The Bone People (57 page)

The kaumatua grins back. It's an impish grin, much like Himi's ? when he's done something not bad, but not

good either.

"And I do not usually bait guests," he answers gently, and the grin fades. "It was necessary to spark a little anger in you, to begin the healing. So much better if the anger began on me. That may sound vague and

mystical, but you were the broken man who had to come."

"You didn't bait me!"

"I did. I was taught early in my life how to manipulate people, by someone who was far top wise. You can

antagonise people, by posture and tone of voice, without them being aware this is being done. Of course, you

can do the opposite thing too, and be conciliatory. Or make people go to sleep."

Joe looks at him sideways.

"And there is no mystery to it," says the kaumatua sadly. "It is horrifyingly easy to make people perform as you wish, if they think they are in control all the time."

"Like me, early this morning?"

"And yesterday afternoon. It is easier, naturally, when someone is bound by pain or pleasure, mental or

physical."

He takes another two cups from the cupboard under the sink, and ladles soup into them. He sets them down

by a plate of fried bread.

"Eat well," he says.

The soup is greenish. The taste is peppery, yet reminiscent of chicken.

"What's in this?"

"Eels mainly. The odd bird. Greens."

"O," He blows cautiously into his cup. It is awkward, having only one hand to eat with.

"What kinds of birds? Greens?"

The old man dips a piece of bread into the soup. "As I remember, it started with a duck, and six potatoes.

Then one night I added two silverbelly eels. After that, more water, a pigeon, cresses, puwha, more potato, o

the soup grew." Shaking his head, laughing silently.

"What's funny? It sounds a good way to build a soup."

"I had always imagined one's death, day to be a solemn ritual affair, not a matter of discussing the contents of a soup!"

"I could think of worse ways to spend it... do you really think you're going to die?"

"I know," says the kaumatua. "As soon as we have finished, I will tell you the story, and show you what must be shown, and hear your answer. And then," he shrugs, "haere. Mou tai ata, moku tai ahiahi."

He lights his pipe and settles back against his chair.

"Na, I have not asked you before, but what is your name, and who are your people?"

"I am Joseph Ngakaukawa Gillayley, and I am Ngati Kahungunu."

"Ah, ah, good... I won't ask you what you are doing on this land...."

"I will tell you because you should know," says Joe quickly. "I was just wandering. I came out of jail last week, and I had, I had nowhere to go. I sold my house before I was imprisoned, my son has been taken away

from me, and my friend has vanished. I mean, she's somewhere, but she isn't at her home any more. I had

nowhere to go."

The old man's face has been impassive: he doesn't look surprised or disturbed to hear that Joe is newly free of

jail, but as soon as "mentions friend, the impassivity vanishes. This friend... is she a gardener, perhaps?" Joe grins.

No, she's a painter... though she does take good care of her dandelions!"

The other frowns.

"She doesn't have anything to do with digging or cultivation then?"

"Nope," and suddenly he hears Kerewin telling the dream that came with Tahoro Ruku,

"Keria! Keria!" she says again, "bloody strange way to end a dream eh?"

"She had a dream of being told to dig. Dig something, she didn't know what," he says slowly.

The old man leans forward a little, stabbing the air with his pipe.

"Ah!" he says, his eyes very bright, "pardon this discourtesy, this curiosity... but is there someone close to you who might be called a stranger?"

And how the hell would he know this?

Joe shivers. "Yes," hesitantly, "my son. I went to jail for beating him up." He darts a look at the old man. "I hurt him badly and they, the court, you know the welfare people, have taken him off me. I'm not even

allowed to see him... but you could call him a stranger."

Understatement of the year, Ngakau.

"I mean, I know him, I've known him for four years, but he wasn't mine to begin with, and his background is

a mystery. No-one knows his name or where he came from. He was too little to let us know when we found

him, and besides, he can't talk." Or do anything much now, he thinks, his heart aching.

It is long seconds before he dares take another look at the old man. He is smiling with delight it seems, but

tears are squeezing past his shut eyes. For Himi? thinks Joe in astonishment, but then the man says,

"Well, Joseph of sorrows, man from the east coast, when you are old you cry easy. You are young, your tears

will keep. You may even find that you needn't weep, for this strange friend and your lost hurt son. If I'm

given time, I'll find out for you, but now I must talk, for a long time, uninterruptedly."

Joe nods to him, Yes, I understand.

Tiaki Mira is greyfaced, and the lines about his mouth and eyes are eaten in sharp and dark against the pallid

skin. Pained and dying.

But he is chuckling to himself, saying, "E kui, how could I have guessed such a riddle as that? Stranger and

digger and broken man all in one. All in one... how could I know? I was just looking for one of them--"

He sighs, and looks at Joe.

"It began with my grandmother. O, it had been in existence a long time before that, but it needed someone

with my grandmother's foresight and intelligence, and sense of what was proper, and I say it, fanaticism, for

it to continue. Otherwise it would have become,

even in her time, just one more piece of lost knowledge. Another legend. One more of the old people's

dreaming lies. But my grandmother heard, and searched, and found, and stayed as a guardian. She got herself

a husband, and bred of him two children. None of them, husband or children, were as strong as she was. They

all died before her, and because she had these strange skills, she knew they would die, and she didn't tell any

of them. When my mother died, my father sent word to my grandmother, and she came to get me.

"I was ten years old, a smart child. I'd been brought up to speak English. I even thought in English. I still

can... they spoke Maori on the farm sometimes, but they were no longer Maori. They were husks, aping the

European manners and customs. Maori on the outside, with none of the heart left. One cannot blame them.

Maori were expected to become Europeans in those days. It was thought that the Maori could not survive, so

the faster they become Europeans the better for everyone, nei?"

The old eyes are as blank of sympathy as a hawk's, watching fiercely for any sign of agreement.

Joe stares unwaveringly back.

The kaumatua lowers his glare.

"My grandmother was not like that. The only European thing about her was her hat... ahh, the hats she used to

wear! Great wheels covered with fruit, with birds, with all manner of wax fakery. Stuck with steel pins like

daggers... ahh, her hats..." shaking his head, "but aside from those hats, she was one of the old people. She didn't wear shoes, and her feet had soles as hard as leather. She was tall, taller than I am, and heavy with

muscle and fat. A big woman, a very big woman... she had a disease in her private parts, and her smell was

offensive. Her hair was rusty black, and her teeth were huge, like a horse's. She stood in the doorway, and

called to me, 'Mokopuna! Tamaiti!' and I was terrified, and squashed myself in by my father lest she seize

me, and maybe devour me. I was a smart child, but I imagined too much... she knelt in the door, and tears

streamed down her face. 'Come to me!' she called, 'o little child, come to me! I have such a need for you!'

And she called and wept until I was no longer afraid, because how could someone who needed you so much

harm you?

"I went into her arms, and she hugged me tightly, and then she stood up, and with her great hard hand,

smacked me round the ears. 'Next time, come at the first call,' she said, and I was dazed and confused. Such a

mixture... I learned, over the next twenty years, that she could be as tender as any person born, and as hard as

stone. She was herself, and a very strange woman indeed. I was lonely, too much by myself as a child, and

more lonely and even more by myself as a young man. She perceived this, and judged the exact time I could

no longer endure the vigil and the learning

she imposed on me. Then she gave me a handful of money, a literal handful of gold sovereigns, and her hand

was large, remember.

"And she said, 'Go away, learn some limits of yourself. Learn to enjoy all that towns and people can offer

you. Get married if you must. But when I send for you, come back!' By then I had learned to obey her least

word without hesitation. She was a terrifying old woman, and she had more knowledge than any one person

should have.

"I went, and I found I was a stranger wherever I went. Women were afraid of me. I was too serious for the

men to find me a good companion. I drank and learned to dislike drinking. I took to smoking, and enjoyed

that. I went to bed with whores and easy women, and found my imagination and the blurred pictures I had

retained from childhood were more vivid that what occurred. I read a lot. I listened a lot. Then I came back to

my grandmother, and returned to her seventeen gold sovereigns. I didn't say much about what I had done, and

she didn't ask at all.

"Since then I have left this place one time only. That was two years ago, when I became ill with phlegm in

my chest... it wasn't the illness that drove me away, but fear that I would die before the people I was waiting

for arrived, digger and stranger and broken man. I made a deal with a lawyer in Durville, that is the town

nearest here... a strange deal he called it, but an acceptable one. I made a will, which is unsigned as yet, with

no beneficiary, yet. I left with the lawyer a complicated design which I said I would draw over the name of

the beneficiary and my own name on my copy of the will, so he would know I had completed it with a sound

mind, without being under duress. I told him if he never received the will, if I died too soon, he must hold the

land in trust, and find a suitable person... but I didn't think that would happen, even then. The lawyer directed

me to a doctor, and the doctor healed the lung disease, and then, days later, I returned home.

"My grandmother died nearly forty years ago, and she died hard. She whispered to me, before she choked,

that I must wait until the stranger came home, or until the digger began the planting, or until the broken man

was found and healed. Then they could bear my charge. They could keep the watch. They could decide the

next step on the way... she instructed me to dispose of her as I told you. She said if I deserted this place, the

land would curse me beyond my death. 'Keep watch!' she cried to me, 'Keep watch as I have taught you!

While you watch, it will be safe, and when your watch is done, if you have kept faith with me, it will be

safe...' she pleaded in the end, when her mind snapped, pleaded with me, which she had not done since that

long-ago day she collected me from the farm.

"I have remained, and kept watch here. Many times, I have cursed bitterly, because I am doomed to live alone

and lonely, and to what end? To keep guard over something that modern people deem superstitious nonsense.

Something modern people decry as an illusion. And yet, forty years after the death of my grandmother, I am

visited by the person who bears in his heart two of the people my grandmother foretold. And he is the broken

man... is it not strange?"

The soft high voice has been hypnotic. The old-fashioned phrases slide easily into Joe's ears. He has been

staring, eyes fixed on the fierce sharpened face. He hasn't been aware of thinking anything while the voice

told the tale.

Told what? he asks himself, told me nothing. A tale of a lonely old man, warped and defeated by a

domineering old woman... but he says,

"Yes, very strange, quietly.

The old man chuckles. It has a breathless sound to it, as though there is not enough air left in his lungs to

support mirth.

"And you think I have gone off my head with the pressure of loneliness and the years, eh? Or maybe you

think I was like that to begin with? hell!"

Joe looks at the table, blushing. He studies his soup cup; the mouthful left in the bottom has a scum on top,

with golden globules of fat studded over its surface. He doesn't say anything. The old man wheezes again.

"Small wonder!" he adds, "I think I would too, if I were you. But let me tell you some more... o Joseph, would you have some tobacco with you? See," taking out his battered tin, and holding it out open, "mine is nearly finished. Like me." Cackle, cackle.

No-one can laugh at their madness if they're mad, can they? Joe stands clumsily.

"I've got some smokes in my pack, I'll get them."

He fetches the two cigars and places them on the kaumatua's lap.

"Anana!" he says with surprise and delight. "These were the kind I smoked first of all... what a kind gift."

He's peeling the wrapping off one with shaky fingers.

"My friend Kerewin left those for me. She left them with my relations in the town I came from, with a letter.

Well, it isn't really a letter...."

The old man nods.

"Tell me soon, if there is time... but first I must finish what I have to tell you."

He lights the cigar carefully, and breathes out smoke with a deep sigh of satisfaction.