Te Porere - the flag of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki c1860s.
Ina woke. Wednesday morning and the sun coming through the gap in the curtains made a glowing strip on the wall opposite, like the crack of light coming through a door left slightly open. Niko wasn’t in bed. She pulled her phone out from under the pillow. A message from Ngaio. Wanna come for dinner tonight? Ina opened the message, went to type something, and then stopped. She put the phone back down on the bed and sat up. Where was he? She looked over at the other side of the bed, to see if his bag or any of his clothes were there. There was nothing, but she spotted a piece of folded up paper sitting on the pillow he had slept on, her name scrawled in his spidery writing.
She had a history lecture at nine, and barely enough time to get there. She grabbed the note and shoved it in the front pocket of her bag. Then she threw clothes on and ran to the bathroom. The quickest scrub of teeth, and a second’s glance up at the mirror. She had twenty-five minutes to get to the bus. On the way out the door she took an apple from the bowl on the kitchen bench. The dishes from last night’s dinner were still piled up in the sink. She tipped out the water they were soaking in and stacked them away from the sink to wash later. Whenever that would be. Outside the big window behind the dining table the sun was gleaming on the neighbour’s tin roof. Last night’s wind had gone.
The bus, when it arrived, was almost full. She found a seat at the back and pulled out her headphones. What would it be today? She wanted something light and airy, something that didn’t make her think too much. The kind of lightness that only ambient house could do, in her opinion. She closed her eyes and let the drum loops take her away. They were all she needed to think about, that steady tap tap tap over and over, predictable and sane. The note from Niko was burning a hole in her brain. She didn’t want to read it, she was trying not to think about it. She tried to focus on the music, the layers were coming in now, like waves. There was an echoing hum underneath them, she imagined it filling the space between her ears, as if her mind was soaking in sound. But it wasn’t quite enough.
Ina picked her bag up off the floor and pulled the note out. She took a breath and unfolded it and saw it was a letter. Niko’s looping scrawl took up an entire page. Her shoulders dropped. She looked up out the window, as if something out there needed her immediate attention. Her eyes traced the rooflines of the houses as they flicked past, and then up to the sky above them, which was mostly clear. But the letter had to be read, there was no more avoiding it. She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and fixed her eyes on the page.
Dear Ina, I wanted to say this to you last night but I couldn’t get the words out. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I don’t think I can only think it any longer, the words want life. You and I have the kind of relationship where we are pretty honest with each other, and I really appreciate that. But there are some things we just don’t talk about. I don’t want anything to change, I hate the thought of our friendship not being what it is. You are basically my best friend, if I haven’t said it already, it’s true. But I have to say these words now or else, or else I don’t know. But I have to say them.
The bus was winding its way downhill to the city centre. Away out on the horizon the harbour was silver blue in the morning light. She thought about Ngaio, and the smell of her when they hugged good-bye on Monday. She thought about Ngaio’s message, and what she would reply. She thought about Niko, and all the nights they’d gone out dancing and walked home through the dark city streets hand in hand. She loved him, she knew that much. Like a brother? The music was faster now, an eighties-vibe drum loop with a scratchy cymbal beat fast and steady. Did she love Niko like a brother?
You’re probably wondering what it is I’m trying to say now. I probably should have tried to say it last night, it’s probably better said out loud. But anyway it’s too late now. I’m running out of room on the page and I need to get to work. (Thank you for having me by the way, dinner was great). So I guess I’ll just say it. I’m in love with you, I have been for a while. You do what you want with this knowledge, I know you will. I want to say I trust you, and I do, but then I know you have your own shit to deal with and maybe this is too much. I mean, I can feel my heart sinking as I write this. Is it too much?
The bus pulled in and stopped. She folded the paper roughly, shoved it back in the pocket, and got off. She was on the north side of university, not far from work. She checked the time, ten minutes to get to her lecture. She picked up speed until she was walking as fast as she could without running. Down a narrow street lined with two-storied student flats, swerving to avoid the piles of recycling put out for rubbish day, cans spilling over, the thin metal glinting. She breathed in the fresh morning air, swinging her arms as she walked, and suddenly she realised there was a lightness in her chest. She was feeling light.
Was it better to know? Did it explain things? She thought back to the last time she and Niko had gone out together. They’d gone to a party first, one of her friends from school who’d also come down for university. They weren’t really friends any more, but an invite was an invite. She’d promised Niko they wouldn’t stay for long, that they’d just go for long enough to say hi, to have a drink, to see who was there. He didn’t seem to mind the idea, but when they walked into the downstairs flat, along a narrow hallway to the kitchen at the back and then out the back door to an overgrown garden, he’d gone quiet. He had sat down on the long grass at the edge of the garden, leaning up against a fence, and stayed there. He hadn’t talked to anyone. And he hardly talked the rest of the night.
The history lecture theatre was at the bottom of the humanities block, in the middle of the university. She crossed the courtyard on the outside edge and walked through a low tunnel. The tunnel opened up to the centre from which most of the university buildings spread out. It was a wide expanse of space with a large square of grass at the very middle. Around the grass and on the grass were a series of stainless steel sculptures shaped almost as if they were oversized people but they weren’t. The giant not-people all had an extra head or a third leg, or something else unexpected. The steel was blindingly bright on the side that faced east, and she could almost imagine that the irregular shapes of metal were portals made of liquid light. She had to look away as she walked past them.
The lecture was on the prophet and general Te Kooti Arikirangi. Organiser of a mass escape, fierce military strategist, writer of predictions and songs, and guardian of the land who kept willing his people to fight to retain their whenua, their first womb. As an infant he was dedicated to the god of war by his prophet grandfather, and a dark song was sung over him. The Ngati Apa chief Eruera Te Kahu built a house for him and named it Kimihia, from the saying Kimihia te mea ngaro - the search for that which was lost. Ina scribbled quickly, this was the kind of detail that she loved history for. Te Kooti was an enigma in many ways, the stories told about him varied wildly depending on who was doing the telling. The lecturer was animated. Ina wanted to know all of it.
She was using a lined exercise book, Ngaio’s influence again. Ina found it was quicker to scribble than type. The dates, the places, at different times in the lecture they came with a rush, and it was important to get them all written down. She had filled two whole pages already, and the lecture was only halfway through. The lecturer, a tall woman with a head of wiry black and silver hair, paused and bent over to take a stack of handouts from her bag. She walked up to the front row and passed them out. Ina picked up her phone. She opened up the last message Ngaio had sent and quickly typed a reply. Yes.
After the lecture was over Ina filed out with the mass of students and walked through to the quad to get something to eat. Her favourite place sold coffee and a good selection of counter food, she ate from there often. She chose a breakfast bagel and ordered coffee, and then stood to the side and watched people pass. The quad was an open space between the library and the student services block, with a glass roof high up spanning the gap between the two buildings. The sun was bearing down full now, with nothing between it and the people below except the frame of the roof, long lines of steel girders a metre apart, which translated into thick repeating strips of shadow across the concrete floor, everything stark bright in between.
She carried the coffee and food carefully through the people to the bank of tables at the centre of the quad. Ina didn’t like crowds much, but she’d got used to eating in the quad. She knew how to scope the place for the most empty table, and once she’d put her headphones in and tuned out to the people around her she could imagine she was anywhere. Today she was lucky, an empty table, right over on the library side. She weaved her way there, sat down, and put her headphones in. More house, the playlist she had been listening to on the bus this morning. The beats drowning out the noise of the crowd. She unwrapped the bagel and took a big bite. It was good, even though the reheating had rendered the poached egg solid. She could feel her mind waking up as the caffeine met her veins, like a hundred light switches suddenly switched on in her brain. She checked her phone for messages and there was Ngaio’s reply. What time? Making ramen. Ina smiled. Going to library to do essay, should be done by four. Are you at uni today? The phone went quiet.
Ina made her way up to the top floor of the library. She wasn’t really in the mood for writing an essay, but she had work tomorrow. She would have to make the essay up. That was her go-to when she wasn’t feeling it. Make it up. Put the words together as if she knew what she was talking about, and hope for the best. Something Niko said to her all the time came to mind, and his quiet voice filled her head. You need to believe in yourself Ina. Why can’t you believe in yourself? And then, without her being able to mount any defence, all the feelings she had pushed aside since she read his letter that morning came flooding in. She put her head down on the table and squeezed her eyes tight to try and stop the flow. Where had the lightness gone that she felt walking from the bus this morning? He was so dear.
It was time to change up the music. If anything was going to kick her out of this slump it had to be the nineties. Sunny Day Real Estate again, the music she was listening to last time she was up here, actually the best of the beginning of emo. Nothing else quite like it. She hit play on Seven and straight away the familiar reverb energy shifted her. Those rolling drum beats going off, just going off, faster and faster and then slow again, a break, and then faster again. She got lost in it. Completely. It was so easy. You’ll taste it, you’ll taste it, in time. You’ll taste it, you’ll taste it. She didn’t know what she would taste, but in the moment it didn’t matter. Something was going to be hers. Something different. Something was going to change.
But the essay wasn’t going to write itself. She took a blank sheet of paper out of her bag and drew a sociogram, to remind herself who she was writing about. Jane Eyre in the centre of course, intersected with the others, Bessie the maid, Mrs Reed, the ghost of Mr Reed, Grace Poole, whose foolishness allows the monster to escape, and Bertha Mason, the monster herself, the secret locked up on the third floor. It was all so depressing and sordid. She needed to write about the mirror in the red room, how was she going to bring herself to do it? And about Bessie calling Jane a mad cat. And about the red room as Jane’s punishment for being wild, ergo for being real. So that while she’s shut in there she starts to lose her grip on herself, and when she looks in the mirror she doesn’t know who she’s looking at. Could there be a fate worse? Ina had to concentrate very hard to keep the words on the page, not to let them spill, not to think about them too much.
She was still listening to Sunny Day Real Estate, face the fool, the mirrors lie and telling herself the story was just a story. She forced herself to make the words, any words, as long as they got her closer to the end. But there was one more mirror to write about, the most frightening mirror of all. The one which Jane looks into the night before her wedding and in it sees the hideous visage of Bertha-Jane. Who was Jane? Was she the monster after all? Was the monster trapped in Jane’s own mind? It was too much.
Ina’s phone vibrated and she jumped. A message from Ngaio. I just had lunch with Niko. Have you talked to him lately? He seems a bit down. What time are you coming over? Ina’s stomach lurched, and the ground started to sway. She stood up, picked up her wallet and her phone, and walked back down the hallway to the lift. She was risking losing something, her place at the desk if nothing else, but her feet propelled her. Down the lift to the floor below, out and across the atrium to the toilets. Over to the sink, run the tap, splash cold water on her face. She did it all without thinking. And then she looked up. The face in the mirror was blank, and pale. The eyes were wide, faintly bloodshot around the edges. She stared into them for a minute, and then she blinked. There you are, she thought, pressing her cheeks with cool, wet hands. There you are.