Witi Ihimaera - The Thrill of Falling - Stories

For six days, we of Uawa were determined to show our greatest hospitality. Great feasts were organised for Tupaea, together with marvellous entertainments, reaching far into the night. Of course, his goblins and tricksters were sometimes like irritating children, but we put up with them for the privilege of having Tupaea in our midst.

He was the guest of honour at Te Rawheoro, the great Maori house of learning in Uawa. Can you imagine the scene, Little Tu? Great crowds gathered to greet him, some having travelled from other tribes to the north and to the south. Sometimes, sessions were limited as tohunga and other sacred priests met him in whare wananga to try to close that gap of three hundred years. We invited Tupaea to travel throughout Uawa, and he consented. We were moved by his ancient tales of Hawaiki and of the current politics and culture of the homeland we had left many centuries before. He thrilled us with his stories of Mahaiatea and his queen, Purea. Wherever he went he was treated with great reverence. Valuable cloaks and ancient ornaments were given to him to take back as tribute to ’Oro’s marae and its sovereign lady.

Why? We knew it was not his destiny to stay.

There was one inspiring event when Tupaea escaped the rain by talking to us within a high-arched cavern. Thenceforward, the cave has always been known as Te Ana no Tupaea. Even today, when you visit it, people say that if you put your ear to the walls you can still catch past echoes of the liturgies of ’Oro which he intoned and the blessings that he gave to the people.

It is written that during the farewell arose the sound of acclamation, a thunderous haka and women in karanga.

‘Haere atu ra e te rangatira!’ the women called. ‘Hoki atu koe ki a Hawaiki nui, Hawaiki roa, Hawaiki pamamao! Return safely to our ancient homeland, Hawaiki, the proud land, the long land, the land far away.’

Children were named after Tupaea. Places were called after him.

Mokopuna, he begat our dynasty in Uawa.

Ka haruru te moana!

The sea mounted, the tides rolled

Ka haruru te whenua

Thunder roared across the land

Hail to thee, Arioi, hail!

I turned seventeen and, one day, when I was taking Koro to catch his plane to Gisborne, he gave me a quizzical look.

‘You once asked me, when you were a boy, what our ancestor looked like.’ We were standing at the gate before he boarded. ‘Looked in the mirror lately?’

I should have been more self-aware but, yes, I realised what he meant. I’d now reached my adult height and for some time had wondered why everyone around me had shrunk: Koro, Mum and even Dad; I’d filled out too. I was in my final year at Wellington High where, wonder of wonders, something clicked into place: from being a trier I’d come through to the A team and my grades had improved as well. If only things were like that at home.

Koro was a mindreader. ‘Be kinder to your parents,’ he said.

‘Dad’s all right,’ I answered. ‘It’s Mum who’s a pain in the arse.’

‘I won’t have you using that kind of language,’ he reprimanded. ‘And you mustn’t say those kinds of things about May. She’s worried about you all these years and, now that you’re becoming an adult, she finds it hard to let go. We all do. You may have grown up, but to us you’re still that little baby in the incubator struggling to breathe.’

‘Could you tell her to cut me some slack?’

‘Well, maybe she would if you weren’t so secretive. Where do you go when you sneak out the window at nights?’

Uh oh, so Mum knew. And was I about to tell Koro, with his old-fashioned morality and attitudes towards modesty and … everything?

‘Perhaps if you asked her nicely,’ Koro said, ‘and told her where you were going, she might say okay.’

I did; she didn’t.

One thing was for sure: the dream that I go to university seemed possible after all. I wasn’t unenthusiastic and, as Dad used to say, ‘It beats working on the buses.’

Mum started to give me a lot of unsubtle hints. ‘I was speaking to Mrs Samasoni in community services and she says that your mate Alapati [alias Bilbo] and some of the other boys at Wellington High are going to Victoria University next year.’ Or, ‘One of the medics, Dr Granger, you know him, he tells me there’s an open day at the university next weekend. Do you want to hop along and take a look?’

One afternoon, I caught her on the telephone to Uawa. She had the decency to blush before saying, ‘Koro wants to speak to you,’ and beating a hasty exit.

‘Is that you, Little Tu? Your mother tells me you want to do law at university. I’m proud of you for making that decision. Don’t worry about those application papers. I’ll get them for you and we can look at them together when I’m next in Wellington, eh?’

Once upon a time I’d have had a panic attack and reached for my inhaler. Although I felt that Mum and Koro were ganging up on me behind my back, most of all, I was glad that I was fulfilling Koro’s wishes, even if I wasn’t sure that they were my own.

I was also loving Jean-Luc’s gym, and closing on my friend Thierry.

‘You start gymnastics later than most,’ Jean-Luc said, ‘but you already have un physique d’ange when you come to me, so that makes up for lost time.’

It wouldn’t be long before I would join Thierry on the rings. Meantime, for preparation, Jean-Luc put me through sessions at the pool close by the gym. From the low dive board he had me practising pikes and tucks into the water. He was really firing my core but ‘Shows promise’ was all he would say after each session.

Shows promise? I showed much more than that! And I was earning my body shape and mid-section as Jean-Luc sculpted me with his punishing exercises.

‘Do you know how to carve an elephant out of stone?’ he asked me one day, as I was sweating with the exertion. ‘It is not only achieved by chipping the elephant out of the granite but sometimes by chipping away everything that is not the elephant.’ I think he meant that as a compliment.

Along with my physical reshaping came something else. Jean-Luc had mentioned that physical perfection was not enough. What was my essence? What was my personality? What set me apart? Certainly my self-confidence was developing and, with it, fearlessness. Is that what Jean-Luc was looking for?

Here’s one example of how it showed itself.

There was always rivalry between Wellington High boys and Scots College boys, not only in sports events but also out of school.

One day, Thierry, Horse and Bilbo and I discovered that a bunch of Scots guys were meeting every Saturday to show off by jumping from a superstructure of four levels and zigzag pathways that took you down to the harbour, into the water below. ‘Let’s go and spoil their party,’ I said to Thierry.

From that day, a duel developed as we challenged the others to jump from the lowest level and then by degrees upped the ante by ascending for other jump-offs from higher points; if you were the last man jumping, you were the winner. Passers-by liked to watch and applaud. After a while word got around and people came every weekend especially to watch.

Nobody from either school, however, had attempted to jump from the fourth level because it was set back from the other pathways. You would have to clear the three levels below by jumping out twice as far and, if you misjudged the circle of plungeable water below, splat. To make matters riskier, that circle of entry was not large — maybe three metres wide — and you couldn’t even see it from the top.