HINE AND THE MATE

Te Ao Hou, June 1963, Page 12

HINE AND THE MATE by Enid Tapsell Hine was dying with the MATE—she had had it nearly all her short life—but Hine would not believe she was dying—she didn't want to. She knew she had the MATE but she had become so familiar with it that it was now just part of herself. In fact, her second self. And what matter if some said she was PORANGI and that the MATE made it worse. She just wasn't going to die—Not yet. The district nurse had a different name for the MATE. She called it the ‘T.B.’ and said Hine was a menace to those around her. She wanted to stop Hine going to the pictures and the dances, and she said Hine should sleep by herself in the nice clean uncomfortable hut provided by the Health Department—Hine who was a married woman! Hine who had been twice a married woman, and whose first husband had also died of the MATE. When Nurse pointed this out to Hine she just shrugged and looked blank. And there's nothing so difficult for the pakeha to combat as that blank stubborn look that a Maori in the wrong knows so well how to assume. Hine continued to go to the pictures, in fact she never missed the weekly serial, and as time went on she coughed and coughed more frequently at the pictures until the few pakehas who also went to the pictures in the crowded badly ventilated hall, started to complain. They'd say, ‘Poor Hine, isn't it a shame the way she coughs and coughs, and she is always so bright and ready to crack a joke. But really she shouldn't be allowed to go to the pictures, it's not fair.’ Then one or the other would run to the district nurse the next time she came to the village, and nurse would say, ‘What can I do?’ hopelessly. ‘Hine won't listen to anybody. She's a law unto herself!’ And that was very true for Hine was not only lawless, but a despot as well. It was simply short of marvellous the way people, pakeha and Maori alike, gave in to her. Even as a child she always managed to get her own way, and when she was growing up, it was ‘Hine this’ and ‘Hine that’—and Hine says this, that or the other—at basketball, at hockey or at running a dance, and Hine had a cutting turn of wit that provoked and often annoyed the butt of her jokes. She had sudden crushes on people and would quite literally live on their doorsteps morning noon and night. She'd go around that village arm-in-arm, or more often than not, cheek-to-cheek with her arm tightly wound around the friend's neck—and usually the friend was someone years older than Hine—And this was a sight that annoyed all Hine's well wishers, for they said, ‘Isn't it disbusting the way Hine hangs onto Mary’ (or Jean or Millie)—‘They (presumably Mary or Jean or Millie) should have more sense—and Hine with “T.B.” too—didn't they know how catching it was?’ Then they'd say, ‘Haven't you noticed lately that she coughs more and there is quite an odour when you're near her…?’ Of course this last might have been due to her teeth—for soon, Hine had them all out and went around all gummy for awhile. This gave her face a more witchlike appearance. Hine's mouth was outsize and narrow-lipped, and it had been made attractive by a very wide smile—until her teeth started to go on her. And Hine was very affectionate too—if she was not hanging on to someone, she had a kitten perched on her shoulder, or a mongrel dog with a wagging long tail at her heels, and she was always to be seen at the village store with sundry animals hanging around her, particularly at mail time when everybody congregated there. Then Hine got a goat—a young billy goat which caused great amusement at first by its antics and the antics of its owner to certain onlookers—but after awhile people began to

get annoyed with Hine's goat. It had an unpredictable habit of butting people or else trying to put its forefeet on the shoulders of someone it took a fancy to. It also had another objectionable habit of going into the store and putting its forelegs on the counter. Funny once or twice, but annoying, most annoying when the novelty wore off. People started to complain, but Hine just shrugged and looked blank when someone with more courage than those who talked behind her back, told Hine to tie her goat or else she'd lose it one of these days. But time went on and lots of other things happened before Hine tied up her goat. Hine was becoming more witchlike than ever these days—with arms and legs like sticks and her skin going darker and darker with the MATE —and everywhere she went the goat was always butting in—Poor Hine whose mother-love had been aroused and sustained for a few short months then buried forever in the little plot in the cemetery soon after her first marriage to the man who later died from the MATE. For awhile Hine eased her sorrow by regular visits to the graveside, then she stopped going and flung herself into a life of activity. In the summer she played tennis vigorously—almost furiously—in the winter it was basketball and dances and long tours with the team—and her husband, soon he went away to the hospital and sometimes Hine visited him—sometimes, not very often—when there was a paper to sign or something. You see he was getting the Social Security benefit, and as his wife she got it too. But presently Hine got tired of having no husband and went to live with Hoata—a gorilla-like cripple—with kind soft brown eyes like a dog watching its master's face—and in time Hoata watched Hine's face the same way. Perhaps he was grateful to her, grateful for sharing her life with him—the cripple with the gorilla-strong arms and chest, and the feet that only dangled. Grateful to a thin spitfire of a girl dying with the MATE—and how she bullied him and looked after him at the one and same time—And how tongues wagged. ‘That Hine! with a husband lying in the public hospital fifty miles away, living with another man! And collecting the Social Security benefits too.—Did he know? Did the Social Security Department know?’ But Hine just shrugged and looked blank when a meddlesome relative tried to pass on public opinion to the transgressors. Soon though the first husband died and after a brief period (no doubt due to customary observances) Hine married her gorilla-man and continued to collect her Social Security, now as the wife of a cripple. ‘Well, well!’ said some people, particularly the pakehas of the village. ‘You can't beat the Maori for diddling the government.’ But Hine, she didn't care what the pakeha thought or what the Social Security Department thought as long as they continued to pay without too much fuss and silly questions about ‘land and houses and/or occupied’ and how many fowls and pigs and horses they might have. There was Hoata's little lean-to-house which had been altered and improved since Hine had married him, and they had a new electric stove and some new furniture, and of course there were the cats and the dogs and the goat—as for the rest, bah! let them answer their silly questions themselves. That's what they were paid for wasn't it? For a while Hine seemed to fill out and look much better after she settled down with Hoata—she had got new teeth too, and that improved her appearance—then she got the ‘flu or something and had to stay in bed a long time, and the patient Hoata waited on her and attended her every wish. In the summer she seemed to get better, but the District

Nurse still had her eye on Hine, and in due course got her X-rayed and a ‘T.B.’ shack moved onto the section next to the house. Hine conceded a point to the nurse—she slept in the hut (the nice clean uncomfortable hut)—but with Hoata, and when the village grapevine passed the news on, the gossips said, ‘Oh dear, the Health Department must be really firm with Hine!’ And Hine queened over all and sundry in the hut surrounded by her cats and dogs and the goat which now stayed home because its mistress didn't go out any more. And all the relations came to see Hine and hear her talk—Hine who had always been the one for wisecracks and jokes at others' expense. They laughed and they went away and they said, ‘Hine she is porangi, no? Did you notice what she said today?’ and another replied, ‘It's the MATE—they always go like that before the end!’ and still another said, ‘Ai-e—but her old man he was rori rori too, before he died…!’ (Mad? Yes they said she was going mad—Hine knew what they all said). The district nurse told the doctor about the cats on the bed and the dogs and the goat, and how Hine refused to sleep by herself because she was afraid of the taipos—the spirits of her ancestors, which she said she could see sitting on the rafters of the hut. No, she must have someone beside her, and she must have the light on ALL the time! It was the doctor's turn to shrug his shoulders and say: ‘Let her be, Nurse—it won't be long now’. Then Hine got so that poor Hoata could manage her no longer and she refused to do anything for anyone else—but the end was not yet. Hine insisted on going to the tangi of a distant cousin that was being held on the marae. She was too ill to walk—but go she would—and poor Hoata was hard put to it to persuade her out of it. She ranted and she raved at him and finally he gave in. With the help of a male friend he wheeled Hine down to the tangi, sitting on a wheelbarrow—all wrapped in coats and rugs. Such a shock for the village and the visitors when they beheld her! ‘That Hine!’ said the gossips, ‘Porangi—Mad she must be…!’ and the pakehas behind their hands said, ‘Ugh! how awful, what a risk—this awful “T.B.”—Aren't the Maoris careless—how people can stand being near her —Really it's disgraceful!’ But Hine didn't mind or care what the people said. She had gone to the tangi and pressed noses with relatives she hadn't seen for ages—she had honoured the dead! She had obeyed the customs of her race and that was all that mattered. After that Hine's strength dwindled quickly, and the talk about the spirits of her ancestors sitting on the rafters became more frequent. Hoata's patience was getting frayed at the edges when the doctor suggested the Mental Hospital. With some heart burnings Hoata agreed. He had heard about people dying in the porangi-house, and had a superstitious awe of it, but the doctor assured him it was the best for all under the circumstances—anything might happen, then Hoata might not be able to manage. Hoata looked at the doctor with his dog-like eyes and said with a catch in his throat, ‘Violent?’—and the doctor nodded. They got Hine into the car that was to take them to the Mental Hospital some eighty or ninety miles away, under the pretext of taking her for a ride, and Hine chattered along quite gaily and was quite intelligent in her comments. Suddenly she said, ‘You're taking me to the porangi-house.’ ‘No, No’, said Hoata in distress. ‘You liar, You are!—You're taking me to the porangi-house to die!’. Hoata looked at Hine with his soft dog-like eyes all misted over, but in a flash of failing strength Hine raised herself and gave him a good hard slap across the face. ‘Liar’ she hissed, and then lay back in her corner and refused to speak for the rest of the journey. When Hine died they brought her home again and she had one of the biggest tangis the village had seen for a long time, especially for a woman, and there were many pakehas present and lots and lots of wreaths. Hine's face looked in death what it should have looked like in life—if she had not always been ravaged by the MATE. Calm and smooth and young, and the red camelia that someone had placed above her right ear in the fine black hair, enhanced the illusion—Poor Hine who had always had the MATE and wouldn't believe she was going to die, had gone to join the spirits of her ancestors.