Keri Hulme - The Bone People

"Right. We'll get that over with."

Joe removes the bandages Kerewin had put on without a word. For a minute, strangely like his son, he won't meet her eyes. When he does, his eyes are full of tears. It takes Simon's slow headshake, straight stare at his father, so full of disgust, so full of disbelief, so exaggerated Regrets now? Ah come on, to break the tension.

"Ah you," says Joe, half-laughing, half-crying.

"Yeah, ah you," Kerewin grins helplessly to the child's sly grin.

There is, after all, really nothing else to say.

That curious impersonal property sense parents display over their young children's bodies… check this, examine that, peer here, clean there, all as though it's an extension of their own body they're handling, not another person-

She's amused by that.

Ostensibly, she's revolving her ersatz champagne glass (very odd tit Madame de Poitier would have had to make this one, sausage-shaped and nippleless…) and watching the bubbles extinguish

themselves. But out of the corners of her eyes, she studies the man and his child.

Most of the time, Joe sits on his haunches and oversees. Simon is way old enough to bath himself, but he checks what the boy does, and when he needs help, helps gently, competently.

Hell, the brat is positively chewed looking. Thick with wales. He'll carry his scars for life. Yet he doesn't seem concerned. He flinches occasionally but not away from his father's ministrations, from the touch of water… and the weird thing is, it's Joe who sucks his breath in each time, as though it was him that was hurting.

Bloody mixed up pair, she thinks, fashed in the head and still making it in the heart.

And now I'm embroiled. She asks, covering her moroseness,

"That hole in his left earlobe… what from?"

"Huh?" and they both turn to look at her, startled.

"During the contretemps this afternoon, I noticed Sim has a small hole in his ear. Is it from an earring?"

"God help us," Joe sounds stunned, "you saw that while hitting me?"

"Yes, and I haven't forgotten I said I'd tell you where I learned to fight."

"I'm not sure I want to know now… probably a pact and personal teaching from some taipo," he says in a soft aside to the child that she is meant to overhear. "That hole, yeah, it's from an earring. He had a heavy gold thing in it, like a keeper, when he arrived. He wore it until early this year. He got teased too much about it at school, so I took it out for him. He still carts it round… in your dufflebag now, isn't it?" and Simon nods.

"O. No marks on it, I suppose?"

"No marks."

"Pity… and pity you had it taken out, ould Ireland, because gypsy or hippy, pirate or fisherman, it'd become you," and the child blinks. "I mean, it would look good, besides being ever-ready coin for Charon, which would have been handy before," she says drily. "You won't need it for that now we've come to an understanding, though… speaking of which, e hoa, here's why you got clobbered this afternoon," and she launches into the tale of her year in an aikido dojo in Japan.

She had been attracted to aikido because she had heard that it was some kind of super-karate, the ultimate kung fu. It wasn't anything of the kind, she said, but it took a while for her to learn that.

"To quote a master of it, 'Aikido walks the way of the universal, and has as its sole aim, the perfection of humankind.' The techniques are based on unifying mind and body and spirit, but they're

immensely practical in any kind of fight. But you're failing if your only aim is to beat up your opponent. I couldn't understand that… I was the ultimate warring barbarian. Slam crash along comes Holmes… chuck out yer morals and spiritualese, show me how to gut 'em in half a second flat. Stomp strangle and maim hooray! I didn't stay that long, not long enough to become really expert, but I can handle six ordinary attackers at once quite comfortably."

"No wonder you waded over me then-"

"Yeah, it wasn't that difficult… but I've seen an old woman in the Hombu dojo take on ten armed men, knives and sticks and bottles, or rather let them take her on, and she just massacred them. Or rather, let them massacre each other… quite a sight," she shakes her head slowly. "Massacre in the figurative sense," she adds, seriously.

"I hoped you meant it like that."

"Mmm, well… I left Japan after a year, screaming about getting up at five every day to practise, practise, practise. Screaming about spending two hours every day in misogi breathing. Screaming about the food, about not being able to test the techniques I'd learned in match situations, screaming about everything."

"No contests?"

"They're forbidden… look, I'll quote you some words, and the thing might become a bit clearer. Just a minute."

She lifts down her guitar case, and takes a small book out of it.

"When I came back to good old Aotearoa after the Japan fiasco — I didn't get kicked out, incidentally, I kicked myself out — I started thinking about all they tried to teach me, and ended up agreeing with them. I didn't do much about it, I had started building at Whangaroa for one thing, and I felt heartily ashamed, for another. But I wrote out a lot of sayings that had been given to me, and added a few bits of my own," waving the book in the air. "That's part of this."

She sits back by the range. "These potatoes smell about done… you nearly finished?"

"I'll just wash his hair."

"Okay. Here goes… Aiki is not a technique to fight with… it is the way to reconcile the world, and make human beings one family. Winning means winning over the mind of discord in yourself. It is to accomplish your bestowed mission. Holmes addendum: and to discover your bestowed mission. Love is the guardian deity of everything. Nothing can exist without it. Aikido is the realisation of love. The way," stopping reading, and explaining, "Do is Japanese for a way. Ai means love, harmony, and ki is the vital spirit. Aikido can mean, the way of martial spiritual harmony, okay?" "Okay," says Joe."… The way means to be one with the will of deity, and practise

it. How can you straighten your warped mind, purify your heart, and be at harmony with the activities of all things in the universe? You should first make God's heart yours. There is no discord in love. There is no enemy in love."

Joe is frowning. He doesn't say anything except, "Keep your eyes covered, tama" when he pours water over the child's soapy hair.

"Even standing with my back to the opponent is enough. When he attacks, hitting, he will injure himself with his own intention to hit. I am one with the love of the universe, and I am nothing else. There is no time or space before Uyeshiba of Aikido — only the universe as it is."

She stands, and puts the small book back inside the guitar case. The guitar strings hum faintly as the lid goes down.

"That writer was Morihei Uyeshiba, founder and master of Aikido."

The silence continues.

Coming back to the range, she opens the oven door and pokes the nearest spud.

"Done to a turn, e hoa ma-"

Simon stands in a flood and shower of drips. Joe wraps a towel round him, and bundles him out of the bath onto the stool.

Joe, towelling the child dry,

"So you picked up the techniques, but not the spirit of it?"

The question was unexpected. The silence had lasted so long that she thought she must have bored the man with the length of the quotations. She answers,

"Since the techniques really concern spiritual development, I didn't pick up anything except enough physical knowledge to make me extremely dangerous in any fight with anyone who isn't an aikido expert. I'm good enough to take the beginners… I started out with a cold temper, fast reactions, a killer instinct, as well as Maori ancestors… all of which makes me someone to avoid when I'm in a nasty mood. Don't worry," she says grinning, her teeth shining red in the light from the open firebox door, "the philosophy is over for the duration, and I promise never to fight you again. Not without serious provocation, that is. Like not eating this superbly cooked meal… oops, the chops seem a bit crisp-"