The Quiet Earth by Craig Harrison

Author:Craig Harrison [Harrison, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC030000, Science Fiction, FIC028000
ISBN: 9781922148131
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2013-07-24T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

‘The object is to sink the black,’ he said, ‘when everything else is down.’

Leaning over the pool table he drove the cue onto the white ball, sending it with a loud crack at the triangle of other balls. They scattered across the green baize. He lifted the cube of chalk and screeched it on the end of the cue.

‘You’re sure you don’t play?’

‘Positive.’

‘I never met anybody who didn’t play pool.’

‘We’ve both led sheltered lives, then.’

He laughed, and began to move round the table lining up shots and cursing when he missed. We were in the games room of a Turangi motel, having taken over a two-room unit for the night. Apirana, for some reason, didn’t want to drive down to Waiouru and stay at the army camp. ‘It’s only crummy barracks,’ he said. After the trauma of last Saturday he had stayed dutifully at Waiouru for two days, then abandoned the camp and driven down to Hawke’s Bay and up beyond Gisborne in search of his relatives. And finding nothing, had come back.

The sun was setting and the darkness gathered in the room. I sat by the open ranch slider doors looking north, the sun on my face. I had noticed that Apirana was left-handed.

‘You’ve never been to Auckland?’ I asked.

‘Nope.’ He tapped the cue ball gently and it missed its target. ‘Been to Singapore, though.’ The ball missed again. ‘Whaka—nui!’ This, I gathered, was his swear word. He put the cue down and came and sat in one of the aluminium chairs on the patio, holding a glass of beer. ‘Too dark in there.’

After a pause, I took a deep breath and said, ‘The reason I asked, was…because when I first saw you today, I could have sworn I’d seen you somewhere before.’

His face was turned towards the sun and the light was being absorbed into his features and reflected from the bone beneath the skin, pale almond under coffee. His eyes were almost closed.

‘Lots of Maoris in Auckland,’ he said softly.

‘Didn’t you think we’d met somewhere?’

The face was expressionless.

‘They say we all look the same to the pakeha.’

‘I don’t think so.’

A pause. He drank his beer. It looked gold; it slid into his mouth. Then, placing the glass on the concrete floor, ‘How many Maoris did you know?’

‘One used to live near us, twenty years ago.’

‘What was his name?’

It was my turn to pause.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Did you ever know?’

‘No.’

He didn’t move. His face was set like an Easter Island monolith against the sun on a hillside.

‘Anybody else?’ he asked quietly. My irritation began to increase.

‘A bloke at the supermarket. A mechanic at the garage. There weren’t many at university.’

‘No, I reckon not.’

It was obviously useless trying to get behind the mask he’d assumed. A sullen reticence had come over him, an apathetic weariness rather than defensive hostility. The shadows stretched across the grass towards us as the light faded. When I looked at his face again the dusk had gained such depth in the porch that only the whites of his eyes reflected glitterings of light.

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