6 – Jake And The Broken Of Hearts And Spirits

Short Info:  After waking in the afternoon of Boogie’s appearance in court and the night after beating Beth, Jake goes with a mate to the pub.

Themes:  Maori Pride / Violence / Prejudice/Bigotry / Maori Culture / Gangs

Jake grinding his teeth and waking from violent dreams.  ‘Just as he woke, almost invariably, with a desire to punch someone, which grew quickly to vivid imaginings of wrongs done him, slights, looks, and so he feeling hurt and then – naturally enough, as he saw it – wanting to right things the only way he knew how: with his fists.’ (p50)

‘Jake’s world was physical; and he was aware it was physical.  He assumed damn near the whole world was seeing it the same.’ (p50). The way Jake sees the world is always with a potential for fighting – he doesn’t think there is anything wrong with this view – it’s the way all his drinking mates see the world.  His language is different to that of both Beth and Grace – more violent, more swear words.

‘… Even love.  Why not love?  Every man needs love: a woman’s love (her twat, more like it), his mates (very important), his kids (in a man’s own way, mind.  Don’t wanna be a fuckin sook about it.  Gotta get their respect or they’ll walk all over you.)  But it was violence that Jake Heke was most tuned to.’ (p51)

Jake’s ramble continues as he walks down the street, every second word the ‘f’ word and thinking about beating his wife.  She’d deserved it.  Thoughts go to Beth catching taxis, buses etc to do the shopping, thinks that he would buy her a car if he had the money because he didn’t want people thinking he didn’t take care of his family.  Mixed up sense of responsibility / love.  Thinks he’s a good man for giving his wife half the dole money so that she can buy the food and pay the bills.  Scorns the other men who don’t do the same.  Jake’s world is about respect and power.  Discusses going in to the bar and not even having to have money because people would shout him ‘And a man knows, they’re buying his favours, his promise he’ll leave em alone, or look after em if they get picked.  They’re buying Jake Heke the man – and so they should.  Not as if God or sumpthin handed a man his rep on a plate, said, Here, take it.  It’s for free Might be free beers sometimes in this world, but there ain’t free scrapping reps, not with Maoris.  You got to earn it . . . Us Maoris, man, we used to be warriors.’ (p53/54)

Jake and Dooly discussing giving their wives the dole money, Dooly giving his wife more than Jake to run the house on.  Jake saying that he’d kick the missus out if she couldn’t run the house on half the money.  Dooley responding ‘Aw c’mon, Jake.  But I like my missus.  Jake’s eyes flashing briefly wide as the sentence tried to cognite in his mind.  Then his face relaxing when he rejected the pronouncement as his friend meaning he liked his missus for what she had on live-in tap for his choice of taking – her sex.’ (p54)

Jake and Dooly cruising the neighbourhood, going past his own house and having a fleeting moment of what might be guilt / remorse, but not recognisable to us.  Yelling at some slum kids ‘Haven’t ya got mothers?’  The question jumping from Jake’s mouth without forethought nor afterthought.  And grinning all over’ (p55) not caring about their neglect.

Going through the white neighbourhood and Jake thinking about the Pakeha and their houses and cars – jealous, but without thinking of it as jealousy.  ‘Jake was getting to fume more and more over the car-loving-successful-appearing white maggot shits.’ (p56)

The chapter concentrates on Jake’s hatred, his bigotry.   Dooly trying to say that we’re all the same.  Jake disbelieving. Jealous, hating.  Seeing the Brown Fists and also hating them.  Seeing old Maori men outside the pub and having no respect for them.

Inside the pub

–        noise – lots of sound.  Violent sound to reflect Jake’s world, the world of the drunken Maori.  ‘Shrieking explosions of laughter, exclamation, SOUND! . . . layers and layers of em, of babbling, jabbering, moaning, cursing, swearing, beer-pouring humanity’ (p60)

Concentrates on fighting – on who is the bigger man. Jake feeling pride that his table was emptied for him, describing the accolades of the people waiting for him:  “People greeted at every step, near. Laughin’ their crawlin’ laughs, patting him, shakin his mit, even the left one’d do in their eagerness to be withim; asking him who he was gonna sort out tonight. Shet.  Lodging their greetings with him so he’d not forget, falling at his feet damn near; brushing, touching, squeezing a man’s rock-hard muscularity just like I’m a fuckin god. Shet. (P62).

Builds the mood/atmosphere:  so people going, all over the joint they were going.  Out of their minds, that is.  Heads rolling, eyes too, things coming out jumbled, rubbishy, and aggression growing; spit-drops on every spat out word, sentence, a gibberish, mixed-up, fuck-up gibberish from a person supposed to be human. Man.  Did a fulla get as bad as that?  Jake always found it hard to believe of himself whenever he did happen to come in sober.

Talk about singing – then Dame Kiri and how she is an international star.  Jake has heard over the years people say “I cried that day to see a Maori – a Maori – singing for royalty in front of the whole world.  Cried.  Only thing, didn’t like that damn dress she wore, made her look like she’d bought it from the Sally Op Shop, eh. “

“when Mavis sang she gave you no choice she bowled you with her talent, almost frightened you with the scope of herself, the tones and shades and hues and sheer range of her notes. Except you didn’t understand what was happening to you, escpeially not if you were Jake Heke, yet you could hear – hear – and so you had this thing happening inside of you but you did not know what.”  (P64)

“Oh kia ora! Jake being greeted in Maori, the language of his physical appearance, his actual ethnic existence, and yet they could be speaking Chink-language for what it mattered . . . made him uncomfortable if they spoke it to him …” (P64)

“Then – Huh? (Boogie.) Boogie? It just popped up in his mind.  O shit, a  man forgot Boog had to go to court and I was sposed to be there.  Jake stopping in his tracks a moment . . . (Sorry Boog.) Ah, fuckit. Wasn’t me got him in trouble with the courts … he’s a wimp anyway. Ya wouldn’t think he’s a son of mine”. (P65)

Jake gets to the bar, says it must have taken 8 minutes “he felt like a chief, a Maori warrior chief – no, not a Maori chief, I can’t speak the language and people’ll know I can’t and it’ll spoil it …” (p65)

… so he stood there swelled with pride and vanity and this sense of feeling kingly and inside a voice was going: Look at me. Look at me, ya fuckers.  I’m Jake Heke. Jake the Muss Heke. LOOK AT ME (and feel humble, you dogs). (p66)

Jake stands off against the Brown Fists and describes the feeling of rage that builds inside of him.  “And Jake at the front there’d built to his HATE state: a steady, mad burning inside of hatred – hatred – HATRED! and this funny, deep-down hurt.” (p76) The Brown Fist gets close to Jake and pleads with him not to punch him “Y’ can’t do this, man.  I got my boys watching … I lose my, uh, my pride here, man …” (p77).

The chapter is intersected at this point by following Grace as she watches her drunken mother and gazes at the stars above, wondering about the Pakeha and their lifestyle.  Foreshadows her death as she watches a shooting star “Ah, so sad really: just a brief moment in time and then gone forever.” (p79)

The bar closes and the narrator gives (his) impression of the Chinese people, how different again they are to the Maori (and the Pakeha, too).  There is clear hatred for them on Jake’s part, he wants their goods and services, but he doesn’t like them. “And the Slit-eyes waiting hungrily forem to arrive, hiding their contempt behind sugary Oriental smiles … and snatched your money, man.” Jake’s contempt stems from envy, from tunnel vision – the Chinese people have a strong work ethic enabling them to do well in life, to have the money they need to be comfortable.  Jake dislikes this because he does not have a work ethic and he will never make anything of himself, even if he doesn’t recognise that this is the reason for his anger.

5 – Tennessee Waltz (Beth’s POV)

Themes: Parenting / Alcohol / Music / Hopelessness / Maori Lifestyle / Womanhood / Dreams

Short Info:  Beth waking up broken and beaten and wanting to drink, reflections on her children, dreams

Beth wakes up the same morning of the court appearance, feeling her bruises and the swelling on her face.  ‘ooo, that bastard.  One day I’ll kill you.  It hurt all over.’ (p38). Beth realises that she has slept until late in the afternoon and that she has missed Boogie’s court appearance.  Wrestling with her guilt she makes herself feel better by justifying it with her physical appearance, couldn’t go there like that.  Beth moves around her kid’s bedrooms, thinking about them, feeling guilty.

She sees Polly’s doll, thinking it looked like a corpse.  She sees the boxer posters in Nig’s room and compares them to Jake ‘But still looking at the Negro boxer and comparing to her husband, the build, the meanness of face, the eyes . . . the eyes, searching for something she could see but not put her finger on; as if the fighter’s eyes were giving away something of the exact same look in her husband’s eyes, almost a hurt.  Yes, a wounded hurt.  As if he’s saying, I’m gonna punish you, not because I’m bad but because you hurt me.’ (p40)

Beth’s reverie is interrupted with thoughts of the Tramberts all the time.

Beth changes, using clothes she has secreted about the house and proceeds to sit down and drink a beer.  She thinks back to girlhood, when she’d been ‘spunky’.  Drinking more and more beer ‘Have another glass.  Mmm-uh.  Thank you.  Downing it greedily, like medicine. Or love.  Or maybe they’re both.’ (p42)

Beth wanting to listen to music, saying that the Maori are a musical race.  Thoughts turning to how Europeans are like strangers – might as well be from another country for all the contact the two races have.  ‘Oh, but I can’t blame em half the time when you see all the crime, or too damn much of it, is committed by us.’ (p43) Beth goes on to say that Maori’s are basically a good people, they look out for each other, give each other the shirt of their backs, etc. Beth says Maori’s have passion and humour “but we ain’t got material things.”  The Maori have their love of food, they are a laid back race, “cept when we’re drunk”.   ‘Half our trouble: beer and fists and having passion.  They don’t mix.’ (p43) Goes on to say Maori are musical, good dancers, natural born entertainers, but shy.

Kids come home and comment on her face.  She is half-drunk by this point and goes back to sense of hopelessness.  Grace comes home, crying.  Grace and Beth hug each other but it feels strange.  They may as well be strangers.  Beth makes false promises to go and see Boogie in the home.  Grace implores her mother ‘why can’t we leave here?’ Again, Beth gives her false promises that they will one day.

‘A smoke.  Coldish beer.  And music.  Wanting no more, for the moment, than that.’ (p46).

Beth continues to get drunk alone and shouts at the ceiling ‘We used to be a race of warriors, O audience out there.  You know that?  And our men used to have full tattoos all over their ferocious faces, and it was chiselled in and they were not to utter a sound.  Not one sound. The women, too, they had tats on their chins and lips were black with tattooing . . . I spose they thought us women are weak anyway, though we aren’t.’ (P47)

‘And we used to war all the time, us Maoris.  Against each other.  Ture.  It’s true, honest to God, audience.  Hated each other.  Tribe against Tribe.  Savages.  We were savages.  But warriors, eh.  It’s very important to remember that.  Warriors.  Because, you see, it was what we lost when you, the white audience out there, defeated us.  Conquered us.  Took our land, our mana, left us with nothing.  But the warriors thing got handed down, see.  Well, sort of handed down; in a mixed-up sense it did.  It was more toughness that got handed down from generation to generation.  Toughness, eh. . . .But we – or our men, anyway – are clinging on to this toughness thing, like its all we got, while the rest of the world is leaving us behind.’ (p48)

During her half-drunk ranting she sees the lights go on at the Trambert’s place again.  Imagining what they’d be doing at this time of night.  Sporadically she sends the kids next door to buy beers.  Beth dances to the Tennessee Waltz by herself.   Grace watches from the outside ‘This grotesque face with its wounds fresh and swollen sliding – sliiiding – across a girl’s vision like out of a dream sequence on that backdrop of yellow/white squares illumiating a woman, a mother, a beaten wife, a member of a troubled race, her condition for this side of the world to see.’ (p49)

1 – A Woman in Pine Block (Beth’s POV)

Chapter One – A Woman in Pine Block

Themes: Hopelessness : Maori Lifestyle : Alcohol : Violence : Dreams : Other cultures : Books

Short Info:  Introduction to Beth, the kids, the setting of Pine Block, Jake Heke, the idea of being Maori

This chapter introduces us to Beth Heke, a Maori woman, a wife, a mother.  We immediately learn about how Beth covets her neighbour, Mr. Trambert’s (“lucky white bastard” page 1) property and lifestyle. He lives close to, but separate from, Pine Block in a nice house on a nice street. Beth goes on to describe Pine Block “A mile-long picture of the same thing; all the same, just two-storey, side-by-side misery boxes” (page 7). She compares her own neighbourhood to that of the ‘white’ neighbourhood and how run down and depressing it is. Pine Block is full of rusting cars, cracked footpaths, broken down houses, washing machines on the lawn (page 12), rubbish over-flowing in the gutters, sending kids to bed with no sheets.  Tells us that she feels like a queen riding home in a taxi with groceries and observing the Pakeha world “And she’d be looking out the window and she’d notice the Pakeha houses, how most of em had well-kept lawns and nice gardens with flowers and shrub arrangements and some with established trees …” (page 12).

Beth goes on to discuss the children of the neighbourhood, including her own children “Beth wondering, all the time wondering. At them. The kids.  The unkempt, ill-directioned, neglected kids.  And her own kids. How were they going to fare?” (page 7). She discusses the plight of the children and how parents neglect them because of the booze. She states that she would never neglect her own children, no matter how boozed she was. Talks about the children who are so alone that they live in car wrecks, sniffing glues and so on.  No wonder then, that children want to join the local gangs as substitute families. The neighbourhood gang is called The Brown Fists; ‘Though there were kids who’d joined with their arch-rivals, the Black Hawks, across town, and so got to do battle, often fatal, with their Pine Blocks brothers and cousins and childhood friends.  Maori against Maori’ (page 15). Beth despairs at the thought of her eldest son, Nig, joining a gang.

We are introduced to Jake Heke for the first time through Beth where we learn about his violent nature, “and yet I love the black, fist-happy bastard.” (page 1). We learn that Beth dreams but she has been suppressed for so long by her living conditions and her husband that they barely exist anymore. She dreamed of being like Mr. Trambert and how her life has turned out to be nothing like that at all, She had dreams then.  But they got lost along the way.  Sixteen years is a long time.  For dreams to stay alive.  And wasn’t as if the dream was to be a Trambert, a Mrs. Trambert, no.  Just to have a whole house with her own bit of land under her feet that she and Jake and their kids could call their own. But nothing like a few hidings – from the man supposed to be part of the dream – to reduce life and its dreams to thoughts that grow to disbelief.’ (page 8).

Beth ruminates on what it means to be Maori as she looks down upon the wasted landscape of Pine Block ‘Feeling like a traitor in her own midst because her thoughts so often turned to disgust, disapproval, shame and sometimes to anger, even hate.  Of them, her own people.  And how they carried on. At the restrictions they put on themselves …” (page 8). Her discussion leads on to thinking about other cultures that she sees in the ‘soaps’; Americans who are ‘beautiful people being nasty to each other, rich, white bitches and bastards not satisfied with life being kind to em.’ (page 9). Whilst thinking about ‘the Maori problem’, Beth ruminates on the fact that nobody reads and whether this means something or not, ‘And it occurred to Beth that her own house – no, not just her own house but every house she’d ever been in – was bookless.’ (p10)  ‘Why are Maori’s not interested in books?  Well, they didn’t have a written language before the white man arrived, maybe that was it.  But still it bothered her.  And she began to think that it was because a bookless society didn’t stand a show in this modern world, not a damn show.  And I live in it, don’t I?  and my kids.’ (p10)

We learn a lot about Beth’s own nature, including the fact that she perceives herself as being strong, a fighter, even in the face of a husband who beats her.  This foreshadows her change of character later in the text. But I’m a fighter, I ain’t the type to lie down and let people, life, roll over me.’ (p13)