Keri Hulme - The Bone People

he never showed it to me.

It gnaws at him: he has this one thing left of her, this secondhand,

barely-touched half-formed relic of her presence.

And he no longer really wants it.

And he knows the rock of desolation, and the deep of despair.

SHE HAD DEBATED, in the frivolity of the beginning, whether

to build a hole or a tower; a hole, because she was fond of hobbits,

or a tower well,

a tower for many reasons, but chiefly because

she liked spiral stairways.

As time went on, and she thought over the pros and cons of each,

the idea of a tower became increasingly exciting; a stargazing

platform on top; a quiet library, book-lined, with a ring of swords

on the nether wall; a bedroom, mediaeval style, with massive roofbeams and a plain hewn bed; there'd be a living room with a huge

fireplace, and rows of spicejars on one wall, and underneath, on

the ground level, an entrance hall hung with tapestries, and the

beginnings of the spiral stairway, handrails dolphin-headed, saluting

the air.

There'd be a cellar, naturally, well stocked with wines, homebrewed

and imported vintage; lined with Chinese ginger jars, and

wooden boxes of dates. Barrels round the walls, and shadowed chests

in corners.

All through the summer sun she laboured, alone with the paid,

bemused, professional help. The dust obscured and flayed, thirst

parched, and tempers frayed, but the Tower grew. A concrete

skeleton, wooden ribs and girdle, skin of stone, grey and slate blue

and heavy honey-coloured. Until late one February it stood, gaunt

and strange and embattled, built on an almost island in the shallows

of an inlet, tall in Taiaroa.

It was the hermitage, her glimmering retreat. No people invited,

for what could they know of the secrets that crept and chilled and

chuckled in the marrow of her bones? No need of people, because

she was self-fulfilling, delighted with the pre-eminence of her art,

and the future of her knowing hands.

But the pinnacle became an abyss, and the driving joy ended. At

last there was a prison.

I am encompassed by a wall, high and hard and stone, with only

my brainy nails to tear it down.

And I cannot do it.

"… like our bullock, Jack. Bugger'll be on the old age pension before he's killed."

"Yeah, but look who's laughing meantime?"

There was a rattle of laughter round the bar.

Kerewin, sitting apart, rang a coin on the counter and beckoned

the barman.

"Same again?"

"Yes please."

This ship that sets its sails forever

rigid on my coin

is named Endeavour.

She buys a drink to bar the dreams

of the long nights lying.

The world is never what it seems

and the sun is dying…

She shrugs.

Wonder what would happen if I started singing out loud?

The beer moves in a whirlpool to the lip of the glass: the hose

withdraws.

"Had a nice night?" asks the barman politely.

It's the first thing anybody has said to her.

"Yeah."

He hands her back the change.

"Fishing been any good?"

How long did it take to get round town that I had bought a

boat?

"O fair enough," she says, "fair enough."

"Well, that's good…." he mops the bartop cursorily and drifts

away down to the other end of the bar, to the talk and the overcurious

people.

It's late, Holmes, way after eleven. There's no point in staying.

There had been no point in coming to the pub either, other than

to waste some more time, and drink some more beer.

Guffaws.

Somebody's in the middle of a rambling drunken anecdote. A Maori,

thickset, a working bloke with steel-toed boots, and black hair down to his shoulders. He's got his fingers stuck in his belt, and the heavy brass buckle of it glints and twinkles as he teeters back and forwards."…And then fuckin hell would you believe he takes the candle…."

I'd believe the poor effing fella's short of words. Or thought. Or maybe just intellectual energy.

The word is used monotonously, a sad counterbalance for every phrase. "And no good for even fuckin Himi eh? Shit, no use, I said…."

Why this speech filled with bitterness and contempt? You hate English, man? I can understand that but why not do your conversing in Maori and spare us this contamination? No swear words in that tongue… there he goes again. Ah hell, the fucking word has its place, but all the time?… aue.

Kerewin shakes her head. No use thinking about it. She drains her glass, slips off the stool, and heads for the door.

The group at the end of the bar turns round to stare. The man stops his yarn and smiles blurrily at her. She didn't smile back.

"Goodnight," calls the barman.

"Goodnight."

The crayfish moved in silence through clear azure water. Bright scarlet armour, waving antennae, red legs stalking onward. Azure and scarlet. Beautiful.

It was about then she realised she was in the middle of a dream, because living crayfish were purple-maroon and orange: only when cooked, do they turn scarlet. A living boiled cray? A crayfish cooking as it walked calmly through a hot pool?

She shuddered. The crayfish moved more quickly through the blue crystal sea and the fog of dreaming increased-

It is still dark but she can't sleep any more. She dresses and goes down to the beach, and sits on the top of a sandhill until the sky pales.

Another day, herr Gott, and I am tired, tired.

She stands, and grimaces, and spits. The spittle lies on the sand a moment, a part of her a moment ago, and then it vanishes, sucked in, a part of the beach now.

Fine way to greet the day, my soul… go down to the pools, Te Kaihau, and watch away the last night sourness.

And here I am, balanced on the salt stained rim, watching minute navy-blue fringes, gill-fingers of tubeworms, fan the water… put the shadow of a finger near them, and they flick outasight. Eyes in your lungs… neat. The three-fin blenny swirls by… tena koe, fish. A small bunch of scarlet and gold anemones furl and unfurl their arms, graceful petals slow and lethal… tickle tickle, and they turn into uninteresting lumps of brownish jelly… haven't made sea-anemone soup for a while, whaddaboutit? Not today, Josephine… at the bottom, in a bank of brown bulbous weed, a hermit crab is rustling a shell. Poking at it, sure it's empty? Ditheringly unsure… but now, nervously hunched over his soft slug of belly, he extricates himself from his old hutch and speeds deftly into the new… at least, that's where you thought you were going, e mate?… hoowee, there really is no place like home, even when it's grown a couple of sizes too small-

There is a great bank of Neptune's necklaces fringing the next pool.

"The sole midlittoral fuccoid," she intones solemnly, and squashes a bead of it under the butt of her stick. "Ann me father he was orange and me mother she was green," slithers off the rocks, and wanders further away down the beach, humming. Nothing like a tidepool for taking your mind off things, except maybe a quiet spot of killing-

Walking the innocent stick alongside, matching its step to hers, she climbs back up the sandhills. Down the other side in a rush, where it is dark and damp still, crashing through loose clusters of lupins. Dew sits in the centre of each lupin-leaf, hands holding jewels to catch the sunfire until she brushes past and sends the jewels sliding, drop by drop weeping off.

The lupins grow less; the marram grass diminishes into a kind of reedy weed; the sand changes by degrees into mud. It's an estuary, where someone built a jetty, a long long time ago. The planking has rotted, and the uneven teeth of the pilings jut into nowhere now.