Legacy Page 6

  They arrive in front of a wooden shed. Jack tugs at the hoodie around Riki’s waist and whispers to him, ‘Give that to me and go round the back while I talk to someone.’

  Riki unties the hoodie and gives it to Jack.

  ‘Laundry man!’ Jack calls out loud. ‘I have some laundry for you!’

  A tall, skinny man comes out. He is Egyptian, dressed in a long pale robe with a jacket over the top and a skull cap. He has a large moustache that droops over his top lip.

  Jack jerks his head a little to the side as he greets him. Get around the back, his gesture seems to say.

  Riki sneaks around the back of the shed, which has openings but no closing doors and windows. He walks in. Clothes lines are strung up across the ceiling, and in one corner there’s a huge boiling copper with a large wooden stirring stick resting across its lip.

  He finds a line of shirts that are damp rather than dripping, and takes one that looks as if it would fit. He puts the shirt on and it sticks to him a little – but in this heat, it will dry quickly. He knows he hasn’t much time, so he grabs the nearest tunic. It is heavy and wet. He rolls it up tightly, like he used to with his towel and togs on swimming day at school. Then he slips out the back of the shed. The tunic drips and leaves a wet patch on the side of his shorts.

  ‘No, no, no,’ the laundry man is saying. ‘Uniforms only.’

  Riki waves at Jack with the wet tunic, and Jack raises his eyebrows in acknowledgement. ‘All right, all right then. Sorry to be a bother.’

  The laundry man bows his head slightly to Jack and then turns back to his shed.

  ‘You’re looking more yourself, Pūweto,’ Jack says, as Riki joins him and they walk away.

  Riki twists the tunic until it stops dripping. He unrolls it and puts it on, the dampness of the cloth making it difficult to get his arms in the sleeves.

  ‘Will we get in trouble for stealing?’

  ‘It is all the property of the Empire, Pūweto. As are we. As far as I can see, it is not theft but redistribution.’

  A man comes up to them with a basket of oranges. ‘Oringis,’ he says. Jack takes two from the basket and throws one to Riki.

  Jack stuffs the hoodie in the man’s basket. ‘For the oringis,’ he says.

  ‘Wait …’ Riki says. He has the piastre that he got from Bill. He gives it to the man. He reaches to take his hoodie, but Jack cuts him off.

  The man looks puzzled. He holds out the hoodie. Jack says, ‘For you,’ and the man nods and walks off.

  Riki wants to go after the man and get his hoodie back, but it seems like a foolish thing to do. It’s not his real hoodie, he tells himself – the one that once belonged to Jase – but a memory of it.

  ‘Why did you give him that?’ Riki says.

  ‘You don’t need it any more. He could use it – sell it, I expect. Come on, let’s go get a drink.’

  For a moment Riki can’t breathe or move. The boots on his feet, the tunic on his back feel heavy. It’s like he’s stuck. It’s like he’s not himself any more – everything that he was has been traded away.

  ‘Come on, Pūweto!’

  Matatau is reading a bible when Riki and Jack get back to the tent.

  ‘We’ve had a successful outing,’ Jack says.

  ‘I don’t want to know what you’ve done.’

  ‘We’ve just been for a walk to the pyramids. Pūweto here was fortunate enough to find a pair of abandoned boots.’

  Matatau snorts, and Jack says, ‘God bless you.’ Matatau’s scowl is no longer exclusively for Riki.

  ‘We’re heading into town for a drink.’

  ‘I don’t drink, you know that.’

  ‘Well, I did know that, Mata my friend. Then I come back on Friday and see that you’ve had a skinful.’

  ‘That was an aberration.’ Mata is trying to keep his voice calm.

  ‘To be fair,’ Riki says, ‘this whole situation is something of an aberration.’

  Jack nudges the corner of Mata’s bed, making him sway from side to side. ‘Come with us, Mata: just one drink.’

  Mata holds his bible firmly, and pretends to keep reading.

  Riki tries not to laugh, but the two of them are acting like kids: one needling, the other refusing to budge. Jack is escalating his needling to get a reaction from Mata. Riki is amazed at how Mata is keeping his cool; one of them must snap soon.

  ‘Mata!’ Jack shouts. Riki had not expected it to be Jack who caved first.

  Mata places his forefinger in his bible to keep his place, and clasps it shut. He looks up at Jack. ‘It is Sunday. Moreover, it is Easter Sunday.’

  ‘A drink to celebrate His resurrection …’

  ‘C’mon Jack,’ Riki says. ‘He doesn’t want to come.’

  Mata holds up his bible like it is a shield against Riki, and Riki shakes his head. Last time I stick up for that guy.

  ‘Come with us, Mata,’ says Jack. ‘It might be the last we see of this place.’

  ‘I’ll be glad for it. Nothing but sin and devils here.’ Matatau opens his bible again and bends his head to read.

  Riki has already ducked out of the tent. ‘C’mon, Jack. Let’s go.’

  Riki is starting to get his bearings. The rows of tents still look the same to him, but now he knows that if the pyramids are behind him then town must be ahead. Jack is unusually quiet. If Te Awhina was here, she’d say that he was sulking – that’s what she says about Jase when he doesn’t talk. Riki’s not sure why it has never occurred to her that perhaps Jase just has nothing to say when he’s quiet, and that he doesn’t use silence as a weapon.

  Jack doesn’t speak till they arrive at the tram stop.

  ‘What happened on Friday, Te Ariki?’

  Te Ariki. It sounds so weird; Riki thinks it’s the first time Jack has called him by his first name since Friday night. Since then it’s been boy or Pūweto or, worst, m’lord.

  ‘You can call me Riki, y’know.’

  Jack laughs. ‘M’lord Riki.’

  ‘Stop calling me “m’lord”. It’s not clever.’

  ‘Yes, m’lord.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Yes, m’lord.’

  ‘Seriously, Jack …’ Riki punches Jack in the arm.

  ‘Temper, m’lord. Save it for the Huns.’

  At the stop, Jack looks down the line for the tram, and then rocks back and forth on his feet. Riki knows he has something on his mind.

  ‘Permission to speak, m’lord.’

  ‘Only if you call me Riki.’

  ‘Fine. Riki,’ Jack sighs. ‘What happened?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You and Mata used to be close. What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you two have words? Was there a woman involved? How did you end up in the Wazza?’

  ‘Honestly, Jack, if I could tell you what happened on Friday I would. I’ve been trying to figure it out myself.’

  ‘Well, whatever happened, you’ve got to make it right with Mata.’

  ‘Me? He’s the one with the problem.’

  ‘He’s also the one who’s as stubborn as an ass.’

  The tram arrives, and they get on.

  ‘What if I’m stubborn too?’ Riki speaks quietly, even though the car is hardly full.

  ‘Pūweto – Riki – you may have been not yourself over the past few days, but you’re not stubborn.’

  Not yourself.

  ‘Have I been acting … strangely?’ Riki asks.

  ‘Out of sorts, yes.’

  A ticket inspector enters the car. Riki checks his pockets.

  ‘You don’t have the fare again?’ Jack says.

  ‘I gave my coin to the orange man.’

  ‘That was just a piastre. Where are the rest of your wages?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Jack finds some more coins to pay for Riki’s fare, gives them to the inspector and counts what he has left over. ‘Well, there’s not much here. A few beers, perhaps.
Only one for you: obviously you’re not a drinker. You can’t remember what happened to your wages, or what happened between you and Mata?’

  ‘I really don’t know. I wish I did.’

  ‘And Mata’s recollection makes no sense at all. He keeps saying that you’re a demon … you must have done something bad to him.’

  ‘Does it matter? So me and Mata aren’t mates, that’s fine.’

  ‘No, it’s not “fine”. We need to rely on each other. Work as a team. Our lives actually depend on it. It’s not a game.’

  But what if it is a game? Riki thinks.

  Jase was a big fan of adventure games. When Riki was twelve or thirteen Jase had commandeered the computer to play them. At first Riki didn’t know what the big deal was – most of the gameplay was just wandering around talking to people and picking up random objects. But sometimes if you combined the objects in certain ways, you could unlock a secret. Riki realises now that the real beauty of the adventure game is that while you may get stuck, you can always find a way out. You never give up because of a simple mistake.

  If this is like a game, then there must be rules, there must be a goal. If he clocks the game, then he can be free of this place. Riki laughs. It could just be some jacked-up virtual reality shit.

  ‘Why is that funny?’ Jack frowns at Riki.

  Maybe this is part of the structure of the game. A mission to get Jack and Mata on his side, as part of his team. ‘It’s not. Nervous laughter, I guess. Because you’re right.’

  ‘Well, of course I am.’ Jack stands up as they approach their stop. ‘So you’ll make it right with Mata, and we needn’t talk of it again.’

  ‘I’ll make it right,’ Riki says. And then I’ll go home.

  There are mounted soldiers in the Wazza, probably to keep the peace. The fires in the buildings have been extinguished. Piles of broken furniture still litter the street; they are being added to as the owners of the buildings try to clear up.

  ‘It’s terrible. Why did it happen?’

  Jack gives Riki an incredulous look. ‘They brought it on themselves,’ he says. ‘Watering down the liquor to cheat us. Their women are unclean – do you know how many of our boys got VD from their whores? Dirty, thieving Gypos.’ He spits at the feet of one of the men piling rubble.

  Jack’s answer makes Riki feel off balance again; it is so different from what he expected. Jack is openly hostile, openly racist about the people here. He truly believes they deserved this violence, that he and the other Anzacs had a right to do this to them. All his life Riki has been told that these men were heroes; that they were fighting for freedom and justice. But it seems this riot had nothing to do with either of those things.

  ‘We won’t get a drink here, Jack. This place is dead.’

  ‘Yes. The Dead City is probably more lively.’

  Dead City. That’s where Te Ariki and Matatau apparently went on Good Friday. Maybe there’s a clue there – that’s how games like this always work. ‘Perhaps we should go there, instead.’

  ‘Haven’t you been there enough times already? If you were going to find something, surely you would have found it by now?’

  What was Te Ariki looking for? ‘I thought that maybe you’d like to go …’

  ‘I’ve already got my good luck charm.’ Jack pulls out his identity discs from under his shirt collar – a small bronze ring has been threaded on the twine.

  ‘Can I see it?’

  Jack sighs. He takes the necklace off and hands it to Riki. ‘I don’t know why you’re so fascinated with that thing. It’s only a ring.’

  And it is. The ring is brown with age, and parts of it are green, like the old statues or the dome on the Public Trust building downtown. It is made up of two rounded bands stuck together. On the front of the ring is a round disc that has some symbols scratched on it, though they’ve been worn away with time and probably wear.

  Riki looks at it carefully, then hands it and the identity disks back to Jack, who slips the necklace back on and under his shirt. Jack pats his chest a couple of times, as if the presence of the ring reassures him.

  ‘It’s a pity that you and Mata have only found worthless bones and skulls,’ Jack says.

  They’ve been grave robbing? Riki feels stupid – of course Dead City would be a cemetery. But why would his great-great-grandfather, or the religious Matatau, be desecrating graves?

  ‘Do you think that we’ve broken tapu? By digging around in Dead City?’

  ‘Is the sun getting to you, Riki? They are heathens. Remember what Pharaoh did to the Israelites? To Moses? We’re not the only ones looking for curios. How do you think museums get their exhibitions?’

  Riki remembers reading about the solemn ceremonies at Te Papa when kōiwi were returned to their people. The preserved heads and bones of his ancestors, locked up in museums and institutes across the world, yet still mourned by their descendants. The carved treasures of his people, of Jack’s people, sold or stolen to build collections in museums. And here they are: Jack, Matatau and Te Ariki Mikaera, guilty of the same crime.

  ‘If it was tapu,’ Jack says, ‘Wouldn’t some utu be exacted? Wouldn’t something terrible happen to us?’

  Riki is not sure if Jack is being ironic.

  ‘We’re not going to Dead City,’ Jack says. ‘I want to have a jolly afternoon, and watching you dig about is not jolly at all. We must be able to get a drink somewhere.’

  They decide to try their luck down one of the back streets. Jack points to a sign that says: Fortunes told, and he grins at Riki.

  ‘Let’s see if something terrible awaits us!’

  The room they enter is small and quite dark, lit by a dim lantern. To Riki it looks like the cliché of a fortune teller’s lair – all heavy fabrics and tasselled tablecloth. A woman sits at a small table. Disappointingly, there is no crystal ball, and the woman is plainly dressed.

  ‘Come in, come in.’ She doesn’t have the thick accent Riki had expected; she sounds sort of British.

  Jack and Riki sit down across the table from her. She opens her hand to them, and they both stare at it.

  ‘I’m the one who reads palms, not the two of you.’ She rubs her fingers together. ‘I need payment.’

  Jack digs in his pocket and hands over some coins. ‘It’ll be only one drink for the both of us, then.’

  The woman puts the coins away, and then lays both of her hands palm up on the table. She smiles at Jack. He gives her his hand, and she looks intently at the palm. Riki is watching her face, searching for some sort of clue, but the woman’s face stays exactly the same, until she lifts her head and says, ‘I cannot tell you anything.’

  ‘What? Are you after more money?’

  ‘No. I simply cannot tell you anything.’

  Jack stands up and looms over her. ‘Give me back my money.’

  ‘Jack, leave her alone.’

  ‘If you were a man …’ Jack’s fist is balled up. ‘Come on Riki, let’s go.’ He stomps out, and Riki is about to follow, when the woman places her hand on his arm.

  ‘Wait.’

  Jack turns back, and Riki says, ‘I’ll just smooth things over here.’

  ‘Fine. I’m going to find beer. And I’m drinking yours.’

  The woman waits a moment after Jack leaves, as if to make sure that he is really gone before she speaks. ‘I could not tell him. It is unfair for a man to know that he will soon die.’

  ‘What? When?’

  The woman shakes her head. ‘To know your time is short makes life a burden to be endured. You spend your time trying to live to the fullest, filling the minutes but hardly enjoying them.’

  She opens her palm again.

  ‘I have no money,’ Riki says.

  ‘Your friend’s payment is enough for both of you.’

  ‘Will you tell me everything? Even if I am going to die? I’d rather count minutes than not know.’

  ‘I refused to tell you friend as a mercy. But I will tell you, if you prefer.’
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  Riki gives his hand to the woman. This time she does not disguise her expression – she looks confused. ‘I cannot tell you anything.’

  ‘No. You promised; you said you’d tell me whatever you saw.’

  ‘But I don’t see anything. It is like you don’t exist. I cannot tell if you are alive or dead.’ She looks at Riki’s face. ‘What are you? Why can’t I see?’

  Riki tries to pull his hand from her, but she holds it tight. ‘Where did you come from?’

  Riki is freaked out. Fortune telling was meant to be a way to amuse yourself. Fortune tellers just used basic psychology tricks to make a buck. But this woman seems to know something. She’s a non-player character, Riki thinks. If I find the right prompt, she’ll unlock the next clue.

  ‘I’m not of this time. I haven’t even been born yet.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth. You must know.’

  ‘Go away.’ She is frightened of him. Her eyes are wide, just like Matatau’s were on Riki’s first night in this place.

  ‘No. Tell me something. You see in the future; you should be able to see my future, even if it is a hundred years from now. How do I get back?’

  ‘I cannot tell you anything.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You don’t belong here.’

  Riki laughs. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ He stands, and leaves without looking back.

  He finds Jack at the end of the street, leaning against a wall waiting for him. Riki tries to get the fortune teller’s words out of his head: it is unfair for a man to know that he will soon die. He can barely look Jack in the eye.

  ‘I thought you were going to find a drink?’

  Jack shrugs. ‘What did she say to you?’

  ‘That she couldn’t tell me anything.’

  Jack laughs. ‘Bloody liars and thieves, the lot of them. Let’s go back to camp. The wet canteen will have my money, not these Gypo charlatans.’

  It is early evening when they arrive at camp; the air has already started to cool. There is a great crowd of men here, yelling and cheering. Riki and Jack push their way through to see what is going on. Riki steps on something soft, and lifts his foot up to see what it is. Squashed on the sole are the remains of an orange.