The Parihaka Woman

by Witi Ihimaera

  The sisters may have been Maori and the other families the relatives of felons, but on that bright morning all celebrated their common humanity and fellowship. Erenora tried to put to rest her fears about what might lie ahead. Mr Donovan, however, was concerned about Ripeka’s expectations. He whispered to Erenora, ‘I do hope you have good news today.’

  Shortly afterwards, they arrived at the prison. This was the moment all had been waiting for, but when the guard finally unlocked the gates, the sisters stepped back. And even though Ripeka’s fingers dug into Erenora’s arm, painfully so, and she said, ‘I am dying of love to see my husband’, she would not go through until all the other families were admitted.

  ‘Come now,’ Erenora said. She told the guard that she would like a word with the Hokitika gaoler.

  ‘That’s Mr O’Brien you’ll be wanting,’ he answered. As he took the sisters to the gaoler’s office, Erenora saw her fellow visitors being reunited with their husbands. The children rushed to their father. Mrs Donovan clung to a fine-looking curly-headed boy.

  ‘Mam! Oh, Mam!’ he cried.

  Mr O’Brien was in a relaxed mood, having eaten a good Christmas breakfast. He was not, thank goodness, as arrogant and abusive as the Mount Cook superintendent. Instead, to Erenora’s relief, he was a man who had dealt fairly with the Parihaka prisoners during their stay.

  ‘They discharged themselves of their sentences to hard labour,’ Mr O’Brien said, ‘and they worked very hard indeed around Hokitika town.’ He shook Erenora’s hand with vigour and nodded to Ripeka and Meri. ‘So you have come from Parihaka?’ he asked. ‘Is it true that Te Whiti had prophesied the prisoners here would be released when the moon turned red?’ He chuckled, shaking his head with wry amazement. ‘Came an eclipse of the moon and the next day, sure enough, I received the order that they were to be discharged! Did they arrive home safely?’

  ‘Yes,’ Erenora answered, ‘but two men did not.’

  ‘Two?’ A shadow flickered over Mr O’Brien’s face.

  ‘Have you ever had a man here named Horitana?’ Erenora asked, her heart beating fast.

  ‘No, I would remember that name.’ Erenora closed her eyes with relief.

  ‘What about my husband?’ Ripeka asked. ‘His name was Paora. Perhaps he was transferred to another gaol?’

  Mr O’Brien’s eyes fell and he would not meet her gaze. ‘That name,’ he began, ‘I do remember …’

  5.

  Truth to tell, Erenora had long had a premonition about Paora, but that did not make the news of his death any easier to bear. Immediately, Ripeka began to wail a tangi for him. ‘Aue, aue te tane e, kua ngaro ki te Po.’

  Mr and Mrs Donovan came to offer comfort. ‘To come all this way, dear,’ Mrs Donovan said to Ripeka, ‘with so much hope in your heart …’

  Mr Donovan took Erenora aside. ‘Charlie told us that some of the Maoris died during the winter,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t bear to tell you.’

  ‘Could you tell me where my sister’s husband is buried?’ Erenora asked Mr O’Brien.

  All the way to the cemetery, Ripeka couldn’t stop crying. The sun was hot through the trees when the sisters entered the gateway looking for Paora’s grave. They saw in the distance, slightly apart, the place where Mr O’Brien had told them Paora was resting.

  Ripeka, filled with grief, stumbled forward, crying to Paora, ‘Aue, husband, aue.’ When she reached the mound of earth, she fell to the ground. ‘You lie only six feet beneath me, and yet you are so far away.’ Some kind soul had raised a white wooden cross. On it were inscribed the words:

  PAORA, A DISCIPLE OF TE WHITI

  Ripeka was in great distress, scraping some of the dirt into her hands and sprinkling it over her head. ‘Te mamae … aue te mamae …’

  Meanwhile, what was Meri up to? She had wandered through the trees, picking small twigs of greenery. When she returned, she began to weave them into funeral chaplets. She placed one on Ripeka’s head, another on Erenora’s and the third on her own.

  ‘We will stay here for three days,’ she said. ‘And we will mourn Paora just as we would have done if he had died in Parihaka.’

  Meri always surprised with her simplicity and sense of rightness.

  And so began Erenora and her sisters’ vigil at the graveyard.

  Mr and Mrs Donovan came to say farewell before returning to Kumara. ‘We’ll bide a little time with you,’ Mrs Donovan said, ‘for surely the Irish and the Maoris are the same under the skin.’

  After two hours, Mr Donovan coughed that it was time to go. ‘You’re a good lad, Eruera,’ he said as he shook Erenora’s hand. ‘Look after your sisters.’

  That evening the sisters wrapped themselves in shawls and slept in the cemetery. The sexton and gravedigger saw them the following morning, but did not disturb their grief. During that day, whenever people from Hokitika came to visit their own loved ones, they were greeted by Meri.

  ‘’aere mai e te manu’iri e!’ she called. ‘Come and mourn with us.’

  Although the Pakeha were puzzled, not knowing Maori custom, they responded by bowing their heads and shaking hands. Some of the men, at the prodding of their womenfolk, left gold coins. ‘After all, it is the Christmastide.’

  The local vicar was soon told about the women and their guardian. He went to see Mr O’Brien. ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘I have already informed the mayor,’ Mr O’Brien answered. ‘Leave the boy and his sisters to their mourning. They will move on in due course.’

  For the second night, the sisters slept in the cemetery, huddling for warmth in the blankets the vicar had brought them. But by the afternoon of the third day, Ripeka had not come to any peace with herself. She could not let Paora go.

  ‘What are we to do?’ Meri asked Erenora, concerned. ‘We must go on to Christchurch. The miners are beginning to congregate for New Year. We should get out of Hokitika as soon as we can.’

  Ripeka overheard her. ‘Then leave me here,’ she said to Erenora. Her grief had made her bitter. ‘You never wanted me to come in the first place, sister, and I will be one less for you to worry about.’

  ‘Ripeka, stop this,’ Erenora said.

  ‘And thank God that Paora is dead, Erenora, because this way he won’t know the shame of my bearing a child of a rape … I’m already soiled goods, aren’t I.’

  ‘No, Ripeka,’ Erenora said.

  Ripeka’s hysteria continued to mount. ‘Yes, go on without me. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? Let me bear my devil’s child where nobody can see it … and, don’t worry, I’ll be able to look after myself … there’ll be other men who can have me if they want to … and when you get back to Parihaka tell them all that I died, Erenora, tell them that, like our ancestor, Poutini turned me into pounamu … I don’t care any more … I don’t care …’

  Erenora slapped her, a stinging blow. ‘But we care,’ she yelled, shaking Ripeka. ‘Meri and I are not going without you. Te mate ki te mate, te ora ki te ora, the dead to the dead, the living to the living. The time has come to carry on.’

  With a cry, Ripeka collapsed into Meri’s arms.

  How long did it take before Ripeka relinquished Paora? It might have been an hour. Two hours. Finally, she saw a small breeze scattering fallen leaves like a benediction: Go, wife. She heaved a great sigh and, under the trees, with the sunlight slanting golden all around, she nodded.

  Meri, trying to make her smile, began to tap her poi, persistent in the sunlight.

  ‘Oh, you two,’ Ripeka said to her sisters in exasperation.

  18 Maarire Goodall, ‘Maori Prisoners in Our Midst’, Witi Ihimaera (ed.), Te Ao Marama Vol. 2: Regaining Aotearoa — Maori Writers Speak Out, Reed, 1993, p. 41.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Courage of Women

  1.

  Erenora and her sisters began the crossing of Ka Tiritiri o Te Moana, the Southern Alps.

  Te ka’a o nga wa’ine, the courage of the women.

  ‘It will be a tough
walk,’ Erenora said, ‘and although it is summer, it will be makariri when we reach the top.’ The flanks of the mountains looked daunting and precipitous.

  The crossing followed an old pre-European trail once used by greenstone hunters moving from the West Coast to Canterbury. When Pakeha arrived, they expanded the trail to a bridle track. Then gold was discovered, and over 1,000 men, armed with picks and shovels, wrested the coach road from the mountains.

  The sisters made good progress. Most of the horse-drawn traffic was coming from the Canterbury side. ‘Hide!’ Meri would yell whenever she heard the rumble of hooves and carts on the road. Having missed Christmas, the miners swept past whooping and hollering, wanting to be in Hokitika or Greymouth for New Year, but Meri wasn’t taking any chances.

  She also kept the sisters’ spirits up. As they climbed the weaving, dizzying road she would exclaim, ‘Oh, look! Titiro!’ Everywhere the Christmas flower, the rata, was in bloom across the forest-covered hillsides. The mountain tops with their ’uka — or ‘froth’ as she called the snow — delighted her.

  Came the first night, and the sisters huddled together to keep warm. Sharp stones from the track had lacerated Ripeka’s shoes; her feet were bleeding.

  ‘Here,’ Erenora said, ‘let me wash them.’ She went down to the river rushing nearby and soaked her headscarf in the water. As she began to minister to her sister, Ripeka started to cry. ‘I’m sorry, Erenora,’ she wept. ‘I didn’t mean what I said about you at Hokitika.’

  Erenora comforted her. ‘I know you didn’t. We are sisters.’

  Their mood lightened, and they maintained good speed next day, with Erenora deciding the pace and her sisters following in her steps. Everywhere were deep gorges and spectacular rivers.

  A few days later the sisters reached the summit of Arthur’s Pass. ‘Halfway there,’ Erenora said as Ripeka and Meri did a little dance of joy.

  ‘I knew it was right to karanga to the mountains,’ Meri said. ‘They are protecting us.’

  They descended to the Bealey River, climbing again to Porters Pass. The only danger they faced was not of the human kind but from strong-beaked parrots which flew at them, crying, ‘Keeaaa! Keeaaa!’

  Then they reached Cass and, not long afterward, the Canterbury Plains, shrouded in mist, stretched before them.

  2.

  Wellington may have been Empire City, but to Erenora Christchurch, Otautahi, was like the city she had read about in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. After landing from immigrant ships into the chaos of a new land, the first citizens had set about building a place of splendid spires:

  The City of the Plains.

  ‘Maori were not as common in Te Wai Pounamu,’ Erenora wrote. ‘When Ripeka, Meri and I found our way to the dignified dark-grey cathedral, in its beautiful square, we were looked at curiously but not with overt animosity.

  ‘We decided to go inside Te Hahi Nui to give thanks to God for keeping us safe. A choir was singing, such a heavenly sound. It was so good to be refreshed by hymn and prayer.

  ‘As we departed I noticed a woman looking at us. Perhaps it was the feathers in Ripeka and Meri’s hair that attracted her attention. She was on the point of approaching but was called aside by her companion.

  ‘My sisters and I began to discuss our accommodation. “We can’t afford to be wasteful,” I said to them. “Let’s camp on the outskirts of Christchurch.” I wanted to save the money that we had for our return trip to Taranaki.

  ‘“What if the police find us?” Meri asked nervously.

  ‘“They won’t,” I answered. “Remember all those times when we were children, on the run from Warea, and made ourselves invisible in the bush?”

  ‘“They might have dogs to sniff us out,” Meri said. Hmm, I had never thought of that!

  ‘We followed the glancing loops of the flax-bordered Avon out of the city; once upon a time, the area must have been a wonderful ma’inga kai. It wasn’t long before we came to fine meadows, bright and open; a flock or two of sheep watched as we passed by. Following the glistening river took us to a potato field. The trill of the riroriro, the bird that signalled summer days, pursued us and, finally, we found a hollow that was warm and cosy for the night. We didn’t think the farmer would mind sharing his potatoes with us so we dug up a few and roasted them on a fire, and then we bedded down, spending the night talking and laughing about our adventures. Sleep came easily and, the next morning, after a quick dip in the river to cleanse ourselves and revive our spirits, we returned to Cathedral Square.

  ‘During the night, I had decided what I would do. “I want you both to remain in the square and wait for me,” I said to Ripeka and Meri. “It’s a lovely day and you can both rest in the sun.”

  ‘“Where are you going?” Meri asked, suddenly afraid.

  ‘“To Addington Prison,” I answered, “to find where the Parihaka men have been incarcerated. It will be quicker if I go alone.”

  ‘Alarmed, Meri looked at Ripeka. “What if something happens to us while you’re gone?”

  ‘Typical, I thought, for my sisters to think of themselves. What about me! I pointed crossly to the doors of the cathedral, “Run and seek sanctuary inside.”’

  3.

  Erenora was soon on the Lincoln Road to Addington, to the south-west of the city. She was in such a hurry, head down and intent on her destination, that she did not notice how quickly the environment around her had changed.

  Suddenly, as she was crossing two iron tracks, there was a huge roaring sound and something monstrous, huge and belching smoke and embers, came out of a cloud to pounce on her. With a cry she flung herself to one side. And when the smoke dissipated, she took her bearings.

  Where am I?

  She was in a world such as she had never been before, a huge cacophonic railway junction of steaming, shunting trains and rolling stock. Of course she had seen illustrations of locomotives in books but nothing prepared her for the immensity of the engines, coaches and freight wagons. They were like her oxen, but they were also not like her beloved companions; they were malevolent, and they screamed so.

  Except that in a brief lull, Erenora realised that they weren’t screaming at all: the screams were coming from her. ‘Mama, kei w’ea koe?’ she whimpered. But her mother and father were gone, had been gone for many years now. What did dead mean?

  ‘A moment ago I was in te Ao, the light,’ she cried to herself, ‘and now I am in te Po, the darkness.’

  Yes, indeed, a few heartbeats before, Erenora had been in the presence of God; now she was in some phantasmagorical space at the edge of heaven, where bawling livestock, destined for slaughter yards, were being unloaded. From one of the trains came another kind of freight: prisoners under guard being delivered to the prison. And one of the guards had a whip …

  Erenora put her hands to her throat. And then she saw the prison ahead and she had to stop and recover her breath — for it was designed in the same new Gothic style as Te Hahi Nui. But where one provided approbation and entry for those chosen by God, the other provided only moral disapproval and punishment for the fallen.

  Disoriented and sobbing, Erenora stumbled across the maze of railway tracks and fell to the ground. Until that moment she had fortified herself with the unswerving belief that Horitana was alive and she would find him. After all, was he not one of the blessed? She remembered how, to Maori, even being put into the lock-up was regarded as a sentence of death.

  ‘Oh Lord of Heaven,’ Erenora prayed, ‘have you deserted us?’

  It had been a long time coming, this sudden collapse of her faith in God. All her life Erenora had been sustained by trust and courage. Now both deserted her. She couldn’t move, and as her spirits descended even further, the question came to her:

  ‘In this kingdom of the Pakeha, erected to the glory of God, where does the Maori belong?’

  The question sank deep into her soul, and her thoughts became incoherent. What had the Confiscated Lands Inquiry said of the purpose for a
llocating reserve land to Maori:

  To do justice to the Maori and continue English settlement of the country?

  Erenora began to moan, swaying from side to side; she felt as though she were choking. All her life, she realised, ever since her mother Miriam had been cruelly ripped away from her, she had been fighting for her life. If confiscation continued, was that to be the future of the Maori, the iwi katoa of all Aotearoa? To be herded onto and live the rest of their lives in reserves … or at the edges of the land, the fringes of the sea, the tops of mountains, offshore islands … or to scrabble with others for scraps and pieces of unwanted broken biscuit, in the great cities of the Pakeha … living at their outer limits where the Pakeha always deposited his waste or the unwanted: the abattoirs, rubbish dumps, sanatoriums, cemeteries, orphanages, tips, brothels, asylums, gaols, poorhouses …

  If Maori continued to fight against the Pakeha, would the price be deprivation of God’s munificence and banishment, like felons, from his presence? Would Maori be erased all together?

  And if this was the fate of Maori in God’s kingdom on earth, would it be the same in God’s kingdom in heaven?

  The ground thundered around Erenora and she howled like a wounded animal, her hands over her ears and her eyes closed. That was when she heard Te Whiti’s voice:

  ‘Aue, Erenora, have you already forgotten that there will come a time when the days of our mourning will be ended? Our people also shall be all righteous … we shall inherit the land forever … A little one shall become a thousand and a small one a strong nation. Therefore, put aside your fears and rise up from the depths of your despair.’