Stream System

by Gerald Murnane

  During the year mentioned in the first sentence of this story, whenever the man mentioned in that sentence foresaw as appearing in his mind the images some of the details of which are explained in the previous paragraph, he observed that the sequence of images that he foresaw as appearing in the mind of the man (or, rather, the image of the man) while he knelt on the bed and performed the acts reported in the previous sentence was such that the man might have been foreseeing himself, while he knelt on the bed, as preparing to write a certain piece of fiction. The man who was the chief character in that piece of fiction might have been alone with a young woman in a clearing in a forest in the USA and might have begun to perform in front of her the acts reported in the previous sentence by way of beginning to explain to her certain details about himself.

  * * *

  A group of about ten cattle stands in long grass with a line of trees behind them. The cattle are at a distance of about a hundred paces from the person perceiving them, but some of the cattle seem aware that a person has begun to approach them. Some of the cattle stand facing in the direction of the person. Each of these animals has long, wide-reaching horns, but none of the cattle stands threateningly. If the person watching were to move closer to the cattle, they would be more likely to run in among the trees than to stand their ground. All of the cattle are white.

  The image of the white cattle in the long grass with the trees behind them is an image of an illustration in a book that was given as a Christmas present in one of the last years of the 1940s to the boy who was later the young man who wears an olive-green shirt and a pale-blue tie in the first of the images described in this piece of fiction. On each Christmas Day in the late 1940s, the boy found among his presents a large book chosen by his mother from the children’s book section of a department store in the city of Melbourne. Each book had been published in England and contained many illustrated articles on topics that he understood to be subdivisions of the vast subject called General Knowledge, in which subject he was said by several of his teachers to be an expert. On each Christmas Day, he looked at each picture in his book and read each caption underneath. During the summer holidays after each Christmas Day, he read each article in his book once and a few articles many times. After the holidays had ended, he looked into the book only seldom, and only at a certain few pictures and captions. On the Christmas Day when he was in his twelfth year, his new book contained an article about certain old houses in England. He read the article only once. He did not doubt what his father had told him about the so-called great families who lived in the great houses of England: that those families had gained their houses and lands by robbery and murder or by driving pious monks from their monasteries in the age of the Tudors. The image of the white cattle in the long grass with the trees behind them might have appeared in his mind on several occasions during the first two years after he had become the owner of the book containing the picture of the cattle, so he supposed sometimes during the year mentioned in the first sentence of this piece of fiction, but he never afterwards remembered any of those occasions. During the year just mentioned, whenever the man most often mentioned in this piece of fiction foresaw the image of the white cattle and the long grass and the line of trees as appearing in his mind he foresaw that the image would appear just as it had appeared in his mind at a certain moment on a certain evening in the first year of the 1950s, while he was lying in his bed in his parents’ house. Three months before that evening, he had performed for the first time the series of acts mentioned in the previous section of this piece of fiction. During the following three months, he had performed the series of acts on many evenings while he foresaw himself as performing the series of acts in the presence of one or another young woman in one or another secluded place out of doors at one or another time in the future by way of beginning to explain to the young woman certain details about himself. On the day before the evening when the image of the white cattle appeared in his mind in such a way that he would remember nearly thirty years later the image’s appearing, he had confessed to a priest that he, the boy who became the man most often mentioned in this piece of fiction, had committed a certain sin on many occasions during the previous three months. Before absolving the boy, the priest warned him that he would be in danger of committing again in the future the sin that he had just confessed unless he could learn to take his pleasure from good and holy things. Late in the evening mentioned in the previous sentence, while the boy who had recently been absolved from his sins was lying in his bed, he prepared to cause to appear in his mind images of what he believed to be good and holy things, although he did not expect to be able to take any pleasure from those images. While the boy was thus preparing, there appeared in his mind the image of the white cattle that he remembered nearly thirty years later whenever he foresaw himself as preparing to write a certain piece of fiction.

  During the years mentioned in the first sentence of this story, the man mentioned in that sentence was able to remember the caption under the picture of the white cattle in the book mentioned previously: Survivors of an ancient herd—the wild white cattle of Uppington. He was able to remember that the article surrounding the picture contained only a brief reference to the white cattle: one or another titled person kept on his estate a small herd of wild cattle of a variety no longer seen elsewhere. The man who remembered this remembered also that he had been reassured as a boy to think of the small and crowded and damaged land of England as containing somewhere inside it a tract of long grass and woodlands large enough for a herd of cattle to run wild in it, and that his feeling of reassurance had been a pleasurable feeling. Yet the man could not remember that he had not performed the series of acts mentioned previously on the same evening when he had tried to take his pleasure from images of good and holy things and when the image of the white cattle had appeared in his mind. The man could readily remember that he had performed the series of acts on many evenings, and sometimes at other times of day, during the years following the evening just mentioned. The man remembered in later years that he had been curious as a boy and afterwards as to where in England was Uppington, with its meadows of long grass and its woods where the white herd hid. The man had never travelled to England, but he might easily have looked into an atlas. Yet he preferred not to look, although he could not have explained why he so preferred until after he had become during the last years of the 1970s a student of a course for a diploma in humanities with a major in creative writing at a college of advanced education in an inner suburb of Melbourne and had enrolled in a unit called Fiction Writing: An Introduction and had heard on one of the evenings when he attended the weekly classes in the subject the lecturer in charge of the subject advising the class that a writer of fiction ought never to consult while writing or preparing to write any piece of fiction any reference book or any map and ought never to visit any library or any other so-called source of so-called facts or knowledge or information.

  * * *

  Certain views of certain valleys and mountains appear as though to a person high up on a mountainside. No road or building appears in any of the views, which are of forests and boulders and sky. The trees in the forests are grey-green in the foreground and dark blue in the background. Above the furthest visible mountain is a narrow band of grey-blue that might be further mountains still or heat-haze or storm clouds.

  The mountains are part of the Australian Alps. The views appear to a man as he looks around from where he sits on the veranda of a large guest-house more than a hundred miles north-east of Melbourne. The man was formerly the man who looked for friends in a hilly district just beyond the outer north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. The season is late summer. The year is in the mid-1960s. A young woman sits near the man on the veranda. The young woman is several years younger than the man and is his wife. She and he have been married for less than a week, after having been for a year engaged to be married. She and he first met in the office building mentioned in the first explanatory section of this pi
ece of fiction, in which office building she has worked for seven years and he has worked for ten years, although the two have always worked on different floors of the building.

  While the man stares from the veranda at the mountains and valleys, he foresees himself preparing to enter a clearing among trees. The man on the veranda supposes that the clearing lies about a hundred paces uphill from one or another of the walking paths that lead among the mountains and valleys around the guest house. The man supposes that he and his wife will walk on one or another of the walking paths on each day before they leave the guest-house. The man supposes further that he will persuade his wife, on several occasions if necessary, to leave one or more of the walking paths and to walk uphill in search of a place like the clearing that he has often foreseen himself preparing to enter. When the man on the veranda foresees himself and his wife as having entered the clearing that he has often seen in his mind, he foresees himself as seeing around him only trees and shrubbery and as hearing only loud clickings and buzzings of insects.

  The man on the veranda of the guest-house hears in his mind a phrase that he read recently for the first time in a newspaper: Swinging London. He believes that persons in England younger than himself are behaving now, in the mid-1960s, somewhat as he had wanted to behave in the late 1950s and had sometimes tried to behave in the early 1960s. The man remembers, on the veranda, a film that he saw six months previously in a cinema in the city of Melbourne in the company of the young woman who would soon become his wife. For a few minutes during the film, he saw on the screen several images of parts of the naked body of a young woman. He had never previously seen such an image as part of any film. The film was set in England. The images of the naked woman appeared against a background that included images of a mansion and of green fields and clumps of trees in the countryside of England. Now, when the man sits on the veranda and hears in his mind the phrase mentioned above, he sees again in his mind the images from the film just mentioned and then he sees in his mind young persons travelling to the countryside of England from London and from other cities of England at weekends and during their recreation leave and doing in rooms of mansions or in corners of extensive gardens or of green fields series of acts such as he foresees himself preparing to do with his wife in the clearing mentioned earlier with all the mountains and valleys and forests of north-eastern Victoria around them while he jeers in his mind at the young persons with only the countryside of England around them.

  * * *

  A view of mostly level grey-green paddocks appears as it would appear to a person standing on the rotting boards of the veranda of a certain weatherboard cottage on a certain dairy-farm in the south-west of Victoria. In most of the view, the mostly level paddocks reach back to the horizon and are marked only by scattered plantations of cypress trees, by the wooden posts of barbed-wire fences, and by a few weatherboard farmhouses. However, in one quarter of the view the paddocks reach back only a few hundred paces to a line of trees and scrub. In the middle distance of this quarter of the view, a herd of about seventy dairy cows is grazing. The cows are of many shades of red or brown, often broken by white.

  The weatherboard cottage with the rotting veranda is provided rent-free by the owner of the farm for the share-farmer and his family. The share-farmer milks the cows twice daily on every day of the year and works between milking-times at maintaining the farm—all in return for one-third of the proceeds of the sale of the milk from the cows. The view from the veranda appears to a boy of no more than ten years. The boy, whose father is the share-farmer, will later become the young man who wears a certain shirt and tie in a certain image reported earlier. Whenever the boy looks at the view from the veranda, he looks most often at the line of trees and scrub. The owner of the farm and of two other farms nearby is a man aged about seventy who disregards many of the customs of the district. All the sub-dividing fences on the farm have fallen down, and the herd is free between milking-times to graze in any part of the farm or even to walk in among the trees and scrub. Each of the three farms mentioned above has a patch of bush and scrub left uncleared with a hut of corrugated iron in the thickest part. The owner of the three farms lives for a few months of each year in each of the three huts. The owner lives alone. He is a bachelor, the last alive of a family of which the sons all remained bachelors throughout their lives. The share-farmer and his family look out each morning from the veranda of their house towards the trees and scrub in the distance. If they see smoke rising above the trees, they know that the owner of the farm is living in his hut among the trees and scrub. No matter where the owner happens to be living, he arrives on horseback every few days to talk to the share-farmer about the running of the farm. When the owner leaves at the end of his visit, he often drives ahead of him with the help of his dog a cow that has come into season. The owner keeps his bulls on another of his farms where the fences have been maintained and the bulls can be secured. During his visits, the owner speaks politely to the share-farmer and his wife and children, but the boy mentioned above has heard from his father that the owner is an odd man who prefers his own company. The boy has never seen the owner’s hut. One hot afternoon when he went out with the farm dogs to round up the cows and when he found the cows grazing near the line of trees and scrub, he walked a little way in among the trees and listened. He heard only the sounds of insects. While the boy listened, he imagined the old man as sitting on the veranda of his hut and reading from a book or a magazine.

  The image of the line of trees and scrub will remind the boy in future not only of the imagined scene reported in the previous sequence but also of certain images connected with the following sequence of events.

  In one of the first weeks after the boy and his family had begun to live on the dairy farm, a cow named Stockings was about to calve. The cow had been named for the white legs that contrasted with her red-brown body. On a certain morning, Stockings was not with the herd when the dogs brought the herd towards the milking-shed. After the milking, the boy’s father explained to the boy that Stockings would have found a hiding-place in the patch of bush and scrub before she gave birth and would try to keep the calf hidden there until it could run beside her. Later on that day and on the following day, the boy saw the cow Stockings grazing alone near the trees and scrub. Next morning, the boy saw his father driving the cow and her calf in from the paddocks to a small yard near the milking-shed. Later on that day the calf, which was a bull-calf, was taken from the cow Stockings. A few days later, the calf was collected by a butcher’s agent. By then, the boy was no longer interested in the calf or the cow, but for as long as the calf had remained hidden among the trees and scrub the boy had supposed that the calf might have become the first of a small herd that would survive out of sight of the paddocks and houses.

  * * *

  Irregular areas of pale shades of brown and pink and gold and green appear as they would appear to a man looking at a certain page of The Times Atlas of the World and trying to find one or another detail that will enable him to see in his mind one or more images such as might appear to a person looking at one or another landscape in the district of England denoted by the part of the map in front of the man.

  The man looking at the page of the atlas is a mature-age student in an institution known as a college of advanced education in an inner suburb of Melbourne. The man, who was formerly the young man whose shirt and tie were mentioned in the first paragraph of this piece of fiction, has worked for more than twenty years in the same office building. For more than ten years, he has travelled on weekday evenings in a suburban train from the city to the outer south-eastern suburb where he lives with his wife and their two children, but during the past three years he has broken his journey homewards on two evenings of many weeks in order to attend classes at the institution mentioned above. The evening when he consults an atlas in the library of the institution, as reported above, is an evening in a certain year in the late 1970s.