Witi Ihimaera - White Lies

Another dawn, and she drags her old bones up from sleep.

Her name is Paraiti and when she is sleeping her bones are light and weightless. But as she wakes she is aware of all the stiffness, aches and numbness of a body that has aged. She opens her eyes, listening to her heart thumping away as it pushes the blood through thickened veins. She hears the usual wheeze and gurgle as her lungs force her breath in and out, and she feels a lump of phlegm in her throat. Creaking like an old door on worn-out hinges, she heaves herself into a sitting position, opens the flap of the tent and spits into the cuspidor she keeps for holding her offensive bodily fluids.

Now that she is awake, Paraiti fumbles among her blankets for her Bible and hymnal and starts to chant a karakia. Old habits die hard, and she wouldn’t dream of beginning a new day without himene and prayer. Her parents Te Teira and Hera, if they were alive, would roar with laughter to see her now; in the old days, when the Ringatu faithful were all at prayer in the smoky meeting house, she was the child always squirming and wriggling. ‘Kaore e korikori koe,’ Te Teira would reprimand her.

Although Paraiti went for a few years to a native school, she can’t read very well; she trusts to her memory when quoting from the Old Testament or singing hymns. She raises a hand in the sign of the faithful.

‘Kororia ki to ingoa tapu,’ she begins. ‘Glory be to Thy holy name.’

She lifts her eyes to the sky lightening above her, and gives thanks to God for having made the world. The huge forest canopy has been a protective umbrella for her sleep. Here, at the bend of a river, with giant ferns unfolding in the lower growth, she has had the perfect camping ground.

Karakia over, she whistles out to her stallion, Ataahua, and Kaihe, her mule. They whinny back — good, they have not foraged too far away in the night. Where’s Tiaki, her pig dog? Aha, there he is, on the other side of the river.

She calls to him, ‘Have you brought something for my breakfast or have you been selfish and wolfed it all down yourself?’

No, today Tiaki has been kind to his mistress. He jumps headlong into the water and swims across; he offers a fat wood pigeon, still alive and unmarked in his jaws.

‘Homai te kereru,’ Paraiti asks him. ‘Give me the bird.’ He sighs, knowing she will release it back into the woods. ‘Ae, Tiaki, we let this one go. Give the first to Tane, Lord of the Forest.’ She gives the pigeon its freedom and it creaks and whistles its way back into the trees. ‘Now go, Tiaki, the second pigeon is for us.’

Right-oh, down to the edge of the river to wash herself, get the pikaro out of her eyes, and use a clean rag to wash her neck, armpits and nether parts. While she is at it, she sprinkles water over her head, and looks at her reflection, hoping to see some improvement. No such luck. Still the same old face, only getting older: big Maori nose, heavy upper lip, three chins, and lots of bushy hair. She fixes the hair by pinning it back with two large ivory combs but, aue, now she can see more of her face. Never mind: there’s nobody else around to frighten.

Time for breakfast. Paraiti rekindles the fire and hangs a billy of water on an iron rod supported by two strong branches; she also puts a skillet among the hot embers.

Tiaki comes back with a second bird. Paraiti has a sneaking suspicion that he catches two birds at the same time and, somehow, has learnt the trick of pinning the second bird down with a stone, keeping it for later. Now that he has served his mistress, Tiaki bounds off in search of his own breakfast.

Paraiti plucks the pigeon and puts it in the skillet; very soon it is sizzling in its own fat. From one of her saddlebags she takes some damper bread and honey. There’s nothing like a fresh pigeon and damper bread running with honey to start the day. A cup of manuka tea made in the billy and, ka pai, she is in seventh heaven.

Once she’s breakfasted, she’s keen to get going. Quickly, she dismantles the tent and bedding and stows them in the saddlebag. She goes down to the river to rinse the breakfast implements, then douses the fire and cleans up around her. She buries the contents of the cuspidor in the ground. Nobody would ever know she’d been here.

At Paraiti’s whistle, Ataahua and Kaihe come at the gallop. She loads Kaihe first, then she puts the bridle and saddle on Ataahua and taps him on the front knees. Once upon a time she could get on a horse without trouble, but these days it’s too much for her old bones. Ataahua obliges, going down on his front legs. He waits for Paraiti to settle and then hoists himself up with a whinny of grumpiness; over the past few years his mistress has got not only older but heavier.

‘Me haere tatou,’ she tells Ataahua. ‘Let us go.’

Pulling her mule after her, she fords the river and climbs the track on the other side. By the time she reaches the top of the ridge, Tiaki has joined her with a supercilious look on his face, as if he has given her only the second-best pigeon. The mist has lifted from the valleys and the air is clear. The forest is raucous with birdsong. Far away, Paraiti can see the smoke curling above the village of Ruatahuna, her destination.

Paraiti is not her real name, but the name people know her by. Mostly she is called Scarface — emblematic of the deep red welt that travels diagonally from her right temple across the bridge of her nose and, luckily missing her left eye, reappears to feather her left cheekbone. The scar was caused when Paraiti was a young girl, in 1880. Her family group was hiding deep within the Urewera country when they were set upon by constabulary forces who were hunting bigger game — the rebel prophet, Te Kooti. They restrained Paraiti’s parents with ropes while they ransacked the encampment. When they couldn’t find Te Kooti, one of them took a burning stick from the cooking fire and slashed Paraiti with it. As her parents were led away to be imprisoned, her father Te Teira cried out, ‘Daughter, quickly, go to the stream and lie down in the cold water.’ Hera, Paraiti’s mother, died while they were still incarcerated, and when Te Teira was released a year later, he went searching throughout Tuhoe and the King Country for his daughter. As soon as he saw the scarred little girl on the roadside at Te Kuiti, where she had been lovingly cared for, he knew it was her.

Today is the first day of June in the Year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and twenty-nine. Paraiti is fifty-four years old now, and a traditional healer.

Maori people have not lost faith in their own healers. Indeed, although those who live in the cities and towns have access to the Pakeha doctors, those who still reside in tribal villages in the backblocks and remote coastal areas rely on travelling healers like Paraiti for medical help. Vilified by the government authorities for their work, the healers are still committed to the health and wellbeing of the morehu, the survivors of the land wars. Many of Paraiti’s people of the Ringatu faith do not trust the authorities at all. And, of course, the Depression is beginning to bite. Who can Maori turn to, apart from their own healers, when they have no money to pay the Pakeha takuta?

Three weeks ago, Paraiti was still in her village of Waituhi, preparing for her travels. The autumn had been unseasonably cold, with southerlies driving into the foothills. Paraiti had huddled close to a warm fire in her old one-room kauta near the painted meeting house, Rongopai. Even so, she was determined to keep to her annual trip. She had become stir-crazy and wanted to be out on the road.