Keri Hulme - The Bone People

The candle flame has "steadied now, and the moths are darting closer.

If I'm going to sit here, I might as well drink and forget about bloody Gillayleys….

Down to the cellar, using a torch to explore the labels of the bottles.

Frontignac, pinotage, port and muscatel;

hock, riesling, sauterne, and liebfraumilch;

mead, burgundy, chianti, and dandelion wine;

Cider? Perry? Arrack? Beer? Stout? Ale?

Holy mother, I didn't realise I had so much grog stored away-

More labels in the steady beam; rum, tequila, Scotch, bourbon, cognac, and liqueurs of all degrees… claret and sherry, madeira and sack, and ah hah! what better? Gloom-defeating champagne-

There's half a case of it left. And I thought that bottle I took from upstairs to Moerangi was the last of it… dear spirits, remind me to visit more often… take two, and hope they'll do.

Upstairs rapidly to the livingroom, where the smell of dead ashes hangs heavily everywhere.

"Ah choices, choices…" standing in front of her minor grog hoard.

"Lessee, what's a fitting cup from which to drink the health of God in bloodless wine?" She runs her fingers over the wine goblet collection.

A thin shell of pottery, lopsided, coloured brown and yellow, speckled like a thrush breast; wooden goblets with carved stems; the three pure bubbles of crystal, brittle upon the thinnest possible stalks; matt pewter; engraved silver; a clear hemisphere of aquamarine, flawed and scintillating with light on that one side; the thick, chunky cut glass that Charles, long ago prince of doomed distant Stuarts, was supposed to have owned; translucent bowls of porcelain brought back from Japan; two handsized lacquer bowls; a jade cup that held as much wine as an eggshell on a tall pedestal of fretted ivory… no two quite the same. All rare, all strange… especially the odd little pottery bowl that Simon used on his drinking spree-

She holds it in her hand a moment, reverently.

Two and a half thousand years old, dug from a gravesite Greece, my precious… what brews were drunk in thee?

But she chooses one of the crystal bubbles, and picks up a opener, a mirror, and wanders back to her bedroom.

And here I go, knocking round the bottle, holding my heart open and hoping my mind keeps closed-

Tuneless bellowing, Holmes-

She watches the candle light spurt up, from the wind of the opening door.

Do not dance, do not get excited, flame; it is only me come in-

She opens a bottle of champagne, and sets the mirror by the candle. She can see her face in it, a candlelit ovoid, with gouges for eyes, shadowmouthed.

"Hi me. I shall converse with thee. There is nobody near so fluent, so full of shining wit. You know the right things to say, to titillate me, to appall. I shall assure thee, give me praise, comfort… no end of good it'll do, talking to a mirrored me."

Her voice raps into silence.

She shudders.

I think I'm going off my head.

They say if you can think it, you can't be it.

The candle rears up and smoke clouds the mirror.

For no reason, she hears Joe talking in the bach at Moerangi: "It was a good idea. I could see out the window that way, and who came in the door."

O yes. Mirror of course. From his flat-on-the-back phase of childhood. And he also said — how did those two bits go?

"I used to get afraid that I'd look up into the mirror and see nothing there."

And,

"I had this nightmare eh. One day, I'd look into the mirror and somebody else would be looking back out of my face "

Nasty.

She leans carefully over, and swivels the mirror round so she can't see in it.

It was a nice idea, to practise the old discipline of mirror and candle again, to use image and living light as pointers to the self beyond self.

But not in this state, gentle soul. It's a bad stage when you get talking to mirrors, and right at the moment, I think you're unstable enough to see other people looking outa your eyes.

She rests back against the headboard of the bed, and begins drinking steadily.

The cold white eye of the moon looks in. A bottle down, and a bottle to go-

Over the lip of wax

a river spills,

flame reddens flickers

flares, stills,

and the river congeals-

The black wick slopes over, leaning out of the flame.

The world is night, quiet night.

She wets the rim of the bubbleglass, and strokes round and round slowly. The crystal begins to sing.

"Getta guitar?"

She squints at the wine.

In the uneasy light, she can just see her reflection.

"Was it thee or me who spake?"

Silence.

"Musta been me."

She sets the goblet down by the backwards mirror with great care, and fumbles her way downstairs.

"Stuhupid barstard, shoulda brought the light."

The toadstools by the seventh step glow palely green. She reaches into the niche and pinches one off, and splutters into a chuckle.

"Brought it!" triumphantly. But the phosphorescence fades even as she speaks. "Ah sheeit," throwing it down on the stone, "hope I squash you."

Darkness, darkness, all around.

The distant crying of the sea… or is it my heart in me? Thou nede not be afrayed of any bugges by night… it must be the livingroom circle by now… this step? What if I've stepped out of my retreat and this downward spiral goes on and on in the black forever? Steep deep, deep where light suffocates and people become tiny creeping shades unseen ever except by horrible-

"Thank heaven," in a loud voice, stepping out into the livingroom. The great window lets in enough moonlight for her to see by.

Wonder when me new one's coming?

She lights a lamp quickly, and another, and another, and their flames all seem to run together in a blurring winery flicker.

"I can see. Short of. I mean, sort of. Sort. Of. Thank you." She bows to herself, to the lamps, to the moon.

Take it easy, Holmes, take it slow.

"Bugger the guitar, I need tucker, I need food."

Hunting through the cupboards, remembering with a vague despair that she'd eaten the remaining tinned food yesterday and earlier today, and had meant to get more when she went into Whangaroa, but….

"Ah typical," she sneers in derision at herself. "Floating on a lake of grog, and sitting on a mountain of tobacco and assorted weedery, and watch ya got to eat?"

A jar of lumpfish caviar.

She sighs.

"Better than nothing."

She blows out two of the lamps, and takes the other up the spiral with her. On the floor below the toadstool niche there is a small shining smear. Her eyes fill with tears.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. Too impatient y'see… do you see? Don't be berloody dense, woman, how could a toadstool see? Well, the Toad mighta retracted and shat an eye eh?" She starts to giggle-It

becomes a dirty lowdown chuckle, blatting out, a gutty bleat she can't stop.

Easy! says herself, cold and furious. Quit it!

She sobers momentarily, bends down swiftly and kisses the slimy patch on the stair.

"Really sorry," she says, and continues upwards, marvelling at the ease with which she'd bent. Never do it sober, sweet, you'll bust your spine-

She stops in the doorway.

"Only half a bottle left? Hell, it'll have to do…."

She puts the lamp by the great candle and slumps onto the bed. The lamp goes out. Face flushdown in the rubicund dark — e hine! Haere mai ki te kai!!

O yeah… sitting up stupidly, and fishing for the small jar. Sticks her tongue in and sucks a mouthful out. Squelching the tiny oily globules… dunno whether it's the salt soy taste or the burstingunderteeth scrunch… delicious anyway.

You have just eaten enough lumpfish to stock an ocean… so what? Whattabout me cod roe patties? Millions and millions of codfry, never going to make it… and for that matter, think of eating a fish of any kind, anything… all its potential gone… mind you, snark, you could eat people like me with impunity: we're kind to mother earth, and don't seek to stock her with replicas of self… we're neither horned nor slatted, a twilight of the genders, as Fletcher rewrote of Agathon… so come all anthropophagi and feast in innocence, least so far as me potential reproductive processes are concerned… neat of Joe to be so understanding, or at least show a mask of comprehension, that's more than most have done… damn hell, I've let a Gillayley back in my brain… distant or near, they close in-