Keri Hulme - The Bone People

"It's going to be a high wild tide," she tells them when she returns, "but that wind'll drop before too much longer. Then all we have to worry about is rain. Or maybe snow."

"Great." Joe keeps on staring at the fury before him. The great waves roll in, crests streaming away before the wind like long white hair. Near shore, the sea is latticed with a scum of yellowish froth. There is a constant grinding thunder as shoals of rocks rumble up and down in the violent boil of water. At last he says,

"Aue tama, we better get our stuff packed too."

The boy spends an hour going through his hoard. He selects all the seacrystalled glass, two perfect lampshells, one black and one red, and three of the holed stones; a paua shell Joe had garnered from the reef, and the big crab claw Kerewin jokingly calls his roach holder.

("Lookat it, chela of Ozius truncatus, defunct, perfect for gripping the teeniest roach…."

"Struth Kere, he's got more than a taste for booze as it is. Don't encourage him to start on anything else.")

He piles all the rest of his collection into a kete and staggers to the door with it.

"Where are you putting that?"

On the beach, point point.

"What about all those stones Kerewin wanted?"

Simon lifts his eyebrows.

"You're growing to be a bit of meanie, fella. Leave some where she can find them. She might have been serious about keeping them for her family."

OK signs the boy and lurches outside.

He stands behind the fence and throws each piece to the hungry waves, telling them thank you and goodbye. The bag is still heavy with holey stones when he has finished. He takes it round to the back of the old bach, where there's an alleyway between the building and its landward fence. Some craypots and a rusted tank are stored there, but it doesn't seem used for anything else. All she had done was look into it without commenting, when she was showing them round. He squats beside the tank and forms words with the stones. He croons to himself, They won't know, They won't know, making the letters good and big. But he hasn't enough stones, and the last two letters of the third word have to be left off. He looks at his message for quite a time, wondering whether it would be better, safer, to kick the phrase into disarray. It looks vaguely threatening as it is. He shrugs. It's too late. Whatever is going to happen, will happen, and there is nothing at all he can do about it now.

He leaves the message as it is.

The rain has ceased. The sky this morning is so pale a blue it appears white at first glance. The wind is gone. The air is very still: the sea roar is magnified, and every birdcall piercingly clear.

A clean refreshed land, she thinks, walking along the tideline for the last time.

Maybe there are such things as second chances, even if dreams go unanswered-

(Back by the car, Joe says, "I don't want to go either, but you've got school, and I've got work, and we don't have any choice eh?" Sighing, "If only she would-" He smiles unhappily to his child, his words an echo in his head, if only she would, if only. Simon smiles bleakly back. "Would you like it if I asked her to marry me?" and the child's smile lightens and his eyes go bright kingfisher green. "Ah, you would too," the man laughs, and his heart is easy all of a sudden.

Should I ask her when she comes back to us? No, not yet, not yet….)

He contents himself by saying as they leave,

"We been good? We can come back?" grinning broadly, his eyes dancing.

He's glad to get away from the place? Ah hell, who cares? "Oh yeah," says Kerewin coldly. "There's always next time."

HELLO, AGAIN.

I planned to try and unravel the tangle of dream and substance that is me, my family, Moerangi… but I am overwhelmed by futility. What use is it to know? What use is it, when I am gutted by the sense of my own uselessness?

Through poverty, godhunger, the family debacle, I kept a sense of worth. I could limn and paint like no-one else in this human-wounded land: I was worth the while of living. Now my skill is dead. I should be.

But I can't.

Let the razor sleek into my flesh. The numb night of overdose send me stillness.

So I exist, a husk that wishes decay into sweet earth.

Writing nonsense in a journal no-one ever sees.

"Ah to hell, Holmes, you take yourself far too seriously." Locking the book away in its chest.

I can hear it whining in the dark to itself, Despair, despair, there's no-one here. I should climb in with it, and we could whimper in company. Each unaware of the other.

She had dropped the Gillayleys at Pacific Street, refusing their offer of dinner. She had sold the car at the nearest sales yard, and walked home.

This Tasman sea is grey and wild, and there is no island with dream marae at its core… There was a film of dust over everything in the Tower.

The suneater burred on in the late afternoon sun, but its beat is irregular, the crystal mounting hazy.

Stasis. A hell in itself. No change. All this waiting for me, to no avail.

Maybe I should load up Aihe and sail off somewhere? Dunno. Go back to Moerangi? Dunno. Sleep for a week? Burn my brain

with booze? Anything? Dunno-

You're wounded, soul, too hurt to heal. Maybe so. I dunno-

He says, stamping up the stairs,

"It was good to go away, but it's better to get back home eh?"

"Yes."

"We were round at Tainuis an hour ago, and Christ, what a reunion! You should've been with us… everyone carrying on, Ben, the old people, Piri's up north but he sent a telegram saying hello, even Luce… you'd think we'd been gone years rather than weeks."

"You're appreciated."

He squeezes her shoulder. "E, so are you-"

He spreads his arms wide at the livingroom circle, "Hai, it's good to get back here too."

"Sim at Tainuis' still?"

"Yeah, being spoilt. Everyone thinks he's looking great. And he was showing off his singing about two seconds after we got in the door. Regular party there now."

Why aren't you at it? Why bother me here?

The whisky she's been supping since putting her nightmare book away hasn't made her feel more joyful.

He says, out of the blue,

"What do you want most of all?"

"All my life or now or what?" frowning into the fire.

"Say, for the future."

"Nothing much. What I want couldn't happen."

"Just pretend it could."

"It'll be pretending all right… I'd like to have a family reunion, reconciliation. Talk, drink, laugh, sing… what you fellas were doing, with no recriminations on either side. And most of all, I'd like to paint again as I could before. I don't care if it came hard, if I could make just one painting we could all see a piece of soul in-"

She sounds cool and controlled as though uninvolved with her wishes.

"And that's all? All you want?"

"Yes. Why, what do you want?"

He is silent. He says at last,

"I don't know. It's clear, and unclear… I would mainly like for Himi and me to be happy. It was so good there this evening, with Wherahiko and everyone… that's what I really want. A good big family group, to help me, for Himi to grow up straight in. With you."

It comes out baldly.

"Hey, Joe-" Her first word is drawled, warningly slow.

"You don't have to say it. I know you don't feel that way. I know you're wary of us all. Maybe that's wise, too. You don't get hurt that way."

She doesn't say anything.

"But it's a dream we've got, Himi and I, that you'll decide to throw your lot back in with humanity again. Specifically, us… we can wait a long time. We're masters of patience, both of us, and trained to disappointments." He grins quickly at her, inviting a flippant retort.