Witi Ihimaera - Bulibasha

My dear cousin Haromi — she was another one. The only recourse for breast cancer in those days was to have a radical mastectomy and even then, according to fatalistic folklore, you ended up dying. When I visited my wonderful cousin in her last week she said to me, ‘At least I will die a complete woman.’ The removal of any part of oneself was a heresy.

Is it any wonder that, in the event of autopsy, the return of a Maori body unblemished by the coroner’s knife and with all body parts in their place, is of such concern to Maori? I can still remember the outrage and agony which attended the tangi of my nephew Aaron, Haromi’s second son, who died of an unknown malady at the age of three. The release of his body was delayed by the coroner. When Aunt Sarah went to bathe her grandson and prepare him for burial she found two neat incisions — one at the base of his neck where his scalp had been lifted, and another across his chest where his heart had been examined.

The body is tapu.

This attitude was the rule with Maori people. Was there any reason to expect that Grandfather would be an exception? No matter Grandmother Ramona’s stern admonitions, he refused to visit the doctor.

When Grandfather’s body began to rot inside, he clamped back the pain. Eating became a nightmare and he turned to the pure Waipaoa water, to kanga pirau, fermented corn, and puha mashed with kumara. When he felt an attack coming on he hissed and clenched his lips. Eyes bulging, he punched out blindly as if trying to render visible the attacker within.

Nobody went to help Grandfather. Nobody offered sympathy, because to do so would mean that Grandfather would have to admit his illness. And that would have meant facing up to that dark deed of the past, for which payment was now being demanded. Instead, a proud complicity of silence surrounded Grandfather as he crashed around the homestead and Waituhi. His body heaved, shat dark red blood, careened, vomited bile, fizzed, pissed poison, staggered, farted rotten stench and bawled like some huge and enraged bull.

Grandmother, Sephora and Esther cleaned up the mess.

This, after all, was Bulibasha. This was the way that such a man, King of the Gypsies, should die.

Bulibasha finally turned to medical help in the second week of April, 1960. By that time, I had been at the Mormon college in Hamilton for two months. When I left, Glory had dismayed us all by screaming, ‘You promised! You promised me, Simeon!’ She ran after the bus until she could run no longer, calling me to come back.

‘You’re a stupid, obstinate, foolish man,’ the doctor said when he was called to Grandfather’s side. ‘I can’t understand how you’ve lasted so long without drugs. You are a miracle of modern science. You have been in terrible pain and I am in no mood to compliment you on your fortitude. Stubborness doesn’t win any medals, Mr Mahana.’

The doctor said he would arrange a nurse to give daily medication and administer pain-killing drugs.

‘My daughters will be my nurses,’ Grandfather answered. ‘I’m not going to have any Pakeha looking at my bum. Anyway, I’m not going to die. Didn’t you say I was a miracle of modern science?’

At the doorway, before leaving, Uncle Matiu asked the doctor whether there was any chance.

‘I shall give that question the contempt it deserves,’ the doctor replied. ‘The man is riddled with cancer. If we had had the chance to operate and remove the malignancies earlier, perhaps —’ He added that Grandfather had a week, ten days at most.

Grandfather must have overheard.

Had I not known him better I would have suspected that Grandfather made another wager with God or that American angel of his. Throughout that time he would not allow people at church to pray for him, persisting in his belief that ‘I’m not going to die’. This same stubbornness, mixed with church disapproval, prevented him from seeking the help of a tohunga. Instead Grandfather turned to the things he knew best. He increased his diet and exercise. Now that he had drugs, he would pump them faster through his body to repel the invader. His body had not let him down before — why should it do so now? After all, he was Bulibasha. The Bulibasha.

Grandfather’s problem was that he didn’t understand that to everyone comes this season of death. Despite his religious upbringing he forgot there was a time to live and a time to die — and his time to die had come. It was as simple as that. His cancer was not an indictment on his life or on him as a person. It was simply his body saying, I am finished now and you must shuck me off as a husk from corn and prepare for your next great adventure. Grandfather never accepted that. He could not leave off asking the question, Why me? As if the cancer had somehow sneaked past God without God’s approval. Or, as if that American angel, so many years before, was welshing on his promise. The cancer was an affront to Grandfather’s ego. It was something else to be battled and triumphed over. And, oh, every breath of air was so sweet.

I could have told him that there was another reason why his time to die had come. He had already achieved the triumphs of his life. There was nothing left for him to accomplish.

Grandfather lasted for another three weeks. Then I received a telephone call from Dad asking me to come home to Waituhi. Grandfather was in the last stages of death.

‘Haere mai koe, Himiona,’ my father Joshua said.

The plane from Hamilton touched down at Gisborne airport late on a Wednesday evening. Glory rushed into my arms, an unruly and impetuous eleven-year-old. I hugged Dad and we kissed. We drove back to Waituhi. God, it was so good to see the Waipaoa River, darkly swirling in the falling light.

Mum, Faith and Hope were waiting at the house on Grandmother’s land. It was nine in the evening, the right time for a departing soul to make its way from Waituhi, across the bosom of the land to the northernmost tip of Aotearoa. The soul would not need to wait too long for the sunrise, the opening of the way to the next world. Together Mum, Dad, my sisters and I walked across the paddocks and along the road to the homestead. The moon was a crescent. There was no sound. No dogs, no cats, no possums squealing in the night. The silence was an indrawn sigh.

Lights in the homestead were blazing. Mourners, dressed formally in suit and tie or in long gown with scarves, waited outside for their turn to go in.

‘Haere mai koutou ma,’ Zebediah Whatu said as we approached.

‘Ae,’ Aunt Molly added, ‘haere mai koutou.’

I stepped into the light and the iwi saw who I was. There was a moan, like banshees on the wind, and old Maggie came to cup my chin lovingly in her hands.

‘Go inside, our father is waiting.’

I had been in the presence of Death many times before, but I was unwilling to be witness to my grandfather’s death. I could still be persuaded, even at that late stage, that Grandfather was invincible. Indestructible. The iconoclast in me wanted to believe he would rise up like Lazarus, or like Christ, and resume his place among us. I could just imagine him doing that, saying, ‘E koe! I fooled you all!’ Laughing in that huge lusty way of his.

Once inside, there was no such delusion. My uncles Matiu, Maaka, Ruka and Hone were standing like first lieutenants at the death of Mark Antony. Aperahama and Ihaka were talking in hushed tones to the priest. I couldn’t see my aunts Ruth, Sarah, Sephora, Miriam and Esther and realised that they — all Grandfather’s women — would be with Grandmother Ramona at the bedside. Bulibasha was dying.

Uncle Matiu saw us arriving and motioned Dad to him. His eyes were red but he was not weeping. He was the eldest son. On him, above all others, would fall Grandfather’s mantle. Others could weep, wail, succumb to the passions of grief, but not him. Never him.