Keri Hulme - The Bone People

Like a puppet lifted by its strings, the old man rises up. His hand outstretched, he receives the pen. His eyes stare fixedly ahead, looking at the end of his bed.

"Where?" pen poised.

Joe stares at him, cold with horror.

For it is as though the old man has already vacated his body and he — or something else — is directing it from the outside.

"Here," he whispers, through numb lips. Blinking against the tears and sweat of pain, he guides the stiff hand. "My name," he whispers, "here."

In beautiful copperplate, the letters form: mechanically, each letter separate then joined by an eerily serene curve: Joseph Kakaukawa Gillayley, Kati Kahukunu-

"It is done. Where?"

The voice is not the kaumatua's, the eyes still stare blankly ahead.

"Here." Joe is shaking and trembling, his voice chilled to an almost noiseless whimper, fear growing in him like crystals of ice.

The signature flows swiftly, appearing on the paper as if tipped from a strange container. T. M. Mira, a flourish, two dots. The pen falls.

As though someone struck him, the old man winces and jerks. For a second he is present again. Joe seizes the pen and returns it to the cold grasp, ice deep in his heart now as he touches the fingers to close them round the barrel.

As though the fingers have eyes, they take the pen back to Joe's name, and quickly draw a complicated maze of spirals and spreading lines. Too quickly. No calligraphist could have drawn the moko so perfectly in the short time the fingers execute it. With the same horrid fluidity, a second pattern is drawn over the kaumatua's signature.

"Yours… Joseph. My. Blessing."

Joe eases the paper away, avoiding another touch of the living dead hand. The pen falls. As though a string has been cut, the thin body flops bonelessly on the bed, the eyes closing.

"Aue," Joe says softly, "it is ended. It is done."

But the old body convulses once, twice, and the bowel contents spurt out. The stench of excrement is overpowering. The old man moans, his fingers twitching helplessly by his sides.

"Not like this," a husky thread of protest, "not like this… aue… aue, the shame, the shame-"

Joe takes hold of the hands, enfolding them.

He says, weeping,

"E pou, tipuna, we all die like this, do not worry, I will be a son to you, be content to let a son perform this office for you, there is no shame, no shame," his words strangle in his sobbing.

"Aue, te whakama," says the kaumatua wearily.

"No shame, no shame,"

but he is talking to empty ears.

"Today I shall cry, Ki a koe, Rehua! Rehua, ki a koe!" "Aue, te whakama-"

He washes the body.

He clothes it in a pair of his jeans and his shirt.

The jeans are short, and the thin ankles stick out ridiculously.

The shirt could be wrapped round the body twice. There are no shoes he can put on the body's feet, no shoes anywhere in the whare.

He walks out and waits by the side of the road.

A passing motorist stops, and when she hears someone has died, she is shocked and sympathetic. She takes him right to the police station in Durville. Joe doesn't speak. He feels as hollow and dry as a cicada husk.

He watches as they casually pick up the brittle old body and tuck it up on the stretcher, blanket across the face.

The roots of the tree snake down the cliff. There is nothing beyond them but the endless sea.

"Lucky for you he found you, mate." The police sergeant is roughly jovial.

"Yes."

"I suppose it was lucky for him too, in a way eh?"

"Yes."

"Going into town to get that arm of yours seen to?"

"Yes."

"I can give you a ride back in the patrol car if you like."

"Yes."

Shocked, poor bastard, thinks the sergeant, and leads the way to the car.

His arm is set under anaesthetic, and the other cuts stitched. They had burst open when he carried the dying man back to his home.

The surgeon says later,

"Well, you've been lucky. Not many splinters, and not much torn muscle. You'll probably have difficulty using your arm initially, the tendon's damaged quite extensively, and it'll be a while before you're carrying weights again. But with rest and physiotherapy you'll come right."

He smiles. Joe says dully,

"I'll be discharging myself tomorrow."

The smile vanishes. "No way, man. You'll be here a couple of weeks before I'll-"

"Tomorrow," says Joe. "There are some things I must do."

Thin darned socks, and old old clothes. The greatcoat. A superb weka feather cloak.

Odds and ends of fishing tackle, and the battered tobacco tin. To pipes. The hexagonal pin cushion. The photographs off the wall. The books. The clock and all the things off the mantelpiece. A pouwhenua. Toilet gear.

He puts them all in a sugarsack, setting aside the cloak and the pouwhenua.

As he is putting in the photographs, something says, "Keep Timon," and he can't tell whether it's a voice in his head or outside of him.'He takes the photograph of the young man out again, numbly, and lays it on the bed.

He cleans out the whare thoroughly, clumsy and restricted with one arm only to use.

He burns the mattress outside.

While it smoulders, he looks at the hut.

The iron of the roof is piled in layers, a kind of metal thatching. Rusted and rain eaten, flaking away piece by piece, it'll decay entirely soon.

The wood of the studs and rafters is borer-eaten. A little while, and it will all subside into dust.

I won't burn it. It can die at its own rate.

He searches for nearly an hour before he finds a toetoe bush. He takes one short strong golden-stemmed spear.

Back in Durville he applies for, and is granted permission to bury the body.

"79 years old, hale and sound except for one heart vessel," says the coroner drily. "Is this kind of tattoo common? In his time, I mean?"

"No. I think, I think he wore it as a reminder of a dead people."

"Hmmm… are you a relation?"

"No, I was a guest in his house when he died. He has no family."

"And you feel this obligation to um," checking the certificate, "Tiakinga Meto Mira, because of that?"

"It's the least I can do for him."

The coroner raises his eyebrows. "Hmmm," he says again.

He takes the cloak and pouwhenua, and his greenstone chisel, pierced now and strung on a plaited cord, to the undertaker's. He helps them clothe the body with the cloak. He places the greenstone round the withered neck, and the wooden spearclub between the cold hands.

This is nearly all the rite and ceremony I can make for you, Tiaki. I am nearly dead inside as well.

In the afternoon, he visits the solicitor whose name is on the titlehead of the will.

The solicitor looks at him a long time, taking in the broken arm, the strained face, the dark furrows under the eyes.

He says,

"Where are you living?"

"Nowhere. I have a mind to go back and live in his house. For a while."

The solicitor offers a cigarette case, "Smoke?"

"Not now, thank you."

The man lights up, and looks at the will, and a sheet of paper he has taken from a wall safe. He compares the designs on each like a detective comparing fingerprints. The cigarette ash grows longer and longer. At last, he puts the papers down.

"Tell me, if you will, how the old man came to die?" He stubs the butt out. "And how you came to be with him?"

"Why?"

He is sick, and tired to the limit of his endurance. And there is still tomorrow to be got through.

The solicitor looks at him again for a time.

"I knew Tiaki Mira for an afternoon, and visited him twice in hospital. I don't make hasty judgements… I don't know whether you'd agree that you can make a friend in a few short hours. I felt I had. He was one of the most noble and dignified people I have ever met, yet he was warm-hearted… it was only because I felt him to be a friend that I agreed to act as his trustee."