Stream System

by Gerald Murnane

  The man mentioned in the previous paragraph has sometimes remembered that the boy mentioned in that paragraph composed while he walked during the morning mentioned in that paragraph the first line of a poem that he intended to compose. The line of poetry just mentioned is:

  O district of my fathers …

  Whenever the man remembers the line of poetry above, he remembers also that the boy who had composed the line shivered while he first spoke the line aloud after he had composed it. The man supposes that the boy shivered partly because he was proud of having composed the line of poetry and partly because he was afraid.

  * * *

  The man mentioned in the second paragraph of this story as holding a stack of cards in his hand remembers every day one or more details from the years when he used to visit his favourite aunt and her parents and sisters or such of those persons as were still alive after the first of them had died. The following is a summary of the details just mentioned.

  The woman who was the favourite aunt mentioned previously was born in one of the first years of the twentieth century and was the eldest of her parents’ six children. When she was twelve years of age, her body below her waist became paralysed. The boy who considered the woman his favourite aunt supposed that she had suffered at the age of twelve years from the disease that he knew as polio, but when he had become a man he recalled after the death of the woman who had been his favourite aunt that no one had ever told him any detail of the story of how the woman had become paralysed below the waist when she was twelve years of age. Sometimes while the boy’s favourite aunt shifted her body in her bed, the boy looked from the sides of his eyes at the mound made in the bedclothes by the parts of his aunt’s body below her waist. At such times the boy supposed from the size of the mound that those parts of his aunt’s body were still of the size they had been when she was twelve years of age. When the boy first became aware of his partly paralysed aunt, she was a woman of forty or more years who had spent nearly thirty years in her bed. When the woman died she was aged about sixty-five years and had spent more than fifty years in her bed.

  The partly paralysed woman mentioned in the previous paragraph rested the weight of her body above the waist on her right elbow for most of each day while she read or talked or held up a mirror with a tortoiseshell handle and looked at a reflection of part of the veranda outside the window of her room or of part of the formal garden on the far side of the veranda or of part of the mostly level countryside on the far side of the formal garden or of part of the sky above the mostly level countryside. The woman’s room was furnished with lounge chairs and was used by the family as the sitting-room of the house. The many visitors to the house were shown into this room and were entertained there. The partly paralysed woman talked and laughed with each of the many visitors.

  The boy who thought of the woman mentioned above as his favourite aunt preferred to visit the woman when no one else was in the room and when he could sit in the chair beside her bed and question her. During the months of each year when the boy was not on holidays, he would make notes of questions in order to have a stock of questions that his aunt would spend many hours in answering when he next visited her. The boy might notice, for example, among the embroidered designs on the altar cloths of the church in his parish the figure of a parent-bird with a long beak together with several infant-birds whose beaks were pointed upwards towards the parent-bird. The boy might ask his favourite aunt when he next visited her to explain this design. The boy’s favourite aunt might tell him that the birds in the design were pelicans and that the parent-bird of the pelican was traditionally supposed to pierce its own breast with its beak so that its young could feed on the blood that flowed.

  * * *

  The card mentioned in the second paragraph of this story has on its obverse an image of the head and the body above the waist of a female saint of the Catholic Church. Behind the image just mentioned is the image of a sky filled with heaps or layers of clouds, one of which is described in the first paragraph of this story as being surrounded by an aureole or nimbus of pink. On the reverse of the card just mentioned are words printed with black ink in bold typefaces. Some of these words are Of your charity, pray for the repose of the soul of … followed by the name of the woman who was once the favourite aunt of one of her nephews. Others of the words just mentioned are May perpetual light shine upon her … Other words and numerals nearby denote a date in one of the first years of the twentieth century and also a date in the seventh decade of the same century.

  Whenever the man who owns the card mentioned in the previous paragraph looks at the reverse of the card, he remembers a day during the week before the second of the dates mentioned in that paragraph. On the day just mentioned the man visited for the first time in several years the house of many rooms where three of his father’s sisters still lived with their mother. When the man entered the room that was used as the sitting-room of the house, he noticed that the woman in the bed in the room was lying not on her right side but on her left side. He noticed also that the woman was not resting the weight of her body above the waist on her left elbow but was lying in the bed in such a position that if her eyes had been open she would have seen through the window in front of her no part of the veranda on the far side of the window or of the formal garden on the far side of the veranda or of the mostly level countryside on the far side of the formal garden and only a part of the sky above the countryside.

  On the day mentioned in the previous paragraph, the man mentioned in that paragraph spoke to the woman in the bed, but the woman spoke in return only the man’s given name. On that day the man learned from the sisters and the mother of the woman in the bed that the woman had not told them at any time recently that she was ill but that she had told them several times recently that she was afraid.

  * * *

  On a certain day when the boy-owner of a collection of holy cards was questioning his favourite aunt about the teachings of the Catholic Church in the matter of heaven, hell, purgatory, and the fate of the soul after death, the boy asked his aunt whether any of the saints of the Church would have known during his or her life on earth that he or she would reach heaven after he or she had died. The boy’s aunt then told him that even the most pious of the saints could not have known before they had died how God would deal with them after they had died. The boy then asked his aunt whether any person living on earth could know whether any of the person’s friends or relatives who had died had reached heaven. The boy’s aunt then told the boy a story.

  The story mentioned in the previous paragraph was about a nun who had lived for most of her life in a convent of many rooms surrounded first by a formal garden and then by a high stone wall and then by countryside in a country of Europe. Many years after she had died, the nun had been proclaimed a saint by the Church, which meant that any Catholic could be certain that the nun had reached heaven and could pray to the nun, but the events in the story told by the aunt to her favourite nephew took place soon after the death of the nun and at a time when no one on earth could be certain of what had happened to the nun after she had died. While the aunt told the story to her nephew, the nephew did not know that the card that the mother of his favourite aunt and her two surviving sisters would cause to be printed and distributed soon after her death would have on its obverse a picture of the head and of the body above the waist of the nun in the story.

  The story mentioned in the previous paragraph may be summarised as follows. During her lifetime, the nun had as a friend a woman who was not a nun but who visited the nun from time to time. The nun and her friend often agreed on how hard it was for persons living on earth that they could not know whether any of their friends and relatives who had died had reached heaven. One day the nun told her friend that if she, the nun, died and reached heaven while her friend was still alive, she, the nun, would send to her friend as a sign that she, the nun, had reached heaven a rose from one of the formal gardens of heaven. In time, the nun died while h
er friend was still alive. A few days after the nun had died, her friend visited the convent where the nun had lived. The friend talked to the head nun of the convent about the nun who had died. While they were talking, the head nun invited the friend of the dead nun to walk in the formal garden surrounding the convent. While the two persons were walking in the formal garden, the head nun walked over to one of the rose bushes and cut one of the roses from the bush and gave it to the friend of the nun who had died.

  * * *

  On a certain morning in his fifth year, when the boy who later became the owner of the holy cards mentioned previously had not yet become accustomed to spending part of his summer holidays in the house of many rooms mentioned previously, he walked in from the formal garden surrounding the house in order to sit beside the bed of the woman who had already become his favourite aunt. In the hallway of the house, the boy found that the door leading to the room of his favourite aunt was closed. The boy then reached up to the handle of the door and turned the handle and opened the door.

  At certain times during the years following his twenty-fifth year, the man who was first mentioned in the second paragraph of this story believed that he had never looked at or touched the naked body of any woman before his twenty-fifth year. At other times during the years just mentioned, the man believed that he had looked at the naked body above the waist of a certain woman during his fifth year. Whenever the man believed what is mentioned in the previous sentence, he believed that he had seen, after he had opened the door mentioned in the previous paragraph, the naked body above the waist of his favourite aunt while she leaned over a dish of white enamel filled with water and on that body two breasts, each with a nipple surrounded by a zone of pink. Whenever the man believed what is mentioned in the sentence before the sentence mentioned in the previous sentence, he believed that he had seen, after he had opened the door just mentioned, the naked body above the waist just mentioned and the dish filled with water just mentioned and on the body the nipples of a girl whose breasts had not yet begun to grow.

  * * *

  On a day when the view from the window of the room where the man who was first mentioned in the second paragraph of this story had kept for more than twenty years in a filing cabinet the cards that he had called as a boy holy cards was of a sky filled with heaps or layers of grey clouds, the man was asked by the woman who had been his wife for more than twenty years why he called such a sky his favourite sky. On that day, the man answered that the sky on the first day that he remembered had been a sky filled with heaps or layers of grey clouds.

  On the earlier of the two days mentioned in the previous paragraph, the boy mentioned in that paragraph was a boy in his third year and living with his parents and his younger brother in a suburb of Geelong. On that day the boy had stood alone in the formal garden surrounding the house where he then lived and had looked up at the heaps or layers of grey clouds in the sky and had imagined for the first time that he afterwards remembered certain details of a district other than the district where he then lived.

  * * *

  On a certain day in the twenty-first year of the man who was first mentioned in the second paragraph of this story, the man moved from the house in a suburb of Melbourne where he had lived for most of the time that he could remember with his parents and his younger brother and began to live alone in a room in a house in another suburb of Melbourne. On the day before the day just mentioned, the man told his father that he, the man, no longer believed in the teachings of the Catholic Church in the matter of heaven, hell, purgatory, and the fate of the soul after death or in any other matter.

  * * *

  On a certain day three months after the day mentioned in the previous paragraph, the man mentioned in that paragraph received from his mother a letter telling him that she and his father and his younger brother had moved from the suburb of Melbourne where they had previously lived to a suburb of Geelong. The mother of the man did not mention in the letter the reason for her and her husband’s having moved, but the man believed three months later that he understood the reason. The mother of the man wrote also in her letter about some of the families who lived in the suburb of Geelong where she then lived. A certain member of one of those families will be mentioned in a later section of this story.

  During a certain hour before daylight on a certain morning three months after the man mentioned in the previous paragraph had received from his mother the letter mentioned in that paragraph, and while the man was sitting beside the bed where his father was lying in a room of a hospital in the city of Geelong, the man believed that he understood why his father had recently moved from a suburb of Melbourne to a suburb of Geelong. The man believed that his father had moved because he understood, even though he was a man in his fifty-sixth year who had not been ill since the years of his childhood, that he would soon die, and because he wanted to move before he died as near as he could move to the district in the south-west of Victoria where he had been born and where his four unmarried sisters still lived with their mother.

  During the hour mentioned in the previous paragraph, the younger of the two men mentioned in that paragraph looked into a small cupboard of steel that stood beside the bed where his father appeared to be asleep in the room mentioned in the same paragraph. Among the things that the younger man saw in the cupboard just mentioned was a man’s dressing-gown rolled into a bundle with the cord of the dressing-gown tied loosely around the bundle. While the man just mentioned was looking at the tassels on the ends of the cord just mentioned, he supposed for the first time in his life that the dressing-gown mentioned earlier in this story as having been worn often by the mother of the man in the first year that he afterwards remembered had belonged not to his mother but to his father; that the dressing-gown just mentioned had been bought by his father during one of the many years when he had been a bachelor; and that the mother of the man had worn the dressing gown often during a number of years because she and her husband and their two sons had been poor during those years.

  During the hour following the hour mentioned in the previous paragraph, the younger of the two men mentioned in that paragraph understood that his father was about to die. At some time during that hour, the younger man remembered his father’s having described to him more than ten years earlier certain details from the first day that he, the father, afterwards remembered. The father had said that he had run on that day along the veranda and through the garden surrounding the house that stood in the early years of the twentieth century where a house of cream-coloured stone of many rooms was later built. The father had also said that he had run to escape from his father and that his father had then run after him.

  When the man who was mentioned in the previous paragraph as having understood that his father was about to die had first heard from his father the details of the father’s running to escape from his father, the man asked his father whether he had been taking part in a game of chasing with his father. The father of the man who asked the question just mentioned had then said that he, the father, had not been taking part in a game and that he had been, on the first day that he afterwards remembered, afraid.

  * * *

  Late on a certain morning in the first summer after the death of the father of the man who was first mentioned in the second paragraph of this story, the man travelled alone in a motor car from the suburb of Melbourne where he lived alone in a room of a house to the city of Geelong. While the man was travelling on the road that led south-west from Melbourne across mostly level countryside on the way to Geelong, he heard in his mind from time to time certain words from a song that he had first heard from a radio during the previous year. While the man was travelling, he looked from time to time at the sky over the district of Geelong and over the beginnings of the district south-west of that district. The sky that the man looked at was filled with heaps or layers of grey clouds. While the man was travelling, he imagined from time to time details of scenes in remote countryside.

  The
morning mentioned in the previous paragraph was the first morning of the man’s summer holidays. The man was on his way to spend the first day and the first night of his holidays in the house in the suburb of Geelong where his mother lived with her younger son. The man intended to leave his mother’s house on the second morning of his holidays and to travel during the remainder of his holidays through districts in New South Wales and Queensland.

  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.