Keri Hulme - The Bone People

"I resign?"

"Well, you can play it out if you really want to, but you're doomed." She sounds smug, she knows. But she likes winning.

The child brings back a packet of cigarettes. He takes out two, and lights them.

She says hastily,

"I don't smoke those cigarettes, thanks all the same," and Joe replies,

"The other one is probably for him. If he had proper manners," reaching up and catching Simon round the waist, and sitting him down on his lap abruptly, "which he hasn't, and can't seem to learn, he would have handed you the packet first."

The boy's already got one cigarette in his mouth, giving the other one to Joe.

"Ka pai, e tama… but see you remember others first next time." Simon gestures to Kerewin in a quick pointed traverse that sweeps to her face round to her side pocket and back to himself. Then he

lies back in the strong circle of his father's arms, and blows a smoke-plume at her with calm expertise.

"Even so, you still offer… he says you smoke something you keep in your pocket, but if you want a smoke you can have his?"

"Ah, no thanks…" she took out the silver container lined with cedar wood that held her cigarillos. "He's right, I normally smoke these. A pipe or cigars on occasion, but rarely cigarettes." She lit a cigarillo. "Ahhh," hunting for words that didn't sound too critical or meddlesome, when Joe says,

"Him smoking eh? Well, he's allowed to when I'm around. He doesn't inhale much, just plays at it. Makes him feel grownup or something," and he leans over and kisses Simon's upturned face. "No harm done anyway."

"None of my business, I know, but it's a little unusual to find the matter treated rationally. Most parents I've had the misfortune to meet don't think about it at all. They instantly assume if their young kid smokes, it's wrong. Doesn't matter if they smoke themselves — watch out, kid! A good example of how parents in our society tend easily to tyranny — I shall make or mould my child as i see fit, without too much reference to the developing personality or needs of the child." She grins suddenly. "And here's me talking who classes children as something more remote from humanity than your average snail!"

Joe smiles. "You're a dispassionate observer, or at least uninvolved… it's awkward to treat this one as my personal property. He's apt to remind me he's a developing personality about two dozen times of an evening. In a particularly stressful way, at that."

"Heigh ho for children's lib," as she puts down her beer, and begins to set up the chessboard again.

Smoke clouds grow and dwindle. The game continues, a leisurely vying of mental strength. And a reaching out from either side, a growing pleasure as the knowledge comes. This is someone I shall be able to call friend.

Simon comes over, and looks, and cuts his throat crossways airily.

"Go get lost," says Joe, "I can see I'm not winning without your cheerful interpretation." Kerewin coughs.

"Simon? There's another bottle of beer in the cooler. Would you open it for us, please?"

And,

"You can pour my glass if you want, yes."

"Don't get sarcastic, that's all," says Joe.

Barely a head on it, professionally poured.

"See?" says Joe, spreading his hand, "told you, eh? Smart arse," he mutters to himself. Pushes his king over.

And the third game.

"Moonmaker, sunraker, o wild song for my ruby guitar," sang Kerewin, very quietly, "ah hah," sneaking up on a bishop.

And Simon, ceased from wandering round the room, lay peacefully stealing fallen chessmen from Joe's side of the board and adding them to Kerewin's hoard.

It was a much longer game.

He can feel mind muscles long-unused, stretching and beginning to feel their way to action again. He played with concentration and was aware that the woman was directing only half her attention to the game, and that the half was enough.

"You are top good," he burst out, "too good. I feel as though every move I make is manoeuvred, that I'm doing exactly what you want me to do."

"On the contrary," she said mildly. "I play opportunist chess, and it's largely dependent on what you do. Or don't," grinning wolfishly.

He looked at her. Looked at his doomed bishop and castle-bound king. Looked at small Simon smiling his gap-toothed happy-idiot smile up at his marvellous newfound friend.

(SHE GOT RINGS. SHE PLAY THE GUITAR FOR ME.

"She liked you?"

NO.)

"Aue," said Joe, but wasn't miserable at all. In this strange round room, warm and full of a golden feeling of companionship, Himi good and sweet beside me, how could I be? "E hoa, I think you just won again."

Dark man lying full length by the fire, pale child huddled at his side.

The firelight dances, ruddying them and the chessboard, all men now neatly packed away. Wars of small kingdoms in forgotten lands, what do chessmen dream of in the dark? She was brewing cocoa, a final drink before the Gillayleys left.

For herself and Joe at least: the boy had drifted off to sleep towards the end of the last game, and his father was reluctant to wake him.

"He doesn't sleep well," he said. "If he falls asleep, I leave him sleeping. Else I have to feed him dope, so he'll go down at night."

Evocative phrase, 'go down at night' — down to Sheol or some other gibbering dark, or ride the restless tumbril of dreams-

"Dope?" she had asked.

"O, some stuff from the medic. Red and syrupy. Doesn't taste too bad."

Stirring sugar and cocoa and a little warm water together, until the whole achieved the consistency and fragrance of melted chocolate:

"Joe, why doesn't he sleep well?"

The man's smile is crooked.

"Bad dreams. He doesn't like going to sleep because he'll dream bad dreams." He twisted round and looked in open wonderment at the still child. "Spooked, would you believe?"

"Spooked, I'd believe."

He wasn't quite joking, nor was he truly serious. There was a strained gaiety in his voice.

"Scared of ghosts and things in dreams… if I was proper Maori I'd…."

Into the following silence,

"You'd what?"

"Hah, I don't know." He laughed quietly. "Maybe take him to people who'd know what to do, to keep off ghosts in dreams." Laughing again, a dry unfunny sound like a cough, "See? Bloody superstitious Nga Bush? Get the Maori a bad name, eh?"

Kerewin, carefully looking into the cup,

"When I worked at Motueka in the tobacco a few years ago, I knew two girls who were really spooked. One was Pakeha, the other, city Maori. They heard things breathing on them at night, and there was no-one there. Damp patches appeared on the ceiling and the floor of their bach, and no-one spilt anything. And books and jugs would fall over when there was no wind, and no-one to touch them, eh. And then the footsteps started, and they couldn't sleep any more… the whole thing was quite stupid, but it had gathered a menacing quality from somewhere. Or something."

Joe was staring, unmoving.

"So the Maori wrote to her mother, who went into a trance, and found out an aunt of the girl didn't like her going round with another woman. She had spooked them. Makutu, nei? The mother said to go to a Catholic priest and get some holy water, and bless themselves and the bach. She was one of the people who know what to do."

"It worked?" There was tension tight in his voice.

"It worked. No more odd things happening. No more scared girls." She brought over the mugs of coffee. "Probably one pissed-off aunt though," she said, sitting down.

Joe grinned.

"Ah hell, I should've kept inside the faith. Might have helped me after all." He said it lightly. Then, slowly, "You speak Maori, and know a bit about, about things. Are you Maori by any chance?"

Kerewin, blue-eyed, brown-haired, and mushroom pale, looked back at him. "If I was in America, I'd be an octoroon." Paused. "It's