The Imaginary Lives of James Po¯neke by Tina Makereti

Iam not yet seventeen years of age, but I have a thought that I may be dying. They don’t say that, of course, but I can read it in their many kindnesses and the way they look at one another when I speak of the future. Perhaps I do not need their confirmation, for surely I wouldn’t see all I can in the night if I weren’t playing in the shadow of death. So when they come and ask about my life, I tell them all. What else is there for me to do? I don’t feel it then, the brokenness of my own body. I feel only the brokenness of the world.

From here, in the shadows, I can see a piece of London’s sky and the roofs of countless houses. The curtain is flimsy, and I have asked Miss Herring to leave it aside, for I am so high in this room and the sky is my only companion these many hours. At night, I see the beetle making his slow, determined way between cracks. I smell the city rising then: black smoke, the underlying reek of p... and sweat, the sweetness of hung meat and fruit piled high in storage for the morning, its slow rot. My own.

The street waits, and the beetle crawls, leg over leg, down the brick side of the house. From his vantage point, I see it all: every detail in the mortared wall, the coal dust that covers it; the wide expanse of London Town, lights shimmering along the Thames and out into a wide panorama more delightful than even the sights of the Colosseum.

I wish I could tell you the air is fresh here, but no, it is stench and smoke and fog rising, obscuring the pretty lights. Yet I love it, love this dark and horrid town, feel the awe rising even beside the dread. It is a place of dreams.

Sometimes I follow the moth who finds her way on swells of air, a ship catching currents established lifetimes ago, knocked sideways by the draught of a cab passing, the hot air expelled from a gelding’s nostrils.

The moon is different here, not a clean, clear stream, but a wide and silty river. She lends her light all the same, so that I might see the faces that pass. And they pain me, it’s true, for every face is one I know, and I cannot say whether they are living or dead. I see all the misses and misters of the streets of London, and the ones of Port Nicholson.

The worst of it is when I see the tattooed face, or hear the music of the garden orchestra, see gaudily dressed couples dancing circles, the spectre of shows pitching illusions into the air: tricks of light, mechanical wonders, wax figures bearing features I knew only for the first few years of my life.

I couldn’t even remember my mother’s face until I was confined to my bed, and now I see her every night, a doll animated by a wind-up box. The acrobats then, and my friends from the card table. Warrior men and women of my childish and dark memories, from before I learnt about the world of books and ships.

My shipmen, both loved and feared. They don’t speak, my friends and enemies and loved ones, but I know they are waiting; I know the streets below are teeming with them, even when the hour grows late and all decent men should be in their own beds.

It is as if I travel through all the old battles each night until I reach him, and though I know not whether he still walks the solid Earth, I always find him. Billy Neptune, even now grinning and ready to make fun. He is the only one who sees me. ‘Hemi, good fellow,’ he calls, ‘back to your bed! What is your business out here amongst the filth of the streets? Not the dirt, mind you, I mean people like us!’ At this he laughs his short, booming laugh, a sound that breaks open in my chest like an egg spilling its warm yellow centre.

‘What is it like?’ I ask him every night, or, ‘How are you?’ But he doesn’t answer.

‘Ah, Hemi,’ he says. ‘What games we made of it, eh, my fine friend? What games.’ And he goes on his way, and I go on mine, circling the restless world.

These past few nights I seem to have gone further than before, and this morning Miss Herring commented that I looked more tired than I had yesterday, when I had seemed more tired than the day before.

‘Are you not recovering, Mr

Po¯ neke?’ she asked. ‘Should I ask Miss Angus to bring the doctor again?’

The doctor has been three times already, and though he works his doctoring skill on my body, I’m afraid he does not have medicine for what ails me.

‘No – all is well, thank you, Miss Herring. Only, I do not seem to sleep at all, and travel the world in my imagination through the long night instead. It seems as real as you standing right here this morning.’

The maid shook her head and smiled, as she always does when I use her name, for I am the only one who addresses her formally, and no Tina Makereti one has yet found a way to correct me in this habit.

‘Mr Po¯ neke, I believe you’ve travelled to the very ends of this Earth. You must have many memories of adventures beyond what’s normal.’ She hummed as she made to clean the fireplace and reset the fire. I suppose Miss Herring and I enjoy an uncommonly open interaction, one that she would not enjoy with more formal masters. But I am not a master, and my position in the house has always been unusual, and I have a great need of companionship, spending so much time alone in bed as I do.

‘It is a dark night I go out in, and I am liable to see ghosts.’

At this she drew in a sharp breath and blustered about, leaving as soon as she saw Miss Angus arrive with the soup she brings each day. Miss Angus enquired after my health, and I repeated what I had told the maid, save for the part about ghosts.

‘Sometimes I wonder – if I had a way of telling my story, perhaps it