Witi Ihimaera - The Thrill of Falling - Stories

Please don’t think less of me that I lied to him. I wanted to be an obedient and dutiful grandson and to serve ’Oro, like one of those altar boys at church. My imagination was always playing tricks and sometimes I did sense voices and hear the sound of distant Tahitian drums.

However, puberty kicked in and I realised that all my pretence had led Koro to believe that the ancestors really were speaking through me.

If that was happening, then I must have a particular destiny, right?

And that should be nurtured, right?

Wrong.

There was a whole lot of life out there.

I started to rebel, not necessarily against Koro, but certainly against the strictures of small town life in Uawa. In this I was aided by my Uncle Bo who liked to press beer on me and my cousins Seth, Abe and Spade, who, despite my gangling appearance and asthma, soon had me shoplifting with them. I wanted to be cool, I wanted to belong, so while I spoke nicely to Mr Merton in the dairy they ducked behind him and raided the cash register or took cigarettes and sweets.

Very soon, like them, I was skipping school and rebelling against anything that I was told to do. Koro soon noticed. He knew what Uncle Bo was up to, and he grew concerned for me because he’d always harboured a hope that I’d become a lawyer and, maybe, a judge. ‘They’re the ones who have the power,’ he told me, ‘not a Maori Land Court clerk.’

Yeah, well, I wasn’t the only one with daydreams obviously. Becoming a lawyer was way off base.

Inevitably, there came a time when I wasn’t as interested in his Sunday afternoon lessons and, in the end, he rapped my skull with his knuckles. ‘Knock, knock, is anybody in the whare? Aue, te hoha o te tamaiti. You’re getting to be like your ratbag cousins. And if you don’t watch out you’ll end up in prison like your uncle.’ Indeed, he became embarrassed by the regularity with which he was asked to intercede on our behalf by Maori wardens who didn’t want us to get police records. ‘When you appear before the judge,’ he growled, ‘don’t tell them who your grandfather is, otherwise people will know that we’re related.’

Everybody began to ask, ‘Whatever happened to Little Tu? Where’s that nice boy gone to?’ They commiserated with Mum and Dad: ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a phase that young boys go through. He’ll be back.’

Oh yeah? How easy it is to be a good boy one minute and a bad boy the next.

Egged on by my cousins, I set fires in people’s letterboxes, shoplifted, broke into houses and cars, and I took to regularly jumping off the main Uawa bridge, scaring people as they drove across it. I was further encouraged by Seth, Abe and Spade; I was such a trier, probably hoping to show my cuzzies that despite my infirmities I merited their attention. They realised I had no fear and, hey, maybe I might actually kill myself in my jumps and they would inherit all Koro’s money. And anyway they could make some dollars out of my foolhardiness.

I was too innocent — or dumb — to disagree when they suggested that I turn my jumping into a money-making operation. They created traffic jams until enough cars had stopped and then pointed me out as I stood on the railing of the bridge. ‘Stop him, please, he’s going to kill himself!’

There was always some heroic old man who would come running and yelling, ‘Don’t do it, son!’ and try to talk me out of it. I would pretend to go along with him but, at the last moment, I would trip …

And that feeling … and all of a sudden, my lungs clearing. Then the clarity as if … somewhere I would find … perfection.

Then, oh, for one moment that sense of weightlessness, of defying gravity before the thrill of falling.

The audience would appear at the railing, ashen-faced, to see if I had survived.

What was I doing? Sitting at the bottom of the river, ho hum, fiddle dee dee, giving them a heart attack.

I would arise like a merman and wave, and my cousins would go cap in hand to ask for money from the now applauding drivers. It was a scam, sure, but my cousins made a lot of money (I got a cut, so I wasn’t entirely blameless) until, one day, Koro happened to be in one of the cars. He witnessed the whole charade and watched me jump off the bridge. By the time I reached the road, Seth, Abe and Spade had taken off.

Koro clipped me over the ear. ‘Are you a muttonhead or what?’

I was thirteen when Uncle Tu-Bad was released from prison, early, for good behaviour.

All the family welcomed him back except Koro. When he knocked on the door of the homestead, Koro said to Nan Esther, ‘Tell him I’m not ready to forgive him.’

His response was stern and implacable but Uncle Tu-Bad took it well. ‘I deserve it,’ he said.

We all thought that Uncle Tu-Bad would revert to his old ways and resume his plantation activities but he had a few surprises for us.

One day, he really surprised me. I was sitting at the back of his place, smoking weed with Seth, Abe and Spade, when he discovered us. I thought he’d be okay with that but, instead, he hauled Seth off his arse and slapped him over the head. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, boy?’

He didn’t like the idea of Seth introducing me to drugs of any kind.

‘Not Little Tu,’ he warned Seth. ‘Apart from anything else, Pa would kill me if he found out Little Tu was smoking dope.’

Then he looked into my eyes and ruffled my hair. ‘You stay away from this stuff.’

That didn’t stop my cousins and me from running away from him, laughing our heads off. But I’ve often wondered whether they liked me at all. Maybe not. I think to them I was a follower, somebody they could order around.

Before anybody could stop us, we’d snatched a little old lady’s car while she was in the post office and went hooning around Uawa in it. Then we were squealing down the old wharf to do rubber-burning wheelies at the end.

Not for long. Uncle Tu-Bad must have rung Koro because they both arrived before the cops could put out an alert on the car.

‘Thanks, son,’ Koro said to Uncle Tu-Bad. They shook hands and then Koro grabbed him in a tight embrace. ‘I’m glad you’re home among your people.’

Uncle Tu-Bad took Seth, Abe and Spade with him; Koro hauled me into his car and we got out of there. ‘Why are you such an idiot?’ he yelled at me. ‘You’ll never get to be a lawyer the way you’re going.’ He drove me home to Mum and Dad’s place. As we went through the township, he pulled his hat down over his face so that nobody would recognise him. I was a bit aggrieved by his action.

‘Koro, I don’t think I can be a lawyer or whatever you want me to be. P-p-please give up on me.’

He looked at me, astonished, and almost crashed the car. ‘How can I do that?’ he asked. ‘You’re the one whose name is Tupaea.’

I pleaded with him. ‘Why should his name make any difference?’

My koro stopped the car. He thought I was stupid. Didn’t I know? He was always assuming that I knew things and that I never had to be told. What was I? A mind reader?

When he finally answered my question, his voice sounded the way it did whenever he was chanting karakia: hushed, focused, as if he was in the presence of the ancestors.

‘Giving you Tupaea’s name is like investing you with his spirit. Haven’t you learnt anything?’

He knocked on my head again. ‘Somewhere inside you his mauri resides and, pae kare, boy, one of these days it’s coming out, whether you like it or not.’

‘We were very distressed.’