The Bone People by Keri Hulme

Author:Keri Hulme [Hulme, Keri]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2012-06-16T23:23:06+00:00

6 Ka Tata Te Po

It's been a smooth week: this is the first flaw in it.

For his cold had cleared up in a record two days; ("and two bottles of whisky," says Kerewin, pointedly.) the weather has held fine and windless; ("Maori summer," he says. "In the middle of winter?" "When better to get a bit of brown in?") and the fishing has been superb.

Simon's made the acquaintance of barracouta, ling, trumpeter, and rig, and red cod, kelp cod, and rock cod.

He gets taught to use a scrubbing brush without getting his bandaged thumb in the way.

He cleans fillet after fillet after fillet that Kerewin slices away from rigid fish. Sometimes the world seems all silver scales and gelatinous eyeballs and bloodcoloured seawater. And the squabbling squawling greed of gulls.

But Kerewin boasts, "Another record year for the Holmes and Gillayley Smoked Fish Corporation!" The racks in the smokehouse are filled with slabs of ling and couta and cod, already pickled and dried. "A hundredweight in there if there's an ounce -- keep us going a while back in Whangaroa, e Joe?"

Ulp, thinks Joe. It's been fish for breakfast, dinner and tea, and it looks like it's going to be fish for snacks chowders and sandwiches for months ahead. He sighs. You could get tired of fish.

But you don't get tired of this place, he reflects, while standing outside the old bach wondering how to approach Kerewin.

He relishes the days at sea, whether fishing or simply lazing in the weak winter sunshine. He walks the beaches a lot: the reefs aren't alien places any more. The black rocks have their secrets, but he feels welcome there now. And best of all, he loves the quiet evenings when the wind has dropped and the homing birds call high above his head, mysterious and lonely. Ah, peace, peace... it is well named, this place of healing beauty where you can, in perfect safety, sleep by day-- Only, at the moment, Kerewin is playing something brutal and discordant.

Aue. If she feels like that sound... even Himi wouldn't like that.

And his child is now passionately, wholeheartedly, openly in love with music.

"He's worse than the transistors," says Kerewin. "He's been warbling along the beach like a demented canary... y'know a way to shut him up?" "No way! It's great." He's still not sure on all the details as to why his son has suddenly discovered he can sing -- "Well, port a beul, wordless mouth music," Kerewin the cyclopaedic -- but he is as delighted and enthusiastic as the child with the ability. It's the only vocal advance Simon has ever made, and besides, as Joe tells her repeatedly, "Sweet Lord, it's tuneful. He really can sing") Simon's had sound nights all this week, and there's been no trouble of any kind during the days. Ah, we never had it so good, thinks Joe. For the child is sweet-tempered, he's happy, he's helpful, he's entertaining (and he's healing up beautifully, from the belt-cuts on his body to his hook-bitten thumb).

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