The Parihaka Woman

by Witi Ihimaera

  ‘I was carrying the two shovels and Rocco the lantern. As we leaned into the driving wind, Rocco shouted instructions. “The prisoner is chained but his hearing is acute. Do not step too close to him, and on no account are you to utter a word to him. When I tell you to dig, do so.”

  ‘We came to the top of the cliff. From there I could see the wild ocean roaring through the passage. Seabirds were riding on the stormy winds above, crying across the clouded vault of the sky. Rocco motioned me towards the cliff where I saw the steep set of steps. Oh, wilful Fate! If I had been behind him, I could have pushed him and he would have pitched headlong in a long helpless fall to the sea far below. But the opportunity was lost … and I would have to bide my time.

  ‘Halfway down the steps I saw the entrance to a shaft. A sense of dread overcame me when I saw the door, which had a grille in it. As Rocco opened it my heart heaved with anticipation and fear. I swayed, almost fainting.

  ‘“Come inside,” Rocco said.

  ‘For a moment I was overcome by a gust of foetid wind that came up from the cave. I went through and, on the other side, rested against the wall of the shaft, waiting for my vision to adjust to the gloom. I saw that Rocco had cut a staircase to enable our safe descent. “How cold it feels,” I shivered. Rocco, oblivious, had descended.

  ‘Taking a deep breath, I followed him. The steps were dangerous and wet. Moss lined the sides all the way down. With shock I had a hideous realisation: I had come to dig the grave of my husband. If I did not succeed in rescuing him, it would indeed become the place where he would be laid in the earth.

  ‘“Stop,” Rocco ordered. We had reached the bottom of the staircase where there was complete blackness. The unbearable stench of animal urine, excreta and putrefaction almost suffocated me. Every now and then came the low boom and hiss of the sea and the crunch of pebbles shifting in the eddying currents, but no amount of sluicing by the sea would ever cleanse the underground latrine. Then Rocco lit the wick in the lantern. It flared in the dark …

  ‘And I saw the prisoner.’

  3.

  Erenora stifled a cry. The rumour was true:

  Te tangata mokomokai.

  He was chained to a post in the middle of the cave. Was he man or beast? His head looked like some corroded thing and he was cloaked with …

  Erenora gave an involuntary gasp as the cloak moved. She saw then the tuatara that clothed the prisoner’s body, holding on with their claws, their bellies pulsating against his skin. As soon as they saw the light of the lantern, they began to slip away from him until the floor of the cave was seething with more than a hundred tuatara, like a grey, writhing carpet piled at the prisoner’s feet.

  ‘Vielleicht ist er tot?’ Rocco muttered. ‘Perhaps he is dead already?’ He lit a firebrand on the wall to give further light in the darkness. He bade Erenora follow him across the floor of the cave.

  Their footsteps were loud on the gravel. The tuatara slid away from the sound.

  ‘Was this the moment that I should kill Rocco?’ Erenora wrote. ‘I raised my shovel to strike him down but …’

  The prisoner spoke in the darkness. His voice was muffled. Erenora could not recognise it.

  Who has arrived to visit me?’ He sniffed the air. ‘Ah, it is my old friend, my gaoler. But surely you come out of time?’

  Erenora’s heart filled with aro’a. She could not resist giving a small cry and, immediately, Horitana was alert, straining at his chains. ‘Who is that? Gaoler, who have you brought with you? Why won’t you speak to me?’

  Rocco motioned to Erenora to back away beyond the reach of Horitana’s chains. He kicked at the floor of the cave until he found a spot where the gravel appeared soft. ‘Eruera, dig,’ he ordered.

  At the sound of the shovel, Horitana rushed toward Erenora. His chains prevented him from coming further and he gave a cry of pain. ‘Who are you? Speak to me, please, let me hear the sound of a human voice. Take pity. Speak. Korero mai.’

  Erenora went to respond but Rocco put a hand over her mouth. ‘No. Keep digging.’

  And Horitana exhaled a deep sigh. ‘At long last, death? I thank you, gaoler. But am I not to have a final meal before you kill me? No?’

  The tuatara were circling back to him. ‘It sounds as though I will be leaving you all soon,’ he said to them. ‘Who will look after you when I am gone?’ He called to Rocco, ‘Hey, gaoler, I will save you all your labour. After you kill me, leave my body to be feasted on by my friends.’

  Suddenly, Rocco gave a cry. ‘O, armer Mann.’ He threw his shovel to one side.

  ‘I had been wondering how I could overpower Rocco,’ Erenora wrote, ‘when I saw him turning away, his back to me. This was it.’

  With a hoarse, guttural moan, Erenora raised her shovel. Screaming for release, she brought it down on Rocco’s head.

  He collapsed, stunned. ‘Eruera, have you gone mad?’

  ‘There was blood on his head and shoulders and arms,’ Erenora wrote. ‘I was screaming and screaming, and the prisoner in his mokomokai was wailing and the tuatara were slithering all over the cave, climbing the rocky walls, trying to get away. But then —’

  Erenora began to sob. She put her shovel down.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she said to Rocco. ‘I can’t stop a murder by committing a murder.’

  She thought of her mother, Miriam, killed so long ago in Warea. Mama, kei w’ea koe?

  She looked at Rocco, tears streaming down her eyes. ‘And I can’t make an orphan of a young girl who lost her mother, by killing her father.’

  She knelt on the ground. ‘Mein Herr,’ she wept, ‘I place my life and the life of my husband in your hands.’

  4.

  Rocco gave a cry. ‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘I knew the emotions I had for you were those of a man for a woman. What is your name?’

  ‘It is Erenora.’

  Rocco gave a gasp. ‘And the prisoner … you say he is your husband?’

  Erenora nodded her head hopelessly. ‘I have been looking for him for a long time. Even just to spend some last moments with him, to touch his face, to caress his skin, to hold him, has made my search for him worthwhile.’

  Oh, even wounded Rocco could have overpowered Erenora easily enough. He could have bound her so that when the assassin arrived he would have two victims, not one, to dispose of. But Rocco had already come to his own decision:

  ‘O, armer Mann,’ he had said when he threw down his shovel. ‘Oh, you poor man.’

  ‘I don’t know how long I lay weeping.

  ‘Rocco had become silent but the prisoner was agitated. “Taku ’oa wa’ine? My wife? Is she here like an angel to escort me to heaven?”

  ‘Then Rocco spoke to me. His voice was hoarse but the accustomed gruffness had gone. “Welch unerhörter Mut, Erenora,” he said with wonder, “what unheard of courage.” His voice softened further, as if peace was coming to his soul; all this time he had been greatly troubled by his conscience about the prisoner and now he was being delivered from it. “I cannot believe that a woman as you,” he continued, “would go to such lengths to save a criminal with blood on his hands. In my heart of hearts I have suspected this accusation wasn’t true. And now, Erenora, you are willing to sacrifice yourself and him to me and place yourselves at my mercy? That only confirms your and the prisoner’s goodness.”

  ‘He helped me up and smiled gently. “Your husband has suffered long enough. Perhaps he will forgive me for my role as his gaoler. Here is the key.”

  ‘All I could do was sob as Rocco put the key into my hands. And then I tried to put the key into the padlock of the mokomokai. Aue, after all these years the padlock had rusted. With a cry of frustration I pushed Horitana against the rocks and, taking up my shovel again, struck the padlock.’

  The sound boomed and echoed around the cave, but the deed was done. The tuatara disappeared into the gloom.

  ‘No, wait,’ Horitana said.

  Erenora looked at the man in the mask. He was panting, ho
lding tightly to the pole, whimpering.

  ‘I have lived so long in the mokomokai,’ he said. ‘It has been like an old friend. Let me say goodbye to it.’ He began to caress it

  with tenderness, and then he gave a sigh of acceptance. ‘And now, you who have come to release me of it, lift it off my shoulders.’

  Erenora put her fingers under the rim.

  ‘I took off the mokomokai.’

  And Horitana gave a huge, painful sob.

  At the final moment when the prisoner’s face was revealed, Erenora became afraid. Again the same doubt: What if it wasn’t Horitana?

  His face was entirely covered by a thick beard and his hair was long, lank. The skin beneath was pale, scabrous and scaly. He would not look up. He buried his face in his hands.

  ‘Horitana?’

  At the sound of Erenora’s voice, the prisoner pushed the hair out of his eyes. He gave a cry as the light from the grille of the doorway beat down upon his face and he reeled away from her. ‘Is it really you, Erenora, here? Oh Lord of Heaven, why do you punish me so?’ He was shielding his eyes.

  Erenora took a few steps after him but he pushed her away. ‘You’re not dreaming. I am here.’

  He cried out again, ‘Erenora?’ and he looked at his hands. ‘You, the first person I have touched in three years … and I push you away?’ He collapsed onto the floor.

  All Erenora could think of was that he could not recognise her. ‘My hair will grow again,’ she said.

  Then she realised that Horitana was blind.

  Did that matter? Horitana and Erenora embraced each other tenderly. In that second touch of skin on skin, Horitana knew it truly was her.

  ‘We have met again in darkness,’ he said as he pulled her forehead close to his. ‘The first time was when we were together in the darkest pit at Warea. The second came when you rescued me from the dead in the trenches, and now you descend into the darkness to me again. You, my courageous wife.’

  Erenora pressed her nose against his and, oh, it was as if all the years melted away. Her heart, how it fluttered, ka patupatu tana manawa.

  ‘I am sorry it has taken me so long to find you,’ she answered, brushing away their tears. ‘’oki mai taua ki te Ao marama. Let us return now to the world of light.’

  With Rocco’s help, Erenora guided Horitana from the cave where he had lived for so long. But at the threshold, the opening to the outer world, he backed away, crying, ‘The sun …’ Erenora ripped off her sleeves and bandaged Horitana’s head.

  Only then did they leave the darkness.

  Just in time. On the horizon was a ship.

  As fast as he could, his head aching, Rocco hastened them down to a cove. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘Hide and, later, I will bring the skiff.’

  ‘How will you explain to the executioner?’ Erenora was panicking. ‘When you take him to the empty cave he will know Horitana has escaped, and will come looking for him.’

  ‘I will tell him that Horitana overpowered me today but I was able to fend him off … and a wave, rushing into the cave, swept him away,’ Rocco answered.

  ‘He will want to see the body.’ Erenora could not quite believe that they would get away with it.

  ‘That will not be possible,’ Rocco said. ‘The currents … there’s a storm coming too … the tide will have taken him miles away by now.’

  ‘But he will find the mokomokai in the cave,’ Erenora answered, ‘and realise that your story wasn’t true.’

  ‘You must go back and get it,’ Rocco said firmly. ‘There is time.’

  With a sigh Erenora made herself believe Rocco’s story. ‘But what about Marzelline?’ she continued. ‘When I don’t return with you …’

  ‘I will not destroy her girlish dreams,’ Rocco answered. ‘I will tell her there was an accident when you and I were returning from the cliffs. I tripped and would have fallen over. You reached out your hand, saved me, but at the expense of your own life. You pitched headlong onto the rocks below. Nobody would have survived the fall.’ He was in a hurry now. ‘Geh, Eruera, leb wohl,’ he said. ‘Goodbye.’

  Erenora took a deep breath: yes, it could work.

  She gave Rocco a grateful look, and then spoke again. ‘Mein Herr, you must take your daughter back into the world.’

  Rocco’s eyes widened and he shook his head. ‘Nein! Nein! She would know only heartache. Would a man ever look her way? Knowing that she is a cripple? No. I do not want Marzelline to experience the world’s cruelty.’

  ‘You are wrong. ‘ Erenora took his hands in hers. ‘You must take the chance. Your daughter is stronger than you think. Give her the opportunity to live.’

  And Rocco finally admitted the truth about his fears.

  ‘What if I lose her … as I did her mother?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  A World Saturated in the Divine

  1.

  Well, time to tie up the loose ends, eh?

  While Erenora was away from Parihaka, William Hiroki — the Maori who had killed a surveyor named McLean and sought protection from Te Whiti — was hanged. His trial had begun on 3 May 1882, and he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death at 8 a.m. on 8 June 1882.

  Te Whiti and Tohu were shipped from Wellington to Addington Gaol in Christchurch, arriving there on the government steamer Hinemoa on 27 April 1882. Regarded as prisoners at large, they were shown the Canterbury Museum and the Kaiapoi Woollen Mills, the Christchurch Railway Workshops and the telephone exchange. When asked what he thought of these wonders, Te Whiti answered that he thought the Pakeha had some useful technology but so did the Maori.

  The prophet leaders were moved throughout the South Island to Timaru, Dunedin, Invercargill, Bluff, Queenstown and Oamaru. Wherever he went Te Whiti was called ‘The Lion of Parihaka’ and attracted a large following; some he regarded as nga tangata tutua, ill-mannered. No matter the hospitality, Te Whiti always asked why he had not yet had a trial.

  The visit to Dunedin is of special interest. Escorted by their gaoler, John Ward, the two prophets stayed at the Universal Hotel. While there the two prophets were guests at the Kai Tahu meeting house — Te Wai Pounamu — at what was known as Otakou Kaik (a Pakeha contraction of the Maori word Kaika), a couple of miles past Port Chalmers. The house was associated with the wellknown local Ellison family, who had so kindly assisted the first prisoners from South Taranaki nine years earlier. Their journey to the Kaik was to visit their kinsman and relative, Raniera Erihana — Dan Ellison — whose wife, Nani Weller, was from Kai Tahu.

  Te Whiti and Tohu ended their travels around the South Island at Nelson, where they were placed under house arrest for eight months. In October 1882, a comet illuminated the sky each evening. I wonder what interpretation Te Whiti made of the comet’s appearance, he whose name meant ‘The Shining Path of the Comet’? The thought haunts me: I can imagine him staring up at that apparition, his face impassive as he watches the comet opening all heaven’s gates, listening to the music of the universe and seeking divination.

  Then, in 1883, Te Whiti and Tohu were told that the government was burying the past and letting them go back to Parihaka as free men. Te Whiti was not persuaded. ‘If the grasshoppers find good new grass, they will come,’ he said. ‘Nothing will prevent them.’

  On 9 March the prophets saw their beloved Taranaki Mountain from the deck of a government steamer. The dawn came up and, behold, the mounga began to shine with the promise of a new day. Although they were home, however, the government extended the legislation to restrain them for another year; if they kicked up any fuss they could be arrested again.

  Their return signalled the further release of hundreds of the Parihaka ploughmen, fencers and farmers still in South Island gaols. Gradually those who had been freed began to arrive back at the kainga. A poi song was composed to honour Te Whiti:

  ‘Tangi a taku i’u e w’akamaru ana ko au pea e … My sorrow is ended now that I may stand with you, the bargeboard of our house Miti Mai Te Arero …
Here the white feather is in its place —’

  Harry Atkinson was still around to harass them. He was back as premier for three further terms before finally being ousted in 1891 by John Ballance and the Liberals, the first organised political party in New Zealand.

  2.

  From the time Erenora had begun her quest, it had taken her two years to find Horitana. They returned to Taranaki at the beginning of 1884. I wish that her unpublished manuscript was intact because it would have given us clues as to her remarkable journey bringing Horitana home. All I have are local South Island Maori sightings and stories that tell of a young Maori — some say a young man, others a woman — leading a blind man northward from Peketua Island to Dunedin and Christchurch and thence, with the aid of Archdeacon Cotterill, by ship to the North Island.

  I can imagine them both, approaching Parihaka, and the tataraki’i, sensing their arrival, beginning to open their shimmering wings, whirring in the dazzling sunlight, whirr, whirr, whirr.

  Erenora was overjoyed to see Ripeka and Meri. Ripeka was the mother of a son she was passing off to everyone as Paora’s; Meri and Riki’s son, Kawa, was now a boisterous little boy who loved to watch his mother swinging her poi.

  ‘You got back safely,’ Erenora exclaimed. ‘Ever since we parted, I’ve been so worried about you both. If anything had happened to you, I …’

  The two sisters looked at each other. ‘She never thinks we can do anything without her,’ Ripeka sighed. ‘She forgets we are women of Parihaka.’