Draft of ‘Jerusalem Daybook 2’

When I wrote the first Jerusalem Daybook, the cold was my taipo . . . My feet are cold, my soul is sleeping. In the morning after Mass in June, the fog has only begun to rise above the trees, the sun shines as if through milk, and to walk on the frosty grass and mud is like walking on hot embers.

At Mass, Father Te Awhitu asked me to speak to the people. ‘To pray is to work,’ I said. ‘A man may seem to be doing nothing, but if he is praying then page 487 his prayer is work, karakia mo Te Atua. The soul is like a chicken inside the egg. It lives in darkness. It has never seen the sun. But at death the egg cracks and it comes out into the light of God. By praying, the chicken is able to push at its own shell, to help the work of God.

‘To receive the Body and Blood of Christ in Communion, to look after the poor man, to pray – these are three ways by which we join ourselves to Christ. Karaiti, the poor man, is Christ himself.’

Up at the house, the two hens and the rooster are digging for kai among the fallen leaves in front of the verandah. The Queen’s Birthday weekend visitors are gathered by the shrine. Steve brings in branches to feed the stove. He welcomes me with an arm full of branches.

I get into bed again, under a quilt, to thaw my feet. They hurt. They teach me that frost is real, that heat and cold both come from God. They teach me my body will die. They teach me something so simple that there are no words for it in the books. I say, ‘God’; but perhaps it is just that I am a man. The two facts are indistinguishable. This man is deaf, blind and dumb.

The teacher begins by saying, ‘Hot, cold; hot, cold.’ The Mass-book is too awkward for me. I have to learn my religion through my feet.

2

I think Gregg will be leaving us. Perhaps to go to Matakana Island. His rapport with the marae is good. He is patient and gentle. When I go away from Jerusalem, he stands in my shoes. This has been a great source of peace to me.

But it is the strongest who have to go, the ones who form the patterns of the earth in their bones. If Te Atua desires it, he will be the queen bee one day of another hive. There are few queen bees among nga mokai.

In Auckland he was the only one in the communal house who had a steady job. He was a good partner to Te Huinga, and learnt much of his improving Maoritanga from her. But when she was strong enough to stand on her own feet, she became restless and left him, rightly, I think, since she had other things to do.

I ask him – ‘What are your spiritual beliefs?’

‘Very unconscious,’ he replies. ‘I think I go quite blindly.’

‘Kei te pai. That is the best way to be, if you intend to be free.’

I will miss him near death. He is more a brother than a son.

3

Mike and Steve gave gone quietly down to catch eels. Steve held a candle and watched while Mike baited the hooks. The first eel he caught, Mike threw back for Manu.

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‘Who is Manu?’

‘He was a fisherman,’ Mike tells me, ‘he was the god of fishing.’

Perhaps he is our Tangaroa. The one I love. Whose speech is heard in the white plumes of breakers crashing on the black sand. The one who is for me the image of Te Ariki.

Sometimes they say, ‘Throw it back for koro.’ Koro is the taniwha, the water spirit, the guardian of this tribe of Te Hau. It is a term of love. He is our uncle and elder, the old river dragon.

But I think the sacrifice to Manu is the more correct one. If we do not respect the world of spirits, why should Te Atua give us eels to eat. The fat of the eel is good, even roasted in our rickety electric stove.

4

I say to Gerry, ‘Go back to the town soon. Get a house. Help the junkies who want to get off the junk.’

He is the man to do it. He has small use for drugs. He can hunt with running ulcers on his feet and a mind that is [. . . ?]. Now he has found his own normality.

I think he has the strength to put up with sudden police visits, visitors arriving stoned out of their minds, and the stupidity of those who ask, ‘Why do people use drugs?’

A devious, fatalistic, explosive kid. He rejoices when he blows the heads off possums with a ˑ22 rifle. The skins are nailed up on all our walls. His aggression will give him perseverance. Set a thief to catch a thief. Set a junkie to help a junkie. It is only commonsense, brother. They don’t avoid death on heroin by knowing mantras or believing in fables. They are like troops the man may find in the trench, not just when the sniper is located.

In town he was a boobhead. Here he became our family hunter, bringer home of meat, goat’s meat that tastes better than mutton.

Now I want him to hunt in a different way. To hunt and kill the inhibiting drugs that prevent so many from being truly militant. Even junkies have a few lies left for comfort. When the big lie is admitted that troubled creature, a free man, is born. Nobody will ever buy him again.

Gerry knows how to love. I will be sorry to see him go.

5

In New Plymouth, at David’s house, I have a dream. In the dream I have become a woman. My name is Deva. I am a daughter of the goddess Kali. Dressed in a stiff dancing costume, I squat on some temple steps, falling easily into the lotus position which I find impossible in my waking life.

Two large leaf-green scorpions move on the ground close to us. (The page 489 goddess Kali is beside me, and I lean my head against her cheek.) The scorpions alarm me. But I force myself to sit in meditation and let them walk over my face.

Waking up, I think, ‘Already I am a Christian and a Buddhist. Now I am becoming a Hindu.’

This dream has a great deal to do with the assumption of evils that one cannot change. Kali is the goddess of the future and also the goddess of death and destitution. [Remainder of paragraph indecipherable.]

It is hard for a man to learn to think like a woman. But I know that the heart of this country is contained in the breasts of those old kuias who continue to know and understand other people – the might of a thousand volunteers. They do nothing, in terms of money or . . . Each day they hoist the sun up over the horizon.

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