Keri Hulme - The Bone People

"Be still, o God be still," while the earth groans,

Jesus the ground's gonna open right under here in a' dirty great crack what are my rahui doing that noise is murder the mauri'll die

"stopit stopit STOPIT!!"

bellowing furiously, and over the earth moaning and the skriek of

iron grating all round him, surprises himself by laughing loudly.

Jesus, Ngakau! This'll take heed of you!?

The tumult suddenly ceases. His heart pounds on in the preternatural quiet.

If this keeps going I'm not going to make it to any Christmas party…

Face on the hard dirt floor, waiting uneasily.

If this is an all over one, she won't either. If she's still alive-

The earth shudders again.

The window behind him splits with a ringing crack!-

Stillness.

Ready for it, sphincters clenched in all directions. Nothing happens.

You might as well get back to bed, man. Damn cold here.

For all that, sweat is trickling down his face. He stands up, his feet meeting the ground unsteadily, still expecting it to jolt.

Might as well stay up… it's getting light anyway.

But Haimona honey, where are you? Kerewin, Kerewin, where

are you?

He rakes away the soft ash and lays wads of fuchsia bark on

the still-glowing coals. It smokes immediately. Twigs, larger pieces of driftwood, hunks of heartwood to top it off-

It's not that I haven't been thinking of you both… but it's been rearranging it. Not falsifying, but trying to see the whole thing as an outsider would.

His thought is as calm as his face. He fills the kettle, and dresses in front of the range.

But I've done as much as I can with the past. I know my child was a gift, and that I loved him too hard, hated him too,much. That I was ashamed of him. I wanted him as ordinarily complex and normally simple as one of Piri's rowdies. I resented his difference, and therefore, I tried to make him as tame and malleable as possible, so I could show myself, "You've made him what he is, even if you didn't breed him." And I loved and hated him for the way he remained himself, and still loved me despite it all.

Now, the gift has been taken back, and I have only myself to blame. As I have only the memory left, of his love and his pain, his joy and badness and sadness, of four years, almost, of growing. That is that.

Another tremor.

He glances at the roof, the cracked window. The whare is creaking and shivering all round, but shows no signs of falling down yet.

Soon as it's light, I'd better go and check what's happened up the gorge.

The kettle has started to sing.

He lays out a cup, and the ready made skim milk, and puts half a handful of tea leaves in the pot. There's a bread left and butter still in the safe. While eating:

Kerewin… I was trying to make her fit my idea of what a friend, a partner was. I could see only the one way… whatever she thought she was, bend her to the idea that lovers are, marriage is, the only sanity. Don't accept merely what she can offer, make her give and take more… now I can see other possibilities, other ways, and there is still a hope-

The birds are starting to make a noise, but it isn't the gradual growing chorus that normally wakes him. They're calling, Alarum! Alarum!

All shook up with nests in the roots of trees he thinks, and giggles. But he loses the gaiety quickly.

The hope is still a hope while Kerewin lives, but if she has died, as her note gloomily foretold, he has decided to stay here. Hermit

and recluse number three, the unsung guardian of a madwoman's dream.

Aie, Ngakau, little did the old lady know what she was bringing you up for! But I can pray and play and carve again… I've got the garden to take care of — if this hasn't shaken it to bits — and my food to catch. Strange old cold trails to follow.

He has begun a correspondence with several North Island elders and two libraries, trying to find out, without giving too much information away, what one of the founding canoes could be buried here. Whether there was any ancient lore concerning a pact with such a nebulous entity as the mauri of Aotearoa and any tribe of the old people. He goes into town each fortnight, staying overnight with the solicitor and his wife. He buys food, checks his mail and writes replies, says Hello to the pub at the edge of the town, and leaves it quickly after a single beer each time. Somehow, it has got round who he is and what he's done, and the incident is still fresh in people's minds. It is a relief to return to eyeless tongueless bush.

He sips his tea thoughtfully.

Next week is Christmas week, and he has still some final arrangements to make for a sneaky happening he has set going. If Kerewin doesn't turn up, he will look all kinds of fool, but if she does… that might be a new beginning.

If the lady lives… look in the tea leaves, Ngakau, some people say they tell you things. She used to play with oracles… and the kaumatua had some tame demons or something. Old karakia he mentioned to make stones float, and find halfdead people cluttering up his beaches. My beaches, now. Well, I don't have second sights or insights or even the uncanny sense Himi had music hutches and lights around people:

shaking his head,

e tama, you were a strange one. He stands abruptly. The day is growing bright. Time to go round and check the damage.

He fills the thermos and takes an extra packet of cigarettes, and the last of the bread filled with cheese. It will take most of the day to go round his rahui.

I'll leave the gorge to last. If one of these neat little wriggles go off while I'm there… aue! a nice career as a hermit ended by a few ton of stone.

There's still enough hope for that to have no appeal at all.

The land shows little damage. Some of the seaward bluffs have crumbled further, and there are several deep rifts by the river, too narrow for anyone to slip down them. All the rahui except one are standing.

When he carved them, he had thought of a person and put all that he felt about them into the work. He had erected them in places that reflected an aspect of each person. The kaumatua stood nearest the gorge. Wherahiko and Marama were close to one another, on the northern track. Luce was planted in the swamp, and other Tainuis bordered the road. Hana and Timote and Simon stand close to the whare, on the southern boundary. And at the western sea border, planted by herself in a place he loved to sit and watch the sea from, Kerewin had stood.

That rahui is angled drunkenly, nearly on the ground.

His heart pounds: "Aieee," flinging down the kete, and racing to prop it up.

You superstitious nga bush, that'll teach you to go thinking a person into a piece of wood, it doesn't mean anything, it doesn't mean anything,

gibbering and praying it didn't.

And all the while, the odd phrases of Kerewin's note pass through his mind:

E Joe Ngakau, I'm in the lost country. And would you believe the crab has me in thrall? A deft pincer caused that alarm at Moerangi, remember the pale and gasping state? Medics chorus dividedly, but a friend in my soul whispers Death sweet Death, and that will probably be the way of it. But if I exist this coming Christ Mass, rejoin meat the Tower eh? O the groaning table of cheer… speaking of tables, does commensalism appeal to you as an upright vertebrate? Common quarters wherein we circulate like corpuscles in one blood stream, joining (I won't say like clots) for food and drink and discussion and whatever else we feel like… a way to keep unjoy at bay, like those last few weeks before they haled your corpus away. With no obligation on your part, I could provide a suitable shell. If, if… I drivel. If you turn up for Christmas, maybe I do too. Then we see, right? In the mean mean time, thus think and drink tobacco. Piri says he'll pass on this to you. I'm stoned the noo. Kia koa koe.