Keri Hulme: The Bone People

stepping away from the steampit, relaxed to the point where she feels boneless.

Flopping down on her spring cleaned bed and bag in naked ease, looking round the doubly spring cleaned hut through half-closed eyes.

The clothes hang drying by the fire, the fire is loaded with wood: they'll dry while I snooze… Jesus holy, I musta been far far gone, I've never got into such slack filthiness in all my years… beating my denims down on the rocks and all kinds of debris floating free with the suds. Part drying them on the bushes… they'll be steeped in the scent of gorse and me in manuka, and I look kinda twiggy, mistaken for ambulant scrub when seen wandering by-

She wakes with a start, peering into the red eyes of the coals… who said that?

Haere mai! Nau mai! Haere mai!

an earthdeep bass, a sonorous rolling call that reverberates still in my gut. Getting up cautiously, her skin feeling pleasantly tight and new, sniffing the plant-sweet air.

No-one's here? No-one living could have that voice anyway-

She shakes her head, and stretches her thin body until the useless muscle crack and all the misaligned vertebrae pop into place. A sudden tide of wellbeing floods through her, a fierce joy at being alive.

And she is hungry enough to eat anything on legs or off 'em. . there's a pound of oatmeal in the cupboard, some honey; two bottles Of whisky; a covered jug — the creature must have left that — it lives somewhere near? — the sour red juice is from currants; skim milk and potato flakes, and that's all? That's all, unless you count the dried moth or two and a curled bunch of a spider —-

She makes a billy full of porridge, and devours it and its syrup Of milk and honey, and surprises herself by making and eating a second, a third.

Satiated; stretched now, in front of the rebuilt fire. Full of new wiry strength and gentle energy, and determined not to wreck it… she drinks a whisky in civilised measure, and in between sips, practises scales on the guitar.

Nice to see those hands looking so neat. . guitar's a hard funky sound, but you'll do, friend instrument, you'll do —-

"You're lucky Holmes, my harmonious soul. Not everyone gets second chances." She thinks, while her fingers slip into picking tunes,

I can paint again, and I will.

I will make overtures to the family soon, because now I can.

Whether they accept or reject me, is up to them.

Rebuild at Taiaroa? We have might and money and we may —-

And then?

She steps lightly round the quagmires and sinking sands of what comes next to the tune she picked in a long-ago pub, Simon's mead reel.

And what about them?

If Joe picked up the note, he might come home for Christmas. He might like the commensal idea. I think I rambled a bit in that note, but he'll understand. . God, I hope he hasn't been warped too badly by jail, and the jail of memories —- And the goblin brat, oddbod spiderchild indeed, the catalytic urchin who touched this off?

Cataleptic then, bald as an egg on the palm of God, with shookup brain and terrible blank eyes where once the sly underhand mischief flickered; where once the strange self-awareness showed; where once the lovelight shone. All gone. Unseeing, the sunchild. Too deep in the dark to know anymore. If he hasn't come back to himself, he's dead to me. Dead to us.

as the overture to La Gaza Ladra swoops and soars and dips, I'll enquire. I'll see if I can be of use —- She thinks, by the firelight,

Art and family by blood; home and family by love… regaining any one was worth this fiery journey to the heart of the sun.

It was that hour before dawn when souls are least attached to bodies. When kehua roam. When, particularly if the tide is going out, old people slip easily away from deathbeds. The eery hour when dreams are real.

She sat outside the door, and thought the dream over.

The land is unknown. Bare and deserted, no trees, no obvious rocks, just low brown rolling hills.

"Haere mai!" Welcome!

But also, Come here-

She had been aware enough to ask, Kei whea?

"Haere mai," now a deep insistent pulse.

A light came up, and the scene began to turn, as though a

camera was panning slowly round 180 degrees.

Bare waiting hills, and the aged night sky… but down in the

gullies, she can see bush starting to grow and straggle up the

bare slopes. The landscape keeps turning, and the next sign

of life is a wrecked rusting building, squat on a tableland.

She walks to it, "Haere mai!" chanted by many voices now,

filling the land like the thunderous pulse of a mighty sea.

She touched the threshold, and the building sprang straight

and rebuilt, and other buildings flowed out of it in a bewildering

colonisation. They fit onto the land as sweet and natural as

though they'd grown there.

The karanga grows wilder, stronger.

The light bursts into bright blue daylight, and the people mill

round, strangely clad people, with golden eyes, brown skin,

all welcoming her.

They touch and caress with excited yet gentle hands and she

feels herself dissolving piece by piece with each touch. She

diminishes to bones, and the bones sink into the earth which

cries "Haere mai!" and the movement ceases.

The land is clothed in beauty and the people sing.

Very peculiar, my soul. I have never dreamed like that before. The welcome chant lingered in her ears. A cool wing of wind brushed her face.

Where is the land I am invited to?

She reached into her pocket and took out a smoke for the first time in a month, and lit up.

The only wrecked buildings I have any connection with are my Tower… and the old Maori hall at Moerangi.

The smoke spreads out and away.

She packs all her gear next morning, except for the guitar and a bottle of whisky. And Simon's rosary draped round the bottle and lying shining on her note: "My name is Kerewin Holmes. My home is The Tower, Private Bag, Taiaroa. Communicate that my joy may be full, okay? Kia koa koe-"

Then she walks out, closing the groaning door behind her for the last time.

The pack is light: books and board, bits of food and the remaining bottle of whisky, a few clothes. The only other thing she carries is the harpoon stick.

Kerewin te kaihau Indee. . if I don't find a town soon, that'll be all I eat for a while, too,

grinning to herself.

Under this sun, with this new buoyant body, she feels nothing will go wrong.

Three miles up the road, she's picked up by a sheep-truck driver, and he lets her down at the next small town, just in time to satisfy the appetite the walking grew.

She replenishes her wallet, has a couple of beers in the local pub, some quiet conversation about the weather, and then sets off again.

She's not in a hurry, or worried about getting there, but the transport is strangely available for her. Another lift from a truckie in time to catch a Railways bus in time to catch the train.

She's walking into the kaika by nightfall.

Whistling to some words that have come into her mind, and wishing for a guitar to make it a processional, stick swung alongside instead, matching her easy stride,

O, never silent by the sea

always something talking

water on rocks

water on sand

wind and birds

your heartbeat and

others' words»

whatever knocks

keep right on walking

Listening is for free-

There is no-one at the baches. She breaks into the old one, and settles in.

The sea rolls on.

A sheep coughs asthmatically behind the hill.

A beetle burrs past.

She stands on the old marae site.

The hall door hangs crookedly open.

"Tena koe… whakautua mai tenei patai aku. He aha koe I karanga ai ki a au?"