A Season on Earth

by Gerald Murnane

  Adrian bought the book. While it was being wrapped, he asked the young woman behind the counter did they have a copy of the works of the poet Francis Thompson. She said ‘Francis Thompson’ as though it was the name of some obscure minor poet, and asked Adrian had he looked in the POETRY shelves. He said he had. The young woman said, ‘Well, if it’s not there we probably don’t have it in stock.’

  Adrian was almost glad. He could feel more sympathy with a neglected genius than with some popular poet whose works were in every bookshop for people to paw at. He went back to the POETRY section and took a copy of An Anthology of Catholic Poets to buy. It would be enough for the present to have Thompson’s masterpiece.

  That night Adrian began the notes for an epic poem set in a country so vast that the hero could make a solitary journey through fifty miles of desolate plains whenever he wanted to brood alone over his troubled past. Adrian kept the picture In the Steppes of Buryat Mongolia in front of him. But although the picture provided him with a perfect setting for his poem, he needed a little information about the customs of Buryat Mongolians to fill out the details in his narrative.

  He found a useful article, ‘Life in a Tent of Horses’ Hair’, in the junior encyclopedia his mother had once given him. But there were too many pictures of smiling children and not enough of worried adults. He wondered whether he dared write to the Russian embassy for an illustrated booklet about life in the steppes. He looked for the embassy in the telephone directory and found instead the Russian Catholic Church. The following Saturday he went to confession and asked the priest would a Catholic commit a mortal sin if he heard mass in a Russian Catholic Church. The priest wasn’t sure. He asked Adrian why he wanted to attend strange places of worship. Adrian thought quickly and said he had a friend who admired Russian customs and scenery and kept inviting him to the Russian Catholic Church. The priest told Adrian to speak to someone at the cathedral if he was really interested.

  Adrian went to a public telephone box and rang the number of the Melbourne Archdiocese. A priest told him at once that the Russian Catholic Church celebrated a valid mass because it acknowledged the supreme authority of the Pope, and any Catholic of the archdiocese was permitted to attend its ceremonies.

  Adrian rang the Russian Catholic Church. A woman with a foreign accent told him the service began at ten each Sunday morning.

  On the following Sunday be travelled by train and tram to the Russian Catholic Church. He planned to sneak into one of the back seats. When the priest started chanting in Russian, Adrian would close his eyes and hear the wind sweeping across the steppes of Buryat Mongolia. When the people were coming back from communion he would observe them closely, searching for a face for the hero of his epic poem. It would be the face of a man who had known sorrows like Francis Thompson’s, but in a remote, mournful landscape.

  He travelled deep into the garden suburbs. When he reached the address of the church he found himself in front of a large brick house set among lawns and shrubbery. While he wondered how he might sneak in without attracting attention, a man and a woman walked up to the gate and pushed it open and walked through. He followed them to the front door of the house and then inside the building.

  Twenty or thirty people were gathered in a large carpeted room opening off the main hallway. They were all standing—no seats were provided. No one seemed curious about Adrian’s being there, and he stood against the rear wall, trying to look as though he was praying.

  The service began. The altar was hidden behind an ornate screen. A priest and two acolytes went in and out through two doorways in the screen, singing and chanting. The congregation sang in reply. The outlandish language and the tantalising melodies had the very blend of grief and heroic resolve that Adrian hoped would permeate his poem. If he could have taken notes of the thoughts that came to him during the service, he would have gone home with the complete plan of a poem about a man who wandered across endless steppes, trying to escape from his past.

  The hero would have looked exactly like the taller of the two acolytes. He was a man in, perhaps, his late twenties with a face lined by melancholy and resignation. His eyes were a peculiar shade of blue—the colour of a wintry sky over the steppes. When he joined in the singing, it was as if he poured out a lament for a distant land. Adrian watched the man closely and even suspected he had seen him somewhere before.

  The service lasted for nearly two hours. At the end, Adrian tried to get away quietly but a man stopped him and asked would he like to stay for the meal to celebrate the feast of St George. Adrian felt obliged to stay. He followed the man across the hallway, wondering what strange Russian customs he might soon witness.

  The congregation sat down at several long tables set with plates of savouries and sandwiches and cakes. They chatted in Russian while they waited for the priest and the acolytes. The priest came in, dressed in an ordinary black clerical suit, and blessed the food and the people. The meal began. A man in casual clothes drew up a chair beside Adrian. It was the acolyte whose appearance had so affected Adrian.

  Adrian nodded at the man and wondered if he understood English. The man said, ‘I don’t believe you’ve been to our church before.’ He had no trace of an accent. Adrian said that he had come just this once because he was interested in the Russian liturgy.

  The man said, ‘We certainly hope you come again. I wish more Catholics in Melbourne realised this church is not just for Russian people. Anyway, my name is Brendan McQuillan.’ Adrian shook the man’s hand and introduced himself.

  During the meal Adrian learned that McQuillan had been passionately interested for many years in what he called the Eastern Rite. He had learned to read and speak Russian and the Old Slavonic language of the liturgy. He hoped one day to visit the great Russian churches overseas. He was a bachelor and lived in a bungalow behind his parents’ home in East Burwood. He earned his living as a clerk in the Public Works Department, on the floor below the Education Department.

  Some of the Russian people began to sing. The melodies sounded mournful to Adrian but the people seemed to sing cheerfully. Adrian excused himself to McQuillan and left quietly.

  On the way home, Adrian began to doubt whether his poetry would benefit from his visit to the Russian church. Some of the hymns had moved him, but he had learned nothing from the people. The acolyte who had taken his eye was not even a Russian and had told him that most of the congregation had never seen Russia—they had been born in China or Manchuria, after their parents had fled overland in the years after the Revolution. Adrian still intended to set his poem in a landscape like Russia’s but he would draw his inspiration from his picture of a windy steppe where a nameless man on horseback prepared for a long, arduous journey.

  Adrian thought the best result of his visit to the Russian service was his having learned that he was not the only member of the state public service who was leading a double life. He began to keep a lookout for other young public servants who might have pursued unusual interests in the evenings behind the drawn blinds of suburban houses.

  In the following weeks, he found two such men not far from his own desk in the Education Department. One confided to Adrian that he was an actor. He had played several parts with a theatre company in his suburb but he wanted to play Shakespearean roles. He was saving up to travel to England, where he would find more opportunities. The other man built complicated models from dead matches. He brought Adrian a cutting from the Sun News-Pictorial showing a photo of himself with a scale model of a Melbourne tram made from twelve thousand matches. He told Adrian he was working on his most ambitious project yet—a model of the Melbourne Cricket Ground that would use more than thirty thousand matches.

  Adrian had to acknowledge that the actor and the model-maker had so far achieved more in their respective fields than he had achieved with his poetry, but he felt no sense of kinship with them. He had little hope that he would find another poet like himself in all of the state public service. He went back to spending his lunch
hours and tea breaks alone at his desk. He consulted his list of Victorian schools, putting a tiny grey dot beside the name of any school that was surrounded by plains.

  Victoria had nothing to equal the steppes of Russia, but Adrian knew that the Western District, beyond his uncle’s farm at Orford, was mostly level land with few trees. And in his father’s collection of Walkabout magazines were pictures of flat country in the Wimmera and Mallee districts. Not many temporary teachers were being transferred just then, but Adrian worked out a scheme for the third term, when more vacancies would need to be filled. If a teacher was needed at a school with plains around it—in the Western District, say—Adrian would try to obtain a teacher from another such school—in the Mallee or the Wimmera, for example. If the teacher thus transferred was at all sensitive or imaginative, he or she could savour the experience of seeming to move from place to place on the one vast plain or steppe.

  In the evenings Adrian worked hard at the preliminary draft of his latest poem. It was to be called Ivan Veliki, after the main character. When the outline of the narrative had been noted down, Adrian became concerned that Ivan Veliki might be banned and he, its author, prosecuted under the Australian laws concerning obscene publications. If this happened, his name and photograph would be in the newspapers for his Aunt Kathleen and Denise McNamara and the brothers at St Carthage’s and the Charleroi Fathers to see.

  He would use a nom de plume. He first tried anagrams of his own name (Nash Radride; Dan E. Drishar; Anders Haird) but it occurred to him that anyone skilled at codes might easily work out his true name. He decided on a name inspired by his admired poet Francis Thompson. The seminary where Thompson had studied was called Ushaw College. Adrian adopted the literary name of U. Shaw, thinking that the U could stand for Ulrich or Umberto or Ulysses. On the cover of his folder of notes he wrote:

  IVAN VELIKI

  An Epic Poem in Two Cantos

  by U. Shaw

  Ivan Veliki lived on the steppes of Buryat Mongolia. At the beginning of the poem he was a young man but his face was already lined and he walked with head bowed and a slight stoop. He was a bachelor, whereas the other men of his own age were already married. His tribespeople wondered what flaw in his character, or dark secret from his past, had made him so reserved and thoughtful.

  Whenever the tribe gathered to consult with one another or to celebrate some festival, someone would always call on Ivan Veliki for a song. He would always oblige with one of his own compositions. They were his own original poems set to music. Their poignant melodies and haunting images brought tears to the eyes of many of the men and women as they sat under the vast skies of Buryat Mongolia. But not even the eloquent lyrics of the songs revealed the cause of Veliki’s melancholy.

  The next section of the poem was going to call on all of Adrian’s skill as a poet. In that section, he had to explain Veliki’s secret. Adrian did not want to offend against Australian standards of decency, but he wanted his meaning to be clear to all male readers. (There was the separate problem of how female readers could be helped to understand this section. Married women could probably have their husbands explain it to them. Other women might have to remain baffled.)

  For almost a year as a young man, Ivan Veliki had been a slave to the solitary sin. During that year, the sight of an empty steppe stretching away to a remote horizon would arouse him to a frenzy of lust. He would imagine himself taking some good-looking young woman of his tribe out into the windswept grasses and having his way with her.

  One evening towards the end of the year just mentioned, Ivan Veliki was sitting by a campfire and listening to some of the songs of his tribe. One of the singers burst out with a ballad that Ivan Veliki had never heard. The ballad celebrated the beauty of the steppes and the inspiration they had provided to the poets of old. From that moment Ivan Veliki was a changed man. He foreswore his lust for women and dedicated himself to a higher form of beauty. From then onwards, whenever he was on the steppes alone, Ivan Veliki strove to express the beauty and power of the landscape in poetry.

  One day during this period of his life, Ivan Veliki heard about a vast uninhabited steppe far beyond the boundaries of his tribal lands. He announced that he would travel there to start a new life with anyone willing to accompany him. A considerable number of his tribesmen and their families offered to go with him. They swore to follow him to the last steppe on earth and to obey him as their leader. (Canto One ended at this point.)

  Years had passed. Ivan Veliki and his followers had prospered in their new homeland. Every day, Ivan Veliki rode around his vast herds and contemplated the endless-seeming steppes and composed superb poetry. He was known to his tribe as the Poet-Chieftain. He was still a bachelor, although any family from among his people would willingly have given him their most comely daughter in marriage.

  One day, far out on a remote steppe, Ivan Veliki came in sight of a vista so striking and so rich in meaning that even his notable poetic power could not put into words its effect on him. He returned to his encampment and asked the parents of the most beautiful girl among his people to allow their daughter to ride out with him into the steppes on the following day. The parents agreed readily. They supposed that their chieftain was going to propose marriage to their daughter.

  Next morning, Ivan Veliki took the girl to the place he had discovered. While he was away, a party of horsemen rode up to the encampment where Ivan Veliki lived among his leading tribesmen. The horsemen were from the tribe that Ivan Veliki and his followers had left years earlier. They had been sent by their chieftain to visit the new settlement and to see that Ivan Veliki was ruling his followers justly.

  The visiting horsemen asked at once to see Ivan Veliki. When they learned that he had ridden out into the steppes with a young woman, the horsemen exchanged glances and said they would wait for him.

  When the red glow of sunset had begun to overspread the far-reaching folds of grasslands, Ivan Veliki returned alone to the encampment. The horsemen rode up and demanded to know the whereabouts of the young woman who had ridden with him that day..

  Ivan Veliki answered that he believed she was safe, although he could not say precisely where she was.

  His questioners were clearly suspicious. Was she, perhaps, his betrothed, they asked.

  Ivan Veliki answered mildly that she was not.

  The horsemen became impatient. What kind of tyrant was he, to carry off the daughters of his subjects and force them to yield to him on the deserted steppes?

  Ivan Veliki scorned to answer them. He wheeled his horse and made for his solitary tent at the edge of the encampment. The boldest of the horsemen rode up to Ivan Veliki and tried to knock him from his horse. Ivan Veliki flung the man from him, but a moment later the others were at him. When he saw that he was surrounded, Ivan Veliki made no effort to resist. He was led to the centre of the encampment and bound with thongs to a tall pole.

  To the people who gathered around, demanding to know what crime their leader had committed, the visitors said, ‘A despoiler of virgins is no fit leader of men. Ivan Veliki must die!’

  There were surly mutterings from the crowd, but the spears of the horsemen held them in check. Then the boldest-seeming of the visitors stepped towards the pole and drove his spear into the heart of Ivan Veliki.

  At that moment the cries of a young woman were heard from the rear of the onlookers. She who had ridden out onto the steppes that morning with Ivan Veliki had returned at last. On learning from the bystanders what had happened, the young woman rushed forward to confront the executioners.

  ‘Fools! Murderers!’ she cried. ‘You have killed Ivan Veliki for no reason!’

  The leader of the horsemen asked her sneeringly, ‘Are we to believe that a virile young man spends a day in the steppes with a nubile young woman and does not try her virtue? What, then, did your unworthy leader want from you?’

  The young woman lowered her eyes. She began to speak softly, and the people behind her pressed forward to hear.
Even the horsemen were so intent on what she said that they lowered their spears and seemed not to notice that the crowd was slowly encircling them.

  The young woman said, ‘Ivan Veliki led me away from our tents soon after sunrise. We rode all morning, he only speaking to ask me was I hungry or thirsty or was my horse weary. Towards noon we stopped in a place overgrown by lush grasses and flowering herbs—a place, I believe, never yet visited by any of our people. After we had eaten a frugal meal, Ivan Veliki began to walk to and fro in great agitation. Not long afterwards he commanded me—or, rather, he requested me—to recline on a grassy bank in such a way that he could observe both my reclining body and, behind me, the distant prospect of steppes. When I hesitated, he swore on his honour as my chieftain that no harm would come to me. I trusted his word and hurried to oblige him. The sun was warm, and I had removed my cape and bared my arms. Otherwise, I was dressed as you see me now.

  ‘While I lay among the grasses, I saw Ivan Veliki cast a sweeping look about him at the wide steppes and then glance downwards in my direction. Ten times, perhaps, he repeated these motions. Sometimes he paused to strike his fists against his forehead. Once, he even drew out his silver-handled dagger and made as if to hack off his right hand with the sharp blade. Finally, he looked once more at me and then turned away and stumbled towards…not, I believe, the steppe after steppe surrounding us both but something that he alone could see…something that beckoned to him. Abruptly, he stopped. With not a word to me he leaped onto his horse and rode back to our encampment. I followed him soon afterwards but arrived long after him—too long.’