White Lies Read online

  IMAGES AND SOUND: For always going the extra mile for this film.

  EVERY PERSON IN THE CAST AND THE CREW OF THIS FILM: You went with me all the way, not always under easy circumstances, to finish every shooting day with the best possible result. No matter how complicated the challenges were, or the nature of the conflicts we all faced, you brought to the set the best of yourselves to make this film. Its beauty belongs to all of you.

  JOHN MACDERMOTT: For being mi buen amigo, and for being a wise and constant source of integrity and goodness.

  CAMERON BROADHURST: For your advice, your clarity and your work.

  MICK SINCLAIR: For finding the key that unblocked something that can be beautiful.

  My friends CLAIRE ST AFFORD, ALI COOMBER, LEANNE POOLEY, PHILIPPA CAMPBELL, CHRIS MEADE, MERCEDES HOPE, MAREE MCDERMOTT and LISA WOODS: For being there for me, when I most needed you.

  MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER: For giving me the life I have.

  Dana Rotberg

  CHAPTER ONE

  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. As she wakes, however, she is aware of all the stiffness, aches and numbness of a body that has aged. She opens her eyes, adjusts to consciousness and listens to her heart thumping away, pushing the blood through thickened veins. ‘Still in the land of the living,’ she says to herself.

  She hears the usual wheeze and gurgle as her lungs force her breath in and out, but there’s a lump of phlegm in her throat. ‘Aue,’ she grumbles as, creaking like an old door on worn-out hinges, she heaves herself into a sitting position. She is wearing a long flannel nightgown buttoned to the neck but, even so, the morning is cold, so she wraps a sleeping blanket around her before opening the flap of the tent and spitting into the cuspidor.

  Now that she is awake, Paraiti fumbles under the pillow for her battered and well-thumbed Bible and hymnal. She raises her left hand and starts to chant a karakia, the Lord’s Prayer.

  ‘E to matou matua i te rangi,’ she begins, ‘kia tapu tou ingoa …’

  Old habits die hard, and Paraiti 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 faithful were all at karakia in the smoky meeting house, she was the child always squirming and wriggling. ‘Kaua e korikori,’ 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 her hand again in the sign of the faithful, ‘Kororia ki to ingoa tapu, glory be to Thy holy name.’ Her religion is Ringatu, created from the narratives of the Old Testament by the Maori prophet, Te Kooti Arikirangi.

  Paraiti lifts her eyes to the sky lightening above her, and marvels again at the goodness of God for having made the world and granting her another day to live in it. The huge canopy of native trees has been a protective umbrella for her sleep; the shimmering giant ferns beneath have provided more intimate shelter from the rain. Mist is steaming from the forest, hastening upward in the wind currents that blow it in arabesques and curlicues toward the bright sun. Here, at the bend of a river, with flax and toetoe unfolding in the lower growth, she has had the perfect camping ground.

  Morning prayer over, Paraiti whistles out to her stallion, Ataahua, and to Kaihe, her mule. The sound is strong and piercing with an upturned inflection: ‘Where are you two?’ Well trained, they whinny back. Good, they have not foraged too far away in the night.

  Where’s Tiaki, her pig dog? Aha, there he is, big and ugly, emerging silently out of the bush on the other side of the river, looking at her. 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 has been hunting and in his jaws is a fat wood pigeon, still alive and unmarked. Even so, he whines, offended that Paraiti should think so ill of him. He jumps headlong into the water, swims across and waits for her to take the bird from his mouth. But he won’t let it go.

  You can apologise first, mistress.

  ‘Very well,’ Paraiti says to him. ‘Give me the bird.’

  Tiaki sighs, knowing she will release it back into the woods. All his work for nothing?

  ‘Ae, we let this one go. Give the first to Tane, Lord of the Forest.’ She kisses the pigeon and gives it freedom; it creaks and whistles its way back into the trees. ‘Now go, Tiaki, the second pigeon is for us.’

  Paraiti watches her dog bounding back to the river and swimming strongly to the other side, creating a V in the water. Righto, down to the edge, mincing over the pebbles to wash herself, get the pikaru out of her eyes, and use a clean rag to wash her neck, armpits and nether parts. For an old woman, and despite her creaking joints, Paraiti walks with a surprising lightness of step; she is sometimes almost girlish. Where the water laps, she kneels and begins her daily ablutions. While she is at it, she sprinkles some of the drops 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, lumpy chin, 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. From this angle she looks like a very ugly potato.

  ‘Never mind,’ Paraiti says to herself. ‘Nobody else around to frighten.’

  Time to change into her travelling clothes: layers of blouses all nice and dry, a jerkin made of supple hide, longjohns, a petticoat and long woollen skirt, socks pulled up to the knees and strong boots.

  And now, 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.

  ‘It’s not the same one we let go, is it?’ Paraiti asks. She has a sneaking suspicion that Tiaki has sometimes clipped the bird’s wings with his teeth so that it can’t fly too far and, when she is not looking, brings the same bird back.

  Tiaki ignores her accusation. He drops the pigeon at Paraiti’s feet and, now that he has done his duty by his mistress, disdainfully he is off again, this time 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 manuka honey. There’s nothing like a fresh pigeon and damper bread running with manuka honey to soothe the gullet and start the day. A cup of manuka tea is made in the billy and, ka pai, with that extra stimulation to the blood and senses, she is in seventh heaven.

  Once she’s breakfasted, Paraiti is keen to get going. ‘Time to saddle up,’ she says.

  She puts on a wide-brimmed hat with a string that she ties under her chin. 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 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, making sure the weight is evenly distributed across his spine — wouldn’t want an unbalanced load to endanger the mule as he is climbing the steep slopes — and then she puts the bridle and saddle on Ataahua and taps his 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 lift herself aboard and settle, and then hoists himself up with a whinny of grumpiness; over the last few years his mistress has got not only older but heavier. And him? Well, his joints are troubling him too.

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

  Pulling her mule after her, Paraiti fords the river at its shallowes
t crossing; she doesn’t want to get wet, but, even so, Ataahua slips into a hole and her hem dips in the water.

  Quickly Paraiti shouts, ‘Hup!’ before the fool horse dumps her completely in the water, and urges him up and onward. Scolding him for not being as young as he once was, she spurs him to climb the track on the other side. Every now and then on the way up she looks behind to check the load on Kaihe.

  By the time Paraiti reaches the top of the ridge, Tiaki has joined her with a supercilious look on his face. 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 rising above the village of Ruatahuna, her destination.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Paraiti is not the name she was baptised with.

  She was given it when she was six years old and became ‘The One with the Blighted Face’, for the bright 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, six years old, in 1880. Her parents and other kin were travelling deep within the Urewera country; her father Te Teira was a tohunga, a revered priest and healer, and the other men and women in the group were accompanying him to a Ringatu church service at Ohiwa. One evening, just as they were settling down for the night’s meal, they were set upon by constabulary forces who were hunting bigger game — their leader Te Kooti Arikirangi. They recognised Te Teira: although Te Kooti and his followers had put aside their arms, they were still being pursued.

  The constabulary restrained Te Teira and the other men with ropes; Hera, Paraiti’s mother, had tried too late to take Paraiti into the bush while the forces ransacked the encampment. When the constabulary couldn’t find Te Kooti, one of them, a burly menacing man, took a burning branch from the cooking fire. ‘Tell me where your leader is,’ he shouted at Te Teira.

  He was waving the branch so close to Te Teira’s face that sparks flew all around him, setting fire to his shirt. Te Teira cried out with terror and fell back onto the ground. The man advanced on him and raised the branch threateningly. ‘It will be the worse for you if you do not tell me your leader’s whereabouts.’

  Te Teira persisted in his pleas: ‘I don’t know where the prophet is.’

  Looking on, Paraiti felt only one desire, to save her father, and she jumped onto the attacker’s back to distract his attention.

  The man reached behind him, clutched Paraiti and, holding her up by her hair, dangled her before him. ‘Is this your cub?’ he asked Te Teira. He slashed Paraiti’s face with the burning branch and then threw her against the trunk of a tree.

  It happened so quickly, but the memory has never left Paraiti in all these years. The pain of the burning. The shock as she slammed into the tree. The pain again, waves of it almost overcoming her. Dazed, she had tried to stand. As her parents and relatives were led away to be imprisoned, Te Teira cried out, ‘Daughter, quickly, go to the stream and lie down in the cold water.’

  Somehow, Paraiti found the strength to follow his instructions. Her face was on fire as, stumbling, she made her way down the slope to the stream. No sooner had she immersed herself in the water than she fainted.

  How long she was unconscious, Paraiti didn’t know. Covered in mud, she was found by local Maori who cared for her as her face bubbled and blistered. They applied healing ointments, but there was nothing they could do to reverse the scarring.

  A month later, Paraiti left her caregivers and followed the constabulary, looking for her parents. Having heard that they had been taken to Whakatane to await sentencing, she found them in a small jailhouse. She threw stones through the barred window until they looked out. They were overjoyed to see her but Te Teira grieved to see her face.

  Once, she had been such a pretty girl.

  ‘Aue, daughter …’

  Paraiti stayed with local Maori, waiting for the circuit judge to arrive to hear the case brought by the constabulary against her parents and her whanau; she visited them every day, squeezing small food delicacies to them through the bars.

  At the trial she managed to slip into the courtroom to await her parents’ release. Instead Te Teira and Hera were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for taking up arms against the government and were transported by coastal steamer from Whakatane to Auckland. She followed overland and eventually found them again in the Pakeha prison on the outskirts of the boisterous town.

  ‘It is too dangerous for you here,’ Te Teira told her. ‘Go to Te Kuiti and wait for us there.’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.

  Instead, she lived close by the prison in a small squatter settlement with others who had also come to wait out the jail sentence of loved ones. Sometimes she would hear her parents singing comforting songs to her. That is, until the constabulary chased her away.

  One day Paraiti witnessed the hanging of one of the faithful. His name was Hamiora Pere, and when the hangman placed the rope over his head he requested that he be given the chance to sing a waiata of farewell. ‘Unloose the knot from my throat that I might sing my song,’ he said.

  His was a terrible death — the sudden fall through the trapdoor, the crack as his neck snapped. Looking on, Te Teira cried out angrily to Paraiti, ‘Now will you go to Te Kuiti? If I am next, I don’t want you to see me, lifeless, dangling from the scaffold.’

  On her father’s instruction, Paraiti therefore joined a band of Te Kooti’s followers who were travelling east. A year later Te Teira was finally released. He went straight to Te Kuiti. As soon as father and daughter saw each other, they clasped each other silently. It was there that Te Teira told Paraiti that her mother, Hera, had died in prison. ‘There’s only you and me now,’ he said.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Paraiti asked.

  ‘Go on living,’ he answered, ‘and do what we have always done: serve God and the people.’

  He resumed his calling as a tohunga, preaching the gospel and working as a healer among the morehu, the followers of Te Kooti.

  From that moment, they were never apart.

  On this first day of June, in the Year of Our Lord, 1935, Paraiti is sixty-one years old and the land wars between Pakeha and Maori have been over for some forty years. Although she has not succeeded her father as a tohunga, Paraiti has continued his work as a traditional healer. Modern medical services may now be available in the many towns and cities that have sprung up around Aotearoa, but Maori in the backblocks and remote coastal areas still rely on their traditional medicine men and women. How can they afford the Pakeha doctors during these years of the Depression?

  A few weeks ago, Paraiti was still in her village of Waituhi, in Poverty Bay, where she had settled during the second decade of the twentieth century. At the height of the terrible Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse reaped a rich harvest among Maori, Te Teira had received a plea for help from a powerful kuia of Waituhi. Her name was Riripeti and she was setting up a hospital to cater for the ill and dying, but she needed people with medical skills to staff it.

  Paraiti was then forty-four, and Te Teira had implicit trust in her. ‘I have to stay here, daughter. You must go to Riripeti in my place.’ Obeying her father, Paraiti set off for Waituhi. As soon as she saw the valley, with its sacred mountain at one end and ancient fortress at the other — and the sparkling Waipaoa River running through it — she knew this would not be a temporary visit. Her sense of wonder mounted when she saw Riripeti’s canvas hospital, which people called Te Waka o Te Atua, The Ship of God, because when the tents were erected they looked like sails.

  And then Paraiti saw the valley’s great meeting house, Rongopai, holding up the sky. Word of its fame had already circulated among the faithful, but even so, she was unprepared for its holiness. It was indeed a cathedral to the vision of the prophet, Te Kooti, so beautifully decorated and carved that she felt, on first entering it, that the angel who guarded it had sh
eathed his golden sword and let her into the Garden of Eden. The walls were like tall trees, elaborately painted in greens, blues and reds; she was wrapped in the glow of an illuminated forest. Through the branches flew fantastic birds, such species as were dreamed of in Paradise. And the Maori ancestors were everywhere, standing, running, climbing through this world before the Fall.

  It was only a matter of time before she returned to stay.

  The autumn was unseasonably cold in 1935 when Paraiti began preparing for her travels from Waituhi. The southerlies had driven into the foothills where she now lived in a two-room kauta close to the meeting house.

  No matter the bitter weather, Paraiti was determined to keep to her seasonal trip as ordained by the Maori calendar — and the Maori New Year, Matariki, was imminent. Also, she had become stir-crazy and wanted to be out on the road.

  After all, the people were waiting.

  From her stockpile of medicines Paraiti carefully selected the small bottles and tins of ointments, philtres and lotions she thought she would need for the various village clinics, wrapping them separately for her saddlebags so that they wouldn’t clink or clang on the journey. Most of her medicines, however, she would gather fresh from the special secret places in the forest and along the coast, among them rimu gum for haemorrhaging, the mamaku pith for scrofulous tumours, seaweed for goitre and pirita for epilepsy.

  For personal provisions she took only kao, dried kumara and water. Food would be her payment from her patients, and, should she require extra kai for herself and her animals, as always, the Lord and the land would provide: fern grounds, pa tuna, taro and kumara gardens and bird sanctuaries.

  Paraiti took a small tent and a bedroll. For protection she put her rifle in a sling and a knife in her left boot. Although she might not be attractive, she was still a woman, and men were men.