Chapter Eighteen: Dear Little Monk
“My lodge is named Matakauri, Matakauri Lodge, after the man of the legend, the one who killed the giant.
“The Māori first peopled this region in search of pounamu, heartstone, or greenstone, a form of nephrite jade used for Māori carvings of tools, ornaments, and even weapons. I always wear one around my neck.” He pulled the cord out and showed us his heartstone.
“And the first Māori who came here,” he continued, “also came in search of the giant moa bird, flightless birds that could reach a height of twelve feet or so. The moa were an important food source for the early Māori settlers of the land. But were hunted to extinction.”
On hearing this account, I was taken back to my dream—the giant birds being taken to market and the red-haired giant wading in the waters alongside the dream village. I had never heard of this giant of Lake Wakatipu. How is it that I so often have dreams in advance of information or events that come my way?
I couldn’t help but think of Beau’s mum, Dee, and of my mum, Eva, and of premonitions of tragic events. My own premonitions and dreams have only once been about personal difficulties or sorrows coming my way.
I dreamed, three months before my diagnosis of leukemia, that I had cancer. At the time, I thought it a strange dream, especially strange because I did not awaken with any special fear or dread. I woke up and simply wondered what it meant. Now I know. Or do I?
And I felt sorry for the giant. He had abducted the chief’s daughter, a bad thing, surely. Or was it? Maybe he was in love, a true love. Maybe she was in love with him too, a true love, and went off willingly, eloping like my own parents on a Friday the thirteenth so many years ago—a day known as unlucky, but which proved to be anything but for Jim and Eva.
I think I felt a great sympathy for the giant because his heart was indestructible.
Like the giant pohutukawa, Metrosideros Excelsa, Heartwood of Iron. Condemn him to death, set him on fire, burn him up. But still his heart goes on beating, eternally beating, rhythmic heartbeats like the soothing music that Matakauri used to lure the poor giant to a dangerous slumber.
Like Beau and me—forbidden in so many places to love each other. But still the heartbeat of love continues its rhythmic music, music “of life of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth.”
As the proprietor of the Matakauri Lodge finished his tale, I sipped my tawny port and wondered if, like the moa, the giants of New Zealand had been hunted and killed to extinction.
A few days later, Beau and I drove up the valley to Glenorchy, then on up to the Paradise region and right up as far as you can drive, to the base of a massive rock face standing sentry over the Dart River, which curves around it.
Here we left the four-wheel drive and got out for a hike farther up into the wilderness. We have done treks of several hundred miles in the Himalayas, first in Kashmir and Ladakh, then some years later in Bhutan. This seemed somewhat tame in comparison but once you get away from the few people at the trailhead, you might as well be in a remote region near the Himalayas.
We walked for a couple of hours through a vast birch forest, while little leaves of the trees gently rained and fluttered down on us. Birch means “white, bright, to shine” and the dappled light in the forest was shining and twinkling with the falling leaves, floating and falling like soft flakes of pure light.
Then we went up and over a pass to the divide, then up and down for a couple more hours, along creeks and flats, past waterfalls, then up and over more passes until we came to a hut that wasn’t marked on our map.
“G’day, mates. Lost?”
He was very tall, had dark, creased skin, and the clearest blue eyes I have ever seen in a Māori-looking face. And he had a full beard. Reddish-brown.
“No, we aren’t lost, just day-hiking. Oh, and g’day,” said Beau.
“Well, I can tell youse, mates, you’re lost—’cause I been here for many years now and no one never comes to my place. The trampers* all head over to the east there, to the Routeburn Track. But if you want to do that it’ll take you a few days, not a day hike.”
“So this isn’t a trampers’ hut?”
“No, mate, this is home to me. But you can call it a hut if you like.” He smiled warmly.
Soon, all three of us were sitting in front of his home, which was actually too rudimentary to call a hut, if the truth be known, drinking black tea from metal cups while Rangi, for so he was named, rolled cigarettes of dark and coarse tobacco and placed them carefully in a tin box.
Rangi—Sky.
“That’ll do me for smokes for the week,” he said, brushing crumbs of tobacco from his old Levi Strauss jeans as he stood up.
From the ground where I sat looking up at him, I was reminded of the giant of Lake Wakatipu. Rangi was very tall, taller than me by several inches and I am six-two. Whereas I am slender, Rangi was broad and strong, more like a rugby player than a swimmer, more like a giant, I mused, than an ordinary man, an ordinary bloke.
“Do you believe in giants, Rangi?” I blurted out.
I thought he would choke with laughter.
“No, I mean the Māori taniwha, the giants, the Water Spirits, the Monsters.”
I mentioned Matau and his slayer, Matakauri. I mentioned the rhythmic rise and fall of Lake Wakatipu and the beating of Matau’s indestructible heart.
“Do I believe there are giants living in these mountains? No, not in the sense where you see me standing here,” he said as he thumped his giant chest hard. And then he sat down again.
“But here is what I believe, true, here is what I believe about that. They do exist.”
He was silent for long moments and looked at the little fire with its blackened billy.
“The taniwha, I believe that there is some sort of existence of it but I’m not sure how I can definition that. My father, he talked to me about it often and again, about them, not about there being monsters around behind the boulders or in the gorges but he said something did exist spiritually.
“Even he couldn’t define it ’cause who can define ‘spirit’? Who can truly and truly define spirit?”
Who indeed? Spirit. Spirits. Great Spirit. Holy Spirit. Holy Spirits. Holy Ghosts.
“Taniwha are real. You can feel a balance between the seen and the unseen. You can feel it in the mountains and the lakes and rivers. And the high heavens. Taniwha can be good or bad, just like people. Some of them are guardians, kaitiaki, guardians in many places. They can be guardians or they can act as warnings in some places.”
I got lost in my thinking then—my mind trailed back over everything Rangi was saying—and back over the hike Beau and I had had that azure day in the mountains, the hike that led us to Rangi’s hut.
“You men are welcome to stay the night.” Rangi brought me back from my reverie. “You can sleep right out here with me, for I do like to sleep under the stars when the night is fine. But if you want to get back to your car today, you’d better head off. You have miles and miles to get back.”
As I write this account now, all these years later, now a naturalized citizen of New Zealand, just like those Hobbits of Middle Earth near Paradise, my thoughts wander again and I wonder about some of my more recent experiences here in New Zealand—
I awoke from a dream so vivid that it seemed to continue. Moonlight all through the little house gave everything a silver-white glow, the waters of Doubtless were making a gentle symphony below—
In the dream, I was aware of a man, a very tall man, maybe fifteen feet high, standing behind me and to the right of me, just over my right shoulder. I could see him although I never turned around. He said one thing and that is what awakened me.
The name of this farm is Sacred Gifts.
And another day, on the farm with Beau, looking to choose a site to build our house—
Now, while the dogs played and hunted for field mice and lizards, Beau and I continued to walk, back and forth, headland to headland—
“It is as beautiful from here, Beau, as from over there, maybe more. But I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right. I don’t know why.”
I turned to look over my shoulder at the paddock behind us. It swept back and then up steeply to the highest point on our farm, up on our western fence line.
“I don’t want to build here. I don’t know why, Beau. It feels as if there is something very big and very heavy back up there. Just up and above me. I don’t know what this is or even how to express it. But I can feel it. It’s palpable. This is not the spot for our house.”
And I remember the most astonishing experience of all, the most powerful, and yet gentle, experience I have ever had, a night at our house up at Doubtless Bay, while Beau and the animals lay sleeping. If I tell you about it, I wonder — will you believe me?
The moonlit past — the moonlit timeless present — the eternal now. Moonlight on Doubtless Bay. Everybody is sleeping—Beau, Kanji and Poggio and Sophie. And Big Deva. All these big and little breaths of life, sleeping peacefully, it seems.
Only I am awake. Leukemia. I have been so strong — we have both been so strong. For the first time I am overwhelmed by it, this leukemia, and by the unknown which lies ahead. A kind of despair. I begin to cry softly but Beau awakens immediately and scooches over, spooning into me from behind, saying nothing, just holding me.
“I’m so depressed and so afraid,” I whisper. He just continues to hold me, not speaking.
My tears flow freely as if they will never end.
I see the Dear Little Monk sitting at the foot of the bed.
When we were climbing up the first mountain range in Bhutan years ago, he passed us. He was short, very old, humped over, barefoot. And he was walking so fast up the mountain trail, over the rocks, he sped right past us and our packhorses and our guide and cook and horsemen, but as he passed me, he paused, put his palms together in front of his forehead, and bowed gently three times, smiling broadly.
And then he was off again, zipping up the steep mountain trail. Before he was out of sight, he stopped, turned around, looked back down at us, waved brightly, and then again put both palms together in front of his forehead. And gently bowed to our little group three times.
Another wave and he turned, took up his wooden staff, and then his maroon robe disappeared around the bend.
“Monk,” said our cook, “dear little monk,” as he put his palms together in front of his forehead and bowed to the place where the monk had been. We never saw the monk again on our trek through the mountains up to the border of Tibet.
But I saw him once in New York City, walking down the street as Beau and I were heading to a restaurant after seeing a Broadway play. He looked me straight in the eyes. “Monk,” I said.
I did not know what to make of that. He looked as real as the New Yorkers hurrying along the street.
And I have seen him several times since. After Bhutan, no one sees him but me. I call him Dear Little Monk. Always he puts both palms together in front of his forehead. And gently bows. A great comfort.
Tonight, he sits at the foot of our bed.
Suddenly, he begins to weep, then great sobs heave his chest and shoulders as he bends in on himself. If he feels the hopelessness, the fear, the dread — All is lost.
And then. At the foot of the bed. A Being of Light. I call this a Being of Light. I do not know what else to say. There is Light. But not as we see it with our eyes. Not as we see it in imagination even or in dreams. But there is Light. A formless form of Light, a Being, a Presence.
And a calm assurance. Everything is OK. Complete peace, complete calm, only good.
Later, I say to Beau that I don’t know what it means. That I will be healed of this disease? That I will die and that is all right? I do not know how to interpret this, how to explain this.
But I accept it. Everything is OK, everything is all right. All is well.
So we will wait and see how it turns out.
END OF CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
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Aaron Allbright’s novel in five parts will be published soon.
IN A DESERT OR A CITY
BOOK I
‘PRINCE CARTIER’ or HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE BEING GAY WITH MY SAUDI PRINCE AND TO START WORRYING
BOOK II
MONSIEUR LE PRINCE, PARIS
BOOK III
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS
BOOK IV
TYROMANCY AND LUCIFER
BOOK V
WHY WAIT FOR THE LIGHT?