Witi Ihimaera - Bulibasha

According to the coroner’s report, ‘No blame should be attached to the publican, Mr Walker, who refused to serve the young Mohi Mahana and his friends after 6 p.m. closing. It is a tragedy blah blah blah.’

The facts are that the said Mr Walker slipped a crate to Mohi, who was angry at having lost the race against Hukareka, on the understanding that the transaction would remain secret between them. Mr Walker was fortunate that the survivors of the accident kept to that understanding. Around five o’clock in the morning, after drinking steadily all night, Mohi failed to take the corner just past the bridge to Waituhi. My father Joshua and I, up early and on our way to a cattle sale in Matawhero, were the first to come across the car. The Zephyr was upside down in the huge drainage canal which ran parallel with the road. The bodywork had crumpled; the windscreen was starred with broken glass. Week-long rain had filled the canal, and floating upside down were the bodies of Mohi, Carol and a young man called Jake. The other three boys were sitting on the side of the canal, drinking and laughing as if the party was still happening, man, and yelling to Mohi, ‘Hey you black bastard, wake up! Don’t be a piker!’ Brown beer bottles bobbed up and down unbroken in the water.

My grandfather Tamihana Mahana, Bulibasha, King of the Gypsies, took Mohi’s death very badly. Mohi had been his favoured one; in him could no fault lie. His grief was only compounded by the way in which the newspapers made a big fuss of Mohi’s promise as an athlete and of his relationship to Grandfather: this was ‘the grandson of Tamihana Mahana, one of the best known Maori citizens of the district and patriarch of the family which last year won the Golden Fleece’. He was outraged that the local Gisborne Herald reporter should use the opportunity of Mohi’s death to editorialise on the danger of alcohol abuse among young Maori. Grandfather was, after all, a respected elder of a church to which alcohol, tobacco and other abusive substances were anathema. A cynic like myself would have said that Grandfather was concerned only for his own reputation. But even if that was true, there was no denying the depth of his grief.

I mourned for my bastard of a cousin. After he died I could never look in the mirror in the bathroom without expecting him to come up behind me and shove me to one side –

‘Get out of the way, Useless.’

I hadn’t expected him to die, ever. Mohi had existed outside the rules because that was where Grandfather had placed him. He walked higher than the rest of us and was not subject to the same laws of gravity that made us walk the earth. There he floated in supreme confidence that, whatever happened, Grandfather would always support him. I think of him, drowning in the canal, his eyes wide with surprise, the air bubbling from his lips –

‘But this cannot be. This cannot be. I am the grandson of Bulibasha —’

In 1959, still determined to prove Grandfather wrong about my abilities, I sat School Certificate for the second time. At seventeen I was two years older than most of the students sitting the examination, and Miss Dalrymple had hinted that perhaps I should give up any pretensions to te rori Pakeha.

The day the results came in the post, Andrew telephoned early to say that he had just received his and that he had failed. I thought, ‘Boy, if he’s failed I’m a goner too.’ By the time Mum handed me my letter, I was convinced of it. I opened the envelope. I thought I saw a blur of Fs for Fail.

Since her brush with Miss Zelda at the general store Mum had started to learn the alphabet. She took the letter from me and, in her halting hesitant way, began to read out the results.

‘P, Biology. Pass ne? Ka pai, kotahi P.’

She held both my fists up in the air and made me put one finger up from the right fist. She read the next line.

‘P, English. Pass ne ra? Kapai, e rua P.’

Another finger up, right fist. Next line.

‘F, Geography. Aue, he raruraru! E rua P, kotahi F.’

One finger up, but left fist. Next line.

‘P, History. Kia ora. Pass ano! E toru P, kotahi F.’

Three fingers up, right fist; one finger up, left fist. Final line.

‘P, Mathematics. E wha P, kotahi —’

Mum’s face quivered as she realised I had passed. She held the results in front of her. ‘I think I’ll get a frame for this,’ she said, ‘just to prove I’m not so dumb a mother after all.’

Naturally Grandfather was told and, while I foolishly expected a compliment, a crumb from his table, I was not crushed when it didn’t fall into my eager hands. Grandfather still mourned Mohi who, by virtue of dying young, had become a kind of saint — the person whom no other heirs could hope to emulate. More to the point, Grandfather had always valued things he could see — strength, a well-formed physique, fortitude. Grandfather could see those, could see sweat, or a hillside after all the gorse had been slashed, or a fence where there had not been one, or the shorn sheep after a contract had been completed. But School Certificate results? Marks on paper? Those remained unseen to Grandfather, like chicken scratchings in the dust, and therefore without worth.

Grandfather’s failure to acknowledge my success at the next family meeting was, I assumed, simply a sign that our relationship was taking its normal course. Whatever my achievements, I was still third child of his seventh son. Little did I know that Grandfather was preoccupied with his health. At sixty-seven he was faced with intimations of his mortality.

Grandmother Ramona suspected something was wrong with Grandfather when she saw him cleaning the toilet bowl after having flushed it two times.

‘I can do that,’ Grandmother said.

‘Hei aha,’ Grandfather answered. He motioned her away but she stepped past him. It was strange to see him on his knees doing woman’s work.

‘Didn’t you hear me, woman? Hei aha .’

Grandmother backed away. But she had seen the blood rushing down the bowl with the water.

A week later Grandfather started to have stomach cramps, and although he never complained Grandmother Ramona knew he was in pain. Then Grandfather began to do his own washing — woman’s work again — washing and rinsing his long underwear. She caught him at it and saw there was blood in the front and in the seat of his longjohns.

‘How long has this been going on?’ Grandmother asked.

‘I feel like a woman,’ Grandfather growled. ‘It is only women who pass blood.’

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘but that is natural for us and only happens every month. It is not natural for the man to pass blood and so often.’

‘You look after your business,’ Grandfather said, ‘and I’ll look after mine.’ Then, ‘I am passing blood from my bum also, kui.’

‘Kaati,’ she answered. ‘It’s time to see the doctor.’

Even in 1959, when they should have known better, Maori used to say, ‘The only time you see the doctor is when you want to be born and when you are about to die.’ Accidental injury was permissible as long as the damage was visible — a fractured limb, a gunshot or knife wound. But something internal — like what had happened to Lloyd or what was now happening to Grandfather — was unseemly and to be feared. The invisible malady was a punishment, retribution for some evil committed when you were younger. So if you were ill from an internal disorder you pretended it wasn’t there and willed it to go away. If it persisted you hid the illness from your close family. If you felt faint you rushed to the bedroom and lay down so nobody would know. If you wanted to vomit you excused yourself and tried to get to the toilet before you spilled your guts. You bore your symptoms with strength and fortitude, in spite of the pain. Much later in life my father Joshua showed exactly the same stupidity when his waterworks stopped and he couldn’t urinate. He remained stoic until finally pain drove him to the doctor. He was lucky to be fixed — unlike Uncle Ihaka who died at forty-nine when the swollen appendix he had been hiding burst and killed him.