Stream System: The Collected Short Fiction of Gerald Murnane

by Gerald Murnane

  In the story ‘First Love’, which I still read every year or so for its railway journeys, the narrator is travelling towards Biarritz. From my reading I understand Biarritz to be such a place that if brown-white photographs were fitted to the walls of compartments of the Nord Express, more than one of those scenes would show the plage, the straw-hatted children, the ladies with parasols (all these are in Nabokov’s story), and a grey-white mist or sea-spray or cloud drifting over the land like a curtain blown inwards by a warm wind (this is not mentioned by Nabokov).

  I am sitting in semi-darkness in an inner suburb of Melbourne, watching one of the last motion pictures I will see. A man has persuaded me to watch this motion picture because one of its scenes is of cliffs and valleys richly coloured and said to be unlike any landscape on earth.

  I watch the oily colours being continually replenished, and I remember the glass marbles I used to hold up against the sunlight in Bendigo. But the colours in front of my eyes are daubed on some kind of pane, while the colours in Bendigo were in the deepest part of the glass.

  When the artist wanted a glass marble to photograph for the jacket of my first book of fiction, I allowed him to handle a few of the marbles that I first collected in Bendigo beneath a calendar showing the ordinal number preceding by two the number on the calendar described in the first sentence of the book of fiction with the glass marble (and the shadow of a second glass marble) on its jacket. I have kept my collection of marbles with me since I was taken away from Bendigo in the fourth year after I arrived there.

  The artist chose for the photograph for the jacket of my book a marble of the sort called rainbow.

  Much more than the coloured oils and dyes on glass, a scene near the end of the motion picture stays in my mind: a scene in which a very old man sits alone in a room coloured white and pale shades of brown.

  I am sitting on a wooden seat on a patch of lawn outside Bendigo railway station. My father and I have reached the end of our journey. Nobody has come to the station to meet us, but by father was expecting nobody, and now he has left me here on this patch of dead grass while he goes to look for a telephone.

  I look at the strange blue of the sky and I feel the hotness of the wind. I am only a small child, but I understand what it is to have arrived in a foreign country.

  And the heat was a medium which made this change of outlook possible. As a liberating power with its own laws it was outside my experience. In the heat, the commonest objects changed their nature.

  I tell myself I am living from now on in Bendigo. I will never again live in Melbourne, where I was born. I tell myself this while I wait for my father to come back to this patch of dead grass and dry soil and then to take me into the heart of the city which some sign or some printed caption has already told me is known as the Golden.

  My hair is thin and my skin is wrinkled; I have come to the end of my travels. I am sitting on a wooden seat on a patch of dead grass and dry soil outside Bendigo railway station. I have just arrived by train. No page of any calendar is conveniently nearby. It would be unthinkable for any such page to be in sight.

  Alfred Jarry once wrote that in order to dwell in eternity, one has only to experience two separate moments at the same moment. I believe this is true whether a moment is a unit of something called time or a unit of place.

  I am among the very last, gentle hills to the north of the Great Divide. The place where I am I have called for most of my life the other side of the Divide, but it is here.

  Before I opened the book at random, I remembered only one detail from my reading in 1977 of The Go-Between. A boy on holidays from school is attending a gathering, where songs are being sung. One of the leading men at the gathering, trying to encourage people to sing, calls on the boy to sing the latest from school.

  I remember no details of the love affair and not even the names of the lovers. But I have not forgotten the oddity of a grown man, with a full and busy life spread out around him, asking a schoolboy what can be seen from the edge of the world.

  Long after I had finished, so I thought, the writing of this piece of fiction, ‘First Love’, and only one week before I saw the final proofs of ‘First Love’, a man who has lived for much of his life at Kangaroo Flat, as one of the characters in ‘First Love’ is said to have lived, gave me a copy of a booklet, ‘Goldfields Shepherd: The Story of Dr Backhaus’ by Frank Cusack, published by the Diocese of Sandhurst. (Sandhurst was once the official title of the place that has always been called by its inhabitants Bendigo.) I found in the booklet four sentences that clearly belong in ‘First Love’. Those sentences now form the following paragraph. When I had first read about Dr Backhaus’s wanting in Melbourne to feel the north wind from Bendigo, I had supposed that he died in Melbourne.

  ‘…already Dr Backhaus was very weak. However, weak as he was, he insisted on returning to Sandhurst. It was there he wished to die and be buried. He rallied; somehow the long, slow trip by train was accomplished, and he was taken to the house of his old friend John Crowley in Wattle Street. There he lingered a day or two…’

  The title of the story by Vladimir Nabokov refers to a small girl the narrator meets on the beach at Biarritz. I first thought of mentioning Nabokov’s story in this story when I remembered the blue, bivalved night light, which is the sort of thing I myself can never remember. I thought that was the only connection between the two stories, and I was bothered by a certain untidiness.

  As I explained much earlier in this story, I used to read only the early part of ‘First Love’; the railway journeys interested me much more than the coastal city. All the while I was writing my own story, I thought of Nabokov’s story as leading only towards a small girl under the white sky overhanging Biarritz in the years on the other side of the First World War.

  Today I read carefully to the end of ‘First Love’. I read, in the second-last sentence, of the narrator’s remembering something about the clothing of the girl that reminded him of the rainbow spiral in a glass marble. I read, in the last sentence, of the narrator’s holding the wisp of iridescence, as he calls it, and not knowing where to fit it into his story. And I read, in the space beneath the last words of the story, the word Boston and the inscription from a calendar 1948 which tells me the author was wondering where that rainbow belonged in the same year in which I packed my glass marbles in a cloth bag in a tea-chest to be loaded onto a furniture van, because my father was taking me back towards Warrnambool and taking me, as he told me then and as I believed for long afterwards, away from Bendigo forever.

  Velvet Waters

  During the last two hours of the last Saturday before Christmas Day in 1959 and then during the first four hours of the Sunday following that Saturday, a man aged twenty-one years and seven months walked up and down the footpath of the Lower Esplanade in St Kilda, opposite St Moritz ice-skating rink.

  During the last two hours of the Saturday and the first two hours of the Sunday other persons walked on the footpath of the Lower Esplanade, but the other persons walked away and out of sight while the man who was walking up and down went on walking up and down until he was the only person walking on the footpath of the Lower Esplanade.

  The Saturday had been a hot day and the Saturday night was a warm night. During the last two hours of the Saturday and the first two hours of the Sunday the man walking up and down heard voices of male persons and female persons from the beach below the wall at the edge of the Lower Esplanade, but after the second hour of the Sunday the man no longer heard voices. During the third hour and the fourth hour of the Sunday the man heard only slapping sounds made by small waves on the beach.

  The man was walking up and down the footpath because he was waiting for his best friend, who was a man five months younger than himself. His best friend had promised to meet the man opposite St Moritz at midnight on the Saturday.

  Once every minute during the first four hours of the Sunday the man looked north along the Lower Esplanade, hoping to see his friend driving sou
th in his brown Volkswagen sedan. On the Saturday evening the man and his friend had each put a suitcase of clothes on the back seat of the Volkswagen sedan. The friend had then driven the man to St Moritz and had promised to meet him again at midnight. The two men had agreed that they would set out in the Volkswagen sedan from the Lower Esplanade at midnight and would arrive before first light on the Sunday at the holiday flat that they had rented at Lorne on the Southern Ocean. The man walking up and down had hoped to sit on the balcony of the flat and to watch the sun rising out of the ocean on the first morning of his holidays, but the sky was already growing pale on the Sunday morning while he was walking on the footpath and waiting for his friend.

  The man was almost sure that his friend was at a party that his friend had told him about. His friend had promised to leave the party before midnight but the man on the Lower Esplanade was almost sure that his friend was still at the party.

  The man on the Lower Esplanade knew where the party was taking place. It was taking place at the corner of St Kilda Road and Albert Road, in a two-storey house in a terrace of houses. The house where the party was taking place and all the other houses of the terrace were knocked down three years later, in 1962, and a building known as the BP Building was built where the houses had stood.

  The man walking up and down could have walked from the Lower Esplanade to the house where the party was taking place. He could have walked there in about forty-five minutes and with no risk that he would reach the house and would be told that his friend had set out no more than forty-five minutes ago for the Lower Esplanade. The man knew the exact route that his friend would follow from the corner of Albert Road and St Kilda Road to the Lower Esplanade. On every Saturday night during the previous six weeks, the man had sat beside his friend in the front seat of the Volkswagen sedan while his friend had driven by the same route from St Moritz to the house where the party would later take place. On those nights the man beside the driver had stared at the streets that he was passing through and had kept silent while the driver had talked to the two female passengers in the rear seat.

  The two passengers were a woman aged about forty and her daughter, who was a girl aged either six weeks or five weeks or four weeks or three weeks or two weeks or one week less than sixteen years. The man beside the driver always knew how many weeks less than sixteen years the girl was aged. After the girl and her mother had left the car and had gone into their house on every Saturday night, the driver had told the man beside him the number of weeks remaining before the girl would become sixteen years of age. Every week the driver had said that the girl was his girlfriend but that the mother of the girl would not allow him to take the girl out until after her sixteenth birthday, which would be celebrated at a party on the last Saturday night before Christmas Day in 1959 at the house that was knocked down twenty-five years ago.

  The man walking up and down did not walk towards the house where the party was taking place because he had been told that he would not have been welcome at the party. His best friend had told him that the party was only for close friends of the girl and her mother. Four weeks before the party the man’s best friend had warned him not to mention the party in the hearing of the girl or her mother, in case they should think that he was hoping to be invited.

  The owner of the Volkswagen sedan had first seen the girl on a Saturday evening in March 1959, when he had been aged twenty years and five months and she had been aged fifteen years and three months, although he had not known her age at that time. The owner of the Volkswagen sedan and his friend had been skating on the ice at St Moritz and looking at young women in the crowd of skaters around them. The owner of the Volkswagen sedan had pointed to a person that neither of the young men had seen before. The friend considered the person a girl rather than a young woman and guessed that she was not even fifteen years of age. She had clear, pale skin and blonde hair that looked almost white. Her arms and legs were thin and her thick woollen sweater seemed flat at the front. Her face had an expression of aloofness. When she saw the two young men looking at her she looked at them for a few moments but her expression did not change. The friend of the young man who had first noticed the girl thought that her face looked interesting but he did not go on looking at her after she had looked at him. The young man who had first noticed the girl went on looking at her after she had looked away from him.

  During the last hour of daylight on the last Saturday before the winter solstice in 1987, the man who had walked up and down at St Kilda in December 1959 walked along a concrete path beside Spring Creek at Hepburn Springs in the Central Highlands of Victoria.

  The man was not walking alone. He was walking beside the man who had been his best friend from 1951 until 1965. The men were still good friends but the first man no longer thought of anyone as being his best friend. The two men had been friends since they had first met in a junior form of a Catholic secondary school in East St Kilda thirty-six years and five months before the day when they walked beside Spring Creek at Hepburn Springs.

  Five paces behind the two men on the concrete path the wives of the two men were walking together. Behind the two wives two other wives were walking together, and behind the two other wives the husbands of those wives were walking together. The four husbands and the four wives had arrived at Hepburn Springs on the previous day in order to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the wedding of the man who had been the owner of a brown Volkswagen sedan in 1959 and the woman who had been the girl that he had noticed among a crowd of skaters on the ice at St Moritz in St Kilda in March 1959.

  The husband and the wife who had first seen one another twenty-eight years and three months before had been married for twenty-five years and five months, but the other three married couples had not been able to celebrate the anniversary until the husband and the wife had returned to Melbourne on a visit from Vancouver, where they had lived for fifteen years in the suburb of Kitsilano on a hill overlooking part of English Bay, and where they intended to live for at least eleven more years until the man had retired from his position as lecturer in the history of the Pacific Basin at a university. The other three married couples all lived in suburbs of Melbourne but they had travelled to Hepburn Springs in order to celebrate the wedding anniversary on the Friday evening and the Saturday evening.

  The four married couples had chosen Hepburn Springs because they believed it to be a restful place among trees and near water at a distance from Melbourne such that any of the couples could have driven back to their houses within two or three hours if their children or a neighbour or the police had telephoned them and asked them to return home at once. The couples had chosen Hepburn Springs also because the wife who lived in Vancouver had told one of the other wives three months before in a letter from Vancouver that her husband had spent part of his summer holidays at Hepburn Springs in every year until the year when he was aged seventeen years but had not been to Hepburn Springs since that year.

  Of the eight persons walking beside Spring Creek, only two persons had not previously been to Hepburn Springs. These two were the man who is the chief character of this story and his wife, who had first seen one another twenty-four years and four months before and who had been married for twenty-two years and five months.

  During the last four hours of the Friday and the first two hours of the Saturday, the four men and the four women had sat in the bed-sitting room of the cabin allotted to the couple from Vancouver in the grounds of the hotel where all four couples had been allotted adjoining cabins. The men had drunk beer or whisky and the women had drunk wine or soft drinks. The four men had sat on chairs on one side of the double bed and the four women had sat on chairs on the opposite side. Sometimes one of the men or the women had talked to all seven other persons but for most of the time the men had talked to one another on their side of the bed and the women had talked to one another on the opposite side.

  The man who had once walked up and down for six hours beside the sea at St Kilda believed while he w
alked beside Spring Creek that he had talked more than any other of the seven persons who had sat around the bed of the couple who had been married for more than twenty-five years. For twenty-seven years and six months the man had not been able to stop himself from drinking beer continually or from talking continually whenever he had been in a place where beer was being drunk. For twenty-seven years and six months, whenever the man had wakened after a night when he had drunk beer and had talked continually he had not been able to remember what he or any other person had said or had done after the third hour of his drinking. On many mornings when the man had tried to remember, the latest thing that he had remembered was his having decided during the third hour of his drinking and talking that he would later take aside a particular person from among the persons around him and would confide to that person something that he had not previously confided to any other person.

  While the man walked beside Spring Creek during the last hour of daylight on the Saturday, he remembered his having decided during the second-last hour of the Friday that he would later take aside the wife of his oldest friend and would confide to her something that he had not previously confided to any other person. The man remembered on the Saturday that he had understood on the Friday that he would not take the woman aside in the bed-sitting room where the eight persons sat around the double bed but would take her aside on the Saturday afternoon beside Spring Creek. The man remembered on the Saturday that he had understood on the Friday evening that the eight persons were going to spend the Saturday afternoon beside Spring Creek and that he had believed on the Friday evening that he and any other man who wanted to drink beer on the Saturday afternoon would take a parcel of cans or stubbies of beer to a grassy place beside Spring Creek and would sit there and drink beer. The man remembered on the Saturday that he had decided on the Friday evening that he would get up from his grassy place at some time late on the Saturday afternoon and would stroll with the wife of his oldest friend among the trees beside the creek and would confide in her there.