztecs their great complexes and temples to the sun god.

We had Mahaiatea.

Of course my pretence couldn’t last.

One day when Koro asked me the usual question, ‘Are your Maohi ancestors speaking to you today?’, and although I answered yes, I had a panic attack.