Stream System

by Gerald Murnane

  The man and his best friend had arrived outside the holiday flat at eight o’clock on the Sunday morning and had carried their suitcases from the Volkswagen sedan up a steep driveway between tall gum trees and into the holiday flat. The owner of the Volkswagen sedan had brought into the flat not only his suitcase but six bottles of beer. The other man had wondered why his friend had brought the beer. So far as the other man knew, his friend had never drunk any alcoholic drink because he was afraid of what his parents might have said if they had learned that he had begun to drink such drinks even though his parents had never drunk them.

  The man who had brought the beer explained that the beer was a present from the mother of his girlfriend. When he had been about to leave his girlfriend’s birthday party at ten minutes to four on that morning, the mother of his girlfriend had given him the six bottles from the supply that she had bought for the party. The man who was leaving the party had reminded the woman that he did not drink beer. The woman had then told the man to give the beer to his best friend for drinking at the first of the parties that the two men would surely arrange in their holiday flat at Lorne.

  The friend of the man who had brought the beer had felt reckless when he had learned that the beer was a present from the woman aged about forty. The man who had been presented with the beer had learned from his friend, three hours before, that the woman had been, fourteen years before, one of the women known as American war brides. Fourteen years before, the woman and her infant daughter had left Melbourne and had travelled in the first ship that had carried passengers from Australia to the United States of America after the end of the Second World War in order to rejoin the American man that the woman had married when he had been a soldier stationed in Melbourne during the Second World War.

  The man who had been presented with the beer had seen his mother staring at a picture in the Melbourne Argus on a morning when he had been a boy aged seven years. The picture was a reproduction of a photograph of a ship moving away from Station Pier and out into Port Phillip Bay. A crowd of young women leaned over the rails of the ship, holding streamers or waving their arms. The mother of the boy had said that the young women were the first shipload of war brides leaving for America. She had then said that the young women would be smiling on the other sides of their faces after they had arrived in America and had found that their Yank husbands and boyfriends were no longer interested in them.

  On the morning when he had seen the picture of the war brides, the boy who was going to receive a present of six bottles of beer fourteen years later from a woman who had been one of the women in the photograph reproduced in the Argus hoped that his mother was wrong.

  In 1945, when he was a boy aged seven years, the chief character of this story had believed that most young men fell in love continually with young women but that most young women consented to be loved by men rather than fell in love with them. When a young man had fallen in love with a young woman, so the boy had believed, the young man tried to persuade the young woman to become his girlfriend or his wife by dressing in a suit and offering her a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates or even by kneeling in front of her and pleading while she sat with her face turned aside. Sometimes the young woman would consent to become the girlfriend or the wife of the young man; sometimes she would go on sitting with her face turned aside; sometimes she would slap the face of the young man. The boy himself fell in love continually with girls of his own age and foresaw himself falling in love continually with young women when he had become a young man.

  When the boy aged seven had seen the picture of the war brides, he had believed that he was looking for the first time at young women who had fallen in love in the same way that he fell in love continually. While he had looked at the picture he had seen in his mind a group of the war brides stepping ashore in one after another of the seaports of America and he had hoped that each of the young women would step into the arms of an American man who loved her. He had then seen in his mind further groups of war brides travelling by steamboat along the river systems of America or by railway train through the mountains or across the plains of America. The steamboats had stopped at jetties far upstream and the trains had pulled into depots far inland, and one after another of the war brides had stepped out into the sunlight and had looked around for her boyfriend or her husband. The young woman who had travelled further from her home than any other war bride had stepped down from the railway carriage at a place where plains of grass reached in every direction from the railway tracks to the horizon. The young woman had looked around her in every direction, hoping to see her boyfriend or her husband.

  The boy in Melbourne, Australia, had turned away from the picture in the Argus because he had not wanted his mother to guess what was in his mind. Then the boy had knelt on the grass in his mind in front of the young woman in his mind.

  * * *

  The chief character of this story and his best friend had sat together on the grass beside the lake at Caulfield Racecourse on many fine Sunday afternoons during the years from 1951 to 1955, when they had been students at secondary school. The boy who became later the young man who noticed the girl on the ice at St Moritz and later still the man who had been married for more than twenty-five years to the woman who had been that girl had ridden on his bicycle to the racecourse from the suburb adjoining the southern boundary of the racecourse. The boy who considered the other boy his best friend had ridden on his bicycle to the racecourse from the suburb adjoining the southern boundary of the other boy’s suburb.

  At the racecourse, which was always deserted on Sundays, the two boys had at first talked and smoked cigarettes with other boys from their school. On some Sundays one of the other boys had shown to the group of boys a few pages torn from a magazine. The boys had seen on each page a reproduction of a black and white photograph of a naked young woman sitting or standing or lying in such a way that her face and breasts were visible while her groin was hidden from their view. After the group of boys had separated on those Sundays the chief character of this story and his best friend had sat on the grass and had stared at the water of the lake.

  On most of the Sunday afternoons when the two boys had stared at the lake a breeze or a wind had blown from the south-west, which was the direction of Port Phillip Bay, and had made small waves in the water of the lake. While the two boys had sat on the grass above the shore of the lake the boy from the further suburb had sometimes heard the faint slapping sound of a wave as it broke.

  Whether or not the two boys had looked earlier in the afternoon at reproductions of photographs of naked young women, the two boys had always talked about naked young women while they had sat beside the lake. While the two boys had stared at the water each boy had told the other what he would do in the future with one after another naked young woman beside a lake or a stream or a bay or the ocean. Each boy had then promised that he would confide to the other in the future whatever he had done with each naked young woman.

  While the boy from the further suburb had ridden on his bicycle away from Caulfield Racecourse on each fine Sunday afternoon he had not been able to foresee himself doing in the future the things that he had talked about beside the lake. The boy from the further suburb had foreseen himself in the future falling in love with one after another young woman and foreseeing himself in the further future confiding to the young woman something that he had not previously confided to any other person.

  * * *

  After the four husbands and the four wives had put their bags and their suitcases in their cabins behind the hotel at Hepburn Springs on the Friday evening, they had gathered around the fire in the lounge of the hotel. While the husbands and the wives were seating themselves the man who is the chief character in this story had asked each of the other seven persons what he or she would like to drink. The man had then gone to the bar of the hotel and had bought two pots of beer, two glasses of beer, a shandy, a glass of white wine, a Coke, and a glass of Hepburn Springs mineral water. The
man had then carried the eight drinks on a tray back to the lounge.

  While the man who had bought the drinks was handing them around to the seven other persons, the man who had been married for twenty-five years and five months had said that the last of the guests had now arrived at the fashionable winter resort somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. The man had said that the four chief couples would now go on drinking and talking continually until after midnight and that the scene in the early hours of the Saturday morning would be of men grabbing the fronts of one another’s shirts or shouting at their wives or whispering into the ears of other men’s wives or putting their hands on the knees of those wives or sitting alone and mumbling that they had been unhappy as children, and of women shrieking at one another or slapping the faces of their husbands or of other women’s husbands.

  The seven other persons had laughed at this, but the chief character of this story had only smiled. The chief character of this story had supposed that the seven other persons were thinking of themselves as characters in an American film. He had supposed that six of the seven persons watched American films often and that his wife, who had watched hardly any films since she had married him, still remembered the American films that she had watched more than twenty-two years before.

  The chief character of this story had watched hardly any films during the twenty-two years since he had been married, but he remembered some of the films that he had watched more than twenty-two years before. When the seven other persons in the lounge of the hotel had laughed and had seemed to think of themselves as characters in an American film, the chief character in this story had smiled and had thought of himself as a character in a Swedish film.

  During 1945 and 1946, when the chief character of this story had been aged seven and eight years, he had been taken by his mother to a picture theatre once in every two or three weeks and had watched American films; during the years from 1947 to 1958, when he had been aged from nine to twenty years, he had been taken by his mother or had gone alone to a picture theatre only two or three times in every year and had watched mostly American films and occasionally an English film; during the years from 1959 to 1962, when he had been aged from twenty-one to twenty-four years, he had gone alone to a picture theatre once in every two or three weeks and had watched films from European countries; during the years 1963 and 1964, when he had been aged twenty-five and twenty-six years, he had gone to a picture theatre once in every two or three weeks with the young woman who later became his wife and had watched American and English films; during the years from 1965, when he had become a married man, to 1987, when he had visited Hepburn Springs for the first time, he had gone to a picture theatre with his wife and his children once in every two or three years and had watched films but had not cared to learn which country the films had come from.

  During the years from 1965 to 1987 the man who went to picture theatres only once in every two or three years had sometimes noticed in his mind an image from one or another film that he had watched many years earlier. If the image had been from an American film, the man had not looked at the image. The man had wanted only images from Swedish films to appear in his mind. The man had believed that images from American films would cause him to try to behave as though he had been alone with many girls and young women and women during his lifetime. The man wanted to behave as though he had sometimes walked between trees and had sometimes sat beside a stream or a lake with the young woman that he had fallen in love with.

  * * *

  The man who had begun to drink beer for the first time on a Sunday afternoon when he was aged twenty-one years and seven months had learned that the previous owner of the beer had previously been an American war bride during the second hour of daylight on that same Sunday, while he had been travelling in the brown Volkswagen sedan owned by his best friend across the plains south-west of Melbourne and while he had been playing in his mind a game that he had first devised as a child.

  Since 1945, when he had been aged seven years, the chief character in this story had played a game that he called as a child Water of the Plains whenever he had travelled south-west of Melbourne. On the last Sunday before Christmas Day in 1959, when the chief character in this story had travelled south-west from Melbourne about fifty miles to the city of Geelong on Corio Bay and then about fifty miles further south-west to the small town of Lorne on the Southern Ocean, he had previously travelled south-west from Melbourne on about thirty occasions. On all of those occasions he had travelled south-west from Melbourne to Geelong and then about a hundred miles west-south-west to the district of Allansford, where the brother and sisters of his father lived.

  During all the years when the chief character in this story had travelled south-west from Melbourne he had played the game Water of the Plains at different places between Melbourne and Allansford. The first of these places was a place about five miles past the town of Werribee and about twenty miles short of the city of Geelong. Whenever he had passed the town of Werribee on his journeys south-west from Melbourne, the chief character in this story had looked ahead as though he was seeing the landscape for the first time and as though he expected to see nothing but plains of grass until he first saw Corio Bay. About five miles past Werribee he would go on looking ahead as though he still believed he was surrounded only by plains of grass, but he would watch from the sides of his eyes for the few trees on the banks of Little River.

  During the years from 1945 to 1958, whenever the chief character in this story had played the game Water of the Plains about five miles past Werribee he had known he would be able to play the game at three or four further places before he arrived at the district of Allansford. When he had played the game about five miles past Werribee on the morning of the last Sunday before Christmas Day in 1959, the chief character in this story had known that he would not be able to play the game later during that day because he was going to travel from Geelong not across the plains and the low hills towards the district of Allansford but through coastal scrub and the edges of rain forest towards Lorne. The chief character in this story had also believed that he would never again play the game on the plains or among the low hills between the city of Geelong and the district of Allansford because he would never again visit the brothers and sisters of his father in the district of Allansford.

  While the Volkswagen sedan had travelled through the suburbs south-west of Melbourne the driver and the passenger had been silent. After they had passed through the last of the suburbs and had begun to cross the plains towards Werribee, the passenger had asked the driver what he had done with his girlfriend when they had been alone together on the Saturday evening and early on the Sunday morning. The driver had answered that he and his girlfriend had talked together.

  After the two men had travelled through Werribee the passenger had asked the driver what he and his girlfriend had talked about when they had been alone together. The driver had then told the passenger what has already been mentioned about the mother of the girlfriend of the driver in the third section of this story.

  The passenger had then asked the driver where the mother of his girlfriend had rejoined her husband when she had travelled to America as a war bride and where she had lived with him in America. The passenger had hoped to hear that the woman had travelled far inland after she had reached America by ship and that she had rejoined her husband and had lived with him in one of the Great Plains states. At the same time, the passenger had begun to play in his mind the game that he had always begun to play in his mind whenever he had travelled past Werribee.

  When the driver had said that the war bride had left Australia by ship, the passenger had begun to pretend that he was surrounded only by plains of grass and yet to watch from the sides of his eyes for the few trees beside Little River. While the passenger had gone on pretending and watching from the sides of his eyes, he had heard the driver say that the mother of his girlfriend had left her ship at a seaport on the west coast of America and had travelled with her infant da
ughter by railway train to Chicago.

  Whenever the chief character of this story had played the game Water of the Plains in his mind in previous years he had been travelling in either a motor car driven by the youngest brother of his father or a carriage of a railway train. Whenever the man had seen Little River in previous years he had seen it for a few moments from either a road bridge or a railway bridge before he had seemed again to be surrounded only by plains of grass. Then he had played the last part of the game, which had been to try to see the image of a clump of rushes or of a pool of water overhung by leaves or of a bed of stones with shallow water trickling between them in his mind as though the thing that he saw had been not an image in his mind but a detail that he saw on the plains of grass surrounding him.

  While the chief character of this story had played the first part of his game in the Volkswagen sedan in December 1959 he had wished that he and his best friend had not been travelling towards Lorne and the Southern Ocean. The two men had agreed eleven months before that they would spend the last two weeks of 1959 and the first week of 1960 at Lorne. The two men had agreed that they would look at young women on the beach and on the streets of Lorne and would approach some of the young women and would invite them to drink coffee in a coffee lounge in the main street of Lorne or on the balcony of the holiday flat. But while the two men had been travelling between Werribee and Little River, the passenger had wished that someone had built a few years previously a caravan park on the level land near the west bank of Little River. If someone had previously built such a park, so the passenger had supposed, then the passenger could have persuaded the driver to turn aside from the road at Little River and the two men could have spent their holidays in a caravan among trees near the west bank of Little River.