Brown Bread from a Colonial Oven/Chapter 1

by Blanche Edith Baughan

BROWN BREAD

 

I

PIPI ON THE PROWL

Pipi was very happy. To an indifferent observer, it is true, the little mummy-like old Maori woman, bundled about with a curious muddle of rag-bag jackets and petticoats, and hobbling along the high-road on crippled bare brown feet, might have presented a spectacle more forlorn than otherwise. But then, what does the indifferent observer ever really see? That grotesque and pitiful exterior was nothing but an exterior; and it covered an escaping captive: it clothed incarnate Mirth. For Miria had gone to town, and Pipi, one whole long afternoon, was free!

She chuckled as she thought of Miria—Miria the decorous, Miria the pakeha coachman’s wife, Miria, who wore tan shoes. Miria did not like her grandmother to go roaming at her own sweet will along the roads; she did not even like her to smoke; what she did like was to have her squatted safe at the whare door, holding on to little Hana, whose kicking really began to be painful, and looking out that little Himi did not get hold of the axe and chop himself to bits. She had left her like that half an hour ago; probably she imagined her to be still like that—submissive, stationed, and oh, how lacklustre, how dull! Well, Pipi might perhaps be a little porangi (crazy) at times, but she was never anything like so porangi as that. How lucky that Ropata’s wife was a trustworthy crony! How fortunate that the babies could neither of them speak! Pipi smiled, and showed her perfect teeth; she took out, from deep recesses of her raiment, her treasured pipe, and stuck it in her mouth. E! Ka pai te paipa!—a good thing, the pipe! There was no topeka (tobacco) in it, to be sure; but who could say whence topeka might not come, this golden afternoon? To those newly at liberty all the world belongs. And, like stolen waters, stolen sport is sweet. No urchin who, having safely conveyed himself away at last out of earshot of mother or teacher, bounds breathless to the beloved creek where “bullies” wait the hook, knows more of the mingled raptures of lawlessness and expectation than this old great-grandmother Pipi did, out upon the high-road, out upon the hunt!

Although it was midwinter, the afternoon was warm—there is never really cold weather upon that sheltered northern coast. The road ran right round the head of the league-long harbour, and showed a splendid view; for the tide was in; every cove and inlet was full, and the sinuous, satin-blue sheen of the water reflected with the utmost fidelity every one of the little long, low spits, emerald-turfed and darkly crowned with trees, that fringed, as with a succession of piers, the left-hand shore; while the low, orange-coloured cliffs of the fern-flats opposite burned in the brilliant sun like buttresses of gold. But what was a view to Pipi? Her rheumy old brown eyes sought but the one spot, where, far down the glittering water-way, and close to the short, straight sapphire line that parted the purple Heads and meant the open sea, the glass of the township windows sent sparkles to the sun. The township—seven miles away, and Miria not there yet! Ka pai! Pipi was ready for whatever fish Tangaroa might kindly send her on dry land, but meanwhile freedom, simple freedom, mere lack of supervision, was in itself enough; and happily, happily she trudged along, nodding, smiling, and sucking vigorously at her empty pipe.

Before very long she came to the river—the sinister-looking river, black and sluggish, that drains the valley-head. In the swamp on the other side of the long white bridge, dark manuka-bushes with crooked stems and shaggy boles, like a company of uncanny crones under a spell, stood knee-deep in thick ooze; some withered rawpo desolately lined the bank above. Even on that bright day, this was a dismal place, and the rawpo, with its spindly shanks and discoloured leaves fluttering about them, looked lamentably like poor Pipi. Poor Pipi, indeed? Dismal place? Huh! what does a fool know?

With brightened eyes, with uncouth gestures of delighted haste, out across the bridge scurried Pipi, slithered down into the swamp, clutched with eager claws at a muddy lump upon the margin, and emitted a deep low grunt of joy. Old snags, quite black with decay, lay rotting round her, and the stagnant water gave forth a most unpleasant smell. But what is foulness when glory beckons through it? Squatting in the slime, her tags and trails of raiment dabbling in and out of the black water, Pipi washed and scraped, scraped and washed, and finally lifted up and out into the sunshine with a grin of delight, a great golden pumpkin, richly streaked with green. The glint of its rind had caught her eye from the other side of the bridge. Evidently it had fallen from some passing cart, and rolled down into the swamp. It was big; it was heavy; it was sound. The goodness of this pumpkin! the triumph of this find! Pipi untied one of her most extra garments, tied the treasure securely in it, slung the bundle on her back as though it had been a baby, and went on.

From the river, the road runs straight uphill, through a cutting between high banks of fern and gorse, with a crumbly crest of papa clay boldly yellow on the full blue sky. The road is of yellow papa also, and unmetalled, and rather heavy. Pipi grunted a good deal as she toiled up it; and about halfway up stood still to get her breath, for the pumpkin, precious as it was, lay like lead upon her frail old shoulders. Why! at the very top of the bank, glaring in the sunshine against the yellow papa, what was that? A white paper only, with nothing in it—or a white paper parcel? Steep as the bank was, go she must, of course, and see; and up, pumpkin and all, she climbed. Aha! Something inside. What? . . . Bread; and, inside the bread? Jam; thick, sweet, deep-red jam, very thick, very sweet, very good!

Next to tobacco, Pipi loved sweet things. She did not expend much pity upon the school-child that, heedlessly running along the top edge of the bank that morning, had lost its lunch and spent a hungry dinner-hour; neither did the somewhat travelled appearance of the sandwich trouble her. She scrambled down again on to the firmer footing of the road, and there she stood, and licked and licked at the jam. Miria’s face, if she had caught her at it! Oho, that face!—the very fancy of its sourness made the tit-bit sweeter. The bread itself she threw away. Her stomach was not hungry, Miria saw to that; but her imagination was, and that was why this chance-come, wayside dainty had a relish that no good, dull dinner in the whare ever had. Sport was good to-day. First that pumpkin, now this jam! Ka pai the catch! What next?

She resumed her journey up-hill, but had no sooner reached the top than she suddenly squatted down on the bank by the roadside, as if at a word of command, with next to no breath left in her lungs, but hope once more lively in her heart—for here, surely, advancing to meet her, was the Next—a tall young pakeha woman, with a basket on her arm. Only a woman. That was a pity, for there was the less chance of topeka; still, what had that kit got in it?

Pipi knew all about strategical advantages by instinct. She sat still and waited on her hill-top as her forefathers had sat still on theirs, and waited for the prey. Soon it came; a little breathless, and with footsteps slackening naturally as they neared the brow, just as Pipi had foreseen. Yes, she would do, this pakeha, this pigeon; she would pay to be plucked. She was nicely dark and stout; she smiled to herself as she walked; and such good clothes upon the back denoted certainly a comfortable supply of hikapeni (sixpences) in the pocket.

“Tenakoe! Tenakoe!” (greeting!) cried Pipi, skipping up from her bank with a splendid assumption of agility, as the stranger came alongside; and extending her hand, expanding her smile, and wagging her wily old head, as if this strange young pakeha were her very dearest friend in all the world. And the bait took! The pakeha, too, stretched forth her hand, she, also, smiled. A catch, a catch to Pipi the fisher! Let us, though, find out first how much she knows, this fish. . . Not to speak the Maori tongue means not to read the Maori mind, so:

“E hoa!” says Pipi leisurely, “E haere ana koe i whaea?”

Good! it is all right. The pakeha stands still, laughs, and says, “Oh, please say it in English!”

She is ignorant, she is affable, she is not in a hurry. She will do, this nice young pakeha! Pipi translates.

“Where you goin’?”

“I am going—oh, just along this road for a bit,” says the girl vaguely.

Pipi considers. “Along the road,” in the stranger’s present direction, means back towards home for Pipi; it would surely be a pity to turn back so soon? A fish on the line, however, is worth two in the water; also, after the feast is eaten, cannot the empty basket be thrown away? in other words, as soon as ever it suits her, cannot she pretend to be tired and let the stranger go on alone? Of course she can! So Pipi says, “Me, too,” and, turning her back, for the time being, upon the enticement of the open road ahead, goes shambling back, hoppity-hop, down the hill again, at the side of her prey. She shambles slowly, too, by way of a further test, and, see, the girl instinctively adapts her pace. Excellent! Oh, the pleasantness, the complaisance, of this interesting young friend! Pipi takes hold of her sleeve, and strokes it.

“Ah, the good coat,” she cries, with an admiration that she does not need to assume. “He keep you warm, my word! My coat, see how thin!” and she holds out for inspection a corner of her topmost covering, an old blouse of faded pinkish print, phenomenally spotted with purple roses. It is true that she has the misfortune to hold out also, quite by mistake, a little bit of the layer next beneath, which happens to be a thick tweed coat; but this she drops immediately, without an instant’s delay, and it is well known that pakehas have as a rule only pebbles in their eye-sockets—they see nothing; while their ears, on the other hand, are as kokota-shells, to hold whatever you please to put in. “I cold, plenty, plenty,” says Pipi accordingly, with a very well-feigned shiver. “How much he cost, your good, warm coat?”

“Why, I don’t quite know,” replies the pakeha. “You see, it was a present; somebody gave it me.”

“Ah, nobody give poor Pipi,” sighs Pipi, very naughtily. Is it a good thing or not, that two of the Colonel’s old flannel shirts, Mrs. Cameron’s knitted petticoat, and Miria’s thickest dress, all of them upon her person at that moment, have no tongues? “Nobody give kai (food) even. What you got in your big kit?” she asks coaxingly. “Plenty big kit!”

“Ah, nothing at all. Only air. It’s just cramful of emptiness,” says the girl, sadly shaking her head. “What you got on your back in the bundle there? Plenty big bundle!”

It is useless, of course, to deny the existence of so plain a fact as that pumpkin. Why had not Pipi had the wit to hide it in the fern?

“On’y punkin,” she says, with a singular grimace, expressive at first of the contemptibility of all the pumpkin tribe, then changing instantly to a radiant recognition of their priceless worth, for her mind has been

“Stung with the splendour of a sudden thought.”

“He fine punkin, big, big punkin,” she cries, and then, munificently, “You give me coat, I give you this big, big punkin!” She exhibits her treasure as one astounded at her own generosity.

The pakeha, however, seems astounded at it, too.

“Why!” says she, “my coat is worth at least three thousand pumpkins.”

Perhaps it is? Pipi tries to imagine three thousand pumpkins lying spread before her, with a view to assessing their value; but, not unnaturally, fails. Ah well! Bold bargaining is one weapon, but tactful yielding is another.

“E! You give me hikapent, then, I give you punkin.” She concedes, with an air of reckless kindness, and a hope of sixpence-worth of topeka to be purchased presently on the sly from Wirimu, the gardener.

But “I don’t care much for pumpkins,” says the stupid pakeha. “And I haven’t any hikapeni,” she adds. The stingy thing! A fish? why, the creature is nothing at all but an empty cockle-shell not worth the digging. And Pipi is just thinking that she shall soon feel too tired to walk a single step farther, when, suddenly producing a small, sweetly-familiar-looking packet from her coat, “You like cigarettes?” inquires the pakeha.

“Ai! Homai te hikarete! Ka pat te hikarete! (“Yes! Give me a cigarette! I do like cigarettes),” cries Pipi, enraptured, and the pakeha holds out the packet. Alas! there are only two cigarettes left in it, and manners will permit of Pipi’s taking only one. This is very trying. “You smoke?” she asks innocently. The girl denies it, of course, as Pipi knew she would: these pakeha women always do, and Miria, their slavish advocate and copyist, declares they speak the truth. Vain words; for, in the hotel at Rotorua, has not Pipi seen the very best attired of them at it? Moreover, why should this girl trouble to carry cigarettes if she does not smoke, herself? Plenty stupid, these pakeha women! Plenty good, however, their cigarettes, and greed (oh Miria!) overcoming manners, “E! You not smoke; you give me other hikaret’, then,” she says boldly.

This miserable pakeha, however, proves to be as a pig, that, full of feed, yet stands with both feet in the trough—she only shakes her head, laughs sillily, and mutters some foolish remark about keeping the other for somebody else she might meet. Ah, well, never mind; Pipi has at least the one, and she would like to smoke it at once and make sure of it, but “No right!” she says plaintively—she means “no light”; she has no matches, and no more, it appears, has the pakeha. Boiled-headed slave! How, without matches, can she expect anybody to smoke her cigarettes?

“Perhaps this man has some,” suggests the pakeha, pointing to the solitary driver of a wagon coming down the hill behind them. She explains the predicament, and the man, with a good-natured smile, pours out half a boxful into Pipi’s upstretched palms, and drives on. Ah, and perhaps he had topeka with him, too, real, good, dark, strong topeka in a stick; and, had Pipi only been wise enough to wait for him, and let this miserable person go by, she might by now, perhaps, have been having a real smoke. As for this hikarete, by the smell of it, Hana, aged thirteen months, could smoke it with impunity. No coat, no kai, no hikapeni, one hikarete of hay—Huh! the unprofitableness of this pakeha!

“You go on!” says Pipi, with an authoritative gesture. They have got as far as the bridge, and she squats down by her swamp. All that long hill to toil up again, too!

But behold, the black-hearted one at her side says, actually, “Oh, I’m in no particular hurry. I think I’ll sit down a bit, too,” and does so. Now, who that has found the riwai (potato) rotten wants to look at the rind?

Worse and worse—who can grow melons in mid-air, drink water without a mouth, or strike a match without something to strike it on? . . . What now? Here is the pakeha, in reply to this reproach, sticking out her thick leather boot right into Pipi’s hand—an insult? She would kick the hikaret’ out of it? Not so, for her eyes are soft. . . . Swift as a weather-cock, round whirl Pipi’s mobile wits.

“E hoa!” she cries with glee. “You give me the hu (shoe)? Poor Pipi no hu, see! I think ka pai, you give me the hu.”

But the pakeha only shakes her head vigorously and laughs out loud. Is she porangi quite? No, not quite, it seems, for, taking a match from Pipi’s hand, she strikes it on the clumsy sole, and lo! a flame bursts out. Pipi can light her hikaret’ now, and does so, coolly using the pakeha’s skirt the while, as a breakwind, for she may as well get out of her all the little good she can. And now, how to get rid of this disappointment, this addled egg, this little, little cockle with the big thick shell? Aha, Pipi knows. She will do what she has done so often with the prying Mrs. Colonel Cameron—she will suddenly forget all her English, and hear and speak nothing but Maori any more. That will soon scrape off this piri-piri (burr). What shall she start by saying? Anything will do; and accordingly she mechanically asks again in Maori her first question, the question she asks every one. “You are going, where?” But, O calamity! This time, the pakeha, the ignorant one, not only understands, but answers—and in the same tongue—and to alarming purpose!

“E haere ana ahau ki a Huria (I am going to Judaea),” she says. And Judaea is the name of Pipi’s own kainga!

“Kia Huria! and you know to speak the Maori!” she exclaims, startled into consternation.

“Only a very little as yet,” replies the girl. “But Miria is teaching me.”

“Miria! which Miria?” cries Pipi, in an agony of foreboding.

“Why, Miria Piripi, Colonel Cameron’s coachman’s wife—your Miria, isn’t she?” says this monster, with a sudden smile. “She has told me about you, often.”

The truant who should suddenly see his captured “bully” pull the hook out of its jaws in order to plunge it in his own, might very well feel as Pipi felt at this frightful moment. True enough, she had often heard Miria speak of the pakeha lady who came to visit Mrs. Cameron and was “always so interested in the natives;” and with the greatest care she had always kept out of her way, for Pipi had her pride—she resented being made into a show. And now———!

“Yes, and I have often seen you, too, though you may not have seen me,” pursued the relentless pakeha. “You, and little Hana and Himi. Where are Hana and Himi now? I shall be sure to tell Miria I’ve met you,” she finished brightly.

Alas, alas for Pipi’s sport! The fish had caught the fisher, and with a vengeance. She collected her scattering wits, and met the pakeha’s eye with a stony stare, for she came of a princely race; but cold, too, as a stone, lay the heart within her breast.

The heart of the pakeha, however, had also its peculiarities. For all she was a pakeha, clad in a fine coat, wearing boots, and carrying cigarettes about with her only by way of Maori mouth-openers: for all this, her heart was the heart of a fellow-vagabond. It understood. She had heard Miria, and Mrs. Cameron too, talk of Pipi; but with a result of which those superior speakers were not conscious. How often she had silently sympathised with the poor old free-lance kept so straitly to the beaten track of respectability; how often she had wished for a peep at Pipi au naturel! And now she had got it; and she meant to get it again. She could not help a little mischievous enjoyment of the confusion so heroically concealed, but she took quick steps to relieve it.

“Well, I must go on,” she said briskly, rising as she spoke. “Take the other cigarette, Pipi, and here’s a shilling for some topeka. E noho koe (goodbye)! Oh, and, Pipi, don’t let’s tell Miria yet that we’ve met, shall we? It will be so nice for her to introduce us properly some day, you know!”

Pipi was game. “Haere ra” (good-bye) was all she answered, unemotionally. But she could not help one gleam of joy shooting out of her deep old eyes, and Lucy Willett saw it, and went on with a kindly laughter in her own.

 

That night, when she had rolled herself up in her blanket, and lain down on the whare floor (she disdained the foppishness of beds), Pipi glowed all through with satisfaction. Miria, on coming home, had found her seated, patient, pipeless, before the fire, Hana and Himi one upon each knee, both intact, both peacefully asleep; and had been so pleased with this model picture, as well as with the size of Pipi’s pumpkin, that she had indulged her grandmother with schnapper for supper. And Pipi had found that pumpkin; she had harvested red jam from a fern-bank; she had had one cigarette to smoke, and with another had been able to encourage Ropata’s wife to future friendly offices. More than that, she had had time for one blessed pipeful of real Derby, richly odorous, and in her most intimate garment of all could feel now, as she lay, safely knotted up, the rest of a whole stick. Nor was even that all. By some extraordinary good management that she herself did not quite understand, she had eluded the hook as it dangled at her very lips while yet she had secured the bait; and she had an instinctive, shrewd suspicion that, in cleverly causing the eye of the pakeha to wink at guilt, she had made sure of more patronage in the future. Who could tell? Perhaps, some fine day, that good thick coat, even, might find its way to Pipi’s back. Taihoa (just wait)! Meanwhile, what a good day’s sport!