The Dream Swimmer Read online

  Witi Ihimaera

  THE DREAM SWIMMER

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  Artemis

  ACT ONE

  Return to Waituhi

  Beloved of Riripeti

  ACT TWO

  Ship of God

  The Summer of Tiana’s Dream

  The Testament of Te Ariki

  ACT THREE

  The Song of Rua

  Dream Swimmer

  House of Atreus

  ACT FOUR

  In the Depths of Te Kore

  Warrior of Judah

  A Walk in the House of Memories

  Lash of the Mate

  The Furies

  ACT FIVE

  Circle of Unholy Spirits

  Paremata O Te Pakeha

  Sea of Dreams

  Eretra

  ACT SIX

  Ephesus, 1986

  Hikurangi Mountain

  Force of Destiny

  EPILOGUE

  Te Torino Whakahaere, Whakamuri

  Author’s Note

  Follow Penguin

  The Dream Swimmer

  Witi Ihimaera was born in Gisborne, New Zealand, in 1944. He is a pioneer of Maori writing in English: his collection of short stories Pounamu Pounamu was published in 1972, and followed by Tangi (1973), the first novel by a Maori. His works include novels, short-story collections, children’s books, plays and numerous anthologies. His novel The Whale Rider has been made into a successful international film, which won the Toronto Film Festival People’s Choice Award in 2002. Ihimaera is a professor of English at the University of Auckland, teaching creative writing and indigenous literature.

  OTHER FICTION BY WITI IHIMAERA

  SHORT STORIES

  Pounamu Pounamu (1972)

  The New Net Goes Fishing (1977)

  Dear Miss Mansfield (1989)

  Kingfisher Come Home (1995)

  Ihimaera: His Best Stories (2003)

  Ask the Posts of the House (2007)

  NOVELS

  Tangi (1973)

  Whanau (1974)

  The Matriarch (1986)

  The Whale Rider (1987)

  Bulibasha, King of the Gypsies (1994)

  Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1995)

  The Uncle’s Story (2000)

  Sky Dancer (2001)

  Whanau II (2004)

  The Rope of Man (2005)

  CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  The Whale Rider – children’s edition (2004)

  The Amazing Adventures of Razza the Rat (2006)

  To my mother, Julia

  When you look long into the abyss the abyss looks long into you

  NIETZSCHE

  PROLOGUE

  Artemis

  One

  O patria mia.

  O patria mia, mai piu ti rivedro … O ciel azzurri, o dolci aure native … Oh, my beloved country, I long to see you again, your blue skies, soft native breezes, green hills and cool valleys, oh my homeland.

  2.40 a.m., 10 June 1886

  A series of loud detonations threw everyone in Poverty Bay and the East Coast into great panic. The ground shook and buildings creaked. Flashes of fire shot up into a dense white mass which at first assumed the shape of a mushroom and later obscured the whole sky. The Maori people believed this to be a portent of some great anger or blessing. Showers of fine ash fell over Poverty Bay, the fall being most pronounced around Ormond. Beyond Anaura the hills were mantled with volcanic ash. On Tuparoa run the pasture was hidden.

  Seven hours later, at 10 a.m., it was as dark as midnight at Wai-o-matatini. The people began to pray for deliverance. The Southern Cross ran into a dense cloud of dust off East Island and put out well off the land.

  It was the date of the Tarawera eruption, when seers and diviners of the past and future saw visions of the world gone and the world to come – of phantom canoes and ghost people gliding through the veil between the dead and the living.

  Nobody knows when Riripeti Pere, also known as Artemis, was born, but I like to think that it was at that time and during the turmoil of Tarawera that she drew her first breath and announced her coming.

  The manner of her birth was unusual. When her koroua, Wi Pere, the parliamentarian and member for Eastern Maori, heard that she had been born with her left eye swimming in blood and her hands around her neck, he claimed her. Riripeti became his whangai, his adopted daughter. Through him she claimed Te Whanau A Kai, the people of the Waituhi Valley, as her people. By descent through him, she further claimed extended kinship links with the Te Aitanga A Mahaki, Rongowhakaata, Ngai Tamanuhiri and Ngati Kahungunu confederations.

  From 1886 to 1905 Wi Pere taught Riripeti the sacred arts of the whare wananga, the ancient lore, the history and genealogies of the iwi, and incantations necessary to important karakia and sacred hui. He also raised her in the faith of the Ringatu, the religion of the rebel Te Kooti Arikirangi. At the time of her coming, the first civil war between Maori and Pakeha had just ended. Neither Te Kooti nor Wi Pere had been able to stop the force of destiny which saw the Pakeha triumphant in Aotearoa. The Pakeha reaction to Maori insurgency had been savage and swift, culminating in wholesale, heart-wrenching confiscations of Maori land.

  ‘You will achieve what Te Kooti and I have not,’ Wi Pere said. ‘You will drive the Pakeha back into the sea. When the time comes you will lead the Maori out of bondage from the Pakeha into the promised land of Canaan. Through you, the land will be returned.’

  In 1895, Wi Pere embarked on a steamship bound for London with his colleague, W. L. Rees. In that same year, Riripeti disappeared.

  Gisborne, 14 May 1911

  The day was overcast when the Hon. Wi Pere, now an old man whose long career in politics was over, visited the Post and Telegraph station in Gladstone Road near the Kaiti Bridge. He instructed the telegraph operator to send a communication to Italy. At the time he was ailing and the shadow of Death was upon him. He was filled to the brim with feelings of failure and defeat and the lost causes of the Maori. The gods had deserted him in 1905 when he had failed to regain his seat in Parliament, and ever since his comet had been falling, falling, falling. Riripeti had learnt enough about the world of the Pakeha. It was time for his whangai to come home and take over the struggle.

  The operator shrugged when he read the text: it was in Maori and he did not understand it. He asked a casual question as to its meaning and was told, ‘It is not your place to question. Simply send the message.’ Wi Pere then asked the operator to let him know when a reply would be received. The operator told him, ‘Perhaps a week, Sir, at minimum.’

  Accordingly, Wi Pere booked a room at the Masonic Hotel and began a long wait. He stirred from the room only to take a morning and evening constitutional walk, and to check at the P & T office. Finally, the awaited reply arrived. The operator could not understand this one either. It was in Italian, so its meaning was lost to all except Wi Pere himself.

  Two months passed and on 12 July Wi Pere took a coastal vessel from Gisborne to the port of Auckland. He was in his best dress coat and he appeared to be in a mood of calm anticipation. His trunk was filled with his best menswear. On arrival in Auckland he took a suite in the Royal Hotel, Symonds Street. The housemaid was requested to take meticulous care in ironing his dress shirts. When he signed the register of 17 July his usually bold strokes betrayed an inner trepidation. During the following five days he visited friends and old colleagues from his days when he was a parliamentarian.

  On 23 July the New Zealand Herald listed the arrival of a packet steamer from San Francisco, the American Queen.

  The steamer was very small and did not carry many passengers. Among them was a ‘Miss R. A. Perry, accompanied by Signora Ana di Stasio’. One might have a
ssumed that these were two women in some travelling theatrical company. All conjecture would have been swept away if one had read the report of the social columnist for the Herald who was, by chance, at the landing. His column reported: ‘An affecting scene was enacted when the retired MP Hon. Wi Pere met young Italian Miss R. A. Perry, just off the American Queen. Miss Perry was dressed in beautiful golden silk and was wearing a cape of the richest green fabric. When she first appeared on the gangplank her face and hair were hidden by the hood of her cape but, when she saw the Hon. Wi Pere her joy made her run towards him and, in that motion, the domino fell from her head. Miss Perry must assuredly be one of the loveliest young women that this reporter has been privileged to see and I understand that she turned heads on the Queen. Her hair was dressed in the Italian style with pearls. Suffice to say, however, that she surprised all, when she responded to Wi Pere, by calling in Maori to him. Without a look either to left or right she ran along the dock to where he was standing and flung herself into his arms. There was not a dry eye among the bystanders witnessing the welcome.’

  On 29 July 1911, Wi Pere returned from Auckland to Gisborne on the regular coastal vessel. With him was a young woman of unsurpassing beauty and wearing pearls in her hair, who spent most of the voyage watching the coast. The log of that journey reports sights of some amazing phenomena: schools of dolphins and whales escorting the vessel, aurora australis in the evenings and, on the approach to Gisborne, a glorious rainbow.

  9 December 1915

  They had three years together, Wi Pere and Riripeti. During that time Wi Pere continued to teach her more of the sacred lore of the ancient whare wananga. But this time there was a difference. Now that she was older, Riripeti was able to be taught esoteric arts of the kind taught Wi Pere himself. The old people saythat this was the period during which Riripeti learnt how to use the forces of the supernatural, to stop the sun, command spiders and to harness Nature to do her bidding.

  Wi Pere also moved quickly to ensure that Riripeti would take the leadership of the Ringatu people in the Waituhi Valley. He secured agreement from the Poutikanga, the group of elders controlling the church after Te Kooti’s death, that this should be so. They agreed, seeing in Riripeti a true daughter of Moses. To assist her, they appointed the priest, Tamati Kota, to be her faithful adviser. With the charisma associated with the Ringatu, Riripeti became set to lead the Maori out of bondage from Pharaoh.

  There was one other move still to make, and this was to establish Riripeti’s position among the chiefs of Poverty Bay, Hawke’s Bay and the East Coast. Wi Pere knew that some difficulty might be associated with this, Riripeti being a woman in a culture that was primarily patrilinear. Nevertheless, he used his formidable powers to install her above all others in the large family homestead in the valley of Waituhi. There, he proclaimed her his successor and demanded that her leadership of Te Whanau A Kai be acknowledged. He then took her with him around the various tribal confederations, bullying, cajoling, forcing and negotiating her ascendancy. This was the first move in the eventual acceptance by other chiefs of Maoridom that Riripeti was of their rank and one among them.

  Meantime, as had been Wi Pere’s wish, Riripeti contracted a taumau marriage with Ihaka Mahana. She was twenty-seven and he was fifteen. The wedding took place at the homestead in Waituhi. Riripeti hated the contract, being neither physically nor intellectually attracted to Ihaka. But she knew that this was the way political alliances were formed, debts paid, promises renewed. Ihaka was of chiefly Tuhoe descent and, in those days when Maori voted by tribe, their support had always been crucial to Wi Pere himself. A son, Te Ariki, the first of ten children from Riripeti’s union with Ihaka, was born the second year.

  In the third year, having taught Riripeti what he knew, and established her as a chief, Wi Pere died. He was buried in a vault in Waerenga-a-Hika on 3 January 1916.

  It is said that at Wi Pere’s death Riripeti had a moko of uncommon design tattooed on her chin. When he was taken into the vault, a strong wind blew from Hawaiki, the place where all spirits go after death. The sky was as turbulent as Tarawera. The whakapapa of Wi Pere, right back to the time of the launching of the legendary Takitimu waka, appeared gliding through the veil between the dead and the living.

  ‘You will be the one,’ Wi Pere had said. ‘When the time comes you –’

  After Wi Pere’s death, Riripeti wore only black.

  Around that time a woman of no account was born.

  Her name was Tiana.

  ACT I

  Return to Waituhi

  Two

  Immense Phta.

  Del mondo spirito animator. Ah! Noi t’invochiamo, t’invochiam … Oh mighty Phta, spirit that animates the world, ah, we invoke thee. Mighty Phta, we invoke thee, we invoke thee.

  11 May 1997

  Eleven years have passed since that winter of 1986 when I put down my pen on the story of the woman who wore pearls in her hair, my grandmother the matriarch, Riripeti Mahana née Pere, whom some called Artemis, ruler of the Mahana family for three generations.

  Something happened during that winter eleven years ago and I closed my memory on the family and its dark secrets. Over the last decade I have been running away, travelling but without a destination. The world has become my hiding place.

  I am still seeking redemption.

  Last week, however, while I was in Greece attending a conference on the Law of the Sea, my ancient protectress, my kaitiaki, the merwoman Hine Te Ariki, came to me. My Biafran friend, Guillaume, was with me when she arrived. The conference had adjourned for the weekend and Guillaume and I had taken an excursion to Mikonos. We stood on the hotel balcony having drinks before dinner. The sun was a swollen fiery ball falling into the sea.

  ‘Ah,’ Guillaume said, ‘you may be lucky this evening, my friend.’ He pointed to the horizon.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘Le rai en vert,’ he said. ‘Watch.’

  There was no hiss as the sun hit the sea. Instead it was the sea that was triumphant, absorbing the sun’s fire and transmuting it into liquid gold. Slowly, the sun began to descend beneath the surface.

  ‘Regardez,’ Guillaume said.

  At the last moment a ray of green shot out from both sides of the sun, limning the horizon with arrows of light, like pounamu.

  That was when I saw her, Hine Te Ariki, my ancient mermaid protectress, shimmering out of that green light, that rai en vert, swimming toward me from the dark swirling waters of the Waituhi and calling across the gold molten sea.

  I had not seen her for a long time. I had told her never to come. But she hadn’t listened. Her shining paua eyes were filled with yearning and the greenstone moko on her chin gleamed with sadness. I knew she wanted me to come to her embrace, but whenever I saw Hine Te Ariki I could remember only what I did to my mother, Tiana.

  ‘Haere atu!’ I called to Hine Te Ariki. ‘Go back to your life and leave me to mine.’

  Hine Te Ariki moaned and threshed in the sea, unwilling to obey. Then, sighing, she began a soaring waiata of desire.

  Hoki mai ki te wa kainga, Tamatea. Hoki mai.

  Come home, Tamatea. Come home.

  And it was too late for me. All those memories of the great Mahana family, my grandmother Riripeti, my father Te Ariki and my mother Tiana, came with her.

  Old ghosts rattling.

  Let us in, let us in.

  Oh, let us in.

  Back in Athens, I decided to go up to Delphi to consult the oracle of Apollo. There are some places in the world where the boundaries between past and future, living and dead, are so fine that you can read the patterns of destiny. Waituhi is one such place; Venice is another; and so is Delphi. Why else would it be so associated with divinations?

  Hoki mai ki te wa kainga, e tama, hoki mai.

  A strong wind came up the valley, and trees knocked and clattered like spears. Hoki mai.

  So where shall we begin again?

  Perhaps with the Blind Ma
n, my Uncle Alexis. Yes, let us begin again with him.

  She made you into a likeness unto herself.

  It was my dear Uncle Alexis who, in 1974, set me on my quest to seek the truth about the great Mahana clan. He had suddenly and for no medical reason gone blind, his eyesight plucked from him. At the time my wife Regan and I were settled in Wellington. I was twenty-nine, a father with two young daughters, Bianca and Miranda, and was working in the law division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  My father, Te Ariki, rang one night from Waituhi.

  ‘Haven’t you been to see your uncle yet? What’s wrong with you?’

  My father, by virtue of being the eldest son of Riripeti and Ihaka, was now the head of the Mahana whanau. He was also titular head of the sprawling iwi that my grandmother Riripeti had once ruled. They numbered some eight hundred souls, around one hundred of whom lived in the valley of the Waituhi, and the rest were scattered to Gisborne and the cities of Wellington and Auckland. When Riripeti died in 1957 the grip by which she had held her people so firmly to her heart went with her. My grandfather Ihaka tried to maintain that rule but Riripeti’s fervent supporters, the Ringatu people, deserted him. When he died, Te Ariki took over, trying to impose some sense of leadership on the morehu, the survivors, the ones who were left behind. But Riripeti had charisma and neither he nor Ihaka did. And what can you do when the land is gone and, landless, the people are at the mercy of the prevailing winds of the Pakeha? Without earth to dig their toes into, without trees to cling to, they had been flung to the ends of the universe. Lost. In limbo.

  I was Te Ariki’s eldest. I was the eldest son of an eldest son of an eldest son, going right back to the beginning of the world, a patriarchal line of leadership stretching from Te Kore, the place that some call The Void and others call Chaos, where all life began. Whenever Te Ariki was angry with me, he would accuse me of forgetting my ordained duty.