Annie Proulx - Barkskins

The small ship, manned by tattooed Maori sailors, entered the great blue harbor at twilight. “Would it not be best to have a good night’s rest and meet with Mr. Oval tomorrow?” asked Dieter, and Lavinia nodded, gazing down at the flashing paddles of men and women in carved canoes all around them. But Mr. Oval was waiting on the dock, a tall rumpled fellow with auburn hair and clear blue eyes.

“So pleased, so delighted,” he murmured, kissing Lavinia’s salt-chapped hand and shaking both of Dieter’s. “I thought I would see you settled into Fern House. I have arranged a very simple dinner at my table this evening so we might sketch out a plan. If you are not too exhausted by the journey? Planning is important as a month is not nearly enough time to show you the wonders of New Zealand.”

They went directly to his house in a garden of trees.

“What a majestic view,” said Lavinia, admiring the harbor painted umber and violet with sunset dregs. A Maori servant — one of the slaves? — showed them into a sparsely furnished room, the walls melting away in shadow. Candles were the only illumination, which Dieter found very pleasant. He disliked both oil and gas lamps. A small round table was set for three. The servant brought in green-lipped mussels, poured a chilled white hock.

“Mr. Oval, delicious — it is reminiscent of German wines,” said Dieter, wondering how it was cooled. Did they have ice or snow in this place? He thought not.

“It is a German wine — imported, as all our wine. I doubt this climate could support vineyards, but some think otherwise. I had twenty cases of Bordeaux shipped a decade ago and it has taken too long a time to recover from the journey — really still not drinkable. I’m told reds can take twenty years or more. But the whites have been good and I’ve developed rather a preference for them, or so I think. To our coming journey together,” he said and he raised his glass, smiled at Lavinia.

The mussel plates disappeared, replaced by a savory pie of the famous Bluff oysters.

“Tomorrow you can rest and get settled, and on Thursday I think it would be advantageous for us to sail to the Coromandel peninsula, where horses will carry us into the forests. Half a century ago horses were unknown here but they came in with the missionaries and the Maori took to them. Everyone rides. I understand, Mrs. Breitsprecher, that you especially wish to see the kauri. Did you bring riding clothes?” he asked Lavinia.

“No,” said Lavinia. “I haven’t been on a horse since I was a girl. It didn’t occur to me to pack riding clothes.”

“I think we can arrange a habit for you. My wife, of course, rides bareback. And in a pinch you can always wear men’s trousers — women here on the frontier of civilization are not fashionable. If you are sanguine in temperament I feel we shall do well.”

Lavinia’s interest was piqued at the thought of an Englishwoman riding bareback and tried to imagine what such a woman would be like — an extravagant hoyden, no doubt. And was she herself expected to wear trousers? Was that what their host was suggesting?

She kept her jaw clenched against falling agape when Mrs. Oval entered the room. Nashley Oval stood up. Dieter rose, smiling. The woman who came toward them was tall and shapely, beautiful in balance and bone. She wore a costume of orange cotton skirt fringed with feathers, and on top a long garment of supple flax that left one shoulder bare. A river of black hair streamed to her waist. Her chin was tattooed with a curious design and a delicate tattooed line enhanced her shapely lips. Lavinia realized with a shock that she was a Maori.

“Welcome, welcome to our land,” she said in perfect upper-class English, her soft voice dropping at the end of her sentence.

“May I present my wife, Ahorangi Oval. Dear heart, these are our guests, Lavinia and Dieter Breitsprecher, with whom we shall travel in your forests beginning on Thursday.”

“I am so pleased,” said Mrs. Oval in a soft fluid voice that reminded Dieter of a pigeon cote. “There is much to show you and I hope you will come to love this place as we do. We have learned about you both from our common friend, Mr. Marsh, whom we met in Italy several years ago.”

Great heavens, thought Lavinia, Mr. Marsh again! He plays an invisible role in our lives.

• • •

A broad path climbed gradually up toward the forests. Ahorangi Oval, again in her orange skirt and flax blouse, sat astride a nervous bay mare dancing and shifting about. Lavinia, feeling constricted and slightly tortured in an ill-fitting riding habit, was on a tractable piebald mare. Dieter on a rangy gelding, and Mr. Oval on his Thoroughbred Queenie, rode behind the two women, talking of Mr. Marsh. Two bareback Maori men — the brothers of Ahorangi — rode in front, turning and calling out comments in good English. The servant and a packhorse laden with full kete baskets followed the party.

“You speak English very well,” said Lavinia to Ahorangi.

“Yes, thank you. I went to school in London,” she said.

At noon the brothers reined up near a stout tree with a self-important air. “A cabbage tree,” said Ahorangi. “All parts are good to eat, we can thatch roofs, make our rain capes. It gives good medicines. It shows itself as different from other trees, so we plant them sometimes to mark a notable place. Let us have lunch here with the ti kouka. ”

• • •

The path rose and they entered a totara grove, the elegant trees rising high, showing needled spikes and red berries.

“This,” said Ahorangi, gesturing with her expressive hands, “is the tree we esteem above all others.”

“Even above the kauri?” asked Lavinia.

“Yes. The kauri is important and we revere it, but it is whitemen who love it to the exclusion of other trees. For them it is the ideal timber tree. But it is the totara with whom our lives and religion are even more deeply entwined. Like kauri, it is one of the great chieftain trees — also rimu and kahikatea and rata. Those are our royal trees.”

“They remind me somewhat of yews,” said Dieter, looking at the totara, “though they are much taller. Very tall indeed.”

“Oh yes,” said Mr. Oval. “They are a much-favored tree, both by the Maori and whites. The Maori prefer totara for carvings and war canoes, houses and so much else — framing timbers, even. The fruit is tasty and plentiful, a bark decoction controls fever. White men like it for its rot-resistant timber.”

Ahorangi led Lavinia to a flounced rimu with drooping fronds. “This is my favorite,” she said. “I love the rimu, but so do the timbermen.” She touched a dangle of green. “The botanists say it is a pine, but it is different. It has no cones like European pines, but a good kind of berry. Kakapo — hear them? — like the berries very much.”

In fact all the previous night in the Fern House, Lavinia had heard a smothered thumping sound like someone dropping cannonballs from the trees. Now she heard it again. Ahorangi told her it was the mating call of the kakapo, a fat puffy parrot that could not fly but spent its time in the rimu gorging on fruit—“usually they make this sound only at night, but I think this one may be rather ardent.” Ahorangi touched Lavinia’s arm and with a sad half smile said, “I must ask you something. I am afraid for the rimu. My husband says you are an important lady who owns a timber company and that you come here to look at the trees with a thought to cut them. I hope you will love our trees and not cut them. They are our lives. To live happily in this place we need the trees. I am afraid for them. You will not cut them, please?”

Lavinia said nothing, and in a few minutes Ahorangi understood the silence and walked back to her husband and brothers. For the rest of the day she stayed with them and made no effort to speak again with Lavinia.