Stream System: The Collected Short Fiction of Gerald Murnane

by Gerald Murnane

  When the man mentioned in the previous paragraph had first arrived in the suburb of Geelong where his mother lived, he stopped his car in a street of shops and went into a shop with the sign NEWSAGENCY STATIONERY. The man intended to buy in the shop a map of the nearest districts of New South Wales and a writing pad and a pen that he would use for writing some of the poems that he intended to compose during his summer holidays.

  While the man mentioned in the previous paragraph was looking at maps in the shop mentioned in that paragraph, he saw behind the counter of the shop a young woman whose age he supposed to be about eighteen years. After the man had seen the face of the young woman, he began to imagine details of remote countryside in the district of Geelong where he and the young woman would be alone together in the future.

  While the man was beginning to imagine the details mentioned in the previous paragraph, he remembered a detail of a letter that he had received from his mother on a certain day three months after he had first moved from his parents’ house and had begun to live alone in a room of another house.

  One of the last paragraphs of the letter mentioned in the previous paragraph may be summarised as follows.

  In the suburb of Geelong where the letter was written, some of the families were poor. Some of the children of the poor families attended the same Catholic primary school that the younger son of the writer of the letter attended. The writer of the letter had first begun to learn how poor were some of these families when the annual fête was soon to be held in the Catholic parish where she and her younger son lived and when the nuns who taught at the primary school had urged their pupils each day to bring from their homes donations of goods that might be sold at the fête. Many of the children had brought to school such items as a tin of fish paste or of baked beans. A few children had brought toys that were scratched or chipped or even broken. And a child who must have come, so the writer of the letter supposed, from the very poorest of families brought to school one morning what the writer of the letter described as a toothbrush holder: an object of pinkish plastic that looked as though it had been taken down a few hours earlier from the hook where it had been hanging for many years on the wall of the bathroom in a house occupied by a poor family of many persons.

  When the elder son of the writer of the letter mentioned in the previous paragraph had first read the letter, he had seen in his mind an image of a girl of about twelve years of age holding in her hands and close to the front of her body a pinkish object. On many occasions during the years after he had first seen in his mind the image just mentioned, the elder son of the writer of the letter remembered that he had not seen in his mind when he first read the letter any detail of the face of the girl just mentioned or any detail of the pinkish object just mentioned. On the many occasions just mentioned, the elder son of the writer of the letter remembered that he had first seen some of the details of the face of the girl and of the pinkish object on a certain morning in the first summer after his father had died, when he, the elder son of his father, had been standing in a shop in a suburb of Geelong. On the many occasions just mentioned, the elder son of the father just mentioned remembered what may be summarised as follows.

  The man who was described in the previous paragraph as the elder son of his parents and in the second paragraph of this story as the owner of a file labelled Memorabilia was standing among displays of writing pads and pens and road maps and other items of stationery and was imagining details of remote countryside. At a certain moment while he was imagining those details, the man saw in his mind an image of a girl of about twelve years of age who was holding close to the front of her body a pinkish object that she was about to offer for sale for the benefit of a parish of the Catholic Church. At the moment just mentioned, the man saw that the details of the face of the girl were the details of the face of a young woman who was standing behind the counter of the shop that he was standing in at that moment. At the moment just mentioned, the man saw also that the pinkish object was an object that had hung on the wall of the bedroom of the favourite aunt of the man during all the years when he had spent part of his summer holidays each year in the house where his favourite aunt lived with others of her family.

  The pinkish object mentioned in the previous paragraph was of a kind of object known as a holy water font. The man mentioned in the previous paragraph was used to seeing as a boy large fonts of stone or marble standing inside the doorways of Catholic churches and to dipping his fingers in the holy water in each font as he entered or left the church and then making the sign of the cross on himself with his wet fingers. The man understood as a boy that any person was free to buy from any shop selling Catholic devotional objects one or more of the small fonts of porcelain for sale and then to hang the font or fonts inside one or more of the doors of his or her house, but the only house where the man had seen as a boy a small font of porcelain was the house of many rooms where his favourite aunt lived with others of her family, and the only room in that house that had a font hanging inside its doorway was the room where his favourite aunt lay by day and by night in her bed.

  The holy water font mentioned in the previous paragraph was of fine porcelain in the shape of the body above the waist of a person with long hair and with the upper parts of a pair of wings visible at the person’s back. The person wore a loose robe over a close-fitting tunic. The arms of the person appeared as though they supported in front of the person the bowl that was the receptacle for the holy water. The bowl occupied part of the space where the body below the waist of the person would otherwise have been. The colour of the face and hands and wings and hair and robe of the person was white. The colour of the tunic was pink.

  The boy whose favourite aunt was the owner of the holy water font mentioned in the previous paragraph was accustomed to dipping the ends of two or three of his fingers in the bowl of the font whenever he passed the font during the years when he spent part of his summer holidays in the house where the font was hung. On many of the occasions when the boy dipped the ends of his fingers in the bowl of the font, he looked at the front of the close-fitting pink tunic worn by the person who held the bowl of the font where the parts of the body below the waist of the person would otherwise have been. During the years mentioned in the sentence before the previous sentence, the boy looked on many occasions also at the front of the tunic of each statue of a person with long hair and a robe and a pair of wings that he saw in any schoolroom or church. During the years just mentioned, the boy looked on many occasions also at the front of each tunic in each picture that he saw of a person with long hair and a robe and a pair of wings in any book or in any schoolroom or church.

  The boy mentioned in the previous paragraph understood that the statues and pictures that he looked at were representations of the creatures known as angels. The boy understood also the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church concerning angels. He understood that the angels lived in the district of heaven. He understood also that the angels were spiritual beings who were without bodies and were, therefore, neither male nor female. Yet the boy expected that at some time in the future while he looked at one or another of the tunics that he would look at in the future, he would learn that the wearer of the tunic was a female person.

  After the man who was first mentioned in the second paragraph of this story had seen in his mind on a certain morning during his twenty-first year and soon after his father had died an image of a girl of about twelve years of age holding close to the front of her body a pinkish object, the man took the map and the writing pad and the pen that he intended to buy to a man behind the counter of the shop mentioned previously and then bought the goods and left the shop. The man then continued to travel towards the house where his mother lived with his younger brother. While the man travelled, he looked from time to time at the sky, which was filled with heaps or layers of grey clouds, and he heard in his mind from time to time certain words from a song that was mentioned earlier in this story and he saw in his mind from ti
me to time details of scenes in remote countryside on the inland slopes of the Great Dividing Range in either New South Wales or Queensland.

  The image that caused me to begin writing this story is an image of a single cloud in a picture on the obverse of a card in the hand of a man. The cloud just mentioned is one of many clouds in a sky filled with heaps or layers of clouds. The sky just mentioned is behind the head and the body above the waist of a saint of the Catholic Church: a female person wearing the habit of an order of nuns.

  The single cloud in the image mentioned in the previous paragraph is surrounded by an aureole or nimbus of pink. The man looking at the card mentioned in the previous paragraph has not yet seen the aureole or nimbus just mentioned. The man takes the card into his hand once in each few years and then reads the printed words on the reverse of the card and then remembers the woman who was once his favourite aunt and then calculates in round figures what quantity of indulgence a person would have amassed if the person had earned ten thousand days of indulgence every day for fifty years and then remembers certain teachings that he has not believed since his twenty-first year and then looks at the sky in the picture on the obverse of the card.

  The man mentioned in the previous paragraph has not yet seen the aureole or nimbus mentioned in that paragraph. I first saw the aureole or nimbus on the day when I began to write this story, and I have seen the aureole or nimbus whenever I have looked since that day at the image in my mind of the clouds in the sky in the picture in the hand of the man.

  I first saw the aureole or nimbus mentioned in the previous paragraph while I was hearing in my mind some of the words of a song that was mentioned earlier in this story. The man mentioned in the previous paragraph has heard in his mind from time to time the words of the song just mentioned, but he has never heard the words in such a way that they have caused him to see in his mind what the same words have caused me to see in my mind.

  The song mentioned in the previous paragraph is one of a sort of song known in the late 1950s and the early 1960s among many of the people who listened to radio programmes as a folk song. The title of the song is either ‘The Sloop John B’ or ‘The Sloop John V’. The previous sentence may be untrue. Whenever the man mentioned in the previous paragraph hears in his mind some of the words of the song just mentioned, he notices words reporting that the narrator has travelled on the sloop named John B or John V around Nassau Town and has stayed awake all night and has got into a fight. Whenever the man hears these words in his mind, he remembers certain events from the years when he used to spend part of his summer holidays each year travelling in his motor car through New South Wales and Queensland. When I heard the words of the song just mentioned in such a way that they caused me to see in my mind the image that caused me to begin writing this story, I noticed words reporting that the narrator was travelling with his grandfather and that he, the narrator, felt so broken up that he wanted to go home.

  Boy Blue

  A few weeks ago, the person writing this story read aloud to a gathering of persons another story that he had written. The chief character of the story that was read aloud was a man who was referred to throughout the story as the chief character of the story. After the person writing this story had read aloud the story mentioned in the previous sentence, the persons listening were invited by the organiser of the gathering to ask questions of the person who had read. The gathering was what some persons might have called a distinguished gathering, and the first person to ask a question was what some persons might have called a most distinguished person, she being the author of a number of books. The first person to ask a question asked the person who had just read whether the chief character of his story might have been a more interesting character if he had been given a name. The person who had just read the story whose chief character was referred to as the chief character of the story had been asked many times previously why the characters in his stories lacked names. The person who wrote stories about characters lacking names understood why his characters could have no names and tried always to explain to his questioners why his characters lacked names. However, the person whose characters lacked names suspected that he had seldom conveyed to any questioner the reason why his characters lacked names, and at the gathering mentioned previously he suspected that his answer to the author who questioned him failed to convey to her the reason for the lack just mentioned. Soon after the gathering just mentioned, the person writing this story decided that he would begin the next story that he wrote by explaining why the characters in that story lacked names. Soon after the person just mentioned had made the decision just mentioned, he began to write this story, ‘Boy Blue’.

  This is a story about a man and his son and the mother of the man. The man just mentioned will be called in this story the man or the father; the son just mentioned will be called in this story the son or the son of the man; the mother just mentioned will be called the mother or the mother of the man. Other characters will be mentioned in this story, and each of those characters will be distinguished from the other characters, but none of the characters will have what could be considered by any person reading or hearing the story a name. Any person who reads these words or hears these words read aloud and wishes that the characters in the story each had a name is invited to consider the following explanation but to remember at the same time that the words of the explanation are also part of this story.

  I am writing these words in the place that is called by many persons the real world. Almost every person who lives or has lived in this place has or has had a name. Whenever a person tells me that he or she prefers the characters in a story to have names, I suppose that the person likes to pretend, while reading a story, that the characters in the story are living or have lived in the place where the person is reading. Other persons may pretend whatever they choose to pretend, but I cannot pretend that any character in any story written by me or by any other person is a person who lives or has lived in the place where I sit writing these words. I see the characters in stories, including the story of which this sentence is a part, as being in the invisible place that I often call my mind. I would like the reader or the listener to notice that I wrote the word being and not the word living in the previous sentence.

  The man who is the chief character of this story was sitting in the dining area of his and his wife’s house at the end of the first hour of a certain morning at the time of the year when the first pink flowers appeared on the branches of the prunus trees in the suburb where he lived with his wife and his son and his daughter in a city in the invisible place mentioned in the previous paragraph.

  At the time mentioned in the previous sentence, the son of the man was sitting in the kitchen adjoining the dining area of his parents’ house after having eaten a plate of curry and rice that had been put into the oven by his mother during the last hour of the previous evening. At the time mentioned in the previous sentence, the father had in front of him the book Woodbrook, by David Thomson, published in 1991 by Vintage, and was pretending to read while he listened for any words that his son might speak. At the time mentioned in the previous sentence, the son had recently returned to his parents’ house from the factory where he worked on four days of each week from mid-afternoon until midnight as the operator of a machine. The son worked on only four days of each week because the workers at the factory just mentioned had chosen during the previous week to work for fewer days of each week rather than to have some of themselves dismissed.

  Early in the second hour of the morning mentioned in the previous paragraph, the son told his father that the manager of the factory where the son worked had told the workers on the previous evening that one or more of them might have to be dismissed in the near future because fewer orders were being placed at the factory for the parts of the motor car engines and of other machinery that were made there. During the hour just mentioned, the son told his father also that he, the son, believed that the worker in most danger of being dismissed from the fact
ory just mentioned was either himself or a certain man who will be called during the rest of this story the workmate of the son. The son did not have to tell his father why he, the son, was in danger of being dismissed. The father knew that his son had begun to work at the factory more recently than any other worker at the factory. But the son had to explain to the father why the workmate of the son was in danger of being dismissed. Before explaining to his father the matter just mentioned, the son told his father the following details that he, the son, had learned from his workmate or from other workers in the factory.

  The workmate of the son was a man a year older than the father of the son. The workmate lived with his wife, his son aged sixteen, and his daughter aged fourteen in a rented house in the suburb where the factory mentioned previously stood, which suburb was often said to be the poorest of all the suburbs in the quarter of the city mentioned previously. The workmate’s wife had recently been dismissed from her job in another factory and was looking out for another job of any kind. The workmate and his wife owned only their clothing and the few pieces of furniture in the house that they rented. The workmate owned also a motor car that he had bought during the previous year for seven hundred dollars, but the motor car was in faulty order, and the workmate lacked the money to pay for repairs to the motor car. The television set in the house was also in faulty order, but neither the workmate nor his wife had the money needed to repair the set.

  After having told his father the details mentioned in the previous paragraph, the son explained to his father why his, the son’s, workmate was in danger of being dismissed from the factory where he worked. His workmate, so the son said, often failed to adjust correctly or to check the settings of his machine, and many of the metal objects that were cut or ground by the machine were found afterwards to be faulty. The workmate wore spectacles with thick lenses, and the son sometimes supposed that the workmate was unable to read the tiny numerals or to see the fine markings on his machine. At other times, the son supposed that his workmate hurried at his work so that he could gain the time for smoking one or more of the many cigarettes that he smoked while he was in the factory.