The Bone People (56 page)

are contaminated, and he is horrified corruption has touched him. He paddles and handwalks along, head

reared high out of the water.

Immediately in front of him, is a very low bridge. He has no choice but to lower his head into the stinking

stream. Retching, he slides down, water creeps into his mouth, and to his surprise it is sweet--

Ahead, weeping willows, foreigners, trail into the water. The stream narrows until he has to stand up, for he

can no longer float. The water trickles over his feet, sparkling and ice-clear now.

He looks down at Hana, who lies on her back smiling up at him, her face relaxed and full of joy. The stream

flows from her vagina in a steady pure rivulet.

"E honey, I thought you were asleep--"

"Joe, why would I sleep? It's time to feed Timote, ne?" She shakes her head from side to side, and amidst her thick long hair he sees his little son moving his toes back and forward with his fingers as though to find out

how far they'll go. He smiles gravely at Joe, but goes on playing, absorbed in these mobile toes.

He lies down beside Hana, stroking her forehead softly. The grass beneath his hips is warm and dry and

prickly, but the sensation is not uncomfortable.

"E Hana," he says, beginning to breathe more quickly, "e taku hine."

Hana reaches for his hands and brings them to her lips. She kisses them. She says,

"Well Joe my love, you'd better feed first then." Her breasts before him are still swollen with milk. The milk is sweeter than the riverwater. Timote crawls out of the soft deeps of Hana's hair, and falls asleep near Hana's

other breast. A hand strokes his hair, a small pale crooked hand. "Ssss," says Haimona. "Ae," says Hana to him, her face sleepy now but still calm, "you suck by Timote, my Himi, my heart child, my honey." But as

the boy begins to drink, Hana's face changes. Her skin goes grey and begins to run with sweat.

"Aue, the moths, the moths!" she cries out, and her voice is harsh with terror.

To his horror, he discovers he is sucking the fat furred end of an enormous moth. Hana and Timote begin to

dissolve, to break

up into whirling clouds of fire-eyed moths. Haimona cries out, wretched and forlorn, and he echoes the cry.

"Aue, Hana, Hana!" he calls in anguish, grasping at her fading body. His hand is full of sliminess and a fine hairy powder. The moths begin to swirl round him, their bodies slapping against his bare flesh with a

pattering sound that becomes louder and louder as the moths swarm out of the ground in their millions.

He gasps, spitting out moth-dust,

"Hana! O God, Hana! Help me!"

"Hana!" His heart is pounding in his breast, and it feels like a thumb is blocking his throat.

"Hana is dead," says a calm voice.

Joe raises himself on his left elbow, shaking.

"I was dreaming," falling back against the pillow, "a nightmare."

The kaumatua is sitting by the range. The door to the fire-cavity is open, and he is partly lit by firelight, a

dark straight figure wrapped in his greatcoat.

He says again.

"Hana is dead."

"I know."

"When the dead are dead, you cannot bring them back. Not by memory, or desire, or love."

"I know," says Joe, more softly.

The kaumatua sighs.

"But you are still calling to her. I have been listening to your dream. It is eery listening to a man talk to ghosts in his sleep."

"I did not ask to dream of her," anger in his voice, "I did not mean to. It just happened."

"The interesting thing," says the kaumatua, as though he had not heard Joe's last words, "is that she has now become a moth."

He shakes his head gently.

"And you must know what that means, o man of wisdom, hmmm?"

"No I bloody don't. I don't want to find out either." Even as he speaks, he feels unpardonably rude.

"But you do," says the kaumatua. "You slept well, but now you are afraid to return to sleep. It is better that we talk. Or that I talk," he amends, and smiles his thin no-smile to Joe lying in the shadows at the end of the room. His teeth glint.

The last of the cannibals... Joe is silent. He is afraid to go back to sleep, but not because of the bus driver's

careless phrase. The dream would continue, would worsen unbearably. He had wondered, when the

nightmares began two years ago, whether he had infected Simon with his bad dreams. Or whether Simon had

infected him.

Now, he grits his teeth until his jaw aches. The old man knows too much, if he can listen in to dreams--

"Maybe you know about moths, eh?"

Rain batters the old roof. A burst of wind makes the metal groan, as though it is tired of standing alone

against the weather. The kaumatua clears his throat. There is the sudden flare of a match, then a sucking noise

as he draws on his pipe.

"When it came time to bury my grandmother, I was instructed to eat part of the corpse, and let the rest of her

decay. I was to clean and oil and ochre the bones, and hide them away. Then, she said, she would rest in

peace and not bother me."

He spits into the firebox.

"Well, I got the piece prepared and cooked, but I couldn't eat it. I carried out the rest of her commands, but it hasn't seemed sufficient. She buzzes in the back of my head like a bluebottle sometimes."

The iron stirs, moaning again, and the rain beats steadily down.

"E well," says the kaumatua. "All that used to give me bad dreams. Now I just wonder what she would have tasted like."

He puts sticks on the fire, and leans back in his chair again,

"After all, she told me how to make her rest. It's my fault that she lingers, waiting, nei?"

He takes the pipe out of his mouth, and blows the ashes from the top of the bowl.

"In a lot of ways, I am stronger than she is, now. So, if she has any thought of revenge for my neglect of her

instructions, there could be an interesting scene."

Sweet Christ, he's as barmy as a coot.

"No, I'm not mad," says the old man gently, and Joe jerks, because he hadn't spoken it.

"I was trying to show how the dead return as voices and dreams quite often. Sometimes, there are very good

reasons for their persistence in our world. Sometimes, we have failed them."

Joe lies very quietly, biting his lips.

Look after our child, she had said. And I have hurt him. And I have lost him.

"You see that my grandmother is still here because I failed her in a small way. But it was necessary she

stayed, because otherwise I would have failed her in a big way. I would have left."

Joe asks in a small voice, "How long have you been here?"

"All my life, since I was a small boy. Waiting for you."

The kaumatua sighs.

"It must seem very strange to you, a young man from the world outside, that someone has been waiting for

you from before the time when you were born. But wait until tomorrow has gone. Then you will know

whether I was mad or sane."

. "You helped me," says Joe, and sees the old man nod, as if that is the proper answer.

"Now about moths," says the old man briskly. "When one dies, one must journey. The journey is well-

known. You must know it.

One goes north to Te Rerenga-wairua, down the grey root of Akakitererenga, onto the rock platform and into

the sea. Into the seahole that leads into Te Reinga."

"It is all myths and legends," says Joe, "and I never liked any of it."

"Tsk," says the kaumatua, "and your wife still returns to you as a moth?"

"Sometimes she turns into moths. Sometimes she decays in my arms. Sometimes she eats one of my sons and

then starts on me, beginning at my privates. That is all business for a psychiatrist maybe, but not any

exemplar of Maori truths."

The kaumatua drew on his pipe.

"I think it is," he says at last. "I have more experience in these matters than you. Listen! There are three versions of what happens to you after death. If you go to Te Reinga, it is held that you live as you did here.

Eventually, you die again. And then the rot sets in. If you get past the spirit-eaters, Tuapiko and Tuwhaitiri,

you get past them, there is underworld after underworld, each less pleasant than the last. In the end one of all

you get a choice. The choice is to become nothing, or to return to earth as a moth. When the moth dies, that's

you gone forever -- just putting off the evil day, her?" Cackle.

He simmers down. "But that is allegory, I think. It means you journey on and on, becoming less human and

more... something else. Your wife has just about reached the end of that road, I think."

He leans forward a little.

"The second way is to journey along the sea path. You surface once to say goodbye to Ohau, the last of this

land you'll ever see, and then go ever westwards till you reach Te Honoiwairua in Irihia. There, there is a

judgement, and you're thrust into heaven or hell."

He spits at the fire again, thoughtfully.

"I think that idea is cribbed. It doesn't sound quite Maori. The third version however, I like, therefore,"

chuckle, "it is more sophisticated. Some of us believe that the soul has a choice of which journey to make, to

stay with Papa, or to join Rangi. Graveminders used to put a toetoe stalk, a tiri, into the ground at the end of

the grave so it pointed to the sky. Then the soul could leave the body, and hang in the sun awhile, like a

cicada crawled from its larval husk. It would choose which way it wanted to develop, the earthly, or the

heavenly, and if it chose Rangi, away into the firmament it would go. Maybe as far as the tenth heaven where

Rehua of the long hair smiles hospitably; Rehua the giver, eldest child of Rangi and Papa, Rehua the star of

kindness with the lightning flashing from his armpits, Rehua who disperses sadness from strong and weak

alike. Today I shall call, 'Ki a koe, Rehua! Rehua, ki a koe!"

His voice rings out, stronger than Joe has heard it yet. It is the voice of a triumphant young man.

There is a long time of silence. The fire dies down. The rain pours down, now hard and wind-driven, now in

steady and soothing

Aue," mourns the old man at last, and his voice is cracked and thin and high again, "that is how I would like things to be, but do you know? I am more scared than a child would be. I have no faith in the old ways and no

hope in the new."

"Are you dying?"

"I am nearly dead."

It was said matter-offactly.

"Sometime today, it will end for me. Don't shiver like that."

He bent over, and picked up more wood, coaxed the fire to burn brightly. Then he said, "It is nearly dawn. I

have some things to tell you, but you must be strong when you hear them. They are not frightening, but they

are grave matters. Matters of importance to you, and all people. So go to sleep again. You will not dream."

Joe says hoarsely,

"I think I am in a nightmare. I think I've been in a nightmare for months. Or maybe forever."

"Rupahu! You are a sick man, a broken man, but now it is time for you to heal, to be whole. To flourish and

bear fruit. Go to sleep."

The old man wraps himself firmly in his overcoat again, sits down in the chair, and motionless, stares into the

fire.

I am not sleepy. In this fug of smoke and turpentine, who could sleep? I suppose I should feel guilty lying on

his bed. I suppose I should give it back and let him have some rest, especially if he thinks he's going to die

soon. But he can't die on me now.

For all his arrogance and rambling, I think the old bloke just cleared up a nightmare for me. I can see where

the thing got its root. And I can see what Hana meant when she said--

The kaumatua smiles to himself as the sound of breathing becomes louder, becomes a steady, even snore. O

man, he thinks, you are still very young, and while your life has broken you, you can still heal yourself. With

a little help, with a little help. And you, cackling away there in the back of my mind -- o yes! I heard you start

when

told him those things you made me do so long ago, for it was

your idea of a joke, nei? -- very soon I will be in the back of my

mind with you, and the thought does not increase my respect...

indeed, my hands are knotting with rage, old woman. Watch out!

There is not long to go now!

He thinks with wonder and easy tears, I still have the certainty Of meeting her.

And the dry voice says from the dark,

I told you. You have never lost that.

The whare shuddered.

A draught of wind forced smoke back down the chimney, and ash spun out of the grate.

"Ata! Do you like ashes with your soup?"

The old man's voice is sprightly, and his eyes gleam with mischief.

"Not really," says Joe, and sips another mouthful of tea. He winces. It is nearly black, and as bitter as

anything he has tasted. "But if they're in there, they're in there."

He thinks

Strange... I feel gay and, o, I don't know.. . unburdened?

He considers that, sipping more of the hellbrew gingerly.

Yes, unburdened. As though something's climbed off my shoulders. Yet nothing's different. I still remember

everything. God, I can even feel my arm as bad as yesterday.

He stares into his cup.

Very strange. The talk this early morning? My dreams? Nah, it must be the change in the weather--

The sky outside is intensely blue. Patches of whitish cloud spear across it, moving eastwards. The wind

blows strongly.

"E ka pai," the old man says. "There's not that many. Maybe enough to make a new flavour."

He stirs the soup busily. "You look much better today."

"I feel much better," says Joe, grinning. "I'm not usually a bastard, I'm sorry for my bad temper."