“I’ve just come from there. There’s nobody around.”
“Then he must be away.” Lines formed on her forehead. “Look—”
“Doesn’t he teach haka anymore?”
“I . . . I don’t know. Why?”
“The marae was deserted. It looked like it had been deserted for a while.”
Her voice was changing imperceptibly. “It’s summer and—”
“Fuck the summer,” he cut in. “It’s not only the classrooms that are empty, the training room and the house are too. Where are the dancers? Where’s Pita?”
Susan’s aged face clouded over. “I don’t know,” she stammered. “We haven’t really been in touch since Wira died.”
“What about Hana?” His tone was more aggressive than his thoughts.
“Hana?”
“Where is she?”
Susan planted her spade in the fresh earth. “She’s gone,” she said without looking at him.
“Where?”
“Europe.”
Osborne went closer to her, his blood turning to steel. “Impossible,” he said. “I checked the passenger lists on all international flights. Her name’s not on any of them.”
Susan didn’t like the tone his voice had assumed. He scared her. Her skin reddened by the southern sun, she adjusted her straw hat. “Listen, Paul, we haven’t heard from her in months. Just a letter to say she was going away.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.” Susan was looking at her spade as if it was a dead object.
“Is that all she said?”
“No, she also said she loved us.” Hana’s mother looked up. Her eyes were blue and watery.
“You’re lying,” Osborne said through clenched teeth.
“No. Now go,” she implored, as if sensing danger. “I don’t know where Hana is. All she said was that she was going away, she didn’t say where. Europe, probably. At least that’s the impression we got.”
“Is that right?”
For a moment, Susan thought he was going to hit her. “Something snapped between us,” she said in a shaky voice. “The bond, something like that. You know Hana has never got along well with her father. He doesn’t speak Maori and . . . Well, it’s an old story, I guess we should have paid more attention, Glenn and me, but it’s too late now, and anyway—”
“You’re lying!”
Susan tried to protect herself but he grabbed her by the collar of her blouse and pulled her toward him violently.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
She had stopped even trying to free herself. Osborne’s eyes glinted with anger. He shook her so hard that she started moaning.
“Please . . . ”
He threw her to the ground. She fell headlong, and her straw hat rolled toward the potato patch. She lay there, her only movement the heaving of her shoulders. Osborne swayed above her, a cold shadow beneath the pale sky. Hana’s mother was still sobbing at his feet, her mouth full of earth.
“Please . . . ”
Insects were humming in the vegetable garden.
Osborne bowed his head.
Even the earth was shaking.
* * *
At midnight, the world toppled.
It toppled backwards.
