Keri Hulme - The Bone People

out.

"I have spent too much time on Timon the singer… but he was the only different man of those few who came here. Besides, he died… Two nights ago, a green gecko lay on my bed. That night a huhu stayed on the window until I slept. My grandmother has been talking a lot to me. I cast twigs to see what I should do and where I should go. One broke. The other found it at a place I had designated the Three Mile beach. I knew you had come at last. Not before time!" and he laughs again.

I wish he wouldn't, thinks Joe. It's too harsh. It sounds as though he's going to go at any moment. He looks as though he might too.

He says, to cover his dismay,

"You are a keeper, you say. And I am the person who was foretold, to keep watch after you. What do I look after?"

"I will show it to you very soon… but you must know what it is before I show you. Otherwise it will seem to be shadows in the water…."

He stands, bending up slowly from the waist, standing piece by piece as it were, chest, shoulders, neck, head. He looks at Joe for a long time, and he doesn't say anything.

"Maybe I can't put it in the proper words," he says finally.

He bows his head.

"I was told about it, taught about it, for a long time before I met it. I was prepared, and aue! there isn't time to prepare you. I think it best to say it bluntly. I guard a stone that was brought on one of the great canoes. I guard the canoe itself. I guard the little god that came with the canoe. The god broods over the mauriora, for that is what the stone is home to, but the mauri is distinct and great beyond the little god… the canoe rots under them both… aie, he is a little god, no-one worships him any longer. But he hasn't died yet. He has his hunger and his memories and his care to keep him tenuously alive. If you decide to go, he will be all there is left as a watcher, as a guardian."

The old voice limps and stutters. The kaumatua does not look up. There is a shudder running constantly through him now.

Sweet Jesus Christ alive! You'd better humour him Ngakau, but he's mad! Watching for sixty years over a canoe. A mauriora! a little god! Doesn't he know the museums are full of them.

But like an unseen current, there's a darker thought — Maybe a priestly canoe? A live god? A live mauriora? He says, with real bewilderment,

"What can I say? What do I do? I've seen them in museums, Pierced stones and old wooden sticks where the gods were supposed to live. Where the vital part of a thing was supposed to rest. But aren't they temporary? And can't they look after themselves?"

The old man mumbles,

"Not this one… it is the heart of this country. The heart of this land."

He straightens his shoulders, his dark eyes burning. In a stronger voice,

"By accident or design, when the old people arrived here, they induced, or maybe it arrived of itself, the spirit of the islands, part of the spirit of the earth herself, it rested in the godholder they had brought. O it isn't able to go now. It is both safe, it is vulnerable." He stops, aware suddenly that the phrases are mixed up, that he is speaking garble.

"O Joseph, my time is coming faster than I thought it would… there will be no time for ceremonies, you will have to take the land without prayers, but you will have my blessing… listen carefully. I was taught that it was the old people's belief that this country, and our people, are different and special. That something very great had allied itself with some of us, had given itself to us. But we changed. We ceased to nurture the land. We fought among ourselves. We were overcome by those white people in their hordes. We were broken and diminished. We forgot what we could have been, that Aotearoa was the shining land. Maybe it will be again… be that as it will, that thing which allied itself to us is still here. I take care of it, because it sleeps now. It retired into itself when the world changed, when the people changed. It can be taken and destroyed while it sleeps, I was told… and then this land would become empty of all the shiningness, all the peace, all the glory. Forever. The canoe… it has power, because of where it came from, and who built it, but it is just a canoe. One of the great voyaging ships of our people… but a ship, by itself, is not that important. And there are many little gods in the world yet, some mean, others impotently benign, some restless, others sleeping… but I am afraid for the mauri! Aue! How can I make you understand? How? How? How?"

He beats his fist against his thigh, drawing in his breath with a great sucking sound. He holds it, his bony chest swelling beneath the wings of his coat. Then, exhausted, he lets it stream out, and stands still, grey and anguished and weary.

"Three days ago, I would have laughed you to scorn, now I believe you," says Joe simply. "You came up the beach, prepared to meet someone and help someone. You've helped me. You've told of all the years you waited, keeping guard. You've told me why. You are a sane man, and a wise man. I believe you. I don't understand it all, but I believe you."

He stands up, cradling his arm.

"Show me where it is, and I will look after it until it tells me

He rests the broken arm against his belt, and holds out his other hand to the kaumatua. "Show me," he says again.

It is a long slow march, paced for a funeral, a march of death.

The kaumatua shuffles, bonefingered hand grasping Joe's forearm. He moves blindly; his feet catch on sticks and stumble on stones. He mutters to himself continuously. He is failing horribly fast, the upright man of yesterday become this scarecrow of bones mere hours later.

I have seen dead people, but I have never seen someone die.

What do you do? Hold their hand and let them get on with

it?

Pray? Tangi? Listen?

The old man trips again, and nearly falls. Joe steadies him with his body. "Corner. Left."

The words are forced out. Thick veins in the old man's forehead pulse alarmingly.

The beaten earth track forks. Joe helps him down the left-hand path. They come to rocks, worn and broken, but still towering above them. An ancient gorge where the river ran aeons ago, and carved this place for part of its bed. A silent place: ochre and slate grey stones. No birds. No insects. The only plants are weeds, stringy and grey and subdued.

The old man pulls on Joe's arm. He points with a trembling hand. "Cave. In ground." He tightens his lips and closes his eyes, concentrating. "I don't. Want. To be put there. In the town…."

Burial cave… and his grandmother will lie up there. Somewhere. There's a rock like a saddle about fifty yards away, in a direct line with where he's pointing. I'll take a look later. Maybe.

Joe shivers.

"E pou, don't worry. I won't put you there. You want to be buried in the town, I will take you there… but what marae? Who are your people?"

]('No. People. They're dead. The town…."

"You want to go to the cemetery in the town?"

A whisper of sound, Ae.

"So be it."

The kaumatua edges forward again. "Tauranga atua…" he says softly. Under his breath, again and again, "Tauranga atua, tauranga atua," as though those words give strength and enable him to walk.

Tauranga… a resting place for canoes, an anchorage. For a god canoe, what anchorage?

I remember a wet afternoon, when I was a child, and I read a magazine. It had the pictures and story of how they found an old canoe of the Egyptians… the sun ship of Cheops, that was it, a burial ship for a pharaoh to ride in. And I thought then — to think of it now! — how much more exciting it would be to find a ship of ours… not a dusty narrow craft in the desert sand, a river-craft if it sailed at all, but one of the far travelled salt sea ships, that knifed across great Kiwa centuries ago… guided by stars, powered by the winds and