White Lies Read online

  Paraiti places her hands on Mrs Vickers’ swollen belly. Oh, the baby is too slow, too slow, so she must administer a series of sharp, forceful blows — one, two, three, four — to give it the impetus to kick itself outward with its last remaining strength.

  The baby pushes head first against the birth opening.

  Paraiti’s manipulation is firm and vigorous. The contractions are rippling stronger and stronger, and the fluids stream from the vagina as the doorway proudly begins to open. ‘Now, bear down,’ Paraiti orders.

  Mrs Vickers does not flail the air. Her face constricts and she arches her neck with a hiss. With a gush of blood, undulation after undulation, the baby slides out, head followed by shoulders, body and limbs, into the world. The baby is dark-skinned with wet, matted red hair.

  ‘A girl,’ Paraiti whispers in awe. ‘Haere mai, e hine, ki Te Ao o Tane. Welcome, child, to the world of humankind.’ Quickly, she cradles the child, wiping the mucus from her face to give her the first breath of life from one generation to the other.

  She feels Maraea’s fingers digging into her, pulling her back. ‘No, let it die.’

  Paraiti pushes her away. Alarmed, she notices that the baby is very still. She clears the baby’s mouth and massages her chest.

  Still no movement.

  Maraea is on her with a growl, but Paraiti pushes her away again. She breathes through the child’s nose and mouth and then gives the ha, the blessing through the fontanelle.

  The baby cries. Her eyes open. They are green, shining, angry.

  ‘Oh,’ Mrs Vickers whispers.

  Rebecca Vickers motions for Paraiti to give the baby to her.

  When Paraiti looks at her, she realises Mrs Vickers has been surprised into love.

  ‘Look, Mother,’ she says to Maraea.

  Paraiti has brought with her a sharp cutting shell to sever the umbilical cord. ‘Hui e, haumi e, taiki e,’ she whispers. ‘Let it be done.’

  She ties the cord with flax. She closes her eyes, feeling suddenly tired. When she opens them, she sees that Mrs Vickers is weeping. Where is the child?

  ‘My mother has taken it. It had no future anyway.’

  All along Paraiti should have realised.

  When Maraea had said, on their second meeting, ‘She will kill the baby, make no mistake about it’, what she had really meant was that she, the mother and not the daughter, would kill it. The baby’s birth threatened not only Rebecca’s life but Maraea’s too, and she wasn’t about to let it be destroyed.

  Paraiti rushes up from the basement. Behind her, she hears Mrs Vickers calling, ‘My mother will not kill the baby in this house. She wants to, but she knows of the spiritual consequences of such an act — of having a child ghost destroy the calmness of her life. But she will get rid of it.’

  Through the kitchen Paraiti runs. The back door is open and she hears the distant crunch of Maraea’s feet on the gravel path. The front gate makes a slight sound as it opens and shuts. Across the garden, the light snaps on in the gardener’s house and he comes to the doorway, silhouetted in the light.

  ‘E Tiaki,’ Paraiti calls to her dog, ‘kia tere. Follow.’

  Keeping to the shadows, Tiaki slinks silently in pursuit. Paraiti follows, watching for a glimpse of Maraea as she flees beneath the moon.

  ‘She’s heading for the bridge,’ Paraiti says to herself, alarmed. On the other side is a small Maori settlement.

  Paraiti hears a thin wail from the baby. She cannot believe that Maraea intends to throw the child into the river.

  But she does, as if she is throwing a sack of kittens.

  ‘Aue, e hine,’ Paraiti cries.

  Paraiti could go quickly to the rescue but some inner sense tells her: Wait. Don’t let Maraea know you are in the darkness. Indeed, not long afterwards, Maraea can be heard returning to Waterside Drive.

  Once she has gone, Paraiti runs to the bridge to look over. Good fortune has attended the child. The sack has air in it, giving it buoyancy. It is floating away on the dark river; it won’t be too long before it sinks.

  ‘Haere atu,’ Paraiti yells to Tiaki. She points at the sack in the river and he jumps off the bridge and splashes into the water.

  Paraiti’s heart is beating fast as she slips and slides down to the river’s edge. She can hear the thin wail of the child again. ‘Kia tere, kia tere!’ she urges Tiaki. The sack is becoming waterlogged and it is sinking. ‘Quick, Tiaki, quick.’

  He is too late. The sack disappears under the water.

  With a yelp, Tiaki dives for it — has not his mistress taught him at a favoured lagoon to bring back speared fish from the sea? But the sack has already gone too deep, too deep. Then something flicks across his nose, a piece of twine trailing from the sack as it sinks deeper, and he lunges …

  Tiaki breaks out of the water. In his teeth, he has the sack. ‘He kuri pai!’ Paraiti calls to him. ‘Good dog. Whakahokia mai te kete ki ahau.’ But the sack, waterlogged, is too heavy and is dragging Tiaki down with it. ‘Tiaki,’ Paraiti cries, ‘have strength, kia kaha.’

  Then comes the sound of someone running past her and diving into the water. It is the Maori gardener. With swift strokes he makes midstream and dives. When he surfaces, he has the sack. ‘Bring it to me,’ Paraiti urges. ‘Quickly.’

  The gardener thrusts the sack into Paraiti’s hands. Her usually clever fingers are so clumsy! They take so long to untie the knot. ‘Do your work quickly, fingers, quickly.’

  The baby is so still, with a tinge of blue on her skin. She already has the waxen sheen of death upon her.

  ‘Move quickly, hands. You have always healed, always saved lives. Give warmth to the child, massage the small heart and body to beat again and to bring the water up from her lungs. Quickly, hands, quickly. And now—’

  The gardener is in despair — ‘The baby is already gone’ — but Paraiti will not give up. She holds the child and gives her three sharp taps on her chest. ‘If you breathe, I promise you that this will be the last time I hit you.’

  And the heart begins to pump and the baby yells, spraying water out of her mouth. She starts to cough; that’s good, as she will get rid of all the water from her lungs. Very soon she is breathing and crying, and Paraiti continues to rub her down, increasing her body warmth.

  Tiaki noses in to see what she is doing. He whimpers and licks her. ‘Oh, pae kare,’ the gardener says to himself, ‘Oh, thank God.’

  Paraiti takes a moment to calm down. ‘Thank you,’ she says to the gardener. Then she addresses the baby. ‘I will call you Waiputa,’ she says. ‘Born of water.’

  She sprinkles her head with water to bless her. Waiputa is already nuzzling Paraiti’s breasts.

  ‘You’re not going to have any luck with those old dugs,’ Paraiti tells her. ‘I’d better find you a wet nurse.’ She looks across the river at the Maori settlement; there’s bound to be some younger woman there, breastfeeding her own child, who owes Paraiti a favour and won’t mind suckling another infant.

  As for the future? Paraiti smiles to herself. ‘What a menagerie we will make, Waiputa! A scar-faced woman, two old nags, a pig dog and you.’

  Others had begun their lives with less.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Seven years later, time has been kind to Paraiti. Although her eyesight has dimmed a little, her memory is as sharp as ever, her medical skills intact, and her hands still do their blessed work. Tiaki has grown a bit greyer and is not as formidable a hunter as he used to be. Both Ataahua and Kaihe are casting a keen eye on the pasture across the road where they can live out the rest of their years.

  This morning Paraiti woke as usual at dawn, said her karakia, performed her ablutions, packed her saddlebags and set off down the road. She still makes her annual haerenga and, in the year 1942, she is on her way to a hui at Te Mana o Turanga, Whakato marae, Manutuke, the birthplace of the prophet Te Kooti. Oh, how she loves that meeting house. So full of carvings and stories of the people. Whenever she visits, it is as if the past
comes to life before her.

  She is looking forward to the hui, too, the celebration of the Passover on November the first, when what has been planted at Matariki is harvested — symbolic of the resurrection of Christ. A special karakia is also planned: with a European war happening on the other side of the world, and Maori soldiers fighting in Italy, Paraiti will join others in praying that the Angel of Death will pass over them without reaping his harvest.

  Paraiti usually travels by the side of the Pakeha roads now. Many of the great Maori trails are fenced off, and the last time she travelled on Rua’s Track, she had trouble hanging on when she was negotiating the steepest part. But she still grumbles about the ways that civilisation is advancing through the world, and she is always pointing out more of its marks.

  She comes to the fork of the road where roadmen have been constructing a combined road-and-rail bridge. She’s never seen one quite like it. The road has been made of a black and sticky material. Tiaki sniffs at it and growls. Ataahua and Kaihe stand patiently waiting for the order to move across.

  ‘It might be like the Red Sea,’ Paraiti mutters. ‘We could be halfway across and next minute, aue, the waves will come over us.’

  ‘No it won’t, Nan,’ a young voice says. ‘It’s called tar seal. Come on, there’s no traffic. Let’s cross now.’

  Riding Kaihe is a pretty young girl, fair, with auburn hair. Paraiti has an assistant now, a whangai daughter, Waiputa, to fill her waning years. She is someone to love; the new seed for the future, blossoming from Paraiti’s old life. In turn, Waiputa is someone who loves her matua, her parent.

  They make a good team, the scarred one and the unscarred one.

  ‘Tar seal, eh?’ Paraiti answers. ‘You’re learning lots of big words at that school of yours.’

  Not only that, but Waiputa has become a very firm dealer in the transactions whenever Paraiti heals someone; Waiputa makes sure her nan is not shortchanged.

  Paraiti pulls Kaihe across the black river. Aue, motorised traffic is faster than an old woman with her horse, mule and pig dog, and a little girl riding the mule. It can come out of nowhere and is onto you before you know it. Now, roaring across the bridge like a ngangara, comes a huge sheep truck and trailer.

  ‘Quickly, Nan,’ Waiputa says. ‘We have to get to the other side of the road or we’ll be run over.’

  Paraiti knows how fast she can go. Quick? She is already at quick. There’s nothing to do except face the ngangara.

  ‘E tu,’ she says to Ataahua and Kaihe. Together, they turn to the oncoming monster. Paraiti reaches for her rifle.

  The truck driver signals to her to get off the road and then, alarmed, sees that she has raised a gun and is sighting it. He slams on the brakes: ‘Shit!’

  The truck squeals to a halt, its trailer rattling, wheezing, collapsing before the old woman and her whangai daughter. The driver swears and starts to open the door to give the kuia a piece of his mind. When he sees the old, greying dog snarling and the little red-haired girl baring her teeth, he shuts it again, rapidly. ‘Stupid old woman,’ he yells at Paraiti as she goes past him. He waits until she has crossed the road before starting his truck and proceeding on his way.

  Waiputa watches the truck disappearing down the road. She wags a finger at Paraiti. ‘Bad girl, Nan. We could have been killed.’

  ‘I know,’ Paraiti answers. ‘And I realise it was just a truck. But you know, in the old days, I would have shot it.’

  Paraiti peers at the sun and begins to laugh and laugh. Then, looking at the road ahead, she pulls down her hat and says to Waiputa, Tiaki, Ataahua and Kaihe:

  ‘Looks like we’re just going to have to last forever.’

  FROM THE NOVELLA

  MEDICINE WOMAN TO

  THE FILM WHITE LIES

  — TUAKIRI HUNA

  SCRIPTWRITER AND

  DIRECTOR’S NOTES

  When I first read Medicine Woman by Witi Ihimaera, in the collection Ask the Posts of the House (Reed Books, 2007), I found it a perfect piece of storytelling. A balanced structure that contained complexity, was generous in its understanding of human drama and had a delightful sense of humour. A profound story but not a pretentious one. A little gem! The story would not leave my mind. It kept visiting me while I was driving on the motorway, when falling asleep, while cooking … Paraiti, the medicine woman, was a stubborn presence who refused to leave and I became haunted by her. I felt that was a clear sign that the story told by Witi Ihimaera was speaking to me from places other than where the original work had come from. Places that belonged to my intimate family history and my most unresolved conflicts as a person in the world. It was a call from the core of my origins to look for answers that mattered to me, being myself a half-caste, a woman, a mother and a descendant of people who have been eternal immigrants or brutally colonised by others. A call coming from every drop of the Mexican, Jewish, Catholic, Polish, indigenous, Italian, Spanish and Russian blood that runs through my veins. The blood of my tipuna. My very own whakapapa.

  Never uprooted from its origins, but with enough independence to become an organic entity with a purpose of its own, the creative process of writing an adaptation and imagining a film story is the work of an alchemist. For that process to happen, I asked Witi Ihimaera if he would give me freedom and independence from him as an author, and allow me to take the original novella Medicine Woman and transform it first into a screenplay and ultimately a film: White Lies — Tuakiri Huna. Witi was generous and trusted me. Only then could this script have been conceived and a film born.

  Writing the script White Lies — Tuakiri Huna has been for me an uninterrupted experience of adaptation, not only through the process of transforming a literary work into a cinematographic expression, but also as a pilgrimage through a cultural, linguistic and spiritual vision that was unknown to me.

  I was privileged to be guided by people who know the Maori culture from deep within. People who honour the tikanga and who are proud guardians of a sacred knowledge.

  THE SCREENPLAY AND THE FILM

  ADAPTATION

  1. the act or process of adapting.

  2. adjustment to environmental conditions, as:

  A. adjustment of a sense organ to the intensity or quality of stimulation

  B. modification of an organism or its parts that makes it more fit for existence under conditions of its environment.

  3. something that is adapted; specifically: a composition rewritten into a new form.

  — MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE DICTIONARY

  Adapting an original work of literature into a film makes sense to me only when the story can be filtered through my own identity as a filmmaker and as a human being. The heart of literature and cinema each palpitate with a different beat. They have different needs in terms of the narrative devices, skills and tools required for a story to be told.

  Looking for answers to the demands of the specific language of cinema, I made fundamental changes in the transition from the novella Medicine Woman to the screenplay. These changes took the story of Paraiti, Rebecca and Maraea to a new destination: the film White Lies — Tuakiri Huna.

  THE TITLE: LIES THAT KILL

  ‘Verdades a medias; mentiras que matan’

  There is a popular saying in Mexico: ‘Verdades a medias: mentiras que matan’. In English it would be something like: ‘Half-truths are lies that kill’. I looked for an equivalent to that saying in English, and I believe White Lies is the right expression within the setting of the film. In the historical context of colonisation it conveys precisely the meaning of that piece of Mexican popular wisdom. While normally the saying ‘white lies’ refers to ‘lies told to avoid hurting someone’, in the film the term has a double meaning: the traditional meaning and a literal one. When the literal and the traditional collide, the title becomes a more complex phrase, reflecting the layers of deceit and suffering being explored in the story. Ani Prip, Hineira Woodward and Mina Prip, who knew the script from its earliest origins, gifted
us with the te reo Maori translation of Tuakiri Huna*.

  That is the origin of the title of the film, born from the novella Medicine Woman. All through the voyage of languages and cultures, the fundamental concepts of the original work, written by Witi Ihimaera, have been retained. I believe that this is the most precise example of how the human conflict of identity and truth is a universal drama, no matter in which language, era or culture it is seeded.

  THE CONTEXT: A MYTHIC PIECE OF TUHOE

  HISTORY AND A FABLE ABOUT HOPE

  In the culture in which I was raised, mythology was either the exclusive territory of a remote god of unappeasable nature, with an indifferent and imperative will, or the playground where capricious and moody gods imposed their complicated ways onto the destiny of human pawns.

  In Maori cosmology, the origin of myth is rooted in and nurtured by the legacy of the ancestors. The deeds and misfortunes of the tipuna can be traced through each person’s whakapapa, paving the route back to their most primal narrative and essential traditions. It is in the living memory of the people that history and mythology breathe from the same source. And it is from there, as well, that the everyday reference to right and wrong takes place, and where the fibres that weave the tikanga are harvested. Origin, mythology and identity are not just a reflection of Maori ways and reasons of being — they are one and the same, always inextricably intermingled, like an ancient heart flooding blood to the present. The scale and dynamics of all this fascinate me.

  The myths of people cannot happen away from their land — they are interconnected. The story of the film White Lies — Tuakiri Huna has its natural origin in Te Urewera, as it is there, in the land of the Tuhoe people, that Witi Ihimaera placed Paraiti the medicine woman — it could be no other way.

  The Tuhoe story ‘Te Tatau Pounamu’ was a major source of inspiration to me during the process of writing this script.

  ‘Te Tatau Pounamu’ (the greenstone door of peace)