The Bone People (67 page)

"It is your life," he had said.

And she made him an answer that surprised her as much as it did the helpless medic.

"It was," she said.

But somewhere long ago it left me.

The promised joys were arid nothings.

The destiny was never proclaimed, and never fulfilled.

She was walking in the park. Park? Several dozen trees, all exotics, and neatly trimmed lawns. A forlorn

pondshell, empty of water and children, filled with dead leaves.

The leaves were everywhere, in deep piles, brown and wilted. When she scuffled through them, they rustled

sullenly as if the movement annoyed them.

Snarling leaves, eh Holmes? and threw back her head and surprised herself again, with laughter.

There was a bolete under a nearby beech. She squatted down and examined it carefully. The slightly viscid

top was hole-free. Ah, no maggots have chanced upon this feast... she plucked it carefully, and held it in her

cracked and weeping hands. The cap spread a royal nine inches. She felt in her pocket for a collecting bag,

and fitted the bolete carefully in.

"I'll cook it in butter with herbs even," she whispered to herself, and as she stood, the two phials of pills clinked a merry requiem in her pocket.

Firstly

"Is it possible to diagnose a condition without hospitalisation or intrusive tests?"

A brisk woman, as young or as old as Kerewin:

"In your case, not surely. I've made a tentative diagnosis, but without a biopsy or other explorative operation, I can not tell you definitely. The pain you describe, the weight loss and waning appetite, the site and form of

the probable tumour, are all pointers, but there could be explanations other than carcinoma."

"Could similar symptoms be initiated by stress and mental discontent?"

The woman shrugs.

"I don't know. The way the human organism reacts to stress and anxiety is extremely variable."

"If I have stomach cancer, how long will it be before I die, given that I won't accept any form of treatment?"

"That is impossible to answer without knowledge of how far the disease has progressed. Even then, it is

uncertain. You might live for a year and longer, or succumb within the month. It depends on many factors,

not least your desire to live."

Kerewin smiles. The dark violet shadows under her eyes give a strange highlight to that smile.

"What is your objection to hospitalisation and treatment?" The doctor is curious but dispassionate.

"Primarily, that I forgo control over myself and my destiny. Secondly, medicine is in a queer state of

ignorance. It knows a lot, enough to be aware that it is ignorant, but practitioners are loath to admit that

ignorance to patients. And there is no holistic treatment. Doctor does not confer with religious who does not

confer with dietician who does not confer with psychologist. And from what I can learn about cancer

treatment, the attempted cure is often worse than the disease--'

"What you are saying basically is that you have no trust in doctors or current medicine."

"Right on."

Her cigar smoke makes a silent barrier between them.

The specialist says coolly,

"Well, all I can do in that case is refer you to my colleague with a recommendation that he gives you what

you have asked for."

"Thank you. That is more than I hoped for."

Secondly

"All right, I give you this and you go away, but there's one thing," he holds up his hands, "doesn't it strike you as selfish? I mean, who cleans up the mess afterwards?"

Kerewin is silent a moment.

He goes on, almost eagerly,

"You must have relations who have some good feelings for you, even if they're presently estranged as you

say."

"I don't give a damn for my relations. They feel, I assure you, the same way about me. As to cleaning up the

mess -- I've left a written explanation with my lawyer as to why I chose not to receive medical care. My legal

and financial affairs are in perfect order. Granted, removing a mouldering corpse isn't pleasant, but there is

every chance I won't be found until I'm a nice clean skeleton."

"What about dying by yourself?"

"What about it? Everyone does. The company you keep at death is, of all things, most dependent on chance. I

am outside my faith with no need of its ministrations. And I function best by myself."

He sighs.

"Okay, blunt words don't affect you and you make your points coherently. Would you consider this? How

about living with my wife and me instead of going away to god knows where? She is trained as a nurse, and

we're both sympathetic to your point of view. We'd leave you alone until you wanted our help. I mean, you

never really know how you're going to feel dying until it happens... you might want a hand to hold after all."

"Thanks but no thanks. It's very kind of you to offer but," she hesitates before saying it,

"I want to be alone."

He grins, "Okay. And you never signed this," holding out the slip for her to sign, "as far as the fuzz are concerned. It's just for my own files." He asks wistfully, "I don't suppose you'd be able to keep any kind of record as to how they help?"

"I'll do me everlivin' best... don't expect it to be too coherent, that's all. I'll leave any notes in an envelope for you."

He grimaces.

"Yes... if you change your mind, please let us know."

"Rightio," standing up, feeling nearly lighthearted now, "and as they say, hooray."

All that talk and time for this, a brown glass jar full of gelatinous capsules.

Extract of mushroom, potent hallucinogen, a painkiller of unknown strength.

Sweet weed, sweet wine, sweet taker-out of self, I have you all, she sang to herself.

And now, begin.

Thirdly

She left a lot of her gear in a commercial holding place, with sealed instructions to be opened a year from

now if she didn't come back for them.

Into the aluminium-framed silk pack she gathers the basics for a tilt against oncoming death.

The three books. Simon's rosary. The Ibanez in its travelling case, with a spare set of silver strings. The

hallucinogen. The month's supply of smoke. A quart of whisky for a kickoff.

Painkillers of the orthodox kind, antihistamine, Vitamin E and C and Laetrile in 1000 mg tablets.

A spare pair of jeans, another silk shirt, change of socks, underpants, leather gloves. Anorak. Very light very

warm waterproof down sleepingbag.

A billy and two messtins. Firelighters and small compact set of cooking instruments.

A packet of coffee and a container of salt and some cooking oil.

The heaviest item is a drawing board with extendable legs. The Pocket at the back of it contains paper and

brushes and felt-tips, and two blocks of ink.

If and when I find a place to die in, I'll stock it.

Meantime, I roam again. Hai, Te Kaihau.

The pain is always present now.

Fourthly

An odd little set of thesaurisms kept running versewise through her head:

geegaw knicknack kicksure bricabrac

That's all the whole thing matters eh, as this snowflake world splinters and glistens. Gimcrack trumpery in

gold and azure and scarlet and a glory silver... becasually nerthing is--

Stink of last night's drink thick in her nostrils. Raw throated, and febrile clots of words still hanging

everywhere... how did it go?

Little febrile clots of words

that choir in earfuls

humping off the page

I declaimed to the sea awash in rainbows--

The earth is wet, rained on, and the coffin smell trails out from roots and leaves.

"This," says Kerewin in a soft slurred voice, "s'll never do. Kidneys aching from the perversity of hard drinking and lying anywhere along the sandhills. And while for a sweet night me mushroom potion supplies

peace, the unreeling mind ain't worth it."

She stood herself up and groaned.

It is a lonely stretch of beach. No eyes for miles. No people.

"I'm grateful, herr Gott, grateful."

She shrugged the twisted sleeping bag off her. It seemed a waste of time and effort to recall her wandering

thought, and wash herself, and see about something to eat and drink, and excrete the last day's food.

She sat crosslegged awhile, hating the hard pressing growth in her suppliant stomach. In a little time, the day

became a day. She washed in a rivulet, gasing at the chill of the water. Her breasts hang; her belly has

developed new folds, and a horrid off centre prominence. The trickle of water lipped it, as though reluctant to

come closer. The fat cover she had sneered at, that lapped her body in protective covering, had vanished. The

muscles of her arms were grotesquely exposed, while thighs and buttocks had thinned beyond recognition. As

she contemplated the ruin of her body, she experienced an odd urging of protectiveness, a desire to renew it.

There is only one of thee, and now nearly none--

Sombrely, she drank a cup of coffee. The sullen smoke of her cooking fire trailed off to one side. Clasping

the cup, still filled with this new feeling of pity for her body, she scans her hands.

For some time, they had been infected. When journeying through a town she hid them in gloves. Since it was

the tail-end of winter, no-one commented.

Swollen, empurpled, leaking pus from every crack.

In this disease

part spiritual

my hands are betrayed

gross, flaccid

decayed to illuse

and all the silent

tender strength

they hold is

in abeyance

out of their reach.

She has a sudden desire to play her guitar. But two days ago, she had sent it to her family's home. No letter.

Just the Ibanez.

Now the need to take the dark and pale between her arms, pearwood surface and ebony underbody. The black

neck fretted with silver. Recollection of the palace of shadows.

O God, even my guitar wore mourning.

Fifthly

I went away. Now, I am come.

The gorse is still yellow on the hill. The rich musty smell still drifts downwind. She had found new strength

after deciding to come here. South into the high barren hills, the anchored remote land, the intense country of

shades and storms and snows and sun... crystals and desert. The McKenzie country where the windswept hut

belonging to her family still stood. Unused since the long-ago summer when three of them had searched for

gold, the door was loose on its hinges, and the glass in the one window was cracked and coated with

spiderwebs. The floor was rammed earth: she kicked the refuse on it outside. The fireplace under the massive

chimney that formed the far wall, was marred by broken bottles and a dead mouse. She kicked them out too.

There were two bunks in the hut. The sacking on the top one had rotted: she tore it off and burned it as soon

as the fireplace was cleared and laid.

On the shelf under the window, she set out her books and paper and art gear. She placed the drawing board

on its legs at an angle that let it serve as easel and desk without further adjustment.

She hung the pack with her clothes on it at the end of the bunk.

By this time, her gift of new strength was fading. In a long effortful day, she hitched into the nearest town,

and bought a new guitar, two crates of whisky, and three cartons of foodstuffs, salami and milkpowder and

dried bananas and everything else the store had, that she could keep without a refrigerator. She travelled back

as

far as she could in a taxi, but it took six trips to transport it all to the hut.

As she looked at it piled on the floor, her hands trembling, her legs weak, the pain in her gut overwhelming,

she fainted for the first time in her life. The last piece of visual consciousness showed the corner of a crate

before she hit it.

A little thread of bright crawling awareness.

Then a slow weary return to light.

It had taken the night to arrange the hut. When she dragged herself to the bunk, a fire gleamed on the hearth,

the cupboards were full, and there was water in the tank outside.

She slept the next day and night through. Woke still tired, full of tension ache, with a thick bruise on the side

of her face to warn against going beyond her strength again. She washed, dressed, ate her mixtures slowly,

drank little, and crawled to the doorway. There she soaked up the sun when it was fine, and watched the rain

with detachment when it rained. So she had grown into a habit of days.

Joy of the worm is upon thee.

Most afternoons she would walk, not for pleasure but because she deemed it necessary. Past the boulder-

riven stream. Past the triangular tussock that marked the halfway point. Past the gorsewoman, huddled and

weeping with the wind's stroke. Limping, bent, weary to death, back home.

At evening, she lit the fire, and made the only cooked meal of her day. She would paint, or write as the mood

took her, all the pain down. Notes for a mushroom dealer. And then, until the fire died, would strum the

guitar, or pluck untunes, or simply hold it in weeping hands.

I am decaying piece by piece.

The skin of her face has gone taut and masklike. Lizardskin eyelids and scales that disguise the lines that

meant laughter. And once, high and uncaring under the benefice of the mushrooms, she caught herself

laughing at the way a bead of pus leaked from the bend in her wrist down her sloping forearm onto the

guitar's strings. It shocked her momentarily, the whole stupid end. But then she had giggled again, not in

despair or dismay, but because that was the only way it was, and always had been, except for the lucid