The Bone People (32 page)

"O. No marks on it, I suppose?"

"No marks."

"Pity... and pity you had it taken out, ould Ireland, because gypsy or hippy, pirate or fisherman, it'd become

you," and the child blinks. "I mean, it would look good, besides being ever-ready coin for Charon, which

would have been handy before," she says drily. "You won't need it for that now we've come to an

understanding, though... speaking of which, e hoa, here's why you got clobbered this afternoon," and she

launches into the tale of her year in an aikido dojo in Japan.

She had been attracted to aikido because she had heard that it was some kind of super-karate, the ultimate

kung fu. It wasn't anything of the kind, she said, but it took a while for her to learn that.

"To quote a master of it, 'Aikido walks the way of the universal, and has as its sole aim, the perfection of

humankind.' The techniques are based on unifying mind and body and spirit, but they're

immensely practical in any kind of fight. But you're failing if your only aim is to beat up your opponent. I

couldn't understand that... I was the ultimate warring barbarian. Slam crash along comes Holmes... chuck out

yer morals and spiritualese, show me how to gut 'em in half a second flat. Stomp strangle and maim hooray! I

didn't stay that long, not long enough to become really expert, but I can handle six ordinary attackers at once

quite comfortably."

"No wonder you waded over me then--"

"Yeah, it wasn't that difficult... but I've seen an old woman in the Hombu dojo take on ten armed men, knives

and sticks and bottles, or rather let them take her on, and she just massacred them. Or rather, let them

massacre each other... quite a sight," she shakes her head slowly. "Massacre in the figurative sense," she adds, seriously.

"I hoped you meant it like that."

"Mmm, well... I left Japan after a year, screaming about getting up at five every day to practise, practise,

practise. Screaming about spending two hours every day in misogi breathing. Screaming about the food,

about not being able to test the techniques I'd learned in match situations, screaming about everything."

"No contests?"

"They're forbidden... look, I'll quote you some words, and the thing might become a bit clearer. Just a

minute."

She lifts down her guitar case, and takes a small book out of it.

"When I came back to good old Aotearoa after the Japan fiasco -- I didn't get kicked out, incidentally, I

kicked myself out -- I started thinking about all they tried to teach me, and ended up agreeing with them. I

didn't do much about it, I had started building at Whangaroa for one thing, and I felt heartily ashamed, for

another. But I wrote out a lot of sayings that had been given to me, and added a few bits of my own," waving

the book in the air. "That's part of this."

She sits back by the range. "These potatoes smell about done... you nearly finished?"

"I'll just wash his hair."

"Okay. Here goes... Aiki is not a technique to fight with... it is the way to reconcile the world, and make

human beings one family. Winning means winning over the mind of discord in yourself. It is to accomplish

your bestowed mission. Holmes addendum: and to discover your bestowed mission. Love is the guardian

deity of everything. Nothing can exist without it. Aikido is the realisation of love. The way," stopping

reading, and explaining, "Do is Japanese for a way. Ai means love, harmony, and ki is the vital spirit. Aikido

can mean, the way of martial spiritual harmony, okay?" "Okay," says Joe. "... The way means to be one with the will of deity, and practise

it. How can you straighten your warped mind, purify your heart, and be at harmony with the activities of all

things in the universe? You should first make God's heart yours. There is no discord in love. There is no

enemy in love."

. Joe is frowning. He doesn't say anything except, "Keep your eyes covered, tama" when he pours water over the child's soapy hair.

"Even standing with my back to the opponent is enough. When he attacks, hitting, he will injure himself with

his own intention to hit. I am one with the love of the universe, and I am nothing else. There is no time or

space before Uyeshiba of Aikido -- only the universe as it is."

She stands, and puts the small book back inside the guitar case. The guitar strings hum faintly as the lid goes

down.

"That writer was Morihei Uyeshiba, founder and master of Aikido."

The silence continues.

Coming back to the range, she opens the oven door and pokes the nearest spud.

"Done to a turn, e hoa ma--"

Simon stands in a flood and shower of drips. Joe wraps a towel round him, and bundles him out of the bath

onto the stool.

Joe, towelling the child dry,

"So you picked up the techniques, but not the spirit of it?"

The question was unexpected. The silence had lasted so long that she thought she must have bored the man

with the length of the quotations. She answers,

"Since the techniques really concern spiritual development, I didn't pick up anything except enough physical

knowledge to make me extremely dangerous in any fight with anyone who isn't an aikido expert. I'm good

enough to take the beginners... I started out with a cold temper, fast reactions, a killer instinct, as well as

Maori ancestors... all of which makes me someone to avoid when I'm in a nasty mood. Don't worry," she says

grinning, her teeth shining red in the light from the open firebox door, "the philosophy is over for the

duration, and I promise never to fight you again. Not without serious provocation, that is. Like not eating this

superbly cooked meal... oops, the chops seem a bit crisp--"

"I like burnt chops," says Joe. "Get some clothes on, honey, and we'll dry your hair after tea. Where do we put the bathwater, Kerewin?"

"Chuck it out the door."

After he has done so, he asks without preliminary, "Did you wonder whether that pain might be a

consequence of sort of misusing knowledge?"

"I did, but I discarded the idea. Deity tends to exact revenge in more subtle ways than that."

"Yeah?" He doesn't sound convinced.

When she woke for the second time, it was nearly midday. She stretched cautiously, but all the pain had

gone. "Downright peculiar," she said, and got dressed.

The Gillayleys were gone from the bach. The bunks were made, the breakfast dishes washed and neatly

stacked to drain and dry.

"Kia ora!" read the note, and Simon had written it. "We are making lunch. See you. Arohanui, H & H."

Joe's dictation, I'll bet... only he would end it, Hohepa and Haimona.

It was still drizzling outside. No fishing for a while yet, she thought, staring at the sea, and sighed. Another

day inside... smoke, and card games, and guarded talk, and everyone looking sideways at each other--

Despite the overt friendliness and reconciliation of last night, she can't believe the former delight in each

other's company will be there. Sooner we finish this stay, the better, she told herself, opening the door to the

new bach.

Joe swings round and grins. Simon isn't here.

"Uh, good morning, where's..." and Joe grins more widely still. "Good afternoon to you!" he says cheerfully.

"Right behind you, he's just been out for a piss."

And you passed me that close while I was doing it, Simon's mime is both graphic and funny. Like his father,

he's full of smiles, and she finds herself answering them.

It might be okay yet,

her heart lightening, but even then she is unprepared for the flood of affection she feels for them both when

Joe says,

"Now you're back, Himi, we can show her." To Kerewin, "It's because you said it would look good... first thing this morning, I had to put it back," sweeping Simon's hair away from the side of his face.

In the pierced lobe of the child's ear, the gold circle. Bright as the smiles, seemingly as unbroken as their

friendship.

Spring Tide, Neap Tide, Ebb Tide, Flood

Tide In

The day is warm and the wind is light, but the sea is still rough and whitecapped.

"Tomorrow," says Kerewin, "better wait for tomorrow eh?"

Joe shrugs. He's easy, he says. The fish'll wait. "I'll try for some paua. Where's the best place?"

"Try the second arm of the reef, out where I was standing a couple of days ago. That's the only place I could

see any sign of them."

So Joe heads north, the fork over his shoulder, while Kerewin goes to the other end of the beach.

"I'm going to do some sketching." She takes a pad and felt-tips and charcoals.

But she isn't drawing, thinks Simon. Sleeping yeah. It can't be sunbathing. She's lying wrapped in a rug under

an umbrella.

He turns his attention back to the cliff above the black bach.

There is a hole there, two feet in diameter. He can see in for nearly a yard, then it tunnels away in a curve and

the shadows become too dark to see anything. He'd like to wriggle partly in, stretch his arms out, explore, but

there might be something quiet, with teeth, waiting further up.

"It's a rabbithole," Kerewin said. "There's still a few of them round here. The country holds a drive every few months with guns and dogs and a helluva hullabaloo, but there's always a couple missed it seems. Rabbits, I

mean, not holes--"

They kill them then, he thinks. Maybe there's nothing down the hole now. Maybe they're all dead.

He finds a stick and inserts it cautiously. It goes into the shadowed part, but he can feel more space beyond

its end, even with his arm stretched in up to the shoulder.

He goes along to Kerewin and takes her hand and shakes her awake, and begins explaining. How can I find

out what's there? he asks with writing in the end. Kerewin says sleepily, "Dig it up. .

you want to?"

He nods vigorously.

"Well don't expect to find anything marvellous," but tells him where to find a shovel in the boatshed. He digs for most of the afternoon before he gets to the end of the hole.

There's a round hollow, not large. It is lined with soft hair, and on that, huddled together, are two mummified

baby rabbits.

He looks at them for a long time, not touching them. Sweat dribbles into his eyes, stinging them, but he

stands quite still and looks.

The fur is dulled, the eyes shut and sunken. Their ears are stiff leather pieces, laid back on their dead bony

shoulders.

He puts the dirt back on top of them.

I'm sorry, he thinks, shovelling faster. I didn't mean to worry you. I wouldn't have dug you up if I'd known

you were there.

He fills back in all the dirt he dug up, and sits down on the pile for a rest. His hands are sore and his

shoulders ache, and he's still sweating, even though the work is finished.

Joe comes along a little later, wet to the waist and whistling loudly.

"Hey, we got paua for tea, Himi!" he calls, and comes to the base of the cliff.

"What you been doing? Been busy?"

Digging, says Simon, showing how. On another piece of ground.

"Find anything in that hole?" asks Kerewin over tea.

Simon shakes his head, No, not a thing.

It's a groggy kind of dream. He knows it to be a dream even as it happens.

You're kneeling back by that hole. It's hot in the sunshine. You feel like crying, but you know something

better, and you want them alive. So you start feeding them music, underbreath singing, and little by little the

withered leathery ears fill out: flick flick, a tentative twitch and shake. The dead dried fur begins to lift and

shift and shine. Those sunken holes of eyes and nostrils pinken slowly, like a blush stealing over, the eyes to

moisten, darken, the nostrils to quiver, and then they open their eyes on you and they glow.

The music rings and swirls now, picks up like a lift of a wave, and the light has turned from ordinary sunlight

to a deepening bluegreen, shot with gold... you're inside a moving wave of sound and light and quick joy, and

it steadies, stays, before the motion of descent can begin, and sicken.

The rabbits shift and nudge one another, start to joust with soft brown forepaws in a glad scrabble to get free

of the hole of darkness, and scatter away into the green watertight shine.

"I want to tell you," he sings fondly to Kerewin and Joe, who've holding his shoulders now, and they turn and stare at one another with delight. But-when they look back, their faces waver and change, and the wave

begins to move, faster and faster, and the light is turning to night.

He can feel the wire round his wrists again. There isn't any room to move, and there isn't enough air to

breathe, and the voice, rich warm powerful voice, is questioning, questions he can never answer,

and laughing when he struggles. The voice grows and echoes, and the pain intensifies, and he tries to cry out

against it, but no sound comes. A bitter sting in his arm, and then the fingers bite him, pushing into the places

where it hurts worst, and sending him down into the blackness where he cannot breathe. The lid closes over

against his silent screaming, and the blackness floods everything.

And as he wakes, gasping and weeping and struggling futilely, he can still hear the voice in his head, singing

his name in the deep of the receding dark.

They're sitting in companionable silence, sipping whisky.

Joe asks, "What was he playing at this afternoon with that shovel?"

"Digging up a rabbithole. He wanted to find out what was at the end of it."

He laughs softly. "Trust Himi... tired himself out nicely anyway. No dope needed, for a change."