A Million Windows

by Gerald Murnane

  If ever he had asked himself, during all the years since, how a person might feel on seeming to recognise as a version of himself or herself some or another personage in a work of fiction, then he ought to have tried to recall whatever he had felt on learning that a wise and eloquent female person in a tall city building, seated at a desk covered with letters from hundreds of puzzled or confused young female persons, had read a report of certain behaviour of his, and had declared in writing to her many thousands of readers that he was a moral coward who deserved to be forgotten by the young woman who had exchanged glances with him for two years. Sometimes, in later years, he supposed that his having read the answer quoted ought to have shamed and humiliated him; that he ought to have felt as though he had been dragged by uniformed female attendants to the desk of the columnist herself who, dressed in the costume of the Queen Bee or the Empress of the Amazons, had shrieked to his face that he lacked moral courage. He suspects, however, that his main concern was that Darlene had not understood his motives for ending their friendship, as she must have described it.

  He must also have been affected by the fact of Darlene’s having written about him. On some or another evening, she had sat with pen and paper and had focused her thoughts on some or another image of him. He must have been thus affected, because the only other details that he recalls from that time are phrases from a letter that he found himself often composing in his mind: a letter that he might have sent to Darlene in order to explain his odd-seeming behaviour and perhaps even to suggest that he and she should become pen-friends for the time being. Perhaps he was dissuaded from writing the letter only by his not knowing Darlene’s address. Few households in the outer suburbs had telephones at that time, and neither his nor Darlene’s parents were listed in the directory. He knew the name of her street, but it was a long street and his only means of learning the number of her house might have been to follow her homeward at a distance as he had tried to follow homeward the first of his dark-haired girlfriends-in-the-mind. Any letter would have had to be sent in care of the columnist, the giver of advice, and she who had urged Darlene to forget him might have refused to pass his letter on.

  Did he ever reflect on the folly of the columnist’s telling Darlene to forget him? He was sure that she still remembered him, just as he still remembered her, although it was the silent Dathar that he mostly recalled rather than the talkative Darlene whose words, or almost all of them, had been seemingly lost on him. He never afterwards forgot the dark-haired young woman, hardly more than a girl, who had sat silently in sight of him on many an afternoon for almost two years. He never forgot that she had replied at once and in kind to the only written message he had sent her, although he had misread her reply. A certain version of him had even written, twenty years later, certain pages of fiction about her, and the pages had later been published. If I were to learn that someone, perhaps in this very corridor, is writing still more about her, then it would seem to me as though a certain sort of man might feel compelled to send messages in writing to a certain sort of dark-haired young woman and, when she had not at first sent a message in return, might be compelled to send further messages at intervals of twenty or twice that many years.

  Yesterday evening, when I looked along the corridor most likely to lead past the rooms where are conceived and written the fictional texts so often referred to in this present text, I brought to mind still another possible subject fit to be treated by the occupants there, to use a word much favoured by Henry James whenever he came to write about his way of writing.

  He who would be best able to treat the possible subject, as I called it, would have spent the last three of his years at school in one or another second-storey classroom with a view of several suburbs in what would be called nowadays the inner south-east of the city where he had been born. The school stood at one end of a long broad valley at the lowest part of which a creek flowed. Whatever might have been the earnings and the bank balances of the families in the suburbs along the valley, he, the possible narrator of what I have in mind, never doubted that all of the families were incomparably better off than was his own family, who lived in a newly settled outer suburb far from the valley. Perhaps half of his classmates lived in the suburbs of the valley, and although many of them were sons of bank-tellers and shipping clerks and lesser public servants, he considered even those families much more fortunate than his own. The tuition fees of the school would be considered modest if converted into the currency of today, but he and his brother incurred no fees – their father had pleaded with the principal when they were first enrolled that he, the father, could not afford even a token fee. He who often looked out across the valley supposed he was the only charity-boy in his class, although he learned many years later that the religious brothers, his teachers, were forbidden by the constitution of their order to turn away any boy whose parents could not pay for his schooling. It would have been prudent of the brothers not to have this known, but he who thought himself the only charity-boy learned also long afterward that he was one of many.

  The creek still flows along the floor of the valley, but a freeway, dense with motor-traffic, now occupies what was formerly open space nearby. Local councils had built many football ovals and cricket pitches and a few grandstands and toilet blocks on the land beside the creek. Elsewhere were grasslands or clumps of gorse or bulrushes – places mostly deserted except for a few persons walking dogs or flying model aeroplanes.

  On every Wednesday afternoon of the school-year, the senior classes travelled by tram to one or another point low in the valley and then on foot along the creek to one or another oval, there to play football or cricket. He, the chief character of this possible narrative, preferred open grassy places to streets lined with houses but he was seldom at ease beside the creek. He was pleased to stand comparatively alone while fielding at deep mid-on during a cricket match or while he was full-forward for his football team and play was at the other end – he could feel the wind in his face or could hear the goldfinches twittering above the gorse-bushes or even, after the spring rains, the creek rushing between jumbled rocks, but always he could see in the distance the streets after streets of houses where lived the residents of the valley, his supposed betters. From many a sportsground he could see not merely a blur of tiled roofs and green treetops but the details of some or another house, often of two storeys, that was the last house in some or another quiet dead-end street leading from a tree-lined avenue higher up towards the flood-plain of the creek. He who shared with his brother a cramped fibro-cement bungalow in a backyard and who did his homework at a kitchen table could hardly visualise the circumstances of some or another young man, hardly more than a boy, who studied each evening in a room that he alone occupied, at his own desk, and with his own bookshelf nearby and through the window above his desk a view of whole suburbs on the far side of a valley where many a house was of more than one storey and where many an upper window would appear strangely golden when lit by sunlight in the late afternoon.

  He who struggled to visualise the details reported in the previous sentence had another reason for feeling uncomfortable beside the creek that flowed through the valley that he saw on most days in the distance. The sportsfields were so far from his school that he was seldom able on a Wednesday to catch the train that carried in the rear compartment of its front carriage a certain dark-haired young woman, hardly more than a girl, mentioned elsewhere in this work of fiction. He travelled homewards in a later train, hoping the young woman understood that Wednesday was sports day at his school and might even have divined that while she was travelling homeward as usual he was detained in what he considered enemy territory: in suburbs where young persons of both genders disdained to approach one another respectfully and warily but met boldly at tennis clubs during weekends or telephoned one another during evenings, looking out, while they talked, across the same valley and each trying to see the other’s window in the distance.

  The events reported in the following pa
ragraphs on account of their being perhaps suitable for fictional treatment, to use that word once more – those events are to be understood as having taken place several months after the young man mentioned in the previous paragraphs had supposed that he was the subject of a paragraph in a newspaper column in which the female columnist accused an unidentified young man of moral cowardice.

  On a certain cold and cloudy afternoon, the chief participant in the treatable events had played with nearly forty of his own age and gender a football match on an oval in a remote part of the valley mentioned earlier. The oval where the match had been played had no changing-rooms or toilet-block, and all those who had played were obliged to change clothes in among the many clumps of gorse along the creek. Many had already changed and were setting out across the parklands towards the nearest tram-stop when he, the chief participant, heard a young man close by calling out that he had found something strange. Only a few young men went to investigate, the rest being probably anxious to set out homeward. What had been found, in long grass under a gorse-bush, was an elegant-looking leather case with the initials of the owner stamped in gold on the upper side. The case contained textbooks and exercise-books belonging to a young man who would have been hardly more than a boy, given that he was in the same form or level as were the finders of the case. The owner of the books attended a boys’ grammar school that would have been called by journalists of the time the most exclusive school of its kind in the capital city. The father of the owner, as the finders learned from the letterhead on a page of note-paper in an unsealed envelope in the case, was a specialist dentist with a suite of rooms in the street of the capital city where whole buildings were occupied at that time by specialist medical practitioners and dentists. The owner, as the finders learned from a handwritten note signed by the father, had been absent from school for several weeks past after having contracted chicken-pox. Even if the case had not contained, in addition to the book and the note, a cap and a necktie in the colours of the exclusive school, so to call it, the finders would soon have understood why the case had been lying under a gorse-bush by the creek. The owner of the case had done what any of the finders would have done if he had had such an opportunity as the owner had had. They would have played truant, as their fathers or teachers might have said, or, in their own words, they would have played the wag or wagged it. They would have hidden their schoolbooks and theirs caps and ties and would have spent the day in the city, playing pinball or lolling in a cinema.

  Even those among the finders who themselves lived in the suburbs of the valley – even those seemed eager to embarrass or humiliate the son of the specialist dentist: the boy no older than themselves who would have spent the day in the city while his father thought him at school and while his teachers and schoolmates thought him at home and ill. The original finder of the case used a red pencil to add to the father’s note a postscript advising that his son intended to wag school on the day after the note had been written. Someone else tore out a clean double-page from an exercise book and scrawled a rhyming couplet that he seemed to have composed for the occasion: If a boy plays the wag from school / he should be strung up by the tool. Others could think only of defacing pages of exercise books and textbooks with messages such as Get fucked, grammar-school cunt! When the finders had tired of their fun, they closed the case, with their messages uppermost among the contents, and replaced it in the long grass where its owner had hidden it.

  The chief participant, as I called him earlier, had stood back and had watched all that is reported in the previous paragraphs – not because he had no wish to make trouble for the son of the specialist dentist but because he was reduced to inaction by his very eagerness to do so. While his schoolmates were tearing out pages and scrawling messages, he was struggling to comprehend his sudden good fortune. He had previously been able only to visualise certain young men of his own age, hardly more than boys, as mere presences behind upper-storey windows on the far side of their valley and to feel towards them only a generalised envy and resentment. Now, he had one of them in his power. He, the chief participant, knew the name of his enemy and his address, which was written on the lining of the cover of the leather case. He, the chief participant, had only to consult a street directory in order to learn where exactly his enemy’s house stood in relation to the creek and the sportsfield. Given that the truant had hidden his case where he had, the house must have been close by. On every Wednesday afternoon in future he, the chief participant, might well be able to see from the sportsfield the very house, surely of two storeys and perhaps even with attic or dormer windows, where the specialist dentist lived with his family and even, in the shortest days of winter, the very window of his enemy’s room picked out by the sunlight of late afternoon.

  He, the chief participant, stood back and watched and tried to comprehend and soon found himself composing the text of a message that he might well have written on some or another blank page as soon as his schoolmates had done with their defacing the contents of the leather case. He was still standing and composing when the finder of the case closed down the lid and replaced the case in the long grass where he had found it. He, the chief participant, was still composing the opening sentences of the message while he walked towards the nearest tram stop and later while he travelled by train towards his outer suburb, sometimes recalling, perhaps, that he, or someone closely resembling himself, had been described in a column of a widely read newspaper as a moral coward because he could not have begun to explain to a certain young woman, hardly more than a girl, why he did not want to sit beside her in a cinema in the suburb adjoining their own. He, the chief participant, composed further sentences of the message from time to time during the fifty and more years following the cold and cloudy afternoon when his schoolmate had found the leather case under the gorse-bush. If challenged to do so, he could compose further sentences of the message in the house of two or, perhaps, three storeys where, presumably, he is preparing to turn into his preferred sort of fiction some at least of the substance, so to call it, of the paragraphs hereabouts.

  The contents and the tenor of his message have been much altered during the past fifty and more years. He who merely watched while his schoolmates scrawled their simple messages – he could not have denied that he resented the dentist’s son’s having for his own use an upper-storey room overlooking a valley, a well-stocked set of bookshelves, and whatever else was provided for him from his father’s substantial income, but his, the watcher’s, chief difference with his enemy, as he considered him, concerned his ways with young women, hardly more than girls. He who merely watched would never have conceded that his own ways were open to question, but he recognised that many another a young man, hardly more than a boy, employed far other ways, at first sight much less demanding and less arduous than his own. He whose way was first to observe and then to begin to speculate about some or another young woman, hardly more than a girl and preferably dark-haired, and then to begin to compose the first of many written messages needing to be sent to her before he could prepare to approach her – he who would much rather have read in solitude a frank and eloquent letter from a person known to him as Dathar than have sat in a cinema beside a person known to him as Darlene was well aware that many a son of a specialist dentist, or even of a bank-teller or a shipping-clerk, was able to play tennis on many a weekend with many a young woman, hardly more than a girl, and afterwards to sit with her and to sip soft drinks and to talk with her while she was still wearing her short tennis-skirt or was able even to go with one of the young women to a cinema on many a Saturday evening and afterwards to escort her to her front door. He whose way was to compose messages or to wish to read messages was aware also that the young men mentioned in the previous sentence would mostly have been satisfied with their way of treating with the young women mentioned there whereas the composer of messages was sometimes made weary by his having to compose messages. And so, the message that he composed in earlier years, while it was intended to de
ride, was partly driven by envy. In later years, the message became more of a commentary. The composer of the message had come to accept that the man he addressed was never likely to read the message, perhaps not even in the unlikely event that the message had been finally written and then delivered to him. The commentary, so to call it, merely reported the differing ways of two sorts of man, neither of whom could have changed his ways, even if he had sometimes wanted to do so. By the time when the composer of the message had found his way into this building and into the very corridor where this account of him is being written, the tenor, as I called it earlier – the tenor of his composition had so changed that the composer of messages seemed almost to be commiserating with a man who might have had by then several wives and numerous sexual partners and who might have watched hundreds of films in dozens of cinemas while his commiserator had been composing message after message for the dark-haired personage that he was yet to meet up with.

  During the years when I used to read the reviews of works of fiction published in newspaper supplements or in so-called literary magazines, one of the words that I most often puzzled over was the word character. Writers of fiction, so I often read, created characters, some of whom were believable while others were not so. One or another reviewer might admit to caring about the characters said to be in a certain work of fiction while another reviewer might gainsay a certain work because he or she was unable to care for the characters said to be in the work. Sometimes a writer of fiction would be praised because he or she had adequately explained the motivation of his or her characters: the reasons for their having behaved as they had. Or, a writer might be blamed for failing to account for the behaviour of his or her characters. I would surely have read many a review in which characters and their motives were never mentioned, but I recall no reviewer or critic who insisted that fictional characters ought not to be discussed as though they are persons living in the world where books of fiction are written and read. In this connection, however, I can report that I once read with approval a statement by the writer of fiction Evelyn Waugh. He had never, Waugh wrote, entertained the least interest in why his characters behaved as they did. Waugh may have belonged among the great number who seem to think of fictional characters rather as they think of actual persons, but at least he felt no obligation to try to read the minds of his creatures, so to call them.