I’ve Been Thinking About You, Sister

A Short Story

Witi Ihimaera

1

Brian rang yesterday to ask if I would send him a short story for an anthology he was planning to publish. The trouble was he wanted the kind of story I used to write thirty years ago.

‘It should be easy for you,’ he began. ‘People love your comic stories about hockey games or sentimental ones about old ladies playing cards, not to mention the epic tales of girls who ride whales to save their iwi.’

‘Brian,’ I answered, ‘I was just a young man when I wrote those stories and the world was a different place. I’m not that same person any more, not as innocent and my voice is not as lyrical. Nor is my work so essentialist any longer; it’s more synthesised. And I’m a professor of English, into postcolonial discourse, Freire, Derrida and The Empire Writes Back.’

‘I was afraid you’d say something like that,’ Brian sighed, but he was not about to give up. ‘Maybe you’ve got a story that you put in a bottom drawer years ago, something you wrote before you became, well, political? Something like the story you wrote about the wily Maori tohunga who puts a spell on a red-headed Irish woman? Readers just love that one! Can you take a look? And if you can’t find a story, can you try to write one for me of the kind you wrote when you were younger? And keep politics out of it? Not that there’s anything wrong with the stories you write now,’ he added hastily, ‘but they’re, well, a bit more difficult for the gentle reader. You don’t mind my saying that, do you?’

Irritated, I put the telephone down. I had worked so hard to become an indigenous writer of some critical distinction, somebody whom critics could admire for my polish and fearlessness in articulating the indigenous position. I had established myself as a writer who was not afraid to engage the complexities of race, identity and representation and examine the polarities that existed between majority and minority cultures. Despite this, while I now garnered hard-earned accolades from critics, the people who actually bought my books were always telling me that my earlier stories and novels were better. Some reviewers, when I started rewriting the earlier work, scolded me. ‘Ah well,’ tutae happens.

Two days later, however, I began the following story, which happened to my mother in 1989. Being a fiction writer, I have altered some of the details and names of those involved in the story.

* * *

My mother was looking out the kitchen window of the house at Haig Street, Gisborne, when she saw her brother Rangiora sitting in the sunlight on the back lawn. She was baking scones for a kindergarten bring and buy and had just taken the last batch from the oven; she almost dropped them.

Mum was seventy at the time and although her impulse was to rush out the door and give Uncle Rangiora a hug, instead she first went to the bathroom to splash water on her face, run a comb through her hair and put some lipstick on. The bathroom window looked over the back lawn, so Mum was able to check that he was still there — he was. He was in his army uniform, wearing his khaki cap, and he didn’t look a day older than when he had left for the war. She looked at her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. In comparison, with her grey hair and her dull skin, she looked so old. She was overwhelmed with self-pity and embarrassment.

Smoothing out her dress, Mum walked out the back door and toward Uncle Rangiora. As she approached, he stood up, took off his cap and smiled at her — it didn’t seem to matter at all that he was still so young and she was so old.

‘Hello, brother,’ she said to him. ‘Why have you come to see me?’

His eyes were twinkling as he gave a deep, grave bow. ‘I’ve been thinking about you, sister,’ he said. ‘It’s a long time since we had a waltz.’

He opened his arms in invitation and, with a laugh of pure joy, she stepped into them.

When I grow too old to dream,

I’ll have you to remember,

When I grow too old to dream,

Your love will stay in my heart —

After the waltz, Uncle Rangiora bowed again and left my mother standing alone in the sunlight. As he did so, a brown bird flew past her, heading after him, and she watched it as it sped across the sky.

* * *

My father didn’t know about Uncle Rangiora’s visit until he returned from Waituhi; he had been shifting cattle from the hill paddock to the flat in preparation for the trucks that would come the next morning to take them to the saleyards. When he arrived home he found my mother speaking on the telephone. There was something different about her, something radiant.

When Mum hung up, Dad asked her, ‘Who have you been talking to?’

‘I’ve been making enquiries,’ she answered. ‘First of all I rang the Returned Servicemen’s Association and then the army at Waiouru and the Maori Battalion Association in Wellington. I wanted to know when they were making their next visit to the Commonwealth war graves in Egypt and the Middle East.’

‘What for?’ Dad asked, puzzled. He could tell that Mum had a bee in her bonnet about something.

‘I want to visit Rangiora’s grave,’ Mum answered. ‘The Battalion aren’t going until next year though, so it looks like you and I will have to make the trip by ourselves. I’ve just asked the travel agent to book our trip for us. He wants us to go into town to see him and to have our photos taken for our passports.’

My father was seventy-seven, and he was waiting to have a replacement hip operation. He didn’t think Mum was serious but when she said, ‘We’re going and that’s that,’ he tried stonewalling. ‘I better have my operation first,’ he said.

Once Mum has made up her mind about something, however, nothing can stop her. She’s always been strong-willed and even though she loves my dad there are moments when, if he gets in her way, he’d better watch out. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘Wikitoria can come with me,’ referring to one of my sisters, ‘and you can stay home.’

* * *

My mother wanted to go to Tunisia because Uncle Rangiora had been killed there on 26 March 1943, at Point 201, Tebaga Gap. He had been a member of C Company, part of the platoon led by Second Lieutenant Ngarimu as they tried to take the German-held position. Twenty-two Battalion soldiers, including Ngarimu and Uncle Rangiora, were killed that day.

Not only was Mum strong-willed but, when she made up her mind, she moved really fast. Once she’d had her discussion with Dad she rang Wikitoria and told her to meet her at the travel agent’s the next morning. Satisfied that she was getting somewhere, she went to have a shower and prepare for bed. While she was in the shower, Dad rang me up in Wellington to try to get me to talk some sense into her.

‘She’s much too old to go travelling to the other side of the world,’ Dad said. ‘And how is Wikitoria going to get somebody to look after her fish and chip shop? Hoha, your mother, hoha.’

I knew that there was no way of stopping Mum. Once she had the bit between her teeth she was off and away. Uncle Rangiora had been her favourite brother. He was just two years older than her and, while they were growing up, he looked out for her; he loved taking her to swim down at the local river and together they would dive for beautiful white river stones. Even when he was a young man and had girlfriends, he and Mum were still as close as ever. Whenever church dances were held at Tokomaru Bay, Uncle Rangiora always saved the last waltz for her. There was a photograph of Mum and Uncle Rangiora taken just before he went to war — Mum always had it on her dressing table. In the photo, Uncle Rangiora was a handsome, laughing, cavalier boy; my mother was a slip of a girl in a pretty white dress, holding him as if she never wanted to let him go.

When Uncle Rangiora was killed, Mum was inconsolable. However, life goes on and, after the war ended, she moved to Gisborne to stay with her sister, Mattie, and worked as a shedhand in various shearing gangs. Dad was a shearer — that’s how they met. But she never forgot Uncle Rangiora, who had been buried in the Commonwealth war cemetery at Sfax, Tunisia. For as long as I can remember, every year without fail, Mum has walked in to The Gisborne Herald office and placed the same notice in the In Memoriam column:

To my brother, Private Rangiora Wharepapa, killed in action in Tunisia, 1943. Sadly missed, never forgotten. Your sister, Aroha.

Of course my sisters, brothers and I knew that Dad would never let Mum go to Tunisia without him. I was not surprised when Wikitoria telephoned to tell me, ‘Well, as usual, there’s no Judy without Punch.’ Apparently, Dad had shown up at the travel agent’s on his truck just when Wiki and Mum had almost completed the arrangements for the trip and were handing over a cheque for the deposit.

‘You can go back to your fish and chip shop, Wikitoria,’ Dad said to my sister. ‘How will that husband of yours cope without you to boss him around?’ He turned to the travel agent, a nice young boy named Donald. ‘My name is Tom Mahana and I’m going to Tunisia with Mrs Mahana.’

Mum looked at Dad askance. ‘With your bad hip you’ll be a nuisance,’ she told him. ‘Look at you! You can’t get around anywhere without a walking stick.’

‘And look at you,’ Dad retorted. ‘You’re an old woman, or have you forgotten? You’ve never been able to find your way around without my help, so how do you think you’ll manage when you go overseas?’

‘You’ll slow me down,’ Mum answered defensively. ‘It’s a long way to go with a lot of connections to catch. I don’t want to miss the planes.’

‘Your wife is right,’ Donald said, pursing his lips. ‘If you have hip trouble you’ll have enormous difficulties.’

Dad was in no mood for an argument. Today was the cattle sales and he should have been there. ‘We won’t miss any planes,’ he said. ‘What do you think I am? I may have to use a walking stick but I’m not entirely hopeless.’

‘And I’m not clever enough to get to Tunisia with Wikitoria, is that it?’ Mum asked. She looked at Donald, who was really only the meat in the sandwich. ‘You know,’ she confided in him, ‘when my husband asked me to marry him I didn’t want to because he was so much older than me. But I thought, “Better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave.” I never realised, that when men get older it doesn’t matter what their age is. They’re all hopeless.’

Donald excused himself while Mum and Dad continued their argument, but eventually Dad got his way. After all, the money for the trip was coming from their joint account, so that was that.

* * *

Now I have to admit that the idea of the trip would have been much easier on the family’s nerves if Mum and Dad had been flying on a, well, English-speaking airline. With an eye to economies, however, Mum had chosen to fly on Aerolineas Argentinas from Auckland to Buenos Aires to Barcelona to Paris, and thence to Tunisia by some airline that nobody had ever heard of.

‘How are you going to communicate?’ Wikitoria asked. ‘How are you going to find your way around when you won’t be able to read the signs?’

And, man oh man, the connections. When Mum sent me their itinerary I just about had a heart attack. ‘How do you know whether those terminals have air bridges?’ I said to her on the telephone. ‘How’s Dad going to get up and down all those stairs to and from the planes? And why does it look like the gates to your connecting flights are in other terminals? I’d better get our cousin Watene to fly from New York to Paris and go with you to Tunisia.’

‘And spoil our great adventure?’ she answered. ‘Don’t you dare! Anyhow, your father’s already in training.’

I’d heard all about Mum’s training from neighbours in Gisborne. ‘Oh, your poor father,’ they told me. ‘Your mother has been getting him up at six in the morning for a run around the block. We hadn’t realised she was so fit. She takes off like a rocket and your father hobbles after her, walking stick in hand. We can hear him complaining all the way about the new trainers she has bought for him. He says they’re too big and he doesn’t like the colour.’ True, my father has always been proud of his small feet and, well, aren’t all trainers white? ‘Does your mother listen to him?’ the neighbours asked. ‘No, she just keeps on yelling at him, “If you can’t keep up, you can stay at home.” By the time they finish their run your dad is absolutely exhausted.’

Exhausted or not, Dad managed to pass Mum’s fitness test. As the time for departure approached, they bought backpacks, got their passports and changed their money into pesos, francs and dinar. Mum gave Dad a haircut to save him the trouble of getting one while they were away. Three days before they were due to leave, she went up to Tolaga Bay where she and Uncle Rangiora had lived. There, she headed for the river where they had loved to swim.

What a nuisance. Mum had hoped to gather white stones from the riverbank but the best ones were at the bottom of the river, and the water was too deep to wade out to them. However, two Pakeha boys who were playing truant from school were jumping off branches into the water. She waved them over.

‘Yes, lady?’ they asked.

‘See those white stones?’ she said. ‘I’ve come to get some.’ She explained that she wanted to take them to Tunisia to put on Uncle Rangiora’s grave.

The young boys nodded and were soon duckdiving to the bottom of the river. Mum could see them, gliding like dreams through the sparkling water. When the boys returned, gasping, to the surface, they brought the white river stones to the bank. They soon had a good pile but they sorted through them, throwing some away. ‘They have to be perfect,’ they said to Mum, ‘You can’t take any old stones, can you, lady?’

‘No,’ Mum smiled. ‘Only the best.’

The boys dived again. They were enjoying themselves. While Mum waited for them she filled a small bottle with river water. Uncle Rangiora would like that — he probably missed the cool of the water there in the desert.

‘Thank you, boys,’ Mum said when the job had been done. She gave them a five-dollar note. ‘Don’t spend it all at once. I’m glad you played truant today.’

She left and gave them their river back.

* * *

At this point, my cousin Clarrie, her husband Chad and my Auntie Taina come into the picture. Somehow Clarrie found out about Mum and Dad going to Tunisia — probably from Wiki. Chad was American and, as it happened, they were planning with Auntie Taina to make one of their infrequent trips to catch up with his folks in Montana.

‘Don’t worry, cuz,’ Clarrie said to me on the phone from Wanganui, ‘We’ll meet them in Auckland. We’ve changed our bookings and are now on the same flight as Auntie and Uncle as far as Buenos Aires. When we get there, we’ll make sure they catch their connection to Barcelona.’ There was a slight tone of disapproval in her voice that I was letting Mum and Dad wander around in a dangerous world where they could get mugged or murdered, the poor things.

‘Thank you, Clarrie,’ I answered, trying to sound suitably chastised.

* * *

The day came for Mum and Dad’s departure. The terminal at Gisborne airport was crowded with my brothers and sisters, all trying to be brave. Mum sat stony-faced as they pleaded with her to change her mind; she was clutching her airline bag with its passport, money, river stones and bottle of river water, and turned a deaf ear to their words.

As for Dad, well, he was surrounded by his adoring grandchildren, all weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth as if they would never see him again.

The departure call was given. ‘Time to go,’ Mum said. ‘Come on, Dad.’ She walked out to the plane without a backward glance. As for Dad, he was the last to board. He had to hobble really fast to get there before the door closed, his new white trainers flashing across the tarmac.

2

I took a break from writing the story.

See what I mean about its essentialist nature? I recalled a meeting I had with the great English- Caribbean writer V. S. Naipaul when he visited Wellington in the 1970s. The poor man had been taken out for ‘a drive’ and suffered an over-enthusiastic seven-hour odyssey to Palmerston North and back. That evening, I joined him at a local PEN dinner where Professor Beeby, a wonderful raconteur, prefaced every comment to him with phrases like, ‘When I was in India …’ or ‘When I spoke to Nehru about the partition with Pakistan …’ or ‘When I spoke to Mrs Gandhi in Paris.’ Attempting to pull me into the conversation, Professor Beeby said to Mr Naipaul, ‘Of course we have a young Maori writer here whose work reminds me very much of your own first collection, Miguel Street.’ Mr Naipaul’s response was to give me a somewhat acidic look, sigh, and say, ‘Oh, he’ll have to do much better than that.’

I remembered with gloom how critics of my early work had pounced on its simplicity and pronounced that it was the literary equivalent of naīve paintings done by unsophisticated native artists: bold colours, representations of village life, but no subtlety — and where was the subtext? The critics seemed to be looking for somebody else; some Maori writer who was aware of literary theory, whose work they could fit into a more refined aesthetic and theoretical model — of cultural displacement, perhaps, directly concerned with the economic and political fabric of cultural existence, or with the racialised discourses of apartheid or colonialism — who would affirm the indigenous voice within the long-standing western European cultural anxieties to do with modernist texts. They wanted literature that operated on a more complex national, political, aesthetic, linguistic and cognitive level, contesting the language and discursive conventions that had historically been instruments ensuring that ‘the Other’ was kept subordinate.

Although I was Maori, I had the suspicion that ultimately the critics wanted that other writer to undo the discursive crime against Africa and to trace a genealogy through Foucault, Barthes and the later Blanchot to a reading — albeit from the South Pacific — of the upheavals in French literary culture precipitated by the anticolonial struggle in Algeria and by the events of May 1968.

Instead, they got me. That other writer must have got delayed when old lady Muse swung by in her Peugeot and mistakenly picked me up instead. Did she ever lose on the deal. She opened the door to sweet, stupid, lyrically voiced me, writing from the heart and not from the intellect, overabundant when I should have been minimalist, without any of those traits that critics wanted to see — particularly cynicism or pessimism.

You get what you get.

* * *

According to cousin Clarrie, the trip to Buenos Aires went very smoothly. She, Chad and Auntie Taina met Mum and Dad’s flight in Auckland.

‘Hello Uncle Tom,’ Clarrie smiled at Dad. ‘What flash white trainers you have. Auntie Aroha? Mum’s just over there with the suitcases.’ Mum was glad to have Auntie Taina’s company; they had been close for all the years since they became sisters-in-law. They chatted on the bus to the international terminal about whanau, who had died, who had married, who had had children, their own hopeless kids and thank goodness for the compensation of lovely grandchildren. When the bus arrived, Dad was delighted to see that a group of strapping young rugby players were on the same flight. Just his chance to let them know how terrific he had been as a left winger.

Dad has always loved talking to strangers. He loves to tell them about his tribe, his big family of brothers and sisters, his girlfriends (when Mum isn’t listening), his children, the farm, his exploits as a top shearer, how he almost became an All Black, how he could have been a world champion wrestler, and so on. Once he gets started he is difficult to stop — and on the flight he had a group of eager young boys who were trapped and couldn’t escape. They were polite and kept nodding their heads at his stories — which only encouraged him.

Clarrie told me later, ‘Don’t be so critical of your father! He’s just lovely! A real patriarch! Young boys love to hear your father telling about his life and giving them advice on what to do if the girl you like doesn’t like you back — even if it’s, well, somewhat old-fashioned and past its use-by date.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘The difference is, of course, that strangers have never heard Dad’s stories before, whereas us kids have heard them again and again. And as for Dad’s advice — well, if I listened to it, I would still be a virgin.’

But to strangers like the rugby boys, Dad’s stories came out fresh, lively, splendid epics of trials that had been faced and triumphs accomplished against all odds. This was why people loved our father: he was such a terrific storyteller and a real spellbinder. By the time the plane landed in Buenos Aires, Dad had made many friends and received several invitations to come and visit.

‘Thank you,’ Mum said. ‘We’ll think about it.’ This was her usual reply whenever Dad received such invitations. It was much better than saying yes or no. People liked to think there was the possibility of a maybe.

* * *

My mother had strict instructions to call home at each leg of the journey so that the family could rest easy, they had survived another day. Somewhat grumpily she telephoned from a hotel close to Buenos Aires airport.

‘The eagles have landed,’ Mum said, ‘and, yes, your father is still hobbling along after me on his walking stick, so I haven’t been able to give him the slip — pity.’ I soon realised why she was grumpy when she gave me what-for. ‘And I have a bone to pick with you, son! You have to get Clarrie, Chad and Taina off our case. They’ve made arrangements for your father and me to be met at the airport in Paris by one of Chad’s old Vietnam veterans mates, who has plans to take us to dinner. But I’ve made bookings for us to see the Folies Bergère.’

I wasn’t listening to her. I was more alarmed at what I could hear in the background: screams, yells, lots of laughter, motorbikes revving up … and then, over her words, were those gunshots? ‘What the heck’s all the commotion?’ I asked.

‘When I told Donald to book us into cheap accommodation,’ Mum explained, ‘I didn’t expect he would put us somewhere we might get murdered in our beds. The taxi driver didn’t even want to bring us here. But Clarrie and Chad have barricaded the door and rung the rugby boys we met on the plane. We are expecting the football cavalry to arrive any minute.’

Of course, that was the kind of news guaranteed to keep me awake all night worrying about my parents. But Clarrie rang me the next morning from the airport to tell me that they had just put Mum and Dad on the plane to Barcelona. Clarrie sounded tired and strained.

‘What kind of hotel were you staying at?’ I asked.

‘Is that what it was?’ Clarrie answered. ‘You don’t want to know, cuz. Do they have Mafia in South America? Whatever was going down, your poor mum and dad were in the middle of it. You owe me big time.’

However, my relief was shortlived when Mum failed to telephone in from Barcelona. And then I received a call from Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, from Chad’s friend, who introduced himself as Addison. ‘Oh, hi ya,’ he drawled. ‘Say, I’ve been waiting for your folks at customs but we must have missed each other. Should I call the police?’

‘No,’ I sighed. ‘I am sure they are okay.’ Yeah, right. My mind was filled with visions of them being kidnapped by French thugs, robbed of their money and their bodies thrown into the River Seine.

Two hours later, Dad phoned. ‘Your mother is getting all dressed up to take me out on the town,’ he said.

‘Why didn’t you phone me from Barcelona?’ I screamed. ‘And why didn’t you meet up with Addison at the airport?’

‘Were we supposed to telephone you from Barcelona?’ Dad answered. ‘And who’s Addison?’

Mum took the telephone from Dad. ‘We gave him the slip,’ she said. ‘As soon as I saw a man dressed like Rambo holding up a sign with our names on it, I took Dad off in the opposite direction. Otherwise we’d never be able to get to you-know-where.’

‘How did you find your hotel?’ I asked. Dad only had a smattering of French, learnt when he was a schoolboy in the 1920s, and I couldn’t imagine how that would enable them to negotiate the horrors of the Metro, not to mention being prey to every pickpocket, pimp and prostitute as they trundled their bags through the streets — and any thief after Dad’s white trainers.

‘Oh, you know your father,’ Mum answered. ‘Talks to anybody. On the plane he got into a conversation with three boys who were backpacking through Europe and he ended up playing cards with them. Poker, the naughty man. How many matchsticks did you win, dear? Anyhow, they offered to escort us to this place; at least this one has locks on the door. But we can’t stop, son, otherwise we’ll be late for the show. I’ll phone you when we get back.’

Two months later, I received a postcard from the three boys:

DEAR MISTER MAHANA, MY FRIENDS AND I FELL IN LOVE WITH YOUR FATHER. BUT COULD YOU TELL US, DID HE AND YOUR MOTHER REACH THEIR DESTINATION AND THEN RETURN SAFELY TO NEW ZEALAND? WE ARE ANXIOUS TO KNOW. FELIX, MARTIN AND PLACIDO.

The three boys weren’t the only ones to fall in love with Dad. When he and Mum arrived at the Folies Bergère, the maître d’ was entranced by their formality and elegance. Dad was wearing his black suit. The jacket is a perfect fit, but it doesn’t do to look too closely at his trousers, as he usually cuts the waistband to give some slack so that his stomach can fit in. Mum was wearing her blue sequined dress and lovely cape of kiwi feathers. They were seated at a table right at the front. The programme they brought home after their trip has the scrawled signatures of Lolo, Dodo, Jou-jou, Frou-frou, Clou-clou, Margot and Valencienne, so obviously Dad was a hit with the girls, too. Apparently he was so thrilled by the show that he got up at the end and did a haka.

‘I wish your father would just clap like ordinary people,’ Mum said on the telephone when she checked in with me. ‘But your father became … well … somewhat excited. You’d think he’d never seen bare breasts before.’

‘Or bare anything,’ I heard Dad grumble in the background, referring to my mother’s legendary modesty.

‘Enough of that,’ Mum reproved him. ‘Our big day tomorrow, Dad. No funny business tonight.’ Then she remembered I was still on the phone. ‘You still there, son? I better hang up now. Dad and I have to get up very early to catch the plane to Tunisia. Don’t worry about us. Love you.’

My mother was not going to leave anything to chance, particularly seeing her beloved brother who, many years ago, always kept the last waltz for her.

So kiss me again, and then let us part,

And when I grow too old to dream

Your kiss will stay in my heart —

The next morning Mum and Dad took a taxi, thank god, back to the airport to catch their first flight to Tunisia. Mum had organised with Donald that they would stay in Sfax for two days. This would give her and Dad plenty of time to visit Uncle Rangiora’s grave. They would check into their hotel, go out to the Sfax War Cemetery, spend some time with Uncle Rangiora in the cemetery and return to Sfax in the late afternoon. They would stay at the hotel that evening, possibly go back to the grave for a second visit the next day to say goodbye to Uncle Rangiora, and catch the plane back to Paris.

The flight was smooth and uneventful. Dad was in an aisle seat and Mum was squeezed between him and an extremely well groomed gentleman sitting next to the window. The man wore a dark suit and a blue tie to match the blue handkerchief in his jacket pocket. But what Mum remembered most about him was that he had the shiniest shoes that she had ever seen. They were like mirrors.

I don’t know who the man was, and Mum and Dad lost the card he gave them, but I can’t write about him without giving him a name — so let us call him Monsieur Samaritan. Dad leaned across Mum and, as usual, began to speak to the man. Dad told him he was from New Zealand, and immediately Monsieur Samaritan’s face lit up. ‘Ah! Néo-zélandais! Go the All Blacks!’ When Dad elaborated and said he and Mum were Maori, Monsieur Samaritan clapped his thighs and said, ‘Ka mate, ka mate, ka ora, ka ora! Kia ora!’

Dad and Monsieur Samaritan shook hands, Dad exchanged seats with Mum, and very soon he and Monsieur Samaritan were talking as if they were old friends. Monsieur Samaritan told them that he was an official for the Tunisian government and had been on business in Paris, renegotiating landing rights for Air France in Tunisia; the negotiations had been somewhat exhausting and he was looking forward to getting home to his wife and children. He had never been to New Zealand, but he had met some New Zealand officials in his business — and he was a rugby fan.

‘We’re on our way to the Commonwealth graveyard at Sfax,’ Dad said. He told him about Mum’s river stones and bottle of river water, and Monsieur Samaritan was affected by Mum’s simple gesture of love for her brother. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and, dabbing at his eyes, waved to some other passengers across the aisle.

‘C’est mon frère, le libérateur de la Tunisie —’

Well, that did it. Before too long, Dad was the centre of attention, and more cards and greetings were exchanged.

* * *

In this mood of general friendliness and bonhomie, Mum and Dad landed at Sfax. They farewelled their new friends, all native Tunisians, and exited the plane. Officials saluted Monsieur Samaritan at the gate, ready to take him through VIP customs to a government limousine that would whisk him into the city.

‘Monsieur Tom,’ Monsieur Samaritan said, clicking his shiny shoes together, ‘I wish you a good visit to Sfax and a safe return to your homeland. Kia ora.’

Then he bowed to Mum — so you mustn’t think that my father was the only one to impress strangers. Mum has her own quiet dignity and inner luminosity, and intrigues in her own way. She has never regarded herself as beautiful — her face is too angular and as a young woman she was built like a man with her wide shoulders and slim hips — but where other women lose their beauty as they grow older, Mum has come into hers. I’m not sure what gives Mum this look of having eternity in her, but I have seen it in other women who have lived life and, somehow, understood its ebb and flow.

Mum rummaged in her bag for some gifts to give to him, and pulled out a bone pendant and an All Blacks T-shirt. ‘For your children,’ she said. ‘And if ever you come to New Zealand, Dad will put down a hangi for you.’

Now I have never been to Tunisia and I have no idea what the airline terminal in Sfax looks like. You will have to bear with me as I let my imagination take over.

I imagine Mum and Dad walking along the concourse — Dad just keeping up with Mum — and looking out the windows to a sky almost white with heat. I can hear the excitement in my mother’s voice as she says to Dad, ‘Come on, Tom, almost there!’ The air conditioning in the airport would have cocooned them in coolness. The concourse would have been crowded with Arab nationals in the majority, and foreigners like Mum and Dad would elicit glances of curiosity. I can imagine Mum, as they approached the customs hall, getting impatient to be on her way to the Commonwealth graveyard and her rendezvous with her brother. And I can just see her hopeful face as they waited for the customs official to stamp their passports and let them go through.

The official frowned. ‘Would you come this way, please?’

Mystified, Mum and Dad followed him. ‘Is there anything wrong?’ Mum asked. She was getting a terrible feeling about this.

The customs officer did not reply. His supervisor stepped up to look at the passports. ‘Do you have baggage?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Mum answered. They were escorted to the carousel to collect their suitcases and then taken to a small room where they were asked a number of questions and their bags were searched. The customs officer wanted to know about the river stones and the bottle of water, and he took a hammer to one of the stones to see if there was anything inside. A long consultation took place, and Mum and Dad were then advised of their predicament.

‘I am very sorry to inform you,’ the customs officer said, ‘that you will not be able to enter Tunisia. You will be kept here in the airport and, when your flight leaves tomorrow, you will be put on it for return to Paris.’

At his words, my father looked at my mother. Tears were streaming down her face. Dad’s love for Mum showed in his concern for her and, heart beating fast, he tried to intercede with the customs officer. ‘Will you not give us just today so that my wife can go to pay her respects to her brother? Sir, we —’

He gasped for air. Then he gave a moan and would have crumpled to the floor had Mum not supported him.

‘It’s all right, Dad,’ Mum consoled him. She looked at the customs officer. ‘Do you have a chair for my husband?’ she asked.

3

I took another break from the story. Once upon a time, I would not have questioned the directness or ingenuousness of my writing. But I know more postcolonial theory now, and not only do I write literature, I also teach postcolonial identity. Is any of this reflected in the story? No.

My problem was that I was, well, still indigenous. Unlike Derek Walcott, a poet of African, Dutch and West Indian descent, born in St Lucia and commuting between Boston and Trinidad, I was not a ‘divided child who entered the house of literature as a houseboy’ and who had become a paradigm of the polycultural order, making of English a polyglot literature. Nor, like Salman Rushdie, Booker Prize winner for his tumultuous, multiheaded myth of modern India, Midnight’s Children, Kazuo Ishiguro, Vikram Seth, Timothy Mo, Rohinton Mistry or Pico Iyer, was I a transcultural writer, the product not so much of colonial division as of the international culture that has grown up since the war, and addressing an audience as mixed up and eclectic and uprooted as themselves. Situated at a crossroads, they reflected on their hyphenated status in the new-world global village with a different kind of sophistication than mine as an indigenous writer.

And where was my sense of irony? To this day, my closest friends bemoan the fact that I don’t have an ironic bone in my body. If I had, I might have been able to undercut the otherwise positive, sacralised and hopeful nature of my mythmaking. I would, instead, have highlighted the nihilistic despair of the victimised and oppressed and the need to continue to propose political and revolutionary solutions. Hybrid writers have often commented, as Edward Saïd did, that: ‘The centre is full of tired scepticism, a kind of knowing irony. There’s something very stale about it.’ As for American literature, it had been sapped by such trends as minimalism. Bharati Mukherjee has written, ‘The real energy of American fiction is coming from people who have lived 400 years within a generation. They’ve been through wars, orbited the world, had traumatic histories prior to coming, and they’ve got big, extraordinary stories to tell. In place of the generic account of divorce in Hampstead or Connecticut, the international writers offer magically new kinds of subject matter and electric ways of expressing it.’

Perhaps there is another way out. My postcolonial colleagues might honour me not for the more political novelising that has been the central poutokomanawa of my artistry — but, rather, for the activism that has been associated with it.

For instance, First Nations friends still talk about the time, over twenty-five years ago, when they came to see me at the Harborfront Festival, Toronto, where I was to read my work. They told me that no First Nations writer had ever been invited to read in Canada’s most prestigious literary festival, and they asked me to represent them. I was so angry that when I came to read I instead let rip to the primarily white and unsuspecting audience, accusing them and Canada of racism of the worst kind: denial of the native existence and erasure of First Nations culture as a willful exercise of Canadian genocide. By the time I finished, there was a stony silence. Greg Gatenby said to me as I walked off the stage, ‘Well, that was interesting. I’ve never seen a writer committing suicide in public before.’

I am an example of one of those writers who could never resist the disastrous.

* * *

Ah well, to proceed.

To be frank, I do not know why my parents were detained at the airport at Sfax. I imagine that there was some irregularity with their passports. The most likely explanation is this:

‘I am very sorry to tell you both,’ the senior customs officer said, ‘but you must have a visa to enter our country. Without it, I cannot permit you to visit.’

But I am only guessing at the reason. There may have been another: perhaps their passports looked too new and clean and therefore suspiciously false. They may have needed different entry documents. The names on their airline tickets might have been different from the names on their passports — Mum and Dad had both Maori and Pakeha surnames. Perhaps they had been mistaken for a couple of criminals on Interpol’s list.

‘Therefore,’ the senior customs officer advised them, ‘I will retain your passports and, as I have already told you, you will both be held in custody at the airport. When your plane leaves tomorrow for Paris you will be escorted onto it. At that time, your passports will be returned to you.’

After a while, however, the senior customs officer relented somewhat, and agreed to allow Mum and Dad to remain in the transit area where at least there were dutyfree shops, food outlets and comfortable seating. After all, how far would an old lady and an old man with a walking stick have got if they decided to make a run for it? And without passports?

Mum and Dad were just two old people, bewildered and unable to get to their destination. But my father regained his strength. ‘Sir,’ he tried once again, ‘whatever the problem is, surely, as reasonable people, we can find a solution? My wife and I are here in your country for only a short time. What harm can we do in that time?’ He showed the customs officer photographs of Uncle Rangiora. ‘All my wife wishes to do is to visit her brother’s grave, pay her respects, and then we will be on our way. Will you not permit us to do that?’

No matter how much Dad tried to explain the situation and to apologise for any error they may have inadvertently made, he just couldn’t get through to the senior customs officer, who was adamant.

What made it worse was that the incident really hurt my parents’ sense of pride and personal honour. ‘You are treating us as if we are criminals,’ Dad said in a temper. ‘I may have received the occasional parking ticket but my wife and I have never been before a judge or committed any crimes. To be treated like this is deeply shaming.’

The customs officer would not be swayed. He retained their passports, showed them the transit lounge, deposited their bags beside them and advised them that under no circumstances were they to leave. Of course, as soon as he had gone, Mum burst into tears. She’s generally a strong woman but her tears were from embarrassment and humiliation. ‘And now look at us, Dad,’ she wept, ‘we’ve become a bag lady and a bag man.’ She was also aching because to come all this way with her river stones and not be able to put them on her brother’s grave was a terrible heartbreak for her.

They sat, talked, waited, and slept. Every now and then Dad wandered off to get Mum a sandwich and a cup of chocolate. Mum talked about Uncle Rangiora and how they would waltz together. ‘He was such a good brother to me,’ she told Dad. ‘He always saved the last waltz for me. I remember well when we danced together for the last time. It was on the platform of the railway station in 1941, just before all the East Coast boys got on the train to Wellington. I was still a teenager. Rangiora was looking so handsome in his soldier’s cap and uniform; I had on my best white dress so that he would always remember me while he was fighting in the war. Rangiora had a girlfriend, a lovely girl from Te Araroa, but just before he got the order to fall in, he turned to me and asked, “Would you like to waltz, sister?” He opened his arms, I stepped into them, we both went onto our toes, and we began —

So kiss me again, and then let us part,

And when we grow too old to dream,

Your kiss will stay in my heart —’

I mean no disrespect to my father, but Uncle Rangiora was the love of my mother’s life. Dad knew it and we, her children, knew it. I suspect that when you lose someone you love when you are both young, the love for that person is heightened and romanticised in some way. The rest of us had to fit in and around that big love, realising that we had no chance of winning because, well, Mum knows our faults too well to let us get away with anything.

My parents continued to while away the day at the airport. They were distressed — but really, there was nothing that could be done about their situation. I imagine that some of the cafeteria workers, puzzled by Dad’s constant visits for more hot chocolate and food, sympathised with their plight and offered words of comfort. When night came, I can imagine my parents sleeping sitting up, a crescent moon gliding overhead and shining on Dad’s white trainers. I can see cleaners going by, hushing each other so as not to wake them. I know that Dad must have disengaged himself from Mum’s arms a couple of times to go to the toilet, as his waterworks were not always reliable. But I know he would have hobbled back as fast as he could to make sure that Mum was not alone for too long. There have not been many nights when they have slept apart. No doubt Mum woke a couple of times to stare out into the dark velvet of the Tunisian sky, her face enigmatic and eternal.

The new day dawned. Mum went to wash her face, comb her hair and make herself respectable. When she came back, Dad did the same. She scolded him to put on a new white shirt and tie. ‘That’s better,’ she said when he returned. ‘Seven hours from now we’ll be on the plane, Dad.’ She tried to be light-hearted about it.

Mum’s head nodded and she drifted into sleep. Then she felt someone shaking her awake. When she opened her eyes the first thing she saw was a pair of very shiny shoes. She would have recognised those shoes anywhere.

‘Madam? Aroha? Did you enjoy your visit to Sfax?’ It was Monsieur Samaritan, their companion on the plane from Paris.

Mum saw that Dad was still sleeping, his mouth wide open, and his trousers wide open too. She nudged him awake. Dad told Monsieur Samaritan what had happened. ‘We have been in the airport all this time,’ he said. ‘Our passports were taken from us.’

Well, there’s no other way to say it — Monsieur Samaritan went ballistic. ‘Please come with me,’ he said, tight-lipped. Mum and Dad had known he was a VIP but they had not realised that he was such a powerful government official. He stormed into the customs area and began to speak rapidly to every underling around, and then to the senior customs officer. I have no idea what he said but I can imagine that it was something like this:

‘Don’t you fools know that these two people have come all the way from New Zealand? Who was the imbecile who said they should not be allowed into our country? Do you realise that this lady’s brother fought and died to enable our freedom? Why am I surrounded by such incompetent and stupid people? Do you think they are terrorists? Do they look like terrorists? Where are their passports? Give them back immediately!’

Monsieur Samaritan then looked at his watch. He mopped his brow and, calming down, bowed gravely to Mum and Dad. ‘Please accept my apologies,’ he said, ‘but perhaps I can be of some service? Although you only have a short time left before your plane departs, it would be my great privilege to accompany you to the Commonwealth graves.’

He hastened them out of the terminal and into the heat to his car, and ordered the driver to put his foot down. ‘Quick! Quick! As fast as you can!’

As I have said, I have never been to Tunisia, so I don’t know what the roads are like from the airport to the Commonwealth war graves. My imagination conjures up heat and dust, roads crowded with traffic, the occasional camel, and the shimmering haze of a bright white day. Conscious of the restricted time, I can hear Monsieur Samaritan urging his driver to ‘Go faster! Faster!’, and the car, with its official pennant flying, speeding through a city of Arabic architecture, serrated walls and minarets.

At last, they arrived. But what was this? The gates were closed. Monsieur Samaritan commanded the driver to go and investigate.

‘Alas, Monsieur Tom,’ Monsieur Samaritan said, ‘the cemetery is closed during the middle of the day.’ Monsieur Samaritan instructed the driver to ring the bell at the gateway, and keep ringing until someone came. As luck would have it, a gatekeeper arrived and let them in.

‘Thank you,’ Mum said. She reached into her bag for one of her bone pendants to give the gravedigger, but the car was already moving swiftly through the gateway.

* * *

I’m told that the cemetery at Sfax is huge — rows and rows of white crosses — and Mum and Dad’s time was ticking by. Even Monsieur Samaritan saw the hopelessness of the task. ‘How will your wife be able to find her brother,’ he said to Dad, ‘among all these dead?’

The gatekeeper had pointed them in the general direction of the Australian and New Zealand section. Suddenly Mum yelled ‘Stop!’ She opened the door of the car and took off. ‘I’ll find him,’ she said. All that training, running around the block in Te Hapara, was about to pay off.

‘Aroha,’ Dad called, reaching for his walking stick. ‘Wait for me —’

But she was already far away, sprinting like a sixteen-year-old through all those rows of white crosses. She stopped at a rise in the graveyard. When Dad and Monsieur Samaritan reached her, they saw more crosses. Which one was Rangiora’s?

‘It really is impossible,’ Monsieur Samaritan said.

Mum was standing with the sun shining full upon her face. Perspiration beaded her forehead and neck. Dad saw her face crumple and went to offer her solace. ‘Keep your hands off me,’ she screamed, frustrated.

Then she saw a little brown bird. It fluttered above her, cocked an eye and turned away. With a cry, Mum took off after it, following the bird as it dipped and sashayed around the white crosses, up, over and down a small hillock. When Dad and Monsieur Samaritan reached the top of the hillock, they saw Mum in the distance, kneeling beside a small cross, weeping. By the time they caught up with her again, she was putting her river stones on Uncle Rangiora’s grave. She had already poured her river water out of its bottle and it was seeping into the sand. There was a radiant look on her face, as if something important had been completed.

Dad and Monsieur Samaritan waited in silence. Then, ‘I will go back to the car and wait for you,’ Monsieur Samaritan said. ‘Please take as much time as you wish, but we should be returning to the airport shortly.’

Dad nodded at him. He watched Mum as she finished laying her river stones. She stood up, wiped her hands on her dress, smiled at Dad and put out her hands. ‘I’m sorry I yelled at you. Will you dance a waltz with me, Dad?’

Gripping his walking stick in one hand and Mum in the other, Dad did his best.

When I grow too old to dream,

I’ll have you to remember,

When I grow too old to dream,

Your love will stay in my heart —

Mum and Dad returned to the airport. Monsieur Samaritan escorted them through customs and saw them to their flight. ‘I’m so sorry you didn’t have more time with your brother,’ he said to Mum.

‘Sorry?’ Mum answered. ‘Please don’t be. And thank you, Monsieur Samaritan.’

From Paris, my parents went on to New York. There’s a photograph taken by a sidewalk photographer which captures the glow of Mum’s happiness. She’s with Dad, and he’s balancing on his walking stick and wearing his white trainers. My cousin Watene took them to see 42nd Street and Cats. Mum told Dad she didn’t want to sleep for one minute, and dragged him up the Empire State Building and down to the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty.

Four days later, they boarded a bus for a tour across America all the way to the West Coast. Dad was looking forward to the trip and his eyes brightened when he saw all the other tourists boarding the bus. As I have mentioned before, he loves to talk to strangers about his family, his tribe, and his sporting exploits.

However, his face fell when he discovered that the other tourists on the bus were German-speaking and didn’t understand English very well.

My parents survived the bus tour. They caught the plane from Los Angeles back to New Zealand, where they were welcomed with tears and much elation by a huge whanau that has never wanted them to go away overseas again — ever.

On their return home, Mum bought four huge scrapbooks and pasted every postcard, photograph and programme into it, including the souvenir programme from the Folies Bergère and the photograph taken in New York. Pride of place was reserved for a blow-up of a photograph of her and Dad standing at Uncle Rangiora’s grave in the hot sun in Tunisia; with them is a gentleman dressed formally and wearing the shiniest shoes — Monsieur Samaritan. Dad had his hip operation, and put away his walking stick and his new white trainers.

If you go home to Te Hapara, you will see the map of Mum and Dad’s travels on the wall in the living room.

* * *

Three months after the trip, Mum telephoned me in Wellington. She told me she was bothered about Rangiora being buried so far away from New Zealand. ‘I want him to come back home,’ she told me.

On her behalf I wrote to the Minister of Defence and the Minister of Maori Affairs. They both gave the same response: the Maori Battalion had made a collective agreement that all the boys who died on the battlefield should stay together in the country where they had fallen.

Dad is ninety-two this year. Mum is eighty-five. She still puts a memorial notice about Uncle Rangiora in The Gisborne Herald every year.

About the author

Described by Metro magazine as ‘Part oracle, part memoralist, Ihimaera is an inspired voice, weaving many stories together’, Witi Ihimaera was the first Maori novelist and has published many notable novels and collections of short stories, he has written for stage and screen, edited books on the arts and culture, as well as published various works for children. His best-known novel is The Whale Rider, which was made into a hugely, internationally successful film in 2002. Apart from his work as a writer, Ihimaera has also had careers in teaching, theatre, opera, film and television. He has received numerous awards, including the Wattie Book of the Year Award and the Montana Book Award, his most recent being the inaugural Star of Oceania Award, University of Hawaii 2009, a laureate award from the New Zealand Arts Foundation 2009, the Toi Maori Maui Tiketike Award 2011, and the Premio Ostana International Award, presented to him in Italy 2010.

Content

I’ve Been Thinking About You, Sister
A Short Story
Witi Ihimaera

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About the author