Keri Hulme - The Bone People

It is very still.

Kerewin waits, hands on her hips, head cocked to one side, listening.

What do I expect? I come and say hello, I've come back, did you call me, and wait for… lightning? Burning bushes?

It is very dark behind the door. "He aha te mahi e mea nei koe kia mahia?" Sea distant on the beach; birds in the night; her breath coming and going. Nothing else.

I ask what it wants me to do, and there's silence.

Nothing else. She sighs.

Typical, Holmes… expectations always greater than reality. So be it. I'll come again tomorrow when it's light.

As she turns away, a great warmth flows into her. Up from the earth under her feet into the pit of her belly, coursing up like benevolent fire through her breast to the crown of her head.

She feels her hair literally start to move.

Shaking with laughter, shaking with tears, shook to the core by joy.

Hi

Sitting in front of a Moerangi fire, the last for some time. Cat purring on my lap. I'm contemplating leavetaking.

She unlocks the small wooden chest that holds her Book of the Soul.

Pretentious bugger, Holmes, taking yourself that seriously-

She weighs the book in her hand. A thousand pages of Oxford India paper, bound with limp black leather covers, the title blocked in silver.

You could expose me to hell, you could give all my secrets away, little miseries and whining self-pities cloistered together… but you've been my last resort, a soul-hold beyond even the bottle.

I

She opens it at the last page she filled in, a third of the way through. Sees, in her thin Italic hand, the lines,

So I exist, a husk that wishes decay into sweet earth. Writing nonsense in a journal no-one ever sees.

Bloody hell, we've come a way since then. Where to start?

She writes:

It's been a rare year, o paper soul, not least because this is the third time I've talked to you. It is now nearly the great Christ Mass, the start of another year, the start of another life. Great changes — where to begin to record them?

With me, natch.

I'm weaker and whiter and wambling, but growing fatter and stronger as the days go. A feeling of burgeoning… it's the only simple word that encapsules the flight and the flower.

I'm working hard, I'm painting easily, fluently, profoundly. I smile often. I have direction in my life again, four directions — make that five — no, six. I am weaving webs, and building dreams and every so often this this wonder seizes me unawares. Which is a far distance on from the moribund bag of bones of a month ago.

You know what? I lost three and a half stone… imagine the glowering heavyweight, twelve stone plus in its bare feet and britches, reduced to that extremity!

But I'm putting fat back on with devotion, eating as though my life depended on it. I'm nine and a half stone, rising ten… I still do interesting things like fold up under weights I would have hefted easily not that many months ago (for instance, tried carrying four sheets of iron, sevenfooters, 26 gauge, pitched over and damn near cut my head off). But we work full days, and we sleep, how we sleep! peaceful and pleasant dreams of nights.

History, cts, practicalities: I started rebuilding the Maori hall because it seemed, in my spiral fashion, the straight-forward thing to do. It didn't take long for curious locals to drift round to find out who I was and why I was playing with their relic. I was recognised, saluted, and they shrugged when they found it was my time and money being given free, and left me to it… only on the Saturday, a few came by to help prop up bits of four by two and handle up the tin. And by late Sunday, we've got the roof done and the outside straight and sober looking. A real working party (we weren't that straight and sober Sunday night).

I was left to me own devices for the week — it was only a matter of relining walls and putting down new floor boards. Light carpentry, and it all fitted together so easy and slick, it might have been building itself.

And on Friday, they came with the new door, and the windows we'd decided to order. They came with a keg, and blankets, and mattresses,

and guitars, and two blank-eyed sheep that were promptly converted to mutton. They came with gallons of glorious rainbows, a tin of paint from everyone's shed. They came with a surplus of song and willing hands.

And on Sunday I'm greasy with picking mutton-bones, and more than slightly riddled with good brown beer, and I'm singing with the rest inside the tight sweet hall that's got a heart of people once more.

The prayers and the hallowing will be done this coming Sunday, and, glory of glories, the old gateposts from the old marae, each with their own name, will be re-erected.

We have not just a hall, but a marae again. The fire's been relit, and I sink gracefully back into oblivion having lit it.

"It's so easy," they kept on saying. "It's the right time to do it, eh?"

Timing is all, my friends.

"What dyou get out of it though?"

A party, I say grinning. Laughs.

But I also got two strange and unlooked-for bonuses.

When the first half sheep was outside cooling, a cat wraith came round.

Dear ghost, I was thin but this was parchment skin on starved bones. It gnawed at the scraps of fat on the ground, at tiny bits of leftover offal. Nobody kicked, but nobody stroked it; nobody owned and nobody wanted it… with an excess of kindness brought on by the beer, I shared my lunch with it, and now find the first of my responsibilities hath come home to roost. Maybe in that way, its thinness was advantageous. It slid into the bach without me noticing, and then fed itself into my heart.

It is a very young cat, not much more than a kitten indeed. From the pale-brown colour and wedgehead, I'd say it was a Siamese's bastard. It has the dark brown mask, but no other markings. Its tail is another leg, a feeler, a toucher, a finger.

It needs such a subtle tail. It has no eyes.

I thought it was the starvation, eh. But the sockets are empty and sealed. I don't think it ever had eyes. The mask has no relief.

I named it. One must name cats, people, whoever whatever comes close, even though they carry their real names hidden inside them. I named this one, Li.

The hexagram name, The Fire, Brilliant Beauty.

For it is not a remote cat, as one would think blindness would make it. It winds about me, begging for touch. It sits on my shoulders, throbbing with the small rough sound of content. It can perch there, admirably balanced, while I walk.

It is a civilised cat, and a keen and curious cat. It gets to know where it is very quickly; who is there, what is there. It is an armed and raking cat, with wicked scythe claws, always retracted when I touch but otherwise ready for anything (as a luckless gull, disputing Li's food this morning, discovered). It devours food — but it has a stronger need for affection. (It hates other cats… it's a female, and since I suspect bastard Siamese are as randy as the true breed, that'll probably soon change… but for the moment, other cats are greeted with an edgy growl, and the dull dun fur stands up in ridges and flakes.) Fiery cat. Strange cat. Neat cat.

I have never owned an animal before. I am glad of her.

My second bonus was a man, and his trade.

He was beery-eyed, a droop-bellied fellow who wobbled over to where I was sitting, and flopped down. Nearly went through the clean new floorboards of the hall we've yet to name.

He said, "Hiccup. Sheesh. How're yer gain mate?"

I tried a basso profundo. More than one word and it tickled the throat to a desperate squeak. So he discovered I wasn't male under the denim and leather and silk.

"Censored. Never thought a woman could use a hammer like that… don't tell me yer rar carpenter by trade?"