Keri Hulme - The Bone People

Joe looks at him sideways.

"And there is no mystery to it," says the kaumatua sadly. "It is horrifyingly easy to make people perform as you wish, if they think they are in control all the time."

"Like me, early this morning?"

"And yesterday afternoon. It is easier, naturally, when someone is bound by pain or pleasure, mental or physical."

He takes another two cups from the cupboard under the sink, and ladles soup into them. He sets them down by a plate of fried bread.

"Eat well," he says.

The soup is greenish. The taste is peppery, yet reminiscent of chicken.

"What's in this?"

"Eels mainly. The odd bird. Greens."

"O," He blows cautiously into his cup. It is awkward, having only one hand to eat with.

"What kinds of birds? Greens?"

The old man dips a piece of bread into the soup. "As I remember, it started with a duck, and six potatoes. Then one night I added two silverbelly eels. After that, more water, a pigeon, cresses, puwha, more potato, o the soup grew." Shaking his head, laughing silently.

"What's funny? It sounds a good way to build a soup."

"I had always imagined one's death, day to be a solemn ritual affair, not a matter of discussing the contents of a soup!"

"I could think of worse ways to spend it… do you really think you're going to die?"

"I know," says the kaumatua. "As soon as we have finished, I will tell you the story, and show you what must be shown, and hear your answer. And then," he shrugs, "haere. Mou tai ata, moku tai ahiahi."

He lights his pipe and settles back against his chair.

"Na, I have not asked you before, but what is your name, and who are your people?"

"I am Joseph Ngakaukawa Gillayley, and I am Ngati Kahungunu."

"Ah, ah, good… I won't ask you what you are doing on this land…."

"I will tell you because you should know," says Joe quickly. "I was just wandering. I came out of jail last week, and I had, I had nowhere to go. I sold my house before I was imprisoned, my son has been taken away from me, and my friend has vanished. I mean, she's somewhere, but she isn't at her home any more. I had nowhere to go."

The old man's face has been impassive: he doesn't look surprised or disturbed to hear that Joe is newly free of jail, but as soon as "mentions friend, the impassivity vanishes. This friend… is she a gardener, perhaps?" Joe grins.

No, she's a painter… though she does take good care of her dandelions!"

The other frowns.

"She doesn't have anything to do with digging or cultivation then?"

"Nope," and suddenly he hears Kerewin telling the dream that came with Tahoro Ruku,

"Keria! Keria!" she says again, "bloody strange way to end a dream eh?"

"She had a dream of being told to dig. Dig something, she didn't know what," he says slowly.

The old man leans forward a little, stabbing the air with his pipe.

"Ah!" he says, his eyes very bright, "pardon this discourtesy, this curiosity… but is there someone close to you who might be called a stranger?"

And how the hell would he know this?

Joe shivers. "Yes," hesitantly, "my son. I went to jail for beating him up." He darts a look at the old man. "I hurt him badly and they, the court, you know the welfare people, have taken him off me. I'm not even allowed to see him… but you could call him a stranger."

Understatement of the year, Ngakau.

"I mean, I know him, I've known him for four years, but he wasn't mine to begin with, and his background is a mystery. No-one knows his name or where he came from. He was too little to let us know when we found him, and besides, he can't talk." Or do anything much now, he thinks, his heart aching.

It is long seconds before he dares take another look at the old man. He is smiling with delight it seems, but tears are squeezing past his shut eyes. For Himi? thinks Joe in astonishment, but then the man says,

"Well, Joseph of sorrows, man from the east coast, when you are old you cry easy. You are young, your tears will keep. You may even find that you needn't weep, for this strange friend and your lost hurt son. If I'm given time, I'll find out for you, but now I must talk, for a long time, uninterruptedly."

Joe nods to him, Yes, I understand.

Tiaki Mira is greyfaced, and the lines about his mouth and eyes are eaten in sharp and dark against the pallid skin. Pained and dying.

But he is chuckling to himself, saying, "E kui, how could I have guessed such a riddle as that? Stranger and digger and broken man all in one. All in one… how could I know? I was just looking for one of them-"

He sighs, and looks at Joe.

"It began with my grandmother. O, it had been in existence a long time before that, but it needed someone with my grandmother's foresight and intelligence, and sense of what was proper, and I say it, fanaticism, for it to continue. Otherwise it would have become,

even in her time, just one more piece of lost knowledge. Another legend. One more of the old people's dreaming lies. But my grandmother heard, and searched, and found, and stayed as a guardian. She got herself a husband, and bred of him two children. None of them, husband or children, were as strong as she was. They all died before her, and because she had these strange skills, she knew they would die, and she didn't tell any of them. When my mother died, my father sent word to my grandmother, and she came to get me.

"I was ten years old, a smart child. I'd been brought up to speak English. I even thought in English. I still can… they spoke Maori on the farm sometimes, but they were no longer Maori. They were husks, aping the European manners and customs. Maori on the outside, with none of the heart left. One cannot blame them. Maori were expected to become Europeans in those days. It was thought that the Maori could not survive, so the faster they become Europeans the better for everyone, nei?"

The old eyes are as blank of sympathy as a hawk's, watching fiercely for any sign of agreement.

Joe stares unwaveringly back.

The kaumatua lowers his glare.

"My grandmother was not like that. The only European thing about her was her hat… ahh, the hats she used to wear! Great wheels covered with fruit, with birds, with all manner of wax fakery. Stuck with steel pins like daggers… ahh, her hats…" shaking his head, "but aside from those hats, she was one of the old people. She didn't wear shoes, and her feet had soles as hard as leather. She was tall, taller than I am, and heavy with muscle and fat. A big woman, a very big woman… she had a disease in her private parts, and her smell was offensive. Her hair was rusty black, and her teeth were huge, like a horse's. She stood in the doorway, and called to me, 'Mokopuna! Tamaiti!' and I was terrified, and squashed myself in by my father lest she seize me, and maybe devour me. I was a smart child, but I imagined too much… she knelt in the door, and tears streamed down her face. 'Come to me!' she called, 'o little child, come to me! I have such a need for you!' And she called and wept until I was no longer afraid, because how could someone who needed you so much harm you?

"I went into her arms, and she hugged me tightly, and then she stood up, and with her great hard hand, smacked me round the ears. 'Next time, come at the first call,' she said, and I was dazed and confused. Such a mixture… I learned, over the next twenty years, that she could be as tender as any person born, and as hard as stone. She was herself, and a very strange woman indeed. I was lonely, too much by myself as a child, and more lonely and even more by myself as a young man. She perceived this, and judged the exact time I could no longer endure the vigil and the learning

she imposed on me. Then she gave me a handful of money, a literal handful of gold sovereigns, and her hand was large, remember.