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 kind 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."
--Keri Hulme, The Bone People
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Mythic Soup in The Bone People
(by Keri Hulme)
In her extraordinary novel about Maori and Pakeha, set in 1976 but ranging in mythic realms, Keri Hulme sets Joe Gillayley on the path to redemption, to meet his kaumatua (elder), an old man on the point of death who has spent his life protecting the life force of New Zealand and waiting "until the stranger came home, or until the digger began the planting, or until the broken man was found and healed." Joe, disgraced and fresh out of prison, has wandered into exile and just thrown himself off a precipice, snapping his arm like a stick at the bottom. The old man finds him and takes him home.
The whare shuddered.
A draught of wind forced smoke back down the chimney, and ash spun out of the grate.
"Ata! Do you like ashes with your soup?"
The old man's voice is sprightly, and his eyes gleam with mischief.
"Not really," says Joe, and sips another mouthful of tea. He winces.
It is nearly black, and as bitter as anything he has tasted. "But if they're in there, they're in there."
He thinks.
Strange...I feel gay and, o, I don't know...unburdened?
He considers that, sipping more of the hellbrew gingerly.
Yes, unburdened. As though something's climbed off my shoulders. Yet nothing's different. I still remember everything. God, I can even feel my arm as bad as yesterday.He stares into his cup.
Very strange. The talk this early morning? My dreams? Nah, it must be the change in the weather....The sky outside is intensely blue. Patches of whitish cloud spear across it, moving eastwards. The wind blows strongly.
"E ka pai," the old man says. There's not that many. Maybe enough to make a new flavour."
He stirs the soup busily. "You look much better today."
"I feel much better," says Joe, grinning. "I'm not usually a bastard, I'm sorry for my bad temper."
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 the 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 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 kind 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."