Keri Hulme - The Bone People

She leans on her elbow to stow away the empty caviar jar, and her elbow collapses under her. She falls forward, on top of the candle. The flame spurts up and scores through her hair.

She jerks back, rubbing frantically.

There's a charred track through the front curls, and a vile stench of burnt hair.

"Ahh heeellll," she says wearily. "Ah to hell." The candle has gone out.

Woken once by a thin tinny whistling, like breath from a bronchial baby.

Then a small moan, and scuffling somewhere under the window.

Stiffen and tense, bent with the ears towards where the sound last came from.

It doesn't occur again.

The silence is ominous, nerve-wracking

Woken twice by having to get up and urinate.

She sways on the toilet, feeling sick and thickheaded. Her eyes are sore, and sticky with mucus. Her head is throbbing.

"You getting old. Old, old old. Bladder worn out and self in misery, just from a few drinks."

There is an odd pressure on her bladder these days.

"Beer belly," she says critically, looking at herself in the mirror. "Fat gutted pig that you are."

All those innards pressing upon one another, she thinks, angry at her self-despoliation. No bloody wonder you can't hold your water anymore.

She goes back to bed, and tosses restlessly for a long time, waiting on sleep.

When she wakes again, it is late morning, the sun streaming in through the sea-coloured window.

The air is stale, and soured by the smell of burnt hair.

Running her hand over her head and discovering the burned patch anew,

Sweet hell, what a morning.

She half-expects Simon to come around, even though it is the first day of the new term. But he doesn't turn up.

"Just as well," growling to herself, standing in front of the mirror again. "I am fed up with Gillayleys to here," knifing her hand across her throat, scissors perilously close to the skin.

We did wake in a bad mood, didn't we? says the snark. Just because we got carelessly drunk and burned ourselves, we start taking swipes at our near and dear friends.

"Near and dear friends be damned… what the hell are they doing to me? Sucking me dry, it feels like. Emotional vampires, slurping all the juice from my home, that's what." Even with the new lightheaded feeling a haircut gives her, she still feels resentful and ill-at-ease.

Better go back to being your natural self, dear Holmes. The loner on the fringes. Phase Joe and his brat out… but I think I'd miss them. Think? You know you would! But don't think… play it as it comes. And enjoy this peaceful solitude — it makes a bloody neat change. And speaking of neat… this place is becoming a hovel.

She starts a cleaning binge. Niches in the Tower that have been undisturbed since the place was built are rudely dusted. The bonsais get trimmed, the toadstools ruthlessly pruned, and the insect population gets the kind of hurry along it's never had before. And she discovers mice everywhere.

There are tiny furrows from their teethwork even on the great candle she notices, while cleaning up the splatters of spilt wax.

"Strangle-traps," with heavy emphasis on the strangle. "That's what it's gonna have to be."

What was that line of Nash? In "The Mind of Professor Primrose"? O yeah, "He set a trap for the baby, and dandled the mice." Got his priorities right, that fella

Normally, she dislikes killing mice. There is something about their beady-eyed furtivity, their wholesale preying on humans, that appeals to her outlaw instincts. But at the moment, they're in her way, and they're doomed.

She fantasises some baby traps though, while baiting the traps for the mice. Glittery things, she decides, that make zing and beep noises to lure the wee souls in. Construct them of shiny fireproof plastic: mould 'em to look like bubbles. And Baby comes to play… once yer victim is inside, an automatic dispenser dispenses a whiff of extremely potent anaesthetic, the clear walls turn opaque, and the cell swiftly incinerates its contents. Just turn upside down afterwards, and let the clean ashes sift away-

You're a morbid abhuman bastard, Holmes… where were you when they built Treblinka and Dachau?

It isn't a mood she enjoys. She clenches her shoulder and back muscles, loosens them, tightens them, trying to physically get rid of a grim humour. It works, until she does a round of the strangletraps in the afternoon and discovers she has caught a fine crop of mice, every size from decrepit patriarch to tender pink nosed fine-furred baby. She flings thirty corpses out to the gulls, and the cold-eyed birds squawl and battle for the stiff little bodies. Some are gulped whole, others torn apart, before she can get away from the view, and she has a new gruesome set of images to fight.

The Tower is clean and sweetsmelling and dustfree by late afternoon. The seawind has blown through it, every window opened wide as could be.

"Foul fug of smoke everywhere… strange I never noticed it before now." She spent some time cleaning her smoking gear.

If I could see this yech,

a disgusting slime, dark dung of tobacco she's excavated from her pipes and nargheel.

every time I smoked, I do believe it would put me off for life… On the other hand, I don't see it,

cheerfully lighting a pipe before going down to make tea. She is laying the fire when the radiophone buzzes.

Hundred to one it's Gillayley senior. It can buzz its head off.

But the clamour is unrelenting, going on and on, so she snatches up the mike and thumbs home the speak button as though she'd like to push it through the set.

"Ah hah," says the operator brightly. "Don't tell me, I know. I just got you out of the shower."

"You did not."

"O? Is everything all right?"

"Yes. Did you just ring up to say hello?"

"No. I've got your friends on the line," all the good humour has fled the operator's voice. "One moment please,"

switch, click, switch.

"Tena koe e hoa!" bellows Joe. "C'mon down to the Duke, Kerewin! We got all kinds of celebration going on!"

Up you.

"No thanks," she says coldly.

"Huh?"

"I said, No thanks."

"Uh Kerewin, you not feeling well?"

"I'm feeling fine."

He's scratching his head. "I've upset you some way? Himi's upset you?"

"Hell, you're self-centred, bloody self-centred. What makes you think the only thing in the world that could upset me would be you or your son?"

"What's wrong?" bewilderment in his voice. "Whatever's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just don't feel like going out and grogging up tonight."

He must be in the phone booth at the Duke. She hears a door pulled shut, and the babble and clamour in the background dim.

"E Kere, that's okay," he says gently. "I'm sorry if it sounded like I expected you to drop everything and come out with me. I didn't mean it that way. You see, Piri and his missus are back together, that's why he went north eh. And Ben's just sold a stud

heifer for a few hundred more than he expected, and everyone's happy. We're having a bit of a do, and I thought you might be happy to come and join it. Piri's been asking where you are. So's Pi and Polly and the old lady, you know? And I've been wanting you here."

Well want on, man.

"Yeah, but I'm busy."

"Okay, e hoa," and sighs his breath huhhh out. "Ahh, will you be busy tomorrow? Because I've got a sort of present for you if you want it-"

Talk about baits… or is it just because I've set too many traps today?

"All right, I bite. What kind of present?"

He laughs.

"I'll give you a clue. He aha koa iti, he pounamu." His voice has grown stronger and more relaxed with each word. "You know last night?"

"What about it?"

"I didn't say anything about the painting, unwrap it or even give a thank you… but it's the best self-portrait I've ever seen, Rembrandt included."