THE PIANO LESSON Screenplay for a film by JANE CAMPION

Producer: JAN CHAPMAN

Script editor: BILLY MACKINNON

Maori dialogue and translator: SELWYN MURU

4th draft 1991 Developed with the assistance of The Australian Film Commission

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Scene 53 EXT RIVERHOLE NEAR BAINES' DAY Sc 53

BAINES bathes in a riverhole. He is watched by a gathering of Maori, sometimes with great seriousness, at other times with hilarity. They pass between them his clothes, trying them on and mimicking him. One of the older women HIRA crouches close to the bank keeping up a steady line of inquiry. Her manner is relaxed but focused and persistent. She smokes a pipe-

HIRA

I got the good wife for you Peini. She pray good. Clean.

Read Bible. You sleep her Peini. She chief daughter.

BAINES

No, no bible readers.

BAINES continues good humouredly washing.

HIRA

Why? We need you pakeha clever. You sleep her.

TAHU

(A big man dressed as a woman)

(Background) I give her plenty clever. (Gestures sexually)

BAINES

I have a wife.

TAHU

(camping it up) I give her clever eb Peini. Hallelujah!

HIRA

Don't answer, he low born. Jun look at him, mongrel.

Your wife where she?

BAINES

She lives her own life in New Jersey, America.

HIRA

You have spare wife here Peini. You get rnana for that.

Our chief four wives.

BAINES shakes his head amusedly. As he gets out of the river HIRA slaps him.

I marry white man Peini, he a whaler like you.

He very good to me. Love me, nurse me.

HIRA touches her own face where BAINES' tattoo is.

HIRA

Who do that? It not finish,

that no good Peini. You finish!

Several people on the bank are taking turns to comb their hair, peering into a tiny piece of mirror.

---end of sequence ---