The Bone People (42 page)

He's glad to get away from the place? Ah hell, who cares? "Oh yeah," says Kerewin coldly. "There's always next time."

III

The Lightning Struck Tower

7

Mirrortalk

HELLO, AGAIN.

I planned to try and unravel the tangle of dream and substance that is me, my family, Moerangi... but I am

overwhelmed by futility. What use is it to know? What use is it, when I am gutted by the sense of my own

uselessness?

Through poverty, godhunger, the family debacle, I kept a sense of worth. I could limn and paint like no-one

else in this human-wounded land: I was worth the while of living. Now my skill is dead. I should be.

But I can't.

Let the razor sleek into my flesh. The numb night of overdose send me stillness.

So I exist, a husk that wishes decay into sweet earth.

Writing nonsense in a journal no-one ever sees.

"Ah to hell, Holmes, you take yourself far too seriously." Locking the book away in its chest.

I can hear it whining in the dark to itself, Despair, despair, there's no-one here. I should climb in with it, and

we could whimper in company. Each unaware of the other.

She had dropped the Gillayleys at Pacific Street, refusing their offer of dinner. She had sold the car at the

nearest sales yard, and walked home.

This Tasman sea is grey and wild, and there is no island with dream marae at its core... There was a film of

dust over everything in the Tower.

The suneater burred on in the late afternoon sun, but its beat is irregular, the crystal mounting hazy.

Stasis. A hell in itself. No change. All this waiting for me, to no avail.

Maybe I should load up Aihe and sail off somewhere? Dunno. Go back to Moerangi? Dunno. Sleep for a

week? Burn my brain

with booze? Anything? Dunno--

You're wounded, soul, too hurt to heal. Maybe so. I dunno--

He says, stamping up the stairs,

"It was good to go away, but it's better to get back home eh?"

"Yes."

"We were round at Tainuis an hour ago, and Christ, what a reunion! You should've been with us... everyone

carrying on, Ben, the old people, Piri's up north but he sent a telegram saying hello, even Luce... you'd think

we'd been gone years rather than weeks."

"You're appreciated."

He squeezes her shoulder. "E, so are you--"

He spreads his arms wide at the livingroom circle, "Hai, it's good to get back here too."

"Sim at Tainuis' still?"

"Yeah, being spoilt. Everyone thinks he's looking great. And he was showing off his singing about two

seconds after we got in the door. Regular party there now."

Why aren't you at it? Why bother me here?

The whisky she's been supping since putting her nightmare book away hasn't made her feel more joyful.

He says, out of the blue,

"What do you want most of all?"

"All my life or now or what?" frowning into the fire.

"Say, for the future."

"Nothing much. What I want couldn't happen."

"Just pretend it could."

"It'll be pretending all right... I'd like to have a family reunion, reconciliation. Talk, drink, laugh, sing... what you fellas were doing, with no recriminations on either side. And most of all, I'd like to paint again as I could

before. I don't care if it came hard, if I could make just one painting we could all see a piece of soul in--"

She sounds cool and controlled as though uninvolved with her wishes.

"And that's all? All you want?"

"Yes. Why, what do you want?"

He is silent. He says at last,

"I don't know. It's clear, and unclear... I would mainly like for Himi and me to be happy. It was so good there this evening, with Wherahiko and everyone... that's what I really want. A good big family group, to help me,

for Himi to grow up straight in. With you."

It comes out baldly.

"Hey, Joe--" Her first word is drawled, warningly slow.

"You don't have to say it. I know you don't feel that way. I know you're wary of us all. Maybe that's wise,

too. You don't get hurt that way."

She doesn't say anything.

"But it's a dream we've got, Himi and I, that you'll decide to throw your lot back in with humanity again.

Specifically, us... we can wait a long time. We're masters of patience, both of us, and trained to

disappointments." He grins quickly at her, inviting a flippant retort.

She gets to her feet. She says in a strained voice,

"I want you to come and look at something."

"Right." He stands gracefully.

Thin etched arch of storm

and eggshell blue sky before it;

far away, goldened by a retreating sun,

grey streak and wash of rainclouds

over the brawling Tasman sea.

Lone gull, sentinel, king gull, watch gull, night black wings, head white as a snow wave and cold barbarian

eye: gull the solidity, all else mist and wraithness sea spume spun to light.

A moon shining a broken road

oversea;

a lone woman naked to her waist

waits at the edge of moonlight;

a shadow person watching for meaning

somewhere.

She doesn't say a word, holding up the boards and canvases from behind her desk one at a time.

A group of lights that look living crystalled in a circle; a tree in the middle waiting.

Sunlight metalling horizon to silver; long stretch of ruffled grey. A matt white line of breakers. Behind the

steel, clouds reach darkly up tops shaded by cold still light.

Abstract, but it is as real a winter sea, winter sun, he has ever seen.

She shuffles through them quickly, paintings full of strange lights and torn lands and odd people who scowl

or stare or smile distantly at him.

He practically snatches the last one out of her hand.

Kerewin on a board.

Wildly curly hair, darkly brown, but the normal highlights have

turned to streaks of gold and red and grey, wheat-colour by

her temples; bushy hair so alive, he startles himself looking

for eyes or fingers among it.

Broad pale face, fleshy cheeks; the V of flesh of her forehead

heavily shadowed so it becomes a brand.

Narrowed cynical intense eyes, neither blue nor grey. Lively

stone eyes, hating life. Thin twisted upper lip, fat lower lip,

chin wedged out, ever-ready to confront the worst.

A grim face, stupid, but redeemed by the harrowing eyes.

Look up from it, and there's the same person staring back. A piece of soul enshrined in paint.

He drinks the painting in.

"These are the only things in my life that are real to me now. Not people. Joe. Not relationships. Not families.

Paintings. That remind me I could."

She is sliding them back behind the desk, screamers and mysteries and the weeping loving pieces of her sea

and land. She holds out her hand for the self-portrait.

"But something. Something has died. Isn't there now. I can't paint." There are tears in her voice, but none in her eyes. "I am dead inside."

He still holds the painting.

"May I have it?"

There are tears in his eyes.

"Have? Not buy?" The harsh burst of laughter sneers, hits at him.

"Whatever price you ask, I will pay."

She is suddenly very weary. It hasn't meant anything to him.

"Ah, keep it. I see better work in the mirror daily...."

"It is, it is real."

Admiration she is used to. Giving paintings away she is used to. This awe she is inured against. She doesn't

reply.

He says softly.

"Whatever you ask of me, I will do. Whatever you want from me, I will give."

"Even absence?"

He draws his breath in sharply.

"If you wish it...."

She hits the desk with the side of her hand and the crack echoes round the library.

"Forget it. Have the painting with my blessing. You're welcome to the gibbering thing, a poor gift to a good

friend. But stay a good friend. Don't come any closer to me, just close enough to be always welcome."

He places it down reverently. He leans over and takes her shoulders.

She stiffens, pulling away.

"You don't want to hongi with me?"

Her taut shoulders relax.

I salute the breath of life in thee, the same life that is breathed by me, warm flesh to warm flesh, oily press of

nose to nose, the hardness of foreheads meeting. I salute that which gives us life.

He sighs loudly, then says, strongly, gaily,

"It's a great gift. A time when it's right to hongi, ne?"

She has pulled away again, leaning on the other side of the desk.

"I suppose so."

She shivers. Something is crawling up her spine with claws on all its thousand feet.

"Let's get back to the fire and have another drink, eh? Leave that thing here for the moment. I'll frame it and bring it round for you sometime soon, okay?"

"Okay."

He props the painting against the desk and says, as though he only just thought of it, "Are you afraid of

kissing? You know, of men?"

"I don't like kissing."

"I suppose it's a matter of taste." Thoughtfully, as though she'd asked him for his opinion on osculation, instead of giving that flat conclusive answer. "I like kissing... Himi likes kissing... in fact, he thinks he can cajole and explain and talk his way out of all kinds of trouble with his kisses. Like they're part of language,

eh. If he's in a good mood, everyone gets a helping."

"I've noticed."

"I wondered, did anyone ever," shrug, "you know, hurt you so you don't like kissing? Love?"

"Nope."

She picks up the lantern and the shadows spin round the booklined walls.

He doesn't move.

"I thought maybe someone had been bad to you in the past, and that was why you don't like people touching

or holding you."

"Ah damn it to hell," she bangs the lamp down on the desk and the flame jumps wildly.

"I said no. I haven't been raped or jilted or abused in any fashion. There's nothing in my background to

explain the way I am." She steadies her voice, taking the impatience out of it. "I'm the odd one out, the

peculiarity in my family, because they're all normal and demonstrative physically. But ever since I can

remember, I've disliked close contact... charged contact, emotional contact, as well as any overtly sexual

contact. I veer away from it, because it always feels

like the other person is draining something out of me. I know that's irrational, but that's the way I feel."

She touches the lamp and the flaring flame stills.

"I spent a considerable amount of time when I was, o, adolescent, wondering why I was different, whether

there were other people like me. Why, when everyone else was fascinated by their developing sexual nature, I

couldn't give a damn. I've never been attracted to men. Or women. Or anything else. It's difficult to explain,

and nobody has ever believed it when I have tried to explain, but while I have an apparently normal female

body, I don't have any sexual urge or appetite. I think I am a neuter."

He picks up the painting again, considering it.

"Maybe you have so much energy tied up in this, you have none left for sex." He doesn't sound doubting, or horrified. "Sublimated is the jargon, eh." He looks at her. "I'm not being funny, but that's a Maori thing in a way... I used to carve a lot, and one of the old prohibitions was, while engaged in a carving, you did not lie

with a woman or spend your seed, as the euphemism goes. It wasn't that sex was bad, but because all the

energy was tied up in a tapu thing, was needed for it."

"Maybe so," says Kerewin heavily. "I don't know."

"Are you a virgin then?"

"Yes."

He puts the painting down and grins impishly at her.

"Well, take it from one who is very experienced, sex is hell of an enjoyable but not the be-all and end-all of

things. I had it best in my life with Hana my wife, and it grew better all the time we were with each other.

Because we learned to know each other with more than our bodies, sharing more than our physical

excitement... like that, it's wonderful, it truly is. Otherwise, like now, I feel it as a need, something I want

more or less to relieve myself of, but it's not overpowering. You need never be scared my cock's going to rule

my head. Or my heart, eh."

He is comforting her.

He is being brotherly, friendly, almost fatherly, she thinks he thinks, denying her difference is ruinously odd.

And she loves him for a moment for his concern.

She picks up the lamp and the shadows gyrate again. "E Joe, e hoa, ka pai."

She adds, "When I was ten years younger, I read all I could to find out the why and wherefore of it. From the

Kama Sutra and Kraft-Ebbing to a pile of know-yer-own body books. I decided I was one more variety in

varied humanity. It doesn't worry me now, but it does seem to worry others."

"Not me now. You've explained. You're Kerewin, and I love you, as Haimona does, but we'll keep it, as they

say, platonic. All right, e hoa?"

"All right," she's smiling for the first time that day. "So let's have that drink...."

"Right on. But I'd better go home soon and get Sim off to bed." Time, he thinks, as she leads the way

downstairs, time and care and tenderness. It'll get through to her. I can wait. I wasn't joking when I said we

were masters of patience. I can wait for a year, years if need be, because she is well worth waiting for. O dear

Lord, in spite of her arrogance and coldness, she is well worth waiting

for.

As he walks down the spiral he thinks it will be far less than years of waiting.

She dreamed that night she was sitting in front of a table, its edges defined by shadows. There were cards on