CHAPTER SEVEN
Normally, Paraiti would have spent the rest of her haerenga on a circuit of the villages closest to Waituhi. The old woman with a dog, horse and mule are familiar sights among the Ringatu faithful in Turanga, which the Pakeha have renamed Poverty Bay.
She would have journeyed with her travelling garden throughout the lands of Te Whanau a Kai, Te Aitanga a Mahaki, Tai Manuhiri and Rongowhakaata. Wherever the Ringatu festivals took place, wherever the faithful gathered to sing, pray and praise God, there she would be: Waihirere, Puha, Mangatu, Rangatira, Waioeka, Awapuni, Muriwai … Still avoiding te rori Pakeha, the Pakeha road, she would instead have ridden the old trails along the foothills or rivers, the unseen pathways that criss-cross the plains like a spider’s web.
Instead, for twelve days, Paraiti remains in Waituhi, venturing every second day to Gisborne. When she returns to the village, she goes into Rongopai to pray until dawn. The interior of the meeting house is like a beautiful garden: sometimes, Paraiti has fancifully imagined it as the garden of the Queen of Sheba, where hoopoes sing; at other times it becomes a garden in fabled Babylon, one of many hanging in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. In this time of agitation and fear, however, Rongopai is like unto the garden of the New Testament at the place called Gethsemane, where a bright, broken Christ was laid to his death and resurrection.
The change in Paraiti’s routine worries her neighbours. They look through the doorway of Rongopai at her. She is kneeling before a painting of the tree of life with its healing blossoms. ‘Aue, te mamae,’ she cries.
‘Are you all right, takuta?’
Then others from villages beyond Waituhi come seeking her. ‘What is the matter, Blightface?’ they ask. ‘Are you ill? We need you. What will happen to us?’
Paraiti is patient with them. ‘I am only delayed. I will come again soon.’
The concern and enquiries force Paraiti to make an appearance at a Ringatu hui at Takipu, the large meeting house at Te Karaka, so that the people will see she’s still alive and kicking. Takipu is so beautiful that Paraiti cannot help but be grateful that her whakapapa connects her to such a glorious Ringatu world.
The hui incorporates a kohatu ceremony, an unveiling of the headstone of a brother Ringatu healer, Paora, who died a year ago. The obelisk, the final token of aroha, is polished granite, gleaming in the sun. It is a sign of the love for a rangatira. As Paraiti joins the local iwi, weeping, around the obelisk, she reflects on the fragility of life. ‘Not many of us morehu left,’ she thinks to herself. Afterwards, she spends some time talking to Paora’s widow, Maioha: ‘It was a beautiful unveiling for a man who always served God and the people.’
‘Ae,’ Maioha says. ‘However, we must go on, eh? The men may be the leaders, but when they die, it is the women who become the guardians of the land and the future.’
On the way back to Waituhi, Paraiti cannot shake off Maioha’s words. Her mood deepens as she thinks of all the changes she has observed in her travels. Since she and her father saw the ngangara those many years ago — the train steaming across the countryside — the marks of the new civilisation have proliferated across the land. New railway tracks, highways and roads. More bush felled to make way for sheep and cattle farms. Where once there was a swing bridge there is now a two-lane bridge across the river. And although the old Maori tracks are still there, many of them have barbed-wire fences across them, necessitating a detour until a gate is found. On the gate is always a padlock and a sign that says: ‘Private Land. Trespassers will be prosecuted. Keep out.’
The changes are always noted by the travellers of the tracks and passed on to other travellers — ‘Kia tupato, beware’ — because, sometimes, horses or children can be ensnared in the coils of barbed wire discarded in the bush after the fences have been built. Paraiti has sewn up many wounds inflicted by the wire as pig hunters and foresters have rushed after prey in the half-light of dusk.
But of all the changes wreaked by civilisation, it is the spiritual changes that really matter. The ngangara is not only physical; it also infiltrates and invades the moral world that Paraiti has always tried to protect.
You wear your scar where people can see it, I wear mine where they can’t.
Perhaps the marks that really matter are, indeed, the ones that can’t be seen.
The twilight is falling as Paraiti returns to Waituhi from Te Karaka.
Tiaki pricks up his ears and sniffs ahead. He begins to growl.
‘He aha?’ Paraiti enquires. ‘What is it?’
She sees that smoke is coming out of the chimney of her two-roomed kauta. When she gets to the gate, a horse is grazing in the front paddock. She reaches into her saddlebag for her rifle and commands Tiaki to be alert. Then she hears someone chopping wood at the back of the house.
‘That’s not the sound of danger,’ she says to herself.
A man, stripped to the waist, his trousers held up by braces, is balancing on crutches, chopping wood. The falling light limns him with gold. Who can it be?
Paraiti realises it is the logger from Te Kuiti whose leg had been broken. At the sight of him Tiaki begins to growl: he is jealous and doesn’t like any other male company around his mistress.
‘Turituri,’ Paraiti scolds him. She watches Ihaka, amused. ‘So what’s a man on crutches doing chopping wood in my back yard?’ she asks.
He puts the axe down and grins at her. ‘Paying my debt to you,’ he answers. ‘I have heated water for a bath and the fire is on in the kauta to make it warm.’
A bath? Paraiti’s eyes light up. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘I won’t take long filling the tub,’ Ihaka responds and then — oh, he’s a cheeky one — ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to look as you get into it.’
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.