Keri Hulme - The Bone People

"Wow," I say at last, coherent and apt and precise as always.

"I'm afraid you won't be able to claim this," he heheheh's discreetly and I he-he-he back with distinct undertones of hysteria, "but we hope to be able to assist with your expenses for, just a minute constable, well, I suppose this can wait… Miz Holmes, if you've got a minute more, Constable Morrison and friend are waiting to talk to you."

And then it was three again, the trinity regained in a microcosmic way.

Well, numero deus impure gaudet.

She flexes her fingers. She's been writing for over an hour. The cat yawns and stretches on her lap. "A few more minutes, Li, so settle down. I want to do this properly."

Not an arbitrary end, like when I crushed the suneater to death. Something of tender ritual, an exorcism of all the past despair. A meet end to make a fit beginning.

She picks up the pen again, thinks a minute.

So we'll make that seven new directions for my life — Deity might as well delight in yet another odd number… imagine this a skewed compass rose, with a tempered steel needle flexing before a magnetic wind; rose and needle myself, and the wind? the wind, my dear sour other self, is that of chance and change. Direction one, is recovery; two, a renewed talent; three, rebuilding; and four, tying up loose ends, making the net whole. Direction five is endeavouring not to dodge responsibilities, for me, or a wandering cat, or whomever. Six is related: I know I can move, can lead, can direct. Therefore, I will. No more sequestration, no more Holmes against the world. And seven is the pivot, the point of balance for the needle of my true soul — I have faced Death. I have been caught in the wild weed tangles of Her hair, in the gleam of her jade eyes. I will go when it is time — no choice! — but now I want life.

It's been a rare year, o paper soul, and against all the preceding bitterness and bile, this one shining scrawl… maybe I should fold you away to pull you out again in a decade, see whether the flowering, that now seems promised, came; see whether it was untimely frostbit, or died without fruit, because you chart the real deeps of me. No: I hold you a pelorus, a flexing mirror, strange quarters for the wind of God.

I follow the Chinese: on the funeral pyre of our dead selves, I place a paper replica of what is real. Ghost, follow the other ghosts — haere, haere, haere ki te po! Go easy to the Great Lady of the Night, and if we ever meet in the dimension where dreams are real, I shall embrace you and we shall laugh, at last.

She caps the pen, closes the book softly. Packs it gently away in the wooden chest. Leans over and places it in the heart of the fire, and closes the range door upon it. The blind cat leaps from her lap, and dances highpawed on lean back legs.

"Yeah, cat Li, it's time to go."

Time to hit the high road.

Time to go home.

Ice crystal haloes round the stars, the crash of waves down on the beach, sweet-scented air breathed in with the wine on my breath, breath.

It doesn't really matter, any of it… and on the instant, it does matter, and I hesitate to upset the moonshadow of a stone.

Sudden flare and splash of light. The crack of fireworks brazening through the night. It's still dark, but the day is drawing near.

Shaking her head over the din,

As well we're an cutaway place… someone's playing that accordion again, and there goes a guitar. They're never all going to go to sleep at the same time. Someone always wakes up. Wakes everyone else up. The reedy song winds plaintively above the throb of the guitars.

It's music and singing and talk talk talk… I come out into the dying night air and a bunch of rockets charge moonwards. Shrieks and whoops and hollering as another snail-hunting party seeks its quarry in the dew-wet grass. "Getit! Yeehai! EEEEK!"… maybe an especially speedy fella? The ones I saw inside were looking distinctly puzzled by all the free greenery.

Teach Luce to ask for a real French salad-We play on, apes

and larrikins all.

Walking down the sinew of track stretched white and tight through the muscle of the hill. Seaward, to that finger of land where the mauri waits, and spins its magic in deep silence.

He wanders through the brand-new rooms, through knots of happy people, chattering people, singing-tired and weeping-drunk people. Couples of all kinds.

Two wrinkled old bodies, Kerewin's great great aunts, cossetted together, full of mothmirth and dry seedy shadows of laughter. Knocking each other's ribs with sharp elbows, plucking at one another with bony fingers, flickering from flame of dirty memory to flame of dirty joke. "So I sol' mesel' soul an' arse'ol, an' never did regret it," husk husk croak croak tee hee hee.

He inclines his head to them.

Two people, pulsing by themselves in a darkish corner.

He steps over them.

Two more, his own relations, Wherahiko and Marama, arms about each other, keeping themselves warm. Pile of grandchildren sprawled round asleep, young arms at angles and curve of sleeping cheek… but no bright head here. Search on… his eyes do, while he stands.

Wherahiko: We don't want to be left out, to sit ignored in the corner, but we might as well be. All the things we've got to tell, years of love and life and hate. We'd be a good drink for them, a fullbodied mature wine, and look at them! Overcome by fizzy pop, lollywater brew…

sweeping his eyes round, fierce as a hawk, over the grandchildren pile. Winking to Joe.

Marama: When they want to listen, they'll listen. We can't wake them up just to tell them our stories. They're busy making their own. And in the meantime, my love, we've got each other,

sliding her plump arm closer, tighter.

Winking to Joe.

A wave of flat and heavy music drowns the homemade plunk and whine and chorus. Stereo blaring, ingots of sound beating the ears, people stirring fukthisracket, louder louder LOUDER and someone bawls out and somebody else switches it off. Ahhh, snore, snore, except for Timote, whimpering out of sleep.

Marama picks him up.

"Over there," she croons to Joe, "over there," cuddling the sleepy child quiet.

Here's the other one, his smile riddled by sleep, nearly out on his feet.

Pick him up, kiss him, give him goodnight.

The rangy black man, spruce in midnight velvet, steps to his side. He watches with a possessive love and pride.

"Want to wish him sweet dreams?"

"Surely, man."

Sharing a look that is communion, black eyes to brown eyes, O we've all had a hand in this venture.

Stepping over more feet and busy bodies.

Sunflowers and seashells and logarithmic spirals (said Kerewin); sweep of galaxies and the singing curve of the universe (said Kerewin);,

the oscillating wave thrumming in the nothingness of every atom's heart (said Kerewin); did you think I could build a square house?

So the round shell house holds them all in its spiralling embrace.

Noise and riot, peace and quiet, all is music in this sphere.

It's sweet to walk through it, looking for a calm place to put him to bed.

Yesterday afternoon, back I came, crowded round with strangers who had taken my invitation for hers, and were too eager to recognise a mistake. My battleready Kerewin went down under the peaceflags. There's herself, content in the long wordless embrace given by her mother. Herself pushed and pummelled and hugged as though she were a child by all her tall brothers (he sniggers, watching as they duck and swerve away from her return punches, all of them aware of how lethal a woman she is). Herself, propped against her fat and comfortable moon-eyed sister, arms round each other's necks all good cheers and covered tears and matey friendship.