Keri Hulme - The Bone People

He is silent for a minute.

"He has got that of me, I suppose. My breath… I was surprised when he started coughing. I hadn't any hope in my heart at all. He was so small, and limp. We didn't think he was much more than two or three, thin and fair with arms and legs like sticks. Sweet Lord, was he skinny! You think he's bad now," grinning at her, "you ought to have seen him then-"

Silence again.

"His eyes were black, all pupil, and he didn't see me at all. I thought he was a girl at first, you know because of the hair, but when I picked him up I saw his penis. He had on the top half of a pair of pyjamas — still around here somewhere as a matter of fact. Common kind, you can buy them at any Woolworth's. And a life jacket. One of those orange things that are two pockets of kapok and a collar for joining them. They go over your head?"

She nods. "I know them."

"He was almost literally black and blue all over from cold and bruising. I didn't know it till after, but his left hand was smashed, his left arm broken in two places, three ribs on that side were fractured, and both his collarbones were cracked. Like he had hit

something very hard, arm first. I just picked him up, and wrapped him in my coat, and ran back, was blown back, snouting like a lunatic with the wind cutting into my kidneys like a knife. And after that, everything is a bit blurred. The ambulance ride into Taiwhenuawera with two corpses for company. Long waiting, or it seemed like it, in hospital rooms with huge bright lights. Examinations, and him screaming his head off. He seemed to come back to life very quickly. Scared as hell, but even when he was half-conscious, he was clinging like a leech to my hand all the time he could and they'd let him. Shock, exposure, pneumonia, he should be dead, said the hospital, and enumerated the breaks. I stayed the night with him, because he was upset whenever I stopped holding his hand, and Hana came up and stayed with me." He adds, "Did you know Hana was a nurse?"

He leans forward and stubs out his smoke, avoiding her eyes.

"No."

"Two other things," he says, after a while. "He had obviously been in hospital before, and it was clear early on, from the way he reacted, that the other time had been bad. X-rays showed he had had widespread injuries to his pelvis and hips, and they would have kept him in hospital for quite a while, the medics reckoned. The other thing is, he never talked. Screamed, my God could he scream! He was, and is, a fluent screamer. But he never said anything, or acted like he was used to talking. The ENT bloke who examined him said there was no physical reason to prevent him from speaking. He's got all the gear needed, eh. But if he vocalises, he throws up, and violently."

"Words?"

"No, just sounds."

"Hmm."

"Well, there was a coroner's court, to get back to the story. I testified. Piri testified. Tass Dansy testified. Half of Whangaroa testified, one way or the other, and enjoyed it very much. The pathologist said the woman was in her late thirties, the man in his early thirties, and both had been in good health. No distinguishing marks or scars — most unusual, said the pathologist, and left it at that.

"The police never got a report of any people of their description missing, and they made enquiries as far afield as Britain. The bodies and the survivor were, and are, unidentifiable. The one object that might have helped is in two hundred fathoms of current ridden water, and nobody wants to have a go at getting to it. You know, I often wonder about the others on board, because I think there were others. Aside from Tass seeing maybe a couple extra, Himi used to be scared of meeting people, like he expected to see someone from the wreck he didn't want to see."

"How much does he remember?"

"Nothing that he's telling, if he remembers anything at all. Sweet Jesus, he was too young to know how old he was. He didn't even know his name, or if he did, he couldn't ever tell us. Hana called him Simon Peter because he initially reacted to that name most of all. We tried lists of them, hundreds… actually, he reacted to quite a few, some of them odd as hell. We thought they might have been people he had known or places he'd been to or something like that. I'm pretty sure that O'Connor was the name of the people he was with, for instance."

"People he was with? Not his parents?"

"Not according to blood groups, definitely not his parents."

"A real live mystery… what other names?"

"Well, one morning he heard something on the radio and got really agitated. Tried to drag Hana to listen to it. What he wanted to hear was over by the time she got there, so she rang the station and they kindly sent her the news broadcast, because that's what it was. And the item Himi went almost berserk over was about a shark attack on a Dunedin beach."

"O, I remember that."

"Well, where did it get us? Nowhere, because he shut up tight and wouldn't say any more. Another thing used to be Citroen cars. He had a bee in his bonnet about them for some reason. And fires… he doesn't mind them now, but at one time he was even afraid of matches."

"A strange collection… how do his beads fit in? Are they your, were they your wife's?"

Joe shakes his head.

"The case was my wife's, that's all. Those beads were his lucky talisman for over a year. He wasn't separated from them ever. Not in bed, not in the bath, not anywhere. Nobody got to have a good look at them for quite a while. They were in the pocket of the woman's blouse. They were shown to him to see if he knew them. He knew them all right. He grabbed them, kissed the ring on them, and thereafter wouldn't let them go. For over a year, as I said. If you wanted to see them, you had to fight him for them, literally. One time, when the police were still trying to find out who he was, a senior detective type came from Wellington to photograph them, and try and question Himi. He would have been about four at this time, I suppose."

Again shaking his head before a vivid memory.

"And my oath! the racket! We told him we were only going to look at his precious beads, but it didn't make an iota of difference. In the end, I grabbed his arms and pinioned his legs, and carried him out of the room, after Hana had removed the beads. We were regarded as poison for a month after."

"He holds grudges, eh?"

"No," says Joe, very slowly, "no, he doesn't hold grudges. He was

just too frightened of us to trust us for a while, and that's after we had looked after him for over a year. By the way, he's only sort of adopted. Because no-one can find out who he is, it couldn't ever be finalised. And besides, my personal status had altered the last time they asked about him. Hana, and my other son, had died by then."

"I am sorry." They are always inadequate, words… if I knew you better, or I was a warmer person, I would hongi, but-

"Yeah." He sits, looking into the flames. "Timote was ten months old, and Hana was thirty, and they died of flu. Which has always struck me as stupid and unfair. Imagine, flu!"

He spits. There are tears filling his eyes.

She doesn't say anything.

"O drink up, Kerewin. I'm boring you." He puts the bottle down. "Excuse me please, I'm going to check on Himi." He strides out of the room, banging the door shut.

O hell, she thinks, a fine end to the night. He's a right emotional boil, and so's the kid, and I suppose no wonder the both of them.

She looked at the wine settling flat in her glass, and drank it, morosely.

Kerewin, beneath the distant luminous dust of stars: so that's what there is to know of Gillayleys in their queer strait antiseptic haven. She stretched her arms, wide as a cross, and something small and bony snapped in her chest.

She swore, and closed her arms in a hurry.

Snapped a wishbone without a wish… what would I wish for anyway? A return of the spirit of joy? It won't come back by