The Parihaka Woman

by Witi Ihimaera

  Although they made light of their odyssey, let me tell you that Ripeka, Meri and Erenora were not the only Parihaka women who made remarkable journeys to the South Island looking for their men.

  Some, dangerously, set out alone and never returned.

  Happily, Horitana gradually regained sufficient sight to be independent, although he could never go out into the strong light for too long. There were many hot sunny Taranaki days when he preferred to stay inside in the cool, quiet and dark. He bore, for the rest of his life, the scars on his shoulders where the mask had rested. The experience of having spent so long in the damp cave never left him; no matter how valiant his heart, its rhythm was forever weakened, and he was plagued with breathing problems and rheumatism. And sometimes he would murmur softly in his sleep, in a loving way, and stroke the air delicately with his fingers. Erenora was puzzled until he explained:

  ‘It is just my little tuatara family. They come to me in my dreams and like to nestle against my skin.’

  3.

  One day Erenora saw Piharo. Although Horitana’s sentence was no longer in force, Piharo still had power and might continue his vendetta against him. She had also heard that Piharo had a reward posted for any Maori to advise him of her own return.

  After brooding for a week, Erenora realised that the time had come to pay Piharo a visit. She risked discovery by riding through the twilight, hoping she would not be seen, and making a reconnaissance of the substantial house that he had built: stone and brick, paved with Italian tiles and filled with chandeliers and other sumptuous objets d’art. Even the garden had been finished, with a maze and fountain in the middle of it, appearing as if it had always been there.

  The purpose of her visit? In her heart of hearts she would have dearly liked to meet him, persuade him to let bygones be bygones and to cease his vendetta, but she knew he would never do that. In her darkest despair, she thought of killing him, stealing into his bedroom while he slept, but that would lead to a hunt for the murderer — and, anyway, she couldn’t take another person’s life, even Piharo’s. Such an act would have undone everything that Te Whiti stood for, all the suffering his followers had gone through in the name of peaceful protest.

  She therefore decided on teaching Piharo a lesson of such power that it might dissuade him from visiting any further vengeance upon herself and Horitana. But how could she gain entry during the day when his farm manager, labourers and servants surrounded him? Even during the evenings there was always candlelight in his bedroom. Did Piharo never sleep?

  Erenora could wait no longer. During a bitter cold night filled with a blizzard off the sea, she rode to Piharo’s house again. Shouldering the knapsack she had brought with her, she moved swiftly through a grove of trees at the back of the building. Branches were being flung into the air and the darkness was filled with calling moreporks. The storm made it easier for her to enter unheard through the rear terrace windows. Once inside she made her way up the staircase and stepped into Piharo’s bedroom. It was ablaze with flickering candles, so many of them. How could Piharo sleep with so much light? And yet he did, his eyes shut tight.

  He had been reading an elegant volume of poetry. He looked so harmless, his chest rising and falling, yet this man was filled with malevolence.

  Erenora gently prised the book from his grasp and went to work.

  Piharo tossed and turned in his sleep. He dreamt that spiders were crawling over him and woke up to find that he was already restrained by Erenora’s ropes.

  ‘I hear you’ve been trying to find me,’ Erenora said. ‘I decided to save you the trouble by coming myself.’

  Piharo tried to shout for help but it was too late; Erenora placed a kerchief around his mouth and tied it tight. ‘I don’t plan to kill you,’ she said. ‘After all, if I did that I wouldn’t join Horitana in heaven when we die.’

  Erenora moved around the room, cupping the flames of the candles and blowing sharply on them. As each one was snuffed out, Piharo began to moan. The smoke from the candles drifted in the air. She left two alight so that she could see what she was doing — and opened the knapsack. In it was something heavy and monstrous.

  ‘In Maoridom,’ she said, ‘we always say that you must be careful of any evil you do lest it be returned unto you.’

  Piharo’s eyes spilled with tears of terror when he saw the silver mokomokai he himself had designed. His heart began to race and, by the time Erenora lifted his head from the pillow to padlock the mokomokai to him he was in a catatonic state. Even so, he formulated in his head three words:

  ‘No, please don’t …’

  Erenora blew out the first remaining candle. She was not to know that Piharo had a particular affliction, claustrophobia, nor that he was afraid of the dark. Then she blew out the second flame.

  ‘… not eternal darkness …’

  He was dead when his servant found him the next morning.

  4.

  Erenora and Horitana helped Te Whiti and Tohu to repair the village that John Bryce had desecrated. They were happy and God smiled on them: they had four children.

  My w’akapapa goes back to the second boy, Whatarangi.

  In 1886, Te Whiti began a new ploughing campaign; he had already resumed the 18th of the month meetings. Despite his limited sight, Horitana led the ploughmen as he had done in earlier days. Te Whiti was gaoled, along with Titokowaru. Oh, this is another story that would make you weep: for instance, during the imprisonment, Hikurangi, Te Whiti’s wife died and he was not allowed to return for her tangi’anga.

  Following the imprisonment, Te Whiti and Tohu, with the help of a man named Charlie Waitara, using Maori money, added gas lighting to Parihaka, many fine European-style buildings, a water supply and a metalled road. Dan Ellison continued his visits from the South Island and also subsidised the rehabilitation of the kainga from his own pocket.

  One of the great glories of Parihaka became its fine orchestral marching band, playing triumphant fifes, trumpets and drums at tribal gatherings.

  On 18 June 1888, the great militarist Titokowaru died. Even so he prophesied, ‘I shall not die, I shall not die. When death itself is dead, I shall be alive.’

  Incredibly it was not until 12 July 1898 that the last of the Parihaka prisoners returned home to the kainga, bringing to a close nineteen years of imprisonment of Parihaka men, some of whom had been only boys when they were exiled.

  Meanwhile, all John Bryce’s kereru were coming home to roost. In 1886, he took the historian G.W. Rusden, whose work has been quoted in Erenora’s story, all the way to the High Court of Justice in London in one of the most famous libel cases in New Zealand. Specifically, Bryce contested the report in Rusden’s three-volume history of what had happened in 1868, during Titokowaru’s War, when the Kai-Iwi Yeomanry Cavalry unit attacked Hauhau warriors. Rusden had included women and children in the incident; Bryce denied direct involvement.

  Bryce may have won the case but for the rest of his life he fought a rearguard action on his crumbling reputation. In 1903, possibly still seeking approval from New Zealanders, he wrote, ‘With the feet of 20th century tourists on the very summit of the mountain, we may well hope that the occult and malign spirits will now retire into a necromantic night and trouble the sunshine no more.’

  He still hadn’t got it.

  EPILOGUE

  Always the Mountain

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Radiance of Feathers

  1.

  Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

  And to women, too. There’s not much more to tell you.

  Tohu Kaakahi died on 4 February 1907. Mourners tell of the coming of a cloud in the shape of a waka, with a solitary paddler, which, when it arrived above the marae, stayed for the entire tangi’anga.

  Te Whiti died nine months later, on 18 November. How significant that his death came a few hours after the special Sabbath he had instituted some forty years before. Mourners both Maori and Pakeha
travelled to Parihaka to pay tribute to him as he lay within a radiant penumbra of white albatross feathers. Taare Waitara, who delivered the eulogy, said:

  ‘Let this be clearly understood by all Maoris, Pakehas and all other nations. The white feather is a sign that all nations of the world will be one, black, red and all others who are called human beings. This feather will be the sign of unity, prosperity, peace and goodwill.’

  So far in this story I have resisted drawing the parallel between Te Whiti and the great Indian statesman, Mahatma Gandhi, whose methods of passive resistance gained acclaim some years later. Gandhi knew of the Parihaka story through Irish leaders who had visited New Zealand raising money and support for the Irish Home Rule movement; he came into contact with them when he was on a visit to London.

  With pride, I make the connection now.

  A few years later, Erenora’s adoptive mother, Huhana, died at Warea.

  The one compensation for that sadness was that on their way back from the tangi Erenora saw five of the bullocks which the constabulary had earlier herded away from Parihaka before Erenora had shot their companions; they were being taken to the knacker’s yard. Of course they were very old now, but they knew her still. Erenora paid top money to save them.

  After all, they had been her beloved companions.

  Loving till the last, Huhana had left Erenora her little patch of land with a small w’are on it, a cow bail, hens and a vegetable garden. It was the place where Erenora had been born and grew up and, although she and Horitana were sad to leave Parihaka, they decided to take the children there. One bright day they set off, herding the bullocks before them. They remained there until the end of their lives.

  It belongs to me and Josie now. Every summer we like to close our bungalow in New Plymouth and spend time on that ancestral land with all its memories. We’ll never sell it.

  Never.

  In 1913 John Bryce died, and then the Great War began in the Northern Hemisphere and, well, that took the attention of New Zealand away from domestic matters.

  As for Parihaka, Te Whiti had prophesied that it would progress through three stages before the arrival of Aranga, the day of resurrection and harvest. He added, ‘Those who are bent by the wind shall rise again when the wind softens.’

  I like to think that Aranga, the day of resurrection and harvest, has arrived.

  Indeed, Horitana himself took on this symbolism to explain to Erenora how he had managed to survive his terrible ordeal of the mokomokai and imprisonment. ‘I always lived in hope,’ he said, ‘and when I was brought before the court that was my day of betrayal. The placing of the mokomokai over my face, on that day I died. Then you came and resurrected me. The rest of our lives will be our harvest.’

  As for our mountain, the New Zealand Geographic Board decreed in the 1980s that it could be called either Egmont or Taranaki. I’m happy to say that both Pakeha and Maori prefer to call the mounga Taranaki rather than using the name of a man who never visited New Zealand.

  Doesn’t Taranaki look beautiful in the twilight? Look at how it is shining! And below it is Parihaka, triumphant, clustered around the three main houses of Toroanui, Te Paepae o te Raukura and Te Niho o Te Ati Awa.

  Stand on, oh great houses, stand always, stand forever.

  The mountain has seen it all. People around here always say that if you want to know what happened, ask the mountain.

  2.

  But … you should always leave the best for the last, eh?

  A few months ago I paid a visit to Donald Sonnleithner. Josie and I went down to Dunedin with three busloads of descendants of the eighteen prisoners from South Taranaki who had died there. It was local historian Denis Harold who had some years earlier discovered the men’s burial places and, ever since then, there have been visits to the graves to remind the men that they are not forgotten — nor their connections with Pakakohe and Patea. One of those visits included Bill Dacker and writer Jacquie Sturm — one of the prisoners had been an ancestor of hers — and Janet Frame was with her.

  Anyway, on the recent visit — Sir Paul Reeves was with us — we unveiled a memorial and, afterwards, I gave Donald a call to invite myself over for a glass of wine from his fine cellar. He had a lovely warm fire going in the living room and, very soon, between sips of wine, he began to tell me what happened to Rocco and Marzelline following Erenora’s escape with Horitana from Peketua Island.

  I say ‘escape’ but, of course, Marzelline didn’t know this. She thought that Eruera had died on the island and, in her diary, she simply writes:

  ‘Der Jüngling ist tot.’

  You can imagine how difficult it was, therefore, to hear Donald on that wintry evening, telling me of Marzelline’s grief when Rocco told her Eruera had drowned.

  ‘She insisted on searching the coast,’ he said.

  I nodded, thinking that when Marzelline didn’t find his body, she surely must have uttered her Walküre cry. If ever she had found Eruera I’m sure she would have taken him proudly to Valhalla.

  ‘Eventually,’ Donald continued, ‘Rocco took Marzelline away from the island and brought her to Dunedin. Here, he began a company importing agricultural machinery to New Zealand. As you can see from the house’ — Donald waved his hand to take in its understated grandeur — ‘he became very successful. As for Great-grandmother, after all she was sixteen and she began to heal. I don’t think she ever forgot Eruera but life has a habit of moving you along, doesn’t it? Very soon she became immersed in Dunedin society and, when she was nineteen, she caught the eye of, and eventually married, a gentleman from Somerset called Quentin Fellowes. The marriage was, from all accounts, a happy one and from them both branched our family like a lovely spreading tree. Great-grandmother took over the importing business when Great-great grandfather took ill, and he lived with her and Quentin, delighting in his grandchildren, until the end of his life. The oldest male child of every generation has taken his surname, Sonnleithner.’

  That evening, Donald and I talked further about Rocco and Marzelline. Donald regaled me with stories of his greatgrandmother’s beauty, charm, wit and huge business acumen. However, he had always sensed that there was more to the story of Marzelline and Eruera than was contained in her diary.

  Yes, he had been patient. But this time, he pushed me.

  ‘There’s always been something that has puzzled me,’ he began.

  He got up from his chair, stoked the fire and then went to his bureau. Picking up Marzelline’s diary, and nudging his reading spectacles onto the bridge of his nose, he thumbed through the pages.

  ‘It’s a diary entry from 1914, in which Marzelline mentions how, with two of their children, she and Quentin were on a motoring holiday through the North Island. They were in the Taranaki and, there, they had an interesting meeting by the side of the road …’

  He began to read from the diary.

  3.

  Im Frühling, komm! Frühling streu ins Land deine Blüthen aus …

  O springtime, come! Strew your blossoms over the land …

  ‘It was a day in spring,’ Marzelline wrote. ‘How beautiful that part of the country looked! It took my breath away, with Mount Egmont cleaving the blue sky apart and the blossoms drifting across the plains.

  ‘We were driving to New Plymouth and had just passed a small Maori farm. A man was in the field behind a plough being pulled by two bullocks. Following him was a woman whom I presumed to be his wife, bending and planting seeds in the furrows.

  ‘Ach! Something happened to the car because, all of a sudden there was a bang and it stopped dead in its tracks. Of course Quentin, who was never any good at mechanical matters, tried to fix it. I had to tell him, “Be off with you and find a mechanic!” He took my remonstrations in good humour and was fast down the road. Meanwhile, I had a good novel to read and the children began to play in a nearby paddock.

  ‘All of a sudden I saw the Maori couple coming along the road. The man must have been in his late sixties, his wife was
a little younger. “Tena korua,” I greeted them.

  ‘The woman said, “Your husband called by to ask if we could look after you and your children while he was away. Well, we were just about finished the ploughing anyway and so …”

  ‘She had a pitcher of water and she offered some to me. “Thank you,” I said.

  ‘Her smile was graceful and she hadn’t really seen my face. But when I lifted the pitcher to drink, she gasped and spilled the water. She looked at me as if she were seeing a ghost. “Your eyes! They were always so blue!” I was puzzled and concerned, but she quickly covered her agitation. “It’s nothing,” she said.

  ‘She gave the pitcher to her husband. “Take some water to the tamariki,” she said. He nodded and went into the paddock where the children were playing. “Are you children thirsty? This is good wai, comes straight off the mountain!” He had brought a spinning top with him and he put it on the ground and showed them how to make it spin by using a whip made of flax. His wife and I stood watching him. “Your husband is so patient,” I told her. She put an arm around my waist in a gesture of friendliness.

  ‘Very soon, I saw Quentin coming back along the road in a cart with a young mechanic. Thanks goodness he hadn’t had to go too far — and that nothing major had happened to the car. In those days, automobiles were rare in country areas, but at least the mechanic knew what he was doing. After a bit of tinkering, he asked Quentin to get into the driver’s seat while he cranked the car. What a relief! The engine burst into life.