Keri Hulme - The Bone People

They spend the afternoons breaking down the upper circles; the neat stone blocks dislodged one by one to hurtle down into the dandelion-studded lawn.

The dandelions are surviving, but only just. They seem to be making a special effort to breed past this menace. The afternoons are full of their ballooning seeds, silver and prodigal in the sun.

They have become expert wreckers. It had been hard at first, blistered hands and stretched aching muscles. But you grew accustomed to the heavy swing of the sledge hammer, built it into a rhythm. You grew wise to the ways of stone and nailed wood, and learned to turn their solidity against them. Lever with a crowbar, tap in a wedge here, a judicious smack with the hammer, and down falls more of the Tower.

She saved very little of the upper levels: the great sister curve from the library, and the seashaded windows from the bedroom, and the golden niche where the boy had stood centuries ago; the plumbing and the solar waterheaters; the handrail of the stairway, taking particular care of the dolphin heads with their benign engraven smiles.

All the rest of the wood and furnishings she sent splintering and crashing downwards in a frenzy of destruction.

Joe protested once.

"It's a waste of good wood, Kere. You might want to build again." She had smiled meanly at him. "I don't think so. Besides, I am short of wood. I need quite a lot of wood. This'll help," smashing the hammer through the smooth floorboards.

He was afraid to ask her what she wanted the wood for.

They are short evenings.

They spend an hour after tea, sometimes talking about the day, sometimes drinking quietly; sometimes sitting in silence until She plays her guitar infrequently, and the music is always dispirited and sad. It has the kind of loneliness behind it that haunts old graves. Forgotten, dead, gone… she knows a lot of that kind

of music.

And when the talk has run out, or the drink has turned sour, or the companionable sitting has grown tense, they say Goodnight and go to their separate beds.

Each night it is the same. They spend a long time listening to each other trying to go to sleep. It is always Joe who sleeps first. He whimpers as he dreams, a small scared animal sound, strange in a grown man.

And what sound do I make when the memories come crowding in too close? I don't know, and I care even less.

She lies stiffly still, night after night, her mind focused in fear on the thing that has invaded her. The wild spreading cells that grow and grow. It is always near dawn before sleep comes.

The suneater is still going, perched on the sill of the great livingroom window now. Late in the last week, she stops it. Quite simply. She crushes it in her fist.

Looking at the small pile of bits, Nearly two years running and now you're dead. I wonder if someone will make another like you?

She feels no remorse. All her feelings are dulled these days, as though life is already going, slowly leaking out and ebbing away.

Maybe it will make my dying that much easier… when I come to die, there will be little left to die.

I'm already a ghost with set wings, stalking tombstone territory.

Three days to the firestorm.

Three days to go.

Joe says that morning,

"I'll stay in 'Roa for a couple of days, if that's all right with you?"

"Of course it is."

"Okay then… I need to sign the papers for the house, and get everything sorted out. Before."

"Of course," but she says it more gently this time.

He pushes the hair away from his face. "You'll be all right, e Kere? I mean, I'll come out each night if you want some company.""I'll be fine… take good care of yourself, and I'll see you Friday."

"Ae. E noho ra," as he swung away down the steps.

"Haere ra."

She listens to his footsteps clatter away.

"Everything sorted out," means the bare house cleared; the budgie given away to the Tainuis; the lawyer seen again and the house disposed of. Preparations for what may be a long stay behind stonier walls than these.

She sighs, and starts on the final work on the Tower.

She finishes nailing the last sheets of iron on the temporary roof to the livingroom circle, and has clipped up a PVC guttering before the afternoon begins. She no longer marks passing time by meals, but by the position of the sun. She doesn't feel like eating these days, though over the past week her appetite for drink has returned. So she is playing a melancholy thoughtful tune, her mind cloistered in a wine haze, when the radiophone buzzes.

It takes several seconds for her to realise what the sound is. More than a month gone by since it rang. And last time… taipa.

"Ah, hello?"

"Hello," says the operator, in subdued tones. "I've got a call for you from Doctor Lachlan waiting."

Lachlan? Lachlan? Sheeit, that's Simon's doctor, Simon's?

Her heart has started to beat crazily fast.

"Put her through."

"Right away."

The voice is distant. She turns the volume control full up, concentrating against the haziness of the wine. "Hello, Elizabeth? What'd you say?"

"I said, is Joseph there?"

"No, he's in town."

"But I've tried his number and he-"

"You'd better leave him a message here if you can. I don't know exactly where he is at the moment, and he's had his phone cut off… he got some nut calls the week he came out of hospital. Nasty ones."

"Oh…" the voice fades and fuzzes.

"Oath, this is a bad line… I can't hear you, Elizabeth."

"I said, in that case would you mind telling him that Simon is conscious but not recognising me, and not responding to very much at all."

"O God."

The tinny voice grows stronger.

"He isn't reacting to sounds, and it appears he has difficulty in focusing on anything. We're not sure how much he can see, but he can move his limbs. And he did more or less co-operate when the neurologist carried out a simple test. He can understand some things I think."

The operator has obviously been fiddling with the connection. The line is now clear, free of all hums and buzzes.

"No idea how much?"

"No, though I personally think he's aware of where he is, for instance, and what's happened to him."

"Others don't think so?"

"Well, they don't know Simon's reactions as well as I do, and you know how difficult it can be, trying to understand him."

I never found it that hard…

Saying aloud,

"He doesn't recognise you at all?"

"He doesn't, but that kind of amnesia is normal after the sort of head injury that's involved here. And as I said, we don't know how much he can see or hear."

"Do you reckon it'd do some good if Joe caught the late flight and came?"

"No," says Elizabeth decisively, "and dissuade him if he has any idea of visiting. Aside from the fact that the police are sure to object, I think the child is terrified by the possibility of this happening. We're doing our — "

"He's terrified of hospitals, that'd be — "

"In this instance, we are all sure that the source of Simon's very evident fear is a recurrence of what has already happened far too often." Cold, authoritative, brooking no disagreement, and implying that Kerewin is somehow guilty for being involved.

So I am, she thinks dully, and I'm probably wrong for thinking Sim would want Joe to help him now. Would I want someone after they had done such damage to me? Even if I loved them? No way….

The conversation ends in small talk, goodbyes.

She thumbs the operator recall button. He says anxiously, "Is everything all right? I was very upset when I heard what had happened."

"Not half as upset as I was," says Kerewin drily. She sends Joe a long telegram in Maori, and then settles down to drinking in earnest.

The boy entombed by deafness? Possibly blind? Mentally deficient?