Stream System

by Gerald Murnane

  The man and his cousin walked up and down on the opposite side of the garden from where they had walked on the previous day. The cousin told the man that he would be ordained in February 1965, after which he would feel even closer to God. The man asked his cousin where he would live after he had been ordained. The cousin said that his superiors might send him either to a monastery in another suburb of Sydney or to a monastery in a country district but that he would feel equally close to God wherever he lived.

  The man in this story then told his cousin that he was thinking of going to live in a country district as from January 1965 and of going into the Catholic church in his district every Sunday.

  The cousin told the man that this was wonderful news. The cousin seemed to the man to believe that the man was thinking of doing these things because he wanted to feel closer to God.

  While the man and his cousin had been talking, the man had been looking at the low stone wall beside the path where he and his cousin were walking up and down. He believed that the wall was the same cream-coloured wall that had stayed in his mind since he had first thought of going to Sydney, but he had not seen any dark-green ferns hanging down in front of the wall. He had seen ferns and other small dark-green plants growing in the beds of soil that reached back from the top of the wall, but none of those plants hung down over the wall. The man had seen also in the beds of soil signs that someone had pulled small plants out of the soil only a few days before.

  The man in this story asked his cousin who it was that looked after the garden around the monastery.

  The man’s cousin answered that he and the other students for the priesthood looked after the garden during some of their recreation periods. The cousin then pointed to the beds of soil above the low stone wall and said that he and the other students had cleaned up that part of the garden only a few days before.

  The man in this story walked up to the low wall of cream-coloured stones. The wall reached as high as the thighs of the man. The man looked at the bed of soil close to the top of the wall and at the cracks between the topmost cream-coloured stones. He was looking for the soil that had held the roots of the few dark-green ferns that he had often seen in his mind.

  The man reached out a hand towards the wall. His cousin told him not to touch the wall and not to put his hands near the soil behind the wall. His cousin told him not to forget that the garden of the monastery was in one of the northern suburbs of Sydney, which was one of the districts where the funnel-web spider lived. The cousin said that he and his fellow-students always wore boots and thick gloves while they worked in the garden because the bite of the funnel-web spider was deadly. The cousin pointed to a crack between two cream-coloured stones in the low wall and he said that such a crack was often the hiding-place of a funnel-web spider.

  The man in this story remembered a joke that he had heard from one of the card-players and beer-drinkers on a Saturday night in April 1964. One of the card-players and beer-drinkers had asked the others had they heard about the young woman who had been bitten on the funnel by a finger-web spider.

  The man in this story heard jokes every Saturday night while he played cards and drank beer. Whenever he heard a joke that made him laugh, the man would put his cards face-down on the table and would take out and unfold a piece of paper that he carried in his pocket every Saturday night. Then the man would write a few words on his piece of paper. On the night when he had heard the joke about the young woman and the spider, the man had written the words finger and web.

  On most Friday afternoons in the hotel, the man would amuse the married men who were his fellow-teachers by taking pieces of paper from his pocket and unfolding the paper and looking at the words written on the paper and trying to remember the jokes that he had heard on the previous Saturday night. On the Friday after the man had written the words finger and web on a piece of paper, he saw the two words on the piece of paper that he had unfolded in the hotel. The man remembered at once the joke that the words had been meant to recall to him, but he looked at the words as though he could not remember, and he told the men other jokes but not the joke about the young woman and the spider.

  The man in this story had not told in the hotel the joke about the finger-web spider because he had thought of the married men surrounding him as much more knowing than himself. The man had been afraid that one of the married men would not smile after he had heard the joke but would say that he knew of no part of a woman’s body that was shaped like a funnel and would then ask him, the teller of the joke, to explain what part of the woman’s body he had had in mind when he had told the joke.

  In the garden of the monastery, beside the cream-coloured wall where the deadly spiders were said to live, the man in this story did not tell his cousin the joke about the finger-web spider. The man did not want his cousin to think that he, the teller of the joke, was boasting of how much more knowing he was or of how much more knowing he would be as from the day in 1966 or 1967 after he had married the young woman that he would have chosen for his girlfriend in the Catholic church in his country district.

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon of his second day in Sydney the man in this story said goodbye to his cousin and travelled by railway train from Turramurra to Sydney and then by taxi to the Majestic Hotel in Kings Cross. In his room he ate sultanas and dried apricots and cheese while he moved his finger along the lines of his map.

  On the following morning the man left the Majestic Hotel for the last time and travelled by taxi to the railway station in Sydney where he had arrived three days before. The man found the window seat reserved for him in the Melbourne train and sat down. He opened the free map that was provided for each passenger and began to study and to follow with his finger the route that the train would follow from Sydney back to Melbourne. When the train began to move, the man looked around him and saw that the only passenger sitting near him was a man in the window seat on the opposite side of the carriage. This man seemed a few years older than the man in this story and was wearing the uniform of a soldier.

  Early in the afternoon the man in this story became tired of studying his free map. He thought of talking to the man in the window seat opposite, but when he looked across the carriage he saw that the man in the uniform had gone.

  The man in this story suspected that the man in the uniform had gone to some part of the train where beer was being sold. The man in this story wanted to drink beer and to talk to other men. He had not drunk beer while he had been in Sydney. He had not wanted to walk alone into a hotel and to order a single glass of beer from a woman older and more knowing than himself and then to stand drinking the beer alone among groups of married men or of single men older and more knowing than himself.

  The man in this story got up from his seat and walked through the carriages of the train until he came to a carriage where women were serving food from behind a tall steel counter. Men were sitting on tall stools in front of the steel counter, and every man had not only food in front of him but a can of beer.

  The man in this story glanced around him but went on walking through the carriage. He did not want to stand and to stare at the men and the cans of beer and so cause the women behind the steel counter to believe that he wanted to drink beer among the men but was afraid to approach the women.

  The man was afraid to approach the women because he did not understand the rules for drinking beer at the steel counter. On his way through the carriage he saw a notice behind the women warning him that liquor would be served only with meals. He did not want to eat a meal that had been prepared by the strange women. If he had wanted to eat a meal he would have eaten the last of the cheese and the dried fruits in his bag. Yet most of the men on the tall stools were eating only cheese. Most of the men had in front of them a few pieces of cheese and a few dried biscuits.

  The man in this story would have asked one of the women for a few pieces of cheese and a few dry biscuits if he had been sure that that was all he had to do in order to bu
y a can of beer. But the man was afraid that the women behind the steel counter would require him to pass some other test before they would sell him the can of beer. And even if he had to pass no other test, he was afraid that he might use other words than the customary words when he asked one of the women for the cheese and the biscuits and the beer, and that the woman would then understand that he had never before asked for cheese and biscuits and beer on the train from Sydney to Melbourne.

  The man in this story was walking past the last section of the steel counter on his way out of the carriage when a man in a soldier’s uniform asked him if he wanted a beer. The man in this story recognised the man in the soldier’s uniform as the man who had sat near him earlier.

  The man in this story sat on the tall stool next to the man in the uniform and leaned an arm on the tall steel counter. The man in the uniform smiled and made a sign with his finger to one of the women behind the counter. The woman smiled at the man in the uniform and hurried towards him. The man in the uniform told the woman to bring a can and a plate for the man in this story. The woman smiled again and went to fetch the can and the plate, but the man in this story understood that the woman had smiled only at the man in the uniform and that she was hurrying to fetch the can and the plate only because the man in the uniform had asked her. When the woman put the can and the plate on the counter near the man in this story she did not look at him, and the man understood that she would have jeered at him if he had not been sitting beside the man in the soldier’s uniform.

  The man in this story learned from the man in the soldier’s uniform that he was a soldier. The two men talked and drank beer from early in the afternoon until early in the evening, when the train had crossed the Great Dividing Range and was approaching the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Sometimes the man in this story ate a biscuit or a piece of cheese from his plate so that the women behind the steel counter would not think he despised the food that they served. The soldier ate none of the biscuits and none of the pieces of cheese on his plate. In the early evening, when the two men had drunk the last of their cans, the plate beside the man in this story was empty and the plate beside the soldier was still covered with dry biscuits and pieces of cheese, yet the woman who took away the two plates smiled at the soldier and did not look at the man in this story.

  During the afternoon the man in this story learned that the soldier resembled him in some ways. The soldier had been brought up as a Catholic but no longer called himself a Catholic or went into Catholic churches. The soldier had a cousin who was studying to be a priest in Brisbane. The soldier did not have a girlfriend. The soldier thought sometimes that he would like to live in a country district. However, the man in this story understood that the soldier was about seven years older than him, that he had had several girlfriends in the past, and that he was much more knowing.

  During the afternoon the soldier told stories to the man in this story. Many of the stories were about men doing things that the man himself had done; they were stories about men drinking beer or playing cards or travelling to cities where they had never been before. Some of the stories were about things that the man in this story had once hoped to do but had since given up hope of doing; they were stories of men having one girlfriend after another. Some of the stories were about men doing things that the man in this story had never hoped to do; they were stories about men travelling to foreign countries and fighting as soldiers.

  * * *

  Twenty years after the man in this story had listened to the soldier on the train between Sydney and Melbourne, the man was drinking beer and playing cards with three married men and four married women of the same age as himself. The man asked the seven married persons how many of them remembered the war between Australian soldiers and Communist terrorists, as they were called, in the jungles of Malaya fifteen years before the war in Vietnam.

  None of the seven married persons could remember the war in Malaya. One of the married women said that the man in this story had not remembered but had dreamed of the war.

  The man in this story said that he not only remembered the war in Malaya but also remembered himself dreaming of the war. When he had been a student at secondary school, the man said, he had read about the war in newspapers and had been afraid that the Communist terrorists would win the war and would conquer Malaya and neighbouring countries and would then invade Australia. He had been especially afraid, the man had said, that he would have to become a soldier and would die fighting the Communist terrorists in the jungles or on the plains of Australia before he had persuaded a young woman to become his girlfriend.

  * * *

  While the two unmarried men drank beer and talked at the steel counter, the soldier sometimes told the other man that he had seen some terrible sights in the jungles of Malaya. After the soldier had said for the first time that he had seen some terrible sights, the other man supposed that the soldier was trying to decide whether or not to tell him a certain story about a certain terrible sight. After the soldier had said for the third or the fourth time that he had seen some terrible sights, the other man supposed that the soldier had decided not to tell him a certain story. But in the early evening, when the train was approaching the northern suburbs of Melbourne and when each man was drinking his last can of beer, the soldier said he would tell the man a little story.

  The soldier told the man in this story first that the jungles of Malaya were far-reaching and thick and dark green and without roads. While he was telling this to the man, the soldier moved the tip of his finger inwards a few inches from one point after another on the circumference of an invisible circle on the top of the steel counter. The soldier moved his finger inwards each time but then lifted the finger away before it reached the centre of the invisible circle. While the soldier moved his finger, the man in this story saw one road after another coming to an end in the remote country districts of Malaya.

  The soldier told the man that the Communist terrorists had lived for many years in the jungle. Some of the Communists had built villages that seemed invisible among the dark-green leaves. The soldier and his mates had been trained to search for the invisible-seeming villages and then to kill all the Communists and to destroy all the invisible-seeming houses in the villages.

  One day the soldier and his mates had found the largest number of Communists and the largest village that they had so far found. The village had seemed invisible because it consisted not of buildings but of caves. The Communists had built an invisible village of caves in a tall, cream-coloured cliff deep inside the dark-green jungle.

  Before the soldiers could enter the village of caves, they had to fight the Communists who lived there. The Communists had fought to defend their invisible-seeming village but in time the soldier and his mates had killed every Communist.

  After the soldiers had killed the last of the Communists, so the soldier had told the man in this story, the soldier and his mates had entered the invisible-seeming caves in the wall of cream-coloured rock.

  When he had come to this point in his story, the soldier in this story began to move his index finger from place to place on the top of the steel counter. The man in this story understood that the soldier was not now trying to make him see a map in his mind but was afraid. The man understood that the soldier was afraid of telling the end of his story because it was the story of something that had changed him from one sort of soldier and man into another sort.

  When the man in this story had understood this, he became afraid. He was afraid that what he was about to hear would be something that would change him from one sort of man into another sort. He was afraid that after he had heard what he was about to hear he would go back to the room that he called for the time being his own room and would put away his map of country districts and would tear up the list of schools where he might have taught as from January 1965 and would be afraid afterwards to live anywhere but in the suburbs of the city where he had been born and afraid even to visit his cousin in the monastery or
his married cousin or anyone else in Sydney or in any city other than his native city.

  The soldier stopped moving his finger from place to place on the top of the steel counter. He looked through the window of the railway carriage at the lights of the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Then he told the man in this story that he and his soldier-mates had found in one of the caves in the cream-coloured cliff about twenty young women. The young women had been kept as prisoners by the Communists who had been killed by the soldier and his mates. The young women had been taken prisoner in a village in a remote country district. The soldier and his mates had passed through the village on their way to search for the invisible-seeming village of the Communists. The soldier and his mates had found all the houses of the village burned and all the people except the young women killed.

  The soldiers had soon decided that they could not leave the young women living in the invisible-seeming cave. But then they had decided that they could not take the young women back to the village where the houses had all been burned and the people had all been killed. The soldiers had then assembled the young women and had looked at the face of one young woman after another. The soldiers had then decided to kill the young women. The soldiers had then fired bullets into the heads of the young women and had left the dead bodies of the young women in the invisible-seeming cave in the cream-coloured cliff in the jungle.

  When the soldier in this story had told the man in this story that the soldiers in the soldier’s story had looked at the face of one young woman after another, the soldier had not told the man how the faces of the young women had looked. Instead the soldier had told the man that he could imagine how the faces of the young women had looked. The man in this story had then seen in his mind that the faces of the young women had looked as though the young women were much too knowing.

  First Love

  Somewhere today in a suburb of Melbourne is a man who calls himself a writer of fiction but who writes, in fact, a sort of diary of the man he wishes he could be. The man I am writing about likes to pose as an eccentric. Before an interview he will always ask to be asked about his odd habits and preferences. And he especially likes to be asked if he has done much travelling lately.