Witi Ihimaera - White Lies

Paraiti rushes up from the basement. Behind her, she hears Mrs Vickers calling, ‘My mother will not kill the baby in this house. She wants to, but she knows of the spiritual consequences of such an act — of having a child ghost destroy the calmness of her life. But she will get rid of it.’

Through the kitchen Paraiti runs. The back door is open and she hears the distant crunch of Maraea’s feet on the gravel path. The front gate makes a slight sound as it opens and shuts. Across the garden, the light snaps on in the gardener’s house and he comes to the doorway, silhouetted in the light.

‘E Tiaki,’ Paraiti calls to her dog, ‘kia tere. Follow.’

Keeping to the shadows, Tiaki slinks silently in pursuit. Paraiti follows, watching for a glimpse of Maraea as she flees beneath the moon.

‘She’s heading for the bridge,’ Paraiti says to herself, alarmed. On the other side is a small Maori settlement.

Paraiti hears a thin wail from the baby. She cannot believe that Maraea intends to throw the child into the river.

But she does, as if she is throwing a sack of kittens.

‘Aue, e hine,’ Paraiti cries.

Paraiti could go quickly to the rescue but some inner sense tells her: Wait. Don’t let Maraea know you are in the darkness. Indeed, not long afterwards, Maraea can be heard returning to Waterside Drive.

Once she has gone, Paraiti runs to the bridge to look over. Good fortune has attended the child. The sack has air in it, giving it buoyancy. It is floating away on the dark river; it won’t be too long before it sinks.

‘Haere atu,’ Paraiti yells to Tiaki. She points at the sack in the river and he jumps off the bridge and splashes into the water.

Paraiti’s heart is beating fast as she slips and slides down to the river’s edge. She can hear the thin wail of the child again. ‘Kia tere, kia tere!’ she urges Tiaki. The sack is becoming waterlogged and it is sinking. ‘Quick, Tiaki, quick.’

He is too late. The sack disappears under the water.

With a yelp, Tiaki dives for it — has not his mistress taught him at a favoured lagoon to bring back speared fish from the sea? But the sack has already gone too deep, too deep. Then something flicks across his nose, a piece of twine trailing from the sack as it sinks deeper, and he lunges …

Tiaki breaks out of the water. In his teeth, he has the sack. ‘He kuri pai!’ Paraiti calls to him. ‘Good dog. Whakahokia mai te kete ki ahau.’ But the sack, waterlogged, is too heavy and is dragging Tiaki down with it. ‘Tiaki,’ Paraiti cries, ‘have strength, kia kaha.’

Then comes the sound of someone running past her and diving into the water. It is the Maori gardener. With swift strokes he makes midstream and dives. When he surfaces, he has the sack. ‘Bring it to me,’ Paraiti urges. ‘Quickly.’

The gardener thrusts the sack into Paraiti’s hands. Her usually clever fingers are so clumsy! They take so long to untie the knot. ‘Do your work quickly, fingers, quickly.’

The baby is so still, with a tinge of blue on her skin. She already has the waxen sheen of death upon her.

‘Move quickly, hands. You have always healed, always saved lives. Give warmth to the child, massage the small heart and body to beat again and to bring the water up from her lungs. Quickly, hands, quickly. And now — ’

The gardener is in despair — ‘The baby is already gone’ — but Paraiti will not give up. She holds the child and gives her three sharp taps on her chest. ‘If you breathe, I promise you that this will be the last time I hit you.’

And the heart begins to pump and the baby yells, spraying water out of her mouth. She starts to cough; that’s good, as she will get rid of all the water from her lungs. Very soon she is breathing and crying, and Paraiti continues to rub her down, increasing her body warmth.

Tiaki noses in to see what she is doing. He whimpers and licks her. ‘Oh, pae kare,’ the gardener says to himself, ‘Oh, thank God.’

Paraiti takes a moment to calm down. ‘Thank you,’ she says to the gardener. Then she addresses the baby. ‘I will call you Waiputa,’ she says. ‘Born of water.’

She sprinkles her head with water to bless her. Waiputa is already nuzzling Paraiti’s breasts.

‘You’re not going to have any luck with those old dugs,’ Paraiti tells her. ‘I’d better find you a wet nurse.’ She looks across the river at the Maori settlement; there’s bound to be some younger woman there, breastfeeding her own child, who owes Paraiti a favour and won’t mind suckling another infant.

As for the future? Paraiti smiles to herself. ‘What a menagerie we will make, Waiputa! A scar-faced woman, two old nags, a pig dog and you.’

Others had begun their lives with less.

Seven years later, time has been kind to Paraiti. Although her eyesight has dimmed a little, her memory is as sharp as ever, her medical skills intact, and her hands still do their blessed work. Tiaki has grown a bit greyer and is not as formidable a hunter as he used to be. Both Ataahua and Kaihe are casting a keen eye on the pasture across the road where they can live out the rest of their years.

This morning Paraiti woke as usual at dawn, said her karakia, performed her ablutions, packed her saddlebags and set off down the road. She still makes her annual haerenga and, in the year 1942, she is on her way to a hui at Te Mana o Turanga, Whakato marae, Manutuke, the birthplace of the prophet Te Kooti. Oh, how she loves that meeting house. So full of carvings and stories of the people. Whenever she visits, it is as if the past comes to life before her.

She is looking forward to the hui, too, the celebration of the Passover on November the first, when what has been planted at Matariki is harvested — symbolic of the resurrection of Christ. A special karakia is also planned: with a European war happening on the other side of the world, and Maori soldiers fighting in Italy, Paraiti will join others in praying that the Angel of Death will pass over them without reaping his harvest.

Paraiti usually travels by the side of the Pakeha roads now. Many of the great Maori trails are fenced off, and the last time she travelled on Rua’s Track, she had trouble hanging on when she was negotiating the steepest part. But she still grumbles about the ways that civilisation is advancing through the world, and she is always pointing out more of its marks.

She comes to the fork of the road where roadmen have been constructing a combined road-and-rail bridge. She’s never seen one quite like it. The road has been made of a black and sticky material. Tiaki sniffs at it and growls. Ataahua and Kaihe stand patiently waiting for the order to move across.

‘It might be like the Red Sea,’ Paraiti mutters. ‘We could be halfway across and next minute, aue, the waves will come over us.’

‘No it won’t, Nan,’ a young voice says. ‘It’s called tar seal. Come on, there’s no traffic. Let’s cross now.’

Riding Kaihe is a pretty young girl, fair, with auburn hair. Paraiti has an assistant now, a whangai daughter, Waiputa, to fill her waning years. She is someone to love; the new seed for the future, blossoming from Paraiti’s old life. In turn, Waiputa is someone who loves her matua, her parent.

They make a good team, the scarred one and the unscarred one.

‘Tar seal, eh?’ Paraiti answers. ‘You’re learning lots of big words at that school of yours.’

Not only that, but Waiputa has become a very firm dealer in the transactions whenever Paraiti heals someone; Waiputa makes sure her nan is not shortchanged.