The Bone People (58 page)

"It is odd how the mouth and nose remember, nei? Well, let me see how to reassure you... I think the heart of

the matter is that I was waiting for you, the broken man. Or one of the other two People, right?"

To Joe's nod, he answers,

"I have been here for fifty years, no, nearly sixty years, and very few people have come during that time.

There was a sawmill here at one time, but they quickly cut down all the trees, and it ceased to operate before

my grandmother died. After her death, there have come pig and deer shooters. Once, three men, looking for

gold. Some survey people. I watched what they did, and where they went. I followed them secretly. And

never did any of them fit the descriptions. They were all whole people, rough strong ordinary men. There was

one man who was very different, and for a while--"

For a minute, the old man muses, his eyes clouded. Then he shakes his head, and his eyes become bright and

aware again.

"When I came back from the town, after preparing this will of mine, I didn't come back alone. There was a

man with me, who wanted to die in peace. He had been in hospital, in the bed next to mine, and he had said

this, and I invited him to come here to die. That is his picture," gesturing to the photograph of the young

white man, "and his name was Timon. He was a singer, he said. He had no family. His wife was dead, and his

child gone too, he said, and soon they would all meet again. He seemed very happy at that thought. Though it

may have been the drugs. He injected himself with them many times a day, and he was always resigned and

placid afterwards. One day, a week after he arrived, I found him dead outside the door, the needle still in his

arm. He looked so peaceful that I wept. I stopped the bus the following day, and told the driver, and later that

afternoon, the police arrived and took him away."

A puff of smoke.

The old man says,

"He was a beautiful man, or he had been beautiful. He had a marvellous voice, that even in his pain could

ring and soar. He didn't say very much about himself, only that he had been a singer, and that he lived with a

lady old enough to be his mother. Those were his words. 'She's old enough to be my mother, and mother of

god, she's lovely. I mean, she was. She wasn't lovely when she died.' He cried sometimes for her and his

child. He cried at other times because he said they were all far from home. And sometimes, he cried for me.

'A wait I could sing of,' he said, 'the wait of a hero indeed... may it finish soon, sir, very soon.' He never

called me anything but Sir, although I had given him my name and circumstances."

He shrugs.

"The day before he died, he sang a song for me. I don't know what the language was, but the melody has

haunted me since. That day he gave me the photograph. He had had it taken before he went into hospital, he

said, because he thought he was going to die there, and he wanted to send it to someone, a woman I think, as

a memento of him. But he said he wanted to give me all there was to give, and that was all there was, his

song and his picture. I wish I could remember enough of his song to give it to you. It is a shame I cannot keep

his song going." He drew a last inhalation of smoke and coughed as he breathed

out.

"I have spent too much time on Timon the singer... but he was the only different man of those few who came

here. Besides, he died... Two nights ago, a green gecko lay on my bed. That night a huhu stayed on the

window until I slept. My grandmother has been talking a lot to me. I cast twigs to see what I should do and

where I should go. One broke. The other found it at a place I had designated the Three Mile beach. I knew

you had come at last. Not before time!" and he laughs again.

I wish he wouldn't, thinks Joe. It's too harsh. It sounds as though he's going to go at any moment. He looks as

though he might too.

He says, to cover his dismay,

"You are a keeper, you say. And I am the person who was foretold, to keep watch after you. What do I look

after?"

"I will show it to you very soon... but you must know what it is before I show you. Otherwise it will seem to

be shadows in the water...."

He stands, bending up slowly from the waist, standing piece by piece as it were, chest, shoulders, neck, head.

He looks at Joe for a long time, and he doesn't say anything.

"Maybe I can't put it in the proper words," he says finally.

He bows his head.

"I was told about it, taught about it, for a long time before I met it. I was prepared, and aue! there isn't time to prepare you. I think it best to say it bluntly. I guard a stone that was brought on one of the great canoes. I

guard the canoe itself. I guard the little god that came with the canoe. The god broods over the mauriora, for

that is what the stone is home to, but the mauri is distinct and great beyond the little god... the canoe rots

under them both... aie, he is a little god, no-one worships him any longer. But he hasn't died yet. He has his

hunger and his memories and his care to keep him tenuously alive. If you decide to go, he will be all there is

left as a watcher, as a guardian."

The old voice limps and stutters. The kaumatua does not look up. There is a shudder running constantly

through him now.

Sweet Jesus Christ alive! You'd better humour him Ngakau, but he's mad! Watching for sixty years over a

canoe. A mauriora! a little god! Doesn't he know the museums are full of them.

But like an unseen current, there's a darker thought -- Maybe a priestly canoe? A live god? A live mauriora?

He says, with real bewilderment,

"What can I say? What do I do? I've seen them in museums, Pierced stones and old wooden sticks where the

gods were supposed to live. Where the vital part of a thing was supposed to rest. But aren't they temporary?

And can't they look after themselves?"

The old man mumbles,

"Not this one... it is the heart of this country. The heart of this land."

He straightens his shoulders, his dark eyes burning. In a stronger voice,

"By accident or design, when the old people arrived here, they induced, or maybe it arrived of itself, the spirit of the islands, part of the spirit of the earth herself, it rested in the godholder they had brought. O it isn't able to go now. It is both safe, it is vulnerable." He stops, aware suddenly that the phrases are mixed up, that he is speaking garble.

"O Joseph, my time is coming faster than I thought it would... there will be no time for ceremonies, you will

have to take the land without prayers, but you will have my blessing... listen carefully. I was taught that it

was the old people's belief that this country, and our people, are different and special. That something very

great had allied itself with some of us, had given itself to us. But we changed. We ceased to nurture the land.

We fought among ourselves. We were overcome by those white people in their hordes. We were broken and

diminished. We forgot what we could have been, that Aotearoa was the shining land. Maybe it will be

again... be that as it will, that thing which allied itself to us is still here. I take care of it, because it sleeps now. It retired into itself when the world changed, when the people changed. It can be taken and destroyed

while it sleeps, I was told... and then this land would become empty of all the shiningness, all the peace, all

the glory. Forever. The canoe... it has power, because of where it came from, and who built it, but it is just a

canoe. One of the great voyaging ships of our people... but a ship, by itself, is not that important. And there

are many little gods in the world yet, some mean, others impotently benign, some restless, others sleeping...

but I am afraid for the mauri! Aue! How can I make you understand? How? How? How?"

He beats his fist against his thigh, drawing in his breath with a great sucking sound. He holds it, his bony

chest swelling beneath the wings of his coat. Then, exhausted, he lets it stream out, and stands still, grey and

anguished and weary.

"Three days ago, I would have laughed you to scorn, now I believe you," says Joe simply. "You came up the beach, prepared to meet someone and help someone. You've helped me. You've told of all the years you

waited, keeping guard. You've told me why. You are a sane man, and a wise man. I believe you. I don't

understand it all, but I believe you."

He stands up, cradling his arm.

"Show me where it is, and I will look after it until it tells me

He rests the broken arm against his belt, and holds out his other hand to the kaumatua. "Show me," he says again.

It is a long slow march, paced for a funeral, a march of death.

The kaumatua shuffles, bonefingered hand grasping Joe's forearm. He moves blindly; his feet catch on sticks

and stumble on stones. He mutters to himself continuously. He is failing horribly fast, the upright man of

yesterday become this scarecrow of bones mere hours later.

I have seen dead people, but I have never seen someone die.

What do you do? Hold their hand and let them get on with

it?

Pray? Tangi? Listen?

The old man trips again, and nearly falls. Joe steadies him with his body. "Corner. Left."

The words are forced out. Thick veins in the old man's forehead pulse alarmingly.

The beaten earth track forks. Joe helps him down the left-hand path. They come to rocks, worn and broken,

but still towering above them. An ancient gorge where the river ran aeons ago, and carved this place for part

of its bed. A silent place: ochre and slate grey stones. No birds. No insects. The only plants are weeds, stringy

and grey and subdued.

The old man pulls on Joe's arm. He points with a trembling hand. "Cave. In ground." He tightens his lips and closes his eyes, concentrating. "I don't. Want. To be put there. In the town...."

Burial cave... and his grandmother will lie up there. Somewhere. There's a rock like a saddle about fifty yards

away, in a direct line with where he's pointing. I'll take a look later. Maybe.

Joe shivers.

"E pou, don't worry. I won't put you there. You want to be buried in the town, I will take you there... but what marae? Who are your people?"

]('No. People. They're dead. The town...."

"You want to go to the cemetery in the town?"

A whisper of sound, Ae.

"So be it."

The kaumatua edges forward again. "Tauranga atua..." he says softly. Under his breath, again and again,

"Tauranga atua, tauranga atua," as though those words give strength and enable him to walk.

Tauranga... a resting place for canoes, an anchorage. For a god canoe, what anchorage?

I remember a wet afternoon, when I was a child, and I read a magazine. It had the pictures and story of how

they found an old canoe of the Egyptians... the sun ship of Cheops, that was it, a burial ship for a pharaoh to

ride in. And I thought then -- to think of it now! -- how much more exciting it would be to find a ship of

ours... not a dusty narrow craft in the desert sand, a river-craft if it sailed at all, but one of the far travelled salt sea ships, that knifed across great Kiwa centuries ago... guided by stars, powered by the winds and

by the muscles of stronghearted women and men--

But Cheops' canoe travelled the way of the dead, and that's a journey and a half... coffined it was, confined

between stone

blocks.

Where will I find this ship? In stone? In water as he suggested?

Or only in the clouded remnants of an old man's mind?

The kaumatua's grasp on his arm tightens again.

"Here," he says in a choked whisper, "here."

The earth track goes on a way yet, turning a corner to head towards the sea. The sea is loud here, as though

the diminishing rock walls, by some freak of acoustics, channel the sound in. There doesn't appear to be

anything different about this part of the gorge. Joe looks sadly round.

Mad and stricken after all--

"See. It?"

The rasping urgency of the tired voice makes him stare at the bare surrounding rocks as hard as he can. Tears

blur his vision.

I can't say even Yes for him. I can't tell him a lie. The wind blows a little more strongly, and the white

streamers of cloud shift away from the face of the sun. Over by the cliff, something glints. "Is it water?" asks Joe sharply. The old man sags. "Haere..." pushing himself away from Joe, go, you go, I cannot

go.

As gently as possible, Joe helps him lie down at the side of the track. He takes off his parka and wraps it into

a pad, a pillow for the kaumatua's head. The old man's eyes are closed.

"I'll come right back."

Don't die yet, he thinks fiercely. He clambers over the rocks towards the glint, his heart pounding.

A weathered stratum of rock makes an overhang. It is almost a cave, but it hasn't a floor. A great natural well,

like a sinkhole, a cenote, has been formed in the rock.

The water is pale green and milky, as though it contains lime dust in suspension. It is opaque at first glance.

But in a very short time -- trick of the light, or his eyes adjusting -- he can see shadows in the pool. He can't

tell how deep the water is, or how large the things that show as shadows are. They cover the bottom of the

pool, with patches and gaps between them. Long angular shadows mainly, with two round ones at the far

side.

It can't be one of the great ships... the pool's only, what? twenty feet in diameter... but there's something down

there... rock debris? Old logs? Dunno... where does the water come from? Underground spring maybe... there