Keri Hulme - The Bone People

"A farewell," says the old man, turning to him, answering his question before it is asked. "I don't think the mauriora or the little god recognise we who watch over them as individuals. My grandmother thought of us as an attendant stream of awareness, and said they knew when we left. Now, they'll know I'm leaving."

Joe, rubbing his thigh awkwardly with his left hand,

"I told them when I said hello. Sort of."

"What did you see to say hello to?" asks the old man, grinning.

Joe flushes.

"What looked like long shadows in the water," his words echoing the kaumatua's earlier words.

The old man says gently,

"It's all in pieces, you know… and not all of it is there. The old people managed to get the stern and the prows and a few of the hull sections to that safety… I know they used pieces of the hull to carry the little god and the mauri to the tarn." They're the round shadows?"

He smiles with satisfaction. "Ah, you're a discerning one after

all… it took me days to see them properly. Yes, I think they may be unwrapped now, but when my grandmother brought them to the surface they were covered with the remains of cloaks. Red feather cloaks, too."

"She swam in that?"

The old man smiles more widely still.

"You touched, eh? It's a surprise isn't it! No, she called them to the top, and the little god came with the mauri on his back, and they stayed there for minutes while she sang, and then sank back to safety. Believe it, or disbelieve it, that was how the matter was. I tried once, using the words she taught me, but the water started boiling, and that hadn't happened when she sang, so I was afraid and stopped. My grandmother was a very strong-minded woman, remember, and she had knowledge she maybe never should have had."

Joe shivers, partly from the growing pain, partly from the magic.

"Where did she get hold of it?" he asks, not really wanting to know.

The old man waves a hand in the air. "From her girlhood, she was curious about this place… her grandfather doted on her, and told her many things from the past. What he told her of the burial of this canoe, and what it contained, fascinated her mind. She sought out the people who had knowledge, and one way or another, obtained all she needed to know. She had the right to this piece of land, through her mother's sister, who never was married. She had to wait years until she got it though, and when she got it, she made sure, pakeha fashion, that it would never pass out of her hands except to someone she was confident would look after what it bore. Me. Now you."

He looks up to the strange well in the gorge-side.

"Remember, it was a time of flux and chaos when she sought her knowledge. No-one can be blamed for giving her information that she maybe should never have known. And she can be praised for having that staunch courage and intelligence to preserve something she believed, as I believe, to be of unusual value. Incalculable value. How do you weigh the value of this country's soul?"

Joe shakes his head. He doesn't want to think of what could be lying there in the cool green and stinging water.

He does say, tentatively, as they're walking slowly away, "If it is, the heart of Aotearoa… why isn't this whole place… flowering? Something as strong as that, would make the very stones flower, ne? And there is nothing at all… no birds… flies, you say, but… flies?"

The kaumatua waits until the halting sentences are finished.

"It despaired of us, remember. It is asleep… maybe its very sleep keeps the living things away, except for flies, who come to the sleeping and the dead alike. Aue! the one thing I regret about dying is that, secretly, in the marrow of my heart, I have always wanted to see what happens when it wakes up." He sighs. "Maybe we have gone too far down other paths for the old alliance to be reformed, and this will remain a land where the spirit has withdrawn. Where the spirit is still with the land, but no longer active. No longer loving the land." He laughs harshly. "I can't imagine it loving the mess the Pakeha have made, can you?"

Joe thought of the forests burned and cut down; the gouges and scars that dams and roadworks and development schemes had made; the peculiar barren paddocks where alien animals, one kind of crop, grazed imported grasses; the erosion, the overfertilisation, the pollution….

"No, it wouldn't like this at all. We might have started some of the havoc, but we would never have carried it so far. I don't think." He adds thoughtfully, after a pause of seconds, "I can't see that," nodding back towards the hidden well, "ever waking now. The whole order of the world would have to change, all of humanity, and I can't see that happening, e pou, not ever."

"Eternity is a long time," says the kaumatua comfortably. "Everything changes, even that which supposes itself to be unalterable. All we can do is look after the precious matters which are our heritage, and wait, and hope."

The lively glint is back in his eyes.

"Well, at least you can do that… this one is going to take things easy from now on!" He rubs his belly. "Though I might wait long enough for tea, Joseph. Yes, I think I'll take you through my garden, and we'll gather food for tea. We'll eat a last good meal together, and you can tell me all about your dead family that was, and your live one which you have lost, and I'll be as polite as you were while I was boring you with tales of my dogs, her?"

Joe grins shamefacedly.

"I wasn't that bored… I hope it's not our last meal. Maybe you won't be called away so fast now they," gesturing with his hand to the pale shining sky, "know how inept and unlearned I am."

"Ah, you'll do, you'll do," says the old man cryptically, and they walk on, limp on, in silence.

In the garden, under that bright sky, the kaumatua clutched at his chest, and fell heavily to the ground. Ahh, he gasps, trying to regain his breath, but with each exhalation there is less left. His body jerks spasmodically. Then slowly, he curls up, withering round his anguish like a burning leaf.

Joe started to run towards the whare, turned and came back. No phone no nothing no doctor what good would a doctor be? He knelt by the man.

His face is suffused and his eyes are screwed tightly shut. One hand scrabbles on the ground.

It is a deliberate motion, Joe realises after a moment. Writing… aie, the will-

"Where is it? The will you want? Where?" he asks urgently, bending over and loosing his voice like an arrow into the old man's ear.

Somehow the thin shaking limbs are drawn together, driven by an inordinate effort of will. He is nearly to his knees.

Joe unstraps his right hand from his belt, and clenching his teeth against the tearing ache, picks him up, cradles him, arm beneath back, head lolling, arm under the long legs. For the strength in my shoulders, praise, going one halt step after the other; for the strength in my shoulders, praise, arm feeling like it is breaking anew; for the strength in my shoulders, praise, a slow torturous ripping apart of bone and muscle fibre; for the strength in my shoulders, praise, staggering, skinning round the doorframe, grating against it, using it as a prop to hold himself up a little longer. He stumbles across the room and lays the old man on his bed.

The sweat rolls into his eyes, stinging them blind.

A whistling croaking voice, pausing after each word, an inhuman voice, says,

"In. The Bible. Pen. On clock."

He wheels round and lurches over, fingers fumbling, words ticking like an inexorable clock, "Bible pen bible pen bible pen."

He shakes the bible and a piece of folded typescript falls out, snatches the pen off the clock knocking over a key a candle butt, and races back to the bed.

"Ahh!" he calls wildly, "something to write on!" picking up the fallen bible and bringing it back. He is dizzy and sick, both with his own pain and the knowledge that the old man, however strenuous and gallant his effort, is too nearly dead to succeed in writing his name, drawing his secret design.