Witi Ihimaera - The Parihaka Woman

Do you want to see a photograph of Rocco and Marzelline?

It was given to me by Donald, and must have been taken about five years after the events I’m telling you about, when Rocco left the island and began an export business in Dunedin.

The photograph was taken for the Otago Daily Times. It shows Rocco as a successful merchant shaking the hand of the mayor and surrounded by employees of Sonnleithner Agricultural Supplies. He is a tall, solid man, with a very serious expression, and he has what was once called a mutton-chop beard — it covers most of his lower face. What is telling, I think, is the way the other men in the picture are standing: like the mayor, they’re not looking at the photographer but, rather, at Rocco. Certainly there’s a softness in his eyes, but he must have been a man whose authority was respected and admired. Judging from some of his public pronouncements that I’ve read, pompous though they are, he had made himself into a man of influence.

Marzelline is standing in front with her father. Her back is straight, and you can just see the walking stick on which she’s supporting herself. She looks as if she has taken a quick deep breath and instructed the photographer, ‘Take the photograph now, sir, in case I lose my balance!’ Despite the strain of maintaining the pose, Marzelline manages to look surprisingly composed, and both the camera and the man behind it are in love with her. They’ve organised a penumbra around her, bathing her in light. She is already other-worldly to look at, but the halo highlights her pale skin and the startling silver-blonde hair. Although the photograph is not in colour, you can tell that her eyes must indeed have been striking. And while all the men are looking at Rocco, his gaze is directed at her.

Marzelline is wearing the latest fashion, a beautiful floor-length light-coloured Victorian gown with a beaded bodice and sleeves; around her neck is a locket, tied high on her neck by a velvet ribbon. There are signs that in maturity she will incline to plumpness but at this moment she’s revealed as having an unusual and singular beauty. There’s something else too: a huge reservoir of strength.

Such a girl would indeed have the Walküre’s cry within her.

How had Rocco and Marzelline come to be in New Zealand?

To tell this story, for which Donald supplied the background, I have to remind you that the dynamic imperialism which marked the New Zealand Company’s colonising zeal was not only attractive to pioneers of English, Scots and Irish extraction. By virtue of the company’s efforts in Germany, two parties of German migrants were attracted to settle at its second town in Nelson.

Most of the Germans in the first party originated from the Rhenish provinces and were led by entrepreneur John Nicholas Beit, with whom they sailed from Germany in 1842 on the St Pauli. Beit had purchased land at Moutere for the purposes of wine production. Unfortunately, their arrival in June the following year coincided with the so-called Wairau Massacre in which, for a long time afterwards, the Ngati Toa chief Te Rauparaha was blamed for murdering a number of prominent townsmen. The incident must have caused the German settlers great anxiety: they had been motivated by economic opportunity and deep idealism — among their number were four Lutheran missionaries of the North German Missionary Society: J.H. Trost, J.W.C. Heine, J.F.C. Wohlers and J.C. Riemenschneider. Of them all, the Reverend Wohlers became the best known, labouring among Maori in the south. The last-named was, of course, the same man who later left Nelson and became Rimene of Warea.

By the way, the second German party disembarked a year later, in September 1844. They were led by Count Graf Kuno zu Ranzau and, unfortunately, their arrival, too, coincided with disaster: the collapse of the New Zealand Company’s operations in New Zealand. Undeterred, and with better capital behind them, the immigrants established a small settlement named Ranzau and added their industry to the making of New Zealand.

Rocco Sonnleithner came to New Zealand on the St Pauli with his family; he was five when they landed. When his parents moved to Ranzau he went to the Lutheran school at nearby Sarau. His love of reading developed there but he was not a good student and drifted into engineering; he worked on bridge construction in the district.

A few years later Rocco met his wife, Lotte, and they married at St Paul’s Church in 1866. He could hardly credit his good fortune: although she was almost ten years older, a schoolteacher in her mid-thirties, she was regarded as a classic beauty. ‘What do you see in me?’ he asked her. She replied, ‘A good man, hard-working, who will make a good father.’ The truth was that Lotte had had many suitors but none had been considered suitable by her repressive, cultured and sophisticated parents. Rocco was her last chance.

Because Lotte had married against her parents’ wishes, there was a falling out. ‘You will either accept my husband,’ Lotte told them, ‘or that will be the end between us.’ Not even her pregnancy appeared to change her mother and father’s view of the marriage, so Rocco decided to leave Ranzau and seek his fortune on the goldfields of Central Otago. He tried to convince Lotte to stay with her parents in Ranzau, but she had had enough. ‘They have already turned their backs on us,’ she said.

Marzelline was born while her parents were panning for gold. From the moment Lotte and Rocco saw their daughter, they were struck by love for her. Lotte had the child she had always craved. As for Rocco, he never ceased to wonder that such a daughter could be the product of loins as rude and ugly as his.

Let me go back to Erenora now.

‘As it happened,’ she wrote, ‘my intention to explore the place where Rocco had disappeared was both thwarted and, ironically, propelled by the arrival of the Anna Milder on its monthly visit. I was pleased to see Captain Demmer but I felt some frustration that time would be taken up with unloading the provisions that had come with him.

‘“How is Herr Sonnleithner treating you, lad?” Captain Demmer asked. I told him, “We’ve reached an accommodation with each other.” Even so, the captain made an offer, “If you want to come back with me, step aboard now.”

‘I shook my head. How could I do that? I was so near to discovering whether Horitana was here. Then Captain Demmer put a hand in his breast pocket and brought out an envelope. “I have a letter for you,” he said to Rocco. At the sight of its seal, Rocco’s face drained of colour.’

After the Anna Milder had been unloaded and made her way from Peketua Island, Erenora took a rest in the barn. When she looked into a mirror she saw that her hair was getting long and decided to cut it before dinner.

‘I was at this task when Marzelline found me. “Would you let me do it?” she asked, her eyes shining. “I trim Papa’s beard and what remains of the hair on his head. Please, Eruera, please!” She was so insistent that I said yes.

‘At the end of the haircut Marzelline gathered the tresses in her palms and brought them to her lips. “Mmmmn, your hair smells beautiful,” she said. Then, just before she left, she asked me a very strange question. “Eruera, do you think I am pretty?” In her voice was all the yearning for affirmation felt by a young girl who does not know that she is, yes, lovely. I wanted to say, “Yes, you’re pretty, Marzelline, and some day some fortunate young man will come along and take you away with him.” But before I could do that she gave a gasp of horror as if she had unmasked something about herself she had not intended — or was frightened that I might say something she did not want to hear. “No, Jüngling, don’t tell me!”