Witi Ihimaera - Bulibasha

‘I will do it,’ Pani repeated. He took his cap off his head, came forward and knelt beside Mum and Dad. ‘It would be a great honour to serve your family, Bulibasha.’

Pani was handsome, shy and, at that moment, aglow with strength.

‘But why would you do this?’ Grandfather asked.

Pani turned crimson. ‘Bulibasha, I wish to marry your daughter Miriam.’

‘Miriam?’ Grandfather laughed out loud. ‘Surely, boy, you know she must be ten years older than you.’ He turned to Miriam. ‘How old are you, daughter? Thirty? Is your womb still ripe or has it already dried up?’

At that moment I hated Bulibasha more than I had ever hated him in my life.

‘Why don’t you ask for Esther?’ Grandfather asked Pani. ‘She’s more your age.’

Pani lifted his eyes to Miriam. ‘Although I have respect for Esther, as indeed I do for Sephora, my feelings for them are as I have for sisters. The one I love is Miriam.’

Made radiant by Pani’s love, Miriam came and knelt beside him. Grandfather became very angry. He stared at my father and pointed a finger at him.

‘You put your sister up to this,’ he said. ‘Well, it won’t work. Even if I was able to let you go, where would you go? There is no land left. I have nothing to give you. Nothing. It has all gone to your older brothers and sisters. Yes, once there was land, a little piece of the broken biscuit that the Pakeha left us. But the major portion of that land has gone to Matiu, for he is the eldest and the one who will carry on after I am gone. And what was left has already been divided up. You were born too late, Joshua. There is nothing left.’

All I could feel were tears of frustration and my sister Glory jabbing me with her elbow: Do something.

What could I do? Nothing, except take Glory’s hand and together with Faith and Hope go to kneel beside our father and mother, Miriam and Pani.

‘We too ask this of you, Grandfather,’ I said. ‘If you won’t take Pani, take me. I will remain behind if you let my parents and my sisters go.’ Glory pulled at my arm. ‘And Glory will stay too.’

Grandfather roared with laughter.

I began to rage inside at our helplessness — my mother and father, kneeling here with Aunt Miriam and Pani, they would never be able to get away. Never escape. Never.

Then Grandmother Ramona stood up.

‘Enough, Tamihana,’ she said. ‘Stop playing with them like a dog does a cat.’

She began to walk across the room to where my mother and father were kneeling. She paused a moment beside them. The hem of her long skirt brushed beside my mother.

‘You might not have any land left,’ Grandmother Ramona said to Bulibasha, ‘but I do.’

My mother gave a moan and began to shake her head. But Grandmother was firm. Her voice softened and she patted my father on the shoulder. My mother caught at the hem of her skirt.

‘You can have my land, son.’

At the words, Grandmother swayed as if the giving of the land were a giving of some part of herself. My mother began to cry because she knew how Grandmother loved that land and its fruit trees and hives: it was Grandmother’s heart and sanctuary.

Then Grandmother recovered. Resolute, she swept the room with her gaze. Her voice was authoritative.

‘All of you are witness,’ she said. ‘The land down by the river I give to Joshua, Huria and their children.’

She was gone out of the room before Bulibasha could speak up against her.

At the end of that winter, my father Joshua and mother Huria moved Faith, Hope, Glory and me from the homestead to the land down by the river.

Grandfather was angry at letting us go, constantly arguing with Grandmother and trying to force her to change her mind. He gave my father Joshua more and more to do, saying it all had to be done before we left. Dad was stoic and patient, despite the fact that Grandfather always found a reason to delay our departure. Finally, exasperated by our wilful and stony silence, Grandfather said to Dad –

‘Go then, go to your mother’s land.’

Mum suspected, though would never say it, that Grandfather wanted us to suffer through next winter. There was little time to prepare the land for crops that would take bud and be ready for the next harvest.

Grandfather was compensated when Pani moved in to take my father’s place. Poor Pani, he agreed to Grandfather’s terms — after one year, Grandfather would offer him ‘my daughter’s hand in marriage’ — without really knowing the extent of his impending servitude. Every morning he was up at six. He was always at Grandfather’s beck and call. He did chauffeuring duties when required. If he was lucky he managed to get into bed by nine. One stipulation, however, Pani fought. This was that he was never to be alone in Miriam’s company. Pani obtained half an hour after dinner to sit with Miriam on the verandah.

Love kept Pani at Grandfather’s stern wheel for the agreed year. At the end of the year Grandfather did indeed offer his daughter’s hand — but Sephora’s hand and not Miriam’s. Was not Sephora the eldest and therefore the one to be wed before her sister? There was something biblical about Grandfather’s gesture, a rightness that was nevertheless vindictive to the course of true love. Yet Pani persevered and agreed to work another year for Miriam.

On the day we moved to Grandmother’s land, my mother found it difficult to leave the quarters. She was a sentimental person and, as the afternoon wore on, became more tearful. No matter what it looked like or how small it was, the quarters had been the place to which she was brought as a young bride. Here she and my father Joshua had shared their passionate life and, from it, become the parents of four children. They had nursed, raised and loved us when we suffered through whooping cough, flu, an ailment which the Maori called puku and other sicknesses. On one occasion Mum had called in an old kuia with healing powers to succour the rasping breathing I developed — Grandfather would have had kittens if he’d found out. The kuia hooked a small finger deep into my throat and pulled out string after string of dry yellow phlegm.

A house, no matter how small or old, is filled with memories.

My spinster aunts were also unhappy about Mum and Dad leaving. We were moving only three miles down the road, but the farewells between Mum and Sephora, Miriam and Esther were agonising. The women had grown to depend on each other. Aunt Sephora, for instance, had been midwife at my birth when I came prematurely into the world. She had always considered herself to be my other mother. As for Aunt Miriam’s romance with Pani, that would never have happened had it not been for Mum telling Miriam to take the chance and forget about the difference in age, that here was a young man who saw beyond physical years to the person beneath.

Our spinster aunts were afraid too. They didn’t want to be left alone with Grandfather Tamihana, whose rages and periods of irrationality could never be anticipated. But Pani would be there, living in the quarters, and he would keep Grandmother and my aunts safe at the homestead.

Dad filled the car with all our possessions, a pitiful assortment of bedding, pots and pans, clothes and a few ornaments and trinkets, and drove on ahead while the rest of us walked along the road, herding Red in front of us. Glory rode Dad’s palomino and pulled the packhorse behind her. Our dog, Stupid, kept barking excitedly.

Grandmother Ramona accompanied us. When we arrived at the land she asked if she might be given a moment to say goodbye to her bees. Of course we agreed, expecting that even though we lived there she would continue to come down to the meadow to keep her hives.

‘No,’ she said. ‘When I gave you the land I relinquished all claim to it.’ When she said it like that, my mother started to cry again, the tears streaming like a river down her face.