Witi Ihimaera - White Lies

It’s dark by the time Paraiti gets out of the bath. When she enters the big room of the kauta, Ihaka has washed and put on a clean shirt.

And he has set the wooden table with a plate of damper bread and pots of puwha, potatoes and bacon bones. ‘I brought these with me,’ he says. ‘They won’t last, so we may as well eat them. Would you like me to say a karakia for our food?’

Paraiti nods her head, perplexed. What is happening?

After grace, Ihaka dishes out the food. He is courteous and polite, attentive to her every need. ‘Would you like more bacon bones? I picked the puwha from your own vegetable garden. I hope you don’t mind — I’ll replace the plants if you do. Let me get you some more damper bread. Would you like some water to wash the meal down?’

The meal completed, Paraiti thanks Ihaka. ‘You are a good cook, and I have not had anybody make kai for me for a long time.’

The room is warm from the fire, and the oil lamp casts a golden glow through the interior. Paraiti’s heart is beating fast. Tiaki does not like the situation at all; his ears are flattened on his head and he keeps showing his teeth.

And then Ihaka coughs, gets up, eases Paraiti from her chair and gently pulls her into a hongi, a pressing of noses. She tries to break away from him but he is so strong, his breath so sweet. To soothe her, he begins to kiss her scar.

‘No.’ Paraiti pushes him away.

‘I have a debt to pay,’ he answers. ‘I am a man of honour. Let me repay it.’

How? Not like this. ‘You are much younger than I am, and you have a wife and children.’

‘A woman must have a good man at least once in her life,’ Ihaka says.

Paraiti has always been alone with her animals, unloved by any man except her father. She can’t help it: tears flood from her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she nods, ‘and I know you are a good man.’

It takes quite a while for Paraiti to recover. Only when Tiaki noses himself into her does she stop weeping. ‘Thank you, Ihaka,’ she says, blowing her nose, ‘but …’ — she gestures at Tiaki — ‘… as you can see, you have a rival.’ She takes a deep breath and, in releasing it, lets Ihaka go. ‘Nor would Tane, God of the Forest, like it if I did not offer the first fruit — you — back to him.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I am sure,’ she smiles, pressing his hands with hers. ‘Go back to your wife. And you don’t have to look so relieved!’

‘She knows I am here. Because of you I am still a good provider, and my wife … she knows I am pleasing to look at. She told me, “Let your beauty be our gift to the takuta.”’

‘Your wife said that? Thank her for her generosity.’

Quickly, before she changes her mind, Paraiti shows Ihaka to the door.

‘Goodnight, takuta,’ he says.

For a long time afterwards Paraiti wanders around the kauta. Ihaka’s scent is everywhere. Tiaki doesn’t like it, endeavouring to urinate in a corner.

Paraiti starts to giggle. ‘Don’t do that,’ she scolds.

Then she opens all the windows and doors.

Breathes in deeply.

Turns her thoughts to tomorrow.

The star cluster of Matariki has burst into its fullness in the night sky.

How Paraiti manages to get through the second week, she will never know. She prays constantly, morning, noon and night, her karakia unceasing and seamless. All that sustains her as she hastens to Waterside Drive every second day is her immense faith, and the words of her father: ‘You know what you have to do.’

But every time Maraea meets her at the side door, saying ‘Come in, quickly, before you are seen’, Paraiti feels sick to her stomach that all her efforts might be for nought — that, instead of saving the baby, she will be complicit in its death. Indeed, as she steps through the doorway she finds comfort in knowing that the Ringatu gardener is watching — somewhere he is out there, going about his work, pretending not to know what is happening inside.

It doesn’t matter if he sees, for he is only a worker; but it does matter if others do, the high-class neighbours, the leaders of Gisborne society, for they are the ones who hold the power.

And so Paraiti continues the regime. First, the administering of the lethal compound designed to shrivel the birth cord and expel the baby from the womb. Second, the deep, forceful, disturbing massage: out, out, come out. She brings Rebecca Vickers from groaning to screaming point, and then those rapid hand manipulations followed by the pressure exerted on the womb.

Paraiti realises, however, her anxiety must be as nothing when compared with that of the baby in the womb. What must it be like to be in the house of birth, a whare meant to nurture and sustain, as its walls and roof are caving in, as the stitched tukutuku are ripping apart, the kowhaiwhai panels are cracking? Where can the baby go when the poutokomanawa begins to collapse and the poisons begin to flood through the placenta that feeds it? Even when it is fighting back, how can it know that even this is anticipated and is part of its brutal eviction?

As she pummels, she imagines the child trying to retreat into the recess of the womb looking out, as if through a doorway to a world collapsing all around it, facing the terror of the unknowable, its little heart beating hard against translucent skin. What is happening? Help me.

‘Forgive me, child, oh forgive me,’ she whispers.

Ironically, Rebecca Vickers’ own strength is working in the baby’s favour for, whether she likes it or not, her baby has inherited her stamina.

And so child fights mother: I will not let you do this. Indeed, for Paraiti, the long moments after each savage treatment are always frightening. Will the baby rally? Will her heartbeat come back?

Child, fight. Fight.

Meanwhile, Mrs Vickers has bought herself the last two days. Her vanity has persuaded her that after the premature birth she would like time to recover and present herself to her husband as immaculately as she can. She has sent him a telegram on board his ship, to say that she will be unable to meet him in Auckland. A reply has come: although he is disappointed, he will spend the evening in the city before travelling on to Gisborne.

Thus, on the twelfth day, when Mrs Vickers groans, ‘Now, Scarface, do your work and rid me of this child’, Paraiti takes the advantage presented to her.

‘The door of the whare tangata is not wide enough to enable the baby’s delivery.’

Turning a deaf ear to Mrs Vickers’ torrent of curses, Paraiti tells her, ‘I will do it on the morning of the fourteenth day, before sunrise.’ Every hour will improve the baby’s chance of survival.

‘Mr Vickers will be home that evening,’ Mrs Vickers cries.

‘Lock your door. Tell him you are still indisposed.’

Mrs Vickers’ rage pursues Paraiti into the street, but the medicine woman is beyond caring about her. Her thoughts are only with the child. ‘Kororia ki to ingoa tapu,’ she prays to the evening sky and all throughout the next day. Her animals, sensing her anxiety, honour her fervency with barks, whinnies and brays of their own; otherwise, they stand and wait in silence and on good behaviour.

Now has come the fourteenth day, before sunrise.

Paraiti arrives at the side door, where she is admitted by Maraea. Rebecca Vickers waits in her bedroom. ‘You think you have trumped me,’ she snarls. ‘Well, two can play at that game, Scarface.’

The final treatment has forced her waters to break. The birth has begun. The contractions are coming strongly — and the baby has slipped from the whare tangata into the birth canal.