The Whale Rider (9 page)

fifteen

Not long after Kahu’s dive for the stone, in the early hours
of the morning, a young man was jogging along Wainui Beach, not far from Whangara, when he
noticed a great disturbance on the sea. ‘The horizon all of a sudden got
lumpy,’ he said as he tried to describe the phenomenon, ‘and lumps were
moving in a solid mass to the beach.’ As he watched, the jogger realised that he
was witnessing the advance to the beach of a great herd of whales. ‘They kept
coming and coming,’ he told the
Gisborne
Herald
, ‘and they didn’t turn away. I ran down to the
breakwater. All around me the whales were stranding themselves. They were whistling, an
eerie, haunting sound. Every now and then they would spout. I felt like crying.’

The news was quickly communicated to the town, and the local radio and
television stations sent reporters out to Wainui. One enterprising cameraman hired a local
helicopter to fly him over the scene. It is his flickering film images that most of us
remember. In the early morning light, along three kilometres of coastland, are two hundred
whales, male, female, young, waiting to die. The waves break over them and hiss around their
passive frames. Dotted on the beach are human shapes, drawn to the tragedy. The pilot of the
helicopter says on camera, ‘I’ve been to Vietnam, y’know, and
I’ve done deer culling down south.’ His lips are trembling and his eyes
are moist with tears. ‘But my oath, this is like seeing the end of the
world.’

One particular sequence of the news film will remain indelibly
imprinted on our minds. The camera zooms in on one of the whales, lifted high onto the beach
by the waves. A truck has been driven down beside the whale. The whale is on its side, and
blood is streaming from its mouth. The whale is still alive.

Five men are working on the whale. They are splattered with blood. As
the helicopter hovers above them, one of the men stops his work and smiles directly into the
camera. The look is triumphant. He lifts his arms in a victory sign and the camera sees that
he has a chainsaw in his hand. Then the camera focuses on the other men, where they stand in
the surging water. The chainsaw has just completed cutting through the whale’s
lower jaw. The men are laughing as they wrench the jaw from the butchered whale. There is a
huge spout of blood as the jaw suddenly snaps free. The blood drenches the men in a dark
gouting stream. Blood, laughing, pain, victory, blood.

It was that sequence of human butchery, more than any
other, which triggered feelings of sorrow and anger among the people on the Coast. Some
would have argued that in Maori terms a stranded whale was traditionally a gift from the
Gods and that the actions could therefore be condoned. But others felt more primal feelings
of love for the beasts which had once been our companions from the Kingdom of the Lord
Tangaroa. Nor was this just a question of one whale among many; this was a matter of two
hundred members of a vanishing species.

At the time Kahu had just turned eight and Koro Apirana was down in
the South Island with Porourangi. I rang them up to tell them what was happening. Koro said,
‘Yes, we know. Porourangi has rung the airport to see if we can get on the plane.
But the weather’s cracked down on us and we can’t get out.
You’ll have to go to Wainui. This is a sign to us. I don’t like it. I
don’t like it at all.’

Luckily, knowing Kahu’s kinship with the sea, I was glad
that she had still been asleep when the news was broadcast. I said to Nanny Flowers,
‘You better keep our Kahu at home today. Don’t let her know what has
happened.’ Nanny’s eyes glistened. She nodded her head.

I got on my motorbike and went round rousing the boys. I
hadn’t realised it before, but when you catch people unawares you sure find out a
lot about them. For instance, one of the boys slept on his stomach with his thumb in his
mouth. Billy had his hair in curlers and he still had a smoke dangling from his lips. And a
third slept with all his clothes on and the motorbike was in the bed with him.

‘Come on, boys,’ I said.
‘We’ve got work to do.’ We assembled at the crossroads, gunned
our bikes, and then took off. Instead of going the long way by road we cut across country
and beach, flying like spears to help save the whales. The wind whistled among us as we sped
over the landscape. Billy led the way and we followed — he was sure tricky, all
right, knowing the shortcuts. No wonder the cops could never catch him. We flew over fences,
jounced around paddocks, leapt streams and skirted the incoming tide. We were all whooping
and hollering with the excitement of the ride when Billy took us up to a high point
overlooking Wainui.

‘There they are,’ he said.

Gulls were wheeling above the beach. For as far as the eye could see
whales were threshing in the curve of sand. The breakers were already red with blood. We
sped down on our rescue mission.

The gulls cried, outraged, as we varoomed through
their gathering numbers. The first sight to greet our eyes was this old European lady who
had sat down on a whale that some men were pulling onto the beach with a tractor. They had
put a rope round the whale’s rear flukes and were getting angrier and angrier with
the woman, manhandling her away. But she would just return and sit on the whale again, her
eyes glistening. We came to the rescue and that was the first punch-up of the day.

‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ the lady said.
‘The whale is already dead of course, but how can men be so venal?’

By that time many of the locals were out on the beach. Some of them
still had their pyjamas on. There were a lot of elderly people living near Wainui and it was
amazing to see them trying to stop younger men from pillaging the whales. When one of the
old women saw us, she set her mouth grimly and raised a pink slipper in a threatening way.

‘Hey lady,’ Billy said. ‘We’re
the goodies.’

She gaped disbelievingly. Then she said, ‘Well, if
you’re the goodies, you’d better go after them baddies.’ She
pointed down to where a truck was parked beside a dying whale. There were several beefy guys
loading a dismembered jaw onto the back. As we approached we saw an old man scuffling with
them. One of the young men smacked him in the mouth and the old man went down. His wife gave
a high piping scream.

We roared up to the truck.

‘Hey,
man
,’ I
hissed. ‘That whale belongs to Tangaroa.’ I pointed to the dying beast.
The stench of guts and blood was nauseous. Seagulls dived into the bloodied surf.

‘Who’s stopping us?’

‘We are,’ Billy said. He grabbed the chainsaw,
started it up and, next minute, had sawn the front tyres of the truck. That started the
second punch-up of the day.

It was at this stage that the police and rangers arrived. I guess they
must have had trouble figuring out who were the goodies and who were the baddies because
they started to manhandle us as well. Then the old lady with the pink slipper arrived. She
waved it in front of the ranger and said, ‘Not
them
, you stupid fool. They’re on
our
side.’

The ranger laughed. He looked us over quickly. ‘In that
case, lady, I guess we’ll have to work together. Okay, fellas?’

I looked at the boys. We had a strange relationship with the cops. But
this time we nodded agreement.

‘Okay,’ the ranger said. ‘The
name’s Derek. Let’s get this beach cleared and cordoned off.
We’ve got some Navy men coming in soon from Auckland.’ He yelled,
‘Anybody here got wetsuits? If so, get into them. We’ll need all the
help we can get.’

The boys and I cleared the beach. We mounted a bike patrol back and
forth along the sand, keeping the spectators back from the water. The locals helped us. I
saw a shape I thought I knew tottering down to the sea. The woman must have borrowed her
son’s wetsuit, but I would have recognised those pink slippers anywhere.

All of us who were there that day and night will be
forever bonded by our experience with the stranded whales. They were tightly bunched and
they were crying like babies. Derek had assigned people in groups, eight people to look
after each whale. ‘Try to keep them cool,’ he said. ‘Pour
water over them, otherwise they’ll dehydrate. The sun’s going to get
stronger. Keep pouring that water, but try to keep their blowholes clear —
otherwise they’ll suffocate to death. Above all, try to stop them from lying on
their sides.’

It was difficult and heavy work, and I marvelled at the strength that
some of the elderly folk brought to the task. One of the old men was talking to his whale
and said in response to his neighbour, ‘Well,
you
talk to your plants!’ At that point the whale lifted its head and,
staring at the two men, gave what appeared to be a giggle. ‘Why, the whale
understands,’ the old man said. So the word went down the line of helpers.

The tide was still coming in. The Navy personnel arrived and members
of Greenpeace, Project Jonah and Friends of the Earth also. Two helicopters whirred
overhead, dropping wetsuited men into the sea.

A quick conference was called on the situation. The decision was made
to try and tow the whales out to sea. Small runabouts were used, and while most of the
whales resisted being towed by the tail, there were some successes. In that first attempt, a
hundred and forty whales were refloated. There were many cheers along the beach. But the
whales were like confused children, milling and jostling out in the deeper water, and they
kept trying to return to those who were still stranded along the beach, darting back to
those who were already dead. The cheers became ragged when all the whales returned to beach
themselves again at low tide.

‘Okay, folks,’ Derek called.
‘We’re back at the beginning. Let’s keep them cool. And
let’s keep our spirits up.’

The sea thundered through his words. The seagulls screamed overhead.
The sun reached noon and began its low decline. I saw children coming from buses to help.
Some schools had allowed senior students to aid the rescue. Many of the old folk were
pleased to be relieved. Others, however, stayed on. For them,
their
whale had become a member of the family. ‘And I can’t
leave Sophie now,’ an elderly lady said. The sun scattered its spokes across the
sand.

The whales kept dying. As each death occurred the
people who were looking after the whale would weep and clasp one another. They would try to
force away the younger, healthier whales which had returned to keep company with their dying
mates. When a large whale was turning on its side, several juveniles would try to assist it,
rubbing their bodies against the dying whale’s head. All the time the animals were
uttering cries of distress or alarm, like lost children.

Some old people refused to leave the beach. They began to sing
‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. They continued to try to right the whales,
rocking them back and forth to restore their balance, and encouraging them to swim in
groups. It was soon obvious, however, that the whales did not wish to be separated. So the
ranger decided that an effort should be made to herd the surviving whales as one large group
out to sea. They seemed to sense that we were trying to help them and offered no resistance
or harm. When we reached them, most were exhausted, but when they felt us lifting them up
and pushing them out to sea they put their energy into swimming and blowing.

Somehow we managed to get the whales out again with the incoming tide.
But all they did was to cry and grieve for their dead companions; after wallowing aimlessly,
they would return to nuzzle their loved ones. The sea hissed and fell, surged and soughed
upon the sand. The whales were singing a plaintive song, a fluting sound which began to
recede away, away, away.

By evening, all the whales had died. Two hundred
whales, lifeless on the beach and in the water. The boys and I waited during the death
throes. Some of the people from the town had set up refreshments and were serving coffee. I
saw the lady with the pink slippers sipping coffee and looking out to sea.

‘Remember me?’ I said. ‘My
name’s Rawiri. I’m a goodie.’

There were tears in her eyes. She pressed my hand in companionship.

‘Even the goodies,’ she said,
‘can’t win all the time.’

When I returned to Whangara that night, Nanny Flowers
said, ‘Kahu knows about the whales.’ I found Kahu way up on the bluff,
calling out to sea. She was making that mewling sound and then cocking her head to listen
for a reply. The sea was silent, eternal.

I comforted her. The moon was drenching the sky with loneliness. I
heard an echo of Koro Apirana’s voice, ‘This is a sign to us. I
don’t like it.’ Suddenly, with great clarity, I knew that our final
challenge was almost upon us. I pressed Kahu close to me, to reassure her. I felt a sudden
shiver as far out to sea, muted thunder boomed like a door opening far away.