Stream System: The Collected Short Fiction of Gerald Murnane

by Gerald Murnane

  While I sat in my cabin during the first sea journey I had ever undertaken, I was aware that the two books I had brought with me were about the two writers who had most influenced me during the first of many years in my life when I spent much of my time wavering between what I saw as the only two courses that my life could take. During the last year of my secondary education, I had read, among other books, Elected Silence and Wuthering Heights. Soon after the examinations at the end of that year, I forgot the experience of having read every book except the two mentioned just now. I never afterwards forgot my foreseeing while I read Elected Silence that I would become a solitary and a writer as Merton had become. (Sometimes the term solitary seemed to mean that I would become a priest in a religious order or a monk in a monastery; at other times the term meant that I would become a bachelor living alone among books.) Nor did I afterwards forget my foreseeing while I read Wuthering Heights that I would fall in love with one or another young woman who would seem to me to resemble the image in my mind of Catherine Earnshaw before she had first thought of becoming the wife of Edgar Linton. (In order to meet such a young woman, so I supposed, I would have to live the opposite of a solitary life.)

  I did not want to begin reading either book at the beginning. I looked at the pages of illustrations in both books and then at the indexes. I read from each book by turns – a page or two from the one, a chapter or so from the other. I remember myself lying back on my bed at some time towards midnight and drinking the last of my sixth stubby and promising myself that I would never again feel obliged to read the pages or the chapters of any book in the order decided on by the author or the editor and regretting that I had read too many books of fiction during my lifetime and too few biographies of writers of fiction. I remember myself at about the same time taking a pen and paper from my suitcase and making a note to remind myself in the future to consider writing a piece of fiction which would be published as though it was a biography, with an index, illustrations, and whatever else might be needed to complete the illusion.

  At about the time mentioned in the previous paragraph, so I remember, I decided that I had been mistaken as a young man to think of Thomas Merton as a solitary. I read in my cabin that Merton as a monk had been continually visited by friends. I read that he had fallen in love, as a man in early middle age, with a young woman he had met when she was a nurse in a hospital where he had been admitted as a patient and that he and the young woman sometimes had picnic lunches together in the woods near the monastery when he had left the hospital and gone back to the monastic life. In my cabin I decided that Thomas Merton had posed as a solitary but that Emily Brontë had been a true solitary.

  At about the time mentioned in the previous paragraph, I decided that I had been mistaken as a young man when I thought of finding in the future one or another young woman resembling the young Catherine Earnshaw. What I read in my copy of the book by Edward Chitham persuaded me that Catherine Earnshaw had seemed to the woman who wrote about her to be an inhabitant of the place called Gondal, which was a place in the mind of Emily Brontë. When I had expected as a young man to fall in love with a young woman resembling Catherine Earnshaw, so I recall having decided in my cabin, I ought to have understood that such a young woman could be met with only in the place called Gondal.

  After I had finished the last of my stubbies, I set aside my books and put on my jacket. I put my flasks of vodka in the pockets of the jacket and walked to the highest and foremost part of the upper deck. The time was soon after midnight and the weather was fine but cold. The barman who had served me earlier had told me we would not come into sight of the lights of Tasmania until early daylight, but I sat on a seat on the deck and stared ahead of the ship. I sipped from my flask and began at last to feel what I usually felt after drinking, which was a feeling that I need no longer trouble myself with reading or writing, since I would shortly see as a result of my drinking what I had for so long been trying to see as a result of my reading and writing.

  Even at that time, a few people still sat or walked on the upper deck, but an hour or so later I seemed to be the only person there. I went on sipping from my flask. I have been a drinker for most of my adult life but never what is called a seasoned drinker. I have never been able to keep pace with men who drink regularly in hotels, and I have often vomited in the toilet of some hotel while my drinking companions were talking quietly and with no appearance of drunkenness in the bar. I have always preferred to drink alone, sipping from stubbies of beer and trying to maintain in myself the feeling I described in the previous paragraph. I have always disliked wine and spirits, but in situations where I could not have at hand a half-dozen stubbies I have usually had a flask of vodka in a pocket. On the upper deck of the Abel Tasman, in the early hours of the morning, I began to sing to myself.

  Among the many songs that I must have sung, several stay in my mind. I sang what I knew of ‘My Old Kentucky Home’, if that is its title, as a result of having read earlier of Thomas Merton in the monastery in Kentucky. I sang what I knew of ‘The Camptown Races’, if that is its title, as a result of my having remembered that Merton’s monastery was in the district of Kentucky celebrated for its racecourses and stud farms. I sang what I thought of as a song about Gondal. The tune and all the words but one were from a song I had heard sung by the American group the Weavers. I sang as I crossed Bass Strait that Gondal was a dreadful place where the whalefish did go and the north wind did blow and the daylight was seldom seen. I sang as though I wanted to warn the curious away from travelling towards Gondal so that I might be one of the few to enjoy its pleasures.

  Not long before daylight, as the barman had foretold, a tiny light appeared far ahead in the darkness. I sat watching the light. By now I had almost finished my second flask of vodka. While I watched, a few persons came up on to the deck and watched also, but I felt confident that I was the only person who could see the single sign in the darkness of the land ahead.

  When the sky began to lighten, I drank the last of my vodka and then went back to my cabin and packed my books into my suitcases. The books were the only things I had unpacked. I was still wearing the clothes I had put on nearly twenty-four hours earlier in Melbourne. I did not clean my teeth or wash any part of myself. I looked at my face in the mirror and told myself that I was not drunk, but I felt strange. In all my life, I had never gone for so long without food or sleep.

  I carried my suitcase up to a coffee shop on an upper level and sipped two cups of black coffee and watched the mountains of Tasmania becoming clearer to view. A few other people sat around me, but I believed they could not see me. When the vessel was entering the Mersey River, I stood in a crowd near the purser’s office and was surprised when people did not blunder into me.

  I walked down the gangplank. The persons waiting all looked through me. I took a taxi to the Elimatta Hotel. I told the driver I was a bad traveller and had not slept all night, and he left me alone. I intended to talk to no one for the whole weekend. I believed I was about to resolve some momentous matter if only I could be left alone. I did not want to sleep or eat. I wondered how soon I might buy a six-pack of stubbies from my hotel.

  The young woman who came to the reception desk in the hotel after I had pressed the bell several times told me that my booking was in order but that I could not occupy my room before eleven.

  I have always preferred to disguise my feelings in the presence of others. I was dismayed by what the young woman had told me, and having stayed only once in all my life at a hotel, I could not understand the reason for my being shut out, as it seemed to me, from my own room. But I behaved as though I had only called at that hour to confirm my booking and to leave my suitcase in her care. I put my suitcase behind her desk and strolled out of the hotel as though I had friends outside waiting to drive me to their home for a shower and a shave and a substantial breakfast. I turned towards the main streets of Devonport. The time was about eight-thirty.

  I walked for fifteen minutes and r
eached the commercial centre of Devonport. I was not unaware that I would be mostly confined to my hotel room for the next two days, and I bought a bag of apples, a few bananas, and a bunch of carrots, but I went on walking with the fruit and the carrots swinging in a bag from my hand. I did not want to eat. I was almost afraid to eat. I felt as though my body no longer needed food: as though my body could be sustained by the powerful thoughts about to enter my mind. Such a feeling was invigorating, but I thought occasionally that if I ate so much as a mouthful I would fall to my knees in the street and would crawl to the gutter and would begin to vomit. The police would be called. I would be taken back to my hotel. My suitcase would be searched. Something in my baggage would enrage the police. It might be my books or something I had scribbled during the previous night. I would be escorted to the Abel Tasman and left in the care of the captain until the vessel sailed for Melbourne on Sunday evening.

  I went on walking. I walked for more than two hours, very slowly and with frequent pauses. I walked through streets of houses at first, and later I walked back to the river and then along a path that took me to the headland where the Mersey enters Bass Strait. I believe I walked for ten minutes or more along the ocean before I turned back. But I remember hardly anything of what I saw while I walked. The one detail I remember is the spur-winged plovers. I noticed the plovers first while I walked along the grassy bank of the river from the Elimatta Hotel towards the main streets. Every twenty or thirty paces, I passed a pair of plovers walking up and down the grass and listening or watching for their prey. I had always been interested in plovers. In the early mornings in the suburb of Melbourne where I lived, I would sometimes hear the cry of a plover and would suppose that I was receiving some kind of message. In the streets of Devonport, I would stand at a few paces from a plover, trying to see the eye of the bird. I remember one bird that turned away and would not meet my eye on a neat lawn that I learned a few moments later was part of the surrounds of the library of Devonport.

  I cannot remember having arrived back at my hotel. I assume that I arrived towards midday and was shown to my room. Perhaps I ate soon afterwards in my room one or more of the carrots or apples or bananas that I had been carrying for so long, but I suspect that I lay on the bed in my room and slept for a few hours. My room was part of a block of rooms across a courtyard from the main building of the hotel. The first thing that I can recall from the Saturday afternoon is my walking across the courtyard to the drive-in bottle shop and buying a dozen stubbies of Tasmanian beer and two or three flasks of vodka and then taking them back to my room. I can recall from that same afternoon a few minutes when I was drinking from a stubby of beer and when the sunlight was bright on the other side of the curtains of my room (I had not opened them since I had first entered the room) and when I noticed a radio near the bed that I was lying on. I turned the radio on. I heard part of the description of a football match between two Tasmanian teams. The broadcast was interrupted by a broadcast of a race from Elwick. I listened to the broadcast, but I had never previously heard the name of any of the horses in the race. (I did not often listen to broadcasts of races in Melbourne, but when I listened I would always recognise the name of one or another horse.) I got up from the bed and walked into the bathroom attached to the bedroom. I looked into the mirror and told myself that I should no longer doubt that I had crossed the sea and had arrived in Tasmania.

  I can recall also from the late afternoon or the early evening of the Saturday a period of about fifteen minutes when I awoke on my bed, still fully clothed, and supposed the time to be the morning of one or another day. I took out of my suitcase one of the parcels meant for my breakfast on each day of my tour. I emptied the oats and other things into my bowl and added water and ate. The first mouthful was hard to swallow, and I supposed I was about to vomit it up again. I stood at the door to the bathroom and toilet with my food in my hand. I went on eating but I was ready to vomit if I had to do so. After each mouthful, I felt less uncomfortable. I nudged with my foot the plastic lid of the toilet. The lid fell over the bowl of the toilet. I sat on the plastic lid and ate the remainder of my breakfast food.

  I can recall a few minutes from a time that I suppose to have been soon after dark on the Saturday evening. I had woken again on the bed that I considered my bed. I was still wearing the underclothes and shirt and trousers that I had put on in my home in Melbourne at least thirty-six hours before. I walked to the small refrigerator in the corner of my room. I opened the door of the refrigerator and looked at the supply of beer and vodka inside. I seem to recall that I saw an unopened flask of vodka and more than six stubbies, but this must have seemed not enough to keep me contented throughout the Sunday. I seem not to have supposed that a guest of the hotel might order drinks on Sunday, since I remember walking across from my room through darkness and buying another six stubbies and another flask of vodka from the bottle shop.

  I must have slept soundly at last during the late evening of the Saturday. What I next remember is my hearing while I slept a sound that seemed to me a sound in a dream. I seemed to be dreaming that a branch of a tree was knocking against the window of my room. As I awoke, I understood that someone was knocking at my door.

  I got up from the bed. I had covered myself with the bedspread, but I was still dressed in the shirt and trousers and underclothes that I had worn when I left Melbourne. I supposed the person knocking was one of the staff of the hotel. I opened the door. A youngish woman asked me if she could come in and then stepped forward as though I had already invited her to enter.

  I stepped back. The woman walked into the middle of the room and then stood and looked around for the best place to seat herself. She walked to an armchair near the head of my bed, as I thought of it, and sat in the chair. She had been carrying in her right hand a bulky briefcase of the sort that men had carried on suburban trains when I had worked as a public servant in Melbourne twenty-five years before. Having sat, she rested the briefcase across her thighs.

  I closed the door to my room. The only places where I could have sat were the bed and the other of the two chairs, which was on the opposite side of the bed from the chair where the woman was sitting. I sat in the chair, and the woman and I looked at one another across the bed.

  Even before the woman had spoken at the door, she had seemed to give off a certain warmth and friendliness towards me. As she had walked into my room, I thought she must have mistaken it for some other room. She had arrived at the hotel to visit someone she had never seen but had corresponded with for a long time, but she had knocked at the wrong door – that explanation would have fitted exactly.

  We looked at one another by the light of the bedlamp. I cannot report that she smiled at me, but her face was composed and her look was friendly. I was sure by now that she took me for someone else.

  Every year, I am less able to estimate the ages of persons much younger than myself. The woman in my room might have been any age from thirty to forty. How did she look to me? My instinctive reaction whenever I meet a female person for the first time is to find her either sexually attractive or sexually unattractive. I did not react instinctively when I first met the woman I am writing about. I seem to have noted few details of her appearance. I remember that her hair was neither dark nor fair, but I do not remember that it was brownish or gingery. Her eyes, her skin, her body – none of these I could describe. What I recall continually is an impression I got from her voice and her posture and her manner towards me. I understood from the first that she thought of me as a friend or an ally of some kind. When she looked at me or spoke to me, it seemed understood between us that we had dealt with one another previously and had long since set aside such petty matters as love and passion. Now, we were together once more in order to deal with things that truly mattered.

  When I had sat down, she told me her name. I heard it as Alice. She told me that she knew my name already but not as a result of her having read anything I had written. She was interested in writing, she sa
id, but not in the sort of writing that she understood me to have written. She knew my name, she told me, because a man she knew – the owner of the briefcase in her lap – had pointed out my name to her in a paragraph in a newspaper. My name had been printed in a paragraph reporting that three writers were going to take part in a tour of Tasmania. The man her friend, so she said, seemed to know something about me or to have read some of the articles or poems or novels or plays that I had written. Her friend had asked her to telephone the newspaper and to ask who had supplied the details of the paragraph about the writers’ tour. She had telephoned and had been told the name of the organisation that had arranged the tour. She had telephoned the organisation for several days afterwards before she had finally spoken to someone. She had asked for details of the itinerary of the writers, including the names of the hotels and motels where they would be staying. She had had to pretend to be a devoted reader of all my writings before the person from the writers’ organisation would give her any details. The person was a man, so she told me, and she believed he would not have given her the details if she had not been a woman and had not spoken pleadingly. When she had reported to her man-friend that I would be staying for two nights alone in the Elimatta Hotel in Devonport before the tour began, he had been pleased. He had then arranged for the visit that she was making at the time of her telling me this.