Stream System: The Collected Short Fiction of Gerald Murnane

by Gerald Murnane

  During the two weeks mentioned in the previous paragraph, I often saw in my mind sequences of images more vivid and more detailed and more apt to recur than any sequence of images that I could remember having seen as a result of any book that I had read recently. Each sequence of images appeared as though on a screen in a cinema in my mind, but while I watched the images I felt as though I was writing certain passages of a book in my mind and as though each passage in the book would drive out of my mind each image from the film in my mind.

  On the screen in my mind, the mother of the man with his chin in his hands held her son in her arms on the day when he had been born. The mother admired the body of her son and saw in her mind an image of her son as a tall, strong man.

  In the book in my mind, the mother of the man with his chin in his hands held her son as in the film but foresaw that he would be small and thin throughout his life and that he would die while she was still alive.

  On the screen in my mind, the mother led her son by the hand towards the school gate on his first day as a schoolboy and foresaw that he would make many friends at school and would learn much and would afterwards earn his living in an office where his fellow workers smiled at him, especially the young women.

  In the book in my mind, the mother read one or another school report on her son and foresaw that he would spend his working life as an unskilled labourer and would be disliked by many of his workmates and would never marry.

  On the screen in my mind, the man opened one or another book from a carton of books lent to him by one of the few of his workmates who was not unfriendly towards him. The man read a number of pages of the book but then fell asleep or began to watch his television set and afterwards could not remember anything of what he had read about.

  In the book in my mind, the man did as reported in the previous paragraph but remembered having seen in his mind while he read one or another of the pages in the book an image of plains of grass reaching to the horizon in his mind.

  At the end of the two weeks mentioned above, my son told me when he had returned home from work late that the kindly man had called with him at the home of the man with his chin in his hands. On this occasion, so my son told me, he had gone with the kindly man to the front door of the flat where the man with his chin in his hands lived with his mother. The mother had answered the door. She had been, in my son’s words, a fat, hopeless woman. According to my son’s report, the kindly man had told the mother that he and my son had called to see how her son was feeling and to collect some books that he, the kindly man, had lent to the son on a previous occasion. According to my son’s report, the mother had answered that her son was at that moment asleep, that he had not been at all well, and that she would prefer not to wake him in order to meet his visitors. According to my son’s report, he and the kindly man had told the mother to pass on their best regards to her son and had then left.

  On a certain afternoon during the second week after the events reported in the previous paragraph, my son told me that he and his workmates had been told during that morning by the owner of the engineering works that the man with his chin in his hands had died. On the following morning, I was about to look through the notices under the heading DEATHS in the Sun News-Pictorial, but then I recalled that I knew only the first of the given names of the man who had died, which name was the only name that my son had used of the man. I asked my son as he was leaving for work that morning, but he said he did not know the surname of the man. I then looked through the text of each of the notices in three of the columns headed DEATHSuntil I had found the notice of the death of the man with his chin in his hands. One notice only had been inserted, the mourners being the man’s mother and his sister. I did not look in the columns headed FUNERAL NOTICES.

  When my son returned home on the afternoon of the day when I had read the notice mentioned in the previous paragraph, he said in connection with the death of the man with his chin in his hands only that an apprentice at the engineering works had said that he was pleased to have heard that the man had died and would no longer tease or insult him.

  On the day following the afternoon mentioned in the previous paragraph, I read among the notices under the heading DEATHS in the Sun News-Pictorial only one notice referring to the man with his chin in his hands. In that notice, the dead man was described as a good mate of a man whose first given name was included in the notice. That man has been called in this story the kindly man.

  On each of the first few afternoons after I had heard of the death of the man with his chin in his hands, I expected my son to tell me that a party of his workmates, himself perhaps included, had attended during that day the funeral service for the man with his chin in his hands, but my son did not tell me what I had expected him to tell me.

  From time to time during the years since the afternoons mentioned in the previous paragraph, I have seen as though on a screen in a cinema in my mind a sequence of images of a fat woman nearly twenty years older than myself looking around a bedroom in a flat in the suburb of Fairfield and preparing to empty the bedroom of most of the belongings of the person who had formerly slept in the bedroom. One of the images in the sequence is of the woman finding under the bed in the bedroom a carton of books.

  Sometimes, when I have seen in my mind the image mentioned in the previous paragraph, I have felt as though I was writing in a book in my mind a passage in which the fat woman mentioned above picked up one or another of the books in the carton and opened one or another page of the book and read one or another paragraph on the page and saw in her mind an image of a man surrounded by long grass reaching to the horizon in her mind.

  At other times, when I have seen in my mind the image mentioned in the previous paragraph, I have felt as though I was writing a passage in a book in my mind in which the fat woman picked up the carton of books and carried it out through the front door of her flat and left it beside the footpath at the front of the block of flats, knowing that a truck would drive past the block of flats later on that day and that labourers employed by the city in which she lived would collect the carton of books from the footpath and would throw the carton and its contents into the back of the truck, after which the truck would continue on its way towards the wastepaper collection depot only a few hundred metres from the block of flats.

  Sometimes, when I have seen in my mind an image of the man with his chin in his hands during the years since I learned that he had died, I see in my mind an image of a line drawing of a famous statue of a man sitting with his chin resting on a fist. The line drawing appeared as a logo on each of the many titles in a series of books with the general title of the Thinker’s Library. The series of books was published perhaps as long ago as the 1920s by one or another English publisher whose name I have forgotten. I saw copies of books from the Thinker’s Library in second-hand bookshops in the 1950s and the 1960s, and I bought only one title in the series. Whenever I looked at the list of titles in the series, I imagined the books as having been bought by young men in cloth caps. The young men worked by day in factories in the English midlands and read books by night in order to educate themselves. The title that I bought was The Existence of God. I remember the surname of the author as McCabe. He was an American and a former priest. His book contained a number of arguments against the existence of God. I have not seen the book for more than thirty years. I bought the book during the year in the late 1950s when I was planning to live as a writer of fiction in a shed at the edge of a grassy paddock. I read the book often during that year. I wanted the arguments in the book to strengthen me whenever I was tempted to believe again in God as I had believed during most of my life until that year. Sometimes, and especially when I was drunk, I would take the book down from my shelves and would read a passage to one or another person and would urge the person to borrow the book from me. Someone who borrowed the book failed to return it, and all I remember of the book today is the drawing of the man with his chin resting on his hand and the claim made by the auth
or somewhere in the book that his children had grown up happily without having been taught about God.

  One of the few sequences of images that still remains in my mind from the evening about twenty years ago when I watched in a cinema the film named earlier in this story is a sequence of images showing part of the interior of a bus in which the small, thin man with dark hair sits beside the man who seems to be his only friend. The two men are travelling to the state of Florida, but for some time the small, thin man has been lying back in his seat with his eyes closed. The time is late at night, and the windows of the bus show darkness and the lights of motor traffic. At some time during the night, the bus stops at the border of Florida. While the bus is stopped, a young woman with fair hair who works as an assistant in a shop of some kind just inside the state of Florida or who works as an employee of some kind of the government of Florida says to the passengers in the bus the words at the head of this section of this story. The sequence of images is such that I understand the thin man with dark hair to have already died when the bus reaches the border and when the young woman speaks.

  Whenever I have seen in my mind the sequence of images mentioned above, I have then felt urged to begin to write a certain book of fiction which would be a report of a search among the images in my mind for the image or images that suggest most clearly the place where I expect to have arrived when one or another person first observes of me that I have already died.

  The Homer of the Insects

  Of all the books that I bought for my son as a result of my having read the list of books in the book published by the Children’s Book Council of Australia, the book that I most looked forward to his reading was a book of fiction of many pages recommended for children aged from eleven to fourteen years. I cannot remember the title of the book or the name of the author or of the publisher. I remember that the edition I bought for my son was a hardcover edition of more than two hundred closely printed pages. Of all the details on the dust-jacket, I remember only parts of the outline of a line drawing of a boy of about twelve years of age and the outlines of line drawings of tussocks of grass at the feet of the boy.

  I cannot remember having read any word of the book mentioned in the previous paragraph. I know that my son has never read the book and that it lies nowadays wrapped in plastic in a carton above the ceiling of my house. And yet, I often see in my mind images of the images that I might have seen if I had read the book.

  During the years when I bought many books and when some of those books would stay on my shelves unread for many years while I read the many other books waiting to be read, I would sometimes stand in front of my shelves and would look at the spine of a book that I had owned for many years but had not yet read and would see in my mind a sequence of images of the images that I might have seen in my mind if I had read the book and had later remembered having done so. Sometimes, when I stood in front of an unread book, I understood that the images in my mind had arisen as a result of my having previously looked at the dust-jacket of the book and read the words there. At other times, I understood that the images had arisen as a result of my having previously read one or more reviews of the book or essays mentioning the book. At other times again, I would see images in my mind as though I remembered having read a book that I had never read, but I would be unable to understand why those images had arisen in my mind. During the years after I had begun to dump books at Fairfield, one of the plans that I devised for my retirement was as follows. I would go on buying books and keeping them on my shelves but I would read no more books. I would allow myself to read the dust-jackets of books and to read reviews of books and essays about books, but I would never again look between the covers of any book. After I had retired, I would stare at the spine of one after another of the books that I had never read and while I stared I would study the images that appeared in my mind. I would afterwards describe these images in writing. The written descriptions of all the images would deserve to be considered a book in itself. I might read this book often, observing what images arose in my mind while I read. Or, I might leave the book forever unread but might stand sometimes in front of the book long after I had written it and might observe whatever images might be in my mind.

  The most prominent of the images that appear in my mind whenever I remember the hardcover book mentioned in the first paragraph of this section of this story is an image of a man sitting among long grass with his chin in his hands. The man is sitting on a small wooden stool and is staring at something in the long grass just in front of him. I first saw this image in my mind many years before my son told me one afternoon about the man who sat in the engineering works with his chin in his hands. For as long as I have seen this image, I have understood that the man is a famous naturalist who lived for most of his life in the south of France and studied the insects of his native district. For as long as I have understood this, I have supposed that my seeing the image of the famous naturalist is partly the result of my having learned from the dust-jacket of the hardcover book of fiction bought for my son that the book is set in the south of France and that the book is a boy who spends much of his time out of doors. On the first occasions when I saw the image of the famous French naturalist, who is always at a distance among the long grass when I first see the image of him, I supposed I was seeing an image of the naturalist as a young man or even as a boy of the age of the chief character of the hardcover book of fiction, but on each of those occasions the image of the person in the long grass subsequently appeared in the foreground of my mind, enabling me to see that he was a man older than myself.

  When I was preparing to write this section of this story, I intended to include in the section the name of the famous naturalist. I had read the name several times in the past but had not remembered exactly the spelling of the name. I looked just now into several reference books on my shelves but was unable to find the name of the naturalist. I then looked among my shelves for some time but was unable to see there any book that might have contained the name of the naturalist in a place where I could readily find it.

  If I was another sort of man, I would have visited or telephoned one or another library in order to learn the name of the naturalist, but I am a man who has not gone into a library during the past ten years and who intends not to go into any library in the future. If I were to go into a library, I would seem to be acknowledging that I had failed to acquire all the books necessary for my satisfaction and contentment. If I were to go into a library, I would seem to be admitting that my own library had failed me. Worse, if I were to go into a library I would have to talk to one of the persons in charge of the books in the library. I have gone so seldom into libraries during my lifetime that I have never learned the system or systems according to which the books are arranged on the shelves of libraries. On my few visits to libraries many years ago, I was satisfied to walk between the shelves and to wait for the spine of one or another book to take my eye, but I understand that I could not hope to find in this way the name of the famous naturalist. I could only find that name after having spoken to one or another person in charge of part of a library.

  More than thirty years ago, before I became a writer of books, I used to seek out persons who might talk with me about books. Whenever I was reading a book in those days, I would hear in my mind the sound of myself talking in the future to someone about the book. I was careful not to talk about books to persons who did not value books, but I expected that I would always have in the future a large number of friends and acquaintances who would talk about books. After I had become a writer of books, I was more wary of talking about books. I understood by then that each book I had written was not the book I had read in my mind before I had begun to write. I began to suspect that a book, and especially a book of fiction, is too complicated a thing to be talked about, except by a person talking to himself or herself. I began to suspect that a book, and especially a book of fiction, ought to be read in private and then put on the reader’s shelves for five or ten or twe
nty years, after which time the reader ought to stare at the spine of the book. After I had begun to suspect these things, I seldom talked about books. Sometimes I would point out a book to a person or would place a book in the hands of a person or would leave a book lying where a person might come across it, but I would seldom talk about any of these books. Nowadays, I am more likely to hide books rather than to put them in the way of people. For some years now, I have not tried to persuade any person to read any book. In future, I will not admit to any person that I have read any book. In future, I will not even reveal to any person the existence of any book that the person has not read unless the person has first persuaded me that he or she has already seen in his or her mind some of the contents of the book. Being nowadays this sort of man, I could hardly bring myself to speak to one or another person in charge of part of a library containing a book I know nothing about.

  While I was writing the previous paragraph, I began to understand the place in this story of the image the connections of which I did not understand when I first included details of that image in this story. I have now begun to understand why the young woman whose image in my mind caused me to write the second and third and fourth paragraphs of this story chose never to speak to me about any piece of fiction that she had written or intended to write.

  The name of the naturalist who spent most of his life in fields of grass in the south of France studying details of the ways of insects is almost the same word as the name of a famous publishing house in London. The famous publishing house publishes much poetry and fiction, and a number of the books on my shelves at this moment were first published by the famous publishing house. At least one of the books that I dumped at Fairfield in the years when I used to dump books had been first published by the famous publishing house. I can remember of that book only that it was a hardcover edition of a book of prose fiction by a famous writer from the West Indies. One of the books on my shelves from the famous publishing house is a paperback edition of one of my own books of fiction. The design on the cover of this book and the advertisement for the book suggest to me that the persons who prepared these things had not read the contents of the book. Another of the books on my shelves is the hardcover edition of the book mentioned most recently in this paragraph. Whenever I look at the illustration on the front of the dust-jacket of the book just mentioned, I suppose that the illustrator first read every word of the book and then was able to see in his mind every detail of each of the images that he would see in his mind twenty or more years afterwards if he stood at that time in front of the unjacketed spine of the book. The hardcover edition just mentioned was the first of my books of fiction to have been reviewed in the TLS. Soon after I had read the review of the book in the TLS, I chose not to renew my subscription to the TLS when it was next due for renewal, and I did not subscribe to the TLS for three years.