The Luminaries

forgotten your name already.’
    ‘It’s Te Rau,’ said Tauwhare.
    ‘So it is,’ said Staines. ‘So it is.’ He paused a moment, wretched with exhaustion, and then said, ‘You wouldn’t mind taking me there, would you, old fellow? You wouldn’t mind it?’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘To the Maori land,’ said Staines, closing his eyes again. ‘You see, I’ve buried a great deal of gold on Maori land, and if you help me, I wouldn’t be averse to giving you a pinch of it. I’ll stand you whatever you like. Whatever you like. I remember the place exactly: there’s a tree. The gold’s underneath the tree.’ He opened his eyes again and gave Tauwhare a beseeching, blurry look.
    Tauwhare tried again. ‘Where have you been, Mr. Staines?’
    ‘I’ve been looking for my bonanza,’ said Staines. ‘I know it’s on Maori land … but there’s nothing to mark Maori land, is there? No kind of fence to mark it. They always said a man could never get lost on the West Coast, because there’s always mountains on one side, and ocean on the other … but I seem to have got myself a little muddled, Te Rau. It’s Te Rau, isn’t it? Yes. Yes. I’ve been lost.’
    Tauwhare came forward and knelt. Up close the man’s wound looked even worse. In the centre of the blackness was a thick crust, showing through it the glint of yellow. He reached out his hand and touched the skin of Staines’s cheek, feeling his temperature. ‘You are sick with fever,’ he said. ‘This wound is very bad.’
    ‘Never saw it coming,’ said Staines, staring at him. ‘Fresh off theboat, I was, and green with it. Nothing shows like greenness, on a man. Never saw it coming. Heavens, you
are
a sight for sore eyes! I’m terribly sorry about this muddle. I’m terribly sorry about your mate Crosbie. I really am. What kind of medicine did you say you had about you?’
    ‘I shall bring it to you,’ said Tauwhare. ‘You wait here.’ He did not feel hopeful. The boy was not speaking sense, and he was much too sick to walk to Hokitika on his own; he would need to be carried there on a litter or a cart, and Tauwhare had seen enough of the Hokitika hospital to know that men went there to die, not to be cured. The place was canvas-roofed, and walled only with the simplest clapboard; the bitter Tasman wind blew through the cracks in the planking, giving rise to a new cacophony of coughing and wheezing with each gust. It stank of filth and disease. There was no fresh water, and no clean linen, and only one ward. The patients were forced to sleep in close quarters with one another, and sometimes even to share a bed.
    ‘Half-shares,’ the boy was saying. ‘Seemed fair enough to me. Half for you, half for me. What about it, he says. Going mates.’
    Tauwhare was calculating the distance in his mind. He could make for Hokitika at a pace, alert Dr. Gillies, hire a cart or a trap of some kind, and be back, at the very earliest, within three hours … but would three hours be soon enough? Would the boy survive? Tauwhare’s sister had died of fever, and in her final days she had been very like the way that Staines was now—bright-eyed, both sharp and limp at once, full of nonsense and tumbling words. If he left, he risked the boy’s death. But what could he do, if he stayed? Suddenly decisive, he bowed his head to say a
karakia
for the boy’s recovery.
    ‘
Tutakina i te iwi
,’ he said, ‘
tutakina i te toto. Tutakina i te iko. Tutakina i te uaua. Tutakina kia u. Tutakina kia mau. Tenei te rangi ka tutaki. Tenei te rangi ka ruruku. Tenei te papa ka wheuka. E rangi e, awhitia. E papa e, awhitia. Nau ka awhi, ka awhi.
’
    He raised his head.
    ‘Was that a poem?’ said Staines, staring. ‘What does it mean?’
    ‘I asked for your wound to heal,’ Tauwhare said. ‘Now I shallbring medicine.’ He took off his satchel, pulled out his flask, and pressed it into the boy’s hands.
    ‘Is it the smoke?’ the boy said, shivering slightly. ‘I’ve never touched the stuff, myself, but how it claws at one … like a thorn in every one of your fingers, and a string around your heart … and one feels it always. Nagging. Nagging. You’d stand me a mouthful of smoke. I believe you would. You’re a decent fellow.’
    Tauwhare shucked his woollen coat, and draped it across the boy’s legs.
    ‘Just until I find this tree on Maori land,’ the boy went on. ‘You can have as many ounces as you please. Only it’s the good stuff I’m after. Are you going